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My Holy Day

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 20, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 25.

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My Holy Day

By Carlyle B. Haynes

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"My Holy Day"

Which Is It, the First or the Last Day of the Week? — Four Steps in the Making of the Sabbath
By CARLYLE B. HAYNES
IN considering the origin of the Sabbath, it is important for us to understand the manner in which the Sabbath was made. The steps taken in the creation of the Sabbath are of the greatest interest. What those steps were, the Scriptures clearly inform us.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." Gen. 2: 1-3.

Four Steps in Making the Sabbath

FROM these verses, it will be seen that there are four steps in the making of the Sabbath; namely, labor, rest, blessing, and sanctification. The labor was not common labor. It was not of an ordinary character. It was creative labor. It was labor of a kind that no being but God could perform. In this case, it consisted of bringing a world into existence in six days. To make a Sabbath, then, creative labor is necessary.
From the labor of creation on the six days, the Creator rested on the seventh day, thus finishing His work. It must not be supposed that the Creator rested because of weariness; for "the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary." Isa. 40: 28.
Christ needed no rest; yet the record is that "on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed." Ex. 31: 17.
Christ rested because He was laying the foundation of a divine institution, and He was refreshed because He took profound pleasure in conferring upon men such a beneficial institution as the Sabbath proves to be to all who observe it. He took delight in bringing into existence an institution which He designed should ever be a memorial of His great work of creation, and ever serve to remind His creatures of the true God.
Then, too, He rested as an example of the manner in which He designed that His creatures should observe the Sabbath. The purpose of the rest was not to regain lost strength and vigor, but to lay the foundation of a perpetual institution. Thus we are told that "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested"; and that He "rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Gen. 2: 3; Ex. 20: 11.

Sabbath the Last Day

IT is worthy of special notice, in this connection, that rest must come after labor, and therefore that the Sabbath, to be a rest day, must, in the very nature of things, fall on the last day of the week. Rest presupposes labor. Sabbath means rest. The labor must take place before the rest. Therefore no matter how many days there may be in a week, two, three, five, seven, or ten, the Sabbath, being a day of rest from preceding labor, cannot be any day but the last day of the week. If the week had ten days in it, and one was a rest day, or Sabbath, then the tenth day would be the Sabbath. If the week had but six days in it, the sixth day would be the Sabbath; if five days, the fifth; if four, the fourth; if three, the third; if two, the second. There being seven days in the week, the Sabbath must be the last day, the seventh, as rest must come after labor.
Having made the world in six days, and rested from that work on the seventh day, the Creator then put His blessing on the day upon which He had rested. It thus became His blessed rest day. And obviously if, in the future, another day was to become the Sabbath, the blessing which was placed on the seventh day must be removed from it, and placed on the day which was to take its place. But can this be done? When God's blessing is bestowed, can it then be removed? How long does God's blessing remain on that upon which He places it? Let the Bible answer: "Now therefore let it please Thee to bless the house of Thy servant, that it may be before Thee forever: for Thou blessest, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever." 1 Chron. 17: 27.
Therefore the blessing which God in the beginning placed on the seventh day will remain on that day forever. The seventh day was blessed in the beginning, has been blessed ever since, is blessed now, and will remain forever blessed. The blessing was not a temporary but an eternal thing.

The Blessing Cannot Be Removed

NOR can the blessing which was placed on the seventh day ever be reversed, or transferred to another day; for "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it." Num. 23: 19, 20.
Therefore it is plain that if another than the seventh day is ever made a Sabbath, this will in no way detract from the sacredness of the seventh day. Another day might be blessed and made holy by the Lord, but that day would not take the place of the seventh day. Rather would there be two blessed, holy days; for the blessing on the seventh day can never be removed or reversed. It will remain a blessed and holy day as long as time lasts, and throughout eternity.
The fourth step in the making of the Sabbath was to sanctify it, or make it holy. To sanctify anything is, according to the "Standard Dictionary," "to set apart as holy or for holy purposes; consecrate; hallow; as, the Sabbath was sanctified by God."

God's Presence Makes Holy

WHAT it means to make holy may be seen by reading Ex. 3: 2-5: "And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And He said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
It is plain that the ground where Moses stood was holy because God's presence was there. God's presence is what makes anything holy. It is what makes a place holy,—the temple, the sanctuary, Mount Sinai. It is what makes a person holy — God's presence in the heart. God's presence is in the seventh day. Therefore the seventh day is holy. God is in that day as He is in no other day. Therefore in a peculiar sense it is His day, "My holy day," "the Lord's day," "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God."