In Defense of the Faith

Religious Leaders Agree

Although most of the Protestant world still clings to the custom of Sunday keeping, yet it is a surprising fact that leaders of religious thought in all the great Protestant bodies agree in teaching the eternal perpetuity and the binding obligation of the law of God. And this they do in spite of their continued observance of the first day of the week. Note the following clear declarations from some of them in support of the fact that the seventh-day Sabbath existed from creation, and was not a new institution when given to the Jews at Sinai: DOF 86.2

“‘And sanctified it.’ Hebrew kadash. It is by this term that positive appointment of the Sabbath as a day of rest to man is expressed. God’s sanctifying the day is equivalent to His commandment to men to sanctify it. As at the close of creation the seventh day was thus set apart by the Most High for such purposes, without limitation to age or country, the observance of it is obligatory upon the whole human race, to whom, in the wisdom of Providence, it may be communicated. This further appears from the reason why God blessed and sanctified it, viz., ‘because that in it He had rested,’ etc., which is a reason of equal force at all times and equally applying to all the posterity of Adam. And if it formed a just ground for sanctifying the first day which dawned upon the finished system of the universe, it must be equally so for sanctifying every seventh day to the end of time. The observance of the day is moreover enjoined in the Ten Commandments, which was not abolished with the peculiar polity of the Jews, but remains unalterably binding upon Christians in every age of the world.... The sanctification of the seventh day in the present case can only be understood of its being set apart to the special worship and service of God.”—George Bush (Presbyterian), professor of Hebrew and Oriental literature, New York City University, Notes, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1, pp. 48, 49. DOF 86.3

“By this [Sabbath] is meant, the appointed of God at the close of creation, to be observed by man as a day of rest from all secular employment, because that in it God Himself had rested from His work. Genesis 2:1-3. Not that God’s rest was necessitated by fatigue (Isaiah 40:28); but He rested, that is, ceased to work, on the seventh day as an example to man; hence assigned it as a reason why men should rest on that day. Exodus 20:11; 31:17. God’s blessing and sanctifying the day, meant that He separated it from a common to a religious use. To be a perpetual memorial or sign that all who thus observed it would show themselves to be the worshippers of that God who made the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Exodus 20:8-11; 31:16, 17; Isaiah 56:6, 7.”—Amos Binney (Methodist), Theological Compend, p. 169. DOF 87.1

“When it is therefore said by the inspired historian that God ‘sanctified the seventh day,’ I must understand him to say, that God set it apart (from the other six days of labor), to be religiously employed by man.”—Rev. J. Newton Brown (Baptist), The Obligation of the Sabbath, p. 48. DOF 87.2

“1. To make holy, to sanctify, to hallow. 2. To pronounce holy, to sanctify, e. g., the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3); a people (Leviticus 20:8, 21:8). Also to institute any holy thing, to appoint.”—Edward Robinson, Gesenius, Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 924. DOF 87.3

“Where is the example in Scripture of any instituted commemoration not beginning from the time of its appointment? ... Did circumcision under the Old Testament, or baptism and the Lord’s supper under the New, remain in abeyance for centuries before they were acted upon? And shall the commemoration of the glories of creation be thought to be suspended for more than two thousand years after the occasion on which it was appointed had taken place? And especially as the reason for the celebration existed from the beginning, related to the whole race of mankind more than to the Jews, and was indeed most cogent immediately after the creation?”—Daniel Wilson, The Divine Authority and Perpetual Obligation of the Lord’s Day, pp. 46, 47. DOF 87.4