p. 6 | THE DAY OF THE SABBATH by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 18, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 16.

THE DAY OF THE SABBATH.

By Editor

An Examination of Mr. Crafts' 'Reply.'

THE Twentieth Century Quarterly of February 15, 1900, has an article by Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph. D., who has, perhaps, done more to establish Sunday in America than any other man now living. His article is entitled 'A Reply to Seventh-day Adventists.' There are some points in it worthy of notice, not because of any strength of argument, but because of the prominence of the author and the currency of his article. His first paragraph is as follows:—

Those who deny the patriarchal Sabbath, but affirm the Lord's-day sabbath—Hessey, of England; Professor Smythe, of Andover, and others—and those Saturday-keeping Christians who affirm the patriarchal Sabbath, but deny the Lord's-day sabbath, [Sunday] accept in one case the same kind and degree of evidence that they reject in the other, namely, one explicit text and half a dozen confirming references—the same sort of evidence that proves gravitation and hangs murderers—a theory that holds and harmonizes all the facts involved. They only are consistent who, on like testimony, accept both the patriarchal and the Lord's-day sabbath, so making the Sabbath as perpetual and universal as 'man,' for whom science as well as Scripture affirms that it was made.

We have no defense to make for those who deny the Sabbath in the days of the patriarchs; but the implication in the last sentence quoted above, that the seventh-day observers who deny the Sunday sabbath repudiate the perpetuity and universality of the Sabbath, is wholly without foundation; for Mr. Crafts ought to know that they hold to the perpetuity of the one universal, unchangeable Sabbath for man in all ages. The unchangeable God gave no kaleidoscopic Sabbath.

Mr. Crafts' second paragraph pertains to those who deny a Sabbath in patriarchal times. He truly points out that they deny a fact established by Revelation, reason, and history.

His third paragraph is as follows:—

The Saturday-keepers should be required to establish their Genesis claims before they are allowed to battle with us in the Gospels. Before they debate 'the change of day,' let them show what day of our modern week corresponds to the original Sabbath of God and man, not to keep which, they say, is as bad as theft or murder. The Lord's-day sabbath has the contested seat. The burden of proof is on them. Let this never be forgotten. To dislodge the Lord's day they must prove: (1) That God's 'seventh day' was twenty-four hours, not the period of redemption, which has continued from the creation of man till now. Geology teaches that each of the 'six days' preceding were indefinite periods, in which case our imitation of God's week would be as all our imitation of Him must be, in miniature. (2) They must prove that the original Sabbath of God and man was identical with Saturday in our age, having come down in unbroken succession, which seems at least unlikely, as the land of Abraham began each month, as I have said, with a new week, and treated the days beyond the twenty-eighth as an interregnum between the four weeks of the previous and the four weeks of the following month. (3) They must prove that the Saturday of Adam on the Euphrates is literally reproduced in the Saturday of Adventists on the Mississippi. Saturday, taking the whole globe into account, is forty-eight hours long.

'Required'! By whom? Is not this a land of free speech? When observers of Sunday, united upon only one thing—the desirability of a Sunday law—contend and 'debate' for a dozen self-devouring theories, why may not 'Saturday-keepers' present the teachings of the Gospels concerning the Sabbath? Now we have no desire to 'debate' or 'battle' over the question at all. We wish to know the truth and hold forth the truth of the Word of God as it is in Christ Jesus. Neither is the burden of proof logically upon those who observe the seventh day. The day that holds the place of authority in God's Word and the life of Christ is the day. It ought, to a Christian, to be sufficient to know the day of the Word. The 'contested seat,' in the church is another thing. That rests primarily in every man's heart, and the only true Sabbath-keeping is heart Sabbath-keeping; the outspringing of the living law of God planted in the heart by the eternal Spirit. The 'contested seat' there is as the soul will. Christ longs to come in and give His rest, true Sabbath-keeping of the true day, but He will not force His way.

The Letter.

A mere outward observance in the church of any day is 'the letter that killeth;' and the enforced observance is slavishness or hypocrisy. We have no desire for any such observance of any divinely-enjoined duty. In all general apostasy Sunday has held the 'contested seat' in outward form. It is 'the wild solar holiday of all pagan times,' entering through apostasy the professed church of Christ. But to answer Mr. Crafts' positions,—

1. The first Biblical cycle of days numbered seven. Genesis 1 and 2. That is the origin of our week. The seventh day of that cycle, or week, was by the Creator constituted the Sabbath. He rested that day; that made it God's rest day. He blessed that day; that made it God's blessed rest day. He sanctified, or set apart, that day of the cycle, or week; that made it

God's blessed, sanctified Sabbath, or rest day. The resting was in the past, when He sanctified and blessed the day; therefore the blessing and setting apart pertain to all seventh days to come. And this very fact, as well as all subsequent teaching, must prove to a demonstration to all believers in the words of God that the Sabbath day, blessed and set apart for man in the beginning, was just such a day as man is in duty bound to observe. For, mark, reader, God made not the Sabbath for Himself, but "the Sabbath was made for man." It was in duration one of the days of this earth, marked by the sun. The question is not what geology teaches; what does God's Word teach?

