[All questions to this department will be answered which to the editors will seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. The same question can not be answered repeatedly in the same volume. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. It is well always to enclose a stamp for reply.]
2284.—Beginning of Months.
I met a minister recently who tried to show me a change in the Sabbath in the book of Exodus where it speaks of the beginning of months. Ex. 12:1-3. The heading of this chapter is that the beginning of the year is changed.
The heading, which is of course by man, is all right. We have no objection to that, but the beginning of the year and the beginning of months does not necessarily mean the beginning of a week. In fact, if the Lord wanted to point that out, why did He not say, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year; and this shall be the beginning of weeks, it shall be the first of weeks to you? The very fact that the Lord does not mention that is certainly evident proof that there was nothing of the kind in it, and that is solid fact. The Lord was simply marking the beginning of Israel's years, and the beginning of years, as we know, has absolutely nothing to do with the beginning of weeks. Sometimes the week might begin with the year, sometimes it would not begin that way, even as with our own year at the present time. The use of such scriptures as that shows how tremendously hard pressed the Sunday cause is. If those who keep the Sabbath of the Lord were forced to use scriptures from which no honest inference could be drawn for the observance of the seventh day, they would be ridiculed out of existence, and ought to be.
The scripture is a part of a vision which the Lord showed to Ezekiel of the corruption that existed among God's children. First He showed him the abominations of the children of Israel worshiping the image of jealousy. Verse 3. Next where they were worshiping every form of creeping thing and abominable beast and various idols portrayed upon the walls. Verses 9-12. Then still greater abominations where the women were weeping for Tammuz, the Sidonian Venus, or goddess of love, the one representing female lewdness. And yet greater than that abomination even was where he found the very elders of the church worshiping the sun. The tabernacle opened toward the east, the altar and center of God's worship was toward the west. To worship the sun toward the east was to turn their backs upon the worship of God, and sun-worship in all ages has stood for the most abominable of all kinds of nature-worship. For that the judgments of God were visited upon them, and it is set forth in the 9th chapter what the judgment would be. The second verse represents the means that the Lord would use, the six men with slaughter-weapons in their hands; but before that work should begin, God sends another messenger who sets a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations. In other words, he seals them as His. They are stamped with the stamp of His own character so that the destroying angel shall not touch them. This chapter is also typical of the sealing work of God, mentioned in Revelation 7, and the destruction upon all those who are not sealed in the seven last plagues, set forth in Revelation 16.
2286.—Wearing Long Hair.
Did the Saviour wear long hair while on earth? 1 Cor. 11:14, 15.
1 Cor. 11:14, 15 has nothing to do with the question. We have no such expression of long hair elsewhere as is there recorded. It means hair dressed in a way that women do, in which great pains is taken so as to adorn themselves. The apostle does not refer to the instruction which the Lord gave to the Nazarites, that long hair should be worn. Absalom wore long hair (2 Sam. 14:26) and there is no reproof against his wearing it. God's instruction to the parents of Samson was that "no razor shall come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb." Judges 13:5. The instruction concerning the Nazarites is that "all the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow." See Num. 6:1-5. In the pictures representing Jesus, He is represented as a Nazarite, one separated unto the Lord. For that reason we suppose the artists represent Him as having long hair; and such may have been the case.
2287.—The True Seventh Day.
(1) Where is your proof that Saturday is the actual seventh day of creation? (2) At what point or meridian on earth did this day commence and end? (3) If at the Garden of Eden, where on earth was this located? (4) Do Seventh-day Adventist people recognize the international date line or Greenwich time in dividing the day? If so, was this instituted by God or man? (5) If we are governed by the rising and setting of the sun, what about the poor Eskimos, who have souls the same as we? What are they going to do when they do not see the sun from November to February? (6) If you travel westward around the earth, observing strictly the seventh day, when you get around you find you are one day behind those who stayed at home. Are you justified in dropping a day so as to make it coincide with the seventh day of your friends, when Moses received the commandment that we must observe every seventh day, governing ourselves by the rising and setting of the sun?
