The Model of Creation Week.
By D. T. Bourdeau
This week is composed of six days of labor and one day of rest; but it is significant in that it was marked by the example of the Almighty, who made our world in six days and rested the seventh day. We call this week the model week, because God made it thus, immediately after his rest from his works on the seventh day, by sanctifying, or setting apart to a holy use, the seventh day; “because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Gen. 2: 2, 3. By this act of sanctifying the seventh day, Jehovah marked off our week, which corresponds with, and is moulded after, the creation week. This correspondence between our week and the first week of time is also made prominent by the fourth commandment, which enjoins the sanctification of God’s rest-day, the seventh day, and grants us the days on which God wrought, in which to do our own work. The reason for thus laboring on the first six days of the week and resting on the seventh, is expressed as follows in the Sabbath law: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day [or rest-day] and hallowed it.” Ex. 20: 11. Man was made in the image of his Creator to imitate him in his imitable perfections; and in performing our work the days on which God labored, and resting the day on which he rested, we commemorate his work and rest, and gratefully acknowledge him as our Creator and the author of all our blessings. A rest implies a work performed; and the seventh-day Sabbath is a fit memorial of God’s rest from his works. It is a sign between God and his people that they may remember him and know that he is the Lord. Ex. 31: 1; Eze. 20: 12, 20. In the Bible there is always a fitness between a memorial, and the event it commemorates. Thus the Israelites ate the passover in haste with unleavened bread to represent the manner in which they left Egypt. And we Christians in partaking of the Lord’s supper with wine, properly bring to mind the broken body and spilt blood of our dear Saviour; and in being “buried with him by baptism,” we show forth his burial and resurrection. So in resting from our works on the seventh day, which God blessed and sanctified, and from which he has never removed his blessing, we memorialize God’s resting from his works on that day. Again, we celebrate our birth on the day on which we were born; and the seventh day is the birthday of our world, the day that saw the works of God complete. But notwithstanding this natural correspondence that should exist between the creation week and our week, efforts are made to disconnect God’s example from our duty with reference to the Sabbath, by asserting that the days of creation were not literal days, but immense periods of time, or millions of years. We think that the following reasons are sufficient to refute this position: 1. The days of creation are composed of the evening and the morning, day and night, the same as our days. That the terms evening and morning are equivalent to a day, is evident from the fact that in the Hebrew of the text: “unto two thousand and three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,” Dan. 8: 14, we have: “unto two thousand three hundred evening morning,” etc. See margin. 2. They are the same as those that are ruled by the sun, moon and stars. After the sun, moon and stars were made light-bearers, i. e., from the fourth day and onward, they served “to divide the light from darkness,” day from night, etc.; and light and darkness, day and night, existed before the fourth day, and meant the same before as after that day, if words are expressive of ideas. Compare verses 5, 17, 18, etc. Therefore if the days of creation were immense periods of time, millions of years, the earth must have revolved millions of times slower in those days than it does at the present time; and the plants, herbs and trees, the fishes, and the birds of the air, must have had long days and nights in those remarkable times. 3. They are spoken of in the historical part of the Bible without the use of parables or figures. One very important feature of history which is to be handed down to posterity, is that it be written in plain language, and free from expressions which would lead the reader astray; and when God causes a history to be written, he will, of course, characterize it with this essential qualification. Consequently, when Moses, actuated by the Spirit of God, calls those periods in which Jehovah wrought, days, he simply means days, and nothing else. 4. The fourth commandment calls them days. Now it is much more important that the law be written in plain language, than it is that history should be so written. Ambiguity in the law of God leading to its violation, would make God the author of sin, and would make him unjust when he punishes the transgressor. 5. They are nowhere in the Scriptures explained to mean anything else but days. Hence if they are immense periods of time the Bible is not a sufficient rule of faith. 6. Their connection with the seventh day proves them to be literal. We are told what God did on the first six days, and then, without any break in the narration, it is said that God rested on the seventh day. To illustrate: you have seven bushels of corn, and decide to sell six of them, but to retain the seventh. Is not the seventh a bushel as well as the first six? You have seven dollars, and dedicate the seventh to the Lord; may you therefore give him but one mill? But, 7. If they are not literal, neither is the seventh day literal; for the same term which is used to denote the length of the periods in which God wrought, is also used to denote the length of the period in which he rested. If, therefore, the six days of creation were immense periods of time, or millions of years, as Adam was created on the sixth day he must have lived a part of an immense period of time, one whole immense period of time, the seventh day, and hundreds of years besides. How much would this make? One million of years, at least. But the record says: “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.” Gen. 5: 5. But there are some who, to evade the force of God’s example in resting from his works on the seventh day, claim that God’s rest is not past; that it covers the whole period of redemption, in which God is