Sunday Not the True Seventh Day.
By John Nevins Andrews
THE testimony of the Bible, which we are about to present, directly and unequivocally establishes the fact that God did command the Hebrew people to observe his own hallowed rest-day. But with this plain testimony before them, these professed ministers of Christ deliberately affirm that God took from the Hebrews his own holy rest-day, and gave them, in its stead, the day next prceding it. The responsibility of such teaching is not to be estimated. It is time that such teachers should examine their right hands. See Isa. 44:20. To justify the severity of this language, which certainly proceeds from no ill will toward those who have done this great wrong, we adduce some of the plainest statements of the book of God. 1. Here are the words of the grand Sabbath law:— "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it." Ex. 20:8-11. And now to observe the following facts:— (1) We have here no occasion to argue that the law of God speaks to all mankind (Rom. 3:19), and that it does therefore speak to the Hebrews. We know that whether others are concerned or not, it was, when spoken, addressed personally to the Hebrews, and that it was committed to them in ten oracles. Rom. 3:1, 2; Acts 7:38; Ex. 20. (2) When the fourth commandment enjoins the remembering of the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, it is, as all Bible students know, the same as saying in plain English; "Remember the rest-day to keep it holy;" for Sabbath in Hebrew, and rest in English, are the same. (3) This precept plainly states whose rest-day it is that should be remembered; viz., the rest-day of the Lord of hosts, which is the seventh day. (4) It also states the reason for the existence of this rest-day, and for the obligation of its observance; viz., that God rested on this day from the work of creation, and that he did, for this cause, bless and hallow the day. It is therefore perfectly manifest, (a) That this precept does plainly and explicitly require the observance of the Creator's rest-day; (b) That it was spoken directly to the Hebrew people, and was certainly obligatory upon them, whether it was upon any other persons or not. How inexcusable, therefore, is the conduct of those theologians who assert that God commanded the Hebrew people to keep the sixth day of the week! and that in proof of this they should declare that, having counted the age of the world to the day, they have ascertained that the day which the Hebrews observed was one day too early in the week to be the Sabbath of the Lord! Would they ever thus charge God with folly, were it not that they hope to relieve themselves thereby from the absurdity of keeping as a Sabbath the day after the Sabbath of the Lord? If the responsibility of enjoining and of observing the day before the true Sabbath can be fastened upon the Lawgiver and upon the Hebrews, then the people of the present day can relieve themselves from the folly of keeping the day after the Lord's Sabbath, and can prove that they are actually observing his seventh day in their first day of the week! And so learned ministers dare to meet the express language of the fourth commandment, and claim to prove, by a count of the days from creation, that the seventh day, observed by the Hebrews, was not the Lord's seventh day, but his sixth! And, moreover, that "the first day" of the four evangelists is not the Lord's first day, but his seventh! 2. But let us compare the fourth commandment with the record in Genesis second. The one is the grand Sabbath law, the other is the record of the origin of the Sabbath. Gen. 2:2, 3: "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." Ex. 20:10, 11: "But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it." The words, "hallowed," Ex. 20:11, and "sanctified," in Gen. 2:3, are both translated from the same Hebrew word, and each signifies to set apart, or appoint, to a holy use. Now it is plain, (1) That Gen. 2:3 does set apart to a holy use the day of the Creator's rest. (2) It is also certain that the fourth commandment repeats the very words of the institution of the Sabbath, and that it enjoins the observance of the day thus instituted. So that in the fourth commandment, even though we except the rest of mankind, God did require the Hebrew people to keep the very day hallowed in Eden. Yet by immense labor expended in attempting the exact count of days from Christ back to Adam, and from Adam forward to Moses, Dr. Akers satisfies himself, and many others, that the Hebrews, in attempting to keep the seventh day, were obliged to take up with the sixth under a false name! and that those who are keeping the first day of the week are really keeping the true seventh day in disguise! So that the Hebrews failed to keep the seventh day though they used their best endeavors to keep it! And the professed people of God, in these days, keep it without even intending to do it! Surely it is easier to obey God now than it was then! 3. But it is time to nail the wicked falsehood that the Hebrews kept the sixth day instead of the seventh; for it furnishes a plausible excuse for breaking the fourth commandment under pretense of keeping it in the observance of the first day of the week. We state the fact, therefore, in plain terms, and will prove it by the express language of the Bible that the Hebrews did keep the seventh day, and did not keep the sixth! We have shown that the rest-day of the Lord, commanded in Ex. 20, is the very seventh day set apart to a holy use in Gen. 2, 3. Now we will prove, (1) That that people knew, beyond all dispute, what day this seventh day was; (2) That they kept the very day pointed out by Him who commanded that his rest-day be observed; (3) That the language explicitly states that they did not keep the sixth day. The reader is well aware that, some weeks before God spoke the ten commandments, he began to feed the Hebrews by bread from heaven. Ex. 16. This bread fell during