Ought Christians to Keep the Sabbath?

OUGHT CHRISTIANS TO
KEEP THE SABBATH?”

By: R. A. TORREY

Fleming H. Revell Company
New York Chicago Toronto

Publishers of Evangelical Literature

Copyrighted 1899, by Fleming H. Revell Company Before reading this tract upon one of the burning questions of the day, the reader is earnestly requested to go to God in prayer and covenant with Him that he will take his stand upon what the Word of God teaches, whether it may agree with his previous notions or not. Let us, at all cost, be true to the Word of God.

Having made this agreement with God, read the tract, Bible in hand, and read it to the end.

“The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath: so that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”. Mark 2:27, 28, Revised Version.

There was nothing for which the religious leaders of Christ’s day, the Pharisees, were such sticklers as the Sabbath. Everything must give way to the demands of the Sabbath law and their interpretation of it. Sabbath keeping was more

important to their minds than love or mercy or the needs of man. (Matthew 12:7, 8.) Whatever a man might be or do that was good, if he did not keep the Sabbath according to their idea of it, he deserved to die and be damned. Sabbath keeping was the sum of all righteousness and Sabbath breaking was the sum of all wickedness. They pronounced Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, to be worthy of death because He did not keep the Sabbath in their way. (John 5:18.) The most constant conflict that Jesus had with the Jews was on the subject of Sabbath keeping. In bringing one of these conflicts to a close, He uttered the words of our text and declared the great underlying principles of the question. These are two. First, that the Sabbath was made for man and that man therefore is not to be sacrificed to Sabbath keeping, but Sabbath keeping to be made subservient to man’s needs. Second, that the Son of Man - Jesus Christ - is Lord even of the Sabbath, and therefore has authority to modify it, change it, or abrogate it as He will.

This same Sabbath question is coming to the front in our day. Those old time Pharisees have their lineal descendants in the present day Seventh Day Adventists. To them also Sabbath keeping is the sum of all righteousness and Sabbath breaking, according to their interpretation of it, i.e., the keeping of the first day of the week, instead of the seventh day of the week, is the sum of all wickedness, “the mark of the beast, “as they put it. Wherever the word “commandment” is used in the New Testament they read in the word fourth or Sabbath, thus corrupting the Word of God by adding to it what the Holy Spirit has not said. (Revelation 22: 18.) For example, one of their valiant warriors wrote me a letter, quoting 1 John 2:4, “He that saith, I know Him and keepeth not His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, “and he wrote it this way, “He that saith, I know Him and keepeth not His (Sabbath) commandment is a liar, and the truth is not in him. “When I showed him it did not so read and the Holy Ghost had taken pains to say what commandments he meant in the next chapter, verse 23, “This is His commandment, that ye should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another as He gave us commandment”(l John 3:23), he simply balked back in the harness and refused to retract.

The Seventh Day Adventists are very fond of making a similar use of Revelation 22:18, “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city. “This is one of their favorite passages, and they make the commandments here to mean the ten

commandments, and especially the fourth. Not only is there no hint that the ten commandments are meant, but anyone who will take the pains to look up the Revised Version will find that all reference to any commandments has disappeared in the text, and the text reads, as it ought, “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.” Perhaps some early day legalist, like our modern Seventh Day Adventist, was not satisfied with the Word of God as it read and substituted the law for the Gospel.

These successors of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and Judaizers of Paul’s day are seeking to break up the churches on this question. They are sending their missionaries and their books and tracts everywhere; they are using the most subtle and oftentimes underhand methods to get people under the yoke of the law In a word, they are repeating the tactics a3 well as the errors of those Judaizers whom Paul so strongly rebukes in his Epistle to the Galatians. They zealously seek weak and uninstructed Christians in no good way, nay, they desire to shut them out, that they may seek them. (Galatians 4:17, Revised Version) Like the young Christians in Galatia, many are being un- settled and drifting into legalism in this way. Just as the question “Ought Christians to be circumcised after the manner of Moses “was a burning and important one in Paul’s day (Acts 15:1-29; Galatians 1:6, 7; 2:4-16; 3:1-29; 4:21-31; 5:1-4) so the question “Ought Christians to keep the Sabbath “is a burning and important one today. I take it up this morning to set some free from the yoke of bondage who have become entangled in it and to help others to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. (Galatians 5:1.)

We will study the question from the Bible. We will find what the scripture saith. In order that we may clearly grasp it and hold it we will put the scripture teaching in a series of plain, unanswerable propositions and thus we will proceed step by step surely.

I. The first proposition is this: THE Sabbath as a law is a distinctly Jewish institution. Deuteronomy 5:12-15, “Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor

thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any oi thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out hence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore, the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.” If you look to the other place where the ten commandments are given, (Exodus 20) they are prefaced in this way, “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” Exodus 20:1, 2. So the ten commandments in the form given are distinctly said to be for the Israelite. The moral principles underlying them are eternal and every one of them except the Sabbath commandment, as we shall see later, is reaffirmed in the New Testament. Look again to Exodus 31:13-17, “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: everyone that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. “We see this still again in Ezekiel 20:12, 13, “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them. But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness: they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my sabbaths they greatly polluted: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them in the wilderness, to consume them. “Over and over again it is clearly stated in the Bible that the Sabbath as given in the law is a sign between God and the children of Israel. The sabbath as given in the ten commandments is a distinctly Jewish institution. We do not need to enter into the much disputed question whether the Sabbath was kept in the times between Eden and Sinai for we are concerned simply with the Sabbath law as found in the ten commandments; for it is necessarily upon this that the Seventh Day people rest the weight of their argument, and both when that law is given at Sinai and when it is repeated in Deuteronomy and in after comments upon it, it is distinctly said

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