p. 3 | ELIHU ON THE SABBATH

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 28, 1876

ELIHU ON THE SABBATH.

In reviewing the subject of “the Sabbath,” I design, not to follow any previous writer, but simply, plainly, and briefly, to convince sinners of sin, let their profession be what it may. And this I hope and pray may be done without giving offense to those who love the truth more than error. God has many servants who would gladly exchange error for the precious truths of his word.

The books of the New Testament are said to have been written thus: Matthew’s gospel, six years after the resurrection of Christ; Mark’s gospel, ten years after the church commenced; Luke’s gospel, twenty-eight years after; John’s gospel, sixty-three years after; the Acts of the Apostles, thirty years after; the epistle to the Romans, and two to the Corinthians and Galatians, twenty-four years after; Ephesians, Colossians, and Hebrews, twenty-nine years; to Timothy, Titus, and the second epistle of Peter, thirty years; the Revelation of John, sixty-one years; his three epistles, about sixty-five years after the resurrection, and after the church had properly commenced. And it is easy for us to understand how these apostles understood and practiced with regard to the Sabbath; and they are the “foundation” next after Christ himself. Therefore, if there was any such institution known and frequently spoken of in the church as “Sabbath,” in those different ages of the church, we can easily know what was then meant by it. Some say if we keep the seventh day of the week, we shall keep a “Jewish Sabbath!” Well, we have no Saviour to trust in but Jesus Christ, who was according to the flesh, a Jew—no other apostles and prophets but Jewish—no other than Jewish Scriptures—and, indeed, Jesus said himself that “salvation is of the Jews.” John 4:22. And what did the writers of the New Testament mean by the words “Sabbath” and “Sabbath day?”

What did Matthew mean in the sixth year of the Christian church? He certainly did not mean the first day of the week, but he meant the day before the first day of the week. See Matt. 28:1. He meant what all other Jewish writers ever meant; viz., “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” But neither Matthew nor any of the apostles ever told us a word about the Sabbath being changed from the seventh to the first day of the week. Now, if the Scriptures cannot be broken, but everywhere mean one and the same thing, viz., “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord,” then, if ministers contradict this, and say the seventh day is not the Sabbath of the Lord, but the first day of the week is the Sabbath, will they not in this bear witness clearly and positively against themselves, unless they bring forward the chapter and verse where God commanded the Sabbath to be changed? What did Mark mean by the word Sabbath? He meant, also, that the Sabbath was the day before the first day of the week. Chap. 16:1, 2. Surely, if the Sabbath had been changed at the resurrection of Christ, Mark would have known it within ten years afterward. What did Luke mean, who wrote twenty-eight years after the resurrection of Christ? He also meant that the Sabbath was the day before the first day of the week; for he says that the women who prepared the ointment rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment. Chap. 13:56. Thus Luke understood the words “Sabbath day,” in the fifty-eighth year of the Christian era, to mean the day immediately preceding the first day of the week. How did John understand this subject in the sixty-third year after the Christian church? He not only speaks of the Sabbath day as the others did, but he shows plainly that the first day of the week was considered a business day by the disciples after the resurrection. John 20:1. See also Luke 24:13. But what did the writer of the Acts of the Apostles mean by the words Sabbath and Sabbath day, thirty years after the Christian church was fully commenced? In writing, he often mentions the Sabbath, and once mentions the first day of the week, as meaning quite another thing in plain distinction from the Sabbath. Acts 13:14, 42, 44; 20:7. The practice of the Jews was then, as it is now, to meet in the synagogue on the seventh day. And again: “The next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.” He does not say this was the Jewish Sabbath, but the Sabbath day; this was the seventh day; and the first day of the week was not then known as a Sabbath by this writer; because he says the next Sabbath day the Jews and the Gentiles must all come together again. I say there would not have been any next Sabbath in the week till the next seventh day. Again, Acts 16:13. “And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made.” He does not say on the Jewish, nor on one of the Sabbaths, as though there were two Sabbaths then, but on the Sabbath, i. e., the seventh day, as understood by all Jewish writers to this day. Again, chapter 17:2: Paul, as his manner was, went in among the Jews, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures. Thus have I proved that the apostles of Christ understood that one day in the week should be called the Sabbath day; and further, I have proved that this day was the day before the first day of the week, which is the seventh day; and you cannot deny it, nor by the Scriptures disprove it; consequently, if the apostles of our Lord always call the seventh day the Sabbath day, six, ten, twenty-eight, thirty, and sixty-three years after the church was fully commenced, then it must be the Sabbath day now. And every one of the Lord’s ministers, who calls any other day the Sabbath besides the one so called by the writers of the New Testament, gives it a title which is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures; for when they say the Sabbath day, they mean something very different from what the New Testament means. It is already proved that the apostles called the seventh day of the week the Sabbath and the Sabbath day, for many years after the church was fully commenced.