now resting. In reply we would say that God’s rest was in the past when the seventh day was blessed and sanctified. “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested.” Gen. 2: 3. But if the first seventh day is not past, the observance of the Sabbath in the past has been premature, and based upon an untruth; for it was enjoined to commemorate a rest that was complete. Equally inconsistent is the position of those who, seeing the force of the terms bless and sanctify as applied to the seventh day, claim that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day in the wilderness of Sin and not in Eden, and that therefore God’s example may have been binding only on the Jews. They have no divine authority to substantiate this position. The Bible nowhere affirms that God blessed the seventh day in the wilderness of Sin. It is there spoken of as an existing institution. The Israelites having, on their own accord, and without any new order from the Lord or from Moses about the Sabbath, prepared to keep the seventh day, Moses approves them by saying, “This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy [sanctified, French Trans.] Sabbath unto the Lord.” And the Lord had a law on the Sabbath before this. See Ex. 16: 28, etc. Hence the seventh day had been previously sanctified, and we trace back its sanctification through the patriarchal custom of reckoning time by weeks and sevens of days. Gen. 7: 10, 12; 29: 27, 28, etc., to God’s act of sanctifying it as soon as he had rested from his works on the seventh day. The facts of God’s blessing and sanctifying the seventh day are given in a plain and connected account of the creation, and as immediately following God’s rest on the seventh day. Therefore those who place God’s act of sanctifying the seventh day in the wilderness of Sin, must, to be consistent, adopt the position that the creation and Jehovah’s rest also took place in the wilderness of Sin, thus leaving no room for the account of those who are reported to have lived on earth before that time, unless it be claimed that they occupied some other planet! No, the same necessity to remember the Creator by keeping the Sabbath day existed before the Jews were known; and God had provided for this necessity by sanctifying the day of his rest at creation. We cannot follow the example of Jehovah in the creation week by sanctifying the first day of the week. In doing this we rest on the day in which God commenced his work, and labor the day that he employed in resting; and form a week that does not correspond with the model week, and this too without any authority from Scripture. For God has never told us to keep the first day of the week; he has never blessed and sanctified that day or called it the Sabbath or Lord’s day; and that day never was kept holy in New Testament times. It occurs but eight times in the New Testament. It is mentioned six times by four evangelists (Matthew and Luke each once, Matt. 28: 1; Luke 24: 1; and Mark and John each twice, Mark 16: 2, 9; John 20: 1, 19) with reference to the resurrection of Christ to show that he was raised on the first day; and it was necessary for the evangelists to mark the day of his resurrection as well as that of his death (which was the day before the Sabbath, Mark 15: 42; Luke 23: 54; John 20: 31), to prove the Saviour’s prophecy true, that he should rise the third day. Matt. 16: 21; 20: 19; 1 Cor. 15: 4. The Sabbath was then kept by Christ’s followers, Luke 23: 56, and the first day was regarded as a business day by the disciples, who at the close of the resurrection day did not all believe that he was risen from the dead, and were at home eating a common meal. Luke 24: 1, 13; Mark 16: 9–14; 14: 15; Acts 1: 13; John 20: 19, 26. The seventh text that mentions the first day, Acts 20: 7, etc., simply speaks of a farewell meeting held at Troas during the night of that day, corresponding with our Saturday night; and the light part of that day was spent by Paul and his companions in traveling on a long journey to Jerusalem. But it was the manner of Paul, who delighted in the law of God of which the Sabbath is a part, to preach on the Sabbath day to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews; and it is recorded that on one occasion he preached that day at the request of the Gentiles, when the Jews were turning against him. Acts 17: 2; 16: 13; 13: 14, 42, 44; Rom. 7: 22. The fact that the disciples met at Troas to break bread (and this is the only record in the New Testament of a religious meeting being held on the first day) does not prove that they kept that day. It sometimes happens that for a want of time on the Sabbath, we celebrate the Lord’s supper at the close of the Sabbath or Saturday night. Is this evidence that we keep Sunday? The eighth and last text that mentions the first day, 1 Cor. 16: 1–3, sets forth a system of finance to be attended to by Christians by themselves, or at home, Greek, on the first day of the week, which Seventh-day Adventists are wont to do; and the church at Corinth to whom these instructions were especially addressed, were raised by Paul, who, while among them, labored at tent-making, and preached “every Sabbath day.” Acts 18: 1–11. Dear reader, this is all that is said in the New Testament about the first day. Can you keep it at the neglect of God’s holy rest day? Dare you call the seventh day a Jewish Sabbath, when God himself made it by resting upon it and blessing and sanctifying it in Eden? God did not rest because he was weary; but to be refreshed in contemplating the perfection and excellence of his works, and to set an example for man to follow. Isa. 40: 28; Ex. 31: 17; 20: 11; Mark 2: 27. Is not the example of God more worthy of imitation than that of man? Can it be despised by any of his creatures? It was worthy of the imitation of our first parents, who were far superior to us in their physical, mental, and moral organizations. Are we more excellent than they? If they needed the Sabbath, much more do we. And when this earth shall be restored to more than its Eden glory, the immortal saints shall keep the Sabbath in honor of the great God. Isa. 66: 22, 23. May we now cheerfully keep it, calling it “a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable.” Isa. 58: 12, 13.