WILLINGLY IGNORANT by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 19, 1876

“WILLINGLY IGNORANT.”

By R. F. Cottrell

Why will men deceive themselves? Why will they, rather than to submit to God's law, seek to undermine and overthrow it? When the one-day-in-seven plea is shown to be false, from the fact that God sanctified, that is, set apart or appointed the seventh day of the seven, the very day on which he rested from the work of creation, why will they blind themselves by the false assertion, that the day is lost, and we cannot tell which is the seventh day in God's given order? Can they not see that this is an argument against God himself? If we cannot keep God's commandment, we cannot. Then who is to blame if we do not?

Their argument stands like this: 1. God commands us to keep the seventh day. 2. But his providence has so ordered it, that we cannot tell which day that is. 3. Therefore, any one day of rest after six of labor will be acceptable obedience to the commandment.

We might just as well argue that since God has suffered his sanctified day to be lost, he does not require us to keep the commandment at all.

But if the people were not willingly ignorant, if they really desired to know which day of the seven is God's sanctified rest-day, they certainly could find it. All believers in Christ and readers of the New Testament know that Jesus recognized and observed the day that the Jews observed; Luke 13: 14-16, and 4: 16; and that the first day of the week was the day next following the Sabbath. Matt. 28: 1; Luke 23: 56; 24: 1. And if they will not close their eyes to the fact, history will show, that, for many centuries of the Christian era, say from the third to the sixth in particular, the Christian world was divided, and there was much contention on the question; not at all which day of the week was the Sabbath, but whether the Sabbath should be kept, or another day, the first day of the week, a day to which “Sylvester, who was bishop of Rome while Constantine was emperor,” gave the “imposing title of Lord’s day.” In those early centuries it was not questioned at all, which day was the Sabbath. No other day than Saturday was ever called the Sabbath by any writer, in the church or out, for more than five hundred years after Christ. In those centuries no one had ever imagined that the Sabbath could be kept on any other than the seventh day, the day God rested on, and therefore blest and sanctified, and which the Jews have ever observed, and do observe to this day. The seventh-part-of-time theory had not then been invented. The Roman Catholic Church still recognize the Sabbath and the first day of the week as two distinct days, claiming that the church, having the power, has “substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.” It was left for Protestants, near the close of the sixteenth century, to develop the seventh-part-of-time theory, and thus show how the fourth commandment, without change, can be kept on the first day of the week.

Why will men choose to be blind? Why will they contend that the day of the Sabbath has been lost, against all history and the testimony of the whole world—Jews, Catholics, and Protestants being perfectly agreed in numbering the days of the week? Why will they, to excuse themselves in following mere human tradition and custom, dishonor God by representing, that, though he requires us to keep holy the day on which he rested, yet it is impossible for us to know what day it is? If they would candidly reflect, they would know that all such excuses are vain. How much better would it be for them to learn this fearful mistake now in time to correct it, than to pass on in blindness till the day of God shall reveal it. R. F. COTTRELL.