APPENDIX

THE TRUE AND ABIDING SABBATH

In the body of the book the reader has been shown the foundation upon which the Sunday-sabbath rests; his attention is now called to a very brief examination of the foundation upon which the true Sabbath rests, that he may contrast the baseless fabric of heathenism with that which cannot be shaken.FACC 347.1

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, 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, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; 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.” Exodus 20:8-11.FACC 347.2

The fourth commandment is the solid foundation upon which Sabbath-keeping rests. They who tremble at the word of God, can desire no other. If we analyze it, we shall find that it consists of a simple command to keep the Sabbath day holy, and then such an explicit definition of the Sabbath as distinguishes it from every other day, so that no attentive person can fail to know what day the Sabbath is.FACC 347.3

“The seventh day is the Sabbath.” What seventh day? The most natural conclusion is that it is the seventh day of the week; for the fact that six days of labor precede it, shows that it is the last in a period of seven days; and the only period of seven days is the week. Besides, the commandment specifies what is meant by saying, “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.” The “creation week” is a very common term to express the time of God’s creation and rest. The day on which God rested was the seventh day of the creation week; the day on which we are commanded to rest is the seventh day of the week, which took its rise from the first week of time, in which God created the heavens and the earth, and rested.FACC 347.4

That the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, and that this is what the commandment enjoins, is evident from a passage in the New Testament. The writers of the four Gospels all record with more or less minuteness the events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. They all state that the crucifixion was on the preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath. They likewise all mention the fact that certain women came to the sepulcher very early on the first day of the week, and found it empty. Luke says (24:1) that they came “upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning;” and Mark says (16:1) that it was “when the Sabbath was past.” Now read in consecutive order what Luke says immediately following his account of the burial of Jesus:—
“And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on. And the women also which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared.” Luke 23:54-56; 24:1.FACC 348.1

From this text we learn that the preparation day immediately preceded the Sabbath day. Verse 54. We learn also that the first day of the week immediately followed the Sabbath. Then since there are but seven days in the week, that Sabbath day must have been the seventh day of the week. “Well,” says one, “nobody questions that; what is the use of stating it so explicitly?” Simply because that Sabbath day which is proved beyond all possibility of denial to have been the seventh day of the week, was kept by the women, “according to the commandment.” Thus we have it most positively proved by an inspired writer that the Sabbath day which the fourth commandment says we must remember to keep holy, is the seventh day of the week.FACC 348.2

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” not to make it holy. Man cannot make anything holy; God alone has that power. It is an unwarrantable, almost a blasphemous, assumption, to say that men can sanctify as the Sabbath any day on which they may choose to rest. The Lord made the Sabbath day holy, and he requires man to keep it holy, and not to pollute it by unholy words and deeds.FACC 349.1

But the Sabbath did not originate with the giving of the commandment from Sinai. At that time God only declared the law which already existed. The sacredness of the Sabbath, which is guarded by the fourth commandment, did not begin at that time, any more than the sacredness of human life, which is guarded by the sixth commandment, began at that time. The commandment itself refers us to creation. Why are we commanded to keep the Sabbath day holy? “For [because] 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.”FACC 349.2

The statement that God blessed and hallowed the Sabbath day, is equivalent to saying that he blessed and hallowed the seventh day, for “the seventh day is the Sabbath.” It became the Sabbath from the time when God rested upon it. The Sabbath is the name of the seventh day of the week, which God sanctified. That God did bless and sanctify, or make holy, the seventh day in particular, and not merely the Sabbath institution in general, is plainly declared in the record to which the commandment refers.FACC 349.3

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”FACC 350.1

This statement that God sanctified the seventh day, because that in it he had rested, upsets the theory that God’s Sabbath is an immensely long time; that the Sabbath which he begun when he finished the work of creation, is not yet completed. Such a theory makes nonsense of the fourth commandment, which enjoins upon us the day on which God rested; but if it were true that God’s Sabbath has continued since creation, and is even now going on, a command for us to keep the Sabbath of the Lord would be the same as a command for us never to do any work! But the fact is clearly stated, that when God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, his rest upon it was in the past. He blessed and sanctified it, not because he was resting in it, but because he had rested in it.FACC 350.2

Notice now the steps by which the Sabbath was made: First, God made the heavens and the earth in six days,—six days such as we are familiar with, composed of a dark part and a light part, caused by the revolution of the earth upon its axis, and each completed in twenty-four hours. Second, God rested on the seventh day. Third, he blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested. Then it became God’s holy Sabbath day.FACC 350.3

At the close of God’s rest upon the seventh day, he sanctified it. To sanctify means to appoint, to set apart by specific directions and injunctions. Thus the Lord says: “Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly.” Joel 1:14. The children of Israel appointed (margin, sanctified) six cities as places of refuge. (See Joshua 20:7.) They sanctified them by setting them apart for that purpose, and letting everybody know it. Still more clear is the evidence in the nineteenth of Exodus. When the Lord would come down upon Mount Sinai, he said to Moses: “And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it.” Exodus 19:12. And afterwards Moses said unto the Lord: “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it.” Verse 23. So God sanctified the Sabbath, by placing around it the sanctions of his word, and commanding the people then living—Adam and Eve—and through them their descendants, not to step over those bounds.FACC 351.1

On these three facts the Sabbath rests: God created the heavens and the earth in six days; he rested on the seventh day; he blessed and sanctified, or appointed as sacred, the seventh day. Before the Sabbath can be changed, the facts of creation must be changed. But a fact is that which has been done, and a fact cannot be changed. Even if the heavens and the earth were destroyed, it would still remain a fact that God created them, and that he rested upon and blessed and hallowed the seventh day, as a memorial of his creation; and upon these facts the Sabbath rests. To abolish the Sabbath, or to change it to another day than the seventh, it would be necessary to annihilate the heavens and the earth, and not only so, but to annihilate the fact that they were ever created, so as to make it a truth that they never had an existence. But this even omnipotence cannot do.FACC 351.2

What stability there is to the works of God! “The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness.” Psalm 111:7, 8. Therefore “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke 16:17.FACC 352.1