SERMON ELEVEN — SUNDAY NOT THE TRUE SEVENTH DAY

“They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.” Ezekiel 13:6.SOSL 157.1

THE chapter from which this text is taken, is a prophetic reference to the last days of human probation. Thus verse 5 brings to view the work necessary to be done in order that the people of God may stand in the battle in the day of the Lord; which battle occurs under the sixth vial. Revelation 16:12-16; Jeremiah 25:30-33. And when God denounces his judgments upon those who refuse to do the work committed to their trust, but who do, instead thereof, a work of their own devising, he declares that the great hailstones shall fall upon them in his fierce anger. Verses 10-14. This is to be fulfilled under the seventh vial. Revelation 16:17-21. This chapter consists principally of an awful denunciation of wrath upon unfaithful teachers. The hedge by which God designs to protect his people in the battle of the great day, having gaps made therein, these teachers should have gone up into these breaches and made them up. Instead of doing this, they build up a wall to suit themselves, which God says shall be broken down by this fall of the great hailstones. The prophet brings to view the same hedge and the gaps made therein in chap. 22:30. Thus he says:SOSL 157.2

“And sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.”SOSL 158.1

But from verse 26 it appears that these gaps have been made in the hedge by false teachers doing away the law of God; and in particular by their act of hiding their eyes from his Sabbath. And when God sought for one man among them to make up the gap, he found none. Instead thereof, these persons build up a wall to suit themselves; and God says of their wall that it shall be broken down by the plague of the great hailstones. How this shall be, is sufficiently explained by Isaiah when he predicts the same great storm of hail:SOSL 158.2

Isaiah 28:17: “Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.”SOSL 158.3

In a former discourse it has been shown that the Man of Sin has thought to change the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Also that the Protestant church, separating itself from the church of Rome 350 years ago, brought away with it the Sunday of “Pope and Pagan,” instead of the Sabbath of the great Creator. Thus has a breach been made in the hedge which God has placed about his people. But as we approach the battle of the great day of God Almighty, the third angel (Revelation 14) is sent forth for the purpose of restoring the precepts of God’s law which Antichrist has broken down. And it is indeed very remarkable that when attention is called to this breach in the hedge, the teachers of the present day are determined to build up a wall of their own, rather than to repair the hedge which God himself has set up.SOSL 158.4

When their attention is called to the fact that they are trampling the rest-day of the Lord beneath their feet, the most frequent answer to this is that the Creator has put away the day which he hallowed in Eden, and that he has chosen in its place the day on which he raised his Son from the dead. But as the Scriptures do not make any such statement, it is not difficult to expose the weakness of this assertion. This, however, does not end the matter. The same persons take another position, and next assert that no one can tell what day is the true seventh day.SOSL 158.5

When, however, this position is wrested from them, they next plant themselves on the ground that any day of the seven will answer, as God requires not the seventh day but the seventh part of time. As this ground is untenable, when they are driven from it they next maintain that the seventh day is a Jewish institution, and that we are at liberty to observe or disregard it, just as we ourselves elect. And they endeavor to strengthen this position by asserting that if we observe the Sabbath we shall fall from grace. When the untruthfulness of this doctrine has been shown, and the self-contradictory nature of the argument in its behalf has been made apparent, then it is that these persons suddenly discover that the seventh day which God hallowed in Eden is of perpetual obligation, and binding upon all men everywhere; but that this same seventh day comes on the first day of the week, or Sunday.SOSL 159.1

Perhaps the most elaborate effort that has ever been made to establish and defend this last position is that of Rev. Peter Akers, D. D., President of M’Kendree College. Certainly no persons have so fully “made others to hope that they would confirm the word,” as has Dr. Akers in his earnest effort to prove that Sunday is the veritable seventh day, hallowed by God in Eden. This, Dr. A. has endeavored to maintain in a work of 411 pages, published in 1855, entitled, “Introduction to Biblical Chronology.” He uses much learning to sustain his theory. A smaller work by Rev. E. Q. Fuller, entitled, “The Two Sabbaths,” in which the theory of Dr. Akers is given in a simpler form and with much greater clearness, has also been published by the same house which issued Aker’s Chronology, the Methodist Book Concern of Cincinnati. More than one hundred years since, David Jennings, D. D., in his “Jewish Antiquities,” endeavored to prove the same position respecting Sunday as the day of the Creator’s rest, though he sustained his point by a theory which clashes with that of Dr. Akers. The theory of Dr. Akers as stated by himself, and even more distinctly by Mr. Fuller, is as follows:SOSL 159.2

The seventh day sanctified in Eden was that day which we call Sunday. The observance of Sunday has therefore been sacredly binding upon all men from creation to the present time, with the exception of the Jewish people, who were exempted from its obligation from the day that they departed out of Egypt till the day that Christ was crucified. This exemption was effected by setting the sabbatic institution back one day when they left Egypt;so that whereas the original Sabbath came upon the sixteenth day of Abib, the month in which they left Egypt, it was at that point of time set back to the day next preceding; and that day, the seventh day of the week as reckoned by Adam, but the sixth day of the week as reckoned by God, was thenceforward observed as the Sabbath; while Sunday, the true Sabbath, and the real seventh day as reckoned by God, though the first day of the week as men kept the reckoning, was never after regarded as the Sabbath, until, at the crucifixion of Christ, the Jewish Sabbath was abrogated, and the first day of the week at the resurrection of Christ resumed its rightful place as the Sabbath of the Lord.SOSL 160.1

This theory of Dr. Akers’ rests upon the following propositions:SOSL 160.2

1. Time is reckoned from Adam’s first day; for all the days of the creation week which preceded that day belong not to time but to eternity. ^{1Thus Mr. Fuller states this doctrine: “Chronology does not commence with the ‘beginning’ of creation, but with the completion of it. Time is reckoned in the Scriptures from the creation of Adam.... Before him was eternity, not time.” — The Two Sabbaths, p.29.
“The Sabbath is explicitly named in this language as instituted on the seventh day of creation, the first day of time.” — Id., p. 16.}SOSL 160.3

2. The seventh day from creation on which God rested was Adam’s first day of existence. ^{1Dr. Akers states this point thus: “This was the seventh from the first, in the count of God’s works for man; but it was the first day in his created history.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 111.
And Mr. Fuller says: “Adam was created last of all the Divine handiwork, at the very close, we may suppose, of the sixth day. The next, the seventh from the beginning of creation, must have been the first of his existence.” — The Two Sabbaths, p. 29.}SOSL 161.1

3. Hence it was that Adam began his week with the last day of the Creator’s week. ^{2Here is Mr. Fuller’s statement of this doctrine: “This ‘seventh’ day of God’s work, which he ‘blessed’ and ‘sanctified’, upon which Adam first appeared before his Maker ‘very good,’ must have been the first day of the week and of the year, because, being the first day in the history of man, it was strictly the first day of time.” — The Two Sabbaths, pp. 29, 30.}SOSL 161.2

4. And thus the Sabbath of the Lord came upon the first day of the week to Adam and his posterity as they reckoned the week. ^{3Mr. Fuller thus dates the first-day Sabbath: “1. That a perpetual Sabbath was instituted at the creation of the world. 2. That the original Sabbath was upon the first day of the week.” — The Two Sabbaths, p. 10.
“Neither the weekly period nor the first-day Sabbath has ever been lost.” — Id. p.12.
“The first day of the week, the patriarchal Sabbath.” — Id. p. 37.}SOSL 161.3

5. But God gave to Israel a new Sabbath the very day that he led them out of Egypt. For whereas the next day after that event was the regular weekly Sabbath from creation, God ordained that Israel should keep the day of their flight as their Sabbath day that week, and that same day of the week ever afterward till the crucifixion. ^{4Dr. Akers thus asserts the change of the Sabbath in Egypt: “This day, the day on which they rested from bondage, was constituted the Sabbath of the Israelites; and the next day, the sixteenth of Abib, which had from the beginning been the seventh day, was constituted the first in the new order of weeks.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 32.
“I undertake to prove that the aforesaid fifteenth day of the old seventh month, called Abib or Nisan, in the Jewish calendar, was, by divine appointment, established to be the day on which the weekly Sabbath of the Jews should recur annually, till the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” — Id. pp. 98, 99.}SOSL 161.4

6. During the period from the departure out of Egypt to the, crucifixion, there were, therefore, two conflicting Sabbath laws; one binding upon the Gentiles, and requiring them to keep the very day of God’s rest, which they did in their heathen Sunday; the other requiring the Jews to keep that day of the week on which they left Egypt, which was the day before the true Sabbath of the Lord. ^{1Mr. Fuller thus distinguishes this universal first-day Sabbath from that seventh-day Sabbath which God gave to Israel: “What is here to be understood by the terms, the two Sabbaths, is, first, that the Sabbath hallowed at the creation of the world is a perpetual institution, the weekly observance of which was from the beginning, and will be, till the ending of time, binding upon the entire race of man, excepting the Jews during the period of their national history; that it is the present Christian Sabbath; and, second, that the Jewish Sabbath was an extraordinary, a temporary institution, pertaining alone to the Mosaic economy, originating in, and ending with it.” — The Two Sabbaths. p. 9. “The original Sabbatic law has ever been, and does now remain, in full force to all people but the Jews, who were exempted from its weekly observance from the exodus to the crucifixion.” — Id. p. 10.
“This institution [the first-day Sabbath], so wonderfully preserved throughout all the regions, languages, and ages of the world, must from the first have been a prominent religious observance and universally known; ordained of God at the beginning of time.” — Id. p. 58.}SOSL 162.1

7. But when Christ died, the Jewish Sabbath was abolished, leaving in full force the original Sabbath of the Lord which had ever been observed by the Gentiles. ^{2Mr. F. and Dr. A. thus assert the abolition of that Sabbath which the Hebrews observed and its supersedure by the Sunday of the heathen:
“The Jewish Sabbath was abrogated with the Jewish economy.... When Judaism was abrogated, the original Sabbath remained to the Christian church.” — The Two Sabbaths, p. 10.
“When the Lord’s, the Christian Sabbath, was first made known to our idolatrous ancestors, they were found on that day paying adoration to the sun. And from them we received our Sunday, Monday, or Moonday, etc. Thus has idolatry itself been made to contribute to the claims of the Christian Sabbath to be synchronical with the original Sabbath of the Lord.” — Biblical Chronology, p.116.}SOSL 162.2

8. And thus Sunday, though called first day of the week, is that very seventh day on which God rested, and is now binding upon all mankind as the Sabbath of the Lord. ^{1Here are Dr. Aker’s words:
“We count Sunday the first day of the week, etc., in compliance with the order established for the Jews at the exodus, when the Sabbath was changed; but down to that time, what we now, following the Jews, call the first day of the week, was the seventh day.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 139.}SOSL 163.1

This chain of propositions presents Dr. Akers’ theory as modified by Rev. E. Q, Fuller in his “Two Sabbaths.” In some minor points Mr. F. and Dr. A. differ. Thus Mr. F. makes God’s seventh day to be Adam’s first day of the week. But Dr. A. teaches that Adam reckoned God’s rest day as the seventh day of the week. Yet both assert that God’s seventh day was Sunday, and that it was the first day of Adam’s life.SOSL 163.2

Both agree precisely in the alleged change of the Sabbath at the time of the exodus of Israel. That is, they assert that it was then changed from Sunday, the day of God’s rest, to Saturday, the day of their departure from Egypt. According to Mr. F., the first six days of Genesis 1 were not counted in the reckoning of the first week. So that Adam and his posterity constructed the week by joining the last day of one of the Creator’s weeks to the first six days of another of his weeks, thus making a week which began with God’s seventh day, and ended with his sixth. And this same week continued in use after God gave Israel a new Sabbath. For from that time they observed the day with which their week closed, instead of the day on which it began. We do not say they observed the seventh day of their week instead of the first day of it, lest these terms should mislead the reader; for their week, according to Mr. Fuller, began with the real seventh day, and ended with the true sixth day. Such is the kind of week which we now have, if indeed Sunday is the true seventh day from creation.SOSL 163.3

It is worthy of notice that that week which witnessed the alleged change of the Sabbath in Egypt did, according to the theory of Mr. F., have two Sabbaths in it! That is, it began with God’s seventh day, which they were still under obligation to observe, and ended with his sixth day, which that very day became their Sabbath. And ever after this point, the sixth day, or Saturday, was kept by Israel as the seventh day; and Sunday, the true seventh day, was called the first day of the week. And so when the Jewish Sabbath, i.e., Saturday, ceased to be obligatory, and the original Sabbath, i.e., Sunday, alone remained in force, that day had thoroughly acquired the title of first day of the week, being called thus by all men from Adam to Christ.SOSL 164.1

But according to Dr. Akers, it seems that Adam reckoned the first week of time from the first day of creation; so that his weeks began and ended just as did those of the Creator. But when the exodus from Egypt took place, God gave Israel a new Sabbath by setting the institution back from Sunday, the day of his rest, to Saturday, the day of their departure from Egypt. And as he thus gave them a new Sabbath, so did he also give them a new week to fit this new Sabbath. For Dr. A. asserts that God gave the Hebrews at this time just such a week as Mr. F. asserts he gave to Adam; viz., a week made up of the last or seventh day of one week, and the first six days of another week.SOSL 164.2

Mr. Fuller’s theory has this advantage over that of Dr. Akers, that he sets out at the commencement of Adam’s history with a kind of week to which he is able to adhere even to the end of time; while Dr. A. sets out with weeks the first of which allows the reckoning of all the days of the creation week, but which he has to change at the exodus to such as Mr. F. started with; and having once changed the kind of weeks in order to bring in what he terms the Jewish Sabbath, he is obliged to adhere to this kind of week after his so-called Jewish Sabbath has, as he teaches, been nailed to the cross.SOSL 164.3

But, whereas Mr. Fuller has a week at the exodus with two Sabbaths in it, Dr. Akers makes the same week to consist of only six days! There is here an ugly crook in each of these theories, and the reader can decide for himself which to choose, as they are equally true.SOSL 165.1

But Dr. Akers, having cut off the seventh day from the first week of this new order, that he may make the sixth day of that week into what he calls the Jewish Sabbath, next takes the seventh day, thus severed from the mutilated week, and joins it to the first six days of the following week. He is obliged to continue this work of mutilation ever afterward; for his succession of weeks is thenceforward maintained by joining the seventh day of the true week to the first six days of the next one; and he has also to change the numbering of the days; so that he makes the true seventh day into the first day of the Jewish week, and makes a new seventh day out of the sixth day of that week. He does not indeed stop to explain how in that first Jewish week which had but six days they could keep any sort of a seventh day for their Sabbath. And yet he affirms that the Sabbath must be preceded by six days of labor. ^{1Here is Dr. Akers’ statement that the Sabbath must have six days of labor precede it, and also his statement that God gave Israel at the exodus a Sabbath made out of the sixth day of the week.
This he says:
“There must be six work days preceding every regular Sabbath.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 107.
“The exodus was on the sixth day of the ancient week. — Id. p. 150.
“The exodus occurred on Saturday and ... it was then constituted the seventh of the week.” — Id. p. 33.
“From the the exodus, Saturday was given to the Jews as their Sabbath.” — Id. p. 150.}SOSL 165.2

