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*Much of the
substance of this chapter is selected from "Seventh
Day Adventism Renounced," by Cauright.
In their very nature all purely
moral laws are universal and eternal in their application,
are binding in heaven, in Eden, on Jews or Gentiles,
saints or sinners, now or hereafter. Test the particular
seventh day, Saturday, by that rule, and it fails
everywhere. All the universe might keep a seventh part of
time, but not the same seventh part. Not knowing this, see
what blunder Mrs. White made. She says: "I saw that
the Sabbath would never be done away, but the redeemed
saints, and all the angelic host, will observe it in honor
of the great Creator, to all eternity."—Spiritual
Gifts, vol 1., p. 113. Uriah Smith, a leading Adventist,
says: "We infer that the higher orders of his
intelligences keep the Sabbath also.... The Sabbath of
each of his creatures will be the Sabbath of all the rest,
so that all will observe the same period together for the
same purpose."—Biblical Institute, page 145. In a
discussion held at Oakland, Pa., I publicly asked leading
ministers of the Adventist movement whether it is their
teaching that God and the angels of heaven keep the
seventh day with them. I asked in particular "Do you
believe that when the sun sets on Friday evening and you
begin keeping Sabbath, that God and the angels begin also
to keep the same time, and thus the heavenly hosts and you
folks on earth keep the same identical time
together?" They both replied: "This is our
teaching."
Look at the utter absurdity and
impossibility of the theory. All intelligent beings in
heaven and earth and on all the planets, keep "the
same period together." Adventists, like the Jews,
keep Sabbath from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32). Now I
shall prove by stubborn facts that they cannot all
"observe the same period together."
Everybody knows that it is Saturday
in India some twelve hours sooner than it is here, and
that it is Saturday here twelve hours after it has ceased
to be Saturday there. In Australia the day begins eighteen
hours sooner than it does in California. So the
seventh day brethren in California are working nearly
the whole time that their brethren in Australia are
keeping Sabbath' Come even nearer home than that. The sun
sets about three hours later in California than it does in
Maine. So when the Seventh day Adventists in Maine begin
to keep the Sabbath at sunset Friday evening their own
brethren in California, where the sun is yet three hours
high, will still be at work for three hours! So very few
of them on this earth "observe the same period
together." While some of them are keeping Sabbath on
one part of the earth, others of them are at work on
another part of the earth. How much less, then, do all the
heavenly host keep the same period with men on earth.
Now, if, as Mrs. White and Uriah
Smith say, the angels keep our Sabbath, the question is,
With which party do they keep it ? With those in
Australia, or those in America ? If the angels keep the
Sabbath at the same time the Sabbatarians keep it in
Australia, then the Sabbatarians in America are working
while the angels keep Sabbath, and so, of course, the
angels work while those here rest. So we see how
absolutely false and absurd is the theory that all can
keep the Sabbath at the same time.
Adventists at Washington, D. C.,
really suppose that when the sun sets Friday evening and
they begin keeping Sabbath, the Lord and the angels begin
keeping it, too. Oh, what blindness! If the Lord keeps the
Sabbath with them at Washington, then he does not keep it
with their brethren on the other side of the globe,
because they begin the Sabbath at least twelve hours
earlier than we do here. In fact, it takes just forty
eight hours, or the time of two whole days, from the time
any one day begins in the extreme east till it ends at the
farthest place in the west. Will the reader stop and think
carefully, sharply, on this point, for it is an important
one? It takes twenty four hours for the first end of a day
to go clear around the earth. Then, as the last end of the
day is twenty four hours behind the first end, it must
also have twenty four more to go clear around the earth,
and that makes fortyeight hours in all that each day is on
the earth somewhere. So for the Lord and the heavenly host
to keep Sabbath with all the Adventists on earth, they
would have to keep the time of two whole days each week.
And in that case, those on this side of the earth would be
working while the Lord was keeping the Sabbath with those
on the other side of the earth; and those on the opposite
side of the earth would be working while the Lord was
keeping Sabbath with those on this side. Thus, none of
them would keep Sabbath with the Lord, after all! In fact,
there is not a single hour in the week when there is not
some Sabbatarian at work on some part of the earth!
What, then, becomes of Mrs. White's
statement that "all the angelic hosts" keep our
Sabbath? or Uriah Smith's hypothesis that all the universe
"will observe the same period together"? Both
are utterly absurd. The same definite seventh day cannot
be kept by all the universe; even on this earth alone it
cannot be kept by all at the same time. This adds another
proof that the seventh day Sabbath with its rigorous
limitations and exactions, as enjoined in the law, was
only a Jewish institution, to be carried out by a small
people, in a limited territory—the land of Canaan. Under
the new dispensation, the gospel was to go to all nations,
to all climates, around the earth. Hence the keeping of a
definite Sabbath Day is left out of the gospel system, the
rest now enjoyed by Christians being a spiritual rest of
the soul, every day of the week.
