THE LORD'S DAY by Marshall Enoch

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1880

THE LORD'S DAY.

By Marshall Enoch

"I WAS in the spirit on the Lord's day." Rev. 1:10. "And that is the first day of the week," said a certain preacher as he was trying to uphold Sunday-keeping a few weeks ago. When pressed to prove it by the Bible, he replied that "history said so, and nearly everybody believed it. And that is the only answer a minister of the gospel(?) could give.

But what does the Bible say about it? "To the law and to the testimony." Isa. 8:20. Here are two infallible rules God has given us. It is very evident that sixty-five years after the death of Christ, there was a particular day called the Lord's day. Which day was that? We turn to the first rule as found in Ex. 20: and find there that it is the seventh day. This is plain enough. We are not left to guess at it.

Would this government set apart a particular day, and then leave its citizens to guess which day that is? This is too absurd to think of. The first rule (the law) teaches that the seventh day is the Lord's day. Now what does the second rule (God's word) teach? "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day," etc. Isa. 58:13. That is plain enough. The Lord is speaking here of his holy day.

After the supposed change of the Sabbath, we find the women keeping the Lord's day on the Sabbath, according to the commandment, and that command says that the seventh day is the Lord's day.

Let us now turn to what Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, says. And he is able to tell us which day the Lord's day is. We turn to Mark 2:27, 28. He says "the Sabbath was made for man." Now when was the Sabbath made for man? We turn to Gen. 2:1-3, and we read there it was at the close of creation. There it says God sanctified it. Christ says it was made for man. Which day was this? The seventh day. Gen. 2:3. Then Christ says: "Therefore the son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath."

Now the first rule teaches that the seventh day is the Lord's day. The second rule says it is the Sabbath which was made for man, and this is the seventh day, and Christ says he is Lord of it. Now I ask in all candor, which day is the Sabbath? The seventh day is the only answer.

Again, the seventh day of what? Of the year? Of the month? No. We turn to Luke 23:56, and it is there stated that the women rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment. This day they kept, says Luke twenty-eight years after the death of Christ, "according to the commandment," was the day before the first day of the week. The day before the first day of the week is always the seventh day of the week, because there are only seven days in the weekly cycle.

Then the first day of the week is not the Lord's day, but the day that precedes it, or the seventh day of the week.

Marshall Enoch.