WHY DEPART FROM GOD'S WORD?
By Editor
A FRIEND has sent us a copy of the Church Advocate and Holiness Banner containing an article on "The Sabbath, Perpetuity, and Change to First Day," and requests us to notice it. Why? The first part of the article is good; its principles are sound; and we can not see why any one holding those principles should not be forced utterly to repudiate the last part of the article. For instance, the writer contends,— 1. That the Sabbath, the seventh day, was instituted at creation; that God blessed that day for all mankind; that He sanctified that day by separating it "from the common use of other days," and gave as a reason for this that it was "on that day He rested; and that so He "established" "the perpetuity of the Sabbath" "by the very terms of its existence." Gen. 2 : 2, 3. 2. That the Sabbath was kept before the giving of the law. Gen. 4 : 3. 3. That the Sabbath was observed in the wilderness, still the seventh day. Ex. 16 : 22-30. The editor says: "It is not here said 'To-morrow shall be the rest of the Sabbath,' or 'the seventh day which shall be the Sabbath,' but declares it 'is the Sabbath.'" 4. That "in the giving of the commandments the Sabbath is referred to in language which supposes its pre-existence: Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Ex. 20 : 8-11. 5. That the early nations observed the Sabbath. 6. That "it is a moral precept," "not typical or ceremonial, and therefore not susceptible of change or abrogation;" that "it can no more be annulled than any other precept of the moral code." 7. That "Jesus affirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath." Matt. 22 : 36-38. "He declares the whole moral law to be binding." 8. That "the law was fulfilled by Christ, but not destroyed." Matt. 5 : 17, 18. "He came then to fulfil the moral law, that is, to obey it." "The Sabbath is one of the precepts of this law, hence was kept by Christ and left by Him as an obligation upon all to the end of time." All this from the Church Advocate is good Bible doctrine, good Christian doctrine, good holiness doctrine of the right kind, because it has back of it all a "thus saith the Lord." But the editor repudiates all this when he attempts to prove his first-day Sabbath. "The particular day is not essential to the Sabbath itself. A seventh day is essential, for the rest must be one day in seven, but a Sabbath is one thing and the particular day on which it is to be observed is another thing. The particular or specific day on which the Sabbath is to be kept is not prescribed in the moral code, all that is implied is that after six days of labor, the next day which will be the seventh, is to be observed as the Sabbath. It is not said that "the Lord blessed" a particular seventh day, but "the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Now "Sabbath" means rest. "The Sabbath day" means "the rest day." Now it is a fact that God did not rest on no day in particular, or on one day in general; but He rested on one day in particular, namely, THE SEVENTH DAY. As the Sabbath day is God's Sabbath day; so the rest day is God's rest day. As He rested only upon one day, only one day can be His Sabbath day. That day is expressly declared to be the seventh day of the septenary cycle or week founded by Jehovah Himself. He blessed only one day—the seventh. He sanctified or set apart but one day—the seventh. And by example and precept, by miraculous providence and manifest punishment, He has demonstrated not only that the day is essential to the Sabbath, but that "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." The law of the Sabbath says nothing about any day after six of labor. Everywhere the Lord makes emphatic the day. It is remember the Sabbath day; that is, the day of the rest; "the seventh day is the Sabbath;" "in it [the day] thou shalt not do any work;" the Lord "rested the seventh day," for which reason the Lord "blessed the Sabbath [rest] day, and hallowed it [the day]." "God blessed Abraham." But according to the logic of our first-day advocate, that did not mean any particular Abraham, but any one whom we may call Abraham! Or a father wills his seventh son a double portion; what kind of a legal argument would we call that which contended that this did not mean any particular son, but a seventh son after counting six others! We would say that it was the shallowest of sophistical quibbles. Once more: This editor starts out to prove that "the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week" and he does it by arguing that God did not set apart any particular day; and that because people live in different longitudes and latitudes they can not keep the same day. How then could the Sabbath be changed from a definite day of the week to another definite day? Then he spends columns to show that the Sabbath now is upon a definite day, namely the first day of the week. The definite seventh day he declares can not be kept, but there is no trouble with a definite first day! The world is round, and has latitude and longitude on the seventh day, but is flat and without all its longitudinal troubles on the first day. He then attempts to prove Sunday holiness by an utter perversion of the Greek [which is answered elsewhere] of Matt. 28 : 1; Mark 16 : 1, 2, 9; Luke 24 : 1; and the other usual scriptures which speak of the first day, to bolster up that which if true would make of none effect his splendid Biblical propositions by which he has established the Sabbath. He also falls back upon the early "fathers," by which every perversion of Christianity may be proved. O, why, why, will not men cleave to the plain Word of God and the example of Jesus Christ, even tho hoary and respected error must fall before it! The truth which God gives is infinitely better. All the perversions and institutions of men are temporal. God's Sabbath is eternal. Says Jesus, "Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up."