87-THE LORD'S DAY

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 23, 1915

87—THE LORD'S DAY

Is there a commandment in the Bible where it says to keep the Lord's day? Where do you get that name?

The only place that the term "Lord's day" is found in the Bible is Rev. 1:10: "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." This scripture does not tell us what day that was. It does not say anything about whether the day should be kept, or how it should be kept. It simply shows this fact,—that there was in John's time a day which He called the Lord's day. Now what is the Lord's day? Certainly we ought to learn what the Lord's day is from the Lord's own book. That is the only correct source of information. The Lord's own book will tell us what the Lord's own day was.

First, we turn to the words of our Saviour in Mark 2:28: "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Jesus honors the Sabbath by calling Himself Lord of the Sabbath. In Isa. 58:13, the Lord speaks in this way through Isaiah, a prophet who spoke by the Spirit of Christ: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable." We are again informed here that the Sabbath is the Lord's day. His holy day. We again refer to the fourth commandment, Ex. 20:10, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God."

These three witnesses thus testify that the seventh day is the Lord's day, and that the seventh day is the Sabbath. Therefore we do have a command for keeping the true Lord's day. That is the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, Ex. 20:8-11. Could we ask more than this?

We know that later in the Christian dispensation, what are called the "fathers" spoke of the first day as the Lord's day. Tertullian called it that two hundred years after Christ; but Tertullian also taught that we should make offerings for the dead, as birthday offerings, and a great many other superstitions for which he had no Scripture at all. Error began very early in the Christian church. Even the Galatian brethren had begun in Paul's day to observe days that God had not commanded—heathen days. Gal. 4:8-10.

Sunday is therefore an interloper. It has no sacredness in God's word, no command for its observance. It does not in any way memorialize the resurrection of Christ. It cannot take the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. It has neither command nor holy example for the Christian; while the Sabbath, the memorial of God's creative power, the sign of His redeeming and sanctifying power, brings with it all the grace and power of God to the child of faith—confirmed by the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.

88—ORIGIN OF AMALEKITES

What was the origin of the Amalekites? Did they spring from Esau?

Some have so thought because Esau had a grandson named Amalek. See Gen. 36:12. But a mere similarity of names is insufficient evidence, especially when there is evidence to the contrary. We learn by Gen. 14:7 that Chedorlaomer and his allies, a century and a quarter before, "smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar." A people existing in B. C. 1917 could not have sprung from a man who was born subsequently, about B. C. 1796. The children of Esau's grandson formed part of the kingdom of Edom, but the Amalekites were once "the first of the nations." In the Septuagint translation of Esther, Haman, a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), is called by the king a "Macedonian," "an alien from the blood of the Persians." It is clear that the origin of the Amalekites is unknown.

89—THE EVENING OF THE FIRST DAY

We read in John 20:19 of "the same day at evening." That day was the first day of the week. Was not that evening the first-day evening when the disciples met together? In Acts 20:7 we say that when the disciples met together to break bread on the first day of the week, it was the same as our Saturday night, and that seems to be very clear; but how can we harmonize the two expressions?

There is very little difficulty in this. The Bible rule for observing the Sabbath is from evening to evening, for the day began at evening and closed at evening. See the first chapter of Genesis. "The evening and the morning were the first day," and second day, and so on. Therefore the first day and each day of the week, began with the evening, or at sunset. Consequently the meeting that Paul held, as recorded in Acts 20—a meeting that lasted all night—began with Sunday evening, or what would be our Saturday night. And all the next day the apostle Paul spent in travel. Referring to the meeting of the disciples in John 20:19, they doubtless met together in the closing hour of the first day.

The Jews recognized two evenings. See Ex. 12:6, margin, "between the two evenings." When the day began to decline, it was called evening, the same as we call it at the present time. That same day, as the sun declined, the disciples met together; but when Jesus Himself met with them, the first day had passed, and the second day had begun. We read, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, that two disciples went down to Emmaus.

It was the afternoon of that day when they started. They walked the seven and one half miles to Emmaus. Jesus walked with them. They sat down to the table and ate; and while they were eating their meal, He was revealed to them. Immediately He vanished from them. "They rose up the same hour" and went back to Jerusalem. And it must have been long after sunset when they reached there. They told the disciples they had seen Jesus; and the disciples themselves did not believe it, for they did not then believe that He was risen from the dead. But while they were talking about it, Jesus stood in their midst. Luke 24:36-42; Mark 16:12-14. That was the time recorded in John 20. The disciples had gathered together before the second day began, while the first day was still with them; but Jesus did not meet with them until some time after that, so that His first meeting with His disciples was really on the second day of the week.

90—THE NEW COMMANDMENT

If Jesus gave us a new commandment, what was it? Was it the doing away with the old law and commandment?

In the "new commandment" that our Lord gave us, no single new principle was enunciated. It was simply the application of a principle as old as eternity. We have that new commandment recorded in John 13:34: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

Nay, it was always duty for men to love one another, and for brethren to love one another; but the world had never had an example of what that love meant until Jesus came, until He Himself had demonstrated what love meant. Jesus showed love that would lead a man not only to die for his friends, but for his enemies. See Rom. 5:6-8.

In this new commandment, we have an explanation of 1 John 2:7, 8: "Beloved, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the Word which ye heard. Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth." In the tenth verse we read, "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light." The commandment became new when it came to them in the new light of the life and love of Christ and His power to make it effective. It had absolutely nothing to do with the abolition of any law or any commandment whatsoever; for as our correspondent says, Jesus came not "to destroy the law or the prophets, . . . but to fulfill." Matt. 5:17.