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CLXXXVI

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 18, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 3.

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CLXXXVI

By J. E. Carmichael

How They Became Convinced

[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]

CLXXXVI.

FROM my earliest remembrance to my fifteenth year I attended Sunday-school, my mother being an earnest Sunday-school worker. At that age I had committed to memory several chapters and many short passages of Scripture, including the first three chapters of Genesis, the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount. By comparing these scriptures with other scriptures as I read or heard them I became curious to know why the first day of the week was observed as the Sabbath instead of the seventh. I asked several preachers why and when the Sabbath was changed, and where any mention of the change could be found in the Bible. But I received only evasive and unsatisfactory answers, most of them claiming that the law was abolished at the Cross, because of man's inability to keep it; and that since then the commandments were not binding, and man was under grace.

By comparing the statement that God, at creation, rested and blessed and sanctified the seventh day (Gen. 2:1-7), with the Ten Commandments, wherein He commanded us to remember the seventh day to keep it holy, I was convinced that the Sabbath was instituted at Creation, and was also given in the written law at Sinai. However the claim of the preachers that the law was abolished, confused me, for Christ certainly taught that "till heaven and earth pass" even "the least of these commandments" are binding. Matt. 5:17-19. Also, according to Luke 4:16, it was Christ's custom to observe the Sabbath and to teach in the synagog on that day. And His disciples "rested on the Sabbath day according to the commandment." Luke 23:56. Likewise Paul's custom at Corinth, some twenty years later, was to work six days and spend the Sabbath day in preaching and teaching. See Acts 18:1-4, 11.

Yet in spite of these and other scriptures, the preachers contended that Sunday was the Sabbath, and that I did not understand the scriptures. So I became discouraged because they could not show me from the Bible why they believed as they did, and why they preached as they did on this and some other subjects. Finally, at the age of twenty I renounced religion as a myth, and preachers as hypocrites. I laid aside my Bible, and did not open it again for ten years, and then only after I had met, for the first time in my life, a person who observed the seventh day as the Sabbath.

A short time after this I had the privilege of hearing a series of sermons preached by a Seventh-day Adventist minister in a tent. I readily saw that he preached the plain Word of God as it is, upholding the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Then I soon rejoiced in identifying myself with this unpopular Sabbath truth, and united with those commandment-loving people.

J. E. CARMICHAEL.