YOU MUST READ THE PREVIOUS POST BEFORE READING THIS ONE! 

It is very logical to state that the 4th commandment does not state that the Sabbath was on Saturday or any other particular day. It only states that the Sabbath is to be observed on the seventh day. Any nation could have made up their own calendar which would make any day of the week the seventh day. I’m not sure that actually happened with any nation, but since I don’t know the answer to that, we’ll just say that it is possible that there were some nations which made different days of the week the seventh day.

It is not really important to me if other nations did change the seventh day of the week to something different from what I know. I only care about what God would do.

Jonathan Edwards hangs his hat on the fact that the seventh day in the Ten Commandments can and does mean anything God wants it to mean. For the Jew, it meant Saturday and for the Christian, it means Sunday. But is this a sturdy peg on which to hang one’s hat? Let’s look at some doctrine and different Scripture.

One of the main concepts to which the literal Sabbath-keeper (I also) holds is that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance. It is believed that God established the Sabbath at the time of creation when He rested from all His work. Now there is nothing in the Genesis account which would tell us which day this actually was.

Genesis 2:1 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

The Genesis account is as vague as the 4th commandment account in that it uses “seventh” instead of “Saturday”. However, we must all agree that God established the first day as the first day and so on. He did not have multiple weeks with which He could use in order to switch the places of the days He made. The first day was indeed the first day. No other day could be that day. Each day was identified by what God did on that day. To mix these days up would be to change the order in which God created each thing, and to do this is certainly unbiblical and also would show mankind’s effort to get the upper hand on God.  I am not claiming that anyone is doing this.

Therefore, although we cannot say that it was on Saturday that God rested, we can say that He rested on the seventh day which was indeed the seventh day. I’m not so sure God gave names to the days of the week. It wouldn’t be out of the question that He let mankind give names to the days of the week. 

With all this so-called ambiguity created by some literal Sabbath keeper such as Jonathan Edwards, the question now extends to Adam and Eve. Did Adam and Eve know on which day God rested? All literal Sabbath-keepers would be hard press to say, “No”. In fact, they would argue that Adam and Eve observed the Sabbath day. Adam and Eve pretty much began their existence observing the Sabbath. They were created on the sixth day which may or may not have taken the whole day. In any case, they would have been able to see that they were the last to be created when the next day God rested and they also joined in His rest. It is interesting to note here at this point that Adam and Eve participated in God’s Sabbath rest BEFORE they even did one day’s worth of work. I might be going out on a limb here, but doesn’t this show even at the beginning of time that Adam and Eve “rested” from any work of their own because they hadn’t done any work at that point and rested in the work that God had done? Perhaps, that’s why they were created last. They could not take any glory in “helping” God in any way. 

 After being in slavery for 400 years, it is quite possible that the Israelites forgot which day of the week it was as Jonathan Edwards points out. However, there are other literal Sabbath-keepers who state just the opposite. Here is a quote by Dr. R. L. Dabney and here is its link. Look under number 504.

“But especially does the twenty-second verse of Exodus chap. 16 prove our view and refute the other. The people had, on the sixth day, already begun to make preparations for the rest of the seventh by gathering two portions of manna, before Moses or the elders had said one word to them about it! Their doing so was what prompted the elders to make the inquiry of Moses. Thus it appears beyond question that the Hebrews did know of God’s command to hallow the Sabbath, and were in the general (not universal) habit of honoring it, before ever the manna had fallen or Moses had said a word about the duty.”

So which is it? Did the Israelites know which day was the Sabbath or did they not? Although Jonathan Edwards was more intelligent than most people (Dr. R. L. Dabney might even agree more intelligent than himself), I will have to side on the side of Dr. R. L. Dabney’s belief that the Israelites knew which day was the Sabbath day for the very reason he gave which is according to Scripture. We can presume logical things about the Israelites all day long, but if they are not supported by Scripture one has to abandon them.

