SABBATH OBSERVANCE

Southland Times, Issue 20663, 19 April 1929, Page 4

SABBATH OBSERVANCE

THE CASE AGAINST THE SEVENTH DAY. X.

To the Editor.

Sir, —The next and most serious flaw in the claim of Seventh Day Adventism to the Sabbath lies in the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the term “law” as it is used in both Old and New Testaments. I will deal first with the term in its connection with the O.T. The period of innocence in Eden was governed by one law which did not include the Babbath. The O.T. record of the period after Eden until the period of Abraham when Israel comes upon the scene contains scarcely any notice of specific law and certainly no mention at all of the Sabbath. The extensive code of law which governed the people amongst whom Abraham the grandfather of Israel lived contains no reference to the Sabbath. There is no record of any code of law governing Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. Can it be supposed for a moment that the Pharaoh of the Exodus, a type of cruelty and oppression, granted place for Sabbath keeping amongst a race of slaves whose tasks were multiplied beyond endurance, who were compelled to make bricks without straw, ahej-yet produce the prescribed number of bricks and were then beaten as idlers? Sabbath rest indeed! Would any sane sensible jury find the fact of a Sabbath in Egypt? They would find absolutely against any Sabbath in But the teaching of Scripture is that there cannot possibly be any Sabbath in Egypt. Can there,be any rest in sin? But immediately' Israel.. came,. out of Egypt, the revelation of Jehbvah to Moses is definitely committed to writing on Sinai, and the Sabbath is specifically and emphatically mentioned and appropriated unto Israel. A careful perusal of the account of the giving of the manna suggests that the Sabbath was given at this juncture. .It is in connection with the Sinai, proclamation that Seventh Day Adventism tries to confuse the issue. 1. In anticipating .'.Sinai by claiming universal Sabbath pbscrvan’ce' from the creation. 2. By divorcing, the decalogue from the book of the law. ’3. By unscripturally dividing the law into moral law and ceremonial law. 1. I have dealt with this in letter V. 2. The decalogue is a short statement of the vital facts of the law together with the particular Sabbath sign of Israel’s separation written by Jehovah Himself in His own writing and in sufficiently small and portable compass to be kept .in the ark as a permanent visible witness and guarantee that the law originated with Him and proceeded from Him and not from man. I have already noted the unscriptural statement by Seventh Day Adventism about the construction of a shelf or pocket in the

side of the Ark to hold the book of the law. There is no such shelf or pocket. It is not mentioned in the specifications of the ark given in Scripture nor will the measurements and construction of the ark allow for any such shelf or pocket. The cuneiform character of the writing of the law upon “tablets” agrees with the Scripture statement that the fuller code of the law was placed by the side of the ark. Conder in “The First Bible” says: “The oldest notice of writing in the Bible is found in connection with the “tablets” of the Law written on both sides of the stones, together with notice of a book or “writing” in which the curse on Amalek was recorded, and of the “book of the covenant” said to have been written by Moses. The “token tablets” are represented by Italian artists of the present day, as a kind of double tombstone inscribed in square Hebrew. (It is in “English” that Adam and Eve are reading the fragments of the broken tombstones with which Seventh Day Adventism has littered the floor of Eden in the picture I noted in letter II). Nothing could be more misleading, for the Hebrew word “lavakh” is the Assyrian ‘lavu’ and the Arabic ‘loh’—terms applied to those small pillow-shaped tablets commonly used in Palestine in the age of Moses and.usually

inscribed on both sides. The script also was probably not even alphabetic and certainly not square Hebrew. Such tablets would not have been more than about six inches square at most, and within this space the Ten Commandments could easily be written in cuneiform characters.” Prof. Sayce in “Archaelogy of the Cuneiform Inscriptions” says, ‘The archaeological world was startled not to say revolutionized by the discovery of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Atnarna in Upper Egypt. A single archaelogical discovery has upset mountains of learned discussion, of ingenious theory

and scriptural demonstration .. . In the ruins of a city and palace which, like the palace of Aladdin, rose out of the desert sands with gorgeous magnificence for a short, thirty years and then perished utterly, some 300 clay tablets were found, not with the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but with the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. They were, in fact, the contents of the Foreign Office of Amon-hotep IV, the “Heretic King” of Egyptian history, who endeavoured to reform the old religion of Egypt and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. This

was about 1400 years before the birth of Christ, and a full century before the Israelitish Exodus. . . .The scope and character of this foreign correspondence are. attending... There arc letters from the kings of Babylon and Assyria of Mesopotania.and the' Hittites, of Cilicia and Cappadocia, besides letters and communications of all sorts from the Egyptian governors and vassal princes in Canaan and Syria. Most of the correspondence is in the lan-

