COMMEMORATION by M. E. Kellogg

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 11, 1880

COMMEMORATION.

By M. E. Kellogg

AMONG the many so-called arguments used to support the first-day Sabbath, none is more frequently used than the one drawn from John 20:19. The text reads as follows: "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you."

The argument drawn from this passage in support of first-day observance is something like this: "Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and here is a record of the disciples meeting upon that same day, evidently to commemorate his resurrection."

This argument is used by every one who undertakes to find scriptural reasons for first-day observance. Now, setting aside the fact plainly revealed in the text, that the disciples were thus assembled for fear of the Jews, also the fact recorded by another evangelist, that at that time the Lord upbraided them for their hardness of heart, because they believed not them who had seen him after he had risen from the dead; setting aside these facts which clearly demonstrate that at this very time the disciples had no faith in his resurrection, we wish to inquire, Would it be possible for the disciples to commemorate the resurrection of Christ the same day he was raised from the dead? Or, to give our question a wider scope, Can an event be commemorated upon the same day the event takes place which makes the day commemorable? We unhesitatingly reply that it cannot.

For instance, the signing of the Declaration of Independence could not be commemorated upon the fourth of July, 1776, not till the fourth of July, 1777. So of your birthday, it could not be commemorated the same day you were born. To commemorate is to preserve the memory of something by some act. It would be the greatest folly to talk of preserving the memory of something by some act the same day the event occurs which you desire to preserve in memory.

The thing to be commemorated, then, must necessarily be in the past. If a yearly observance, it can be commemorated in a year from the event which makes the day commemorable; if a monthly, in a month; if a weekly, in a week, not sooner. How, then, can people believe that the disciples at this time were commemorating the resurrection of Christ? It is a manifest absurdity to suppose such a thing. The next meeting which we have a record of took place after eight days, which reaches to Monday, and possibly to Tuesday.

M. E. KELLOGG.