NOW it is a fact that there is much discussion of the Sabbath question. Many people seem to have great difficulty in knowing just what day is the Sabbath; yet the Word of God says plainly, “the seventh day is the Sabbath.” Any person who will simply accept that statement as it stands, taking it simply as it says, will never have any difficulty at all in knowing exactly what day is the Sabbath. And the Bible throughout speaks just as plainly and is as easily understood in all its statements with reference to the Sabbath, as it speaks in this sentence quoted.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.1

The people who accept the Bible statements exactly as they are on this subject, never do have any difficulty at all in knowing what day is the Sabbath. But those who will not accept it have endless con-fusion and difficulty; and in fact, never do get the question settled to their perfect satisfaction.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.2

He who knows most can always make plainest and simplest what he has to tell, however deep the subject he may be discussing. God, knowing all things, and being the embodiment of all wisdom, is capable of making subjects that are of eternal depth so plain that a little child can receive them and understand them. But when anybody, whether it be the devil or a man not believing what the Lord says just as He says it, undertakes to interpret it and by subtle distinctions to tell what the Lord means, he produces only infinite and eternal confusion. And all who allow themselves to be so beguiled from the simplicity that is in Christ, inevitably find it to be so.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.3

When the Scripture is read that says plainly, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” those who do not believe it and will not accept it as the truth of God, and will not allow that He knew what He wanted to say and then said just what He meant, put on an air of child-like innocence and inquire “The seventh day of what?” or “What seventh day is the Sabbath?”PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.4

In the very first chapter of the Bible the Word of God is, that in six days the Lord created the heavens and the earth and all things that are in them. Then the same word follows with a statement that on the seventh day He rested, and that He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from the work which He had created and made. And that particular seventh day, that rest day, is the Sabbath, for Sabbath is rest.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.5

That six days of creative work followed by the seventh day of rest, formed the first week of time that this world knows anything about. And from that record just as it stands, without any interpretation or explanation whatever, it is perfectly plain that the seventh day, which is God’s rest day; the seventh day, which is the Sabbath of the Lord, is the seventh day of the week.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.6

Such is the record that the Lord Himself has given of His own creative acts through the first six days of the world’s existence, and of His rest on the seventh day of the world’s existence. These together compose the original week of the world’s existence. And every one who will believe the record just as it stands and simply as it says, will know for himself and to his perfect satisfaction what seventh day it is that is meant in the Bible, when it says that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.7

Then if anyone wants to have another statement of the case, he needs only to turn to the 20th chapter of Exodus and read what the Lord Himself said with His own voice, speaking from the top of Sinai. To His people there assembled and for all people for all time who will be His people, the Lord Himself said, “Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work; ... for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.8

Here the Lord says that the people are to work six days and rest the seventh, because at creation He Himself had worked six days and then rested the seventh day. Now anyone who is willing to allow that the Lord tells the truth, and was able to remember at Sinai what He had done at creation, will have no difficulty whatever in understanding what seventh day it is that Is referred to in this language. For it is the identical day of His rest at the close of the six days of creation, which cannot possibly be any other than the seventh day of the week; for there was no other existing period of which it could possibly be the seventh day.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.9

The people who stood at the base of Sinai that day and beard that voice, have continued, through their descendants, unto this day; and are scattered over the whole earth, amongst all the nations. And the day that there God gave them, upon His own count, by His own voice, in connection with the facts in which He Himself was the actor, they have never lost.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.10

If anyone wants yet further evidence, come fifteen hundred years still further down. Then He who made the heavens and the earth, who rested that seventh day at the close of the work of creation, He who spoke from the top of Sinai the word we have just quoted, stood upon the earth Himself in the form of a man as a teacher sent from God. He observed this same seventh day as the Sabbath. He ever called it the Sabbath.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.11

And it was the same day that the people of Israel had observed as the Sabbath, from the day that He Himself had spoken from the top of Sinai. And though there was constant criticism of all His words and ways on the part of the scribes, Pharisees, lawyers and rabbis, yet there was never any shadow of a question raised as to whether He observed the proper day as the Sabbath. There was always agreement between Him and them as to that. Their objections against Him were solely with reference to His manner of observing the day. And He in this as in everything else was the grand exemplar of the right way for all mankind for ever.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.12

Thus three separate times the Lord Himself has stated the facts concerning the origin and the basis of the Sabbath, and ham made plain exactly what seventh day it is. First, in the record of the original creation in the first and second chapters of Genesis. Secondly, in repeating with His own voice the record of the original creation. Thirdly, when upon the earth He repeated with His own voice and manifested in His own life the living truth as the example for all mankind.PTUK July 5, 1900, page 422.13

O that man would believe the Word of the Lord which He has taken all this pains to make plain to their understanding. Why will men continue to allow the same serpent that beguiled Eve, and in the same way, through his subtlety, to corrupt their minds from the simplicity that is in Christ?PTUK July 5, 1900, page 423.1

A. T. JONES.

June 28, 1900

July 19, 1900