guage of Babylonia; it is only in a few rare instances that the cuneiform characters embody the actual language of the people from whom the letters were sent. It is difficult to imagine anything more subversive of the ideas about the ancient history of the East, which were current twenty years ago, than the conclusions to be drawn from this correspondence. It proved that, so far as literary culture is conceived, the civilized oriental world in the Mosaic age, was quite as civilized as our own. There were schools and libraries all over it, in which a foreign language and a complicated foreign system of writing formed an essential part of education. It proved that this education was widely spread. There arc letters from Bedawin shieks as well as from a lady who was mueh interested in politics. It. showed that this correspondence was active and regular, that those who took part in it. wrote to each other on the trivial topics of the day, and that the high roads and postal service were alike well organized. We learned that the nations of the Orient were no isolated units cut off from one another except, when one of them made war ■with the other, but that on the contrary their mutual relations were as close and intimate as those of modern Europe. The Babylonian king in his distant capital on the Euphrates sent to condole with the Egyptian Pharaoh on his father’s death like a modern potentate, and was every whit as anxious to protect and encourage the trade of his country as a Joseph Chamberlain. Indeed the privileges of the merchant and the sacredness of his person had long been a matter of international law. In 0,.e respect the advocates of international harmony and arbitration were better off in the Mosiac age than they arc in the Europe of to-day. There was no difficulty about diversities of language and the danger of being misunderstood. The language 'of diplomacy, of education and trade was everywhere the same and was understood, read, and written by all educated persons. Even the Egyptian lord of Western Asia had to swallow’ his pride and write in the language and script of Babylonia when he corresponded with his own subjects in Canaan. Indeed like English officials in Egypt, who are supposed to write to one another on official business in French, his own Egyptian envoys and commissioners sent their official communications ’in the foreign tongue. It is easy therefore, to understand the instruction to put the decalogue “into” the Ark and the book of the law “by the side of’ the Ark, and .to realize that the law “inside” and the law “outside” were so'joined together by -God: thatr.no-dhan- might -put them asunder. 2. Seventh Day Adventism un-

scripturally divides the law into moral and cerchionial law’. There is no such division. “The Jewish term .'Jaw’ includes much more than is commonly comprehended Under that

name . . . The originators of Biblical laws were well aware of the difference between juridical ceremonial and moral law, as is proved by the number of synonyms for ‘law’ found in Scripture. For although these synonyms were in the course of time used without distinction yet there is no doubt that they originally indicated different classes of law, the original differentiation being lost when the laws were traced back to one divine origin. In the Pentateuch the word ‘Torah’ is used to designate all precepts, regulations, commands, and prohibitions which were considered authoritative because they were of divine or at least holy r origin, whether they were moral maxims, ceremonial usages or legal de-

■ cisions . . . According to tradition all the : regulations found in the Pentateuch were : given by Moses to Israel at the command : of God, hence the Torah includes only one i code.” (Jewish Encyc.) At Sinai, there- . fore, there was no division of the law into moral and ceremonial in such a way as to invest the decalogue with legal value superior to the hook of the law. Moreover, the law relating to the Sabbath is certainly not “moral”. The decalogue is not in itself “the moral law,” hut it consists of rules of moral law together with a particular non-moral rule about, the Sabbath. I must now refer to the law of tithes about which Seventh Day Adventism refused to give any answer whatever in crossexamination. The question was asked , whether the. law of tithes was part of the. moral or ceremonial law. If it is part of the moral law, it is certainly not included in the decalogue. If it is part of the ceremonial law then according to Seventh Day Adventism it is done away with and is no longer obligatory The truth is that the law of tithes is part of the law pertaining to Israel—part of Judaism. It does not therefore exist for

the Christian. Christ’s relationship to the law of tithes had reference to his position as a Jew. Christian giving is on a different plane. The Christian is to give such proportion as he feds to be right before, the Lord. Moreover his giving need not be represented by money, for he should not be in bondage to any particular proportion of “income.” The principle of giving has its root in motive. If the revelation of Christionity is better than the revelation of Judaism, which made obligatory the giving of a fixed proportion of substance, then the Christian should be moved to give more, as the expression of a heart more deeply thankful, ‘according as the Lord hath blessed.’ Seventh Day Adventism has no right to impose the law of tithes or any other part of Judaism upon those who are not Jews. The law was expressly addressed to the Jews. It is prefaced by the words “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” These words were evidently addressed to Jews. In Deut. ,5.1 I here is this preface: "Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which 1 speak in your ears this day.” The people to whom fhese laws were given were Jews. We have no right to assume without proof that they arc all binding upon other nations. This applies with special force to the fourth commandment. In Deuteronomy, at the end of this commandment is added “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord 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.” It is distinctly stated that the commandment was imposed because of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. But it is when Seventh Day Adventism attempts to expound the N.T. that the most serious mistake is made in the definition of ‘law.” This I hope to show in my next letter.— I am, etc., FRANK SAMPSON. Record of letters: I Feb. 19, II Feb. 23, 111 Feb. 28, IV March 6. V March 13, VI March 19, VII March 25, VIII April 3, IX