Sabbath - Replies to Canright sought

[Your Neighbor]

The Sabbath on a Round Earth

In their very nature all purely moral laws are universal and eternal in their application, are binding in heaven, in Eden, on Jews or Gentiles, saints or sinners, now or hereafter. Test the particular seventh day, Saturday, by that rule, and it fails everywhere. Go to Venus, where the days are about twenty-three hours long, to Jupiter, where they are only about ten hours long; to Saturn, where they are about twelve hours long, or to some of the larger planets, where their days are much longer than ours. How could the inhabitants of those worlds keep our seventh day? They could keep "a" seventh day, their own, but that would not be of the same length of ours, nor come at the same time of ours. Their seventh day would not be our Saturday, nor would the seventh day of any two planets be alike, nor come at the same time. All the universe can keep a seventh part of time, but no the same seventh part. Not knowing this, see what a blunder Mrs. White made. She says: "I saw that the Sabbath would never be done away, but the redeemed saints, AND ALL THE ANGELIC HOST, will observe it in honor of the great Creator to all eternity." Spiritual Gifts, Vol. I, page 113. Elder U. Smith, Biblical Institute, page 145, says: "We infer that the higher orders of his intelligences keep the Sabbath also.... The Sabbath of each of his creatures will be the Sabbath of all the rest, so that all will observe THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER for the same purpose."

Here you have your definite seventh-day theory with a vengeance. Look at the utter absurdity and impossibility of the theory. All intelligent beings in heaven and earth and on all the planets, keep "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." So the Sabbath day on this little planet of ours regulates the Sabbath days of all the planets in the universe! I wonder how they manage it in Jupiter, where their days are only ten hours long, or in Venus, where they are twenty- three hours long, or in some of the planets where they are as long as several of our days? As the Sabbath must be kept from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32), I wonder how they find out, on all those planets, just when it is sunset down here!

The stubborn facts nearer home show that God's children do not, and cannot, all observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." Everybody knows that it is Saturday in India some twelve hours sooner than it is here, and that it is Saturday here twelve hours after it has ceased to be Saturday there. In Australia the day begins eighteen hours sooner than it does in California. So the Seventh- day brethren in California are working nearly the whole time that their brethren in Australia are keeping Sabbath! Come even nearer home than that. The sun sets about three hours later in California than it does in Maine. So when the Seventh-day Adventists in Maine begin to keep the Sabbath at sunset Friday evening, their own brethren in California, where the sun is yet three hours high, will still be at work for three hours! So, very few of them on this earth, observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." While some of them are keeping Sabbath on one part of the earth, others of them are at work on another part of the earth. How much less, then, do all the heavenly hosts keep the same period with men on earth.

Now, if, as Mrs. White and Bro. Smith say, the angels keep our Sabbath, the question is, with which party do they keep it? With those in Australia, or those in America? If the angels keep the Sabbath at the same time the Sabbatarians keep it in Australia, then the Sabbatarians in America are working while the angels keep Sabbath, and so, of course, the angels work while those here rest. So we see how absolutely false and absurd is the theory that all can keep the Sabbath at the same time.

I have to confess that for many years I was so stupid as to suppose that the Lord himself kept the Sabbath at the same time I did here. I supposed that when the sun set Friday evening and I began keeping the Sabbath, the Lord and the angels began keeping it too. But now I see how utterly impossible that is; for if the Lord keeps the Sabbath at the same time I do here, then he does not keep it with the brethren on the other side of the globe, because they begin the Sabbath at least twelve hours earlier than we do here. In fact, it takes just forty-eight hours, or the time of two whole days, from the time any one day begins in the extreme east till it ends at the furthest place in the west. Will the reader stop and think carefully, sharply, on this point, for it is an important one? It takes twenty-four hours for the FIRST END of a day to go clear around the earth. Then, as the LAST END of the day is twenty-four hours behind the FIRST END, it must also have twenty-four hours more to go clear around the earth, and that makes forty-eight hours in all that each day is on the earth somewhere.

