In Defense of the Faith

Days Change In Traveling

“When a person travels, his days are of abnormal length. DOF 205.2

“For example, the New Yorker who travels westward across the United States finds it necessary to set his watch back one hour on three different occasions in order that the time by his watch shall correspond with the true course of the day. Otherwise his watch will register 3 P.M. when the California sun is only at high noon. DOF 205.3

“Pursuing such a course westward at a thousand miles a day will bring the traveler back to his starting place in twenty-four days-estimating the world’s circumference at exactly 24,000 miles, for the sake of the illustration. DOF 205.4

“But each of his twenty-four days has been twenty-five hours long. Therefore in his trip around the world he had accumulated a total of twenty-four extra hours. If he has not already dropped them an hour at a time, he must finally drop the whole twenty-four at once, if he wishes to keep his reckoning correct. Now twenty-four hours equal one day. Therefore he drops a day. But is a moment really stricken from his life on that account?” DOF 205.5

To say that “the Sabbath cannot be kept at the same identical moment of time in different time belts,” is to assume a difficulty which does not exist. As Mr. Bloom says: DOF 205.6

“Neither the Sabbath command nor the Bible anywhere speaks of time belts, or of keeping the Sabbath at the same identical moment of time. The Good Book tells us that we should keep the seventh day, and that we should keep it ‘from evening to evening.” DOF 205.7

“Mr. Speaker, God does not ask man to base his obedience upon what other men in other parts of the world may be doing.” DOF 206.1

All of this is good, sound common sense, and moreover is in harmony with the Scripture. The human family, in God’s providence, began to make its circuit of the earth from Western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. One portion of mankind went eastward through Asia into the fringe of islands on that side of the Pacific, carrying the reckoning of time. Another portion of the human family journeyed westward, across Europe and into the New World of the Americas and the island fringe beyond, carrying the reckoning of time. There is exact agreement the world over. In God’s providence the westward and the eastward marches of civilization meet in the mid-Pacific, and there, as we have already seen, His own providence, in the history of the human race, fixes the day line. DOF 206.2

A just solution to this day-line round-world problem, therefore, shows that no real difficulty exists in the matter of keeping the Sabbath, and that as a matter of fact any day can be found on any part of the earth, and-observed by those who are disposed to observe it. DOF 206.3

True, those who keep the Sabbath cannot begin its observance simultaneously in all ports of the world, for, as has already been shown, the day does not begin on all parts of the world at the same time. One cannot begin to keep the seventh day until that day comes to that part of the world where he is. It is not one-seventh part of time, a specific, uniform twenty four hour period to be kept by all at the same identical time, that God has hallowed and sanctified, but the seventh day. It matters not to the Sabbath observer in China whether or not his brethren in America start and close the Sabbath just when he does, but he is particular about keeping the same day that they keep when it comes around to him. The Sabbath is none the less sacred to him because of the fact that it is not observed at the same identical instant of time by others in other lands. DOF 206.4

No one in New York or Chicago would refuse a Monday morning’s paper because in Berlin or London the people have had their Monday’s paper hours before. We each take up Monday’s duties when Monday comes, wherever we are. All the Lord asks of man is that he shall keep the seventh day holy when that day comes to him. And it will come. The sun is the divinely appointed timekeeper for man (Genesis 1:15-18), and it never fails. When the holy day comes, keep it. DOF 207.1

The Sabbath comes to the East before it comes to the West; but as it passes around the world, it is the same blessed, holy day everywhere. DOF 207.2

The day line in the Pacific Ocean, which is offered as evidence that the Creator made a world and a Sabbath which do not fit together, is in itself an absolute answer to the argument that the fourth commandment means only that one day in seven should be kept. It is said that Sunday is a seventh part of time; and so Sunday, the first day, will do as well as Saturday, the seventh day. But the fact that every traveler must change his own reckoning of time by one day in crossing the Pacific in order to keep the true sun time, which marks the days for all nations, forever dispenses with this “seventh part of time” theory. The transpacific traveler could not follow the “seventh part of time” theory and still keep his Sunday. For in travelling one direction he would have a week of only six days, and the other way his week would have eight days. Thus if he stuck to Sunday, he would find himself observing either one-sixth part of time or one-eighth part of time during the week in which the line is crossed, depending upon the direction traveled. But no such dilemma ever confronts the Sabbath keeper. He observes a day, not a certain part of time. Wherever he finds “the seventh day” or wherever the seventh day finds him, he keeps it. DOF 207.3