The Seventh or One Seventh
By Abdiel
A Review of the "Christian Statesman"
THE Pacific Press Publishing Company publishes a little tract entitled "The Seventh, or One Seventh; a Sabbath Query." By illustration and scripture it clearly shows that the seventh day is the Sabbath, the day commonly called Saturday, from sunset Friday night, of course, till sunset Saturday night. The little tract also shows that the seventh-day Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Utterly ignoring this, however, The Christian Statesman for May makes a long and labored argument of eight columns, nearly, to endeavor to prove that the seventh day of the commandment means the seventh after six days of labor, or the seventh day in any series of seven. The core of its argument is found in the following expressions which we number (italics are ours): From the "Christian Statesman."
1. "It is not true that God has given specific command in the Fourth Commandment to keep the seventh day of the week." 2. "The expression 'the seventh day' occurs about fifty times in the Old Testament. In fifteen of these Scripture passages the undoubted reference is to the day of rest. The thirty-five other texts in which the day of rest is not named should be first examined so as to determine the significance of the term from its use. If the argument of the observers of the seventh day is of any value, they must show that the expression 'the seventh day' is a specific name for the Sabbath and that it invariably means the seventh day of the week. If there is failure in a single instance to show this, it becomes possible that such is not its meaning in the Fourth Commandment." The Statesman then refers to the days of the Passover, of the glory of the Lord abiding upon Mount Sinai, of the days of the shutting up of the leper, of the days concerning the Nazarite, of the days of purification from touching a dead body, where the term "the seventh day" is used, in which it says: 3. "In all cases it denotes, not the seventh day of the week, but the seventh of a series which might begin on any day. It is highly probable, therefore, that in the Fourth Commandment and elsewhere when the Sabbath is designated as the seventh day the meaning is the seventh of a series which might or might not begin on the first day of the week. The fact that the Sabbath of the Hebrews was observed on the seventh day of the week is no doubt the cause of confusion in many minds." The fifteen references to the seventh-day Sabbath are given by The Statesman, and Gen. 2:2, 3; Acts 16:26, 27, 29; Acts 20:10, 11 are referred to as examples of the use of the term "seventh day," and again it is declared: 4. "In all the places where the language 'the seventh day' is found without a specific reference to the Sabbath it means simply the seventh after a series of six which might begin anywhere in the week. . . . The only logical inference is that the inspired writers did not use it as a distinctive name for the Sabbath, but only to denote the seventh after six other days previously described." 5. "The Fourth Commandment needs no amendment to continue its authority when the rest day is changed, no matter on what day of the week it may be fixed. There is need, however, for divine authority for any change that may be made. One chief difficulty with seventh-day observers is that they consider the Fourth Commandment and similar scriptures as fixing the day of rest irrevocably and are not able to feel the force of the argument for the change. God has His own way of appointing religious institutions and of making changes in the same. The Sabbath was set apart at the first not by command, but by example. God rested after finishing the work of Creation. Similarly by example the day of rest was changed from the seventh to the first. This example was given by Jesus Christ, who claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath. This example is repeated in His frequent meetings with His disciples on the first day of the week. (Matt. 28:1-10; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1, 13, 36; John 20:14, 19, 26.) The apostles so understood it and acted accordingly. (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10.)" 6. "But some people are not satisfied with this proof and demand more specific evidence that the day was changed. They ask for a command declaring that the first day is the Sabbath just as they claim that there is a command stating that the seventh day is the Sabbath. When people presume to dictate to the Lord the manner in which He shall appoint and change His institutions, they take a position which prevents their understanding His word. The proof that God Himself changed the day of rest is as clear as the proof that He ever appointed such a day." Here are six reasons which The Statesman has advanced. It gives another, but it is extra-Biblical. We may refer to it later on. We reply to the above statements categorically. 1. Is it or is it not true that God has commanded the seventh day of the week? In the first place the Sabbath makes the week. We would have had no week at all were it not for the Sabbath. After six days of labor, God made the Sabbath. Gen. 2:2, 3. The septenary cycle has without any break whatsoever come down from Creation to the present time. There may be a thousand other periods of seven days; that has nothing to do with this particular seven days, the last of which is the Sabbath. To use an illustration of our own time: Men do not become confused when we speak of the seventh-day Sabbath, or the first-day sabbath. We never need to say, the first-day-of-the-week sabbath, or the seventh-day-of-the-week Sabbath; the seventh-day Sabbath is perfectly understood. No one declares for a moment that that may mean any seventh day—the seventh day of a law-suit, or the seventh day of a case of sickness. It is understood by every soul that it has reference to the seventh day of the week. 2. Seventh-day Adventists never contend, nor so far as we know, seventh-day observers of any class, that the expression "the seventh day" always means the Sabbath. That were folly. Nor can The Statesman point to one single instance where such contention is raised. That journal has had no trouble at all, at least in its own mind, in segregating the texts which refer to the Sabbath, and the thirty-five instances which do not. 3. The Statesman admits as a "fact" that "the Sabbath of the Hebrews was observed on the seventh day of the week." It was; for the language can only mean the seventh day of the week, because the week was made with especial reference to that day. In the monumental chart prepared by the noted antiquarian, Rev. Wm. Jones, of London, it is shown that the seventh day of the week has been regarded by nearly all Oriental nations as the Sabbath, and the days of the week are numbered with reference to that: "the first toward the Sabbath," "the second toward the Sabbath," "the fifth toward the Sabbath," "the sixth toward the Sabbath," "Sabbath eve," and "the Sabbath,"—the crowning day of that septenary cycle, which we call the week. The Origin of the Sabbath.
