“The Sabbath was made for man.” As shown in the preceding article, the Sabbath as a great life-giving and life-saving truth was given to all men, throughout all ages and generations. God so appointed. Did His appointment miscarry?
Were there no affirmative evidence forthcoming, were both later Scripture and all history silent, were men left with absolutely no testimony other than the good word of God, which “can not be broken,” which is “yea” and “amen,” and which “shall not pass away,” the child of God could still know that the Edenic plan announced in Gen. 2:3 would be fully carried out: God spoke not in vain. The Sabbath which was made for mankind has been known to mankind throughout all the ages and generations which have come and gone. Like the glorious Gospel of which it is a part, it has known an unbroken history “from the foundation of the world,” and has always had its faithful observers and witnesses.
The Sabbath in the Patriarchal Age
The Patriarchal Age was no exception. During that age, extending from Adam to Moses, from Eden to Sinai, the Sabbath day was known and kept. Concerning this very important fact we are not left to mere assumption. Abundant testimony has been given, and of such character that upon it the child of God may rest his faith, for he finds running throughout it the golden chain of the Divine.
First, the witness of the Scriptures. While writing to the church relative to another thought, the apostle Paul incidentally gives an unanswerable argument showing that from Creation to Sinai the Sabbath was known, and that for its violation men were held responsible. After stating that sin was the cause of death (Rom. 5:12), he adds, “For until the law [that is, until spoken on Sinai] sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Verse 13. “For where no law is, there is no transgression.” Chap. 4:15. “Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses.” Chap. 5:14. Tracing out his thought, we find (a) death from Adam to Moses and, consequently, (b) sin from Adam to Moses and, consequently, (c) the law from Adam to Moses and, consequently, (d) the Sabbath from Adam to Moses.
The fact that the Sabbath is not specifically mentioned by Moses in his inspired account of those early days, is no argument that it was unknown. No other commandment is given specific notice, and yet no one will say that men were not held accountable for blasphemy, theft, or idolatry. The perfect law of God, of which the Sabbath was an important and inseparable part, was all there, and constituted then, even as now, the great standard of uprightness. By its holiness men were enabled to detect sin (Rom. 7:7), “for sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4), and by its perfection they could be converted. Ps. 19:7.
Abraham a Sabbath-Keeper
In the face of such divine logic, human reasoning must stand aside. The law existed and therefore the Sabbath existed. Men5obeyed the law and therefore they kept the Sabbath. Of Abraham, “the friend of God” and the patriarch of faith, Jehovah said, “Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” Gen. 26:5. The same was true of Noah (Gen. 6:9; 7:1), and of all others who walked with God, and thus all honored the Creator in the honor which they showed to His Sabbath memorial.
The Week
One of the first stories with which the divine pages are filled, gives to us a distinct reference to the weekly cycle—the cycle for which the Sabbath alone is responsible. The record is, “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock.” Gen. 4:3, 4. The offerings of Cain and Abel were unto the Lord and were made “in process of time,” or, as expressed in the margin, “at the end of days.” The “end of days” undoubtedly has reference to the end of the weekly cycle of days or the Sabbath, at which time the brothers came to worship God. The custom of making offerings upon the Sabbath, during holy time, was known throughout both the patriarchal and Levitical dispensations. See Num. 28:9, 10; Eze. 46:4, and kindred texts.
In harmony with this, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown’s Commentary says that this happened “probably on the Sabbath.”
Origin and Meaning of the Week
Perhaps it may be in place to state here that aside from the appointment of the Sabbath as the conclusion and climax of the cycle of seven days, there is absolutely no reason to be found for the existence of the week. Appealing to the heavenly bodies, we discover laws for the day, the month, the year; but God’s word alone reveals the origin of the week, and in doing so, it reveals Jehovah’s Sabbath.
And this brings to view another and most wonderful fact. The weekly cycle with its closing day of Sabbath was known to all the great nations of antiquity, even from the time that nations first began to exist. Not only that, the records of nations that have been, as well as of nations that are, furnish unimpeachable testimony to the truth that the weekly cycle has come down to us from Eden unbroken and unchanged. The seventh day—the Sabbath—of the first week is the same seventh day and the Sabbath of this present week.
The Testimony of the Nations to the Sabbath
Speaking of “A Chart of the Week, Showing the Unchanged Order of the Days and the True Position of the Sabbath, as Proved by the Combined Testimony of Ancient and Modern Languages,” a copy of which the writer possesses, a leading writer has said: “It gives . . . the names of each of the days in the original language, the transliteration, and the translation into English in one hundred and sixty ancient and modern languages and dialects; and one hundred and eight of these languages know the seventh day by the name ‘Sabbath’ or its equivalent, while the entire number bear testimony to the identity and order of the days of the ancient and modern week.” “Their testimony is equally positive that the order of the days of the week is the same now as from the beginning of nations; that the seventh-day Sabbath came from God, and was once recognized by the nations as such, and that it is now recognized by the majority of the great nations by name.”—“The Lord’s Day the Test of the Ages,” pp. 20, 21.
And this is not all. Ancient records show that the seventh-day Sabbath was at one time actually observed by nations that afterward lapsed into idolatry. China, for example, in what is known as the “Book of Diagrams,” furnishes the following remarkable statement: “On the seventh day the passages are closed.” And one well qualified to speak, adds, “It is plainly to be seen that in the times of the ancient kings, on the day of the Sabbath, all classes kept at rest and observed it.” Similar testimony comes from Assyria and from a time more than five hundred years before Moses. The Assyrian word is from an account of Creation and reads,
“On the seventh day He appointed a holy day,
And to cease from all business He commanded.”
Of the tablet from which these words are taken, Mr. H. Fox Talbot says, “The fifth tablet is very important, because it clearly affirms, in my opinion, that the origin of the Sabbath was coeval with Creation.”
The Sabbath Heritage
But why go further? God gave His Sabbath to mankind. By Adam, by Enoch, by Methuselah, by Noah, by Abraham, it was observed and passed on down to the nations. Well, indeed, had it been if those nations had proved faithful in its observance. That they did not the records plainly show, but the failure and its consequent idolatry and rank heathenism of all kinds should be to us who now live a spur to greater faithfulness in our service of Sabbath-keeping.
“The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”
