Astounding Assertions by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 15, 1874

Astounding Assertions.

By Uriah Smith

In the Review of Nov. 24, we offered a few brief comments upon some of the positions and admissions of Clark Braden, as set forth by him in the Christian Standard of Sept. 26, 1874. In the same article there are some further declarations too astounding to be passed over unnoticed.

He takes the ground, which a few before him have also been reckless enough to take, that the record of Gen. 2: 2, 3, is not, like that which precedes and follows, a record of what took place at creation, but is a record thrown in out of its chronological order, of what took place twenty-five hundred years afterward. What is the object of this forced and unnatural construction? Simply to avoid the acknowledgment that the seventh day was set apart at creation. If the day was there set apart, it must be admitted that the language of Gen. 2: 2, 3, would be a consistent narrative of that fact, and the very language in which it would naturally be recorded. And have we any intimation either in the narrative itself, or in any subsequent portion of the Bible, that the narrative thus suddenly and abruptly changes from the events of creation week, to events which took place 2500 years afterward? Not a syllable.

But to admit the Sabbath instituted at creation, would be to admit that it is now binding in its original form; and that will never do. Hence this groundless assumption, this wicked perversion of the sacred record, to get around it.

Mr. B. says: “We have not one particle of evidence that Adam knew aught of the facts of creation, or that his descendants knew anything of them until revealed by the inspired Moses 2500 years after creation, when he wrote the book of Genesis.”

What an ignorant set the first members of the human family must have been! So it seems God created man and set him adrift without a scrap of knowledge in his empty cranium! Braden would probably agree with Beecher that the antediluvians were great overgrown, overaged, slow-molded, ignorant boobies.

It makes no difference, we suppose, that God held personal converse with the pair he had created, and instructed them in regard to their position, their dominion, their future duty, and their means of sustenance. Adam didn’t learn anything, probably, from having the beasts brought before him to name; didn’t know where they came from, nor where he came from, and didn’t know enough to care or inquire; didn’t learn anything from the creation of Eve, although he called her bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; and they probably didn’t learn anything, either of them, from what God told them, in the sad experience of the fall, when he reminded Adam that he was created from the dust of the earth, and told him that he should go back to dust again. Shame on such teaching that would make the crowning production of God’s fair creation, a mere piece of animated stupidity!

And his descendants did not know the facts of creation, says Mr. B. Yet Jude says that Enoch the seventh from Adam knew about the plan of salvation, and the coming of the Lord to Judgment at the end of the world; and he prophesied of these things: and yet, we are asked to believe that he didn’t know anything of the facts of creation and the Sabbath! Oh, no!

Here is another assertion about equal to the one just noticed: “Then how does any one know that God sanctified the seventh day at creation? This is assumed; for the account in Genesis does not say so. God is now resting from creation; and we are living in God’s seventh day, or rest, or Sabbath.”

This view is not new; but it is none the less foolish because a learned man repeats it. Moses wrote that God, whether at creation, or 2500 years afterward, blessed and sanctified the seventh day because that in it he had rested. The day was ended and his rest was finished before he blessed it. But Mr. B. says that we are still “in God’s seventh day;” so the seventh day is not yet finished, and of course not yet sanctified and blessed. So on Mr. B.’s own showing Moses in that record anticipated more than 2500 years, yes, even more than six thousand. Shall we believe the record? or shall we tell Moses to stand back; for Mr. Braden, with his superior wisdom, has the floor.

Once more we quote: “Again: God may have hallowed the seventh day at creation, and not have revealed to man that he had so hallowed it, nor have then commanded him to observe it, nor for a long time afterward.”

To hallow or sanctify means to set apart to a sacred or religious use. And the Sabbath was thus set apart for man, not for God; for God does not require the Sabbath. And were it not for the irreverence of the expression, we might retort that perhaps Eld. B. is right, and God, after setting apart the Sabbath for man’s use, forgot to tell him for 2500 years anything about it. What exegetical depravity may we look for next?

Nehemiah 9:12-15, is not passed over by Mr. B. On this passage he says: “Here it is explicitly declared that God made known to the Hebrews the Sabbath at Sinai, or that he gave it to them with the rest of the law of Moses, given during the journey in the wilderness.”

The testimony of Nehemiah has respect to what was done at Sinai. But this does not mean first bringing the Sabbath to their knowledge;

for Ex. 16, says that they knew and observed it, a month at least, before they came to Sinai.

U. S.