Apostolic Example on the Sabbath Question by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1907

Apostolic Example on the Sabbath Question

By C. M. S.

One of the first reasons given for Sunday observance is “the authority of apostolic example” in that direction. The inquirer is given to understand that the apostles were Sunday-keepers, and by their example, approved at least by the Saviour himself, changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. When pressed for specific proof, of course, they are unable to give it.

Paul’s directions concerning the gathering of a fund for the poor at Jerusalem are made to teach the inauguration of a plan which the very directions themselves discountenance—the taking of a collection while he was among them. The fact that the laying aside of the money was to take place on the first day is supposed to show that the first day was the Sabbath. The holding of a meeting on the first day of the week is made to do duty also to the same end; and the declaration of the apostle that the types, shadows, and “days” of the ceremonial dispensation were nailed to the cross, is taken as a declaration that the Sabbath of Jehovah, instituted in Eden, commanded in the great Ten Words, and set for a Sabbath in the earth made new, ended at the cross.

Paul answers all such arguments and statements, and answers them so emphatically that none need ever have put them forth if they had studied his teachings. When Paul, bound as a Roman prisoner, pleaded before the Jews of Rome the cause for which he and so many others were suffering, he said: “I, brethren, though I had done nothing against the people, or the customs of our fathers, yet was delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.” Acts 28: 17.

After reading that statement of the apostle Paul, no one can have just ground for accusing him of being a Sunday-keeper or teaching any one else to keep that day in preference to the seventh-day Sabbath. Paul never could have spoken those words truthfully if his “apostolic example” had leaned toward a disregard of the Sabbath and the setting up of Sunday as a sabbath in its place. One of the most marked of the “customs of our fathers” to which Paul referred was the custom of keeping the Sabbath commanded on Sinai and written in the decalogue. The heathen world was at that very time keeping Sunday—worshiping the sun upon that day. Had Paul changed from the seventh day to Sunday, that act would have constituted the Jews’ first accusation against him. Nothing was more obnoxious to the true Jew than sun-worship. Therefore it is beyond all reason that Paul or any of the other apostles would adopt as a sabbath a day so long dedicated by their enemies to the worship of the sun. Especially is it unthinkable when the Lord had given no direction for such an alteration in his holy law as would make such a substitution possible.

The Jews vehemently accused Paul on a number of occasions, and persecuted him. They accused him of doing things he did not do and teaching things he did not teach; but the idea of Paul’s being a teacher or practiser of Sunday-keeping was so far from anything that any one would believe him guilty of doing that the remotest possibility of it never seems to have entered their minds.

They who look to Paul’s example in the matter, and take these facts in connection with his emphatic declaration that he had done nothing against the customs of their fathers, must conclude that Paul was a strict observer of the Sabbath of Jehovah. We can not accuse Paul of throwing his “apostolic example” on the side of Sunday-keeping without accusing him of falsehood in his statement to the Jews of Rome.

C. M. S.