THE LORD’S DAY | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 21, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 29.

“THE LORD’S DAY.”

What Dr. A. Simpson Has to Say.

In the Christian and Missionary Alliance of February 23, 1898, is a sermon by the Rev. A. B. Simpson on “The Lord’s Day,” based on 1 Cor. 16:2 and Rev. 1:10, in which he endeavors “to trace the true scriptural doctrine of the Sabbath through the various dispensations.” We present a few striking utterances from this sermon:—

The Sabbath is a primeval institution as old as creation. Its supreme authority does not rest upon the Mosaic law, but it has come down itself from Eden, and is as old as the human race, the institution of marriage, and the first promise of redemption. It was given for man, and not for any single race of men. . . . It is essential in considering this subject that we always recognize the earlier institution of the Sabbath, because this at once lifts the character and claims of the day above all questions connected with Jewish law. Even the fourth commandment, which reinstated the Sabbath, distinctly recognizes its prior existence by using the words, “Remember the Sabbath day.” . . .

The Sabbath of creation stands, notwithstanding all that may have been supplemented for the Jewish people and the Mosaic dispensation at Sinai. This lifts this sacred day to a lofty height, and a universal scope that can not be claimed for any of the older institutions of the Mosaic system. This blessed memorial of the crowning of creation comes down to us with the sweetness, the beneficence, the liberty and love of unfallen Eden and heaven’s first smile over a new-born world.

We next recognize the Sabbath as a Mosaic institution. It was taken up by the great Lawgiver, and re-enacted for God’s peculiar people with all the awful sanctions of that fiery law. . . . For a time they [the shadows of Sinai] gathered around it, but they have passed away, and it [the Sabbath] stands out in the clear sunlight of its ancient institution and its yet higher Christian significance.

Note, reader, that all these refer to the Sabbath ordained of God in the beginning; the day on which He rested, which He blessed, which He set apart, namely, the seventh day. The Lord’s Sabbath was the Lord’s rest day. “The Sabbath of creation stands.”

There is no need of elaborate argument to sustain the above statements; the evidence from the Word is full and abundant. God has said it; we have His Word. But now comes the labored part of the sermon:—

We now come to the third stage of the observance of the Sabbath, namely, the Sabbath as once more re-enacted under the New Testament dispensation. Now it is well to notice that God had already been preparing the minds and hearts of His people for a very radical change with the incoming of the new covenant. He told them He was not going to deal with them according to the covenant that He made

with their fathers, but He was to enter upon the covenant of grace in which love, forgiveness, and liberty were to take the place of constraint, bondage, and selfish effort.

But has not God through all the past granted “love, forgiveness, and liberty” to all who trusted Him? Did not Moses and Elijah and David and Isaiah and Daniel know God’s “love and forgiveness and liberty”? God’s law was not bondage to them.

Mr. S. continues:—

When the Lord Jesus appeared, we find Him at once facing the Sabbath question, and we notice two distinct attitudes which He takes from the beginning. The first is a positive recognition of the Sabbath as one of the institutions which He assumed and incorporated into His kingdom and took under His direction and authority. “The Son of man,” He says, “is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28. In the parallel passage in Matt. 12:1–8 He assumes still more authoritative direction of this day. . . . The Lord Jesus Christ thus distinctly recognizes the Sabbath, but, on the other hand, He as distinctly set His face against the severe Jewish conception of it, and from the very beginning insisted upon the new construction of its meaning and a new charter of liberty and beneficence in its observance. . . . He most distinctly laid down the law that true Sabbath observance always carried along with it a spirit of thoughtful love which would not hesitate to perform any work of real necessity of mercy.

But this implies no change in the day. Mr. Simpson endeavors to lay a foundation for a change of the Sabbath in the following:—

While He recognized the Sabbath as an institution of Christianity, He also recognized His right to change it, and set it free from all that was peculiar to the transitory system of Judaism that had incrusted around it. Not in any sudden or formal propaganda of a new Sabbath law did He startle and shock even His disciples, but gently He allowed a new character and significance of the day to grow up out of incidents and events, as He allowed almost all the important acts and ordinances of His kingdom to develop out of the circumstances that gave them birth. The Gospel did not start out as a rigid system of theology, laying down cardinal principles and enacting written laws like the Mosaic economy, but it grew out of living facts, so that every institution and ordinance of Christianity has behind it an incident rather than a proclamation. Even the Lord’s supper grew out of the farewell meeting of Christ with His disciples.

