No Lie is of the Truth by R. F. COTTRELL

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1872

No Lie is of the Truth.

By R. F. COTTRELL

THIS is a self-evident proposition, yet an apostle, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has stated it, that it might be impressed upon our minds.

Truth is wholly truth—no part of it is a lie—and it is not sustained or aided in the least degree by lies. It stands firmly upon its own basis, and needs no false props. “No lie is of the truth.”

If it is a truth that the first day of the week is the Lord’s Sabbath, there was a time when it became such. When was it? We inquire,

1. Was it the first day of the week that God blessed and sanctified at the beginning, because that in it he had rested from all his work? If so, the first day has been the Sabbath from the very first, and there could be no change to make it the Sabbath since that time.

2. Did the first day become the Sabbath for the reason that the blessing and sanctification of the seventh day pertained to an indefinite seventh part of time? Then the first day has been the Sabbath from the beginning to the full extent that it is now, or ever can become, without the appointment of the specific day; and such appointment would subvert the original design; namely, that the Sabbath should be any one day of rest after six days of labor. With this indefinite-day theory no definite day can become the Sabbath without overturning and nullifying its very foundation. Therefore the first day always was the Sabbath as much as it is now, and it is no more the Christian Sabbath than any other day of the week, the seventh day not excepted.

3. Did the first day become the Sabbath at the birth of Jesus Christ? as the Roman church hold that he “was born upon a Sunday.” If so, it was not the Sabbath before, and has not become such since.

4. Did Christ make the first day the Sabbath by his teaching? If so, it was not the Sabbath from the beginning, nor from his birth; neither could it become the Sabbath at any subsequent time, from the fact that his teaching had already made it such.

5. Did the first day become the Sabbath at the resurrection of Christ? Then it was not the Sabbath before, and could not be made the Sabbath afterward.

6. Did the outpouring of the Spirit upon the apostles on the noted day of Pentecost, bless and sanctify the first day of the week as the Sabbath? Then it had not been the Sabbath from the resurrection of Christ; for it could not be the Sabbath before its sanctification, that is, before it was set apart for this use, and it could not become the Sabbath by any act or saying of the apostles afterward, because it was already appointed. They might refer us to the fact, that the day was blessed and sanctified on the day of Pentecost, but their acts and teachings could not make it the Sabbath.

7. Was the first day made the Sabbath by the action or commandment of the apostles? In that case it had not been the Sabbath from any point of time mentioned before.

Again, we ask, When did the first day become the Sabbath? If it is the Sabbath because it is the very day on which God rested from the work of creation, then there has been no change; and therefore every effort to prove a change is false. Away then with all these false positions; they are not needed; for “no lie is of the truth.”

Or, if it is the Sabbath by virtue of its being one day in seven, it always has been just what it now is. Hence all efforts to prove that it became the Sabbath at any subsequent point of time, are vain, and every added prop is false. It could not become what it already was. To say it became the Sabbath afterward is false; and no lie is of the truth—lies do not help the truth in the least degree.

But if the Sabbath was changed at the resurrection of Christ—if the first day then became the Sabbath instead of the seventh, which had been the Sabbath before, the position that it had been the Sabbath from the creation, by virtue of its being a seventh part of the week, is false, and should be abandoned; for no lie is of the truth.

In answer to the question, When was the change of the Sabbath made? our friends are obliged to say that it was brought about gradually—that Christ in his teaching laid the foundation for the change, that by his resurrection and by the outpouring of the Spirit—two events fifty days apart—he pointed out the day, and left it with the apostles to give the decisive and authoritative instructions in regard to it to the church, which, by the way, they neglected to do.

Yes, my friends, the change was gradual; and the grade was much longer, and consequently not half so steep, as you imagine. Instead of the descent being made in the first century, during the lifetime of the apostles, the change in the law of God was not fully made and the first-day Sabbath completed, till in 538 the church of Rome decreed that all, in the country places as well as in cities and villages, should rest from labor on that day, and anathematized all those who still adhered to the original Sabbath. And it was many centuries later still, when the discovery was made that the fourth commandment could be fully obeyed, in letter and in spirit, by keeping holy the first day of the week. The Roman church claimed the right and authority to change the day, but it remained for Protestants to discover that there needed no change, but that Sunday was the Sabbath by virtue of the original enactment as expressed in the fourth commandment, because it was a seventh part of the week. Any one may be satisfied of the truth of these statements who will read the history of the Sabbath during the present dispensation.

And now every conceivable position is taken, silly, absurd, discordant and contradictory, all that we have named, and how many more of the same sort, or, rather of a like heterogeneous and contradictory character, perhaps no one living can tell, all to prove that we ought to keep the first day as the Christian Sabbath; or, at least, that we need not keep the day that is named in the commandment. As no one place can be found where the first day became the Sabbath, it is said that the argument is cumulative which sustains the change, and hence search is made from the beginning of the Sabbatic institution to the present time, to find reasons for holding that the Sabbath has been changed without any revelation to sustain it. No lie is of the truth; and since these contradictory positions cannot all be true, why not throw away all of them, except the true one, and tell us how and when the first day became the Sabbath? Is not that theory false, which needs so many false props? The different steps in the “cumulative argument” contradict each other. They cannot all be true. But no one can be spared; and, it is thought, that taken altogether the argument is exceedingly strong; and the more strange and contradictory ideas that can be added, the stronger, it is thought, their mountain stands.

The truth has no need of a single lie to sustain it. But the difficulty is this: When you have abandoned every false proof that Sunday is the Sabbath of the Lord, nothing remains.

R. F. COTTRELL.