NO DIFFERENCE by John Hackett

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 17, 1879

NO DIFFERENCE.

By John Hackett

Those who advocate the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath, are often met with the remark that it makes no difference which day is kept, if only one-seventh part of time is observed. In fact, this seems to be the most common excuse offered by those who try to evade the claims of the law of God upon them. It is used very generally by that largest of Protestant denominations, the Methodists, while at the same time they indorse Dr. Aker’s chronology, the whole object of which is to prove that Sunday is or was the original seventh day.

If it makes no difference which day is observed, why take so much trouble to find which is the particular seventh day? It looks very much as though they think it does make a difference; and since they can find no authority in the Bible for the course they are taking, and since it would cost them great inconvenience to turn their course, therefore they seek to excuse themselves with the contradictory pleas of “no difference,” and “Sunday the original seventh day, and the one commanded to be kept, by the fourth commandment.”

The commandment plainly says that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” and believing as they do in the perpetuity of that law, and its obligation in the Christian age, in order to be consistent they must show that they are observing it, which they try to do, by saying that the Jews kept the sixth day, while they keep the Sabbath according to the commandment by observing the Sunday, which they claim, and we also believe, to be the day of Christ’s resurrection, and which the Bible calls the first day of the week—the day after the Sabbath was past. In Luke 23:56 it is said that the disciples “rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment;” and if, as some claim, they kept the next day too, did they do it according to the commandment, which only requires one day in seven, or the seventh day?

Again, if the first day, or Sunday, is the original seventh day, then the Jews were deceived. The reason assigned to them why the seventh day was holy, and to be observed by them as the Sabbath, was that God had created the heavens and the earth in six days, and had rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. It was given as a memorial of creation, and for no other reason did the people in the old dispensation observe it. Moreover the Lord pointed out the particular day to be kept, by over eight thousand miracles, during the space of forty years, in the giving of the manna. Did the Lord deceive the people when he said that on the seventh day there should be no manna, because that day was the Sabbath of the Lord? Did Christ keep the sixth or the seventh day while on earth? and did he recognize the sixth day as the Sabbath when he said, “The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath”? Mark 2:28.

But it should be enough for us to know that the Lord has never intimated that it makes no difference to him whether we obey him or not. I would like to ask how God could have worded the commandment so as to make it more definite and particular? I apprehend that the difficulty all comes from the names given to the days at that time; viz., first, second, third, etc. If they had had the names they now have, and God had said that Saturday was the Sabbath, there would be no difficulty in the minds of any; and yet it would then be no more definite than it now is. The term “fourth day” was at that time just as intelligible and as definitely understood as Wednesday is with us. What right has man to say it makes no difference whether we obey God strictly or not? Has a subject the right to thus carelessly set aside the laws of his sovereign to suit his own convenience? God has been very jealous of his law and his Sabbath, and has sent severe judgments upon his people because they put no difference between the holy and profane, and have hid their eyes from his Sabbath. Ezek. 22:26.

Christ has declared that “till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven.” Matt. 5:19. Again, “Pray ye that your flight [from Jerusalem] be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day.” Matt. 24:20. Why pray that their flight be not on the Sabbath day, if there was not a particular day which was the Sabbath, and for which God had a special regard?

But perhaps our Christian friends who think the law of God so easily stretched to suit their convenience, find their license in Rom. 14:5: “One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Or perhaps they will confidently quote Col. 2:16: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”

If the day spoken of in the former text, and the sabbath days mentioned in the latter, had reference to the Sabbath of the Lord enjoined in the fourth commandment, then here would be a strong point. But let it be borne in mind that these words are spoken in connection with meats and drinks, holy days and new moons, which Paul says “are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” Col. 2:17. Now if it can be proved that the Sabbath was of that shadowy, typical nature, then when the substance came the shadow ceased, and we now have no Sabbath. But the Sabbath was instituted before the fall, therefore was not typical. It was placed upon a definite day, for a specific reason, and placed in the midst of God’s immutable law; and never until the unchangeable God changes his law, will we be at liberty to change in our observance of it. JOHN HACKETT.