No Change of the Sabbath Possible by Adolphus Smith

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 13, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 27.

No Change of the Sabbath Possible

By Adolphus Smith

By ADOLPHUS SMITH

THE seventh-day Sabbath was given to man before sin entered our world. See Gen. 2: 1-3.

The Sabbath, therefore, could not be Jewish, Christian, nor gentile; but God calls it His, and it is universally binding. If the Sabbath had not existed in the law from eternity, it could not have been drawn out of it into the fourth precept of the Decalogue. See Matt. 22: 36-40.

The Ten Commandments were not a new law given at Sinai, but were a drawing out or ultimate application of the basic law of God. Of what God has once spoken He says, "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips." Ps. 89: 34. See James 1: 17.

God declares His law, of which the fourth commandment is an integral part, to be perfect, and ever enduring. See Ps. 19: 7-11. But man has thought to change the law of God, thereby undertaking to stultify the act of its Author in its enunciation, and to exalt human judgment above that of Jehovah. See Dan. 7: 25.

No man or church is competent or has authority to read into any precept of the Decalogue any wording or meaning not embodied therein by the Author of the law.

God Himself will not nor can He change the Sabbath, without confessing His original law to be imperfect. What folly, then, for man, like Lucifer, to exalt himself above the wisdom of God!