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An Explanation

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 12, 1874

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 43, No. 22.

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An Explanation.

By J. H. W.

A FRIEND writes that an objector, laying claim to some considerable education, says there is a contradiction in our views, especially in the pamphlet entitled Truth Found. He says that we admit that the Saviour rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and yet deny that the evangelists say that he was raised on that day.
We are unable to see the contradiction. We admit it in our arguments on the question of the Sabbath, because we will not admit that the time of the resurrection has any bearing on the controversy in regard to the day of the Sabbath. That rests on other grounds entirely. Again, we admit it because circumstances seem to render it probable. But we do not admit that these circumstances amount to a statement of the fact.
“Now when Jesus was risen, early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalen.”
“Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher. . . . And they entered in and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.”
No text says that he arose on the first day of the week. Early on the morning of the first day of the week, they came to the sepulcher and he was not there. How long he had been absent, or when he left the sepulcher, the record does not say.
When men base their opinions (I will not say faith) of the sabbatic nature of the first day, and of duty to observe it, upon such inferences, it is proof that they feel the weakness of their theory. If there was any evidence that the first day is the Sabbath, if the Lord had ever blessed it and set it apart, if he had ever claimed it as his day, if he had ever commanded anybody to observe it, then men would refer to these facts instead of putting forward such groundless inferences. Paul says the Scriptures thoroughly furnish the man of God unto all good works. But the Scriptures never thoroughly furnished anybody with evidence that the first day is the Sabbath or the Lord’s day. “What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.”
J. H. W.