The Beginning of Day by John Norton Loughborough

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 18, 1906

The Beginning of Day

By John Norton Loughborough

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH

“WHERE is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?” Job 38:19, 20. These are among the words spoken by the Lord to Job when correcting him and his unwise comforters. In these questions is really involved the thought, Where is the exact point where light separates from darkness? or in other words, Where is the line of day? Where does one day begin, and another end?

The Lord gave the sun to rule the day. Ps. 136:8. When he was appointing days to be observed by his people, he said they should regard them “from even unto even.” Lev. 23:32. And in his Word we learn that “at evening” is “when the sun did set.” Mark 1:32. So in the revolution of the earth on its axis, causing the recurrence of day and night, the setting of the sun is God’s signal for the beginning of a twenty-four-hour day.

In no place in his Word has he ever told us the precise point we must begin to reckon those sun settings. At the close of creation week, when God sanctified the seventh day (commanded it to be kept holy) those to whom it was first given were in the garden of Eden. But in the settlement of the earth, their posterity went east from Eden, as well as west. Now if Eden was an exact longitudinal point from which they must reckon the course of day, then those who went east from Eden would begin their Sabbath just as those west of Eden were closing the Sabbath day. We have no hint in all the Bible that any such difference ever existed among the Edenic race.

After the flood the descendants of Noah—the posterity of Shem, Ham, and Japheth—divided the territory of the Eastern continent (Gen. 9:19), settling in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they were scattered hundreds of miles apart, and far away from any point that has been conjectured as the ancient site of Eden. Being thus far away, east and west, from that point, did they differ one day in reckoning the days of the week, or in the keeping of the Lord’s Sabbath? There is nothing in the Scriptures from which we could infer any such thing.

The facts in the case are these: As mankind settled the world, they went east and west until they had covered the land portion. They took their day reckoning with them, as measured by God’s great timekeeper,—the sun,—and never knew any necessity for any other “day line” until they began to cross the Pacific Ocean. Going from either side to the other, they found a difference of a day in the reckoning of the day of the week. All the nations on the lands thus settled were agreed in their reckoning of the days of the week. They still thus agree, as may be demonstrated by the “chart of the days of the week,” compiled by William Meade Jones and Prince Lucien Bonaparte, of London, England. This agreement is in itself a proof that none of these have ever recognized an Edenic day line.

As before stated, men circled the land portion of the earth, from the west side of the Pacific Ocean—Asia—to the east side—America—all in the whole round were in perfect harmony in their week, and day reckoning. They began to cross the Pacific Ocean, and, whether going east or west, if they took their day reckoning with them, they would find themselves out of harmony with those on the other side. This demonstrated a stubborn fact, which was this: In God’s providence, in the settling of this world, following the Lord’s timekeeper—the sun—days were fixed to this earth, and

to be in harmony with those fixed days mankind must adjust themselves to these stubborn facts.

From actual experience they had now learned that the day, from one to two, and so on, actually changed in the Pacific Ocean. No matter whether or not you decide to do it at some particular meridian of longitude of man’s choosing, the day actually changes between America and the eastern shores of the Eastern continent. To keep in harmony with the actual change of day, the nations have established their “day line” in the Pacific, where the navigators add or drop a day, and that only that they may be in harmony with the established days of the people among whom they land.

In late years some persons have arisen who have contended that the “day line” in the Pacific Ocean is all man-made, and that it is wrong to comply with this arrangement, and instead the change of days should be made at a point where the day first began with mankind; namely, in the garden of Eden. In carrying out that theory, the first trouble that confronts us is to settle within several hundred miles where the garden of Eden was located. Among those who have speculated on the site of Eden there is diversity of opinion. As that garden is not on earth now, and no vestige of the river that flowed out of it remains, who can tell where it was? One branch of that river it is said compasses Ethiopia. Ethiopia is on the west side of the Red Sea. As all contend that Eden was east of the Red Sea, it would seem that some mighty changes must have been made by the flood. Was the Red Sea there before the flood? and did the river now compassing Ethiopia run through the Red Sea like the Gulf Stream through the Atlantic?

