WHICH IS THE TRUE SEVENTH DAY?
By Abdiel
Man's Supposition, or God's Word?
THE Herald of Gospel Liberty, of Dayton, Ohio, published by the "Christian" denomination, has in its issue of June 22, the following question and answer: DEAR DR. SUMMERBELL:—The advocates of a seventh-day Sabbath assume that our present Saturday is the successor in regular order of the seventh day upon which "God ended His work . . . and He rested . . . from all His work which He had made," and also the regular successor of the Mosaic Sabbath.
With all the changes of calendar to which the human reckoning of time has been subject since the creation, is it possible to maintain that the week is the same now as then, and that what we call Saturday has always been the seventh day?
H. G. COWAN. The question of Brother Cowan is an exceedingly practical one; for, unless the Saturday people can prove incontestably that the week of seven days has been kept undisturbed through the decades, centuries, and thousands of years, and through all captivities, changes of calendar, language, government, and civilization, their own argument, from their own point of view, has no force. We have no proof beyond slight probability that the seventh day of Genesis, first chapter, was the seventh day of Moses' time. There was a long stretch, thousands of years, before the exodus from Egypt, soon after which the Decalogue was given, from the events of the first and second chapters of Genesis (where the seventh day was spoken of); and to maintain that through that whole period, in which there was no Jewish nation, and no Decalogue to emphasize a seventh day, the seventh day was accurately noted, is very difficult. We know of too many confusions of calendars, and too many changes of calendars in historic times and in literary periods for us to admit that it is certain that there were no changes in the thousands of years before the historic period.
Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. But if every person is to keep his accurate seventh day, mankind will be observing all the days of the week; the distribution produced by two causes:
(1) Men are born on all the days of the week; and each one must have a partial week to begin with,10who was not born on the first day. If it be objected that it would destroy the Sabbath day for each man to observe his own seventh, preventing the community from uniting in worship or in rest, it is the very point we make: We should unite in the count of the community, and with it worship and rest; because the "Sabbath was made for man."
But the true spirit of obedience is ignored by the Saturday men, who ignore the calendar of their own birth (which they can prove), to accept the calendar of their own small sect (which they can not prove), thus preventing a common day of worship and rest, which is so necessary for man.
(2) In a voyage around the world a Saturday man will unhesitatingly skip a day of the week, or repeat a day of the week; because of the fact that he gains or loses a day, according to which way he goes around.
If the Saturday man can thus change his calendar, when he goes around the world, to prevent his Saturday from being the Sunday where he arrives, or from being Friday where he arrives, and to enable him to have the same seventh day as his Saturday, should he not modestly admit that the rest of us have a right to make our seventh day to harmonize with the worship-needs and with the rest-needs of mankind in general?
This common Sabbath argument is absolutely certain; but the Saturday man's count is very uncertain.
Statements like the above are often made, and with such seemingly plausible assurance as to deceive the uninstructed. For all such who believe God's Book (for upon that we rely) we reply briefly: I. The Institution of the Sabbath.
God fixed the week in the beginning, by His threefold act of making the Sabbath, namely, His rest, His blessing, His setting apart the day. Gen. 2:1-3. He made the Sabbath—the seventh day—for man, therefore appointed it for him in the beginning. Did mankind forget the Sabbath during the first decades, centuries, and thousands of years, so that, as Dr. Summerbell says, "we have no proof" "that the seventh day of Genesis" "was the seventh day of Moses' time?" Let us see:- A Preposterous Thing.—It is exceeding improbable that a community or a nation should forget the day of the week. There are many instances of an individual forgetting the day of the week; there are a few cases where a family has been led astray; but who ever heard of a neighborhood forgetting its order of the days! or a township! or a county! It would be preposterous that a whole nation should forget! Any or all could wilfully depart from observance of a day, but no one believes that the order of the days would be forgotten.