Certainly that form which Mr. F. has given to this theory has one decided advantage over the form given it by Dr. A. For Mr. F. sets out to show that the day of God’s rest is rightly called first day of the week even from Adam ‘s time, and so he comes down to New-Testament times, and, as he thinks, identifies the day with the first day of the week, there mentioned some eight times. But Dr. A. maintains that God’s rest-day was the seventh day of the week, as reckoned by Adam, yet makes it his grand object to identify this day as the New-Testament first-day of the week. So that what began in Paradise as the seventh day of the original week, appears in the New Testament as first day of the week!SOSL 165.3

Having stated the theories of Dr. Akers and Mr. Fuller, it will be proper now to state that of Dr. Jennings, with such arguments in its support as are not made use of by Dr. Akers. For Mr. Fuller’s theory is really a modification of Dr. Akers’; while the latter is but a modification of that of Dr. Jennings.SOSL 166.1

The theory of Dr. Jennings recognizes the institution of the Sabbath at the close of creation; but like those already stated, it asserts that the Sabbath observed by the Hebrew people was not the same as the Sabbath of the Lord ordained in Paradise. But Dr. J. places the origin of the so-called Jewish Sabbath, not at the exodus from Egypt, as does Dr. A., but at the fall of the manna, one month subsequent to that event. Dr. J. thinks it very probable that the patriarchal Sabbath was the day after the Sabbath observed by the Hebrews. Such is the theory of Dr. J. He is very modest in its statement. Those arguments which Dr. A. has borrowed from Dr. J. will be answered in considering the theory of Dr. A. But that one peculiar to Dr. J’s position will be considered in this place.SOSL 166.2

His argument that the Lord gave to Israel a new Sabbath, rests principally on the following statement:SOSL 166.3

That the manna fell for six days; that the following day was the Sabbath, ever afterward observed by Israel; in other words, that it was Saturday; and that the day before the six-days’ fall of man, which was simply one week before the first Jewish Sabbath, was spent by them in marching, so that it could not have been a Sabbath until set apart as such by God at the fall of the manna.SOSL 166.4

Now it is remarkable that, while Dr. Jennings, writing one hundred years since, evidently furnished Dr. Akers the idea that Sunday, and not Saturday, is the true seventh day, Dr. Akers should first deny the alleged fact on which Dr. J. rested his whole argument; and should even deny the particular point which Dr. J. tried to prove, viz., that the Sabbath was changed at the fall of the manna, yet should take up the change of the Sabbath from Sunday to Saturday as asserted by Dr. J., and place it one month earlier, resting the reason of it upon a different basis.SOSL 167.1

Thus, Dr. J. asserts that the Sabbath was changed at the fall of the manna, and proves it by the statement that the children of Israel marched from Elim to Sin one week before the Sabbath rest of Exodus 16. But Dr. Akers denies this march of Israel on Saturday, and asserts that it was on Monday that they made this journey, and, as we have seen, places the change of the Sabbath itself one month earlier, at the Exodus from Egypt. ^{1Here is Dr. Jennings’ assertion that Israel marched from Elim to Sin on Saturday: “It moreover appears, that that day week, before the day which was thus marked out for a Sabbath by its not raining manna, was not observed as a Sabbath. On the fifteenth day of the second month they journeyed from Elim, and came at night into the wilderness of Sin (verse 1), where, on their murmuring for want of provisions, the Lord that night sent them quails; and the next morning, which was the sixteenth day, it rained manna, and so for six days successively; on the seventh, which was the twenty-second it rained none, and that day they were commanded to keep for their Sabbath; and if this had been the Sabbath in course, according to the paradisiacal computation, the fifteenth must have been so too, and would have been doubtless kept as a Sabbath, and not have been any part of it spent in marching from Elim to Sin.” — Jewish Antiquities, p. 320, 321, book 3, chap.3.
But Dr. Akers denies the very foundation of Dr. Jennings’ theory, by asserting that the Jews marched from Elim to Sin on Monday. Thus he says: “The Jews did not manifest a familiar acquaintance with their Sabbath in the early part of their history. They came into the wilderness of Sin on the fifteenth day of the second month after departing out of the land of Egypt. This day, in numbering fifty days from the second day of unleavened bread, was required to be Monday, the second day of the Jewish week.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 118.
While Jennings and Akers thus contradict each other in attempting to prove Sunday the true seventh day, a competent witness, Dr. E. O. Haven, President of the University of Michigan, bears the following testimony respecting their theories: “There are some who maintain that it can be chronologically demonstrated that, on account of some confusion in time of disaster, revolution, and ignorance, the Jews are themselves mistaken, and that the genuine Sabbath is our Sunday, wrongly called ‘the first day of the week.’ There is no good reason, however, for denying that the Jewish Sabbath is the true seventh day, reckoning from the creation of man, and that the Christian Sunday is the first day of the Hebrew week, or of the genuine week.” — The Pillars of Truth, p. 89.}SOSL 167.2

One word more should be spoken relative to the march from Elim to Sin. Exodus 16:1. Drs. J. and A. contradict each other on this point, though each is using his best endeavors to prove Sunday the seventh day. Dr. J. endeavors to prove the journey upon Saturday, by reckoning back from the Sabbath celebrated in this chapter. But this kind of reckoning leaves the thing in uncertainty; as, first, it cannot be definitely proved that one or more days did not elapse after the arrival at Sin before the fall of the manna; and second, it is not a certainty that the manna fell six days before the Sabbath mentioned in this chapter; as the sixth day here brought to view was certainly the sixth day of the week, and therefore not necessarily the sixth day of the fall of the manna. It was not necessary that the first fall of the manna should be upon the first day of this week. And therefore, even if Dr. A. could positively prove (which he cannot) that the fifteenth day of the second month was Monday, he has even then determined nothing certain as to the beginning of the fall of the manna. And, in like manner, Dr. J. has no clear, well-ascertained fact on which to base the inference that constitutes the substance of his theory.SOSL 168.1

It is remarkable that these two doctors each deny the ground of the other’s position, though each one endeavors to prove Sunday the true seventh-day. But, whereas Dr. J. attempts to establish this change at the fall of the manna, Dr. A denies the very foundation on which it rests, and places this change one month earlier. But Dr. Jennings, who has evidently studied the book of Exodus very intently, to find some place for the change of the Sabbath, deliberately passes over the point selected by Dr. A., in Exodus 12, and sets it one month later. Thus he says: “As to the institution of the Jewish Sabbath, the first account we have of it is in Exodus 16.” — Jewish Antiquities, p.320. And the only reference that he makes to the exodus from Egypt is that it is possible that this Sabbath-day was the day of the week on which Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea. — Id. p. 321.SOSL 168.2

Dr. J’s principal reason for denying that the Sabbath of the Hebrews was identical with the Paradisiacal Sabbath has been considered, and the fact that Dr. A. sets it wholly aside has been shown from his own language. But if Dr. A. and Mr. F. had imitated the modest statement of Dr. J. relative to Sunday as the true seventh day, it would much better accord with the doubtful deductions which, in so positive a manner, they offer to us. But Dr. J. only makes it “a very probable conjecture” that Sunday was the true seventh day. Thus, he frankly acknowledges his theory to be based on probabilities, to say the most that can be said, and that it does not rest upon certainties. ^{1Here are his words: “For if, as we shall presently make appear to be probable, the Jewish Sabbath was appointed to be kept the day before the patriarchal Sabbath, then the first day of the week, or the Christian Sabbath, is the seventh day, computed from the beginning of time, and the same with the Sabbath instituted and observed by the patriarchs in commemoration of the work of creation.” — Jewish Antiquities, p. 320.
“It is a very probable conjecture, that the day which the heathens in general consecrated to the worship and honor of their chief god, the sun, which, according to our computation, was the first day of the week, was the ancient Paradisiacal Sabbath.” — Id. p. 322.}SOSL 169.1

One remarkable fact pertaining to Dr. Jennings’ theory should here be noticed: He holds that Sunday is the Sabbath which was observed in Paradise, and that it was binding, as such, till superseded at the fall of the manna by Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. He also holds that the Saturday next preceding the one marked by the cessation of the manna, Israel marched from Elim to Sin; which assertion he uses as a clear proof that it was not then the Sabbath. He further holds that the manna began to fall the next day after that march.SOSL 170.1

So, according to Dr. Jennings, the manna began to fall upon the morning of Sunday, the true Sabbath of the Lord, as observed from creation down to that time; which original Sabbath was not superseded by the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday, till six days after this, at the first cessation of the manna.SOSL 170.2

And Dr. Jennings’ theory requires him to believe that the people went out and gathered manna for the first time on Sunday morning, though it was the Sabbath which God hallowed in Eden, and which had been observed down to that point; and though the act of gathering manna upon that day is one that directly violated the Sabbath, as this chapter plainly teaches (Exodus 16:4-30), yet the people did this without one expression of surprise that God should send them bread to be gathered upon his holy Sabbath!SOSL 170.3

And observe this remarkable fact, that whereas they had just spent six days in labor, ending, according to Dr. J., with this march on Saturday, from Elim to Sin, now they begin a second six days’ labor on the morning of Sunday, which was the Lord’s Sabbath day, which continues till the day on which the manna was withheld. In other words, twelve days elapsed between the ancient Sabbath of the Lord and the newly-ordained Sabbath of the Jews And during this period, but six days before the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday, had superseded Sunday, the Sabbath of the Lord, the people spontaneously, and with the divine sanction, violate the true Sabbath by gathering their first manna on that day.SOSL 170.4

So that, whereas Dr. Akers changes the Sabbath by having one week consist of only six days; and whereas Mr. F. changes the Sabbath by having one week that has two Sabbaths in it; Dr. Jennings changes the Sabbath by having one week constituted of thirteen days! And he has the manna begin to fall on God’s seventh day, which is the seventh day of this thirteen-day week! And as if it were not enough to teach that God’s Sabbath was by divine authority removed, to give place to the Sabbath of the Jews, he teaches that it was violated six days before the Jewish Sabbath came into existence; and all this was effected by the wonderful miracle of the manna!SOSL 171.1

Dr. Jennings’ alleged change of the Sabbath rests upon the supposed employment of Saturday as a day of marching one week before the first Sabbath marked by the cessation of the manna. But to carry out his theory, he has the manna begin to fall on Sunday which he calls the true seventh day, and the original Sabbath, and has the people gather it that day, though the new Sabbath was not instituted for five days after that time! God sent the manna to prove the people whether they would walk in his law or not. Exodus 16:4. And according to Dr. Jennings, the very first day of the manna was the original Sabbath! And so, in the providence of God, they were called to do that which his law forbade!SOSL 171.2

Leaving Dr. J., let us now consider the position of Mr. Fuller.SOSL 171.3

Mr. F. holds that Sunday was Adam’s first day of the week, and Saturday was his seventh. He also holds that Adam kept Sunday for the Sabbath. This order continued till the exodus of Israel from Egypt, when, by divine direction, the children of Israel changed, not the order of the week, but only the day of the Sabbath, adopting Saturday, the seventh day of the week, in the place of Sunday, the first day of the week. He proves this assertion by referring the reader to the work or Dr. Akers, who claims to have made an exact count of the days from creation to the exodus. But it is remarkable that Dr. A., in this exact count of the days, reckons the first six days of the creation week, which Mr. F. asserts ought not to be reckoned. Also, that he sets out with Monday as the first day of the week, and Sunday as the seventh; and when the exodus takes place, he has one week with only six days in it, in order that he may have the sixth day, or Saturday, thenceforward reckoned as the seventh day, and Sunday, the seventh day, to be, ever after, the first day of the week. Dr. A’s week, thus changed, corresponds exactly to the week which Mr. F. asserts was used by Adam. Mr. Fuller’s book, the “Two Sabbaths,” rests, almost wholly, upon the exact computation of days from creation, which is given in Dr. Akers’ Chronology. But if Dr. A’s calculation is good for anything, it establishes his own reckoning of the week, and disproves and sets aside Mr. F’s order of the week, on which his theory rests. Now it is particularly dishonest in Mr. F. to make the use which he does of Dr. A’s calculation. Mr. F’s argument rests upon the truthfulness of Dr. A’s reckoning of the week from creation. And Dr. A’s reckoning is wholly directed to show that Sunday is the seventh day of the week, as reckoned by Adam, which Mr. F. denies, asserting it to be the first day of that week. Dr. A. professes to be able to count the time from Adam to the exodus so exactly that he can positively prove that Sunday was the seventh day of that entire series of weeks. But when he comes to the exodus, in order to show that the Sabbath observed by Israel was not the ancient Sabbath of the Lord, he he changes the reckoning of the week, and thus makes a week that begins with God’s seventh day and ends with his sixth! and which thus exactly corresponds to Mr. F’s week. And thereupon Mr. F. seizes this result, thus obtained, and gives his readers to understand that Akers’ Chronology proves that this kind of week had been observed without change from the beginning. ^{1Here is Mr. Fuller’s statement which he proves by Dr. A’s “Biblical Chronology” though it expressly contradicts his point: “The sixth and seventh days of the week, mentioned in Exodus 16, when the manna was first given, synchronize with the same days of the original week, thus showing that this period had been carefully preserved from the beginning. (Bib. Chro., pp. 98-121.)” — The Two Sabbaths, pp. 32, 33.
To this statement we would not object were it not that he makes the original week begin with the seventh day and end with the sixth! and of course the week in Exodus 16, which synchronizes with it, is reckoned in the same way. But when he proves this by using Akers’ “Biblical Chronology” which directly contradicts what Mr. F. says, it is an unpardonable departure from rectitude. We have no doubt that God’s weeks, ordained in the beginning, remain unchanged till the present time; but weeks beginning with God’s seventh day and ending with his sixth are “weak and beggarly elements” which never were changed because God never suffered them to exist!} Whereas, Dr. A. avows just the reverse! And Mr. F. rests his theory of a change from Sunday, the first day, to Saturday, the seventh, at the exodus, on this misstatement of Akers’ calculation! How reliable that calculation is, we shall soon consider.SOSL 171.4

