KENTUCKY by S. Osborn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 30, 1876

KENTUCKY

By S. Osborn

I continued my lectures at this place until last Sunday evening, Nov. 12, with good interest most of the time. Several are keeping the Sabbath, I do not know just how many. I am not quite through yet, but am much worn and must rest, having labored almost constantly since May. Many efforts have been made to get a minister to oppose our positions. They finally succeeded in getting one, Dr. Berry, D. D., Cumberland Presbyterian. He gave two discourses against us,—one on the immortality of the soul. All his arguments for man's immortality were drawn from the law of transmission, thus: God is immortal. 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16. Christ, being his son, by this law of transmission was also immortal; and he making man, by the same law, man was immortal. Any one can see by this theory that every thing would be immortal. Further he said, “Man was living before the breath of life was breathed into him;” but he offered no proof.

The other discourse was on the Sabbath question. The doctor boasted of his new ideas, and that with his logic he had demolished Sabbath-keepers in the West. Therefore, I will give a sample of his logic, with my replies. First, God created lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and said, Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. Gen. 1:14. He said this was the rule of time for twenty-five hundred years. In Ex. 12:2, he said there was a new cycle of time commenced, and this new beginning of time embraced days, weeks, months, and years, and was the origin of the first-day Sabbath. On this Sabbath, the Israelites left Egypt. He said the number seven was a complete number, and therefore proverbial.

To sustain this position on Exodus 12, he referred to Lev. 23:39, which reads, “Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruits of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath.”

Reply. First, I showed that time in weeks did not have its origin in Gen. 1:14. There were no weeks until after God had worked six days and rested the seventh. Secondly, I showed that time in weeks was not mentioned in Exodus 12, neither the Sabbath. Thirdly, that the week is an independent institution, not dependent upon months or years for its beginning or ending; that the Sabbath was a memorial of God’s work and rest at creation, and wholly dependent on that for its origin and perpetuity.

He quoted the first part of the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work;” then said, The seventh day is not the Sabbath, but the first, eighth, fifteenth, &c. I showed his dishonesty in this garbled quotation of the fourth commandment. Then I showed that the sabbaths in Lev. 23:39 were only monthly sabbaths, and pertained to the seventh month alone, and that they commenced in the evening. Verse 32. Therefore, in keeping Sunday as kept now, they break the doctor’s Sabbath and the seventh-day Sabbath also. This is a sample of the wisdom of the great Dr. Berry, D. D.

S. OSBORN.

Knob Lick, Metcalfe Co., Ky., Nov. 17, 1876.