I am quite certain that the average Sabbatarian feels he keeps the seventh day that he is now keeping holy time with the Lord himself, and with the angels, and with all his brethren. I used to feel that way I know, and the above quotations from Mrs. White and Elder Smith show plainly that even they think so, too. But it will be seen that this cannot be so unless the Lord keeps the time of two whole days each week. And in that case, those on this side of the earth would be working while the Lord was keeping the Sabbath with those on the other side of the earth. Then those on the opposite of the earth would be working while the Lord kept Sabbath with those on this side. And so none of them would keep the Sabbath with the Lord after all! In fact, taking it all around the earth, there is not a single hour in the whole week, when there is not some Sabbatarian at work on some part of the earth!

But, further, does the Lord keep our seventh day with us, or does he keep the seventh day with the people on other planets? Our days and weeks are not at all in harmony with theirs, nor can one of them be like another. Now, if the Lord rests only on our Saturday, then he could not rest on the seventh day of Venus or Mars or Jupiter, etc., as the seventh day of each planet differs in length and comes at a different time, from that of our earth or any planet. How, then, could God rest on all these days? If he did he must keep Sabbath all the time, and then nobody, angels or men, could keep the Sabbath with the Lord if they worked at all!

What, then, becomes of Mrs. White's statement that "ALL THE ANGELIC HOST" keep our Sabbath? or Elder Smith's hypothesis that all the universe will observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER?" Both are utterly absurd. The same definite seventh day cannot be kept by all the universe; even on this earth alone it cannot be kept by all at the same time; but all can keep a seventh part of the time. This principle upon which the fourth commandment was based, may be of universal application in earth and in heaven, in time or eternity. But just which day that shall be, is a matter of minor consequence to be determined by the circumstances in the case, which may and must differ at different times and different places. To the Jewish people it certainly was the seventh day, or Saturday, and no other day would have met the commandment. All the rigorous limitations and exactions of the Sabbath day, as under the Jewish law, could be carried out by a small people in a limited territory where the church bore rule. A particular day, the seventh, Deut. 5:12-13; definite hours, sunset to sunset, Lev. 23:32; no fires in all their houses, Ex. 35:3; stoning to death for picking up a stick, Num. 15:32-36 - this was the Jewish law. But we are not Jews nor under the Jewish law. Under the new dispensation of the gospel, other circumstances have arisen plainly and grandly marking another day as the all important day in Christian memory - the resurrection day. When the gospel was to go to all nations, to all climates, and around the earth, the Christian rest day was necessarily and wisely left upon a far different basis.

From Seventh-day Adventism Renounced (ch 9), by D.M. Canright

Do we have any responses?

See next post for another question.

 

[Your Neighbor]

Where Shall We Begin the Day?

If a man's salvation depends upon keeping the same day to a minute that God kept at creation, then it is infinitely important that we know exactly to a rod where his day began so as to begin ours there too. But the Lord has not said a word about it nor given the least clue as to where to begin the day. Nor do Sabbatarians KNOW anything about it, but have to guess at the whole thing. The day is now generally reckoned to begin at a certain line 180 degrees west from Greenwich, England. It runs north and south through the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles west of America. I wrote Prof. E.E. Holden of Lick Observatory asking, "1. Have we the date when the day line was established there? 2. Who did it, and why? 3. When? 4. Has it been reckoned from other places than Greenwich?"

He answered: "1. There was no one date. 2. No one. For convenience. 3. During the last hundred years. 4. Yes. Canary Islands, Tenereffe, Ferro, Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem, Washington, etc."

So we see: 1. It is only within the last hundred years that the day line has been fixed where it is now. 2. This was done merely for convenience, not because there was anything in nature requiring it. 3. At different times the day line has been counted from at least seven different places, from Jerusalem in the east to Washington in the west, about 8,000 miles difference, or one-third the way around the earth. Hence, the beginning of the seventh day has varied that much at different dates. 4. In another century it may be changed again. 5. There is just as much authority for one place as the other, and no divine authority for one place as the other, and no divine authority for either, as it is all man's work and done at hap-hazard. 6. Hence, so far as duty to God is concerned, any nation, church or society is at liberty to begin the day wherever they please. One place will be just as apt to be in harmony with God's day line as another.

Sabbatarians in America can fix their day line in the Atlantic instead of in the Pacific and then our Sunday will be Saturday, and they will be all right and convert a nation in a day! Could any one prove that this would not be in harmony with God's day line at creation? Certainly not. It would be just as apt to be right as the present day line. Then why not do it? Indeed, this is exactly parallel to what Seventh-day Adventists have done within the past few years in the case of a whole colony in the Pacific Ocean. Pitcairn Island, in the Pacific, was settled one hundred years ago by persons who brought their reckoning eastward from Asia. But it happens to be on the American side of the present day line; hence their Sunday was our Saturday, and they all kept it one hundred years as Sunday. According to Adventists, this was an awful thing, for Sunday is the Pope's Sabbath, the mark of the beast. So, a few years ago, Adventists went there and converted them all to keeping Saturday. How? They simply induced them to change their reckoning of the day line a few miles and lo! their Sunday was Saturday! Now they are all pious Sabbath- keepers while before they were all keeping Sunday, the mark of the beast! And yet they are keeping exactly the same day they always kept! If this is not hair-splitting, tell me what is. It illustrates the childishness of the whole Sabbatarian business. Now let the Adventists just shift their day line a little further east to include America and they can keep our day with us.

If the day began in the traditional place where Eden is said to have been located, then the day line would be away west of the present location some 7,000 miles, west even of Australia; and then the Seventh-day people in Australia are not keeping the Sabbath at all. In that case the Sunday-keepers of New Zealand and Australia are now actually keeping the original seventh day, and Sabbatarians there are keeping the sixth day! Do they know, and can they prove, that this is not so? No; they simply have to take the reckoning just as it happened to be, right or wrong, without knowing which it is. And yet, at great expense, they have sent missionaries there to convert the people over to keep another day, when actually they do not know but what those people are really keeping the seventh day, and they themselves are wrong! None, not even themselves, pretend to know where God began to reckon that day; yet they draw the line to a hair, and say that all will be damned who do not toe that line and count from that spot! Does the salvation of a man's soul depend upon such mathematical niceties and such uncertainties as these? If it does, we may well despair of heaven.

The very fact that God has never revealed just where the true day line is, or where the seventh day began, shows that it is of no consequence for us to know. Alaska, the northwest point of America, was settled by Russians ages ago, before the present day line existed. Of course they brought their reckoning with them and hence their Sunday was on Saturday. In 1867 we bought Alaska and it became a part of the United States. The day we took possession our laws changed their Sunday to Saturday, all by human authority. Did that change the Edenic Sabbath for that people? Again, in going around the earth one way we lose a day and going the other way we gain a day. Hence, in one case we must add a day and in the other drop a day. All have to do this to keep in harmony with the world. Adventists do this, but by what authority, and where? The Bible says keep the seventh day and from sunset to sunset. Ex. 20:8-11; Lev. 23:32. Let two Adventists start from Chicago, one going east, the other west, around the earth. Each keeps carefully the seventh day as the sun sets. When they meet again at Chicago they will be two days apart! One will be keeping Sunday and the other Friday. How do they manage it? Each gives up his seventh day and both take that of the world. So they have a worldly day after all!

Look at the difficulty in crossing this supposed day line in the Pacific Ocean. I have personally conversed with Sabbatarians who have crossed this line both ways, east and west. Going west, a day is ADDED, going east it is DROPPED and this is done at NOON of the day which finds them nearest the supposed line. On the vessel, a man going west sits down to dinner 11:50 A.M. Friday. While he is eating the time is changed and he rises from dinner Saturday noon! Then he has only six hours of Sabbath till sunset; or coming east, he sits down to dinner Saturday noon and rises from dinner Friday noon! He has kept eighteen hours Sabbath; then it is gone in a second at high noon, and he has six hours to work till sunset. Now he must begin Sabbath once more and keep it over again - twenty-four hours! In one case he only kept six hours Sabbath, and in the other case he kept forty-two hours!

These stubborn facts demonstrate the utter absurdity of the Sabbatarian view. They claim that these things do not bother them any; but I know that they do, and badly, too. They have written much on it, devised all sorts of diagrams, illustrations and arguments to meet the difficulty; but none are satisfactory, even to themselves. Hence new methods are constantly being devised to dodge the difficulty.

Responses?

 

[woobadooba]

From Seventh-day Adventism Renounced (ch 9), by D.M. Canright

Do we have any responses?

See next post for another question.

Apparently Canright didn't think this thing through aright, since his argument is filled with holes.

1. Since when was Venus and Saturn ever populated? Why would he even argue this point? Has he been given some divine insight into these things? How come leading scientists today don't have such knowledge as to determine that these planets are populated?
2. Angelic Host doesn't have to mean every single being in all the universe. It could just simply be referring to the angels that are in heaven.
3. The Bible makes it quite clear that the Sabbath was made for mankind. Mk. 2:27 Having said that, why is Canright trying to argue from the point of view that inhabitants from other planets are also required by God to keep this day holy, especially since the Bible is silent on this matter?
4. Ellen White said the angelic host "will" keep this day holy, meaning that doesn't necessarily suggest that they already are. This idea is based on Isa. 66:23.
5. It doesn't matter where one is. The seventh day is what it is--a day that is set aside as holy, and separate from all others days.
6. According to Isa. 66:23 God is going to make it possible for all people to keep the Sabbath day holy at the same time. Would Canright dare call God a liar? Why would it be an issue if he believed what the Bible says?

 

[Jon0388g]

From Seventh-day Adventism Renounced (ch 9), by D.M. Canright

Do we have any responses?

See next post for another question.

Utterly ridiculous.

Is God (and even the angels by that matter) bounded by time?

Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as "time" per se - it is all relative. Does this mean the Sabbath is in question?

We are commanded to keep the seventh-day holy. There are no ifs nor buts about it.

Jon

 

[OntheDL]

In their very nature all purely moral laws are universal and eternal in their application, are binding in heaven, in Eden, on Jews or Gentiles, saints or sinners, now or hereafter. Test the particular seventh day, Saturday, by that rule, and it fails everywhere. Go to Venus, where the days are about twenty-three hours long, to Jupiter, where they are only about ten hours long; to Saturn, where they are about twelve hours long, or to some of the larger planets, where their days are much longer than ours. How could the inhabitants of those worlds keep our seventh day? They could keep "a" seventh day, their own, but that would not be of the same length of ours, nor come at the same time of ours. Their seventh day would not be our Saturday, nor would the seventh day of any two planets be alike, nor come at the same time. All the universe can keep a seventh part of time, but no the same seventh part. Not knowing this, see what a blunder Mrs. White made. She says: "I saw that the Sabbath would never be done away, but the redeemed saints, AND ALL THE ANGELIC HOST, will observe it in honor of the great Creator to all eternity." Spiritual Gifts, Vol. I, page 113. Elder U. Smith, Biblical Institute, page 145, says: "We infer that the higher orders of his intelligences keep the Sabbath also.... The Sabbath of each of his creatures will be the Sabbath of all the rest, so that all will observe THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER for the same purpose."

Here you have your definite seventh-day theory with a vengeance. Look at the utter absurdity and impossibility of the theory. All intelligent beings in heaven and earth and on all the planets, keep "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." So the Sabbath day on this little planet of ours regulates the Sabbath days of all the planets in the universe! I wonder how they manage it in Jupiter, where their days are only ten hours long, or in Venus, where they are twenty- three hours long, or in some of the planets where they are as long as several of our days? As the Sabbath must be kept from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32), I wonder how they find out, on all those planets, just when it is sunset down here!

The stubborn facts nearer home show that God's children do not, and cannot, all observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." Everybody knows that it is Saturday in India some twelve hours sooner than it is here, and that it is Saturday here twelve hours after it has ceased to be Saturday there. In Australia the day begins eighteen hours sooner than it does in California. So the Seventh- day brethren in California are working nearly the whole time that their brethren in Australia are keeping Sabbath! Come even nearer home than that. The sun sets about three hours later in California than it does in Maine. So when the Seventh-day Adventists in Maine begin to keep the Sabbath at sunset Friday evening, their own brethren in California, where the sun is yet three hours high, will still be at work for three hours! So, very few of them on this earth, observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER." While some of them are keeping Sabbath on one part of the earth, others of them are at work on another part of the earth. How much less, then, do all the heavenly hosts keep the same period with men on earth.

Now, if, as Mrs. White and Bro. Smith say, the angels keep our Sabbath, the question is, with which party do they keep it? With those in Australia, or those in America? If the angels keep the Sabbath at the same time the Sabbatarians keep it in Australia, then the Sabbatarians in America are working while the angels keep Sabbath, and so, of course, the angels work while those here rest. So we see how absolutely false and absurd is the theory that all can keep the Sabbath at the same time.

I have to confess that for many years I was so stupid as to suppose that the Lord himself kept the Sabbath at the same time I did here. I supposed that when the sun set Friday evening and I began keeping the Sabbath, the Lord and the angels began keeping it too. But now I see how utterly impossible that is; for if the Lord keeps the Sabbath at the same time I do here, then he does not keep it with the brethren on the other side of the globe, because they begin the Sabbath at least twelve hours earlier than we do here. In fact, it takes just forty-eight hours, or the time of two whole days, from the time any one day begins in the extreme east till it ends at the furthest place in the west. Will the reader stop and think carefully, sharply, on this point, for it is an important one? It takes twenty-four hours for the FIRST END of a day to go clear around the earth. Then, as the LAST END of the day is twenty-four hours behind the FIRST END, it must also have twenty-four hours more to go clear around the earth, and that makes forty-eight hours in all that each day is on the earth somewhere.

I am quite certain that the average Sabbatarian feels he keeps the seventh day that he is now keeping holy time with the Lord himself, and with the angels, and with all his brethren. I used to feel that way I know, and the above quotations from Mrs. White and Elder Smith show plainly that even they think so, too. But it will be seen that this cannot be so unless the Lord keeps the time of two whole days each week. And in that case, those on this side of the earth would be working while the Lord was keeping the Sabbath with those on the other side of the earth. Then those on the opposite of the earth would be working while the Lord kept Sabbath with those on this side. And so none of them would keep the Sabbath with the Lord after all! In fact, taking it all around the earth, there is not a single hour in the whole week, when there is not some Sabbatarian at work on some part of the earth!

But, further, does the Lord keep our seventh day with us, or does he keep the seventh day with the people on other planets? Our days and weeks are not at all in harmony with theirs, nor can one of them be like another. Now, if the Lord rests only on our Saturday, then he could not rest on the seventh day of Venus or Mars or Jupiter, etc., as the seventh day of each planet differs in length and comes at a different time, from that of our earth or any planet. How, then, could God rest on all these days? If he did he must keep Sabbath all the time, and then nobody, angels or men, could keep the Sabbath with the Lord if they worked at all!

What, then, becomes of Mrs. White's statement that "ALL THE ANGELIC HOST" keep our Sabbath? or Elder Smith's hypothesis that all the universe will observe "THE SAME PERIOD TOGETHER?" Both are utterly absurd. The same definite seventh day cannot be kept by all the universe; even on this earth alone it cannot be kept by all at the same time; but all can keep a seventh part of the time. This principle upon which the fourth commandment was based, may be of universal application in earth and in heaven, in time or eternity. But just which day that shall be, is a matter of minor consequence to be determined by the circumstances in the case, which may and must differ at different times and different places. To the Jewish people it certainly was the seventh day, or Saturday, and no other day would have met the commandment. All the rigorous limitations and exactions of the Sabbath day, as under the Jewish law, could be carried out by a small people in a limited territory where the church bore rule. A particular day, the seventh, Deut. 5:12-13; definite hours, sunset to sunset, Lev. 23:32; no fires in all their houses, Ex. 35:3; stoning to death for picking up a stick, Num. 15:32-36 - this was the Jewish law. But we are not Jews nor under the Jewish law. Under the new dispensation of the gospel, other circumstances have arisen plainly and grandly marking another day as the all important day in Christian memory - the resurrection day. When the gospel was to go to all nations, to all climates, and around the earth, the Christian rest day was necessarily and wisely left upon a far different basis. From Seventh-day Adventism Renounced (ch 9), by D.M. Canright
.

