Sunday Not the True Seventh Day.
By John Nevins Andrews
ONE thing which makes Dr. Akers very certain that he is right in this count of the days from creation, is the fact that reversing, as he terms it, the weeks for this whole period, he finds the first day of time to have been Monday, and, of course, the first seventh day would in that case be Sunday. But that all may place a proper estimate upon this reversing process, it is only necessary to remark that Dr. A. constructs a system of chronology which assumes that Monday was the first day of the week, and which is everywhere reckoned in accordance with that idea. Now a reversing of his weeks, i. e., a reckoning of them backward to the day from which he first started, will indeed show that starting point to have been Monday, but will not prove that that was the day on which God created the heavens and the earth. And it is remarkable that Dr. Akers not only claims to establish Sunday as the seventh day by his own peculiar system of chronology which makes the world to have been created Sept. 15, and to have been 3899 years old at the exodus, but he also takes the Rabbinical era of the world, which makes the age of the world 2114 at the exodus, instead of 3899, as represented by his chronology, and by this system he also shows that Sunday was the original seventh day. He holds, indeed, that the Rabbinical system of reckoning time by lunar months was wrong, but he says: "There is nothing more certain in chronology, than, according to the established number and measure of Rabbinical years, in common use, that the first day in the whole series began on Monday, the 7th of October, A. J. P. 953. Let the days, both of Julian and Rabbinical years, be counted from that beginning, till 771,945 are told; and the last one in the Julian line will be the said Saturday, the 27th of March, A. J. P. 3067; and in the Rabbinical line it will be the said 15th of Abib, Rab. A. M. 2114, making just 110,277 weeks and 6 days, thereby demonstrating, according to their own calendar, that Sunday, the 16th of said Abib, correspond to the original Sabbath."—Biblical Chronology, pp. 32, 33.189 But Dr. Akers gives us too much proof. It is certain that if Dr. A. is right in fixing the creation upon Sept. 15, then the Rabbins are wrong, who fix it upon Oct. 7. For though we leave out of the account the immense difference of the two chronologies from creation to the exodus, one making it 3899, and the other only 2114, and confine ourselves solely to the day on which each asserts the creation to have taken place, we shall have the most convincing proof that this system of counting days from the creation, which can show Sunday to be the seventh day of the week, is certainly unreliable and deceptive. Only look at the case. If creation was upon Sept. 15, then Oct. 7 was not the day of creation. Twenty-two days intervene between these two dates. But if the world was created B. C. 5545, on the fifteenth day of September, as exactly defined in Akers' book, or, if it was created Oct. 7, 1785 years later, as the Rabbinical era indicates, it is all alike to Dr. A. In either case he can prove positively that Sunday is the true seventh day. It is not at all likely that either of these years, or either of the precise points in the year, is the exact date of the creation. But if we grant one of them to be the true date, we must hold the other to be false. Yet Dr. Akers can prove that Sunday is the true seventh day, no matter which of these conflicting eras we adopt. One of them is certainly false. And neither can be proved to be right. But if we grant one of them to be right, and thereby declare the other to be false, which follows as a matter of necessity, then we have the singular spectacle of a venerable Doctor of Divinity counting the exact number of days from creation from a false starting point, and thereby proving Sunday the true seventh day! and at the same time counting the exact number of days from another starting point, which may also be a false date, and proving from this date also that the original seventh day was Sunday! What shall we say to these things? Is not every word established by the mouth of two or three witnesses? Has not Dr. A. produced two witnesses (as good at least as the two produced when Christ was upon trial) to prove that Sunday is the true seventh day? And how will the four evangelists be able to meet these witnesses of such undoubted veracity? But if Sunday can be shown to be the seventh day from a starting point which is false, what evidence have we that Dr. Akers' wonderful exactness in counting amounts to anything? He starts with Monday in each case as the first day of the week, and comes out at the close of his computation with Sunday as the seventh day, and indeed with Sunday as the Sabbath every week through the whole period. And when, to use his own expression, he reverses those weeks, i. e., reckons the time backward to his starting