p. 125 | THE DISCUSSIONS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 18, 1878

THE DISCUSSIONS.

It was proposed that I should write out the principal points of the discussion at Danvers, Mass., between Eld. D. M. Canright, Seventh-day Adventist, and Eld. C. E. Barnes, first-day Adventist; but for two reasons I have not done so. First, the points, with two exceptions, were the same that are always brought up; hence there was little new to state, unless the whole argument were given, which would be too lengthy. Second, I have been unable to find the time. I now present a few thoughts.

Eld. Barnes from the first labored under a difficulty. It was this: He did not believe in the sanctity of Sunday, and he did not wish the audience to know it. The argument, however, drew it from him, and he admitted that it might be a common, secular day, and stated that it was never called the Sabbath for twelve hundred years after Christ, and that the meeting of Christ with his disciples on the day of his resurrection did not make it a holy day.

He argued that the Sabbath was not given to man until the law was given from Sinai, and based his argument on Deut. 5:15. Here he made one new argument. He said the word “keep” in that verse was from a Hebrew word, which, in the two thousand seven hundred times it occurs, is translated keep only twenty times, but make and made, over four hundred times; and that in Deut. 5:15 it should be translated thus: “Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to make the Sabbath day.” That was its origin. Eld. Canright showed that his Hebrew criticism was untrue, and also unscholarly. The same word is translated do; as, “Therefore ye shall observe and do them,” spoken of God’s commandments a great many times. To keep God’s laws and to do them are equivalent. To make them, God never invited man. Also when the word in the Hebrew means make it has a certain prefix which gives it that meaning. Eld. C. read this from the Hebrew Lexicon. In Deut. 15:5 it has no such prefix, and means simply to keep, as it reads.

On the second evening Eld. B. made another new argument from Hos. 2:11. He said that “moadeem,” translated “solemn feasts,” means properly, “commemorative days;” and that the Sabbath was one of them, and that it has therefore ceased. The next day, Eld. C., seeing the error of this criticism, concluded that Eld. B. must be utterly ignorant of the Hebrew; so he visited him with a good brother, and asked him to show him that point in his Hebrew Bible. Well—his Hebrew Bible was not there just then. Eld. C. produced his own, and asked him to turn to the passage. After some hesitation, it turned out that he could not read the Hebrew, and he confessed that he did not know one Hebrew letter from another. Eld. C. exposed the falsity of the criticism, in the last evening’s debate; and handing his Hebrew Bible to Eld. B., offered to submit that whole point if he would read one verse in Hebrew.

Eld. C. showed that the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), at creation (Gen. 2:1-3); and that sanctifying it there was really a command to Adam to keep it holy. The passover was given to commemorate the flight from Egypt (Ex. 12:11, 17, 26, 27, 42), and the Lord does not give two memorials for the same event. The Sabbath could not be, therefore, a memorial of the exode, as Eld. B. had claimed; neither would there be any fitness in it—a rest to commemorate a grand rush! No; the Sabbath is a memorial of God’s rest when he had created the world. Ex. 20:8-11.

The question was, “Do the Scriptures teach that the seventh-day Sabbath of the decalogue, Ex. 20:8-11, is to be observed by Christians?” Eld. C. showed that it was observed by Christ’s disciples after his death (Luke 23:56), and by the apostles (Acts 13:14, 42, 44). That Christ recognized the Sabbath as existing forty years this side of the cross in prophesying of the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred A. D. 70. Matt. 24:20. He showed that the Sabbath existed when John wrote the Revelation, near the close of the first century. Rev. 1:10. The Lord’s day is the Sabbath. That is the day, and the only one, he has ever claimed as his own. Ex. 20:8-11; Isa. 58:13; Mark 2:27.

The result of this debate was greatly to strengthen the church at Danvers in the truth. Our social meetings following were the best we ever had. The brethren could hardly express their love for the truth, since they had seen so great a gulf fixed between it and error.