"You
will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the
Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom?
Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty
God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh
day,' who shall dare to say, 'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner
of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first
day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know
not how you can answer."
"You
are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible
only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one
day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the
Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible
has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of
the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still
binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you
are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the
Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion
of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly
altered."-"The Library of Christian Doctrine,"
pages 3, 4.
"The
first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day:
'God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3. This
precept was confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember
the Sabbath day to keep It holy. ...The seventh day is the Sabbath
of the Lord thy God.' Exodus 20: 8, 10. On the other hand, Christ
declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it.
(Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His custom
was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: r6.
His disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They . . .
rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment.' Luke 23:
56. Yet with all this weight of Scripture authority for keeping
the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of all denominations
make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to the
first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they
for doing this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition
of the Catholic Church, which declares that the apostle made the
change in honour of Christ's resurrection, and the descent of the
Holy Ghost on that day of the week."-JOHN MILNER, "The
End of Religious Controversy," page 71.
"Sabbath
means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but the
early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honour the
day on which Christ arose from the dead."-FULTON OURSLER.
Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1951, pages 34, 35.
"I
do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures.
I read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching for guidance,
and in the immortal 'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good
life."-Id., page 33.
"Most
certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than
ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral
challenge in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable
alike to Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the
light of history and of current events, can doubt their identity
with the eternal law of nature?"-Id., page 124.
"The
Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not
be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or
the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath. . . . It was the last
day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy.
The observance of no other day would fulfil the law."-H. J.
FLOWERS, B.A., B.D., "The Permanent Value of the Ten
Commandments," page 13.
"The
evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection
of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian
Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day
of the week, the Sabbath. English speaking peoples have been the
most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the
obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday.
In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken
of as the Sabbath."-F. M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department
of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept.
1, 1949.
"He
that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which
it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation
of the first man; in the creation of a fair abode for man in the
space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the
heavens and the earth, and, as a necessary antecedent to all this,
in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative effort,
rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which
the believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from
those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance.'
- JAMES G. MURPHY, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus,"
comments on Exodus 20: 8-11.