In Defense of the Faith

Chapter 10 — The Sabbath on a Round World

Mr. Canright the Baptist raises the old objection to the seventh-day Sabbath, that it cannot possibly be kept on a round world. Concerning this, he says: DOF 199.1

“The stubborn facts nearer home show that God’s children do not, and cannot, all ‘observe the same period together.’ Everybody knows that it is Saturday in India some twelve hours sooner than it is here, and that it is Saturday here twelve hours after it has ceased to be Saturday there. In Australia the day begins eighteen hours sooner than it does in California. So the seventh-day brethren in California are working nearly the whole time that their brethren in Australia are keeping Sabbath! Come even nearer home than that. The sun sets about three hours later in California than it does in Maine. So when the Seventh-day Adventists in Maine begin to keep the Sabbath at sunset Friday evening, their own brethren in California, where the sun is yet three hours high, will still be at work for three hours! So, very few of them on this earth, ‘observe the same period together.’ While some of them are keeping Sabbath on one part of the Earth, others of them are at work on another part of the earth.”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 174. DOF 199.2

So there we have it. The world being round, it is impossible to obey God’s law in respect to the Sabbath, says Mr. Canright. Strange that God should have made a Sabbath for a world which He knew to be round, isn’t it? But there is a still stranger thing. That is, that this very same identical earth that is so round, and which rotates so fast that one cannot possibly keep the Sabbath, presents no difficulties whatever to the person who desires to keep Sunday! This we also are taught by Mr. Canright, for in the same chapter in which he attempts to prove that on account of the earth’s being a globe the Sabbath cannot be kept, he confidently informs us that Sunday can be kept. Note his teaching on this point: DOF 199.3

“Under the new dispensation of the gospel, other circumstances have arisen plainly and grandly marking another day as the all-important day in Christian memory—the resurrection day.’—Ibid., p. 176. DOF 200.1

He further says: DOF 200.2

“The essential idea is that we should devote one day in seven to religious duties. To secure the highest good, all should unite in observing the same day. From the days of the apostles the Christian church has, with one consent, observed the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, or Sunday.”—Ibid., p. 181. DOF 200.3

He explains that the difficulty about keeping the Sabbath is the existence of a “day line,” and that this jumps about so from place to place that “there is no possible means of fixing the day of the original Sabbath.”—Ibid., p. 184. DOF 200.4

Surely this reasoning is more profound than enlightening. Just how it is that Saturday cannot possibly be kept on a round world, but Sunday can be, is, to say the least, a bit confusing. Does he perhaps mean that on Sunday the earth flattens out, and thus the difficulty is overcome for the day, and that it then resumes its globular form until the next Sunday rolls around? Or does the day line stay fixed on Sunday, so that the particular day can be located, and move about only on Saturday, making it impossible for that day to be found? In any event, there is evidently no difficulty experienced in locating Sunday in any part of the earth, for, according to Mr. Canright, “from the days of the apostles the Christian church has, with one consent, served the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, or Sunday.” DOF 200.5

“From the days of the apostles.” This covers a period of nineteen hundred years. And, says he, during this period Britains have kept Sunday. They have done it, he claims, “With one consent,” that is, Christians in America, Europe, Australia, China, wherever they have been found during these nineteen hundred years, have all agreed on the question of which day was Sunday. They have done it “with one consent,” with no mix-up over a round world, a day line, lost time, or any of these scary hobgoblins; they all agree that Sunday, the definite day upon which our Lord was raised, can be found, yea, has been found, and is everywhere known. Upon this all have been agreed for nineteen hundred years; and yet, would you believe it? The seventh can neither be found nor kept! The world is too round. Time keeping has not been accurate enough. Day lines move about so. The north and south poles present serious obstacles; and there are so many reasons-not the least of which is the fact that men invent such arguments for the press purpose of getting rid of a plain command of God with which their lives are not in harmony. DOF 201.1

Surely this kind of reasoning answers itself. What candid person would say that Sunday can be kept on a round world that has a day line, but that Saturday cannot? What advantage could one day possibly have over another this respect? DOF 201.2

Seventh-day Adventists have never claimed that the Sabbath could be kept in all parts of the world at the same moment of time. They may be illiterate, as Mr. Canright tries to make them appear, but their ignorance does not quite reach to the point where they fail to recognize that each day of the week travels around the earth, and that the Sabbath therefore does not come to people in all places at once, and therefore cannot be kept by all people at the same time. What they do claim is that wherever one may be, in the Orient or Occident, he can keep exactly the same day as his fellow Christians keep on the other side of the world, but his keeping of the day must be at the time when the day comes to him, and has no relation to the question as to when it comes to those in other countries. DOF 201.3

When God made the Sabbath, He made it for a round world, and made the sun “to rule the day.” Genesis 1:16. Therefore, as an obedient child of God, it is my duty to keep the day when in the divine order it comes to me, without finding fault with God’s arrangement. DOF 202.1

As has been pointed out, Seventh-day Adventists have missions and missionaries in almost every land of earth, the “Land of the Midnight Sun” not excepted, and never yet have we heard from one of them or from their converts any complaint about not being able to find the Sabbath because the world is round, or for any other reason. Sabbath keepers are in no difficulty on this point. The difficulty, when it arises, is always in the mind of someone who desires to oppose and discredit the Sabbath, and never in the mind of one who desires to keep it. DOF 202.2