THE SABBATH INVISIBLE by Elder William Covert

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 37.

THE SABBATH INVISIBLE.

By Elder William Covert

A THING may be covered over in such a manner as to be invisible to those whose eyesight is good; or it may fail of recognition because the eye is bad. Of course it will be invisible to all whose eyes are closed by sleep.

But there is yet another condition which prevents the eye from seeing objects which stand out quite plainly. It is brought about simply by closing or hiding the eyes. It is also effected by turning the face away from an object that is not welcome to the view. It is this condition of vision which makes the Sabbath invisible to many people. The prophet in referring to them said:—

"Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and the profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them." Eze. 22:26.

This is a serious charge, but it is true, for it is the Lord himself who has made it. Those

who are refusing to see this truth are here charged with violating God's law. The fact is they must know it is there or else they would not hide their eyes to keep from seeing it.

Judging from the scripture cited above, there are many who pose before mankind as teachers of God's word who have had their attention called to the Sabbath of the Lord, and have examined the subject far enough to see that the day that God has blessed and made holy is now trampled upon and profaned as a common laboring day by themselves and those who are looking to them for instruction, yet they have chosen the darkness of self-closed eyesight rather than the light of truth, because they do not want to see the Sabbath.

In taking this course they have of necessity had to assume various positions to keep from seeing that which they do not love to behold. They must try to defend their course to the best of their ability. But their arguing the prophet calls daubing with untempered mortar. Eze. 22: 28. In chapter 13: 10 he says, "They have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar." In verse 5 they are charged with refusing to go into the gaps to make up the hedge, that the house of Israel may stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. Again, in chapter 22: 30, the Lord says, "I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none."

According to this testimony, the Lord cannot get those priests who have hid their eyes from his Sabbaths to go into this gap to repair the breach that has been made in his law. They are too busily engaged in daubing some wall with their untempered mortar. For this reason they will not help repair the breach. But why is it that they are so averse to building up the gap that the Lord wants repaired in his hedge? The reason is because they have hid their eyes from the Sabbath. Should they go into that gap to repair the hedge, they would have to open their eyes and see the Sabbath. Therefore, that they may have some apparent excuse for not repairing the breach that has been made in the hedge that the Lord has built about his people, they keep at work, daubing their fraudulent, papal wall with untempered mortar. Well, then, the thing that they are doing is framing excuses for their Sabbath breaking. But all these excuses are like untempered mortar, which does not harden to stone nor fasten anything together.

Their excuses will not support each other, and when the wind of God's wrath blows upon them, they will crumble of their own weakness. Just to show how incompatible these excuses are with themselves we will set before the reader a few of them.

Calling upon a neighboring pastor, we ask him to give us his reasons for not keeping the Sabbath as it is commanded in the Scriptures. He tells us, first, that Christ changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. But he soon finds that position untenable because there is no argument, outside of the bare assertion, to sustain it. The next proposition will be that the change was effected by the apostles during their ministry. But the scriptural proof is wanting just as much as with the first proposition. But the second position contradicts the first, and so on clear through. His third line of defense will likely be that any day will do. If this one is the true one, then the first two were incorrect. But, not satisfied with the third proposition, his fourth is that the whole law was abolished at the cross, and his fifth that only the Sabbath commandment was done away. His sixth is that the Sabbath was not abolished, but that it simply ran out by limitation. His seventh line of argument is that time has been lost, and therefore no one can tell which is the true seventh day. Eighth, Sunday is the true seventh day, counting from creation. Ninth, the world is round, and therefore no particular day can be kept. Tenth, the Sabbath is Jewish and should therefore be rejected, while Sunday is Christian, because it has been kept so long and by so many good people that it would be quite improper to begin the observance of the Sabbath at this late date. Although he admits the Scriptures do enjoin the seventh-day Sabbath, and that Christ and the apostles, together with all the churches established by them, did keep it, yet he says, "I cannot see it." He is like the fox that cannot be induced to stand in the open gap in the hedge.

These are only a part of the incongruities that enter into the compound that is used in daubing up the Sunday wall. No two positions agree; each one contradicts all the others. We know of no man who holds any one of these positions who does not hold two or more, and therefore no advocate of Sunday sacredness agrees with himself all the time. Many of them advocate five or six of these positions to suit their convenience according to the occasion or the pressure that may be brought to bear upon them. Some there can be found who will advocate them all to the best of their several interests in their success.

The Roman Church has built up this wall by assuming the prerogative of God without offering any scriptural reason for building it. To them it is a sign of their infallibility, a badge of their authority, a seal of their divine right to annul a commandment that God has enacted and to create a new thing to take its place. How sad it is that our Protestant brethren will keep daubing away with their contradictions, to try to strengthen this wall of papal creation!

But some souls are going to be found who will go into the gap to repair the breach that this papal assumption has made in God's law. Of that class the Lord says, "Thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in." Who shall be called this? The next verse tells us: "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." Isa. 58: 12, 13.

The repairers of the breach are a humble, obedient people, who consistently and scripturally keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath that they keep has been trampled underfoot and derided as something unholy and undelightful. In its restoration they are raising up the foundations of many generations, and building up the old waste places, as is seen by reading the connection. These considerations show that the Sabbath here enjoined has been generally and long neglected.

The context also speaks of the exceeding joy that the obedient experience because of their Sabbath delights. They find the presence of the Lord in the day. Their eyes have been opened to behold wondrous things in God's law. Reader, if you are trampling upon the Lord's holy day, you are wronging your own soul, and by continued disobedience are withholding from yourself the greatest possible joys. Leave that tottering wall of Roman creation, and identify yourself in Sabbath obedience with Him who gave you life.