A few years ago there was in England one, who, for a time, was with our people. He finally advocated the theory of an Edenic day line. He thought he had identified the location of ancient Eden. He said that the people in Australia and New Zealand were so far east of that Edenic line that the real day was one day ahead of their reckoning. Although those there who observed Sunday according to their reckoning thought they were keeping the first day of the week, they were actually keeping the seventh day of the week, as reckoned from his imaginary Edenic day line. He took passage to Australia to give his revised third angel’s message.

His message, reduced to “nutshell” size, it seemed to me would run on this wise: “The people who, in the order of God’s three messages have established the work in Australia and New Zealand are mistaken. The mass of professed Christians in those countries are in no danger of worshiping the beast in Sunday-keeping, because the Sunday they are keeping, which the Catholic Church claims that it has put in the place of the seventh-day Sabbath, is really the true Sabbath commanded by the fourth commandment, and sanctified in the garden of Eden.” I have never heard that the Englishman made any great stir in Australia. Truly the people might have said of his proposed revolution, in the language of Isaiah, “Your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay.” Isa. 29:16.

Let us look at this situation in the light of fulfilled and fulfilling prophecy. These rules are accepted by all true expositors of prophecy:—

1. God is the author of prophecy, therefore the events predicted in a prophecy will be fulfilled as God has given them.

2. When God’s time comes for a prophecy to be fulfilled, the very event predicted is there every time.

3. A false fulfilment of a prophecy in the appointed time for a true fulfilment is therefore an impossibility.

In harmony with the above proposition let us consider the bearing of the proposed new light respecting the “day line of Eden.” God’s time came for the great second advent movement. The first and second messages were given in harmony with and exactly fulfilling the prediction made concerning those messages. A third message was to follow. It thus arose, and after sixty years of its onward course, in which time it has made its entry more or less into all the leading countries of the world, some one claims to discover that in a large portion of the territory already entered no such message is needed to correct the people in regard to the keeping of the Lord’s commandments, but rather to tell them that they are already keeping the right day if they would only begin it at sunset instead of midnight. Those who have been so zealously laboring to establish the message, it is claimed, should confess to the people, and tell them that the third angel’s message applies to only a part of the world that is west of the site of Eden. Does that look like God’s manner of working in the fulfilment of his prophetic word? According to Matt. 24:14 the last message is to be proclaimed to all nations for a witness.

If it is true now that acceptable obedience to God’s Sabbath is only found in keeping a sun-measured day that began its course on the meridian of Eden, it must ever have been so. If the claim of the Edenic day-line reasoner is correct, then every one east of that line, to be really a true seventh-day keeper, must keep his sabbath the day after the one on the west side of the line, beginning just as the other closes its observance; in other words, keep it on what on this plan was, and is, reckoned by that people as the first day of the week. This Sunday, the first day of the week, the North British Review styles “the wild solar holiday of all ancient pagan nations.”

Shall we then decide that when the Jewish people were in captivity in Medo-Persia, with its one hundred and twenty provinces, whose territory extended east to the eightieth degree of longitude, more than twenty-four hundred miles east of any point that has been claimed as the site of Eden, they changed their day of worship to the pagan Sunday, and differed one day with their brethren who were still left in Palestine?

Is there in the Bible a single hint that on their return to Palestine, under the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, they had to remodel their day reckoning? It would seem that some such facts are needful to establish an Edenic day-line theory, before proposing to one half of this world’s inhabitants to change their reckoning of the days of the week.

While the ancient Scriptures reproved the people for following the customs of the heathen in sun-worship, and other idolatry, we find no hint that they were called upon, after their return to Palestine, to change their day of Sabbath-keeping. So let us observe God’s order of days established in his providence on this round world, and go forward in the faithful proclamation of the third angel’s message, not being turned aside by any rushlight of the enemy’s devising to throw discredit on the work.

Mountain View, Cal.