4. The origin of the Sabbath is more than the designations of a mere day. It does not rest on a mere arbitrary command: (1) God labored for six days; on the seventh day He rested; not on no particular day, but on some particular day, because it is impossible to rest on a day without resting on a particular day. (2) That day He sanctified, or set apart, from the other days, holy unto Himself; for this is the meaning of the word sanctify. (3) He blessed that day as the day upon which He rested, the day which He had set apart, placing His blessing upon it for His people for all time to come. It was that which made the seventh day of that cycle a holy day. Not any seventh day, after six of labor, but the seventh day which God had invested with His own example, sanctification, and blessing. That the seventh day is not the seventh after six other days previously described, that is, some indefinite seven, is clearly shown by Inspiration in Matt. 28:1, Mark 16:1, 2, and other scriptures. Note there, that the first day mentioned is "the first day of the week," and that the Sabbath comes the day just previous to the first day of the week. Therefore we are not stating an un-Biblical truth or one which can not be clearly proved by the Scriptures, when it is said that the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. 5. God has His own way of appointing institutions, as shown in our previous statements, and that way He has condescended to reveal to His children. Not only has He condescended to reveal it to them, but He has taken express pains to reveal it to them in order that they might see and know the nature of the institution itself.
He has revealed that the Sabbath rest is not mere cessation from work. "The Most High fainteth not, neither is weary." "On the seventh day He rested and was refreshed," we are told elsewhere. He received satisfaction, delight, in contemplating His own work, and so He has asked His people to make the Sabbath day just what it was to Him, a delight in contemplation of the works of the Lord. He has made "His wonderful works to be remembered," we read in the 111th psalm, and that memorial of His works is the seventh-day Sabbath as given in the Fourth Commandment, to be kept holy to the Lord, honorable, as interpreted by Inspiration in Isa. 58:13.
Nor did He give us simply His example. To "sanctify" is to set apart, or separate, as before remarked, but it would be manifestly impossible for God to set apart or separate a day for an institution made for man (Mark 2:27) and not give instruction concerning it. This is very clearly evident5from Exodus 19, when God sanctified Mount Sinai. He did that by setting bounds about it, separating it from the adjacent country; and gave command to the children of Israel that they were not to pass those bounds; and so Lange's Commentary on Gen. 2:2 declares that the very record there must imply a command. It could not be understood otherwise. Such a command we have not concerning the first day of the week, neither have we any example for the first day of the week such as we have for the seventh. It is expressly stated that God rested upon the seventh day. It is never stated anywhere that Christ rested upon the first day of the week. It is not stated anywhere that He honored the first day of the week in any other way than He did the other days of the week. He merely appeared to some of His disciples in the early morning of that day, and then He leaves them alone in doubt and perplexity until the very close of that day before He manifests Himself to them. With brooding, sad hearts some of them remarked toward the close of that day, "We thought that it had been He that should have redeemed Israel, but now this is the third day since these things were done," bringing from the Master's lips Himself: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe." We ask the reader to faithfully, slowly, and carefully read all the New Testament references given in the quotation from The Statesman above, and find, if he can, one utterance in any one of them which would indicate that the first day was to be regarded as a holy day. 6. There are some people who are not satisfied with such proof as The Christian Statesman offers, and, believing the Bible, one does not wonder that they are not satisfied. They do ask for a command; God has taught them that they should do this. The Statesman says, "When people presume to dictate to the Lord the manner in which He shall appoint and change His institutions, they take a position which prevents their understanding His word." But we would ask in this case, Who is presuming to "dictate to the Lord the manner in which He shall appoint and change His institutions"? Those who hold to the seventh-day Sabbath are simply taking God's word for it. They are neither presuming nor dictating as to how He should set apart the Sabbath for man, they are simply taking it just as He has given it in His word. They have no ifs nor ands nor presumptions, nor assumptions connected with it. It is simply the straightforward word spoken from heaven by the voice of God and lived out in patriarch and prophet, and above all else, in our Lord Jesus Christ. Then to say that if we do not accept of a rival institution which has neither command nor example to sustain it we are presuming "to dictate to the Lord the manner in which He shall appoint or change" it, is worse than begging the question. It is God Himself who has declared