11 - LOSS OF TIME by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 18, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 32.

11 — LOSS OF TIME

By Editor

A friend who has read S. Gamble’s book on “The Sabbath” says that the true Sabbath was lost in the fall of Babylon, and that Jesus restored it to the first day of the week by His resurrection. Please explain. A. C.

Now that is not a difficult thing to say, is it? It would be just as easy to say that the Sabbath was lost at the time of the Exodus as at the time of the fall of Babylon, or that it was lost at the time of the crucifixion, or that it was lost in the Dark Ages. It is not hard to make any such statement as any of these, but the simple fact is that the Sabbath was not lost at any of these times. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man.” Is it possible that, when God made the Sabbath for man, He would suffer that a knowledge of that institution and that day should be withheld from man for hundreds of years? According to the above statement, the people of God had no Sabbath and no knowledge of any Sabbath from 538 B. C. to the time our Saviour came—for over five centuries. No one believes this. Jesus found the Jews keeping the true Sabbath. He does not condemn them for this. Paul tells us, in Rom. 2:20, that the Jews had “the form of knowledge and of the truth.” The only trouble was, they didn’t have the spirit of it, and so they loaded the Sabbath day with exacting traditions, burdens grievous to be borne, that God had not put upon it at all. Jesus simply restored the Sabbath to its true place in God’s plan by using it as a day of blessing and joy and helpfulness—in doing God’s work. See Matt. 12:1-12 and elsewhere. His disciples—those who had followed Him through His ministry—kept the Sabbath day “according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. The next day was the first day of the week. Luke 24:1.

According to this scripture, therefore, the Sabbath was the day before the first day of the week, and that Sabbath day was according to the commandment. That carries us back to Ex. 20:8-11. That declares that the Sabbath “according to the commandment” was the seventh day of the week, and that carries us back still farther to the time the Sabbath was instituted at creation, when God rested on the seventh day, and appointed it to be observed.

Consequently we have the divine stamp upon the identity of the Sabbath. We have it in Gen. 2:2, 3, we have it in the Decalogue, we have it in the life of our Lord. The first day of the week is not called the Sabbath. It was just a common, ordinary working-day. The weekly day called the Sabbath always pertains to the seventh day.

Furthermore, we have the Ptolemy canon, which reaches back to the Babylonian kings, and that canon is confirmed by twenty eclipses. There is no time lost since then. (See “The Lord’s Day the Test of the Ages,” Part 1, and especially chapter 3; “Questions and Answers,” pages 101 and 102.) The seventh-day Sabbath of that time is the seventh-day Sabbath now.