six days, and did not fall on the seventh, and this course of continued for forty years. Now it is perfectly certain that, when God, in the fourth commandment, required men to keep the seventh day on which he had rested, and that when in his providence he showed, by the miracle of the manna, which day the seventh day was, the seventh day of the one was identical with the seventh day of the other, unless God can contradict himself. And we do read that the seventh day pointed out by the manna was "the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Verse 23. And Israel did rest on the seventh day, but did on the sixth day gather and cook their manna for the Sabbath. What then shall we say of those who undertake to prove that Israel kept the sixth day, and not the seventh, for the Sabbath? Which is more reliable, their counting of time, or God's designation of the numbers of the days? Is it not a dreadful crime to falsify God's word. 4. God gave his Sabbath, to be a sign between them and himself. Ex. 31; Eze. 20. All other nations had forgotten the true God, and were worshipers of false gods of every kind. That Israel might keep in their memory the Creator, who is the only true God, he gave them his Sabbath which he hallowed when he made the heaven and the earth. The observance of the Creator's rest-day designated the Hebrews as the worshipers of the only true God. Those who attempt to prove by counting, and from various inferences, that God gave Israel the sixth day, and not the seventh, assert that the Sabbath could not have been a sign to Israel unless God gave them a different day from that which he ordained in the beginning. And yet when God gave them this sign, he made its entire significance to consist in their keeping his rest-day; because that he had created the heaven and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh. Ex. 31:17. And this is therefore a decisive proof that the Hebrews did observe the day of the Creator's rest, and not one of the six days of his labor. 5. When God came down upon Mount Sinai, he is said (Neh. 9:14) to have made known his Sabbath, i. e., his rest-day. This cannot be spoken in an absolute sense, for they were already keeping it. It must imply that he made it known more perfectly, even as he made himself known in Egypt. Eze. 20:5. But how far from the truth is this language, if, instead of giving them his holy rest-day, he gave them the day before it, as proved by the count of Dr. Akers and Mr. F. To say, as does Dr. Akers, that he had just before given them another Sabbath, and authorized them to tread his own Sabbath under their feet, is a most inexcusable perversion of the truth! 6. What God requires of the Jews and Gentiles alike, is to keep his holy day. Isa. 58:13. Who shall have the presumption to say that he authorized the Jews to disregard it and to keep another day? 7. When the Saviour spoke of the design of the Sabbath, he said it was made for man. Mark 2:27, 28. God made it out of the seventh day. Gen. 2:2, 3. In the fourth commandment he bade Israel (and indeed all mankind) observe that very day. But though the Jews are men, and though they were amenable to the fourth commandment, yet Messrs. Akers, Fuller, and others, say that God gave Israel at the exodus a different Sabbath, and authorized them to violate his own rest-even from that time till the resurrection of Christ! And what is worthy of notice, our Lord had this second-rate Sabbath to keep, instead of the genuine! But this theory is proved to be false, even by the very fact that it was concerning this same so-called Jewish Sabbath, that our Lord was speaking when he said it was made for man. They had, beyond all dispute, therefore, the original Sabbath; for theirs was the one of which Christ spoke. 8. Finally, with one grand fact which cannot be counted down, nor counted out, we close this argument. The holy women who followed the Saviour to his burial, having made preparation to embalm his body, laid the spices aside at the approach of the Sabbath, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Luke 23:56. It is certain, (1) That they kept the very day observed by Christ and his apostles and by the Jewish people; (2) That they kept the very day ordained in the commandment; Ex. 20:8-11; (3) That that day was the rest-day of God set apart at creation; Gen. 2:2, 3; Mark 2:27, 28. And now mark the decisive fact: the next day after the rest-day of the Lord was the first day of the week! Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1, 2. No wisdom of man can make the day of the Creator's rest, which the fourth commandment enjoins, identical with the first day of the week, which comes the next day after that rest-day is past!237 How much wiser in God's sight the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord (for that is the institution enforced by the commandment of God), than the mighty effort to move heaven and earth to show that the first day of the week is, itself, the hallowed rest-day of the great Creator! The text at the head of this discourse may well be cited at its conclusion: Eze. 13:6: "They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith; and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word." Are not these words true of these teachers? Reader, are you one of those that have been made "to hope that they would confirm the word"? These men are not making up the breach in the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They are not anxious to restore that which has been broken down in God's law. They have a very different work to perform; for their business is to build up a wall of their own, and to daub it with untempered mortar. The day of God is coming; and when its great hail stones shall fall, this wall will be broken down, and every refuge of lies shall, with it, be swept away. Would you stand in the battle of the great day? Then you must make the truth of God your shelter, and this you can only do by obeying it. J. N. A.