"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." Eze. 13:6.
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. Rev. 16:12-16; Jer. 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. Rev. 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 chapter 22:30. Thus he says:—
"And I 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."
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:—
Isa. 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."
The Man of Sin has thought to change the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. And 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 (Rev. 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.125When 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.
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.
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 Akers' 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:—
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.
This theory of Dr. Akers' rests upon the following propositions:—
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.
2. The seventh day from creation on which God rested was Adam's first day of existence.
3. Hence it was that Adam began his week with the last day of the Creator's week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.