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REPORT OF MEETINGS

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Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1859

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 15, No. 5.

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REPORT OF MEETINGS.

By John Norton Loughborough

Bro. Smith: Since I left home I have held meetings at Parkville and White Pigeon, Mich., and in North Liberty, Ind. At Parkville I found there were about twenty-five keeping the Sabbath, who are growing stronger in the good way. They have two prayer-meetings a week. I spoke four times in Parkville and vicinity. Considerable interest was manifest in the word spoken, and others, I trust, who are half persuaded to obey the truth, will yet come out, and join the commandment-keepers. I have already given some notes of the opposition sermons in Parkville. Since giving these notes, another discourse has been preached on the coming of Christ and the judgment, in which the elder claimed that the judgment of the great day meant the judgment at death. All days, he said, were alike to the Lord. So its being the judgment of the great day could only mean that it was a great day to us, and, said he, the greatest day to us is the day of our death. So the great day must be the day of our death. Christ's coming, he said, was at conversion.
I preached a discourse at the same school-house, in which I endeavored to set forth the Bible doctrine of the judgment and coming of Christ in opposition to Eld. Duncan's mystical coming and judgment.
On Tuesday evening, Dec. 6th, by request I gave a discourse near White Pigeon to an attentive congregation, on the subject of the Christian's hope. Last Sabbath I met with the church in this vicinity. The Lord met with us, and although our numbers were few we felt that it was good that we had met together.
On first-day I listened to a discourse from one Eld. Brown, a Methodist minister, who gave out that he should prove in his discourse that our Sunday was the seventh day from creation. I had often heard it stated by Methodist ministers that time had been lost so that we could not tell when the seventh day was. You may imagine, then, that some curiosity was awakened in me to see the process by which the said elder would prove to a demonstration that our Sunday was actually the seventh day of the week from creation. I found the principal authority produced was the celebrated Dr. Akers' chronology, and that the common plea, that time had been lost, was now to be set aside. The Eld. proceeded to tell us just where the sun was at its creation, and just exactly how many days, hours and minutes it was from the creation of the world to the year 1900. And then dividing his number thus obtained by seven he found that the fraction over the weeks would make our Sunday the seventh day from creation.
This man said that the idea of keeping Saturday as the seventh day, grew out of following the Roman calendar, which was gotten up b. c. 45, by which calendar the day of the sun was called the first day of the week, and from that on the numerals were applied to the seven days of the week which were then only known by their heathen names. The Jews, he said, fell in with this, and that was why they celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday. He told us that before the time of this calendar, the Jews reckoned their Sabbath from the commencement of the year, the beginning of the month Abib. And that every year the correct reckoning for their Sabbath was pinned down by the feast of passover, which occurred on the fifteenth day of the month Abib.
To still further show that his position was right he told us that the Jews had not been able to keep their Sabbath right, or in the right time since they ceased to observe the passover, and if anybody wanted to keep the Jewish Sabbath they would have to get a Jewish Rabbi to tell them when it was the fifteenth day of the month Abib. He told us that the Jewish Rabbis had lately found out that they had all along been keeping the wrong day, and in Cincinnati they had concluded to change, and keep the right day, and would not keep Sunday.
As he requested those who differed with him to speak, I arose after he got through and read three questions which I had penned down while he was proceeding in his discourse.
1. If God meant to have the Jews keep the sixth day from creation, why did he tell them in the fourth commandment, (which you admit as the great Sabbath law,) that they should keep the day on which he rested at the close of creation week? Can it be that the day he pointed out by miracles for forty years, and told them was the seventh, was actually the sixth?
2. If we are to understand that the seventh-day Sabbath is pinned down each year by the fifteenth day of the first month of that year, must it not each year move one day ahead, like all our annual festivals, such as Christmas, New Years, Independence, &c.? And if so, how do we know that the Jews always kept the sixth day, and that it was the sixth day that was observed by them the year of Christ's crucifixion?
3. If the Jews kept the seventh day from creation in keeping the fourth commandment, then those now keeping Sunday do not keep the day of the commandment. If those keeping Sunday keep the seventh day, then the Jews never kept the commandment. But we believe they did keep the commandment. They still observe the Sabbath on our Saturday. And as they have never changed the day of their Sabbath, Saturday instead of Sunday must still be the day pointed out in the fourth commandment.
About the only definite reply we received to the above questions was a motion made by a United Brethren preacher to close the meeting. I am satisfied that the questions awakened interest in the minds of some, which was fully manifested by their earnest request that I should preach to them. I am now at Bro. Harvey's, expect to start in a few moments to the Morris neighborhood, seven miles south of this, where I commence a course of lectures this evening. J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH. North Liberty, Ind., Dec. 12th, 1859.