Objections to the Sabbath Answered by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1873

Objections to the Sabbath Answered.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

TWENTY-FIRST OBJECTION.

It is a violation of the Sabbath to go out of the dwelling, or kindle a fire, or to drive our teams to meeting, on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:29; 20:8–10; 35:3), hence it cannot be kept now.

Answer. To the first part of this objection, I answer that there is no such prohibition in the Bible, Old Testament or New. One occupation of the Sabbath, as specified by God himself, was that of coming together for religious meetings. Lev. 23:3: “Six days may work be done; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, an holy convocation.” What is a convocation? Is it not a calling together, or a coming together? Yes. Could the people all come together, and still not go out of their dwellings? No. Shall we, then, charge God with contradicting his own laws, in one place commanding them not to leave their houses, and in another place to go to meeting, at the same time? The very fact that the pious Jews, during the old dispensation, were accustomed to assemble in the synagogues, and other places for meetings, on the Sabbath day (2 Kings 4:23; Luke 4:16), shows that they were ignorant of any law forbidding them to leave their houses on that day. Our opponents will admit that Jesus had to keep all the old law, till it was abolished at the cross. Very well; we find him constantly going to the synagogues on the Sabbath.

These facts show that our opponents have misinterpreted the text upon which they rely. It simply relates to the act of the people in going out of their places on the Sabbath day to gather food, which God had forbidden them to do; but does not contradict the other requirement, to assemble in meetings on that day. Thus the text reads: “And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” Ex. 16:27–29. Who can fail to see that this prohibition related only to the act of going out to gather food, but had no reference to going to meetings, or attending to other sacred duties belonging to that day?

The same strained and unnatural interpretation is forced upon Ex. 20:8–10, to show that it is wrong to drive our teams to meeting on the Sabbath. “Six days shalt thou labor and do all THY work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, . . . nor thy cattle,” &c. We have just shown that the Lord required his people to go to meeting upon the Sabbath day, and that they all did so. Yet God forbids them to do any work, the same as in the case of the cattle. If their walking to meeting on the Sabbath was not a violation of the law, neither would it be for the cattle to walk there. God said, “Thou shalt not do any work,” yet the hardest day's work of the whole week, for the priest, was done upon the Sabbath day, on which they had to do double work. Num. 28:9. Still, Christ says they did not violate the Sabbath, in doing this. Matt. 12:5. Why not? Because this was for God's special service, and was not their own work. The law simply forbids the doing of our work, either by ourselves, our children, our servants, or our cattle. But that which is for God's worship, is lawful on that day, as are all deeds of mercy and benevolence, for so Christ has decided. Matt. 12:10–13. Hence it is lawful to drive our teams to meeting on the Sabbath.

Lastly, as to building fires on the Sabbath day, Ex. 35:3, we may observe, 1. That this prohibition is not in the ten commandments, which we claim are still binding. 2. That it is in the law of Moses, which we and our opponents both agree has been abolished; so that, whatever its meaning once was, it does not concern us now. 3. There are many facts which show that this prohibition extended only to the Jews, while in the wilderness, but never applied to them after they reached Canaan. (1.) Palestine, in winter, is so cold as to require fire to keep the inhabitants from suffering. (2.) The Sabbath was not designed to distress men, then, more than now. (3.) In the warm climate of Arabia, where this law applied, no fires were needed for comfort. (4.) If this law had been carried out, in Palestine, it would have directly conflicted with the law of the passover, which required the lamb to be roasted on the evening following the fourteenth day of the first month, which would occasionally come on the Sabbath. But the passover was only once celebrated in the wilderness. Hence we conclude that this objection is unfounded, as the law against fires was only local, not extending even to the land of Canaan, but applied only for the few years the Israelites were in the wilderness.

TWENTY-SECOND OBJECTION.

Stoning to death, the penalty for Sabbath-breaking, has been abolished; and as a law without a penalty is of no force, therefore the law of the Sabbath is void.

Answer. Stoning to death never was the final penalty for the violation of the Sabbath, or any other of the ten commandments. It was simply the penalty prescribed by the civil law of the Jews, the same as hanging or imprisonment is with us. A little reflection will show this. Suppose a Jew had murdered a man. For this he was arrested and stoned to death. Was that the penalty of the moral law? If so, as soon as he was dead, he had paid the penalty of the law, and would not, in justice, be made to pay it again. Hence, in the final Judgment, this man would go clear of the second death! God would not judge, condemn, and punish him twice, for the same crime. So he would go straight into the kingdom! This is too absurd to be believed. No; the stoning penalty was simply that prescribed by the civil law of the land, the same as hanging is with us. But the real and final penalty for the violation of the moral law, has always been death—the second death. There has been no change in this penalty. It has always been the same in the Old and New Testaments. Eze. 18:20; Rom. 6:23. Those who violate God's Sabbath now, will find, in the Judgment of the great day, that death is the penalty for Sabbath-breaking, the same as ever.

MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS.

If the seventh day is the Sabbath, why has it not been found out before?

Answer. It was found out six thousand years ago, Gen. 2:3, and has been frequently urged upon men's attention, ever since. There has never been a time when the Sabbath has not been observed by some of God's people. (See Andrew's History of the Sabbath.) But many of the most prominent truths of the Bible have, at different times, been perverted and finally lost by men, sometimes for ages. Then, when God raises up some one to restore these old truths, they are opposed as introducing new doctrines, and the strong argument against them always is, “If this is so, why was it not found out before?” Luther had this constantly thrown in his face. For hundreds of years, the truths he began to revive had been lost sight of. That generation had never heard of them. To them, they were entirely new. The first question, everywhere, was, “If these things are so, why have they not been found out before? Why have not our ministers preached them?” All Luther could say, was, that these truths were in the Bible, and he should preach them.

So we say of this truth. Why God suffered it to be lost for so long a time, by the mass of the people, and to be revived now, rather than at some other time, we may not be able to tell, any more than why he has suffered other truths to be lost for ages, and then restored the same as this. The violation of the second commandment, image worship, was nearly universal for about one thousand years previous to the Reformation. Then God raised up men who restored that down-trodden commandment. Why was it not done before? Who can tell? Was Wesley a reformer? Yes. Why were not the truths he preached found out before? To be consistent, those who raise this objection ought to reject all the light, all the improvements, all the reformations, which have ever been received since Adam's day, and refuse to know or believe anything not revealed in the first chapter of the Bible!

D. M. CANRIGHT. Concord, Minn.