432
July 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Where Did We Get the Lord’s Day? B y K. L. B.
f N not a single text is the first day of the week called by any sacred title.” Thus writes L. Erwin Wright in the Watchman Magazine (7th Day Adventist). On the above proposition, the Adventist teacher has to fortify himself by twisting the statement of Rev. 1 :10: “I was in the Spirit, on the Lord’s Day.” He tells us that it means “the day o f the Lord,” or future day of wrath. Some other evangelical teach ers have fallen into the same error. They would make the words mean that John’s spirit was carried forward to the future tribulation period, enabling him to describe these coming events. This is strange confusion, for the word “Spirit” is spelled with a capital S. John was in the Holy Spirit on a certain day, and these things were made known 'to him in precisely the same way that holy men of old saw future events by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. No one attempts to explain how man’s own spirit could be car ried forward hundreds of years to see events that have not happened. The meaning of the text is obvious, and why does John refer to the day as “the Lord’s Day” ? Had he meant “the day of the Lord,”, he would have used the usual Greek expression appearing in the New Testament. He does not do so, and nowhere in the Scrip ture is the coming judgment period spoken of as “the Lord’s Day.” John used this title for the simple reason that the first day of. the week was called, in the early Church, “the Lord’s Day,” a fact abundantly shown in writings of the first three centuries. At the late date of John’s writing, this title had come to be widely used for the day which Christ had separated by His resurrection, the day upon which we are told believers commemorated His completed redemption by the observance of the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7). On that day, also, they took the offering for the needy saints (1 Cor. 16:2). It was the day honored by all of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances (Mk. 16: 2, 9; Jno. 20:19, 26). Not once did the Saviour appear on the Jewish Sabbath, the day on which unbelievers con tinued their meaningless forms. It was also a day set apart by the descent of the Holy Spirit for the birth of the Church. Lev. 23 :15, 16 shows us that Pentecost fell always on the day following a Sabbath. Is T h e F ir s t D a y T h e S a b b a t h ? “Never once,” says the Watchman magazine, “does the New Testament call the first day the Sabbath.” This statement has caught many an unthinking Christian. It was not called the Sabbath for the simple reason that it was not the Sabbath but the resurrection, the Lord’s Day. The old Sabbath ran on, as it still does among unbe lieving Jews and those who have been led to think that it was the Pope of Rome who gave us the Lord’s Day. The old Sabbath was the day of deepest gloom for Christ’s followers, for it was the third day in which His body had lain lifeless in the tomb. That very day Christ’s rejectors continued their sacrifices, as though God’s Lamb had not been once for all sacrificed. But when the “first day” came, Christians worshipped a risen Lord, lived a new
life, dwelt spiritually in a new sphere, became new creat ures. Except for that day, there never would have been a church. They tell us the Pope changed the day of rest from the seventh to the first day of the week. This position is proved absolutely untenable by the fact that the two days ran on contemporaneously from the days of the apostles until now. Christians went into the Jewish synagogues on the Sabbath to witness of Christ, but met as Christians to observe the Lord’s Supper and to worship the risen Christ on the resurrection day. W h a t D id E a r l y B e l ie v e r s D o .? From A. D. 30 to 67 we have the Gospels, Acts and Epistles. To the end of the first century we have the writings of John. Following this, we have the epistle of Barnabas written at the beginning of the .first century; seven epistles of Ignatius, (A. D. 107); epistle of Poly carp, (A. D. 108); Pliny, (A. D. I l l ) ; Justin Martyr, (145-150); apostolic constitutions about the same date; Dionysius, (A. D. 170); Melito, (A. D. 170); Irenaeus, (155-202); Tertullian, (150-230); Clement of Alexan dria, (150-220); Origen, (253); Cyprian of Carthage, beheaded for loyalty to Christ, (258). These men are linked one to another. Ignatius, the pupil of the Apostles, was a friend of Polycarp. Irenaeus describes how he sat at Polycarp’s feet. This living chain, fastened at one end to John, carries us to the third cen tury, and is there united to a great group of Christian teachers spread over the Roman earth. Their writings have all been well tested by all the methods of criticism and found genuine. All testify that from the resurrection forward, the first day of the week was observed by Chris tians and called the Lord’s Day. Says Barnabas: “We keep the 8th day with joyful ness, the day on which Jesus rose from -the dead.” Says Ignatius: “Let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s Day as a festival—the resurrection day, the queen and chief of all days. If we live according to Jewish law, we acknowledge that we have not received grace. We have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the old Sabbath but living in observance of the Lord’s Day. Said Origen: “It is one of the marks of the per fect Christian to keep the Lord’s Day.” In the apostolic constitution we read : “On the Lord’s Day assemble yourselves together without fail.” Such quotations we can produce at great length. How T h e C h a n g e C a m e A b o u t The mode in which the change was really effected was exactly analogous to the change in the Passover for the Lord’s Supper, and of circumcision for baptism. No command for the abolition of either Passover or circum cision was given. Both were suffered to stand side by side among the Jewish converts with the Lord’s Supper and baptism. Many of the early converts observed both, but as the full significance of the atonement and resurrec tion dawned upon them, the old forms dropped away. When, in A. D. 70, the mighty judgment of God came over the unbelieving Jews, swept away their loved city
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker