Did He Mean It? by W. M. Healey

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 16, 1878

Did He Mean It?

By W. M. Healey

Did God mean what he said and wrote at Sinai, as recorded in the 20th chapter of Exodus, that man should "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it?"

Dear reader, if God meant what he said, he had a Sabbath day and it was the seventh day. If he meant what he said, that day was set apart for a sacred use at the close of creation week. Gen. 2:2-3. The children of Israel were reproved for going out to gather manna upon it. Exodus 16:27-30. Jerusalem was destroyed, partly for the reason that they did not keep the Sabbath. Neh. 13:18. "Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath." The Israelites were to be scattered among the heathen, and the Lord says one reason was because they did not keep his Sabbaths. Eze. 28:23-24. It was to be a sign by which the people who worship the true God were to be known. Eze. 20:20; Ex. 31:13.

Paul says, "There are lords many and gods many," almost everything in the world has been worshiped as a god. The city of Athens had over thirty thousand gods at the time Paul visited it, and perhaps an equal number could be found among the heathen nations of to-day. By what mark or sign can those be known, who worship the true God? How shall we know, which among so many, is the true God? Paul to the Athenians defined him as the Creator of all things. Acts 17:24. "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands."

The Sabbath was given that man might remember that his God was the one that created all things. The Sabbath as an institution was given to commemorate God's creative work, and it came on the seventh day because God finished the work, and so rested on that day. Creative power is an attribute of only the true God. There is no other way given us to so fully acknowledge this power in God as by keeping the Sabbath day. If God meant what he said, he requires us to keep that day holy. Comparatively few who claim to believe in the Creator of all things keep his memorial. Most of them, it is true, set apart a day each week for rest and recreation from their ordinary pursuits, but the day thus set apart is usually Sunday, or the first day of the week, and God worked that day. See Gen. 1:1-5. But the reason usually assigned for observing the first day is that Christ rose on that day. Then it is no memorial of creation at all, but of Christ's resurrection. If God meant what he said, a blessing is to be bestowed upon those who keep the Sabbath. "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." If God meant what he said; the Sabbath will be kept by God's people after they enter into their rewards. Isaiah 65:22-23.

"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Does God mean what he says, in the above declarations and glorious promises? Then let us be very circumspect in all that which the Lord our God hath commanded. W. M. HEALEY.