I don't think this argument really deserves a response since Ellen White didn't say they will keep the sabbath in the same period. It was Uriah Smith who said it. Uriah Smith could say anything he wanted since SDAs don't claim his writings inspired.

 

[woobadooba]

Responses?

I don't think this argument really deserves a response since Ellen White didn't say they will keep the sabbath in the same period. It was Uriah Smith who said it. Uriah Smith could say anything he wanted since SDAs don't claim his writings inspired.

I think every argument deserves a response, since these are real issues that real people are struggling with. It's just a matter of how much time one ought to spend responding to such ideas. There comes a point when we just need to walk away.

 

[OntheDL]

Where Shall We Begin the Day?

If a man's salvation depends upon keeping the same day to a minute that God kept at creation, then it is infinitely important that we know exactly to a rod where his day began so as to begin ours there too. But the Lord has not said a word about it nor given the least clue as to where to begin the day. Nor do Sabbatarians KNOW anything about it, but have to guess at the whole thing. The day is now generally reckoned to begin at a certain line 180 degrees west from Greenwich, England. It runs north and south through the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles west of America. I wrote Prof. E.E. Holden of Lick Observatory asking, "1. Have we the date when the day line was established there? 2. Who did it, and why? 3. When? 4. Has it been reckoned from other places than Greenwich?"

He answered: "1. There was no one date. 2. No one. For convenience. 3. During the last hundred years. 4. Yes. Canary Islands, Tenereffe, Ferro, Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem, Washington, etc."

So we see: 1. It is only within the last hundred years that the day line has been fixed where it is now. 2. This was done merely for convenience, not because there was anything in nature requiring it. 3. At different times the day line has been counted from at least seven different places, from Jerusalem in the east to Washington in the west, about 8,000 miles difference, or one-third the way around the earth. Hence, the beginning of the seventh day has varied that much at different dates. 4. In another century it may be changed again. 5. There is just as much authority for one place as the other, and no divine authority for one place as the other, and no divine authority for either, as it is all man's work and done at hap-hazard. 6. Hence, so far as duty to God is concerned, any nation, church or society is at liberty to begin the day wherever they please. One place will be just as apt to be in harmony with God's day line as another.

Sabbatarians in America can fix their day line in the Atlantic instead of in the Pacific and then our Sunday will be Saturday, and they will be all right and convert a nation in a day! Could any one prove that this would not be in harmony with God's day line at creation? Certainly not. It would be just as apt to be right as the present day line. Then why not do it? Indeed, this is exactly parallel to what Seventh-day Adventists have done within the past few years in the case of a whole colony in the Pacific Ocean. Pitcairn Island, in the Pacific, was settled one hundred years ago by persons who brought their reckoning eastward from Asia. But it happens to be on the American side of the present day line; hence their Sunday was our Saturday, and they all kept it one hundred years as Sunday. According to Adventists, this was an awful thing, for Sunday is the Pope's Sabbath, the mark of the beast. So, a few years ago, Adventists went there and converted them all to keeping Saturday. How? They simply induced them to change their reckoning of the day line a few miles and lo! their Sunday was Saturday! Now they are all pious Sabbath- keepers while before they were all keeping Sunday, the mark of the beast! And yet they are keeping exactly the same day they always kept! If this is not hair-splitting, tell me what is. It illustrates the childishness of the whole Sabbatarian business. Now let the Adventists just shift their day line a little further east to include America and they can keep our day with us.