Now, we are to show what sin is; and we are not left to guess at it, or to suppose it; but we have a given rule to know with certainty what constitutes sin. “By the law,” then, “is the knowledge of sin.” By what law was the knowledge of sin twenty-four years after the resurrection of Christ? Ans. The very same law that was given when it was said, “Thou shalt not covet.” The law, then, by which sin is known, is the ten commandments, and you cannot deny it. This law says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; 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, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:10, 11. Now, until this law is altered or abrogated (and Christ says he “came not to destroy the law”), by the same power that enacted it, a willful transgression of it is a willful sin, let your profession be what it may; for sin is the transgression of the law. He that offends in one point, or in one of these commandments, is guilty of all; i. e., is a transgressor of the law, a sinner in the sight of God. Now, a regenerated soul, a true-hearted Christian, says with Paul, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good.” And any person who is not willing to keep the commandments of God, when plainly understood, has still a carnal mind, which “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Will you say this is judging too hard? or, This is a hard saying, who can hear it? I wish to judge no man; but the word that the Lord hath spoken, the same shall judge you in the last day. John 12:48. “As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; . . . in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.” Rom. 2:12, 16. Then those who shall hold the truth in unrighteousness, those who pretend to keep the law differently from what God appointed it, those who, in fact, lay aside the commandments of God (the seventh day or any other command), and teach for doctrine the commandments of men (the first day instead of the seventh), such, the word says, are vain worshippers. Mark 7:7. But you say, it makes no difference which day is kept or called the Sabbath day, provided we keep one-seventh part of the time! This is not correct, because God never said so. God is not to be mocked in this way! He has been very good and kind to make the Sabbath for man, to appoint the day, and the particular time of the day when the Sabbath is to commence, and when it is to end; it is the seventh day in order from the creation—the seventh day in the creation; and he said, “From even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbaths;” as the evening and the morning were reckoned for the day. God did not leave this subject undecided, so that his people would appoint different days, and then for every one to call his own the Sabbath day. But God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, and proved that particular day to be designated by him, in the face and eyes of about six hundred thousand witnesses, by a miracle directly from Heaven, in withholding the manna on that day, and in giving the food for that day on the day before; and you cannot deny it, nor disprove it. Again, you say, How shall we know which is the seventh day? I answer, Do you wish to know? Then ask the Jews; for God has committed the lively oracles to them, and then scattered them among all nations.

Do you know when the first day of the week comes? Well, the Sabbath is always the day before the first day of the week. Matt. 28:1. But you may say, Do not the majority of honest-hearted Christians keep the first day of the week? and have they not for centuries done common labor on the seventh day, and observed the first in obedience to the fourth command, and still been honest in their motives, and living Christians? I answer, What is that to us, so long as the true light of the Sabbath did not come to their minds?

Now, we certainly know what sin is; not by what popular writers say—not by the popular traditions of our fathers—not altogether by our feelings—but by the law of God is this knowledge; for sin is the transgression of the law; and all who have the law of God have an infallible and everlasting rule to know what sin is. Art thou a willful transgressor of the law of God? Then by the law is the knowledge that thou art a willful sinner before God. But if thou art an ignorant transgressor of the law of God, then by the law is the knowledge that thou art an ignorant sinner before God. To say nothing of presumptuous sins, I say, If thou hast ignorantly sinned, then repent and reform, and God will heal you. Lev. 4:2, 13.

By the law of God, then, is the clear knowledge of sin. I speak to you, Protestants, who keep the Sunday, a day formerly dedicated to the worship of the sun by the pagans, and afterward brought into the church by Constantine and Roman Catholics, and called the Christian Sabbath, a name never known for the first day of the week by any of the writers of the New Testament. I speak to you, Protestants, and ask you if you have any given rule to know what sin is? Have you any certain rule to know whether Roman Catholics sin or not, in bowing down to images? They say they do not sin! You say, you know they do sin! But how do you know it is sin to bow down to images, when they say it is not sin? . . . Ans. By the law, you say, you know this is sin, and you know it by no other rule; for you “had not known sin but by the law.” Well, by the same rule I know what sin is. You say it is not sin to work and do common labor on the seventh day. But we know, not by your assertion, but by the law, whether you sin or not. You say you know by the law that it is sin to bow down to images. I say, by your own rule, I know by the law that it is sin to do common labor on the seventh day; and you cannot deny it. And, if you know it is the duty of Roman Catholics to repent of their sins for transgressing the second command, then I know it is also your duty to repent of your sins for transgressing the fourth command. He who said, Thou shalt not kill—Thou shalt not steal—Thou shalt not bow down to images, neither serve them, &c., also said, “The seventh day is the Sabbath.”

I would that you could see the weakness of your argument, viz., that one-seventh part of time was meant in the law, without regard to any particular day. In this, you make the commandments of God of no effect through your tradition. Yea, you make void the part of the command which says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” We read, not that the Lord blessed the seventh part of time, or the Sabbath institution, as you say, but the seventh day in particular. Why do you wish to take out and make void this part of the fourth command, when Christ hath said, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law?” It was just as necessary that the particular day should be designated as it was that there should be a Sabbath made for man. It would not have been according to Divine Wisdom to say, Thou shalt keep one-seventh part of time, or one day in seven, because this would have left mankind in as much confusion as your theory could make them! One might have kept one day, another, the next, till seven Sabbaths were kept in one family. Thus much for your seventh part of time.

Suppose a parent should command his child to do a certain piece of labor on a certain day, and that the child should, without any just cause, neglect to perform the labor on the day specified, and should perform it on the next day. Would this show any respect for the authority of the parent? or would the parent approve such conduct in his child? You must say, No. Or, if a governor should command all the military to do duty two days in the year, and leave each one to select his own days, there would be as much wisdom in this as in your seventh part of time for the Sabbath of the Lord. God is not the author of confusion, but of order; yet your theory of one-seventh part of time makes him the direct author of confusion. Thus your theory, not the law of God, leads to anarchy and confusion, and the observance of no Sabbath; and you cannot deny it.

What reasonable objection have you to the law of God? What fault can you find with it just as it stands? Have you wisdom enough to change it for the better? “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Ps. 19:7. Yea, it is so perfect that it has already converted the souls of many, even from the doctrines and commandments of men, to keep the Sabbath of the Lord, and I trust in God it will convert many more.

Because the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes—more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter than honey and the honey-comb. Verses 8, 10. “Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” For I [Paul] delight in the law of God, after the inward man.

(Concluded next week.)