p. 5 | And Yet They Do by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 3, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 34.

And Yet They Do

By Editor

The Deliverer, published in Lincoln, Nebraska, by the Rev. Walter K. Williams, referring to the position of Seventh-day Adventists on the meaning of “Mystery, Babylon the Great,” etc., of Rev. 17: 5, says they believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the mother and “that we of other denominations are her daughters, because the Roman Catholic Church observes the first day of the week, which we also do,” and then the editor states:

“We do not keep this day as our Lord’s day because the Roman Catholics do it nor because Constantine made Sunday legally the Christian’s sabbath. We observe it because we are taught in the Scriptures to do so. Besides we know that the disciples of Jesus began to do this immediately or very soon after the resurrection of our Lord, and that it has continued to this day. Acts 20: 7; 1 Cor. 16: 1 and 2.”

Now we do not question the motive or belief of those who thus aver. We grant that they are honest, intelligent, conscientious. But it is true, nevertheless, that Protestants to-day are observing Sunday because they received it from the traditions of the past and not from the Word of God. Proof: (1) The texts cited above—the best, evidently, the writer could bring—make no reference to the holiness of Sunday, give no command for its observance, save in commanding a secular task on that day, refer to no law or commandment of God declaring the day holy. Acts 20: 7 records a remarkable night meeting on what would be our Saturday night, and the next day was spent in travel. 1 Cor. 16: 1, 2 refers to a private reckoning at home of one’s income after the week is over—a purely secular duty. If in these cases the second day of the week were mentioned, no one would take it as authority for second-day sacredness. Why not admit the fact, which many do, that there is not a scintilla of evidence that Sunday was or is designed to take the place of the Sabbath; that it is not in any sense a sacred day; that there is neither command nor example for it which would be considered of any worth if another day were mentioned; that it was many years, nay, centuries, before it was called a sabbath or considered sacred; that all the sacredness which attaches to it is in the application of scriptures to the Sunday which belong to the Sabbath alone; that it was preserved and passed on into Protestantism by the Roman Catholic Church; that every argument used by Protestants, with perhaps the exception of the unlearned one on the Greek, to support Sunday sacredness, is received from Catholics, even to the last, coercion?

Now, our friendly critic the Deliverer evidently believes he is observing Sunday as a Bible day, but unconsciously he is passing on the well-worn counterfeit coin of apostasy, which will not ring true to the government requirement. Let the Deliverer labor to deliver its readers from this child of apostasy also. The genuine is infinitely better. W.