LET us see what Dr. Akers is attempting to accomplish: It can be stated in one sentence: He is laboring to prove that God took away the Paradisaical Sabbath from the Hebrews, and that he gave them a ceremonial sabbath in its place.
And what makes him anxious to do this? Simply that he may show that the so-called Christian Sabbath is the day ordained by God in Eden. If he can do this, then he vindicates the prevailing first-day observance. If he fails to do it, then that observance has no foundation in divine authority. What must Dr. Akers establish in order to prove his alleged change of the Sabbath in Egypt?
1. That God gave up his ancient Sabbath to desecration by his chosen people for the whole period of their separate existence!
2. That God gave Israel a new week by joining the seventh day of the true week to the first six of another of his weeks; which kind of week has come down to us, with God's seventh day for its first day!
3. That the first of this new order of weeks in Egypt had only six days in it!
4. That God then made a new Sabbath out of the sixth day of the week!
5. That he then made the sixth day of the week into the seventh!
6. That the Sabbath which God caused Israel to observe from Moses to Christ was only a ceremonial institution, though he took the true one from them!
7. That the first of these new weekly Sabbaths was observed by the children of Israel in marching from Rameses to Succoth, with their unleavened dough in their kneading troughs bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders!
But how does Dr. Akers establish this change of the Sabbath from Sunday, the seventh day, to Saturday, the sixth?
1. By the statement that a new calendar was given to the Hebrews whereby the seventh month of the old year as reckoned from creation became the first month of the new Jewish year. And such a change taking place in the reckoning of the year by divine authority, indicates that a similar change in the reckoning of the week is not unlikely.
But to this it should be answered: (1) God did not discontinue the ancient year beginning with Tisri, or October, and marking the years from creation. He established what is distinguished as the sacred year, which was reckoned from Abib, or April, the seventh month of the ancient or civil year. That the year, beginning and ending in the fall, was not discontinued by the establishment of the sacred year which began and ended in the spring, is plain from Ex. 23:16; Lev. 25:1-9; Deut. 31:10.
(2) Thus instead of one kind of year beginning in the fall and reckoned from creation, they had thenceforward two, in that a year was also given them beginning in the spring, and designed to establish and to preserve the reckoning of the years of their national history.197These two years are distinguished by the terms civil and sacred; and one began with the seventh month of the other.
(3) To establish this new year, they did not have to mutilate, or disarrange, or discontinue, the existing civil year, as Dr. Akers makes them do in the case of the week.
(4) The establishment of the sacred year was by the plainest direction from God, and did not have to be inferred by Israel, nor does it need to be inferred by ourselves; which is more than can be said of his alleged change of the Sabbath.
There is nothing, therefore, in the new calendar of the year, that affords the slightest pretext for asserting that God changed the Sabbath, and re-arranged the week.
2. Dr. Akers' second proof that the Sabbath was changed from the sixteenth day of the first month to the fifteenth, is found in this, that whereas the sixteenth of the first month was the true seventh day, God then established the fifteenth day of the month to be the Sabbath of the Hebrews, so shaping the year that that day should always come on Saturday.
But how does he prove all this? Certainly, not by any direct statement of the Bible as in the establishment of a second kind of year. If such declaration were found in the Bible, we should at once accept it as closing the controversy. But the Bible does not state any such thing. It is simply an assertion of Dr. Akers' which rests upon his ability to prove the two points already named: (1) That the original Sabbath came upon the sixteenth day of Abib; (2) That God ordained the day of the exodus, Abib 15, to be the Jewish Sabbath. Observe these two points carefully. The whole argument of Dr. Akers rests upon their truthfulness. And what is not to be forgotten, if he proves the truth of one of them, it does not establish the change of the Sabbath in Egypt unless he can also prove the truth of the other. This being too plain to be denied, it follows that a failure to sustain the assertion that the original Sabbath came upon Abib 16, makes his second proposition, viz., that the Jewish Sabbath came upon Abib 15, even if it could be proved, of no account, so far as establishing a change of the Sabbath in Egypt.
The truth of his first proposition must be maintained, or the whole argument for a change of the Sabbath at the exodus falls to the ground. And now what is the evidence by which he proves his first proposition? Simply, he counts the days from creation to the exodus, and though he does not agree with the Hebrew chronology into 1386 years, and though he does not agree with any other writer that we have examined, who uses the Septuagint chronology, and though he confesses that the Septuagint numbers have been sometimes altered, and need correcting (of which, by the way, we have a notable instance in their making Methuselah survive the flood fourteen years!), yet he is able to give the exact age of the world even to a day! So that by this exact count he proves that the day kept by the Hebrews came one day too soon to be the original seventh day!
But the reader will say, perhaps, that Dr. Akers uses the deductions of astronomical science to prove that Sunday is the true seventh day, and certainly we ought to respect the science of astronomy. To this, it is sufficient to reply that Dr. Akers has not established his reckoning upon any such basis of astronomical calculation as to command the respect of the scientific world. His book was published in 1855, but we have no evidence that the scientific men of this age accept it as established by any substantial facts in astronomy. Indeed, the president of the University of Michigan, whose words we have already given, like Dr. Akers, a Methodist clergyman, writing in 1866, pronounces the whole effort a complete failure! And yet every one of these scientific men are in sympathy with the first-day Sabbath so far as they have any religious interests.
But even astronomy must have data from which to reckon, or upon which to base its calculations, or it is utterly powerless to establish chronological points. The testimony of all history shows Sunday to be the first day and Saturday the seventh. How, then, can astronomy prove that the first day of Genesis was Monday and the seventh day Sunday? Can that science determine the exact age of the world, and so enable us to count the days from the creation to the resurrection of Christ? No astronomer claims to do this. How, then, does Dr. A. prove that the seventh day of the week observed at the exodus is not the seventh day of Gen. 2:2, 3? How he establishes this will certainly interest the curious reader. His "fixed point in chronology" is the Sunday of Christ's resurrection. From this he reckons back to the day of God's rest in Gen. 2:2, 3, and finds it to be just 290,767 weeks, to a day! Thus proving, to his mind, that the seventh day of Gen. 2:2, 3, is the first day of Matt. 28:1.
But this is not all. Having reckoned back from Christ's resurrection to God's rest-day in Eden, and by that reckoning made it clear to his own mind that God's rest day was upon Sunday, he sets out from his new basis, the rest-day of God upon Sunday, and reckons forward to the exodus, and by that second count of days he determines that God's rest-day came that year upon Abib 16.
This is a roundabout journey. It begins with Christ's resurrection and counts the days backward to the creation week; and thence, forward to the day of the exodus. Now, Dr. A.'s theory falls to the ground unless he can do this so exactly as not to err to the extent of one day! Thus, according to his table on pages 34, 35, of his chronology, if he has erred one year either way in the age of the world at the exodus, then, on his own showing, the original Sabbath came upon Abib 15, the very day which he labors to prove was the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, which would prove that the Jews had the true seventh day.
But the rest-day of God, in Gen. 2:2, 3, Dr. A. proves to be Sunday by counting the days exactly from the day of Christ's resurrection back to it; and having thus proved God's seventh day to be Sunday, he takes that as a new basis, and counts forward to the exodus, making that to be Saturday, the day before the original Sabbath, or Sunday.
No other man but Dr. A. ever claimed to do such wonderful feats of reckoning; or if there was ever found such another, his computation was not the same as Dr. Akers'. J. N. A.