If the day began in the traditional place where Eden is said to have been located, then the day line would be away west of the present location some 7,000 miles, west even of Australia; and then the Seventh-day people in Australia are not keeping the Sabbath at all. In that case the Sunday-keepers of New Zealand and Australia are now actually keeping the original seventh day, and Sabbatarians there are keeping the sixth day! Do they know, and can they prove, that this is not so? No; they simply have to take the reckoning just as it happened to be, right or wrong, without knowing which it is. And yet, at great expense, they have sent missionaries there to convert the people over to keep another day, when actually they do not know but what those people are really keeping the seventh day, and they themselves are wrong! None, not even themselves, pretend to know where God began to reckon that day; yet they draw the line to a hair, and say that all will be damned who do not toe that line and count from that spot! Does the salvation of a man's soul depend upon such mathematical niceties and such uncertainties as these? If it does, we may well despair of heaven.

The very fact that God has never revealed just where the true day line is, or where the seventh day began, shows that it is of no consequence for us to know. Alaska, the northwest point of America, was settled by Russians ages ago, before the present day line existed. Of course they brought their reckoning with them and hence their Sunday was on Saturday. In 1867 we bought Alaska and it became a part of the United States. The day we took possession our laws changed their Sunday to Saturday, all by human authority. Did that change the Edenic Sabbath for that people? Again, in going around the earth one way we lose a day and going the other way we gain a day. Hence, in one case we must add a day and in the other drop a day. All have to do this to keep in harmony with the world. Adventists do this, but by what authority, and where? The Bible says keep the seventh day and from sunset to sunset. Ex. 20:8-11; Lev. 23:32. Let two Adventists start from Chicago, one going east, the other west, around the earth. Each keeps carefully the seventh day as the sun sets. When they meet again at Chicago they will be two days apart! One will be keeping Sunday and the other Friday. How do they manage it? Each gives up his seventh day and both take that of the world. So they have a worldly day after all!

Look at the difficulty in crossing this supposed day line in the Pacific Ocean. I have personally conversed with Sabbatarians who have crossed this line both ways, east and west. Going west, a day is ADDED, going east it is DROPPED and this is done at NOON of the day which finds them nearest the supposed line. On the vessel, a man going west sits down to dinner 11:50 A.M. Friday. While he is eating the time is changed and he rises from dinner Saturday noon! Then he has only six hours of Sabbath till sunset; or coming east, he sits down to dinner Saturday noon and rises from dinner Friday noon! He has kept eighteen hours Sabbath; then it is gone in a second at high noon, and he has six hours to work till sunset. Now he must begin Sabbath once more and keep it over again - twenty-four hours! In one case he only kept six hours Sabbath, and in the other case he kept forty-two hours!

These stubborn facts demonstrate the utter absurdity of the Sabbatarian view. They claim that these things do not bother them any; but I know that they do, and badly, too. They have written much on it, devised all sorts of diagrams, illustrations and arguments to meet the difficulty; but none are satisfactory, even to themselves. Hence new methods are constantly being devised to dodge the difficulty.

Along the same logic...when do you begin to celebrate the New Year? Whenever your clock happens to strike twelve. Not know when the exact second sabbath begins is irrelevant. When sun goes down on Friday is when Sabbath begins for you.

Canright's argument is a legalistic view of trying to get out of it.

 

[Your Neighbor]

I don't think this argument really deserves a response since Ellen White didn't say they will keep the sabbath in the same period. It was Uriah Smith who said it. Uriah Smith could say anything he wanted since SDAs don't claim his writings inspired.

Yes, I agree upon further examination. Posters may ignore the first post in the thread and respond to the second post.

 

[Your Neighbor]

bump

 

[djconklin]

Yes, I agree upon further examination. Posters may ignore the first post in the thread and respond to the second post.

#2 is the same thing in a different quise.

 

[visio]

From Seventh-day Adventism Renounced (ch 9), by D.M. Canright

Do we have any responses?
See next post for another question.

The bible says we will keep the sabbath in heaven... what you are really doing is calling God a liar. You are stating your intelligence is far superior to His as He was the one who instituted the sabbath and commanded all who claimed to follow Him to worship on it.

Woodabooba had it right. God is not bound by time so how can you logically pull God into a debate where He is the creator of logic and bind Him to it? Again your demeaning God to your level.

These aren't real issues. The bible plainly tells us what to do. To question it is questioning God. How can you question God?