MAY WE KNOW THE DAY OF THE SABBATH?
Not long since we heard an esteemed Christian minister assert with much positiveness that he did not believe that any one could tell what the true seventh day was. The gentleman believed that God gave the Sabbath, but he thought that in the vicissitudes of change, the uncertainty of the records of barbarous ages, the various methods in vogue of reckoning time, etc., etc., no one could tell with certainty what day the seventh day was in God’s count of time. His positive statement awakened these reflections:— 1. God rested on the seventh day of that first septenary cycle. Gen. 2:2, 3. That made it His rest-day, a fact which could never be changed, unless creation should be blotted out, and gone over again. He blessed and sanctified that seventh day of the cycle. To sanctify, or set apart, involves a proclamation, a command. That blessing and sanctification, given in the beginning, has never been removed. God’s law—“Remember the Sabbath day ‘[the rest-day]’ to keep it holy; . . . the seventh day is the Sabbath [the rest] of the Lord thy God”—is perpetual; it has never been abolished; “it is ‘easier’ for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of ‘the law to fail.’” Luke 16:17; Matt. 5:17-20; Isa. 51:6, 7. Now, did God set apart an institution so clearly, with such elaborate care, command its observance so positively, and yet leave the identity of that institution so obscure that man had no means of ascertaining the truth? Would this be like God? Would not He who gave the day and issued the law, preserve its identity for all?—Surely His wisdom, justice, and love would demand this. 2. Again: We can not say that a certain portion of time is all that is required, and that we can adopt or substitute any day we wish. He gives no license to substitute human for divine. The priests who substituted the common fire for the sacred, died for the rash act. The substituting of a cart and oxen to carry the sacred ark instead of its being borne on the shoulders of men divinely appointed, resulted in the death of Uzzah. There are other instances which show that God will not accept substitutes for His own divinely-appointed institutions. When He has seemed to do this, He has been merciful despite the transgression, because of human ignorance and blindness. 3. The day was the seventh in a particular cycle ordained with respect to that one day alone, and from which every day was named. It was first day of, or to, the Sabbath; second day to the Sabbath, and so on to the Sabbath, the crowning day of the week. It is ever that particular day, the rest-day of God, the day He blessed and sanctified; it is the seventh day, not a seventh day, that is commanded. Surely, when God so emphasizes the day, why should not we? When He makes that one day a blessing to man, why should not man embrace the casket of blessings? 4. Did the world forget the day from the Creation to the Exodus?—It is not reasonable. Occasionally one person forgets the day of the week; very rarely a family does. But who ever heard of a community forgetting it? Who ever heard of a township, or a city, or a nation forgetting it? Many of these have put the Sabbath away, refusing to observe it, but God has ever preserved its witnesses. 5. But if during the period noted in the last paragraph the Sabbath had been lost to man, what of it? It was not lost to God. He who rested on the day, who blessed the day, who gave to man the day to be a blessing, did not lose the Sabbath. And when Israel was brought out of Egypt to serve the Lord, He marked for them each recurring Sabbath for forty years by the three-fold weekly miracle of the manna. Read the record in Exodus 16. Surely, when the Lord said through His servant, “To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord,” He knew that the next day after that was His regularly recurring rest-day. And when some of the people went out to gather manna on “the seventh day,” the Lord said, “How long refuse ye to keep ‘My commandments and My laws? See, for that the ‘Lord’ hath given you the Sabbath. . . . So ‘the people rested on the seventh day.’” See verses 23-30. 6. No one contends that the day was lost during the Levitical age, from the Exodus to the Crucifixion. It was observed by Jews all the way from Babylon on the east to Egypt on the west. Surely, also, our blessed Redeemer, Teacher, and Example, who is Lord of the Sabbath, knew the day. He observed it, taught upon it, healed upon it, and made it a blessing, as God designed it should be. The Sabbath was then known, and it came the day previous to the first day of the week. Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1, 2; Luke 23:56; 24:1. Nineteen centuries ago the Sabbath was known as the seventh day of the week, the day just before “the first day of the week.” 7. Since then there is no question as to the day among scholars. The first day of the week now, synchronizes with the first day then. Eclipses dating back to B. C. 500 show the reckoning to have been correct. All scholars and historians are agreed as to the day. All religions of note are agreed as to the day. Christians generally observe the first day of the week for the usually alleged reason that Christ rose on that day. The Jews, scattered in every country and clime, have preserved the knowledge of the seventh day. Christians who have kept the seventh day from the early centuries of the era to the present are in evidence. Among these may be numbered the Abyssinians, who are observers of the seventh day to the present. The names of the days of the week among over a hundred dialects and languages are in harmony in declaring the seventh day the Sabbath. And God in His wisdom and goodness is sending a message to all the world to restore to them the Sabbath of the Lord our God, full of rest and blessing to all the race who accept it joyfully, gladly. Isaiah 56, 58; Rev. 14:6-14. The same gentleman referred to in the beginning of this article said that rather than have division, he would prefer that the whole world should keep Saturday. But it is not Sunday-keeping or Saturday-keeping that God wants. It is Sabbath-keeping, knowing the rest of peace which Jesus gives, knowing the power of the endless life, knowing the creative, regenerating power of God, knowing the sacredness and holiness of God’s institutions and commandments; and knowing all these and more, and gladly yielding to do His whole will, to keep not Saturday, but Sabbath. “God is not the author of confusion,” that which ever results in departing from God’s commandments. We wish no soul to be compelled to keep the Sabbath; in fact, he can not be. “God is ‘love,’ and love can not be served by fear or force, but only by voluntary love. We know the commandment; we know the day. The Lord says, ‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments.’ Better to serve Him alone forever, than ‘to follow a multitude to sin.’”