Test the seventh day theory in the
frozen regions of the north. The law declared that the day
must be kept from sunset to sunset (see Lev. 23:32). In
the extreme north in the winter there are months when the
sun is not seen there at all, so they have no sunset. And
again, in summer there are months when the sun is above
the horizon all the time, when there is no sunrise. This
difficulty confronts the Adventists of northern Sweden and
Norway. Here their theory breaks down again. They have to
reckon the day by artificial means. This again proves that
that law was for the Jews. What endless and needless
difficulties people get themselves into trying to keep a
law that was designed only for the Jews in a limited
locality! How contrary to the freedom and simplicity of
the gospel!
Another great difficulty that
stands in the way of Sabbatarianism is, Where shall we
begin the day, If a man's salvation depends upon keeping
the same day to the hour that God kept it at creation,
then it is infinitely important that we know exactly where
his day began, so as to begin ours there too. But the Lord
has not said a word about it, nor given the least clue
respecting where to begin the day. The day is now
generally reckoned to begin at a certain line 180 degrees
west from Greenwich, England. It runs north and south
through the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles west of
America.
Prof. E. S. Holden of Lick
Observatory says: "There is no one date when the day
line was established there; but it was during the last
hundred years. It was established there for convenience.
Besides Greenwich, it has been reckoned from Canary
Islands, Tenereffe, Ferro, Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem,
Washington, etc." So we see: 1. It is only within the
last hundred years that the day line has been fixed where
it now is. 2. This was done merely for convenience, not
because there was anything in nature requiring it. 3. At
different times the day line has been counted from at
least seven different places, from Jerusalem in the east
to Washington in the west, about 8,000 miles difference,
or one-third the way around the earth. Hence the beginning
of the seventh day has varied this much at different
times. 4. In another century it may be changed again. 5.
There is just as much authority for one place as the
other, and no divine authority for either, as it is all
man's work and done at haphazard. 6. Hence so far as duty
to God is concerned, any nation, church or society is at
liberty to begin the day wherever they please. One place
will be just as apt to be in harmony with God's day line
as another.
Sabbatarians in America can fix
their day line in the Atlantic instead of in *e Pacific,
and then our Sunday will be Saturday, and they will be all
right and convert a nation in a day! Indeed, this is
exactly parallel to what Seventh day Adventists have done
in the case of a colony in the Pacific Ocean. Pitcairn
Island, in the Pacific, was settled one hundred years ago
by persons who brought their reckoning eastward from Asia.
But it happens to be on the American side of the present
day line; hence their Sunday was our Saturday, and they
all kept it one hundred years as Sunday. According to
Adventists, this was an awful thing, for Sunday is the
Pope's Sabbath, the mark of the beast! So the Adventists
went there and persuaded them all to keep Saturday. How?
They simply induced them to change their reckoning of the
day line a few miles, and lo! their Sunday was Saturday!
Now they are all pious Sabbath keepers, while before they
were keeping Sunday, the mark of the beast! And yet they
are keeping exactly the same day they kept before. If this
is not hair-splitting, tell me what is. It illustrates the
childishness of the whole Sabbatarian business. Now let
the Adventists just shift their day-line a little farther
east to include America, and they can keep Sunday with the
other people. Does the salvation of a man's soul depend
upon such mathematical uncertainties as these? If it does,
we may well despair of heaven.
The law said keep the seventh day
from sunset to sunset (Exod. 20:8-11; Lev. 23:32). Now,
let two Adventists start from Chicago, one going east, the
other west, around the earth. Each keeps carefully the
seventh day as the sun sets. When they meet again at
Chicago they will be two days apart! One will be keeping
Sunday and the other Friday. How will they now manage it?
Each gives up his seventh day, and both take that of the
world. So they have only a worldly day, after all.
Look, also, at the difficulty in
crossing this supposed day line in the Pacific Ocean.
Going west, a day is dropped going east it is added, and
this is done at noon of the day which finds them nearest
the supposed line. On the vessel, a man going west sits
down to dinner 11:50 a. m. Friday. While he is eating the
time is changed, and he rises from dinner Saturday noon!
Then he has only six hours of Sabbath till sunset. But
coming east, he sits down to dinner Saturday noon and
rises from dinner Friday noon! He has kept eighteen hours
Sabbath; then it is gone in a second at high noon, and he
has six hours to work till sunset. Now he must begin
Sabbath once more and keep it over again—twenty four
hours. In one case he keeps only six hours Sabbath, and in
the other case he keeps forty two hours!
These stubborn facts demonstrate
the utter absurdity of the Sabbatarian view. It proves
that the strict keeping of days was confined to the Jews
in Palestine.
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