Your ShelfYour Projects

A Testimony Meeting

5%

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 29, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 38.

Read the full edition

A Testimony Meeting

By H. A. St. John

READER, imagine that you are present in a conference meeting when a number of notable persons are assembled. A testimony meeting is held. The theme is the Sabbath question. Each is called upon to bear a short testimony.
1. Moses.—“The Lord gave me a view of the wonderful work of the creation of the heavens, earth, and sea, and all things therein; and by His Spirit I wrote it out for mankind. It was revealed to me that the Lord made all things in six days, rested on the seventh day, and then hallowed and sanctified the seventh day for all time to come, to be ever remembered and kept holy, as a memorial of the Creator and all His wonderful works. (Gen. 2:2, 3.)
“The Lord called me at one time to lead His people out of bondage and apostasy. He wrought many wonderful miracles in their deliverance; and He performed a three-fold miracle every week for forty years, to impress upon all the particular day of the Sabbath and its sacredness. (Exodus 16.) And once in our journey the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai in terrible majesty, and spoke His immutable and eternal law of Ten Commandments with a voice that shook the earth. It was an event never to be forgotten. He then placed the holy Sabbath commandment in the bosom of the divine law, where it must forever remain.” (Ex. 20:1-17.)
2. David.—“The Lord hath made His wonderful works to be remembered. The works of His hands are verity and judgment. All His commandments are sure, they stand fast forever and ever. Great peace have they that love that law, and nothing shall offend them. My delight is in the law of the Lord. O how I love it! It is my meditation day and night.” (Ps. 111: 6-8; 119: 165, 97.)
3. Isaiah.—“I am in perfect accord with my dear brethren who have just spoken. It has been revealed to me by the Holy Spirit, that blessed is the man that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, that turneth away his foot from the Sabbath, from doing his own pleasure on the Lord’s holy day. If any call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, then they will delight themselves in the Lord, and He will highly exalt them by and by.” (Isa. 56: 1-7; 58: 12, 13.)
4. Matthew.—“I am one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, and I wrote a history of His life. I remember that Jesus told us that Jerusalem would meet with a fearful destruction, even in our day. He told us how we might know when it was at hand, and then we must all flee to the mountains for safety; and He requested us to pray that our flight might not come on the Sabbath day. And thus we prayed, till the signs appeared, and we did not have to flee on the Sabbath day. You see from this, that Jesus had a sacred regard for the Sabbath, and expected it to continue in the years to come.” (Matt. 24: 20.)
5. Mark.—“I also wrote a life of Jesus, and I well remember His high regard for the Sabbath day. Once He said He was Lord of the Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2: 27, 28.)
6. Luke.—“It was my blessed privilege to write a life of Jesus; and I well remember that after He was crucified on a Friday, He rested in the sepulcher over the Sabbath day. Some of our sisters prepared spices to anoint His body; but by the time they were ready, it was sundown on the preparation day, so we all rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” (Luke 23: 56.)
7. John.—“I was inspired to write a life of Jesus also; and it was revealed to me that Jesus made all things, and that without Him there was not anything made that was made. Thus we may see what Jesus meant, as Brother Mark tells us Jesus said He was Lord of the Sabbath. As Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, then the Sabbath must be the Lord’s day. Once when I was on the Isle of Patmos, I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” (Rev. 1: 10.)
8. Paul.—“I carried the pure Gospel of Christ to the world, to the dispersed among the Gentiles. It was my manner to attend divine worship on the Sabbath day, as did Jesus, and to reason with the people out of the Scriptures. I was in Corinth a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them; and I reasoned in the synagog every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. Thus, for seventy-eight Sabbaths in succession I taught the people in Corinth, and worked at my trade in the meantime. In my day, Moses was read in the synagogs every Sabbath day; and we all know well on what day the synagogs were opened for worship. At that time there were no Sabbaths other than those the Jews observed.” (Acts 15: 21; 18: 1-11.)
9. Neander.—“I am a church historian of the nineteenth century. From a careful examination of the subject of the Sunday festival and the Sabbath, I am persuaded that thefestival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect—far from them, and the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.”
10. Sir Wm. Domville.—“Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed as a Sabbath.”
11. Archdeacon Farrar.—“The Sabbath is Saturday, the seventh day of the week.”
12. Dr. Lyman Abbott.—“The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day of the week for the seventh day, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.”
13. James Cardinal Gibbons.—“Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.”
14. Jesus.—“I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one jot or tittle of the law to fail. I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil. Which of you convinceth Me of sin? (Sin is the transgression of the law.) It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath days. Blessed are they that do My Father’s commandments, for they shall have right to the Tree of Life, and enter in through the gates into the city. Why do you transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? In vain ye do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. The law of My Father is in My heart, and I delight to do His will. If you will obey My Gospel, you will have My Father’s holy law written in your hearts, and then you will delight to do your heavenly Father’s will, and abide in His love.”
Benediction: “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are. Amen.”—Jesus.
H. A. ST. JOHN.