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A Check on Adventism

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 15, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 43.

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"A Check on Adventism."

NO WEAKER deception was ever foisted upon the religious world than that which would make it appear that there was a change of the Sabbath made when the children of Israel left Egypt. The assertion of Mr. Woodworth that Seventh-day Sabbath teachers pass by Ex. 16 in silence unless compelled to notice it, is absurd, as most of his statements about us are. Let the Methodists attempt to review our criticism of Armstrong on this chapter, and we have invited them to do so time and again. We are forced to the conclusion that they dare not do it. Every Methodist who knows the Hebrew alphabet knows that Mr. Armstrong practiced a gross deception in his comment on this chapter; and we exposed the deception. But the "Methodist Book Concern" published it, and the California Christian Advocate recommended it; yet not one of them makes an attempt to justify his statements. Why not?
Every attempt to make out a change of the day of rest at that time is based on assumptions, and contradicts the sacred record. Let us note some of Mr. Woodward's statements. The reader will readily see that he manufactures his own evidence.
1. The children of Israel left Egypt on the seventh day of the week.
2. The next day, being the first day of the week, they did not journey, but rested and worshiped, observing it as the "patriarchal Sabbath"!
3. The Egyptians were so strict in their observance of the patriarchal Sabbath, that they would not pursue the Israelites on that day, but waited until the second day of the week!
The reader will perceive that this puts off the pursuit till the third day after the flight, and makes Pharaoh and his people conscientious observers of the original Sabbath of Jehovah, though he defied the Lord and insolently said he did not know him.
4. He says that when the manna was given the Lord set back the week one day, and thus changed the Sabbath to the actual sixth day, now called the seventh day of a new week. Of course when that change was made there was a singular week of only six days! Or it might have been a week having two Sabbaths; the first day being the original Sabbath and the seventh day the new Sabbath. It is singular to what devices people will resort to get rid of a plain Bible truth.
5. He says the manna commenced falling on the 16th day of the month, and fell six days before the next Sabbath which they observed, both of which statements are assumptions to make a case.
6. He offers as proof of the change that the first Sabbath which they kept was the 22d day of the month (which he does not know), and that they traveled the 15th, which would have also been a Sabbath if there had no change been made between the two days. And thus both God and his people, under his immediate direction, disregard the patriarchal Sabbath, the original Sabbath blessed in Eden, and regard another day of the institution of which there is no record, and which never received the divine blessing!
7. As further proof of the correctness of his inferences, he says if the 15th had been the Sabbath they could not have traveled, because "the cloud that led them would have settled over the tabernacle," and they must have remained in camp. This statement was made in sheer ignorance, for they did not receive the order to make the tabernacle until nearly three months after that time, and it was not finished until the following year. But it is as valuable as any of his assertions.
8. He says that (on his own supposition that the 15th would have been the Sabbath without a change, but on it they traveled) "the Adventists do not, cannot, admit that it was broken; and we agree to that." He does not agree to that, for, according to his system the original Sabbath, for which alone we plead, was dropped out of the commandment and another day substituted for it. If he has the truth in his theory, the "patriarchal Sabbath" could be and was broken every week after that time. Into such confusion his theory involves him.
9. He also says: "They cannot admit that it was a new institution, and we agree to this." He can only "agree to this" by denying his theory. On the third page after this statement he says: "This offering [Lev. 23:10, 11], made on the first day of the week, kept in constant memory the patriarchal Sabbath." And again he says on the same page, of the first day of the week, that it was marked "even under the Jewish economy, as the great day, the Sabbath of creation." Now if, under the Jewish economy, the first day of the week was marked, pointed out, and honored by certain observances, as the Sabbath of creation, and the seventh day observed as a Sabbath at the same time but for another reason, then the seventh was never substituted for the first, and therefore there was no change, as Mr. Woodward affirms, but the seventh was a new institution, which he denies. Or, otherwise, there were two different Sabbaths on two different days of the week, kept for entirely different reasons, and both of them the same identical institution! If Mr. Woodward can see his way out of this dilemma of his theory, we wish to know how. If Dr. Stratton discovers something "cogent," powerful, irresistible, in such crudities, he has a wonderful power of discernment.