Pointed Out Miraculously.

2. However geologists or pagans or infidels or higher critics regarded the day of the Sabbath at the Exodus, whether one or all of these classes knew it or not, the great Jehovah, the Shepherd of Israel, knew the seventh day of the hebdomadal or weekly cycle; and He, that it might never be questioned, pointed it out by a threefold miraculous manifestation, every week for forty years. See Exodus 16. It was the same day of Genesis; for it was "the rest of the holy [hallowed, sanctified, Gen. 2:2, 3] Sabbath unto the Lord." Verses 23, 25. It was "the seventh day," "the Sabbath." Verse 26. It was one of God's commandments and laws upon which the people were tested. Verses 4, 27, 28.

A few days later, panoplied in such glory as sinful earth had never seen, God spoke His unchangeable law, in the very midst of which was placed the Sabbath precept, enjoining His holy rest day, the seventh of the cycle. He knew the day then. Fifteen centuries later the inspired writings record, concerning the holy women who returned from Christ's sepulcher: "And the women also, which came with Him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and how His body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher." Luke 23:55 to 24:1. Matthew (28:1) connects the two days a little more closely: "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher."

The Sabbath day of Christ's time was "the Sabbath day according to the commandment." The commandment enjoins the seventh day, and identifies it with the seventh day of Gen. 2:1-3. The Sabbath day of Christ's time immediately preceded the first day of the week, and was, therefore, the seventh day of the week. Since that time no one will for a moment contend that the identity of the days of the week has been lost. The seventh day of the week then is identical with the seventh day of the week now, with this exception, the Bible day began at sunset and closed at sunset, while the present civil day begins and closes at midnight. God's work is ever the same; and God's representative in his time was Abraham; but Abraham's ancestors were idolaters. Their observance of the day was not Abraham's.

Self-Devouring Fallacies.

3. Mr. Crafts' third point that he demands should be proved, is that the Saturday of Adam on the Euphrates is literally reproduced in the Saturday of Adventists on the Mississippi.

And then he tells us that "Saturday, taking the whole globe into account, is forty-eight hours long." In other words, Mr. Crafts' argument boiled down is the old cavil that we can not keep a definite day on the round world. And yet, mark it, reader, right in the face of this demand, Mr. Crafts' holds that Christ's "resurrection and reappearance and His Pentecostal reincarnation" "make the Lord's day [by which Mr. Crafts means Sunday] more glorious in the eyes of His disciples than the Jewish Sabbath." He also argues in the same connection that the Sabbath law of the fourth commandment is "kept where a whole people are accustomed to work 'six days' and rest 'on the seventh day,' after these six days of work." And he demands that seventh-day keepers shall prove that all of these positions are not true.

Really, Mr. Crafts has saved us the trouble. Consider, reader, his contentions:—

1. The same literal day can not be kept on the round earth. Those in America do not have the same week as Adam.

2. The fourth commandment requires not a definite day, but only one day after six of work.

3. That the Lord requires us to keep the first day of the week.

Now, if the same literal day can not be kept on a round world, how can Mr. Crafts keep the day upon which Jesus rose from the dead? He says, "If American Adventists would keep the present Saturday of Eden, let them keep the American Friday." And we say, according to the same argument, if Mr. Crafts would keep the present day of the resurrection, let him keep the American Saturday.

If Sunday can be observed world-wide—and a world-wide Sunday law our first-day friends are working for—then the Sabbath can be observed world-wide. Neither have men had any trouble in so observing it. From the cradle of the race the travelers westward have carried with them the Sabbath, and the Sunday, and the week, to the Pacific Ocean, and found themselves in harmony with the week in every land. Mr. Crafts knows this to be so. He knows that Sunday can be observed "the wide world around," and he is anxious for a law to compel it. But if Mr. Crafts' contentions are true, is not Sunday open to the same objection as the Sabbath? Is not the seventh day the seventh after six of work?

God demands no literal hours; He commands the keeping of the day, not before it comes to us, not after it leaves us, but when it is present, when it is with us; or, more literally, perhaps, when we, in our earth-whirling, come to the day.

It is a beneficent law of nature that man can occupy only one place at a time, or that he can not be in two places on the earth's surface at the same time, mahatmas and astral bodies notwithstanding. He is a local being; and all he is required to do to observe the day where he is, the day commanded of God, the seventh of the septenary cycle. If our friends can not find it, God's Word definitely locates it as the day just previous to the first day of the week.

To summarize: (1) God rested on the seventh day, blessed that rest day, set it apart for man. Could He do this on an indefinite day? (2) God honored that day 2,500 years afterward by a threefold weekly miracle for forty years as the only day He could honor. (3) He fixed that day of His rest, blessing, and sanctification in His eternal law. (4) The Gospels identify it 1,500 years afterward, as the day just before "the first day of the week." (5) Jesus Himself honored the Sabbath of the Lord in precept and example, but left neither word nor example as regards the holiness of the first day of the week.

And all this Mr. Crafts confirms by his beautifully-constructed but self-devouring fallacies. It is the best he has for Sunday-keeping. Why will he not take the better way, the way of righteousness and truth?