Between Mr. F. and Dr. A., the whole truth respecting the original Sabbath is confessed; yet each connects with that part of the truth which he confesses, sufficient error to completely drown it. And each sees the errors of the other, and denies them. Thus Mr. Fuller states that the original week began with Sunday and ended with Saturday; which week, he teaches, has come down to us. This is a very important truth. But he drowns it in an ocean of error, saying, (1) That the first six days of Genesis were not admitted into the original week, (2) That God’s rest-day was the first day of man’s week, (3) the week thus began with God’s seventh day, and ended with his sixth. Thus Mr. F. states two very important truths, and hides them under three strange errors.SOSL 173.1

But Dr. Akers is just the counterpart of Mr. F. He says: The week began with the first day of creation, and thus the Sabbath came upon the seventh day of Adam’s week. And so God’s seventh day and Adam’s seventh day were one and the same.SOSL 173.2

But he covers up these precious truths with an error equally as pernicious as those of Mr. Fuller. Thus he teaches: The first day of the week was Monday, and the seventh day, Sunday. Between the two, however, the whole truth is confessed, and all the errors of both are denied. Thus the truth is acknowledged:SOSL 174.1

1. The original week began with the first day of creation, and ended with the rest-day of the Creator. Adam’s weeks corresponded to this. — Akers.SOSL 174.2

2. Adam’s weeks began with Sunday, and ended with Saturday. — Fuller.SOSL 174.3

3. This week has come down to us unchanged in its reckoning. — Fuller.SOSL 174.4

4. The seventh day of Adam’s week is still sacredly binding upon all mankind. — Akers.SOSL 174.5

Thus Mr. Fuller corrects the error of Dr. Akers that Sunday is the seventh day of the original week; and Dr. Akers shows no countenance to Fuller’s idea that the first six days of Genesis were not counted in the first week; nor to the idea that the first week began with the rest-day of the Lord. According to Dr. Akers, we should observe the seventh day of that week which God gave Adam; which day, according to Fuller, is Saturday, and which week, according to the same writer, has come down to us. unchanged.SOSL 174.6

Mr. F. is an outspoken first-day man. Dr. A., on the contrary, is a most decided seventh-day man. Both, however, are earnest champions of Sunday as the true Sabbath. Mr. F. vindicates it on the ground that it is the genuine first day of the week; Dr. A. maintains it because it is the only day that has any right to the designation of seventh day of the week. What is remarkable, Dr. A. vindicates his Sunday-seventh day by an exact count of the days; and Mr. F., who cites this reckoning as reliable, uses it to establish his own theory that Sunday is the first day of the week, and is not the seventh.SOSL 174.7

When the same set of figures can be made to sustain two diverse positions, we may justly suspect some error in the use of the figures, or some sleight of hand and cunning craftiness in the matter somewhere. Let us see how Mr. F. establishes his first day of the week. We shall find it a costly operation on his part; yet it is easy to understand why he enters into it. It is to avoid the difficulties of Dr. Akers’ theory. If the rest-day of the Lord was actually upon the first day of the week, then he can avoid Dr. A’s dilemma of having a week at the exodus with only six days in it, as has Dr. A,; and also when he reaches the New Testament he finds his favorite day bearing the right name — first day of the week — whereas Dr. A. has the ugly fact of finding his genuine seventh day on which Christ arose from the dead, called by inspiration first day of the week. And whereas Dr. A. at the exodus has to change not only the day of the Sabbath, but also the reckoning of the week itself, Mr. F. only has occasion to change the day of the Sabbath, and is able to leave the week unchanged. Yet it is to be noticed as a singular feature of this Sunday-seventh-day theory, that, whereas, Dr. A. and Mr. F. both assert that the Sabbath was changed on the day of the exodus, Dr. A. asserts that it was changed from the seventh day of the week to the sixth day, and Mr. F. asserts that it was changed from the first day to the seventh! Yet each of these gentlemen, by the change which he alleges, establishes the sanctity of Sunday on a firm basis!SOSL 175.1

Mr. F. does not wholly steer clear of difficulty in his theory of Gods rest-day on the first day of the week. His week from Adam to Moses begins with a Sabbath for its first day. And when he changes the Sabbath at the exodus, from first day to seventh, it compels him to put two Sabbaths into one week! That is, the last week in Egypt which began with a first-day Sabbath had its seventh day also made into a Sabbath by the act of setting the Sabbath back from Sunday to Saturday! So here was a very highly-favored week with a Sabbath for the first day and a Sabbath for its last, and with five working days between!SOSL 175.2

But on the whole Mr. F. has fewer difficulties, after the first start, than has Dr. A. As both of them mean to come out in the New Testament, first-day men, it is evident that that process of reasoning which can make God’s rest day, in the beginning, come upon the first day of the original week, will steer clear of a number of very serious difficulties that the Sunday seventh day has to encounter.SOSL 176.1

But let us see what it costs Mr. F. to get started. His grand idea is this: The first day of the original week was the day on which the Creator rested, and which he blessed and sanctified for time to come in memory of that rest. How does he establish this remarkable declaration? By the statement of three palpable untruths as follows:SOSL 176.2

1. That the six days of creation belonged to eternity and were not counted as the first six days of time.SOSL 176.3

2. That Adam’s first day of existence was the Creator’s rest-day.SOSL 176.4

3. That Adam counted the day of the Creator’s rest the first day of the week.SOSL 176.5

These are very remarkable declarations to be made by a student of the Bible. Let us weigh them well.SOSL 176.6

1. Mr. Fuller makes the first of these statements for the alleged reason that time began with Adam’s first day. Let us admit the proof. Now what follows? Simply this: as Adam must have been created quite early on the sixth day, as will presently be proved it follows that the division between time and eternity, on Mr. F’s own showing, does not lie between the sixth day and the seventh, but between the fifth day and the sixth. But it is really no proof at all being simply coined out of his own vain imagination, and never in any way sanctioned by the words of inspiration.SOSL 176.7

The first chapter of Genesis contains a record which commences with what the Holy Spirit calls “THE BEGINNING.” Of what is this the beginning? Of eternity? Mr. F. will not assert it, though he places this beginning in eternity; i.e., he asserts that the events of the six days of creation belong not to time, but to eternity. Perhaps Mr. F. will say that “THE BEGINNING,” is simply the beginning of our world’s history. But is it not true that God caused Moses to count time from that very point? What if Adam could not of his own knowledge count the number of days which preceded his existence? Could not Moses do it by the Spirit of inspiration? And cannot we do it now by Moses’ help?SOSL 176.8

But observe, Mr. F. has the last six days of the eternity of the past, numbered, measured, and recorded. Then he teaches that time begins where those six days end. But is not eternity, as distinguished from time, unmeasured duration? And is not time, as distinguished from eternity, that part of duration which is measured by the Bible? And if these definitions be accepted as just, is it not manifest that “THE BEGINNING,” of which Moses speaks, is the commencement of measured duration; i.e., the beginning of time, the point which marked it, being the creative word that gave existence to the heavens and the earth?SOSL 177.1

Mr. F. says that the six days of Genesis 1, are the last six days of the eternity of the past; we say that they are the first six days of time. Which is right? If the remarks already made have failed to settle the question, let the reader give attention to the following point which cannot be evaded. Mr. F. acknowledges the rest-day of the Creator to belong to time, but he denies this of the days which God employed in the work of creation. But observe that the day of God’s rest is called the seventh day. Genesis 2:1-3. This shows that the rest day of the Lord belongs to a series which commenced with what Moses calls “THE BEGINNING.” Mr. F. must therefore admit that the six days belong to time, or else assert that the seventh day belongs to eternity. As he cannot ascribe the seventh day to eternity, he must acknowledge the six days of creation to be the first six days of time.SOSL 177.2

The first of the three propositions on which Mr. F. bases his assertion that God’s rest-day was the first day of the week, is, therefore, proved to be false. Now let us examine the second of the three.SOSL 178.1

2. He says that the day on which God rested was the first day of Adam’s existence. But for this to be true, Adam must have been created on the seventh day of the week; or, if such a thing be conceivable, he was created on the very line which divides the seventh from the sixth. But neither of these conclusions is truthful. Adam was created on the sixth day of the week, and at a period in the day when very much of it remained unexpired. That he was created on the sixth day is plainly taught in Genesis 1:26-31. After the creation of Adam, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden, in trusting it to him to be dressed and kept. Then he stated to him the conditions of his probation. Genesis 2:15-17. And after this, the Lord God brought to him every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, “to see what he would call them.” “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.” Genesis 2:19, 20. This must have required several hours of time. When Adam had thus viewed “every living creature,” and given to each its proper name, he found not one that was fitted to be his own helper. So it is added that “for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” Verse 20. Next we are told that God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. While he thus slept, God took one of his ribs, and of that rib formed Eve. Then he brought her to Adam, who at once gives her a name, and recognizes her as his helper which he had failed to find in all the creatures that he had viewed and named. Verse 23. And God gave her to Adam for a wife. We are informed in Genesis 1:28; 2:24; Matthew 19:4, 5, of what God said to them on this occasion. The marriage of Adam and Eve is placed, by Genesis 1:28-31, on the sixth day of the week, the day of their creation. And Genesis 5:1, 2, plainly teaches that the creation of Eve was upon the same day with that of Adam, and intimates unequivocally that their marriage occurred on that very day. After all this, God announced the food for man and beast, and when everything was completed, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE SIXTH DAY.” Genesis 1:28-31. Let us enumerate the several events which followed the creation of Adam on the sixth day of the week:SOSL 178.2

(1) God placed him in Eden to dress and keep it, which implies that he gave him instruction on the subject.SOSL 179.1

(2) He stated to him the conditions of his probation.SOSL 179.2

(3) “All cattle,” “every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air,” were brought to Adam for names.SOSL 179.3

(4) Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam while he created Eve.SOSL 179.4

(5) Then Adam and Eve were united in marriage.SOSL 179.5

(6) Then God announced to man the gift of his food.SOSL 179.6

(7) Then God saw that everything he had made was very good, and the sixth day of creation closed.SOSL 179.7

To these facts should be added the announcement which follows their accomplishment: “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.” Genesis 2:1-3.SOSL 179.8

What shall we say to the statement of Mr. Fuller that the day on which God rested was the first day of Adam’s life? Shall we not pronounce it a most inexcusable falsehood? Did Adam take a wife the day before his own existence commenced? Did God cause the animals to pass in succession before Adam that he might give them names suited to their several organizations, and yet no Adam exist till the following day? Did God place Adam upon probation and threaten him with death in case he sinned, and Adam himself have no existence till the ensuing day? And what about in trusting him with the garden before there was any Adam to intrust with it? Will Mr. F. deny that these things required time? Dare he assert that they took place on the day of the Creator’s rest? But whatever answer he may return to these questions, we have the plain testimony of Genesis 1:26-31, which shows that the events of chap. 2:7-25, transpired upon the sixth day of creation. We have now examined the second proposition on which Mr. F. bases his assertion that God rested from his labor on the first day of the week. The reader will agree with us that this second proposition is of the same character as the first, an inexcusably false statement. Mr. F’s third proposition furnishes the remaining proof on which he relies to show that the Creator rested upon the first day of the original week.SOSL 179.9

Here it is:SOSL 180.1

3. That Adam reckoned the day of the Creator’s rest the first day of the week. But how does Mr. F. know this statement to be true? The Bible says nothing of this kind. Indeed, the real ground of this assertion is found in the two propositions already discussed. For if, as Mr. F. asserts, the six days of creation belong to eternity, then the Creator’s rest-day was the first day of time; and if time began with Adam’s existence, and his existence began with the seventh day, then we may well conclude that Adam reckoned God’s rest-day as the first day of the week. But these two propositions are absolutely false. For the first week of time, as has been fully shown, was made out of the six days of creation, and the rest-day of the Creator; whence it follows that that rest-day is rightly termed in the Bible “THE SEVENTH DAY.” Genesis 2:2, 3. And that Adam’s existence began quite early on the sixth day has been clearly proved. It is certain, therefore, that Adam could not reckon the rest-day of the Lord, as first day of the week on the ground that it was the first day of time, when the record shows it to have been the seventh day; and it is equally certain that he could not reckon it the first day of the week as being the first day of his own existence when it was not his first day, but his second. To say, therefore, that God’s rest-day was the first day of time, is to say that Adam was created in eternity. To say that the week began with Adam’s first day, is to assert that it began with the sixth day of creation. And to assert that God rested upon the first day of the week on the authority of the three propositions already examined, is to handle the word of God deceitfully. The theory of Mr. Fuller that God’s Sabbath is the first day of the original week, is therefore not founded in truth, and only exists in consequence of his corrupting the word of God to justify his own violation of the fourth commandment. Several minor points should be mentioned before we turn from Mr. F. to Dr. Akers.SOSL 180.2

1. When God appointed the seventh day to a holy use, for sanctify signifies to set apart to a holy use, Adam and Eve must have been addressed, for they were the ones to obey the appointment. But the day thus appointed by God was the seventh day (Genesis 2:2, 3), which name, it is certain, was that used by God in the appointment; and he must have used the term to those who understood it as he did, or it would have misled them.SOSL 181.1

2. The appointment of the seventh day for the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3), necessarily established weeks, and made the Sabbath to be the last day of the seven, six days of labor coming first. And the week thus created, and the Sabbath thus appointed, were respectively a model of the Creator’s week, and a memorial of his sacred rest. But Mr. F. alleges that the six days of creation do not form a part of the first week of time. He also asserts that the first day of time was given to Adam for the Sabbath. What was there, then, to show when another Sabbath would come? if it be said that it would come in one week, who, on Mr. F’s ground, could prove the existence of weeks at that time? for Mr. F. destroys the Lord’s week by disconnecting the six days of Genesis 1 and the seventh day of Genesis 2, giving those to eternity, and this to time. And he nullifies the appointment of weeks in Genesis 2:1-3 where the setting apart of the seventh day as the Sabbath really divides time into periods of seven days; for in the face of the plain statement of this text that it was the seventh day, Mr. F. asserts that it was the first day thus set apart. Now this being the case, as he had destroyed God’s original week, and as he destroys also the week which is created by the appointment of the seventh day by substituting first-day for seventh, it is fair to ask him how often this first day comes. If he answers that it comes weekly, we ask him how he proves the existence of weeks after he has destroyed the week which God observed, and has also destroyed the weeks ordained by him in appointing the seventh day to a holy use.SOSL 181.2

If it be said that Adam constructed a week in imitation of God’s week, we ask how this can be when the very existence of God’s week is denied? God had a period of six days only, a very poor model for a week. Or, if we give him seven days, we do it by joining the last six days of the eternity of the past with the first day of time; a most marvelous week indeed! But if we grant the existence of such a week as that, how poor an imitation of it did Adam construct! For whereas God has a week which ends with a Sabbath, Mr. F. has a week which begins with one! Nay, this is not all. Adam does not wait for God’s week to close, but he seizes the last day of God’s week and makes it the first day of his first week! So that God’s rest-day formed a part of God’s week and a part of man’s! But it is folly to talk of such weeks. They have no more existence in the divine plan than has the first-day Sabbath which they were framed to bolster up. As Mr. F’s theory destroys the institution of the week at the very place where God set it up, we ask him again to tell when his first-day Sabbath would come the second time? He calls the Creator’s rest-day the first day of time; but we have proved it to be the seventh. He calls it the first day of the week; we have proved it to be the last. He calls it the first day of Adam’s life; we have proved it to be the second. To establish a first day Sabbath in Eden, it is necessary to assume each of these falsehoods to be a truth; and it is also necessary to destroy the institution of the week in order to set up this costly pretender to Sabbatic honors. But when it has been thus made sacred in the estimation of men, who can tell how often the day would come? As first day of time, it could never return; as first day of Adam’s life, he could never again behold it; as first day of the week, it could never return, for the week is destroyed in the very effort to make the rest-day of God its first day. And there is one other reason why the day can never come the second time in any one of these capacities. It is this: it never yet came thus the first time.SOSL 182.1

3. One thing more in Mr. F. must be noticed before we leave him for Dr. Akers. He asserts the change of the Sabbath in Egypt, inasmuch as Israel, at the fall of the manna, kept the seventh day (Exodus 16), whereas, at creation, God ordained the first day. But what a sentiment is this! The Scriptures just as explicitly represent God as setting apart the seventh day in the beginning (Genesis 2:2, 3) as they represent Israel, at the fall of the manna, observing the seventh day as a sacred rest. And the manner in which Mr. F. has attempted to transform the seventh day of Genesis 2:2, 3, into first day has been proved to be inexcusable and wicked.SOSL 183.1

Mr. Fuller’s idea of God’s rest-day constituted the Paradisiacal first day of the week having been shown to be a most pernicious and costly error, let us next see how well Dr. Akers will succeed in proving that Sunday, which Mr. Fuller asserts is the day of God’s rest, is really the seventh day of the original week. How does Dr. Akers prove that Saturday, which the Jews have ever kept as the seventh day, is not such, and that Sunday, which they have always counted first day of the week, is really the true seventh day?SOSL 183.2

Dr. Akers goes down to Egypt for help. Indeed, Egypt is the place of resort for all this class of expositors. There, or in the adjacent, and equally significant, wilderness of Sin, four classes of Sunday advocates find evidence that the Sabbath was changed, though each uses arguments in proof that conflict with those of all the rest, and though three different times and places are assigned for the occurrence of this event which seems to them so very desirable and important.SOSL 184.1

The Jews now observe Saturday as the Sabbath of the Lord, and as the seventh day of the original week. It is an indisputable fact that the Hebrew people have never lost the identical day which they observed at the fall of the manna. Saturday is therefore the day which the sixteenth of Exodus calls the Sabbath. Hence it becomes necessary to show that on the day of unleavened bread in Egypt, or at the crossing of the Red Sea, or at the fall of the manna, no matter which, if only one of these points can be made certain, the true Sabbath was taken from Israel, and a temporary one given to that people in exchange!SOSL 184.2

How remarkable is this statement! God took away his Sabbath, and in place of it gave his own chosen people a shadowy Sabbath, designed to last only from the exodus till the crucifixion! That is to say, he gave Israel a Sabbath of small account, but took from them his own hallowed rest-day! He forbade their labor on a ceremonial Sabbath, but gave them permission to do all manner of work upon that day which he had consecrated to a holy use in memory of the creation of the heavens and the earth! For his own chosen people he turned his own rest-day into a day of common business, and elevated a common working day to be their Sabbath! The Gentiles around retained the ancient Sabbath, but God’s chosen people had it taken from them, and a day, which had been nothing but a common working day up to that time, given them to take its place! “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?” Paul answered this question by saying: “Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.” Romans 3:1, 2. But if we can believe Dr. Akers, one of the “advantages” consisted in having the Sabbath of the Lord taken from them, and a ceremonial Sabbath given them in its stead!SOSL 184.3

But why does Dr. A. feel so great an interest in wresting from the hands of Israel the rest-day of the Lord, and in proving that they kept the day next before it? Simply that Sunday, which comes next after the day kept by ancient Israel, may be shown to have a foundation in the Scriptures. And it is to be observed that those who change the Sabbath at or near the exodus, give themselves no trouble to prove its second change at the resurrection of Christ. For if the Jews did not have the true seventh day, but did have for a Sabbath the day that next preceded that real seventh day, then the New Testament first day of the week is actually that seventh day which God hallowed in Eden, and the keeping of Sunday is the observance of the ancient Sabbath of the Lord!SOSL 185.1

But how does Dr. Akers prove that at the exodus Israel gave up the Paradisiacal Sabbath and adopted in its stead the day next preceding it? He does not assert that this change is expressly stated in the Bible. But he proceeds to count the exact number of days from creation to the sixteenth day of the month Abib of that year that Israel left Egypt. Having done this, he finds that this sixteenth day of Abib was the seventh day of the week in regular succession from that seventh day on which God rested in the beginning. But the day before this, viz., the fifteenth day of the month, by divine direction the children of Israel went forth out of Egypt, taking “their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.” Exodus 12:34. And they journeyed that day from Rameses to Succoth. Exodus 12:37; Numbers 33:3-5. But Dr. Akers asserts that this day on which they marched from Rameses to Succoth (carrying on their shoulders their dough and their kneading troughs bound up in their clothes), viz., the 15th day of Abib, was the first Sabbath of the new order. So that the day of their departure out of Egypt being thus observed as the Sabbath by divine direction, the next day, which was the true seventh day in regular succession from the day of the Creator’s rest, was thenceforward reckoned the first day of the week; and the previous day, the sixth day of the week being established as the seventh day, was ever afterward observed as such by Israel. Whence it is that the Jews have Saturday, the true sixth day of the week, for their Sabbath; while Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, is God’s hallowed rest-day, the true seventh day of the week.SOSL 185.2

Thus the children of Israel first took up their peculiar Sabbath, which was the sixth day of the week as they had previously reckoned it, on the fifteenth day of the first month, being the very day that they left Egypt, and God so ordered the year that ever afterward the fifteenth day of the first month did recur upon the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday. And the day which follows it, being our Sunday, or Christian Sabbath, is the seventh day of the week from creation down.SOSL 186.1

But how does Dr. A. so exactly count the weeks from Genesis 1 to Exodus 12, that he can tell to a day how much time elapsed from the rest-day of the Creator in Eden, to the first day of unleavened bread in Egypt! How does he establish with certainty even the number of years, to say nothing of the exact number of days?SOSL 186.2

1. He does not do this by using the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures; for he discards this as utterly unreliable.SOSL 186.3

2. But, in the place of the Hebrew chronology, he adopts that of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament made at Alexandria in Egypt, some two or three centuries before Christ.SOSL 186.4

3. Nevertheless he confesses the Septuagint to have various errors in its numbers. Thus he says: “The Septuagint numbers, like the dates of other copies of the inspired testimony, have been subject more or less, to alterations; and, therefore, they may sometimes need correction.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 16.SOSL 187.1

4. This is a most important confession. Dr. A. undertakes to tell the age of the world to a day at the time of the exodus. To do this he discards the numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures, and adopts those of the Septuagint, and at the same time confesses that the Septuagint sometimes needs correction itself. How about establishing the age of the world to a day by a standard that needs itself to be corrected before it will even give the number of years correctly?SOSL 187.2

5. It is worthy of observation that of the nineteen periods which make up the chronology of the world, from creation to the exodus, all but five are different in the Septuagint from the same numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures. And it is further to be noticed that the Septuagint makes twenty periods instead of nineteen, by inserting the name of Cainan between that of Arphaxad and that of Salah (Genesis 11:12); and it ascribes to him the period of 130 years! Moreover, the space from the creation to the exodus, which the Hebrew Scriptures make to be 2513 years, the Septuagint makes to be 3899, a difference of 1386 years! Certainly, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which from creation to the exodus differs from the original in its reckoning of chronological dates to the extent of 1386 years, ought to have great evidence of correctness before it supersedes that original.SOSL 187.3

6. But while Dr. Akers, in determining the age of the world to a day, adopts as his standard the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, he gives evidence that he sees the need of correcting this standard. For the Septuagint chronology makes Methuselah survive the flood some fourteen years! Compare Genesis 7:7; 8:18; 1 Peter 3:20. He remedies this remarkable error by following those copies of the Septuagint, which, in the case of Methuselah, conform to the numbers of the Hebrew Scriptures. But surely these things are quite sufficient to evince that whoever claims to give the age of the world to a day, even from Adam to Moses, puts forth a most unreasonable pretension, particularly when he attempts to establish that claim by setting aside the numbers of the Hebrew text, and adopting in their stead those of the Septuagint, though constrained to acknowledge that the Septuagint has been subject to alterations, and that it therefore needs some corrections!SOSL 187.4

But Dr. Akers has unbounded confidence in determining the exact age of the world, even to a day. Thus he affirms that the world was 7400 years old on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 1855. (Biblical Chronology p. 8.) He fixes the resurrection of Christ on Sunday, March 28, A. D. 28, in the year of the world 5573. During this time, he says there were just 2,035,369 days. (Biblical Chronology, p. 31.)SOSL 188.1

The age of the world at the commencement of the Christian era is given by Dr. Akers to a day. Thus he says:SOSL 188.2

“A M. stands for the year of the world. This era began, according to the chronology here adopted, 5545 years, 3 months, and 19 days, before the common era of Christianity.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 41.SOSL 188.3

Dr. Akers thus claims to give exact results, even to a day, covering the entire period, not merely from the creation of the exodus, but even to the resurrection of Christ, and also thence to the present time. He frames a system of chronology unlike that of any other writer on the subject. He sets aside the Hebrew original and takes the Septuagint translation, which he acknowledges sometimes needs correcting, and which differs from the Hebrew text in the space from the creation to the exodus to the amount of 1386 years. And in the entire period from the creation to the Christian era, it differs 1426 years! Dr. Akers does, therefore, assert the Hebrew records to be utterly unreliable, at least for a great portion of this space! And he corrects them by the Septuagint, which he acknowledges sometimes needs itself to be corrected! But he is not inadequate to the task! The Hebrew numbers he corrects by the Septuagint, and the Septuagint by such authorities as he decides to be correct where the Septuagint is in error!SOSL 188.4

But that which seems to be the most extraordinary feature of the case is this: Dr. Akers can reckon the whole time from creation to the present time so accurately that he can tell the present age of the world to a day! And he can so exactly count the time from the first Sabbath in Eden to the first day of unleavened bread in Egypt, that he is absolutely certain that that day was the original Sabbath! And he is able to continue this exact reckoning to the day of Christ’s resurrection, which, by Dr. Akers’ count, is the two million, thirty-five thousand, three hundred sixty-ninth (2,035,369th) day from creation! Now if this sum be divided by seven, the number of days in a week, it will give just two hundred and ninety thousand, seven hundred and sixty seven (290,767) weeks as the result; thus showing that the day of the resurrection of Christ was the seventh day of the week from the creation of the world! ^{1Dr. Akers says: “The day of the resurrection of Christ has been chosen as a fixed point in chronology. The testimony — which shall be adduced in its proper place — requires for this event, Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, A. D. 28; that is, A. M. p. 4741: and the same day of the week, the sixteenth of Abib, or Nisan, A. M. 5573. If from Sunday, the said sixteenth of Abib inclusive, the weeks be reversed through the said years of the world, to the first Sabbath of Genesis, there will be found just 290,767; and the number of days to the first day of Genesis inclusive, will be 2,035,369. And if the same number of days be reversed from Sunday, the said twenty-eighth of March, A. J. P.4741, the last one will be Monday, the fifteenth of September, requiring the first Sabbath in Julian time, on Sunday, the twenty-first of said month. (See the first year of the cycle.) This is one way in which the first Sabbath of the Bible is proved to correspond to our Sunday.” — Biblical Chronology, pp. 31, 32.}SOSL 189.1

But the reader will ask what we are to do with the fact that the day which Dr. Akers has thus proved by exact count from creation to be the seventh day of the week, is by four inspired writers called “FIRST DAY of the week?” Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1, 2, 9; Luke 23:56; 24:1; John 20:1, 19. This is the very question which Dr. Akers has written his large book to answer. His reckoning of the exact number of days, he is confident, is absolutely right. So that must stand, and Sunday is the seventh day of the week from the creation of the world! But were not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, inspired men? And do not they call this day “first day of the week”? What if they do? Shall that prove that Dr. Akers is incorrect in his reckoning even to the extent of just one day? No indeed! The thing is impossible!SOSL 190.1

But the four evangelists say that this day was “the first day of the week,” and three of them state distinctly that the Sabbath was the day previous. How then can Dr. A. boldly assert that the day called first day of the week in the New Testament is the true seventh day, and the real Sabbath of the Lord? He does not assert that the four evangelists told a downright falsehood. He does not even mean to insinuate that they were uninspired men. But he does mean to stand to his exact count of the days from creation, whereby he has proved to his own satisfaction that Sunday is the seventh day. There must be some way, therefore, discovered to reconcile the evangelists with this accurate count of the days, or they will be convicted of a very grave error!SOSL 190.2

One thing which makes Dr. Akers very certain that he is right in this count of the days from creation is the fact that reversing, as he terms it, the weeks for this whole period, he finds the first day of time to have been Monday, and of course, the first seventh day would in that case be Sunday. But that all may place a proper estimate upon this reversing process, it is only necessary to remark that Dr. A. constructs a system of chronology which assumes that Monday was the first day of the week, and which is everywhere reckoned in accordance with that idea. Now a reversing of his weeks, i.e., a reckoning of them backward to the day from which he first started, will indeed show that starting point to have been Monday, but will not prove that that was the day on which God created the heavens and the earth.SOSL 190.3

And it is remarkable that Dr. Akers not only claims to establish Sunday as the seventh day by his own peculiar system of chronology which makes the world to have been created Sept. 15, and to have been 3899 years old at the exodus, but he also takes the Rabbinical era of the world, which makes the age of the world 2114 at the exodus instead of 3899, as represented by his chronology, and by this system he also shows that Sunday was the original seventh day. He holds, indeed, that the Rabbinical system of reckoning time by lunar months was wrong, but he says: “There is nothing more certain in chronology, than, according to the established number and measure of Rabbinical years, in common use, that the first day in the whole series began on Monday, the 7th of October, A. J. P. 953. Let the days, both of Julian and Rabbinical years, be counted from that beginning, till 771,945 are told; and the last one in the Julian line will be the said Saturday, the 27th of March, A. J. P. 3067; and in the Rabbinical line it will be the said 15th of Abib, Rab. A. M. 2114, making just 110,277 weeks and 6 days, thereby demonstrating, according to their own calendar, that Sunday, the 16th of said Abib, corresponded to the original Sabbath.” — Biblical Chronology, pp. 32, 33.SOSL 191.1