1. Let us first say that Saturday does not coincide with the Bible day. The Bible day begins at sunset and ends at sunset. Saturday begins at midnight and ends at midnight. Let this always be understood in such connections, so when Saturday is spoken of as the seventh day, the day will be considered as beginning at sunset Friday and ending at sunset Saturday. There are a few simple events which clearly fix the identity of the seventh day. First, it matters not if the race had lost the reckoning of the days of the week—a preposterous thing—for the first twenty-five hundred years of Bible history, the Lord fixed it by the falling of the manna for forty years. See Exodus 16. There was no difficulty whatever for them to know the Sabbath of the Lord. That Sabbath which originated at creation was confirmed by the commandment from Sinai, not to remember a seventh day, or every seventh day, but the seventh day, on which God rested. If Israel had become so blinded to the simple truth as to forget the day of the Sabbath during the next fifteen hundred years of their history, they were set right by the life and teaching of Christ, who Himself observed the Sabbath, and of which Inspiration declares that the holy women who were with Him kept the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Since that time the whole world has been at one in regard to the day of the week. A noted antiquarian of London, William Jones, D.D., published not many years ago a chart of the week in which 160 languages and dialects were presented, with the names of the weeks, the number of days of the week, and the names of the days. These were languages from lands entirely separate, but the week is identical in all. 108 of the 160 languages call the seventh day by a term which indicates its holiness, the Sabbath day, "the day of rest to the heart," showing conclusively that the original day known in Noah's time has come down thru various languages of earth to the present time. Of this there can be no question.
2-4. As to just what point on the earth's surface the day began matters nothing. In all probability the face of the earth was altogether different before the Deluge than since. Peter tells us that the world, or cosmos, that then was perished. Out of the Deluge came the broken condition of the earth as we see it at the present time. Those that survived the Deluge kept the Sabbath still as it came to them in Asia. In God's providence some of them drifted eastward to the eastern shores of Asia, keeping the same day, and from time immemorial the day has been identical; one could travel westward from the eastern shores of the Eastern Continent to the western shores of the Western Continent and find himself in perfect harmony with all the countries thru which he passed in the numbering of the days. Crossing the narrow ocean, in God's providence the week was carried with the migrators to America, so that from the western shore of America to the eastern shores of Asia eastward there is perfect harmony. In God's providence when the Pacific Ocean was crossed, men saw that a day must be dropped or added, according to the direction in which the ocean was crossed, and this, not fixed by astronomical date-line, but in God's providence. Sunday-keepers have no trouble whatever in adjusting themselves to this. No one raised any objection to it. Never until the Sabbath question was agitated, and men have desired to evade—to them a cross, but really a blessing—the keeping of God's Sabbath, has the objection been raised that the Sabbath can not be kept on a round world. God in His providence selected the Pacific Ocean and settled the change of time in connection with it.
5. So far as the Eskimos are concerned, they have no trouble in keeping the day as far north as any one lives. Such objections as this and the one that follows are not against men who may observe the Sabbath, but against the God who gave the Sabbath. Here are two scriptures: "The Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. "God that made the world . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." Acts 17:24-26. He that made the world knew that it was round, and placed man upon it; He has overruled thru all the ages of the past so that every soul that desired has had no trouble whatever in keeping God's times before appointed; and every objection that is brought against it is not against man, but is against the wisdom of God as expressed in His word, and demonstrated by the conduct of His faithful children.
The other questions in this connection have been clearly answered, it seems to us, in what has already been said. We wish only to remark again that it is not every seventh day which the Lord has told us to keep, but the seventh day on which He rested and which He has blessed.
2288.—The Wise Men.
Why were the wise men of the East called wise men?
The more correct term for wise men is Magi, as given in the American Revised Version. The Hebrew word is chartumim, meaning sacred scribe, from two roots, sacred and style or pen; priests who were skilled in sacred writings and in divining thru signs the will of heaven. They were a regular order among the Eastern nations. The word magi comes from the Persian. Take, for instance, in Jer. 39:3 the term, Rabmag, meaning chief of the magicians. The Magi were a priestly caste among the Medes in connection with the Zoroastrian religion. "They waited upon the sacred fire, and performed ablutions, and practised observation of stars." One writer tells us that the Chaldeans first gave them the name of Magi. Some of these men seem to have been devoted men and worshipers of one God. They seem to have been enlightened by Balaam's prophecies in Numbers, and doubtless also by Daniel's prophecies; inasmuch as so many of them came in contact with Daniel, they doubtless were brought to a knowledge of the Scriptures in that way; and it was these Magi who came from the East to find Jesus.