that His law is unchangeable. He has said that it can not be changed in one jot or tittle, the smallest letter or smallest point of a letter, which would affect the precept, the obligation. He has enjoined upon us that we should not add to or take from that which He has spoken in order that we may keep His commandments. Deut. 4:2. And the necessary inference is that to add to or take from is to place ourselves in that position where we can not observe His law. To demand acceptance and observance of an ancient institution because kept by good men, would be to demand that the government use and accept as genuine a counterfeit note because good men passed it as genuine. On the same supposition the children of Israel could have demanded the worship of the serpent of brass which Hezekiah ruthlessly and justly destroyed, calling it Nehushtan, "a piece of brass." "Why," the idolaters could have said, "that was made originally according to God's command,"—something which by the way could not be claimed of the Sunday Sabbath,—"and we have paid adoration to that ever since the days of Moses. Who are you that should 'presume to dictate to the Lord the manner in which He shall appoint and change His institutions'?" Presumably there were those who offered just such arguments in the days of Hezekiah, but they did not change the course of the true-hearted king. It is Jesus our Lord who says, "Ye are My disciples if ye do whatsoever I command you." And again, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments," and again, "Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" And He justly rebukes His ancient people who had multiplied fasts and feasts, and thought that by so doing they were honoring God, with the words, "Who hath required this at your hands?" The Statesman remarks that "the proof that God Himself changed the day of rest is as clear as the proof that He ever appointed such a day." But all that it condescends to give us is its own statement. The proof they present is just as clear as the rest of their argument. 7. The reference to Colossians bears just as strongly against The Statesman's position as it does that of seventh-day observers; for if the expression, "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon, or a sabbath day," applies to the weekly Sabbath, and, if it is true, as The Statesman declares, that "it is sufficient to say that the Fourth Commandment is as binding now as any other precept of the Decalogue," and that the first day of the week is now the Sabbath, then Paul's letter to the brethren in Colosse applies with equal force to the first day as to the seventh. But those who are familiar with God's word know that there were certain annual sabbaths, all typical in their nature, pointing forward to Christ Jesus, the body and the substance. When the substance was reached, the shadow ended, in the very nature of the case, expired. Some of the Jewish Christians observed those annual feast days and sabbath days, others did not. They concluded every day was alike outside of the Sabbath of the Lord. The injunction of the apostle is not as to whether one ought to keep them or ought not to keep them, but let no man judge you or condemn you in the doing of those things. Neither did some of the Jewish Christians keep both days, as The Statesman declares. Church historians tell us that the first day of the week was never observed as the Sabbath, nor was it called the Sabbath until we come down hundreds of years this side of Christ. Tertullian tells us that they had no command whatsoever, only custom, for the early morning services which were held in his day, two hundred years after Christ. Early Christian Churches.
It is generally conceded by all candid church historians that all of the early Christian Jewish churches kept the seventh-day Sabbath. Paul, in the 28th chapter of Acts, challenges his Jewish brethren to bring anything against his own example concerning the law of God; and he commends the Christian church in Thessalonica for becoming "followers of us and of the Lord" (1 Thess. 1:6) and for becoming "followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus" (1 Thess. 2:14). This certainly shows that the customs among the Thessalonian brethren, converted from the Gentiles, were similar to those of the Judean Christians. The passage in 1 Cor. 16:2, as every one knows, refers to the reckoning up of accounts and the laying aside at home whatever each was able to do, as the week went by; and this was done as a purely business matter on the first day of the week. Acts 20:7, if the context is studied, clearly shows that Sunday was used as a regular working and traveling day by the apostle. And Rev. 1:10, if interpreted by the Scriptures, refers not to Sunday, but to the Sabbath of the Lord; for the Lord's day, interpreted by the Lord's word, is demonstrated to be the Lord's Sabbath, or the seventh day of the week. This much for "The Seventh, or One Seventh." He who gave the day also designated the time where the day should fall. To say that it is indefinite, is to charge God with the confusion which human beings, wise above what is written, have brought upon themselves. We plead with our readers to be loyal to that law, before which they must stand in the last great day. For our judgment will not be as to what human custom was, but as to what the Lord Himself taught. "So speak ye, and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty."
ABDIEL.