But Dr. Akers gives us too much proof. It is certain that if Dr. A. is right in fixing the creation upon Sept. 15, then the Rabbins are wrong, who fix it upon Oct. 7. For though we leave out of the account the immense difference of the two chronologies from creation to the exodus, one making it 3899, and the other only 2114, and confine ourselves solely to the day on which each assert the creation to have taken place, we shall have the most convincing proof that this system of counting days from the creation, which can show Sunday to be the seventh day of the week, is certainly unreliable and deceptive. Only look at the case. If creation was upon Sept. 15th, the Oct. 7 was not the day of creation. Twenty-two days intervene between these two dates. But if the world was created B. C. 5545, on the fifteenth day of September, as exactly defined in Dr. Akers’ book, or, if it was created Oct. 7, some 1785 years later, as the Rabbinical era indicates, it is all alike to Dr. A. In either case he can prove positively that Sunday is the true seventh day.SOSL 191.2

It is not at all likely that either of these years, or either of the precise points in the year, is the exact date of the creation. But if we grant one of them to be the true date, we must hold the other to be false. Yet Dr. Akers can prove that Sunday is the true seventh day, no matter which of these conflicting eras we adopt. One of them is certainly false. And neither can be proved to be right. But if we grant one of them to be right, and thereby declare the other to be false, which follows as a matter of necessity, then we have the singular spectacle of a venerable Doctor of Divinity counting the exact number of days from creation from a false starting point, and thereby proving Sunday the true seventh day! and at the same time counting the exact number of days from another starting point, which may also be a false date, and proving from this date also that the original seventh day was Sunday!SOSL 192.1

What shall we say to these things? Is not every word established by the mouth of two or three witnesses? Has not Dr. A. produced two witnesses (as good at least as the two produced when Christ was upon trial) to prove that Sunday is the true seventh-day? And how will the four evangelists be able to meet these witnesses of such undoubted veracity?SOSL 192.2

But if Sunday can be shown to be the seventh day from a starting point which is false, what evidence have we that Dr. Akers’ wonderful exactness in counting amounts to anything? He starts which Monday in each case as the first day of the week, and comes out at the close of his computation with Sunday as the seventh day, and indeed with Sunday as the Sabbath every week through the whole period. And when, to use his own expression, he reverses those weeks, i.e., reckons the time backward to his starting point, he finds Sunday to be the seventh day each time, and find the first day of the entire series to be Monday. Is not this sufficient proof that he is right? Rather, what does it amount to, after all? He reverses a series which his own ingenuity has constructed. And unquestionably, in tracing back weeks of his own construction, he will come out just as he started.SOSL 192.3

But he has this grand difficulty to overcome: that when he reaches the resurrection, which event stands at the very termination if his chain, he finds Sunday, as himself acknowledges, called by the four evangelists “first day of the week.” At the commencement of his chain, Sunday was the “seventh day;” he keeps the reckoning exact to a day, and at the end of his chain, behold, the Scriptures mark the day as “first day of the week.” And, instead of allowing their testimony to stand, and confessing that he must have started wrong when he fixed Monday as the day of creation, Dr. A. is sure that the day called “first day of the week” by the evangelists is the true “seventh day” after all and he is nothing daunted by the fact that at the close of his long chain of reckoning, the day which he asserts was the veritable “seventh day” on which God rested, is by inspiration called “first day of the week.”SOSL 193.1

And yet what a surprising spectacle this presents! Dr. Akers, having reckoned back to the beginning, and forward from the beginning, and the one reckoning happily agreeing exactly with the other, he is so convinced of its truthfulness that he confidently asserts that the “seventh day” mentioned at the beginning of his long reckoning is Sunday, notwithstanding four inspired men who write at the very close of the chain, do, as he confesses, call this very day the “first day of the week”!SOSL 193.2

His confidence in his reckoning is greatly confirmed by the fact that he can take the Rabbinical computation of time, and show from that that the creation was upon Monday, and the first Sabbath upon Sunday; so that whether the creation of the world was Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it makes no difference, as an exact count of the days from either date makes Sunday to be the original Sabbath! This is worse than Mr. Fuller’s act of proving that the original Sabbath was upon the first day of the week, by the use of Dr. Akers’ figures which make Sunday to be the seventh day. For the two can be in a certain sense reconciled by the following statement:SOSL 194.1

Mr. Fuller’s weeks begin one day earlier than do those of Dr. Akers. But Dr. Akers has one more week than has Mr. F., who refuses to count the first six days of Genesis 1.SOSL 194.2

But when Dr. A. proves Sunday to be the true seventh day with equal facility whether the creation occurred Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it is not very easy to set limits to his skill in this kind of computation.SOSL 194.3

But it is proper that we should now consider that feature of Dr. Akers’ theory by which he reconciles his computation of the weeks with the fact that the evangelists call Sunday the first day. As already stated, the doctor’s theory is framed to meet this very difficulty. Indeed, that part of it which we are about to state is something absolutely indispensable to the vindication of that which we have been considering. His doctrine may be stated in two propositions: 1. That the sixteenth of Abib is the seventh day of the original week, as proved by the exact count of days which we have been examining. 2. God commanded the Hebrews at the exodus to hallow the fifteenth as their weekly Sabbath. And thus Dr. Akers reconciles the truthfulness of his theory and the veracity of the evangelists.SOSL 194.4

Dr. Akers’ attempt, to count the exact number of days from creation to the sixteenth of Abib at the exodus, and his Biblical argument to show that God gave Israel a new Sabbath by ordaining the fifteenth day of the month, or sixth day of the previously existing week, for that purpose, are two propositions neither of which amount to anything for his purpose unless he can prove the other.SOSL 195.1

For if he cannot prove by his counting of days that the sixteenth of Abib was the original Sabbath from the creation of the world, then his subsequent argument to prove that the fifteenth of Abib was so regulated as to come each year upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even if it be sustained, does not prove that the seventh day of this Jewish week was not identical with the seventh day reckoned from creation.SOSL 195.2

And again, if he fails to prove that the fifteenth day of Abib must necessarily come upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even though we could find conclusive evidence that he had reckoned time so exactly as to be certain that the sixteenth day of Abib was the seventh day from creation, we should then have no evidence that the seventh day of the Jewish week was not the seventh day from creation. The establishment of one of the propositions amounts to nothing unless he can establish the other.SOSL 195.3

Let us see what Dr. Akers is attempting to accomplish: It can be stated in one sentence: He is laboring to prove that God took away the Paradisiacal Sabbath from the Hebrews, and that he gave them a ceremonial Sabbath in its place.SOSL 195.4

And what makes him anxious to do this? Simply that he may show that the so-called Christian Sabbath is the day ordained by God in Eden. If he can do this, then he vindicates the prevailing first-day observance. If he fails to do it, then that observance has no foundation in divine authority. What must Dr. Akers establish in order to prove his alleged change of the Sabbath in Egypt?SOSL 195.5

1. That God gave up his ancient Sabbath to desecration by his chosen people for the whole period of their separate existence!SOSL 196.1

2. That God gave Israel a new week by joining the seventh day of the true week to the first six of another of his weeks; which kind of week has come down to us, with God’s seventh day for its first day!SOSL 196.2

3. That the first of this new order of weeks in Egypt had only six days in it!SOSL 196.3

4. That God then made a new Sabbath out of the sixth day of the week!SOSL 196.4

5. That he then made the sixth day of the week into the seventh! See quotations from Akers, on page 165 of this work.SOSL 196.5

6. That the Sabbath which God caused Israel to observe from Moses to Christ was only a ceremonial institution, though he took the true one from them!SOSL 196.6

7. That the first of these new weekly Sabbaths was observed by the children of Israel in marching from Rameses to Succoth, with their unleavened dough in their kneading troughs bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders!SOSL 196.7

But how does Dr. Akers establish this change of the Sabbath from Sunday, the seventh day, to Saturday, the sixth?SOSL 196.8

1. By the statement that a new calendar was given to the Hebrews whereby the seventh month of the old year as reckoned from creation became the first month of the new Jewish year. And such a change taking place in the reckoning of the year by divine authority, indicates that a similar change in the reckoning of the week is not unlikely.SOSL 196.9

But to this it should be answered: (1) God did not discontinue the ancient year beginning with Tishri, or October, and marking the years from creation. He established what is distinguished as the sacred year, which was reckoned from Abib, or April, the seventh month of the ancient or civil year. That the year, beginning and ending in the fall, was not discontinued by the establishment of the sacred year which began and ended in the spring, is plain from Exodus 23:16; Leviticus 25:1-9; Deuteronomy 31:10. ^{1Even Dr. Akers confesses this fact as follows: “Exodus 12:2, proves that a new beginning of the year was then given to the Israelites. They retained however, the old year, beginning with Tishri, for all civil purposes.” — Biblical Chronology, p. 29.}SOSL 196.10

(2) Thus instead of one kind of year beginning in the fall and reckoned from creation, they had thenceforward two, in that a year was also given them beginning in the spring, and designed to establish and to preserve the reckoning of the years of their national history. These two years are distinguished by the terms civil and sacred; and one began with the seventh month of the other.SOSL 197.1

(3) To establish this new year, they did not have to mutilate, or disarrange, or discontinue, the existing civil year, as Dr. Akers makes them do in the case of the week.SOSL 197.2

(4) The establishment of the sacred year was by the plainest direction from God, and did not have to be inferred by Israel, nor does it need to be inferred by ourselves; which is more than can be said of his alleged change of the Sabbath.SOSL 197.3

There is nothing, therefore, in the new calendar of the year, that affords the slightest pretext for asserting that God changed the Sabbath, and re-arranged the week.SOSL 197.4

2. Dr. Akers’ second proof that the Sabbath was changed from the sixteenth day of the first month to the fifteenth, is found in this, that whereas the sixteenth of the first month was the true seventh day, God then established the fifteenth day of the month to be the Sabbath of the Hebrews, so shaping the year that that day should always come on Saturday.SOSL 197.5

But how does he prove all this? Certainly, not by any direct statement of the Bible as in the establishment of a second kind of year. If such declaration were found in the Bible, we should at once accept it as closing the controversy. But the Bible does not state any such thing. It is simply an assertion of Dr. Akers’ which rests upon his ability to prove the two points already named: (1) That the original Sabbath came upon the sixteenth day of Abib; (2) That God ordained the day of the exodus, Abib 15, to be the Jewish Sabbath. Observe these two points carefully. The whole argument of Dr. Akers rests upon their truthfulness. And what is not to be forgotten, if he proves the truth of one of them, it does not establish the change of the Sabbath in Egypt unless he can also prove the truth of the other. This being too plain to be denied, it follows that a failure to sustain the assertion that the original Sabbath came upon Abib 16, makes his second proposition, viz., that the Jewish Sabbath came upon Abib 15, even if it could be proved, of no account, so far as establishing a change of the Sabbath in Egypt.SOSL 197.6

The truth of his first proposition must be maintained, or the whole argument for a change of the Sabbath at the exodus falls to the ground. And now what is the evidence by which he proves his first proposition? Simply, he counts the days from creation to the exodus, and though he does not agree with the Hebrew chronology into 1386 years, and though he does not agree with any other writer that we have examined, who uses the Septuagint chronology, and though he confesses that the Septuagint numbers have been sometimes altered, and need correcting (of which, by the way, we have a notable instance in their making Methuselah survive the flood fourteen years!), yet he is able to give the exact age of the world even to a day! So that by this exact count he proves that the day kept by the Hebrews came one day too soon to be the original seventh day!SOSL 198.1

But the reader will say, perhaps, that Dr. Akers uses the deductions of astronomical science to prove that Sunday is the true seventh day, and certainly we ought to respect the science of astronomy. To this, it is sufficient to reply that Dr. Akers has not established his reckoning upon any such basis of astronomical calculation as to command the respect of the scientific world. His book was published in 1855, but we have no evidence that the scientific men of this age accept it as established by any substantial facts in astronomy. Indeed, the president of the University of Michigan, like Dr. Akers, a Methodist clergyman, writing in 1866, pronounces the whole effort a complete failure! See page 168 of this work. And yet every one of these scientific men are in sympathy with the first-day Sabbath so far as they have any religious interests.SOSL 198.2

But even astronomy must have data from which to reckon, or upon which to base its calculations, or it is utterly powerless to establish chronological points. The testimony of all history shows Sunday to be the first day and Saturday the seventh. How, then, can astronomy prove that the first day of Genesis was Monday and the seventh day Sunday? Can that science determine the exact age of the world, and so enable us to count the days from the creation to the resurrection of Christ? No astronomer claims to do this. How, then, does Dr. A. prove that the seventh day of the week observed at the exodus is not the seventh day of Genesis 2:2, 3? How he establishes this will certainly interest the curious reader. His “fixed point in chronology” is the Sunday of Christ’s resurrection. From this he reckons back to the day of God’s rest in Genesis 2:2, 3, and finds it to be just 290,767 weeks, to a day! Thus proving, to his mind, that the seventh day of Genesis 2:2, 3, is the first day of Matthew 28:1.SOSL 199.1

But this is not all. Having reckoned back from Christ’s resurrection to God’s rest-day in Eden, and by that reckoning made it clear to his own mind that God’s rest was upon Sunday, he sets out from his new basis, the rest-day of God upon Sunday, and reckons forward to the exodus, and by that second count of days he determines that God’s rest-day came that year upon Abib 16.SOSL 199.2

This is a roundabout journey. It begins with Christ’s resurrection and counts the days backward to the creation week; and thence, forward to the day of the exodus. Now, all Dr. A’s theory falls to the ground unless he can do this so exactly as not to err to the extent of one day! Thus, according to his table on pages 34, 35, of his chronology, if he has erred one year either way in the age of the world at the exodus, then, on his own showing, the original Sabbath came upon Abib 15, the very day which he labors to prove was the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, which would prove that the Jews had the true seventh day.SOSL 200.1

But the rest-day of God, in Genesis 2:2, 3, Dr. A. proves to be Sunday by counting the days exactly from the day of Christ’s resurrection back to it; and having thus proved God’s seventh day to be Sunday, he takes that as a new basis, and counts forward to the exodus, making that to be Saturday, the day before the original Sabbath, or Sunday.SOSL 200.2

No other man but Dr. A. ever claimed to do such wonderful feats of reckoning; or if there was ever found such another, his computation was not the same as Dr. Akers’.SOSL 200.3

