Observing Days | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 4, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 14.

Observing Days.

Paul told the Galatians: “Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed labor upon you in vain.” Gal. 4:10, 11. It is assumed that these were days observed by the Jews; but it is pure assumption, the context does not warrant it. Admitted that certain Judaizing teachers had gone down to Galatia, and taught the new converts that they were saved by their works. These Galatian Christians would naturally endeavor to do works of supererogation, and think that God would be glorified, and they saved more abundantly if they took their own ancient heathen customs and brought them over into Christian practise. And so the teaching, instead of making them Jews, would drive them back to heathenism. And this is just what it did. Listen to the two verses preceding the one quoted above: “Howbeit at that time [when unconverted], ye were in bondage to them that by nature are no gods; but now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again.” Now, one can be in bondage in striving to keep the Decalogue, but that was not what these Galatians did. They went back again to the service of the gods which were no gods; and the evidence of this is, that they began to observe the days and months and seasons of years of Paganism, or heathen worship. Even as early as this the pagan customs, chief among which is “the wild solar holiday” of all pagan times, began to come into the Christian church.