BUT THE SEVENTH DAY IS THERE.
By G.
ONE who persists in being "not subject to the law of God" (Rom. 8:7) has recently published a remarkable finding. A child who ever learned the fourth commandment could have told him the same thing. He says, "There is no Saturday in the Decalogue, and no Saturday mentioned in connection with God's sanctifying the seventh day after six creative days." This discovery is supposed to demolish the Sabbath of the Lord. True, "there is no Saturday in the Decalogue," or anywhere else in the Bible. Saturday is a name given by the Romans to the seventh day of the week, as Sunday to the first day, Monday to the second, etc. But the Decalogue does mention the seventh day, in a way to explicitly identify it with the seventh day that God blessed in the beginning. Compare Ex. 20:8-11 with Gen. 2:2, 3. This same definite seventh day was known to Moses and the children of Israel when the manna was given in the wilderness, some weeks before they came to Sinai. Then for forty years it was definitely designated by three miracles every week. When Christ, the "Lord of the Sabbath," came to earth, He observed the Sabbath on the same day the Jews were observing it, thus showing that they had made no mistake in the matter. He rose from the dead on the "first day of the week," which was the day following the "Sabbath day according to the commandment." Now the Jews have continued to observe the seventh day without change until now, without confusion or dispute in any part of the world, and the people who chose to observe the first day have always kept the day after that observed by the Jews and seventh-day Christians. And that first day has always been the day which the Romans called Sunday, so named before the advent of Christ. So the Roman name Saturday does not in any sense affect the seventh day of the Decalogue. That "Saturday" argument is like a drowning man catching at a straw; but the law of the Lord is not so easily overthrown. G.