[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]
XVII.
I WAS brought up in the Lutheran Church. My parents left the State Church for they did not believe that the priest could forgive sins. Because I did not believe in confirmation that was brought into the church by King Christian VI. of Denmark, in 1736, some of the church members called me a heathen. So for a few years I did not attend the church. In the spring of 1877 I hired out to work for a Sabbath-keeper who lived at Hundred Mile Grove, Wis. Here my attention was called to the truths held by the Seventh-day Adventists. There I began to study the Bible by subjects, with the aid of “Cruden’s Concordance” and a few other books.
After my day’s work was done my main study was the Bible, till 10 o’clock and later. This I kept up earnestly for over two months, when I took my stand to keep all of God’s commandments. It was a struggle, but God gave me the victory, and I have never been sorry that I took this step.
When I found out that Jesus Christ all His life kept no other day for the true Sabbath than the seventh day of the week; that Christ taught that the seventh day would be binding on the disciples seventy years this side of the Christian era, as Matt. 24:20 plainly states; that all His apostles kept the same Sabbath before His resurrection and after, as the Gospels and Acts plainly show; that the holy women kept the same Sabbath after Christ’s death, as recorded in Luke 23:50-56; that this was after the new covenant had been sealed and confirmed by the blood of Jesus; and that Christ is my only Pattern and Example,—this decided me in keeping the seventh day instead of the first, or Sunday. What convinced me the most was the fourth commandment itself; for, if this commandment could be changed, then all could be changed, and no dependence could be placed on anything.
Christ says, in Matt. 5:17-20; Luke 16:17: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one jot or tittle of the law to fail.” This shows clearly that the seventh day is still binding. God has settled it in heaven that the seventh day is His holy rest day still. Ps. 119:89. And His word can not be broken. John 10:35.
So all the authority for Sunday-keeping is by the Catholic Church, as their own works plainly show.
Mather, Wis. SWIN SWINSON.
XVIII.
I WAS entirely unacquainted with the Bible two months before the Sabbath truth came to me. In reading the Bible for the first time I was struck with amazement at the great number of times it spoke of the Sabbath, and its utter silence about the Sunday, or so-called “Christian Sabbath.”
I saw that the Saviour always observed the seventh day, and taught it for the whole of the “Christian age.” I will give the texts that most forcibly impressed this thought upon my mind. Matt. 24:20. I thought, If He commanded it to be observed at the destruction of Jerusalem, thirty-nine years this side of the cross, why does it not come all the way? In Matt. 5:17 He said He did not come to destroy the law—that not a jot or tittle would be changed so long as heaven and earth stand. Then I remembered, and the Holy Spirit led me to associate with this, Hebrews 8, where it is said that this law (fourth commandment and all unchanged) is by the new covenant placed in the heart of the believer. And I soon became acquainted with a scripture that impressed this upon my mind indelibly. Isaiah 56 convinced me that it was the Lord’s will that all converts in the Gospel age should keep the day that was then called the Sabbath, and it pronounced blessings upon those who would do so.
I soon heard Rev. 1:10 applied to Sunday, and the statement was made that history showed that the term “Lord’s Day,” from the authority of this text, had, from the beginning, been applied to the first day of the week. Those who have learned what I learned can appreciate the surprise and astonishment, my joy and satisfaction, too, when I learned from Mark 2:28 and Ex. 20:10, that the seventh-day Sabbath was the Lord’s day referred to in Rev. 1:10.
I was also surprised to learn that Dan. 7:25 referred to the Papacy, and there was a plain prophecy that that power would attempt to change that part of God’s law that refers to God’s time, the Sabbath, and that the time allowed him in which to keep it under his control had passed, and now it was time for God’s people to keep it again. I was almost dumbfounded to learn that the Papacy claimed the right, and attempted to exercise the power, to change God’s law at will, and boasted of having done so. I felt that Christ’s church had been defrauded, and I resolved to help restore the Sabbath to its place.
