THE WORLD IS ROUND by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 18, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 32.

THE WORLD IS ROUND.

By Editor

We do not design to make an argument to prove this statement, for we think that there are so few who would deny it that we can safely take it for granted. And yet we are occasionally led to believe that there are some people to whom the statement is news. We have but recently received a letter from a gentleman in Iowa, who seems to have but just heard that the world is round, and who has not yet fully waked up to a realizing sense of all that that implies. As his letter is a very fair sample of the trouble in which many people find themselves when the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is brought to their attention, we publish it in full:—

DEAR EDITOR: I am an occasional reader of your paper. I indorse your position against the worldliness of professing Christians, and temperance reform. I also believe in the near approach of the second coming of Christ. But as yet I cannot accept your views on the fourth commandment. Thus far some physical facts stand in the way of my believing that the seventh day of the week instead of the seventh part of time is intended by that command. As you kindly answer all reasonable questions, giving light to those who sit in darkness, I take the liberty to address you. As the Master did, I will form a parable and state the case, and you will have the goodness to help me out of the difficulty you think I am in.

There are three brothers who live in the same town, Peter, James, and John; they are good Adventists, and keep the seventh day as their Sabbath. Peter and James desire to see the world, so they start out to circumnavigate the globe, while John remains at home. Peter starts east and James west. Each keeps his course, counts his weeks, and observes strictly his seventh-day Sabbath till he gets back to his native town. The three brothers meet and talk over the fourth commandment. They discover to their sorrow and astonishment that each is keeping a different day. Each one accuses his brethren of changing the day.

Peter, who sailed east and carried his time carefully and correctly, is keeping the first day of our week, or Sunday; James, who sailed west and carried his time carefully and correctly, is keeping the sixth day of our week, or Friday; while John alone is keeping the day they all observed before they parted. Now which one is keeping the right day? If we say John, then why haven't Peter and James, who observed correctly each succeeding seventh-day Sabbath on shipboard, as much right to their days as John, who observed his on land?

If your Sabbath views are correct, these physical facts can be shown to harmonize with them, for all natural truth is in harmony with revealed truth, because all truth is God's truth. If this harmony cannot be shown, I shall still feel that my first-day Sabbath is as good as yours. Yours for the truth,

A. S.

We cannot think that we mistake when we judge that this brother has but recently heard that the world is round, for although he speaks in the beginning of his letter of the seventh part of time, the closing sentence shows that the seventh part of time which he observes always comes on the first day of the week. We take it, therefore, that he is a professed Christian and a conscientious observer of Sunday. And yet until he read in the Signs of the Times that the fourth commandment requires the observance of the seventh day of the week, or Saturday, he never imagined that the rotundity of the earth would interfere in any way whatever with the keeping of the first day of the week. How is it that people will keep Sunday all their lives, and will send missionaries to the opposite side of the globe to teach the heathen that they must keep Sunday, but as soon as the Sabbath of the Lord is broached they declare that it cannot be kept because the world is round? Is the world round only when a person tries to keep the Sabbath, and flat at all other times?

Is it not just as round for the first-day missionary who goes to China, India, or Africa, as it is for the seventh-day keeper who goes around the world? The simple fact that people do keep the first day of the week in every part of the world, should be a sufficient answer to the objection that people cannot keep the Sabbath on the round world. Indeed, it should prevent such an objection from ever being made.

But since our brother has used a parable, we feel like adopting it and improving upon it a little. The three brothers of whom he speaks were all born on the same day. With this correction we will adopt the parable as he has given it. Peter has come home from his journey eastward around the world, and having gained one day is one day older than his brother John, who stayed at home. James, who has just returned from his journey westward around the world, has lost a day and is keeping Friday, and so he is one day younger than his brother John, who stayed at home, and two days younger than Peter, who went around the world the other way. Now if our friend will accept this conclusion of the parable, we shall conclude that he is more puzzled over the fact that the world is round than any person whom we ever saw. But we believe that he will say that it is impossible that Peter should have gained a day on his brother John, and James should have lost one, and that their relative ages must be the same as before they started. But if this is so, his supposition concerning the Sabbath must be abandoned.

As a matter of fact, there is no trouble whatever in circumnavigating the globe in any direction. To say that one cannot keep Saturday if he goes to the other side of the globe, is equivalent to saying that they do not have the days of the week over there. But we have evidence from history that people on the other side of the world knew something of the days of the week even before America was discovered. It is true that it is not a given part of the day at the same moment all over the world, just as it is true that no man can be all over the world at the same instant. But as the man can only be in one place at a time, all he has to do is to keep the Sabbath when it comes to him, wherever he is. If anybody should start out to travel, with the idea that when it is noon in his native town, it is noon at the same instant all over the world, or, in other words, that the sun rises and sets at that same instant all around the globe, he would find out his mistake before he had traveled a thousand miles. He would find that he would have to set his watch ahead a little every day if he were going east, or back if he were going west.

The day is formed by the revolution of the earth. So far as the formation of days is concerned, the sun is fixed; but as a given portion of the earth in its revolution from west to east comes into the light of the sun, the sun is said to rise at that place, and when it comes into the shadow, the sun is said to set. Now if the person is traveling westward, he is going with the sun, and so he will see it above the horizon each day longer than if he remained in one place; while the one who goes east, goes with the motion of the earth, and so passes into the shade quicker and has less of the sunshine in the day, than if he remained at home. Therefore the one who goes west must set his watch back a few minutes each day, and the one who goes east must set his forward, so that he will be in harmony with the local time wherever he may be. And when both return home, having kept their time accurately, they find themselves perfectly in harmony with those who have remained there. Each one has kept his Sabbath when he came to it, from sunset till sunset; and this is all that is required. If the commandment required the seventh part of time, this would not meet the demand, for when a man is traveling westward, it is longer from sunset to sunset than when he is traveling eastward. In short, all that the commandment requires is to keep the seventh day of the week wherever a man may be. This can be done in China as well as in America, and it can be done in any intermediate place between America and China, whether we go east or west.

If this were an age in which a trip of fifty miles from home would be a great wonder, the objection which our brother has made might seem plausible, but when a trip around the world is a thing so common as not to attract any attention, and is accomplished every year by thousands and tens of thousands of people, and yet no individual has found his reckoning out of harmony with the reckoning of those whom he meets in any part of the world, the objection is simply absurd.

To conclude: The Lord made the earth and therefore we cannot doubt that he knew that it is round. He also made man, as the apostle says, "to dwell on all the face of the earth." Acts 17:26. He also instituted the Sabbath, declaring it to be a fixed, definite day, and commanded man to observe it. Christ says that the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), meaning all mankind. Therefore we must conclude that God designed the Sabbath to be kept by men on every part of the round world. If God gave mankind such a commandment, knowing all the time that the world was round, it is nothing else but charging God with folly to say that man cannot keep the Sabbath of the Lord on the Lord's earth.

We trust that our friend will cling to his statement that all truth is God's truth, and that since the God who made the world also made the Sabbath, there can be no physical facts to interfere with the keeping of the day. W.