The Seventh Day Sabbath | Page 5

(because you see it could not have been fulfilled unless it had continued from generation to generation,) to keep the Sabbath holy, would not God have been bound to let Jerusalem remain forever? You say [9]yes. Well, then, I ask you to shew how he could have kept that promise inviolate if he intended in less than six hundred and fifty years to change this seventh day Sabbath, and call the first day of the week the Sabbath, or abolish it altogether? I say, therefore, if there has been any change one way or the other in the Sabbath, since that promise, it would be impossible to understand any other promise in the Bible; how much more reasonable to believe God than man. If men will allow themselves to believe the monstrous absurdity that FOREVER, as in this promise, ended at the resurrection, then they can easily believe that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week. Or if they choose the other extreme, abolished until the people of God should awake to be clothed on with immortality. Heb. iv: 9.
Now does it not appear plain that the Sabbath is from God, and that it is coeval and co-extensive (as is the institution of marriage) with the world. That it is without limitation; that there is not one thus saith the Lord that it ever was or ever will be abolished, in time or eternity.--See Exod. xxxi: 16, 17; and Isa. lxvi: 22, 24; Heb. iv: 4, 9. But let us return and look at the subject as we have commenced in the light of Paul's argument to the Romans and Collossians, for here is where all writers on this subject, for the change or the overthrow of the seventh day Sabbath attempt to draw their strong arguments. The second question then, is this:
HAS THE SABBATH BEEN ABOLISHED SINCE THE SEVENTH DAY OF CREATION? IF SO, WHEN, AND WHERE IS THE PROOF?
The text already referred to, is in Rom. xiv: 5, 6.--"One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day to the Lord, he doth not regard it." Does the apostle here mean to say, that under the new or Christian dispensation it is a matter of indifference which day of the week is kept as a Sabbath, or whether any Sabbath at all is kept? Was that institution which the people of God had been commanded to call a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, now to be esteemed of so carnal a nature as to be ranked among [10]the things which Jesus "took out of the way, nailing it to his cross." If this be true, then has Jesus, in the same manner, abolished the eight last verses in the fifty-eighth of Isaiah, and the 2d, 6th and 7th verses of the 56th chapter have no reference to the Gentile since the crucifixion. O Lord help us rightly to understand and divide thy word. But is it not evident from the four first verses in the same chapter of Romans, that Paul is speaking of feast days; giving them again in substance the decrees which had been given by the Apostles in their first conference, in A. D. 51, held at Jerusalem. See Acts xv: 19. James proposes their letter to the Gentiles should be "that they abstain from pollution of Idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood;" to which the conference all agreed. Now please read their unanimous decrees (xvi: 4,) from twenty-three to thirty verses. "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things." "That ye abstain from meats offered to Idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well." Reading along to the 13th of the next chapter, we find Paul establishing the Churches with these decrees; (see 4, 5,) and at Philippi he holds his meeting, (not in the Jews Synagogue) but at the river's side, on the Sabbath day. A little from this it is said that Paul is in Thesalonica preaching on the Sabbath days. Luke says this was his manner! What was it? Why, to preach on the Sabbath days, (not 1st days.) Observe here was three Sabbaths in succession. xvii: 2. A little while from this Paul locates himself in Corinth, and there preaches to the Jews and Greeks (or Gentiles) a year and six months every Sabbath. Now this must have been seventy-eight in succession. xviii: 4, 11. Does this look like abolishing the