point, he finds Sunday to be the seventh day each time, and the first day of the entire series to be Monday. Is not this sufficient proof that he is right? Rather, what does it amount to, after all? He reverses a series which his own ingenuity has constructed. And unquestionably, in tracing back weeks of his own construction, he will come out just as he started. But he has this grand difficulty to overcome: that when he reaches the resurrection, which event stands at the very termination of his chain, he finds Sunday, as himself acknowledges, called by the four evangelists "first day of the week." At the commencement of his chain, Sunday was the "seventh day;" he keeps the reckoning exact to a day, and at the end of his chain, behold, the Scriptures mark the day as "first day of the week." And, instead of allowing their testimony to stand, and confessing that he must have started wrong when he fixed Monday as the day of creation, Dr. A. is sure that the day called "first day of the week" by the evangelists is the true "seventh day" after all; and he is nothing daunted by the fact that at the close of his long chain of reckoning, the day which he asserts was the veritable "seventh day" on which God rested, by inspiration called "first day of the week." And yet what a surprising spectacle this presents! Dr. Akers, having reckoned back to the beginning, and forward from the beginning, and the one reckoning happily agreeing exactly with the other, he is so convinced of its truthfulness that he confidently asserts that the "seventh day" mentioned at the beginning of his long reckoning is Sunday, notwithstanding four inspired men who write at the very close of the chain, do, as he confesses, call this very day the "first day of the week!" His confidence in his reckoning is greatly confirmed by the fact that he can take the Rabbinical computation of time, and show from that that the creation was upon Monday, and the first Sabbath upon Sunday; so that whether the creation of the world was Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it makes no difference, as an exact count of the days from either date makes Sunday to be the original Sabbath! This is worse than Mr. Fuller's act of proving that the original Sabbath was upon the first day of the week, by the use of Dr. Akers' figures which make Sunday to be the seventh day. For the two can be in a certain sense reconciled by the following statement:— Mr. Fuller's weeks begin one day earlier than those of Dr. Akers. But Dr. Akers has one more week than has Mr. F., who refuses to count the first six days of Gen. 1. But when Dr. A. proves Sunday to be the true seventh day with equal facility whether the creation occurred Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it is not very easy to set limits to his skill in this kind of computation. But it is proper that we should now consider that feature of Dr. Akers' theory by which he reconciles his computation of the weeks with the fact that the evangelists call Sunday the first day. As already stated, the doctor's theory is framed to meet this very difficulty. Indeed, that part of it which we are about to state is something absolutely indispensable to the vindication of that which we have been considering. His doctrine may be stated in two propositions: 1. That the sixteenth of Abib is the seventh day of the original week, as proved by the exact count of days which we have been examining. 2. God commanded the Hebrews at the exodus to hallow the fifteenth as their weekly Sabbath. And thus Dr. Akers reconciles the truthfulness of his theory and the veracity of the evangelists. Dr. Akers' attempt to count the exact number of days from creation from the sixteenth of Abib at the exodus, and his Biblical argument to show that God gave Israel a new Sabbath by ordaining the fifteenth day of the month, or sixth day of the previously-existing week, for that purpose, are two propositions neither of which amount to anything for his purpose unless he can prove the other. For if he cannot prove by his counting of days that the sixteenth of Abib was the original Sabbath from the creation of the world, then his subsequent argument to prove that the fifteenth of Abib was so regulated as to come each year upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even if it be sustained, does not prove that the seventh day of this Jewish week was not identical with the seventh day reckoned from creation. And again, if he fails to prove that the fifteenth day of Abib must necessarily come upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even though we could find conclusive evidence that he had reckoned time so exactly as to be certain that the sixteenth of Abib was the seventh day from creation, we should then have no evidence that the seventh day of the Jewish week was not the seventh day from creation. The establishment of one of the propositions amounts to nothing unless he can establish the other.