Chapter Three – Has Time Been Lost?

Next Part The Manna Miracle Reveals the Sabbath

Many realize that God created, rested on, blessed, and hallowed the seventh day!—and by now, so should you. But which day is the seventh day in today’s calendar? Has the weekly cycle been lost? Can we know? You can be certain. This chapter presents absolute PROOF!

“In spite of all of our dickerings with the calendar, it is patent that the human race never lost the septenary [seven-day] sequence of week days and that the Sabbath of these latter times comes down to us from Adam, through the ages, without a single lapse.”

- Dr. Totten of New Haven, Connecticut—Professor of Astronomy, Yale University (www.truthontheweb.org/shabbatu.htm)

Let’s ask, is the above statement true? Can it be proven? If so, how? We saw that at the end of the creation week in Genesis 1:1-31 God finished His activity with a special creation: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:1-3).

Twenty-five centuries later, at Mt. Sinai, God gave the Ten Commandments to the nation of ancient Israel through Moses. We also saw that the Sabbath command in Exodus directly referred to the creation account of Genesis 2:1-25. It states, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labour, and do all your work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God.... For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Exod. 20:8-11).

These have been very plain, clear verses. But for the sake of discussion, we will continue with several basic facts. God made the Sabbath. He rested on it. He sanctified it (set it apart). He blessed it. He made it to be the seventh day of a seven-day cycle.

This chapter is not primarily written to prove that the Sabbath should be kept. The book does that. Our purpose here is to prove the weekly cycle has never changed since creation. Many suppose that it has. If this cycle has been either broken or lost, there remains no further obligation for mankind to observe the true Sabbath of the Bible. It is that simple. If the weekly cycle has been broken, the Sabbath is lost to history and cannot be in effect today!

Keeping Track of the Sabbath

Others are more sincere and ask, “Well, I know God created the Sabbath, but how do we now know which day of our week He made holy?” or “Hasn’t mankind changed the calendar?” And further, our seventh day, Saturday, was named after the pagan god Saturn, and some question whether this had an effect on the Hebrew calendar. Others ask about what has been called “the long day of Joshua” or travelling around the world and “gaining a day” or “losing a day.” Many naturally wonder what possible effects any of these issues may have had on the weekly cycle.

Before addressing the concerns raised in this series of questions, a point must first be acknowledged.

Consider! These questions, while individually important, collectively represent a single great question. Is the all-powerful God of the universe capable of creating, hallowing, sanctifying, and blessing the seventh day of the week, yet, at the same time, incapable of keeping track of this day throughout history? Would God command people to “remember” the Sabbath only to Himself forget that He must preserve it for this to be possible? The idea is absurd. It insults God’s thinking—and power—by making Him appear to be a doddering old man who is so disorganized and forgetful that He cannot keep track of what He has created or commanded!

While mankind seeks excuses not to keep the Sabbath, some actually dare to blame God as the reason this is no longer possible. They then reason that if He forgot to preserve the weekly cycle, mankind no longer needs to remember and observe the Sabbath. How convenient for human nature!

This world’s professing Christianity—Catholicism and the many branches of Protestantism—keep Sunday. It has been the Roman Catholic Church that has preserved Sunday as the day of worship. Notice again, before continuing, what was a stunning admission from a letter by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921). While it also makes a statement about how Sabbath obedience was exchanged for Sunday observance, this quote demonstrates the importance of the preservation of Sunday observance for Catholics throughout the centuries. This is only one of so many previously-stated similar quotes:

“Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments? I answer yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did the Church [Roman Catholic] change the seventh day—Saturday—for Sunday, the first day? I answer yes. Did Christ change the day? I answer no!.. Faithfully yours, J. Cardinal Gibbons.”

No one ever seems to question that the first day of the week is Sunday! Over two billion professing Christians assert that they keep Sunday in commemoration of Christ’s supposed resurrection on that day—the first day of the week. It is unthinkable to suggest that so many people would either purposely, carelessly, or inadvertently be keeping “their day,” the first day of the week, Sunday, on the wrong day! Right? But Jews are no less certain that they are keeping the Sabbath on the true seventh day of the week. The Jewish people have been responsible for “keeping track” of their day, the same day kept by Jesus and the apostles, for many centuries longer than Catholics have been tracking “their day.”

The point is this: each group (Catholics and Jews) knows full well which day is which—and neither would dare suggest the other does not!

Israel Forgets the Sabbath

Most know the story of Israel’s slavery in Egypt and her Exodus under Moses. A 1950s Hollywood movie made it famous. Before the Exodus, Jacob and his sons had joined another of his sons, Joseph, in Egypt. Later, after Jacob died, a different Pharaoh came into power and enslaved the Israelites for over 150 years. They were not permitted to keep the Sabbath and had no priesthood to guide them. Since Moses recorded the first five books of the Bible later, they would not yet have had any Scriptures available to teach them.

Notice Israel’s condition: “Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Rameses.... And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor” (Exod. 1:11, 13-14).

The Bible records that there were 600,000 men, age 20 and above, who left Egypt with Moses. This means there were three-to-four million Israelites, counting women and children. All of them lacked formal knowledge of the Sabbath. By the time they reached the Wilderness of Sin (Zin), two months after leaving Egypt, they were hungry and complaining because of lack of food in the desert.

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