Is It a Whimsy? by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 15.

Is It a Whimsy?

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

A NOTED California clergyman says that the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath is "a whimsy," and a prominent religious journal of the coast indorses the statement. A whimsy is, "a whim; a freak; a capricious notion." Let us see about this. About four thousand years ago a mountain in Arabia "was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." Ex. 19:18. "He came with ten thousands of his holy ones; from his right hand went forth a fiery law for them." Deut. 33:2. This law was spoken by God himself "out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice" (Deut. 5:22); and was written upon tables of stone. "The tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." Ex. 32:16. Of this law the psalmist says: "Thy word is true from the beginning; and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever." Ps. 119:160. And again: "All his commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness." Ps. 111:7, 8. Christ himself said that "one jot or one tittle" should in no wise pass from the law (Matt. 5:18), and that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke 16:17.

And now we find that of the commandments which were spoken by God's own terrible voice, amid scenes of the most awful grandeur, and which were written with his own finger in the imperishable stone, to indicate that every letter was to be as enduring as his own eternity, the fourth one reads as follows:—

"Remember the Sabbath day [literally, the day of the Sabbath], to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Ex. 20:8-11.

What do you say, friends? Is the keeping of the seventh day a capricious notion, a whim? If so, do you know of anything that is reasonable, and which rests on a solid foundation? Read the book of Malachi, and see what the prophet says of those who say, "It is vain to serve God." E. J. W.