No, sir; Jesus Christ did not “startle and shock even His disciples” with any idea whatever of any change of the Sabbath. On the contrary, He tells them, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one title of the law to fail,” and “till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” He ever enjoined obedience to the law of God; He ever kept the law as our surety and example; He ever taught, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me.” Yes, indeed, “a new character and significance of the day” did grow out of His life, but not another day, nor the hint of another day is uttered.

But the Sabbath, God’s Sabbath, like every part of His law and Gospel, grew out of living, existing facts; the creative and regenerating power of God.

There is no parallel between Sunday and the Lord’s supper, as intimated by Mr. Simpson. Our Lord in specific words declares of the observance of the Lord’s supper, “This do;” but nowhere does He say thus of Sunday. The weakness of this argument is evidently felt by Mr. S., for he makes desperate efforts to obtain a law. He says:—

But, further, we know that our Lord gave to His disciples a great many commandments which have not come to us in categorical form. [When? and where? and what?] The apostle John and other apostles tell us that during the forty days He spoke to them in detail all things concerning the kingdom of God, and commanded them to teach the church to observe these things. John also tells us that if all the things which He said were written, the world would not contain the books that should be written. Doubtless, therefore, in these intervening days He gave them specific directions about the Sabbath as well as the government of the church, and many other things respecting which we have no specific word from His lips.

That is, Mr. Simpson would have us believe that during Christ’s life He ever taught and observed the Sabbath day of Jehovah, taught that the law of God is obligatory in every jot and tittle, and then after His resurrection He taught that the Sabbath of the Creator and Sanctifier (see Eze. 20:12, 20) was abrogated, and a new day, which had naught of a Sabbath character about it, took the place of the Sabbath, and yet Christ left us not one word recorded about it. He gave instruction concerning baptism and feet washing and the Lord’s supper, but no word concerning Sunday observance! Well, He did give no word, and for good reason: Jesus knew no Sunday sacredness before or after His crucifixion, and taught none.

But Mr. S. asks, “Does not love take the hint?” Surely it ought; Jesus says, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments;” and, “Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” There is life in His words to faith.

Mr. S. refers to the usual texts where the term “the first day of the week” is used, but the Sacred Record shows concerning every one of these instances that the day was not regarded as a Sabbath. But, more than this, Mr. S. says:—

Furthermore, it is a fact that the first day Adam ever spent on earth was really the Sabbath. He was created just at the end of the sixth day.

But Adam did quite a day’s work on that same sixth day. He viewed all the animals, noted their character, named them accordingly, found among them no helpmeet for himself; after this God put him to sleep, woman was created, and then God gave to them both their dominion and charge, all on the sixth day. So much for that; but the question is not, “What was Adam’s first day?” but, “What is God’s Sabbath day?”

And then Mr. Simpson overthrows all he says by endeavoring to show by a round-world argument “that the whole question of numerical days is impossible. It is the principle of one day in seven that God requires.” That controversy we will let Mr. Simpson settle with the all-wise God, who gave a definite-day Sabbath for the people on this earth; but what we wish to know is, What is he laboring so hard for to build up a Sunday-sabbath, and to demolish the true Lord’s day structure built by Christ? Is not Sunday as much one day in seven as is the Sabbath? And is it not just as difficult to keep it on a round world?

It is unto such inconsistencies that error leads good men.

The Sabbath is not a matter of Judaism; it is not a matter of Seventh-day Baptistism; it is not a matter of Seventh-day Adventism. All these may pass away; but the Sabbath stands.

The Sabbath is an institution of the great God of heaven, a memorial of creation, a sign of redemption, a mark of His authority, involving the very integrity of His Word. When Mr. Simpson comes to know the Sabbath as it is, the pure, genuine gold coin of Christ’s minting, the emblem of rest in Christ from sin, and of eternal rest from strife, he will wonder and weep that he could substitute for it a base counterfeit of sun-worship, born of the worst paganism, and cherished by the unholy apostasy of the Christian church.