How are we to know that Saturday is the seventh-day Sabbath, since the days and years have been so changed?
It is just as easy as for a man to know his own birthday; yea, much easier, for one's birthday comes but once a year, while the Sabbath comes every week.
Moreover, but very few persons have any interest in any ordinary man's birthday, while there are several hundred millions of people who are interested in keeping count of the days of the week; so that there are several thousand million more chances that everybody in the world is mistaken as to when his birthday comes, than that there is any doubt as to which day is the seventh day of the week-the Sabbath of the Lord.
In fact, it is an absolute impossibility that there can be any mistake in the matter of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath and the Week
Let us consider the question together. In the first place, we will accept, as beyond reasonable controversy, the statements in the fourth commandment and the 2nd chapter of Genesis, that: "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord," (Exodus 20:10) and that in the beginning God rested upon the seventh day, after having devoted the preceding six to the creation of the heavens and the earth; and that: "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created." (Genesis 2:3)
Thus the week was instituted. It is a division of time that has been common in all ages, and it is marked only by the Sabbath, and it was known among the ancients by the same name.
It will readily be seen that no chance for the numbering of the days could be lost before the flood, because two or three men's lives spanned the entire period from the Creation to the flood. Even if we allow the supposition that the correct reckoning was lost, we must see for a certainty that the correct day was found at the Exodus. At Mount Sinai God made known to the people of Israel His holy Sabbath. "You came down also upon mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments: And made known unto them your holy sabbath, and commanded them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses your servant." (Nehemiah 9:13-14)
The Sabbath of the fourth commandment is identical with the Sabbath of creation; for the fact that at the close of the creation week God rested on the seventh day, is given in the fourth commandment as the ground of the Sabbath, and we may be sure that God had not lost the reckoning of time in twenty-five hundred years.
From Moses to Christ
From the days of Moses until the coming of Christ, Israel existed as a distinct people in the midst of the heathen, and the seventh-day Sabbath was their distinguishing characteristic. It was that by which the people showed themselves worshipers of the true God; for we read this injunction and promise: "Hallow my Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God." (Exodus 20:20)
There was therefore no possibility that the day of the Sabbath could be lost while the people of Israel continued to worship God. Just stop and think how quickly a man is set right by neighbors, or by the members of his own family, if he chances to the make a mistake in the day of the week, and then try to calculate the possibilities that not only one man, nor a single family, but a whole nation made a mistake in reckoning, and all made the same mistake at the same time, so that nobody discovered it! The thing is manifestly impossible, but we have not yet finished the proof.
Christ and the Sabbath
About four thousand years after the creation, or a little more than two-thirds of the distance, in point of time, from the creation till now, Christ came to: "magnify the law, and make it honorable." (Isaiah 42:21) "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell," (Colossians 1:19) "[even] all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, ... [yea,] all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:9,2)
So that He certainly knew the exact truth about everything. He himself is the truth, and therefore He was not mistaken as to the day of the Sabbath. If the people had lost the reckoning of the days of the week, and so lost the Sabbath (an impossibility, as we have already seen), He would have set them right. But while He was sharply criticized because He did not conform to the Rabbinical perversions of the Sabbath, there was never a question as to which day was the Sabbath.
The fact that Jesus recognized the day upon which the Jews rested as the Sabbath, shows that no mistake had been made up to that time. It shows more than this, also. It proves that the day which the Jews professed to keep--the seventh day--is the Sabbath for Christians, because Christ kept it.
Throughout the New Testament, which was written between six and sixty years after the crucifixion, the day is invariably referred to as the Sabbath (except in Revelation 1:10, where it is called "the Lord's day"), and there is not only no intimation that the Jews were mistaken as to the day of the Sabbath, but there is no hint of any change.
After the crucifixion the disciples "rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment" (Luke 23:56); so we know that this day on which Christ and His disciples rested, in common with all the Jews, is the day commanded at Sinai, and set apart at creation.
Moreover, since the New Testament is, even by those who lightly esteem the Old Testament, confessed to be the Scriptures given for the guidance of Christians, as it was written by Christians under the influence of the Holy Spirit, it follows that the day which the Jews professed to observe, in the days of Christ and the apostles, is the Sabbath for Christians.
No one who uses Scripture language, and who regards the Bible as final authority in religion, can apply the term "Sabbath" to any other day than the seventh day of the week.
The Sabbath Since the Crucifixion
Now what about the time since the ascension of Christ? There is in this period less possibility of losing the Sabbath than at any previous time. Soon after the ascension Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans, and destroyed, together with the temple, and the Jews dispersed throughout the whole world. In every nation Jews are to be found, and all keep the Sabbath with more or less strictness.
Now if the exact day of the Sabbath were lost, we should find a disagreement among the Jews; some would be keeping one day, and some another; but this is not the case. If all the Jews were assembled from all parts of the world, all would be found in perfect harmony as to which day is the Sabbath.
Can any sane person suppose that all these people, so widely scattered, have lost the count of the days of the week; and, what is more wonderful still, have all made the very same mistake, so that there is no confusion; and, still more remarkable, that they all made the same mistake at the very same instant, so that nobody could discover that another had made an error in his reckoning? The thing is too self-evidently absurd for a moment's serious thought.
The Sabbath and Sunday
Still further: Within two hundred years after the ascension of Christ, professed Christians began to observe the first day of the week--the "day of the sun,"--in deference to the vast number of heathen who were willing to join the church, provided they could do so without too great a sacrifice of their heathen customs.
In the fourth century this custom was quite common in the church, and one of the main reasons given for the change was that they ought not to have anything in common with the Jews.
By the sixth century Sunday had been completely substituted for the Sabbath, throughout the entire Catholic Church, only a few scattered Christians remaining faithful to the commandment of the Lord. The Catholic Church's zeal for Sunday, and its determination to have nothing in common with the Jews, increases to the highest degree the impossibility of there having been any mistake in the reckoning of the days of the week.
A Change of Dates
But you say there has been a change from Old Style to New Style, by which ten days were dropped out at one time. Very true, but those days were not blotted out of existence. Nobody lost ten days out of his life. They simply agreed to call the fifth day of a certain month the fifteenth, but there was not the slightest interference with the numbering of the days of the week.
The surest proof of that is the fact that to this day Russia reckons according to the Old Style, and is about twelve days behind the rest of Europe, as to the numbering of the days of the month; but the Jews of Russia keep exactly the same day as do their fellow-religionists in Germany, England, and America, and all the people in Russia who observe Sunday are in perfect accord with those of the same persuasion in all other countries.
Another thing which also tended to the preservation of the Sabbath intact, making it forever distinct from all other days, was this, that it was the only day of the week that had a name, until comparatively modern times. The "six working days" were known from the beginning as the first day, second day, third day, and so on to the sixth day; but the seventh day was "the Sabbath" from the beginning.
Surely you must agree that nothing in the world can be more sure than that the day commonly called Saturday,--the seventh and last day of the week,--is the exact seventh day in regular succession from the creation. God in His Word, which "lives and abides for ever" (1 Peter 1:23) says: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work." (Exodus 20:8-10)
Here is a question for you to answer in your private corner: What do you propose to do about it?--Present Truth, January 31, 1901.