If Dr. Akers, in this extraordinary computation, errs to the extent of one day, he fails to show that Abib 16 was the original Sabbath. But, on the other hand, if he could prove it beyond all doubt, he has not even then established the change of the Sabbath at the exodus, till he has shown that God bade Israel relinquish the seventh day which came that year, as Dr. A. says, on Abib 16, and take the sixth day of the week which came on the fifteenth. And to say that Dr. A., by his system of counting, has proved God’s rest-day to be Sunday, and that he has proved, by the same means, that the Hebrews kept a Sabbath that came one day before the Sabbath of the Lord, is to insult the good sense of the reader, and to do despite to the English language.SOSL 200.4

But Dr. Akers, having proved to his own satisfaction, by the process indicated above, that God’s Sabbath at the exodus came upon the sixteenth of Abib, undertakes to prove that God then made the fifteenth of that month into a Sabbath for Israel; which two things, taken in connection, show that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh day to the sixth at that time.SOSL 200.5

How does Dr. A. prove that Abib 15 was the Jewish Sabbath? It should be stated that, according to Dr. A., God made the day of the exodus, Abib 15, being the sixth day of the week, to be the Sabbath of the Jews, and that same day of the week was ever afterward observed as their Sabbath. And he so constituted the year that the fifteenth of Abib came every year upon that day.SOSL 201.1

Now both parts of this proposition are simply false. Neither of them are stated by the sacred writers, and both involve great absurdities.SOSL 201.2

Dr. Akers’ proof that God established the fifteenth of Abib to be the first Sabbath in the series of weekly Sabbaths observed by the Hebrews, is found in the statements of the law respecting the first fruits of barley harvest, and in an explanation of Leviticus 23, which endeavors so to shape the months that the Jewish weekly Sabbath, as he calls the seventh day, shall fill them in turn and come again on the fifteenth of Abib, in the next sacred year.SOSL 201.3

His proof drawn from the offering of the first fruits of barley harvest may be presented thus:SOSL 201.4

(1) The law required the first fruits of barley harvest to be offered to God on the morrow after the Sabbath. Leviticus 23:9-11.SOSL 201.5

(2) Josephus says that they were offered on the sixteenth of the first month. — Antiquities, book 3, chapter 10.SOSL 201.6

(3) Joshua, in his record of the Passover and feast of unleavened bread (Hebrews chap. 5:10, 11), shows that the first fruits were offered on the sixteenth of the first month, and therefore the Sabbath, after which the law required them to be offered, was the fifteenth.SOSL 201.7

(4) A further proof that the fifteenth of the first month was the Sabbath, is found in that our Lord being crucified on the fourteenth of Abib, the day of the Passover, the following day was the Sabbath. John 19:31.SOSL 202.1

These are the chief points used by Dr. A. to prove that the fifteenth of Abib was the Jewish weekly Sabbath. Let us see if they do prove that point:SOSL 202.2

(1) That the first fruits were to be offered on the morrow after a weekly Sabbath is very evident. Leviticus 23:15, 16.SOSL 202.3

(2) That this Sabbath was fixed to the fifteenth of the first month is nowhere stated in the Bible.SOSL 202.4

(3) It is true that Josephus says that the first fruits were offered on the sixteenth of the first month, but this does not help Dr. Akers at all, inasmuch as in the same paragraph he states that the month was a lunar month, i.e., one governed by the appearance of the moon, which would make it impossible to have the weekly Sabbath come upon its fifteenth day only occasionally. As Dr. A. denies that the months were governed by the moon it is manifest that in citing Josephus, he quotes a witness whose testimony does not help him, and which he himself impeaches.SOSL 202.5

(4) As to Dr. Akers’ argument from Joshua 5:10, 11, it is an entire failure. The text says that they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, and that on the morrow after the Passover they ate the old corn of the land. Observe the following facts: (a) The Passover was upon the fourteenth day, (b) The unleavened bread and parched corn was eaten the morrow after the Passover, i.e., on the fifteenth day of the month, and not upon the sixteenth, as Dr. A. maintains. (c) That this was certainly on the fifteenth and could not be crowded over to the sixteenth is proved by the fact that the law required them to eat unleavened bread on the fifteenth day, the very thing which they are here said to have done. Leviticus 23:6. (d) A second positive proof that the morrow after the Passover is the fifteenth of Abib, and not the sixteenth, is found in Numbers 33:3; “And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the Passover the children of Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians.” (e) But mark another point. The children of Israel did not on this occasion use the first fruits. The Bible is so express as to place it beyond all dispute. It says twice that what they ate was the OLD CORN of the land. And so Dr. Akers entirely fails both as to the time of this act, and the act itself.SOSL 202.6

(5) That the Saviour was crucified on the day of the Passover, and that the fifteenth of the first month did that year come upon the Sabbath, we think to be true. All we deny is, that the fifteenth day of the month always comes that day, which idea is one of the most important arguments of Dr. Akers’ theory.SOSL 203.1

(6) The feast of Pentecost came upon the fiftieth day after the offering of the first fruits. The first fruits were offered on the morrow after the Sabbath. But this only fixed the day of the week on which that offering should be made, and did not fix the precise day in the first month when that Sabbath should come. And the letter of the laws governing the time was simply that the ripening of the barley harvest should mark the commencement of the period. “Begin to number the seven weeks,” says Moses, “from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn.” Deuteronomy 16:9. See also Leviticus 23:10-16. The forwardness or backwardness of the season must therefore affect the time when they should select the week, on the first day of which they should present the first fruits to God. And it is remarkable that, whereas there are three feasts ordained in the law of Moses, and whereas the first and the third are fixed to definite points in the first and seventh months respectively (Leviticus 23:5, 6, 34), the precise point at which the feast of Pentecost should come is not thus marked, but is left to be determined by the ripening of the harvest. Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16.SOSL 203.2

What Dr. Akers has adduced from the law respecting the first fruits of barley harvest, to prove that Abib 15 was appointed to be the day of the weekly Sabbath, is therefore destitute of any foundation in truth. Let us now examine Leviticus 23, to discover his further argument by which he endeavors to show that his alleged weekly Sabbath, reckoned from Abib 15, answers to the annual Sabbaths of that chapter, and that the year was there so arranged as to bring the fifteenth of Abib every time upon the Jewish weekly Sabbath. ^{1The reader will please bear in mind that we use the terms “Jewish weekly Sabbath” in order to state the argument of Dr. Akers correctly, and not because we admit it to be different from the Sabbath of the Lord.} In the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus are seven annual Sabbaths, i.e., seven Sabbaths which came at seven specified points in the year, and cannot come any oftener than once in the year. The first of these is the fifteenth of Abib, the first month.Verse 7. The second of these was the twenty-first day of that month. Verse 8. The third was the fiftieth day from the first fruits of barley harvest. Verse 21. The fourth was the first day of the seventh month. Verses 24, 25. The fifth of these was the tenth day of the seventh month. Verses 27, 32. The sixth was the fifteenth of the seventh month.Verse 39. And the seventh annual Sabbath was the twenty-second day of that month. Verse 39.SOSL 204.1

We have tested the argument of Dr. Akers to prove that the first of these Sabbaths, viz., the fifteenth of Abib, was no other than the Jewish weekly Sabbath, and have seen that his argument in support of this is an entire failure. But Dr. A. does his best to trace the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, which he claims was the sixth day of the original week, through this entire list of Sabbaths. He has failed to identify Abib 15 with the weekly Sabbath, and the next one of these annual Sabbaths is fixed at such a point that he does not even attempt to identify it with the weekly Sabbath. Indeed, he passes it in silence, not so much as noticing its existence.SOSL 204.2

The feast of unleavened bread was for seven days, commencing with Abib 15. It lasted seven days. Its first day, and its seventh, were to be days of abstinence from labor. But they were not identified with the weekly Sabbath, for they began on a certain day of the month, without regard to the day of the week, and they were only five days apart. Thus the weekly Sabbath corresponds with neither of these.SOSL 205.1

And the weekly Sabbath does not correspond with the third annual Sabbath, because that was fixed upon the morrow after the seventh of a series of weekly Sabbaths. Dr. Akers does not attempt to identify the weekly Sabbath with that Sabbath which the law said should come the morrow after it. Leviticus 23:15-21. So we have now found three annual Sabbaths, one of which never can correspond to the weekly Sabbath; and only in a series of years is it that either of the other two could come upon the seventh day of the week, and never but one of them in the same year.SOSL 205.2

But when we reach the seventh month, Dr. A. makes an earnest effort to identify the weekly Sabbath, observed by the Hebrews, with the several annual Sabbaths which came in that month. As he claims 30 days to each month, a weekly Sabbath reckoned from Abib 15, would come on the third day of the seventh month. But the law distinctly states that the first day of the month should be a Sabbath. Verse 24. So Dr. Akers lengthens the sixth month two days; or rather, he says, as the last month of the Jewish civil year, it once had thirty-five days, and he shortens it three days, so that it has thenceforth but thirty-two. And the month thus changed, as Dr. A. reckons it, is made to end on the sixth day of the week, so that the seventh month, beginning with an annual Sabbath, has that Sabbath come on the day of the weekly Sabbath, as Dr. A. reckons it from Abib 15.SOSL 205.3

It is with such violent efforts that Dr. A. succeeds in identifying one of his weekly Sabbaths, reckoned from Abib 15, with one of the subsequent annual Sabbaths of Leviticus 23. But the next Sabbath of this series comes nine days later, and obstinately refuses to be identified with his weekly Sabbath. So Dr. A. finds an excuse, in that the people were to afflict their souls on this tenth day of the month, for declaring that it was not a Sabbath, ^{1Dr. A. says of the tenth day of the seventh month: “This was not to be a Sabbath” (Bib. Chron., p. 107), whereas Leviticus 23:32, says, “It shall be unto you a Sabbath of rest.”} though the law declares it to be one in the most emphatic manner. See Leviticus 23:27-32.SOSL 206.1

Five days later than this was another annual Sabbath; and one week from that was another, i.e., the fifteenth and the twenty-second days of the seventh month were Sabbaths. But Dr. A. having pulled down the tenth day of the seventh month from the rank of the annual Sabbaths, establishes out of his own heart a weekly Sabbath on the eighth day of the seventh month instead of the tenth day ordained of God for an annual Sabbath. With this change, made by violent wrestling of the ceremonial law, he is able to identify his weekly Sabbath from Abib 15 with the series of annual Sabbaths in the seventh month; viz., the first, the fifteenth, and the twenty second. But to do this he destroys one Sabbath expressly established by God, and establishes another out of his own heart.SOSL 206.2

Were it true that these were weekly Sabbaths, it would not be the case that the first two of them are only five days apart! That the third comes on the morrow after the Sabbath! That the next two are ten days apart! And that the next one comes in five days! These were simply annual Sabbaths, and were different in their nature from the Sabbath of the Lord. And indeed, had they been simply weekly Sabbaths there would have been no need of enjoining them as days of the months, for in their turn they would all have been observed. It is manifest that this effort to reckon the year in such a manner that it shall end with the sixth day of the week, so that the new year, Abib 1, and the first day of unleavened bread, Abib 15, might always come on the day of the weekly Sabbath, is something which has no other support than is found in the ingenuity of its author. That these Sabbaths of Leviticus 23 come sometimes upon the weekly Sabbath is freely admitted. That they did not regularly come thus has been fully proved.SOSL 206.3

Dr. Akers brings forward one fact as a strong proof that the first day of the first month, and consequently the fifteenth day of that month, also, was the weekly Sabbath. It is this: That Moses, according to Exodus 40, set up the tabernacle, and set in it the table and the shew bread on the first day of the first month. But the law (Leviticus 24:5-9) commanded the priests to set forth the shew bread every Sabbath. Therefore when Moses set up the tabernacle, and set forth the shew bread on Abib 1, that day must have been the Sabbath.SOSL 207.1

1. But this ceremonial precept touching the setting forth of the shew bread on the Sabbath was not given till some time after Moses set up the tabernacle. So it furnishes no proof to sustain Dr. A. Compare Exodus 40 and Leviticus 24.SOSL 207.2

2. It was a strict law, which we find in Leviticus 16, that the high priest should enter the holiest only on the tenth day of the seventh month. But before this precept was given, it appears that Aaron entered that place at all times. Leviticus 16:1, 2. This shows that, arguing from a precept of the ceremonial law before it has an existence, as does Dr. A., is very certain to lead to wrong conclusions.SOSL 207.3

3. The evidence that the tabernacle was set up on the Sabbath therefore amounts to nothing. And indeed, when God had plenty of time for the work, it was in the highest degree improbable that he would cause so extensive a labor to be performed upon the Sabbath. Even if it could be proved it would only show that the Sabbath did constitute the first day of that one year, and not that it did always begin the year. But it is not proved that it did even this one year; and hence the proof to be derived from it that the fifteenth of Abib was always a Sabbath amounts to nothing at all. In closing the examination of Dr. Akers’ argument in support of his theory, several facts should be adduced which show that his establishment of the weekly Sabbath upon the fifteenth of Abib is absolutely without any foundation in truth.SOSL 207.4

1. The fifteenth of Abib in Egypt was wholly unlike the weekly Sabbath of the Lord. Just after midnight Israel was thrust out, and taking what they could carry upon their shoulders, they thus started in the night, and that whole people, amounting to some three millions in all, marched from Rameses to Succoth, driving with them their flocks and their herds! Exodus 12:29-39.SOSL 208.1

2. Surely if this was the foundation of a new order of Sabbaths to be observed by the Hebrews, it was laid in a manner utterly unlike that of the Sabbath of the Lord. Genesis 2:1-3.SOSL 208.2

3. But if the following day, viz., Abib 16, was the true Sabbath of the Lord, as Dr. A. professes to be able to show by exact count that it was, did it not come in a good time, and must it not have been very acceptable to that people? Must it not have surprised them very much to have Moses say to them (provided that he did), that though that was the ancient Sabbath, they need not keep it, as their flight out of Egypt the previous day was all the Sabbath-keeping they needed for that week!SOSL 208.3

4. Did God sanctify this day for a weekly Sabbath? If so, where is the record of the fact? Did he take from them his ancient Sabbath? If so, what did he say on the point to Israel? If we have no record that he said anything of the kind, who knows that he did?SOSL 208.4

5. Did God then remove the sanctity from the true seventh day, his original Sabbath? If not, did not Israel, for the whole period from the exodus till Christ’s resurrection, desecrate the sanctified rest-day of the Lord, provided Dr. Akers’ theory is true? But if he did take away the sanctity of the ancient Sabbath at the exodus, did not the day need to be sanctified over again at the resurrection of Christ?SOSL 209.1