- The Testimony of Languages.—The records of the week of all the oriental nations which have come down to us, far antedating the Jewish nation, attest to the truthfulness of the Biblical record, showing that the origin of the week dates back to primeval times where the book of Genesis places it. Before us as we write hangs "A Chart of the Week," prepared and compiled by the late Rev. William Mead Jones, D.D., an antiquarian of London, assisted by some of the most noted linguists of the world, embracing one hundred and seven oriental and ancient languages and fifty-three European languages and authorities, prepared by the well-known linguist, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte. This chart gives in nine columns the name of the language used, the name of the week, and the name of each of the days of the week. All of the one hundred and sixty languages and dialects confirm the week of seven days; and one hundred and seven of the one hundred and sixty count the seventh day the end of the week, and most of the one hundred and seven show the seventh day to be a sacred day. These languages range from those of Russia on the north to far Annam, Burma, and Java, embracing Shemitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic. They are an undesigned, yet the more striking, evidence to the Biblical week, and its order of days.
- God's Witness of Miracle.—But even admitting that the day of the week could have been lost between the Creation and the Exodus (a preposterous thing!), we are not dependent on human guesswork or conclusion to set us right. He who gave the week and established the order of the days has preserved the day; and when He called Israel from Egypt to make that nation the depository of His truth, He anticipated just such subversions and perversions of that truth as we have before us in this article from the Herald we are now considering; and, therefore, He fixed the Sabbath day by a threefold weekly miracle of the manna, which continued for forty years, during which there could possibly be no mistake as to the definite day of the Lord's rest day, or Sabbath. See the whole of Exodus 16, and especially verses 4, 5, 22-30, 35. Jehovah Himself spans the centuries, and establishes by His own miraculous power this mighty pillar of witness to the identity of the week and the order of the days from Creation to the Exodus. Then He guarded that day by a holy commandment placed in the very heart of His unchangeable law. Ex. 20:8-11.
In the life of Christ,—in His teaching concerning the law (Matt. 5:17-20; Luke 16:17), in His example in the observance of the Sabbath (Luke 4:16; John 15:10), in the inspired record of His burial and resurrection (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1, 2), we have indubitable witness to the perpetuity of the week and the identity of the Sabbath. The Sabbath comes just before "the first day of the week," and is enjoined by the commandment. Luke 23:56. The Son of God, in whom dwelt all fulness of wisdom and knowledge, knew the Sabbath day and confirmed its identity by His teaching and example. IV. Subsequent Witnesses.
Since the time of Christ we have:- The Testimony of Astronomy.—Eclipses have been recorded for hundreds of years before Christ. The records of these eclipses correspond with present calculations, showing there has been no loss of time.
- The records of nations under different laws and widely separated have the same week and the same order of the days of the week.
- From the second century, when error began to lift its hydra head in the temple of truth, men began to observe the first day of the week as a holy day. They are still doing it, and there is no disagreement among them as to the day.
- The Jews.—From the time of Ezra the Jewish body called first "The Great Synagog," and afterward, "The Sanhedrin," down to the year A.D. 300, in regular succession announced the Jewish calendar to all the Jews in the world. The Babylonian Academy did the same thing from A.D. 200 to 1,000. The Jews have been scattered all over the world, in every country, but wherever they have gone there has no difference ever arisen among them as regards the day. Those inclined to observe it have had no difficulty in observing it anywhere in the world.
From these witnesses there is absolute certainty that the present week is identical with creation week, and that the present, seventh-day Sabbath from set of sun to set of sun is identical with the original seventh-day Sabbath, instituted in the first Biblical week of time, established by continuous miracle for forty years at the Exodus, observed by Jesus Christ and His disciples, and confirmed by astronomy, by religious and secular history, and by common sense ever since.
The dropping or the adding of a day in going around the world is seen and acknowledged by men of common sense, scholarship, and candor, to be a necessity, inasmuch as one gains or loses a day in going against or with the sun. The Sunday man also does it. No man in doing this changes his calendar; he brings himself into harmony with the calendar. The calendar has not changed; he has changed, and he merely corrects that change.
One thing can not be made too emphatic: no general change of calendars in the past has ever affected the day of the week. These changes have affected the month and the year, but never have changed the divine week. That still stands, unchanged and most certain.
One thing more: God asks no man to make his own sabbath, or to keep a seventh day from his birth. All this is utterly beside the question, and Dr. Summerbell must know it. It is a hiding of counsel by words without knowledge. God commands us to observe His holy day, not one of our own choosing. To say that we can not know what this is, is to charge God with folly or injustice. Rather, "let God be true," as He is, tho it prove every man a liar. ABDEL.