No Sabbath | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1864

No Sabbath.

Elder Himes has declared that he does "not belong to the no-Sabbath party;" yet in the Voice of the West, of Oct. 25, 1864, he speaks thus in relation to the Sabbatic institution:

"There was no Sabbath to man before the flood, and none after, in the Patriarchal age, including a period of more than 2500 years. The first account we have of its enjoinment is in Ex. xvi, 1. On the fifteenth day of the second month, b. c. 1611, the Israelites traveled all day, from Elim, to the wilderness of Sin. The next day the manna fell about the camp. And on the sixth day they gathered twice as much as on either of the preceding five days, because the morrow was the Sabbath; which would be the twenty-second day of the second month. So that the day of their entrance into the wilderness, on the fifteenth of the second month, must have been a Sabbath, if the Sabbath had been instituted before this for man to keep holy. And yet on this very day, the people traveled all day by the command of God, and in violation of the law of the Sabbath afterward instituted through Moses. The fair and unavoidable conclusion is, that up to this time there was no special day assigned to, or enjoin upon, man to be kept as holy time."

In a subsequent paragraph he says:

"It will be seen that the fifteenth day, on which the Israelites came into the wilderness would have been a Sabbath, if there had been any before the twenty-second of this month. And if so, God could not have directed his people to violate it by a day's journey! The Seventh-day Sabbath then began here, and was a Jewish institution, and a type, or shadow of good things to come, as Paul declares in Col. ii, 16, 17."

Let us try this argument by another circumstance that happened not long after that time and see how it will stand the test. On their entrance into the promised land, the children of Israel were commanded to march around Jericho seven days in succession. One of these days must have been the Sabbath, "if the Sabbath had been instituted before this for man to keep holy!" And yet on one of these days which must have been the Sabbath, the people by the command of God, all marched around Jericho, in violation of the Sabbath law given through Moses. "The fair and unavoidable (?) conclusion is, that up to this time there was no special day assigned to, or enjoin upon, man to be kept as holy time." There! how does that sound, considering that this was forty years subsequent to the time when the earth itself had quaked under the utterance of the great Sabbath law, by the voice of God from the mountain of Sinai?

Applying his second paragraph to the events around Jericho, we have this conclusion: If one of those days had been the Sabbath, "God could not have directed his people to violate it by" marching around Jericho!!

But how do we know that it was the Sabbath, if it was then in existence, on which the children of Israel traveled from Elim to the wilderness? Eld. H. concludes it was because the next day the manna fell, and on the sixth day they gathered twice as much, &c. The sixth day from what? The fall of the manna! The record does not say so. This is one of those assumptions which inhere in every argument devised against the Sabbath. We say it is the sixth day of the week, without any reference to the fall of the manna. The record says nothing about "the preceding five days." But if the Sabbath was here instituted, as he claims, let him show it. There is no record of any institution here, no facts are given upon which it is based, the meaning and intent of the institution are not expressed, nor is there any reason assigned why it should be observed. We might as well look in the first chapter of Chronicles for the institution of the Lord's supper, as in the sixteenth of Exodus for the institution of the Sabbath.

A fitting conclusion to such arguments as these is found in the declaration that "the seventh-day Sabbath" was "a Jewish institution, and a type or shadow of good things to come, as Paul declares in Col. ii, 16, 17." But Paul declares in that Scripture that the handwriting of ordinances containing all these types and shadows, has been blotted out and nailed to the cross. And if the Sabbath is or was among them, that too has been abolished; and there is now no Sabbath; for nothing has been instituted in this dispensation to take its place. Such an institution, under any divine sanction, cannot be found. Hence Eld. H., in spite of his declaration to the contrary is a no-Sabbath man after all. Yet with a strange inconsistency he tells where he was such and such a "Sabbath," and what he designs to do on such and such a "Sabbath." But he declares that he keeps the "Christian Sabbath" or "Lord's day," meaning the first day of the week. Let him show the warrant for applying either of these titles to the first day of the week, or for observing that day as a day of rest and religious worship. We have often wondered how men felt, keeping a divine institution which was never instituted, applying to it Bible terms which the Bible never uses, obeying a law which was never enacted, and following apostolic example which was never given! And all this under the impression that they are obeying the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, and doing God service. Truly the wine of the mother of harlots is all-potent in beclouding men's reason, and shutting their eyes to the light of truth.