6. It is very true that God bade Israel remember the day on which they left Egypt. But was it to be commemorated weekly or annually? One test will determine. Did God say, “Remember the sixth day of the week, for in that day you were brought forth out of Egypt”? Or did he bid them remember the fifteenth day of the first month, for on that day they were brought forth out of Egypt? If he said the first, it establishes a weekly celebration. If he said the last, it established simply an annual celebration. Does not every Bible student know that he did not then command the observance of a weekly, but of an annual, day of commemoration? How often can the fifteenth day of the first month come?SOSL 209.2

7. But they had one week in Egypt with only six days in it! And its sixth day was made into the Sabbath by their fleeing upon it! And they kept the day so effectually by thus fleeing, that they had no occasion to observe the following day which was the Sabbath of the Lord!SOSL 209.3

8. But what about this sixth-day keeping? Dr. Akers says, God then gave them the sixth day for the Sabbath. Did he then bid them to observe the sixth day as the Sabbath after the model of that Egyptian week? Oh! no; he made the sixth day into the seventh, as we are told by Dr. AkersSOSL 209.4

9. But how could even the Almighty do this, seeing that he has no power to utter a falsehood?SOSL 209.5

10. And how does Dr. Akers know that he did thus change the Sabbath from the seventh day to the sixth? And what testimony does he find that God first gave Israel a week of six days, and then improved upon it by giving them a week which began on his own seventh day and ended on his sixth?SOSL 210.1

11. The reader need not be told that Dr. A. does this by counting. He counts from the resurrection of Christ, back to the rest-day of the Creator in Eden, and thus makes out that “the first day” in the one case is “the seventh day” in the other. Then he counts from the Lord’s rest-day, forward to the exodus; and if he counts right, then Abib 16 was the true Sabbath. And if he can, in addition to, and independent of, all this, prove that Abib 15 was made into a weekly Sabbath at that time, then all this change of the Sabbath, and all this change of the week, follow as a matter of course. But if Dr. A. has made the mistake of just one day in this immense count, then all these wonderful changes are creations of his own fancy.SOSL 210.2

11. The fifteenth of Abib was of the same rank with the other annual Sabbaths, of Leviticus 23, with the exception of the tenth of the seventh month, which was more sacred than the rest. It came once a year, and not once a week, like the Sabbath of the Lord. And whereas no servile work was to be performed on Abib 15, no work at all was to be done on the seventh day. Leviticus 23:3, 6-8.SOSL 210.3

12. Finally, the preparation of food was expressly allowed on the fifteenth of Abib, the first day of unleavened bread (Exodus 12:15, 16; Leviticus 23:6-8), but was expressly forbidden upon the day of the weekly Sabbath. Exodus 16:23. This of itself is a clear proof that the fifteenth of Abib was not made to recur regularly on the day of the weekly Sabbath.SOSL 210.4

We have thus shown that Dr. Akers has no valid reasons to prove that the first day of unleavened bread was the seventh day of the week; and we have proved by positive evidence that such cannot possibly be the case.SOSL 210.5

Dr. Akers has to fundamental arguments: 1. He asserts that he can count the time to a day from Christ’s resurrection back to God’s rest-day in Paradise, and then forward to Abib 16 in Egypt, which day was also God’s rest-day. 2. And he alleges that he can prove that Israel, by divine direction, observed Abib 15, and not Abib 16. Wherefore, it follows that the Sabbath was then set back one day.SOSL 211.1

But when Dr. Akers asserts that the first day of the week of Matthew 28:1 is the same as the seventh day of Genesis 2:2, 3, because the time comes out in even weeks, counted from one to the other, the very fact that the day at one end of the reckoning is not the same as at the other, shows that, unless he can prove a change of the week between these two points, his reckoning is false. For either Matthew or Moses gives a wrong name to the day; as one, at one end of the chain, calls it “first day of the week,” and the other, at the other extremity, calls it the seventh day. Hence he attempts to remove the contradiction, and to sustain his reckoning, by changing the weeks in Egypt. But we have proved that the weeks were not changed in Egypt. And having proved this, we have thereby shown that his count, which starts at Matthew 28:1 with the day as first day of the week, and ends with it as the seventh, Genesis 2:2, 3, is certainly an effort to prove an absolute falsehood! The change of the weeks in Egypt, and the count of the days by Dr. A., are both an entire mistake, and wholly unworthy the confidence of the reader.SOSL 211.2

Dr. Akers’ act of counting the days from the resurrection of Christ back to the day of the Creator’s rest, is all mere talk, for the pretension is preposterous. But this amounts to nothing unless he can show that there was one week somewhere between the two points that had only six days in it, for it is thus only that he can bring the New-Testament “first-day” to be identical with the Paradisiacal “seventh-day.” But unfortunately, the only way to prove this week of six days (of which the Bible says nothing) is by means of this alleged exact count. And even this count is of no consequence, unless it be shown that the day kept by the Hebrews was one day earlier than the true seventh day, an attempt which has already been shown to be an entire failure.SOSL 211.3

The history of this Sunday-seventh-day or Sunday-seventh-day-first-day theory, is very remarkable. The man who first gave this theory to the world, so far as we are informed, was the distinguished Joseph Mede, who died in 1638. Dr. Jennings thus states his theory;SOSL 212.1

“The learned Mr. Mede endeavors to prove the seventh day of the Jewish week, which was appointed for the Sabbath, to be the day on which God overthrew Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and thereby completed the deliverance of his people from the Egyptian servitude. And, whereas a seventh day had before been kept, in memory of the creation (but to what day of the Jewish week that answered, we cannot certainly say), now God commanded them to observe for the future this day of their deliverance, which was the seventh day of their week, in commemoration of his having given them rest from their hard labor and servitude, in Egypt,” — Jewish Antiquities, book 3, chap.3, pp.329, 330.SOSL 212.2

This theory of Mr. Mede’s asserts the change of the Sabbath from God’s seventh day to the seventh day of the Jewish week. But to what day of the Jewish week God’s seventh day corresponded, he did not know; so that it would seem hard to prove by any evidence of Mr. Mede’s that it was certainly changed at all. But Mr. M. endeavors to prove that Pharaoh was overthrown in the Red Sea on the seventh day of the Jewish week; which day God required the Jewish people to keep, in memory of that event. Thus the Sabbath was changed at the passage of the Red Sea, but what day it was changed from, Mr. M. did not know.SOSL 212.3

This was the greatest light which Mr. M. could shed upon the change of the Sabbath in Egypt. But though it was seen that the Sabbath could not have been changed at that point, yet the very idea that it was changed at the commencement of the Jewish dispensation, was so serviceable in helping to prove that it was changed again at its close, that it could not be given up.SOSL 212.4

But though the idea of this change was too valuable to the friends of the first-day Sabbath, to be relinquished, yet it was plainly seen that it could not have been changed at the point fixed by Mr. Mede; or that if it was, nobody could find any record of it.SOSL 213.1

So it came to pass after more than a hundred years, that Dr. Jennings took up the grand idea of changing the Sabbath from the Paradisiacal rest-day to the so-called Jewish Sabbath. This itself, in his estimation, was very precious, but Mr. Mede was mistaken in the precise time and place. It was not changed at the passage of the Red Sea, but at the fall of the manna. Dr. Jennings could see clearly that the Sabbath must have been changed when given to Israel (it was so desirable); but he also saw that there was nothing to sustain the change where Mr. Mede had fixed it. So Dr. J. decided that the fall of the manna was the very point where this change was effected. And he taught that the fall of the manna was made to bear testimony in behalf of the new Jewish Sabbath and against the ancient Sabbath of the Lord. The Jews never changed the day after this, it is certain; so if he can change it here, it will be easy to change it again at the resurrection; and if he cannot prove it to have been changed at this time, or hereabout, then the Jews have now the true seventh day.SOSL 213.2

Thus the case stood for another hundred years, or more, when Dr. Akers took the case in hand. It was a precious idea that God had given to Israel the sixth day of the week as the Sabbath, and that he had taken from them the true seventh day of the week, our Sunday. But though Dr. Jennings had fixed the time and place of this auspicious change, as being at the fall of the manna, and not at the Red Sea, as asserted by Mr. Mede, yet Dr. A. could see that Jennings had not got it right. There was nothing to his argument fixing it at the fall of the manna, in Exodus 16.SOSL 213.3

Dr. A., by counting the days in the manner which we have seen, satisfied himself that the change took place on the day of unleavened bread in Egypt. So he published to the world, in 1855, the grand fact that at the exodus, God changed the Sabbath from Abib 16 to Abib 15, i.e., from the seventh day of the week to the sixth! For, according to Dr. A., God took from his people his own hallowed rest-day, and gave them a ceremonial Sabbath made out of the sixth day!SOSL 214.1

But the matter is not yet settled. Some ten years after Dr. Akers’ book was published, the Rev. E. Q. Fuller tried his hand at this great undertaking. Dr. Akers has fixed the time and place all right, but he does not rightly state the change. The Sabbath was not changed from the seventh day to the sixth, as Dr. Akers asserts. No, indeed! It was changed from the first day of the week to the seventh! And instead of there being one week in Egypt with only six days in it, Mr. F. declares that that week had two Sabbaths in it, viz., its first day and its seventh!SOSL 214.2

Thus Mr. Mede, early in the seventeenth century, announced a wonderful fact. It was this, that the Hebrew people did not have the original Sabbath, or rather, it was taken from them, and the Saturday Sabbath was given them in its place at the passage of the Red Sea.SOSL 214.3

That is a grand idea! responds in substance, Dr. Jennings a hundred years later; you are right as to the change of the Sabbath, at the commencement of the Jewish dispensation, but mistaken in the time and place of its occurrence, and in the arguments you adduce to prove it. It did not occur at the crossing of the Red Sea, but at a later point, at the fall of the manna.SOSL 214.4

Not so, virtually responds Dr. Akers, something more than a hundred years later. Though your zeal for the great truth that the Hebrew people had the ancient seventh-day Sabbath taken from them, and a new Sabbath made for them out of the sixth day of the week, is very praiseworthy, yet you are even further from the truth as to the time and place of the change than was Mr. Mede, and your arguments to prove the change are not sound. It was not changed at the fall of the manna, but on the day that Israel started out of Egypt. And I ascertain the fact of the change by counting the exact number of days from the creation to the exodus.SOSL 214.5

But Mr. Fuller now rises, and in brief responds to Dr. Akers after this manner: I am much indebted to you for the count of of the days you have made from the creation to the exodus. You show Sunday to be the original Sabbath to my full satisfaction. But when you state that God changed the Sabbath at the exodus from the seventh day to the sixth, you make a bad mistake. Not so. It was changed from the first day of the week to the seventh! And I prove it by your own figures in which you count the days from creation!SOSL 215.1

One grand error is held in common by all these theologians, which is that God took away from his people his own Sabbath and gave them in its stead a ceremonial Sabbath. But while they are all interested to prove this assertion, one of them says that this change was at the Red Sea; the second says that this change was at the fall of the manna; the third says it was effected at the exodus by changing from the seventh day to the sixth; while the fourth says that it was changed at that point from the first day to the seventh!SOSL 215.2

Thus they all agree that the Jews did not have the Sabbath of the Lord, but they entirely disagree in proving it. Their case is like that of the false witnesses who all testified that Jesus was not the Christ, but did not at all agree in the nature of the proof!SOSL 215.3

We now call the reader’s attention to the remarkable changes which each of these writers makes in the reckoning of the week. We present the week of Mr. Fuller at three grand epochs; viz., at the creation, the exodus, and the resurrection of Christ. We also present the week, as reckoned by r. Akers, at each of these three points. As Dr. Jennings uses precisely the same week as Dr. Akers, except at the fall of the manna, we simply give Dr. J’s week at that point.SOSL 215.4

FULLER’S WEEKS AT CREATION.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C R E A T I O N.                             F I R S T  W E E K
1        2       3       4      5    6      7
-------------------------------------
Mon  Tues Wed  Thur Fri  Sat   Sun  Mon  Tues Wed  Thur Fri  Sat
                                                 1      2       3       4       5      6     7
                                                ------------------------------------                                  
                                     SAB
                                                [SAB=1st day of Adam’s life]   
E T E R N I T Y.                                         T I M E.  _______________________________________________________________

The reader will observe that his first week of time is framed on the theory that the six days of creation belong to eternity, and that God’s seventh day is the first day of time, the first day of the week, and the first day of Adam’s life — four remarkable falsehoods. Observe that Mr. F. has here one period, we cannot justly call it week, which has only six days in it. This feature has to appear once in each of the several theories. Observe nextSOSL 216.1

FULLER’S WEEKS AT THE EXODUS.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A WEEK  WITH  TWO  SABBATHS
                                            Exodus
Sab                                          Sab                                                   Sab
1      2       3       4       5      6   7        1      2      3        4       5      6   7  
Sun  Mon  Tues Wed  Thur Fri Sat     Sun  Tues Mon  Wed  Thur Fri Sat
                                                  |         |
                             [15th of Abib]         [16th of Abib]                                                                                  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are two of his weeks at the exodus. The first one has two Sabbaths in it, being that week in which the Sabbath was changed from Sunday back to Saturday. The second week is simply the ordinary week of the Jews, thenceforward having its Sabbath upon the seventh day instead of on the first day as it had had down to that time, according to Mr. F. Next we giveSOSL 217.1

FULLER’S WEEKS AT CHRIST’S RESURRECTION. No.1.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWO  SABBATHS  CAME  TOGETHER.   
                                                     Sab   Sab
1       2        3        4       5       6     7       1       2        3        4       5      6     7 
Sun   Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat    Sun   Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri  Sat
                                               |                |
                                Crucifixion               Resurrection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Observe, two Sabbaths come together! One week ends with a Sabbath, and the following week begins with one! If he says, Not so, for the Jewish Sabbath was abolished at the cross, then we give an illustration of this view:SOSL 217.2

FULLER’S WEEKS AT CHRIST’S RESURRECTION. No.2.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One week without a Sabbath                 |  Sab  
1       2        3        4       5       6      7    |  1       2        3       4        5       6     7 
Sun   Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat  |  Sun   Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat
                                                |                 |     
                             Sab abolish’d                Resurrection
                             at Crucifixion       
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Observe, this time we have a week which has no Sabbath in it. As he had a week in Egypt which had two Sabbaths in it, he has a right to give us one this time with no Sabbath at all! On an average, we hold our own on Sabbaths at Mr. Fuller’s hands; so we must try to stand it! Now we illustrateSOSL 217.3

AKER’S WEEKS AT CREATION.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETERNITY.
First Week                                  Sab |   Second Week                              Sab 
1        2       3       4       5     6       7    |  1       2        3       4       5     6      7
Mon  Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat   Sun |  Mon  Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat   Sun
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With Dr. Akers’ division of time from eternity, we perfectly agree; the only error being the serious falsehood of calling the first day of the week Monday. And Dr. A. does this although he acknowledges that the New-Testament first-day of the week is Sunday. How he brings this around will appear in the diagram ofSOSL 218.1

