Is Saturday the True Seventh-Day.
By M. C. Wilcox
THIS is a question that is frequently asked by many to whom the subject of the Bible Sabbath has been presented. With some no doubt it is a mere cavil or excuse to evade duty, while with others it is a serious objection. Some few have been taught that Sunday is the seventh day, others that time somehow has been lost, and that no one knows when the seventh day comes. These objections to some seem to be very specious and forcible, yet they are easily proved to be false. In the first place it is neither reasonable nor just that God should so definitely and plainly command us to keep a certain day and then deprive us of the means of knowing when that certain day comes. He has told us that if we transgress his law the penalty visited upon us will be death. Eze. 18:4, 20; Rom. 6:23; that the Sabbath law as found in Ex. 20:8-11 is plain, positive, and definite no candid, honest man will deny. Shall we then, dear reader, charge God with requiring his subjects to obey a law that they cannot understand? Has he required us to keep the seventh day and yet hidden it from us? “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Yes, just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.” But for proof positive that Saturday is the seventh day. The history of the world, ecclesiastically, is divided into three dispensations. 1. The patriarchal, from Adam to the exodus from Egypt; 2. the Mosaic or Levitical, from the exodus to the crucifixion; 3. the Christian, from the cross to the time when Christ shall come again. It is a forcible fact, and one which the careful student of the Bible would expect to find, that the seventh-day Sabbath is found at the beginning and ending of each of these dispensations. Let us take them in their order. 1. The patriarchal dispensation.. At the beginning of this, before sin entered the world, we find the institution of the Sabbath, God’s sacred, sanctified rest-day. Gen. 2:2, 3. Note this fact. Sabbath means rest. The Lord’s Sabbath is the Lord’s rest. As the Lord did not rest on any day of the week but the seventh, no day of the week but the seventh could ever be the Lord’s Sabbath. Consequently whenever we find his holy Sabbath mentioned by inspiration it can refer to no other day than the seventh day: This conclusion is inevitable as all must see. At the beginning of this dispensation the Sabbath was sanctified “or set apart,” in other words commanded to be kept. And when we reach the close the Sabbath is found still, not as something new, but as an already existing institution. Ex. 16:23, 25-29. 2. The Levitical dispensation. When the Lord separated Israel from all people and made them the depositaries of his truth, he gave them his law written with his own finger on tables of stone, that it might ever be with them. The fourth commandment in that law was the Sabbath commandment, Ex. 20:8-11, enforcing the seventh-day Sabbath, the memorial of the Creator’s rest. Further than this the Lord pointed out by a three-fold weekly miracle, in the falling of the manna for forty successive years, that the seventh day was the Sabbath. In fact no other day could be kept. Even if the Sabbath had been lost in the patriarchal age, it was here restored and made plain to all, by the great Creator himself. We come to the closing years of the Levitical dispensation and we find the Sabbath recognized and kept by our Saviour. Luke 4:16, 31. 3. The Christian dispensation. In the first four books of the New Testament we have our Saviour’s teachings recorded respecting the light in which he regarded the commandments of God. In Matt. 19:16, 17, Jesus teaches the young man that if he would have eternal life he must “keep the commandments.” In Matt. 5:17-19, he plainly tells us (1) that he did not come to “destroy the law;” (2) that “one jot or one tittle” should not pass away; (3) that it was easier for heaven and earth to pass than one title (the smallest point of a letter) of the law to fail. See Luke 16:17. And right here, please notice that the first and last mentioned institution in each of the dispensations is the Sabbath of the Lord our God; and this side the cross just entering upon the new dispensation we find holy women keeping “the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. Inspiration has marked it again, it is the seventh day Sabbath still; for, first, the seventh day is the only Bible Sabbath, and secondly, the next day was the first day of the week. Luke 24:1. Thus far there is no mistake. Though man may have lost the time, the Lord has not. But has man lost the time since? We say, No; he has not, for the following reasons:— 1. It is a very rare occurrence that every one in a family should lose the day of the week. But one week could thus pass without their neighbors correcting them. It would be unreasonable and absurd to suppose a whole town could lose the reckoning of the weekly cycle. How much more absurd that all the nations of the earth should lose the correct numbering of the days of the week? 2. The Jews had no names for the days of the week. They were simply called first day, second day, and so on to the seventh day, which was called Sabbath. The names of the days of the week came from the heathens. Sunday was named in honor of the sun; and each day after some heathen deity. So when the Jews came to mingle with other nations, as the Chaldeans, Romans, etc., it was found that the Jewish, or Bible first-day, corresponded to the Roman Sunday; the Bible second day to the Roman Monday, and so on to the Bible seventh-day or the Lord’s Sabbath to the heathen Saturday or Saturn’s day. Thus have the nations of the world reckoned and there is no disagreement. 3. The Jews scattered all over the world, separated and remote from each other, have kept the seventh-day Sabbath since their dispersion thirty-nine years after the crucifixion. If a mistake had been made or time been lost it would have caused a dissension among them; but nothing of this kind has ever occurred. 4. The records of eclipses which date as far back as 500 years before Christ have come down to us. The dates upon which these occurred are given in the record. All admit that astronomers can foretell to a minute the occurrence of an eclipse. The loss of a minute could be found out in this way, so that it is impossible that time should be lost. Thus we see that God has preserved his holy Sabbath. It is all fenced in with irrefutable arguments, with proofs which cannot be overthrown. He has commanded us to keep his Sabbath, and he has made known the Sabbath that we may keep it. The last great reform in the Christian dispensation is upon the Sabbath. Rev. 17:1-4; Isa. 58:13; 8:16; Rev. 14:6-14 and other passages teach the same thing. Here, dear reader, is presented before you briefly and imperfectly the proofs that we can know the true seventh day. In fact all orthodox denominations hold Sunday as the Bible first-day. We know that the more you study with an earnest desire to know God’s will in order that you may do it, the clearer will grow the light on this important question. And one of the glories and beauties of that new earth state—the everlasting dispensation—is the Sabbath of the Lord our God. Isa. 66:22, 23. All will keep it then. May God help you, dear reader, to learn to keep it now that you may be privileged to enjoy it then. “Blessed are they that do his commandments.”