Church of God, Carmichael, CA
H. M. Riggle, 1928
[Original Page Numbers]
of bondage." Were the angels in Egyptian bondage? Would not that sound a little queer to Gabriel and the heavenly host? Were the Gentile nations there? How does this apply to us Americans? Were we in Egypt? Not many of us. We are free born. Then, to whom are the words applicable? The answer is obvious: To the Jewish nation, and to no others. Notice the language: "Keep the Sabbath Day.... The seventh is the Sabbath. .. . Remember that thou west a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out . . . therefore [or for that reason] the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath Day." Language could not be framed to teach more clearly that the Sabbath commandment was to the Jews only. So it read on the tables of stone, and when law teachers apply such language to Gentile nations, or to angels in heaven, they prove that they "understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm" (1 Tim. 1:7).
"Take the Sabbath commandment: 'Thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates' (Exod. 20:10). Think of that commandment being given to angels in heaven! 'Sons,' 'daughters,' and 'thy neighbor's wife' (vs. 17), when they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Again: 'Cattle,' 'ox' 'ass,' etc. Do the angels own cattle and work oxen and asses in heaven? So 'man servants and maid servants.' This means bond servants or slaves, such as the Hebrews owned in those days.... [Their 'man servants and maid servants' (Exod. 20:17).] But do the angels own slaves? Did Adam have servants in Eden? [Do Christians now have slaves?] Will the redeemed own them hereafter? What nonsense to apply this law to the angels and to Eden and to heaven! This word was specially adapted to the social condition of the Jews as a nation in the land of Canaan, and to no others.
"Once more: 'Thy stranger that is within thy gates' (vs. 10). As everybody knows, 'the stranger' was the Gentile. 'Within thy gates' was a common expression meaning within your cities or dwelling in your land. It has no reference to living on your farm or inside the [21] gates that enclose your farm, as Adventists always explain it. The towns were walled in and entered by gates. Here is where the judges sat and business was done. Thus: 'All that went in at the gate of his city' (Gen. 23: 10). 'Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates' (Deut. 16:18). To this custom of the Jews the Sabbath commandment refers. All the Gentiles dwelling in their cities among them must be made to keep the Sabbath. This shows it to be a national law, worded in all its parts to fit the circumstances of the Jews at that time.
"This command, then, could not apply to any but the Jews."—Canright.
"The laws regulating how the Sabbath should be kept show that it was a local institution adapted only to the Jewish workshop and to that warm climate." "All the rigorous limitations and exactions of the Sabbath Day, as under the Jewish law, could only be carried out by a small people in a limited territory where the church bore rule. A particular day, the seventh (Deut. 5: 12, 13); definite hours, sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32); no fires must be built on the Sabbath (Exod. 35:3); they must neither bake nor boil that day (Exod. 16:23); they must not go out of the house (Exod. 16:29); they were stoned to death for picking up a stick (Num. 15:32). Their priests must offer two lambs that day (Num. 28:9); they must compel all among them, living in their land, to keep it (Exod. 20:10). It was to be wholly a day of rest." —Canright.
Such was the Jewish law. We are not Jews, nor under the Jewish law. "What things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law" (Rom. 3:19). But the Gentiles "have not the law" (Rom. 2:14); and Christians "are not under the law, but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).
That Jewish law could not be universal. In cold countries people would freeze without fires, and suffer without warm food. Adventists with all their blind zeal cannot keep the day according to the law. "They go many miles on the Sabbath and drive; they offer no lambs; they can compel no one to keep it; nor do they stone those who break it." In this they expose their folly in trying to observe an obsolete Jewish day. [22]
In Hos. 2:11 the Sabbath is plainly said to be "her sabbaths" that is, Israel's sabbaths. It is classed in with Jewish "feasts" and "new moons," and all belonged to "her"—Israel. This settled the matter. The seventh day Sabbath is the Jewish Sabbath. To this day the Jews claim the Sabbath as their institution.
"Ceremony. Outward rite; external form in religion." —Webster. "An outward form or rite in religion; anything or observance held sacred."—International Encyclopaedic Dictionary. This is exactly what the observance of the Sabbath was in Jewish worship. The day in itself was not holy. One twenty four hours of time is no better than another, unless made so. In the nature of days there is no difference; there is nothing in one that makes it differ from another. All nature continues the same. Then, the only way in which one day can become holy is by divine appointment.
Moral obligations are not made, or do not become so by mere appointment. They exist in their very nature. Murder, idolatry, blasphemy, stealing, adultery, etc., are morally wrong. Had God given no special command against these things, they would have been wrong in their nature. But it would never have been wrong to work on the seventh day unless God had given a commandment to rest in it. The day in itself was not holy, any more than the other days. God made it holy. He "sanctified it" (Gen. 2:3); he "hallowed it" (Exod. 20:11). This act of the Lord made the day holy. But did it make it holy for all time and eternity? I mean this: Did God's appointment, his sanctification of that particular day, set it apart as being holy forever? If so, then every other day and thing made holy by God's appointment would remain so forever.
Other days were made just as holy as the seventh day. In Leviticus 23 are the feasts of the Lord, which were all "holy convocations." These were the ceremonial [23]