The Lord’s Day by W. Mayhew Healey

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 19, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 41.

The Lord’s Day

By W. Mayhew Healey

Can It Be Sunday?—What Day Is Blessed? Can the Seventh Be the First?

By W. MAYHEW HEALEY

MANY of the addresses and papers at the International Lord’s Day Congress in Oakland, California, made very frequent reference to the first day of the week, Sunday, calling it “the Lord’s day,” and asserting that it should be observed in honor of Christ’s resurrection; that when God instituted the Sabbath in Eden, He blessed it as an institution of rest on one day following any six working days.

The seventh day was the day set apart as the memorial of creation until Christ rose from the dead, but they claimed that then the first day of the week was selected in honor of the resurrection, to be called “the Lord’s day,” taking the place of the seventh-day Sabbath, and therefore enforced by the same commandment.

THE SEVENTH CANNOT BE FIRST

The above position is unscriptural and unreasonable. By no common sense rule of language can we construe the commandment which reads, “the seventh day,” into meaning the first day.

When the Lord blessed the Sabbath in Eden, He did not bless the rest separately

from the day. The blessing was on the day, and not on the rest. “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.” Gen. 2:3.

THE BLESSING ON THE DAY

God placed the blessing on the seventh day, for the reason that He had rested on that particular day. The blessing cannot be transferred to any other day; because the reason that called it forth, God’s rest, cannot be changed to any other day. Man may take his rest upon any day he chooses, but he cannot have the blessing of God upon any day except the one on which the Lord placed it.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, God sent them a double portion of manna on the sixth day, and it kept, over the seventh day; but when they tried to keep manna over on any other day, it spoiled. If the commandment permits a change of day, there is no reason why such change could not have been made in the time of Moses, as well as in the days of the apostles. But God recognized no such right. He confined the blessing to the seventh day.

The seventh day was the memorial of creation finished. If the first day of the week is set apart in honor of the resurrection, there should be two distinct days kept, for entirely different reasons. Keeping another day, for another reason, should not affect the observance or law of the seventh-day Sabbath. The celebration of the fourth of July has no effect on the observance of Christmas, because the days are different, and the reasons are different. If the first day is to be observed, the seventh-day Sabbath should not be affected by it.

FACTS CANNOT BE CHANGED

The seventh day was the “Lord’s day” of rest at the beginning. The rest being a matter of the past, and the blessing already bestowed, no future event could possibly change these facts. No one can change his birthday, as it is an event of the past. He may be mistaken about the day, or he may lie about it, but the fact is unchanged. The death and resurrection of Christ did not change one fact or reason that had made the seventh day the “Lord’s day” of rest. When John said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” it must have been on the seventh day, as that is the only day the Lord ever called His.

WORK IN ONE WEEK, REST IN THE NEXT

The Sabbath, as all agreed, is a weekly institution, always preceded by six working days. While this is true of the Sabbath, it is not true of the first day of the week. Six days, or even one day, cannot possibly come before the first day of the same week. If a person gets any labor days before the first day of any week, they must be days that belong to the preceding week; and this destroys the claim that the first day is a weekly institution, as the working days are in one week, and the rest day is in another.

To avoid this difficulty, and if possible, make the first-day institution fit into the law for the seventh day, some called the first day of the week, Sunday, the seventh day. But this destroys their reason for observing it as the resurrection day; because Christ rose on the first day of the week, although He never commanded any one to rest on that day. If Sunday is to be called the seventh day of the week, the reckoning must begin with Monday as the first day; and if the first day is to keep in memory the resurrection of Christ, the change in numbering should have been made immediately after that event.

NO CHANGE AT THE CROSS

Christ was crucified on Friday, and remained in the tomb over the seventh-day Sabbath, and the disciples kept that day “according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. Here the inspired Word informs us that there was no transfer of the rest to another day at that time, as they rested on the seventh day, and on the first day went about business as usual.

To begin the new week on Monday, the first day of the first week would necessarily have to be dropped entirely from the count and from the calendar. It was not counted as a rest day, and could not begin the week, if there was to be a change, as that would bring the Sabbath just where it had always been.

To call Monday the first day of the week, when God has made it the second day, is to deny His authority, and contradict His word. A like condition existed early in the history of the world, when Eve told the serpent that God had said they should not eat of the forbidden fruit, lest they die. The serpent contradicted what the Lord had said, and replied, “Ye shall not surely die.”

To adopt any day as God’s commanded rest day, other than the one He gave, is to contradict Him. It would be a counterfeit at the start, and time would not change its nature. Counterfeit money is not made genuine by being long in circulation, nor because many have been deceived into accepting it.