QUESTIONS FOR SUNDAY-KEEPING CHRISTIANS.
By Alexander Ritchie
Please turn to the scriptures referred to as you read. 1. When you study the Bible with the Sabbath question in mind, do you look for justification for your Sunday-keeping? or do you look for the truth? Eze. 14:4, 7. 2. Please tell me where you can find one text of Scripture that says plainly that God changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. 3. Where is there just one verse that says Sunday is a holy day, or in any way different from Monday? 4. Point out one passage of Scripture that says that Jesus or any of His apostles kept Sunday holy, and give the chapter and verse. 1 John 2:6. 5. Find just one verse where God commands you to keep it holy, and give chapter and verse. 6. Please show me one text that condemns me for keeping holy the seventh-day Sabbath. 7. When you go to church, on Sunday, to worship, what command are you obeying? Isa. 1:12. 8. When you stay at home on Sunday and work as usual, what command are you breaking? 9. What is sin?—“Sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. 10. How do men know that they sin?—“By the law is the knowledge of sin.” Rom. 3:20. 11. Can there possibly be sin without a law?—“Where no law is, ‘there is no transgression.’” Rom. 4:15. “I had not known sin, but ‘by the law.’” Rom. 7:7. 12. Is there any difference between crime and sin?—Yes! Daniel’s refusal to worship the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, was crime; but it was not sin; nay, more, it was the proof of Daniel’s righteousness. 13. Why did Daniel refuse to obey the law of the land?—Because it would have been sin to do so. 14. Why was image-worship a sin in Daniel’s eyes?—Because he had no faith in the lifeless image. 15. Why had Daniel no faith in the image?—Because it was not in accordance with God’s Word. “Faith cometh by hearing, and ‘hearing by the Word of God.’” Rom. 10:17. 16. We see that Daniel could not worship the image because image-worship is not based upon God’s Word. Anything that is not in accordance with God’s Word can not be a subject of faith. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Rom. 14:23. If Daniel had bowed to the image, he would have obeyed the law of man; but he would have broken the law of God, and that would have been sin. By refusing to bow to the image, he broke the command of Nebuchadnezzar, which was not sin, but he honored the law of the Most High. 17. What law is Sunday a part of? Neander, who is admitted by all to be one of the greatest and most reliable church historians, says:— The festival 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 from the early apostolic church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.—Rose’s Neander, page 186. 18. Can it be sin to break a law which “was always only a human ‘ordinance’?” If it is not sin to break it, it must be because we were never commanded to keep it. If we were never commanded to keep it, it can not be a part of God’s Word. If it is not in God’s Word, we can not have faith in it. If we can not have faith in it, it must be sin because “Whatsoever is not of FAITH is SIN.” And “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6:23. And He it was who said, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one little of the law to fail.” Dear reader, when heaven and earth have passed, firmly imbedded in the bosom of God’s changeless law there will shine forth the eternal command: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . ‘The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.’”