68. THE SABBATH—ITS NECESSITY AND TIME OF BEGINNING.
By Editor
Is it to our salvation that we keep the Sabbath? And what time shall we begin to keep the Sabbath? 1. To the first question we would simply say: God has given the Sabbath as the memorial of himself. He has commanded man to keep it. He has placed that command right in the midst of nine other moral precepts (Ex. 20:3-17), showing the Sabbath to be morally obligatory also. Is it necessary to salvation to keep the first or seventh or tenth commandment? How much God excuses because of the blindness and darkness of men to whom his light has not come we know not. That we leave with God. The real believer in Christ submits to all of God's law, to all that is revealed or that God may afterward reveal. He does not expect that his keeping the fourth commandment will give him life, nor the keeping of the second, or sixth, or all, but loyalty and love for God and Christ demand that he should, in the strength of Christ, do them all. True faith works, not in our way, nor according to our standard, but in God's way, and according to his standard—the moral law as it is in Christ. This brief answer may not be all our friend desires. If he will read the SIGNS the coming year, it will have much more to say on the subject. 2. The time to begin the Sabbath is at the beginning of the natural day. See Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; Lev. 23:32; Matt. 8:16; Mark 1:32; Luke 4:40. Other texts might be given; but the above clearly show that the natural day, as given by God, is composed of two parts, "evening and morning;" that the evening begins at the going down of the sun; that in this way the Jews counted time in their annual feast days, and as regards the Sabbath also. This method of keeping time is known to all; it is not dependent on man or his inventions. The beginning of the Sabbath is, therefore, Friday night at sundown, and it closes Saturday evening at sundown. This is the only Sabbath which God has given.