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The Day of the Sabbath

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 8, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 10.

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The Day of the Sabbath.

By Editor

IN connection with the time of the Sabbath it is not out of place to make some remarks upon the day of the Sabbath. It is a subject so plain that no one who professes reverence for God's commandments ought to permit himself to entertain a doubt in regard to it. Yet their "name is legion" who make this an excuse for turning away from God's law as an instrument which they cannot understand.
B. F. Roberts is one of the leaders of the "perfectionists" of this day. He is editor of the Earnest Christian. In regard to keeping the Sabbath he wrote thus:—
"To keep the seventh day of the week in regular succession, I must know, wherever I am, when it comes. How am I to know? I have studied as much as Christians generally, but I should be very unwilling to have my salvation depend upon my knowing that the day of the week we call Saturday, is the seventh day in regular descent from creation or from the days of our Saviour. If this is a fact, I cannot prove it to be such. I do not know, I cannot know."
It is not usual that we see a person who claims a large share of intelligence, culture, and piety, so nearly base his chance of salvation on his ignorance, nor rest so complacently in his ignorance. What has he studied so much that he yet does not know anything about it? He may have studied to evade the responsibility; but he has not studied much in regard to the facts in the case, if he can honestly say, "I cannot know." Let us examine his statement.
He has divided his negation into two branches: (1) That he cannot know that the day now called Saturday is the seventh day in regular succession from creation. (2) That he cannot know it was known as the seventh day in the days of our Saviour. He may indeed be ignorant on both these, but if so it is an impeachment of his veracity when he says he has studied much on the subject. For one can possibly study much and be ignorant of the truth, so easily learned. He may possibly hide behind the vague expression—"I have studied as much as Christians generally." If so, "Christians generally" are not complimented by the expression.
1. That the day we call Saturday is the true seventh day from creation is easily drawn from the statements of the Scriptures and well-known facts relating thereto. Let us divide the history of the world into three periods: the first, from creation to Moses; the second, from Moses to Christ; the third, from Christ to the present time. The day was neither lost nor changed during the first great period, for the seventh day was well known at the very close of the period. In Ex. 16, we learn that the Jews were not permitted to gather manna on the seventh day, and in Ex. 20, where Jehovah spake to them with his own voice, this seventh day was shown to be the identical seventh day on which God rested when he made the worlds, and which he set apart at the time of creation to a holy use. And it was impossible that there should be any mistake in the day, as it was identified by constantly recurring miracles for the space of forty years. This point is settled positively.
The second, from Moses to Christ, is settled in the same manner. In the days of our Saviour "the Sabbath" was well known—it had never been lost. And here again the day was identified. Luke records that it was the day of the commandment, referring to the fourth commandment which enjoins the observance of the Creator's rest day. And all the evangelists prove that it was the true seventh day,—the last day of the week,—because they place the first day of the week immediately after it, without any day intervening. This is equally positive.
The third, from Christ to our day, has not the same kind of testimony in regard to it, because the Scriptures close their account early in this period. But we are not left to conjecture here. The Jews, to whom the day was committed in the moral code proclaimed to them, did not lose the day in all their dispersions during the centuries between Moses and Christ, nor have they lost it yet. Much of the time since the advent of the Saviour there have been three days, rivals to each other, the Mahomedan Friday, the Lord's Sabbath, and the Roman Sunday, acting as a check upon each other to guard against a change, were it necessary. But no check was ever necessary. It is beyond our power to conceive how the counting of the days of the week should be universally lost, and nobody know it. The order of the days changed universally, without universal consent, and yet after the change was made, all the nations and all the individuals of all the nations were found in perfect agreement, all unconscious that there had been a disarrangement of the days of the week! That is to suppose that the Jews lost the seventh day, and skipped over on to some other day, and did not know it. The Romans lost the venerable day of the sun, the first day of the week, and adopted some other day without any knowledge of the change; and, strange to say, their change agreed exactly with that made by the Jews. Millions of others, who were well acquainted with the order of the days of the week, but were not particularly interested in the observance of either these two days, also suffered the same loss, at the same time, and were also ignorant of the fact. The Mahomedans, or the people who afterward became followers of the prophet, as the case may be, lost the sixth day in like manner, and at the same time, and adopted another day in its stead, neither did they know that any change had taken place. These several losses and changes must have been of the same amount of time, in the same direction, and at the same time; otherwise one party would have checked the error of the other. Furthermore, all navigators on the seas must at that time have lost their reckoning, and made a mistake in the keeping of their "logs," and all made the same mistake, and their mistake is found to agree perfectly with that made on land. And nobody knows how it was made, when it was made, or to what extent it was made. And "Rev. B. F. Roberts" has studied as much as Christians generally, and does not know, "and cannot know" but all this has actually taken place! Does anybody wonder that the "theology" of the day is looked upon with contempt by thousands of intelligent, thinking people, seeing that it leads men who are possessed by nature with fair reasoning powers to adopt such vagaries.
2. But with the second branch of Mr. Roberts' negation of knowledge we have a still more certain test to apply. We say then, that if he does not know that we have the same order of the days of the week that was in use in the days of the Saviour, or if he honestly believes that he cannot know this, he is not only ready to adopt all the absurdities above supposed, but he is ignorant of some of the most commonly-known facts of science. We have on record accounts of certain eclipses which occurred on certain days of the week according to the order of the days in use before and at the time of the Saviour. Astronomers at the present time calculate those eclipses and find that they did take place exactly at the time recorded, according to the reckoning of the days of the week now in use. Thus it is demonstrated that the present reckoning is the same that was in use at the time when these eclipses occurred; and that what is now called Saturday—the seventh day of the current week—is identical with the Sabbath—the seventh day of the week—in the days of the Saviour. But "Rev. B. F. Roberts" does not know—he cannot know! We dare not deny his word in regard to his own lack or ability, but if we give him credit for telling the truth we must be allowed to draw our own conclusions in regard to the extent of his ability.
And the wonder has not yet ceased. Mr. Roberts, and with him many advocates of the observance of "the venerable day of the sun," after adopting all the absurdities involved in the idea of a loss and change of the order of the days of the week, and confessing his entire ignorance of well-established facts, demonstrated by the science of astronomy, and knowing that he does not know which is the seventh day of the week, urges with a zeal well becoming the importance of the subject, that men ought to keep the Sunday because it is the identical day—the first day of the week—upon which Christ arose from the dead; that it has been kept in honor of that event without any interruption or cessation from the days of Christ till the present time, and therefore no change of that day was possible. Of this, in his mind, there is no room for doubt. He knows to a certainty which is the first day of the present week; but, alas and alas, he does not know—he cannot know—which is the seventh day of the same week!
How much more easy it would be to identify the day in God's commandment if he had only commanded the first day instead of the seventh day! Read Rom. 8:7.
We say of this subject as we said of the cavil in regard to "the same identical time." It would not be worth while to notice such puerilities if they were not advanced by men to whom people look for information, and who are credited with the necessary qualifications of religious teachers. God pity the blind who are led by such blind leaders.