WHAT WORK by E. R. Jones

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 23, 1878

WHAT WORK.

By E. R. Jones

It is painfully amusing to see what work some who stand as teachers in Israel make to evade plain Bible duties. Inconsistencies appear in nearly every sentence, and confusion seizes upon their theories like a horrid nightmare. We are slow to speak the exact words of the conclusion to which their efforts drive us, but by deep feelings of pity and a charitable change of terms we express it thus: They must be lunatics.

In a published sermon by a minister in Illinois, the author puts forth an effort to prove that the first day of the week, now called Sunday, is the original seventh day of the fourth commandment and the identical day of God’s rest at creation. But Luke 23:56 and 24:1 seems to trouble him, and to make it sure he endeavors to cite apostolic example to prove a change in the Sabbath; and then to make surety doubly sure he calls attention to 2 Cor. 3 to prove that the law has been abolished. Sunday is the seventh day of the commandment, the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh day to the first day of the week, the law has been done away: three different positions in one sermon, and each one is destructive of the others.

As I read I could but exclaim in my own mind, What work! Shame should cover the faces of such men as to their ability to reason on the word of God. Right-thinking people who are not blinded by prejudice or moved by undue sympathy, will sooner or later characterize all such efforts by a harsher but more strictly truthful term than lunacy. Paul once used it with reference to those who reasoned in like manner, only a little better, concerning the resurrection of the dead. 1 Cor. 15:36.

After all, when we take this matter into careful consideration, we are not so sure but these men, in their blind zeal to tear down the ancient and venerable Sabbath of our God, are doing much to advance it among those who are seeking for truth; for, aside from the Bible statements, so plain, simple, and forcible, the strongest evidences that the seventh day is the Sabbath are found in the inconsistencies, contradictions, and utter absurdities of the reasons adduced for the observance of Sunday, its only rival.

E. R. JONES.