The Day Not the Time by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 11, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 10.

The Day Not the Time

By Editor

ONE of the chief arguments against the seventh-day Sabbath is the seventh-part-of-time theory. The argument is that God is not particular as to the day, and that if the proportion of time — one seventh — is kept, the requirement of the fourth commandment is met. Any day of the seven, it is claimed, will answer the intent of the Sabbath law. Sunday is kept because more expedient.

But is this true? Why then did the Lord make the commandment so definite as regards the one particular day? It is the seventh day of the seven we are to remember; in it we are to do no work; on that day God rested; that particular day He blessed and sanctified, or hallowed; that day is His holy Sabbath day. And no other day can be; for no other day ever passed through such a process. The definite day is the pivotal point of the whole Sabbath law. God could not rest upon and make holy a day without resting upon and making holy a definite day. A man could not sell one seventh of seven horses without selling a definite horse. The Sabbath of Jehovah can, therefore, only be a definite day; and the commandment is very emphatic that that is the seventh day.

Again: Why will people contend for the proportion of time, which is only implied, and disregard the specific day, which is clearly stated. In some conditions it is impossible for an individual to keep one seventh of the time. For instance, a rapid train going westward would in one day lose about an hour. To a passenger the day would be one of only twenty-three hours; consequently, he could not keep the seventh part of time. But there is no such difficulty to him who keeps the definite day. Have we any more right to change from the day so plainly expressed in the law, than we have to change the proportion of days? Is not Papal Rome, that has attempted the change from the seventh to the first day, just as guilty as is infidel France, that changed from the seventh day of one cycle to the tenth of a new cycle? Did not God mean what He said when He gave the seventh day? Did patriarch, prophet, or the Christ ever understand it otherwise? If the Lord did not mean what He said, who can say what He did mean? The same reasons exist now for the seventh-day Sabbath that existed when it was given from Sinai. Who dare say otherwise? "Who art thou that repliest against God?"