Does God Claim the First Day of the Week?
Does God claim the first day of the week as his own? This is a question that has been agitated for a long time, but more especially in the last forty years. During this time it has been actively declared by tongue and pen that Sunday has no claim whatever to any sacredness, but that, according to the Bible, “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” and that this is the only day that was ever made sacred, or that God has ever claimed as being in any way peculiarly his own. This has been disputed, of course, by almost all people, because nearly all keep Sunday. But the one thing lacking to Sunday-keepers all these years is a “Thus saith the Lord,” in favor of the Sunday as a sacred day, or that it should be kept at all. Sabbath-keepers have called repeatedly for the scripture that commands that the first day of the week shall be kept. They have even offered large rewards for the discovery in the Bible of any such text. And we have known Sunday-keepers, too, who would have given a good deal to find such a text plainly written in the word of God. This is a question too that is every day coming to be of more and more importance to all people; and we are watching with intense interest the development of the controversy. And we notice that as the truth becomes more widespread that the seventh day is, and that Sunday is not, the Sabbath; the defense of Sunday becomes more bold in its assertions; that, as it becomes more and more apparent that the Sunday-sabbath institution lacks the essential element of truth, its defenders more positively assert that which is false. The latest that we have seen in this connection is the assertion that God does claim the first day of the week to be his, and so plainly, so decidedly too, that there can “be no arguing or quibbling about it.” If that be true, certainly the Sunday-sabbath controversy must soon be forever settled. If the Lord does really claim the first day of the week, so plainly as to preclude all argument, that will surely be a “Thus saith the Lord;” that is what we all want, and to that we will all willingly yield. But not to hold our readers in suspense, we will lay before them this decisive (?) “claim.” Rev. David Gregg, the Sunday-school lesson commentator for the Christian Statesman, in the issue of that paper for December 25, 1884, says:— “When the seventh day of the week was the Sabbath, God claimed it as his day, and that made its hours consecrated time. If God in any way claims the first day of the week, its hours must be treated just as the hours of the seventh day were. Now does he claim it? He does. And that there may be no arguing or quibbling about it, he stamps his name upon it. The Spirit of inspiration speaking through the apostle John distinctly calls it ‘the Lord’s day.’” There you have it. But for all he has pronounced to the contrary, we think there is room here for some argument. 1. He does not tell us where it is that the apostle John “distinctly” calls the first day of the week the Lord’s day. 2. We look through the gospel according to John, and although we read there twice, the expression “first day of the week” (John 20:1, 19), in all this book there is no such term as “the Lord’s day.” 3. We look through the three epistles of John, and in them there is no mention of either the first day of the week or the Lord’s day. 4. We turn to the book of Revelation, written