p. 624 | Just What We Believe by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 39.

Just What We Believe.

By Editor

It has been stated in an exchange that Seventh-day Adventists hold to the view that work on six days of the week is mandatory, that this is unscriptural, and that therefore the persecution which comes upon them because of working on Sunday is really a persecution on account of error which they hold. This view of the case, that labor on six days of the week is mandatory, has been stated, and as to that we will not now discuss it; but there is a far deeper reason underlying the work of Seventh-day Adventists on the first day of the week. In the first place, they hold that the only Sabbath of the Bible is the seventh day of the week, and that the first-day sabbath is a counterfeit, a usurper, a change which the "man of sin" has sought to make in God's law, and which change this "man of sin" holds to be a sign of his power. No Seventh-day Adventist who did not work on the other five working days would feel called upon to work on Sunday to show his contempt for the day, or to spite his first-day brethren; but to work the other five days and rest upon that day, because it is required by law, either ecclesiastical or civil, is to pay homage to the power from whence the first-day sabbath sprung. In other words, it is the worship of the beast, to him. It is with him a matter of conscience, because to recognize the day is to recognize the power which gave the day. No true Sabbath keeper should work on Sunday simply to spite or defy someone else, and we know of none who do. On the other hand, no law has a right to demand that any man, after working five of the working days and observing the Sabbath according to the commandment, should also cease from work on the first day of the week. It is not the mere matter of working six days of the week, although that is an absolute necessity to many a poor man, it is the matter of recognizing the two powers, which stands behind the two Sabbaths. The commandment plainly gives man six days in which to do his own work, and no earthly power, civil or ecclesiastical, has a right to deprive him of his God-given privilege.