AKERS’ WEEKS AT THE EXODUS.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last week of the old series,             New week, beginning with the last 
containing only six days.                  day of the old week.
                                       Exodus    
                                             |
1       2        3       4       5      6       7       1       2        3       4        5     6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mon  Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat     Sun   Mon  Tues  Wed  Thur   Fri   Sat
                                           Sab     1       2       3        4       5       6      7
                                              |        |-----------------------------------------             
                                   |        |         NEW WEEK                     Sab 
                                              |        |
                            15th of Abib       16th of Abib
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first of these weeks has only six days in it, though its last day is made into the so-called Jewish Sabbath! But this sixth-day period is as essential to Dr. A. as to Mr. F. Observe that at the exodus Dr. A. changes, not only the Sabbath, but, unlike Mr. F. even the week also. Sunday now, by means of this six-day week, becomes the first day.SOSL 218.2

Next we give Dr. Akers’ weeks at Christ’s resurrection, though they are precisely identical with those of Mr. F. at that point. But we do it to show that, having changed his reckoning of the week at the exodus, in order to change the Sabbath from Sunday to Saturday, now when he changes the Sabbath back from Saturday to Sunday, his week refuses to change. It seems strange that it changed so easily in Egypt!SOSL 218.3

AKERS’ WEEKS AT CHRIST’S RESURRECTION.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                            AKERS’ NEW TESTAMENT WEEK,
                                                              Made from two of his creation weeks.
                                                         Sun   Mon  Tues  Wed   Thur   Fri   Sat
                                                          7      1        2        3        4       5      6
       Jewish Week                              ---------------------------------------------           1      2       3        4       5      6      7     1      2        3        4        5       6      7
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun  Mon  Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri  Sat   Sun  Mon  Tues  Wed   Thur   Fri    Sat 
                                              |   Sab   Sab
                                              |               |
                               Crucifixion              Resurrection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The reader will observe that the upper line in this diagram shows the days of the New Testament week, as reckoned by Dr. Akers. So that if he is correct in the reckoning, our present week begins with the seventh day of the original week, and ends with its sixth! But if the evangelists are correct in the numbering of the week, then his order of the days in the week is false.SOSL 219.1

These illustrations must suffice for the theories or Mr. F. and Dr. A. As the theory of Dr. Jennings is precisely that of Dr. Akers, except with reference to the place where he changes the Sabbath the first time, we simply illustrateSOSL 219.2

JENNINGS’ WEEKS AT THE FALL OF THE MANNA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWELVE DAYS WITHOUT A SABBATH.
_______________________________________________________Sab___
1         2       3        4       5      6       7       1        2       3        4        5     6
Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur  Fri   Sat     Sun   Mon   Tues  Wed  Thur   Fri   Sat
Last week of the old                 |          |       New kind of weeks, beginning 
series containing only                |          |       with the 7th day, and ending      
six days.                                   |          |       with the 6th.            
                                               |          |                
                                Elim to Sin         1st day of Manna      
                                                                                      (6th day = No Manna)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Though we give Dr. Jennings only one illustration, he contributes his full share toward interesting and edifying the reader.SOSL 219.3

Here is a period of thirteen days from one Sabbath to another! But the reader will observe the indispensable period of six days neatly hidden under the ample robe of this thirteen-day week! That is to say, here is a week and six days with only one Sabbath for the whole period! And here is a theory, which, to prevent a journey on the Sabbath (which did not occur on that day), has the children of Israel gather manna for the first time on the Paradisiacal Sabbath! Dr. J. here robs us of one Sabbath-day in the count, and never makes up for it like Mr. F., by giving us a week with two Sabbaths in it! And let it be observed that, whereas Dr. Jennings uses a week from the fall of the manna to this time, which begins with God’s seventh day and ends with his sixth, Dr. Akers adopts such a week on the day of the exodus, while Mr. F., by assigning the six days of Genesis 1 to eternity, has such a week as this from the beginning!SOSL 219.4

Thus it is evident that while each one of these able writers is anxious to prove that Israel had another Sabbath besides the Sabbath of the Lord, they do not agree how they came by it, nor when it was given! The truth is, they are all wrong; and the reason why they do not agree as to the time and manner of the change is because no change of the kind was ever made! Each sees the weakness of the arguments used by his predecessors, and each attempts to place a firm foundation under the Sunday-seventh day, though to do it, he must remove that which those before him have laid.SOSL 220.1

But we have no disposition to dwell upon the peculiarly ridiculous character of the work which these men have wrought. There is another aspect of the case that demands our attention, and in the light of that all other things pertaining to it are, comparatively speaking, of small account. What we now call attention to, is the inherent and palpable wickedness of this work, more especially as exhibited in the effort of Dr. Akers and Mr. Fuller.SOSL 220.2

The testimony of the Bible, which we are about to present, directly and unequivocally establishes the fact that God did command the Hebrew people to observe his own hallowed rest-day. But with this plain testimony before them, these professed ministers of Christ deliberately affirm that God took from the Hebrews his own holy rest-day, and gave them, in its stead, the day next preceding it. The responsibility of such teaching is not to be estimated. It is time that such teachers should examine their right hands. See Isaiah 44:20.SOSL 220.3

To justify the severity of this language, which certainly proceeds from no ill will toward those who have done this great wrong, we adduce some of the plainest statements of the book of God.SOSL 221.1

1. Here are the words of the grand Sabbath law:SOSL 221.2

“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; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11.SOSL 221.3

And now observe the following facts:SOSL 221.4

(1) We have here no occasion to argue that the law of God speaks to all mankind (Romans 3:19), and that it does therefore speak to the Hebrews. We know that whether others are concerned or not, it was, when spoken, addressed personally to the Hebrews, and that was committed to them in ten oracles. Romans 3:1, 2; Acts 7:38; Exodus 20.SOSL 221.5

(2) When the fourth commandment enjoins the remembering of the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, it is, as all Bible students know, the same as saying in plain English, “Remember the rest-day to keep it holy;” for Sabbath in Hebrew, and rest in English, are the same.SOSL 221.6

(3) This precept plainly states whose rest-day it is that should be remembered; viz., the rest-day of the Lord of hosts, which is the seventh day.SOSL 221.7

(4) It also states the reason for the existence of this rest-day, and for the obligation of its observance; viz., that God rested on this day from the work of creation, and that he did, for this cause, bless and hallow the day.SOSL 222.1

It is therefore perfectly manifest, (a) That this precept does plainly and explicitly require the observance of the Creator’s rest-day; (b) That it was spoken directly to the Hebrew people, and was certainly obligatory upon them, whether it was upon any other persons or not.SOSL 222.2

How inexcusable, therefore, is the conduct of those theologians who assert that God commanded the Hebrew people to keep the sixth day of the week! and that in proof of this they should declare that, having counted the age of the world to a day, they have ascertained that the day which the Hebrews observed was one day too early in the week to be the Sabbath of the Lord! Would they ever thus charge God with folly, were it not that they hope to relieve themselves thereby from the absurdity of keeping as a Sabbath the day after the Sabbath of the Lord?SOSL 222.3

If the responsibility of enjoining and of observing the day before the true Sabbath can be fastened upon the Lawgiver and upon the Hebrews, then the people of the present day can relieve themselves from the folly of keeping the day after the Lord’s Sabbath, and can prove that they are actually observing his seventh day in their first day of the week! And so learned ministers dare to meet the express language of the fourth commandment, and claim to prove, by a count of the days from creation, that the seventh day, observed by the Hebrews, was not the Lord’s seventh day, but his sixth! And, moreover, that “the first day” of the four evangelists is not the Lord’s first day, but his seventh!SOSL 222.4

2. But let us compare the fourth commandment with the record in Genesis second. The one is the grand Sabbath law, the other is the record of the origin of the Sabbath.SOSL 222.5

Genesis 2:2, 3: “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.”SOSL 223.1

Exodus 20:10, 11: “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.”SOSL 223.2

The words, “hallowed,” Exodus 20:11, and “sanctified,” in Genesis 2:3, are both translated from the same Hebrew word, and each signifies to set apart, or appoint, to a holy use. Now it is plain, (1) That Genesis 2:3 does set apart to a holy use the day of the Creator’s rest. (2) It is also certain that the fourth commandment repeats the very words of the institution of the Sabbath, and that it enjoins the observance of the day thus instituted. So that in the fourth commandment, even though we except the rest of mankind, God did require the Hebrew people to keep the very day hallowed in Eden.SOSL 223.3

Yet by immense labor expended in attempting the exact count of days from Christ back to Adam, and from Adam forward to Moses, Dr. Akers satisfies himself, and many others, that the Hebrews, in attempting; to keep the seventh day, were obliged to take up with the sixth under a false name! and that those who are keeping the first day of the week are really keeping the true seventh day in disguise! So that the Hebrews failed to keep the seventh day thought they used their best endeavors to keep it! And the professed people of God, in these days, keep it without even intending to do it! Surely it is easier to obey God now than it was then!SOSL 223.4

3. But it is time to nail the wicked falsehood that the Hebrews kept the sixth day instead of the seventh; for it furnishes a plausible excuse for breaking the fourth commandment under pretense of keeping it in the observance of the first day of the week. We state the fact, therefore, in plain terms, and will prove it by the express language of the Bible that the Hebrews did keep the seventh day, and did not keep the sixth!SOSL 224.1

We have shown that the rest-day of the Lord, commanded in Exodus 20, is the very seventh day set apart to a holy use in Genesis 2:2, 3. Now we will prove, (1) That that people knew, beyond all dispute, what day this seventh day was; (2) That they kept the very day pointed out by Him who commanded that his rest-day be observed; (3) That the language explicitly states that they did not keep the sixth day.SOSL 224.2

The reader is well aware that, some weeks before God spoke the ten commandments, he began to feed the Hebrews by bread from heaven. Exodus 16. This bread fell during six days, and did not fall on the seventh, and this course of things continued for forty years. Now it is perfectly certain that, when God, in the fourth commandment, required men to keep the seventh day on which he had rested, and that when in his providence he showed, by the miracle of the manna, which day the seventh day was, the seventh day of the one was identical with the seventh day of the other, unless God can contradict himself. And we do read that the seventh day pointed out by the manna was “the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.” Verse 23. And Israel did rest on the seventh day, but did on the sixth day gather and cook their manna for the Sabbath.SOSL 224.3

What then shall we say of those who undertake to prove that Israel kept the sixth day, and not the seventh, for the Sabbath? Which is more reliable, their counting of time, or God’s designation of the numbers of the days? Is it not a dreadful crime to falsify God’s word?SOSL 224.4

4. God gave Israel his Sabbath, to be a sign between them and himself. Exodus 31; Ezekiel 20. All other nations had forgotten the true God, and were worshipers of false gods of every kind. That Israel might keep in their memory the Creator, who is the only true God, he gave them his Sabbath which he hallowed when he made the heaven and the earth. The observance of the Creator’s rest-day designated the Hebrews as the worshipers of the only true God. Those who attempt to prove by counting, and from various inferences, that God gave Israel the sixth day, and not the seventh, assert that the Sabbath could not have been a sign to Israel unless God gave them a different day from that which he ordained in the beginning. And yet when God gave them this sign, he made its entire significance to consist in their keeping his rest-day; because that he had created the heaven and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh. Exodus 31:17. And this is therefore a decisive proof that the Hebrews did observe the day of the Creator’s rest, and not one of the six days of his labor.SOSL 225.1

5. When God came down upon Mount Sinai, he is said (Nehemiah 9:14) to have made known his Sabbath, i.e., his rest-day. This cannot be spoken in an absolute sense, for they were already keeping it. It must imply that he made it known more perfectly, even as he made himself known in Egypt. Ezekiel 20:5. But how far from the truth is this language, if, instead of giving them his holy rest-day, he gave them the day before it, as proved by the count of Dr. Akers and Mr. F. To say, as does Dr. Akers, that he had just before given them another Sabbath, and authorized them to tread his own Sabbath under their feet, is a most inexcusable perversion of the truth!SOSL 225.2

6. What God requires of the Jews and Gentiles alike, is to keep his holy day. Isaiah 58:13. Who shall have the presumption to say that he authorized the Jews to disregard it and to keep another?SOSL 225.3

7. When the Saviour spoke of the design of the Sabbath, he said it was made for man. Mark 2:27, 28. God made it out of the seventh day. Genesis 2:2, 3. In the fourth commandment he bade Israel (and indeed all mankind) observe that very day. But though the Jews are men, and though they were amenable to the fourth commandment, yet Messrs. Akers, Fuller , and others, say that God gave Israel at the exodus a different Sabbath, and authorized them to violate his own rest-day, even from that time till the resurrection of Christ! And what is worthy of notice, our Lord had this second-rate Sabbath to keep, instead of the genuine! But this theory is proved to be false, even by the very fact that it was concerning this same so-called Jewish Sabbath, that our Lord was speaking when he said it was made for man. They had, beyond all dispute, therefore, the original Sabbath; for theirs was the one of which Christ spoke.SOSL 226.1

8. Finally, with one grand fact which cannot be counted down, nor counted out, we close this argument. The holy women who followed the Saviour to his burial, having made preparation to embalm his body, laid the spices aside at the approach of the Sabbath, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Luke 23:56. It is certain, (1) That they kept the very day observed by Christ and his apostles and by the Jewish people; (2) That they kept the very day ordained in the commandment; Exodus 20:8-11; (3) That that day was the rest-day of God set apart at creation; Genesis 2:2, 3; Mark 2:27, 28. And now mark the decisive fact: the next day after the rest-day of the Lord was the first day of the week! Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1, 2. No wisdom of man can make the day of the Creator’s rest, which the fourth commandment enjoins, identical with the first day of the week, which comes the next day after that rest-day is past!SOSL 226.2

How much wiser in God’s sight the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord (for that is the institution enforced by the commandment of God), than is the mighty effort to move heaven and earth to show that the first day of the week is, itself, the hallowed rest-day of the great Creator!SOSL 226.3

The text at the head of this discourse may well be cited at its conclusion:SOSL 227.1

Ezekiel 13:6: “They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith; and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.”SOSL 227.2

Are not these words true of these teachers? Reader, are you one of those, that have been made “to hope that they would confirm the word”? These men are not making up the breach in the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They are not anxious to restore that which has been broken down in God’s law. They have a very different work to perform; for their business is to build up a wall of their own, and to daub it with untempered mortar. The day of God is coming; and when its great hail stones shall fall, this wall will be broken down, and every refuge of lies shall, with it, be swept away. Would you stand in the battle of the great day? Then you must make the truth of God your shelter, and this you can only do by obeying it.SOSL 227.3