Preserved During the Captivity

“Next comes, 600 years before Christ, the Babylonish captivity of seventy years. Was it not lost here? Notice a few facts: 1. God sent them into that captivity because they did not regard His Sabbath strictly enough. Jeremiah 17:17-24; Nehemiah 13:15-18. Would He then allow the Sabbath to be lost so that they could not keep it, and thus frustrate the very object for which He sent them there? 2. Daniel, the greatest of all God’s prophets, lived in Babylon with the captives during the whole of their sojourn there. (See Daniel 1:1-21; 9:1, 2; Ezra 1:1-6, etc.) Daniel thus having constant communion with God would have corrected his people had they been in danger of losing or forgetting the Sabbath, as he was very jealous for the law of his God. Daniel 6:5. 3. As soon as the Jews return to Jerusalem, they solemnly promise God not to violate His Sabbath any more; and Nehemiah reminds them that this was the very sin for which they were sent into bondage. Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-18. 4. It would not be possible for a whole nation in the short space of seventy years to forget and lose the Sabbath, even though they had no prophets to teach them, which, however, the Jews did have. What would we think of the assertion that the Americans had lost Independence Day within the last hundred years, so that we could not tell when the 4th of July does come? The idea would simply be laughed at. Yet the 4th of July comes only once a year, and hence would be much more easily lost than the Sabbath, which comes once every week, besides being a day much more sacredly observed. 5. The records and genealogies were all carefully kept during this time. 6. On their return, the whole nation is still found keeping the Sabbath, without any disagreement as to which day it was. Nehemiah 10:31. These facts show that it was not lost then.DOF 98.2

“About 500 years before Christ, the Jews returned to Judea, and there remained till the final overthrow of Jerusalem, seventy years after the birth of Christ. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi prophesied during this time.DOF 99.1

“Again the Jews became a powerful nation, settled in their own land, under the Maccabees and others. The Sabbath now comes in still more prominently. They regarded it so strictly that some of the time they would not even defend themselves in was on that day. 1 Maccabees 2:32-40. (See Josephus.) Of course there was no possibility of their losing the Sabbath at that time. So when Christ came, He found them all very strict and over particular in keeping the ‘Sabbath. Matthew 12:1-12; John 5:5-19.DOF 99.2