10. He says of the seventh-day Sabbath: "Moses calls this Sabbath 'a Sabbath,'" Ex. 16:25, thereby implying that he knew it was not the Sabbath, but was a Sabbath, appointed by the Lord to the Jews for a specific purpose. The evidence is quite clear that not only Moses, but the Jews, knew that the patriarchal Sabbath was not identical with their own." To this we say (1) Moses did not call it a Sabbath, though there would be no argument in it if he had. It is true that our version has the indefinite article in this text, but in the Hebrew it is definite by grammatical construction. After using the article with the word Sabbath many times, it is omitted in Deut. 5:14, forty years afterward. This surely does not indicate that it was something new at that time. But it is definite there also, by the same rule that it is in Ex. 16:25, and the translators properly inserted the definite article, as they might properly have done in the last-named text. We hope soon to reproduce our review of Armstrong's deceptive argument, when we shall more fully expose the fallacy, and we may say the wickedness, of trying to make the English reader believe that the Hebrew teaches that a new Sabbath was brought to view in Ex. 16. (2) The Jews never knew that their Sabbath was not the Sabbath of creation. There is not a word of truth in this assertion. To the contrary, they well knew that the Sabbath enjoined upon them was the Sabbath of creation. Presently we shall give the proof, not flimsy inferences, of this fact.
11. Again he says: "The Jews, in order that they should not forget the original Sabbath, which fell, according to the order of their week, on the first day, had instituted for them upon this day holy convocations, offerings, feasts, and in it there was no work to be done." To prove this he quotes Ex. 12:16: "And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them." Now whether this statement was made by him honestly and innocently, depends altogether upon the amount of ignorance he can plead in its justification. Every Bible-reader of ordinary intelligence knows that this did not refer to the first and seventh days of the week, but to the first and seventh days of the feast of unleavened bread. As the first day of the feast, or the first day of holy convocation, always fell on the fifteenth day of the month, it could not always fall on the first day of the week, and therefore the order could have no reference to the days of the week. Therefore, we say that Mr. Woodward could not honestly refer this to the first day of the week unless he can plead extraordinary ignorance of the subject of the feast of the passover. He also quotes Lev. 23:10, 11, under the same head, where an offering was made on the morrow after the Sabbath. But this is open to the same remark. Dr. Smith, in his Bible Dictionary, says it was "on the morrow after the passover Sabbath, i. e., on the 16th of Nisan." And so say Clarke, Kitto, McClintock & Strong, and others. Of course it was not confined to any day of the week. And each of these came only once a year. We are willing to leave it to the judgment of the reader as to how much honesty a man can have who offers those texts as proof that they observed Sunday or the first day of the week.
We have other, egregious errors to notice on this point, but have not room in this number. We will notice briefly the proofs against his position.
  1. The Bible says nothing about changing the Sabbath, or changing the week, at the time of the exode. This is an unaccountable omission if such a change took place.
  2. No profane history speaks of such a remarkable event; for if it occurred it was truly remarkable.
  3. Josephus makes no mention of it.
  4. The Jews know nothing of it; not the sign of a tradition of such a thing.
  5. The record of Ex. 16 forbids it. On the sixth day Moses said to the elders or rulers: "This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Gen. 2:3 tells us when and how the seventh day became "the rest of the holy Sabbath of the Lord." There is no hint of the Lord resting on any other day, or sanctifying any other day.
  6. But the decisive and overwhelming evidence on this point is found in the fourth commandment. This is the word of Jehovah himself, in unmistakably plain terms, and it gives definite information concerning the Sabbath which the Jews kept. The Lord said to Israel: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath [rest] of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.' What is the reason underlying this precept? How came this seventh day to be the Sabbath or rest of the Lord God? Jehovah himself answers this. No doubtful inference is brought in favor of this fact. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore [for this reason] the Lord blessed the Sabbath day [Heb., day of the rest], and hallowed it."
This is the seventh day which God commanded the Jews to keep. It is the only seventh day God ever commanded or sanctified. And here is the only reason ever given for the sanctification of the seventh day, which is the Sabbath. Against this truth and these facts, proclaimed by Jehovah himself, Mr. Woodward is fighting. His inferences against the truth of this commandment the Christian Advocate pronounces "good reading." Dr. Stratton says they are "timely" and "cogent," and calls our advocacy of the precept of Jehovah a "whimsy." "Lord, how long?" For forty years, day by day, the Lord performed miracles to impress upon the minds of his people the sacredness of his own rest day, and to preserve it from desecration. And now, the people professing to be specially his own, brush it aside with an unsupported inference contrary to the Bible and all history, trample it under their feet, heap upon it all manner of reproach, and despise and scoff at those who uphold it in their teachings and their lives! We can imagine but one reason why religious teachers do not tremble when they thus evade the plain words of God himself given in this commandment, and that is, that they have so given themselves to religious prejudice and popular tradition that they have lost their reverence for the word of the Lord, and their consciences are seared. For the present we leave this subject, citing them to two solemn truths,—one from the Bible, and the other beyond all dispute. 1. "Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into Judgment." 2. Men may so sear their consciences that they will not here tremble before the commandments of God, but they will need no consciences to tremble in the day of Judgment.