If the Israelites already knew which day was the seventh day because it was an established point in time since the beginning of time, then it is unremarkable that God didn’t state “Saturday” in the 4th commandment instead of “seventh”. If God established the seventh day to have its own place in time, then He didn’t need to say “Saturday” in the 4th commandment. The seventh day would always be the seventh day no matter what you called it. You could call it “Saturday” or you could call it “Goenluyn” and it still remains the seventh day. Actually, God saying “seventh” secures the place that the Sabbath day held. If He had stated “Saturday” in the 4th commandment, then mankind could have changed the actual day to another day and just named the new day “Saturday”.  For example, mankind decides he doesn’t like the seventh day to be the Sabbath day so he changes it to the fourth day. All he would have to do is change the fourth day’s  name to “Saturday” and he would still be observing the law. If God had put “Saturday” into the 4th commandment instead of “seventh”, then He in essence wouldn’t have specified which day was the Sabbath but would have only given the Sabbath day a name. You see, the order of the days would be impossible to change since He established their place in time, but the names of the days would be possible to change, and God knew that.

However, let’s continue with Jonathan’s line of thinking for the sake of showing where errors might exist. 

Even though the Israelites had forgotten the day on which to celebrate the Sabbath, can we lay this forgetfulness upon God? Would He be perplexed as to which day to honor the Sabbath? No. Everyone agrees that God knew which day was the Sabbath. Many would agree that it was the same day on which He rested in the creational account.  

God had been just as vague about which day was the Sabbath day in the creational account as He was in the 4th commandment, and yet, He expected Adam to know which day it was. We have no Scriptural support which would leads us to believe that God had to spell out this day for Adam. We are not shown that Adam was left with the sense that any day could be the seventh day, and therefore, needed divine revelation as to which day was the seventh day. It must be supposed then that God made each day to fit in the order in which He made them. Why would this not continue throughout history? Why would He make a commandment which could scramble the seventh day around in the week? He had created the seventh day to fit in its own place in time. Was He now about to  decide to change the order of the days via a moral command? Why would He do that? Would He really make the “seventh” in the 4th commandment undefined, not because He didn’t know which day was the seventh at the time of creation, but because He wanted to change the place in time the seventh day had always inhabited later on in history? God is an orderly God, yet this indeed seems very unorderly. This is, however, what Jonathan purports.

Let’s for the sake of continuance say he is right. Which Scripture tells us that Saturday is now Sunday and both are the seventh? I, of course, do not believe there is any Scripture to support this. However, if we continue with Jonathan Edward’s line of thinking, any day of the week can be the seventh day as long as you work six days before the “resting” day. We have to use the same reasoning here in the NT as he used in the OT. Once you’ve established a premise, you must carry it through to the end of your belief system. His premise is that the “seventh” in the 4th commandment isn’t particular to a specific day and that God had to give Exo. 16, which is outside of the moral law and thus has the ability to change, to show the Israelites what day He meant by the “seventh” in the 4th commandment. If the 4th commandment is ambiguous for them, then it is also ambiguous for us. We would, therefore, need an “Exo. 16″ in order to tell us which day is the Sabbath. Well, we did have an “Exo 16″, but Jonathan Edwards claims that we now cannot use Exo. 16 as our instructions to tell us which day is the Sabbath.

He believes God changed the Sabbath day in the NT and supports this change with Scriptures such as Christ’s resurrection, one account of Paul preaching on the first day of the week, Paul’s instruction to put aside money on the first day of the week, and John the Apostle having a vision on the Lord’s Day. Fine! I don’t think any of those Scriptures support his beliefs, but let’s pretend they do. 

If Jonathan Edwards is willing to allow the seventh day in the week to be mobile and not adhere to Scriptural support that God gave each day its own position in time, then that type of thinking also has to extend to every other day of the week including the first day of the week. We might have Scripture which tells us to change the Sabbath from the seventh to the first, but we lack Scripture which tells us which day the first day actually is…remember we’ve thrown out Exo. 16 which informed the Jew on which day (Saturday) the Sabbath took place. This would seem like a ridiculous statement to Edwards because he would state that the Jews had for centuries observed the Sabbath on Saturday, and so it would be natural for the first day to follow the seventh day. However, he would be ascribing to the principle that God established each day in its own place in time…a principle he threw out some time ago!

Advertisement