DOES DAY MEAN DAY?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 25, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 13

DOES DAY MEAN DAY?

In the Northern Christian Advocate of Feb. 19, 1880, appears an article from Rev. William Armstrong on the question, Is Saturday or Sunday the Sabbath? This is No. 3 of the series, and the whole paper is devoted to the proposition that the six days of creation were each immense periods of time. This is assumed instead of proved, and then handed out with great confidence and complacency as a crushing overthrow of the idea that the seventh day is the Sabbath. How all this helps his idea of a first-day Sabbath, does not appear. We can assure him, however, that the seventh-day Sabbath will survive that argument as easily as a first-day Sabbath.

Quoting a statement from “Sermons on the Sabbath,” by J. N. Andrews, that the days of creation were periods of twenty-four hours each, the natural day, he says:—

“In reading the above, I am amazed! Am I in the latter part of the nineteenth century? Is Galileo still before the Inquisition? Does the sun move, and the earth stand still?”

But does not Mr. Armstrong remember that a few years ago the very same pompous exclamations were made by so-called scientists, when propositions were questioned which they themselves have since utterly discarded as contrary to both facts and reason?

The confidence and assurance with which men talk of the work of creation is amusing. One would think from their language that they were on the spot, and overseers of the work. True science is good, and worthy of all respect, but when the Bible speaks of “science falsely so called,” and solemnly warns believers against its “oppositions;” and while the most plausible scientific schemes are in such a state of rapid transition, to-day lauded to the heavens, and to-morrow discarded as utterly worthless, we have no hat to lift nor knee to bend in reverence before any theory because it claims to be “scientific.” There is too much sham and shoddy in this line to make it wise for any one to accept that which is not clearly demonstrated.

Mr. Armstrong essays to confine his argument to Scriptural ground, giving, as the principal reason for his position, that the Hebrew for day (yom) is sometimes used indefinitely; as, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” But while we admit that the word day is sometimes used indefinitely, will he deny that it is ever used definitely? Will he claim that day (yom) never means a period of twenty-four hours? By no means. Then why may it not be used definitely in Genesis 1? If it is not, other reasons must demonstrate it.

His second argument is that the sun was not given to measure off the day, and be for signs and seasons, until the fourth day. So he says that not until the fourth day “could there be days like ours,—the evening and morning as we now understand the terms.”

Does Mr. A., then, admit that after that happened, the days were such as we now have, measured by the sun? If so, does it not follow that the previous days were of the same length, God so arranging the light that the revolution of the earth would cause alternate periods of light and darkness, as we now experience them? There is nothing to indicate a change in the narrative, and nothing unreasonable in such a supposition.

Now we think it can be shown decisively, so far as the Scriptural argument is concerned, which is all that we are now discussing, that those days were literal days. The fourth commandment says that we are to rest upon the seventh day, after working six, for the reason that God did the same thing. No one questions that the days mentioned in the fourth commandment of the decalogue are literal days of twenty-four hours each, as we now reckon them. But this commandment points back to creation, and says that we are to work the same length of time that God worked, and then rest the same length of time that he rested. If God worked for six immense periods of time, then man must work the same, according to this commandment; but if what the commandment requires is six literal days of work, and then one literal day of rest, such were the days on which God worked and rested; for so the commandment declares. There is an irreconcilable contradiction between the fourth commandment and the hypothesis of the six-period theory of creation. We stick to the commandment.

But the strangest of all Mr. Armstrong’s declarations is this, that as the seventh day is not said to have an evening and a morning, we are still within that period, and the seventh day is not yet ended! What, then, shall we do with the record in Genesis, and in the fourth commandment also, which says that God spent the entire seventh day in rest, and then blessed and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested; for according to Mr. A., the seventh day is not yet ended, God’s rest is not yet complete, and the

acts which he is said to have performed because he had rested, have not yet taken place! Thus the plain declarations of the word of God are perverted and nullified by this monstrous theory. Well did Paul say to Timothy, and through him to all Christian believers, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” 1 Tim. 6:20, 21.