A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath and the Commandments of God

Third Pillar For No-Sabbath, No-Commandments

Gal. ii. – vi. chapters. Here we are told that the whole law and commandments are abolished. I say the man was never yet born that can prove it. You say “we want none of your inferences.” Neither do we want yours, unless you can back them up by scripture testimony. Paul begins with the Gospel; in his second chapter he brings up the law of circumcision, and goes on to show that it is abolished. Just look at the 7th and 8th verses, where he begins his argument, and then 11-14th. His controversy with Peter respecting this point and eating, meets; then the 16th, 18th and 21st verses show again most clearly that he is contrasting the Gospel of Christ with this law of meats and circumcision. He now passes through the 3d chapter, (so much relied on for the abolition of all law,) without intimating any other law whatever. In the 4th chapter, 4th verse, he says, God sent forth his son, made, or born under the law. What law? Answer – the law of Moses. There is not an intimation of the law of commandments here; neither is there an intimation in God's law, relating to Jesus, but there is in Moses'. In the 10th verse he begins again, and says “yea, observe days and months and times and years.” These are the same feast days that I have been treating of in the two first Pillars, viz. Rom. xiv. and Col. ii., for when he comes to the 21st verse, he says again, “tell me ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law.” What is it? Why, Abraham had two sons, one by his bond maid, Hagar, the other by Sarah, his wife. These two women represent the two covenants. Hagar represents mount Sinai, where God gave the first covenant. Hagar also answers to the present Jerusalem, now in bondage; Sarah represents the second covenant, (which gives entrance into the) New Jerusalem. See 9.

In the fifth chapter he begins again with circumcision, 2d and 3d verses. In the 4th verse he says, “Whosoever of you are justified by the law are fallen from grace.” This is the law of circumcision; see 6th and 11th verses: “If I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution.” Now see the contrast at the close of his argument. Here is the law of God; see 14th verse: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This was his very expression to the Romans, four years previous; see xiii: 9. Here he has cited them to the second table of stone in God's law, in respect to their neighbor, which is alone, the clear meaning; and we are saved by “keeping the commandments of God and faith of Jesus.” – Rev. xii: 12; xxii: 14. Paul did not stop to explain about these two covenants, but merely alluded to them to show the two entirely different modes of worship under the two dispensations. His letter to the Hebrews six years afterwards, explains, “Now the first covenant had ceremonies of divine service and a worldly sanctuary,” ix: 1. Now the covenant itself was in the ark; see 4th verse. Now these rites and ceremonies which stood in meats and drinks, &c. were carnal ordinances, a figure for the time then present, until the reformation, or coming of the new covenant. Not a syllable about the fourth commandment in 4th verse being a figure, or ordinance or ceremony, or being done away. Why? Because in the preceding chapter, 6-10th verses, he shows is the new or second covenant, which was to succeed the first, and Jesus was to be the mediator of it. Now the first covenant was the ten commandments, with ceremonies, &c. The second covenant is (my laws) the same ten commandments, (not as before, on tables of stone,) but in our minds and on our hearts; 10th verse. Connected with this is the testimony of Jesus Christ – proof, Rev. xii: 17; xix: 10, and xiv: 12. This is the New, or Gospel Covenant, which Jesus Christ came to confirm. Then all that was nailed to the cross was the ceremonial law, the Jewish mode of worshipping God. The first covenant the law of God, is here transcribed from the tables of stone and placed on our hearts; see Rom. ii: 15: Heb. viii: 10. This entirely changes the mode of worship, and shows us “without faith it is impossible to please God.” If the law of God is not the same in both covenants, with Jew and Gentile, tell me if you can the chapter and verse for the second, or new law of God. It is the very same that Jesus had given in Matt. xxii: 39; the last six commandments. Here he closes this chapter by contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruits of the spirit, and then in the 6th chapter, 12th, 13th and 15th verses, he alludes again to circumcision, and says, in 15th verse, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision,” &c., showing conclusively that the great burthen of his argument from first to last, was to abolish circumcision and vindicate God's law, instead, as you and your adherents will have it, abolish the commandments in the law. I say then in the 5th chapter, 14th verse, he has positively taught us that the law of God was untouched in his argument. Suppose we take his letter to the Romans, to explain how he sustains this law. “If there be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” xiii: 9. “Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” In the first place he is here showing us our duty to our neighbor, (not to God), 8-10 verses – for he has quoted only five of the commandments from the second table of stone. Will you say that because he omitted the fifth one, it is abolished; see his letter to the Ephesians, four years after this: “Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment, with promise,” vi: 2. Now Paul has here quoted from the tables of stone, and this is proof positive that these six are not abolished. But because he has not quoted the first four, will you say they are abolished? If you say they are, then you make void the Saviour's words in Matt. xxii: 37, 38; and also Paul's in the 7th chapter, 12th verse, where he says “the law is holy and the commandments holy, just and good.” Again, because Jesus, in Matt. v: 19, 21, 27, 33, only quoted the 3d, 6th and 7th commandments, are the other seven abolished? If so, how strange that he should add three more, respecting love to our neighbor, in chapter xix: 18, 19, viz. the 5th, 8th and 9th. And in the 15th chapter quote only one. Further, because he never mentioned the fourth commandment separately, you would have us believe there is none – he abolished it. Then, by the same rule he abolished the first, second, and tenth, for he has not mentioned them. In this case Paul has taught heresy, for he has mentioned the tenth commandment twice in Romans. Paul nowhere speaks of the first four commandments, but he quotes the other six. James only quotes two, the sixth and seventh, for his perfect royal law of liberty, by which man is to be judged; but that we might not misunderstand that he meant what he said, that it was a perfect law, including the whole ten, he declares that “if we fail with respect to one precept, we become guilty of all.” Here you, and all of like faith, must see the fallacy of your reasoning, which is, that because the fourth commandment has not been distinctly expressed, then there is no Sabbath. I say, by your rule, it is just as clear that Jesus and Paul never taught us that we should not worship images, and bow down to idols, for they have never quoted us the precept. But they both have taught us the whole law and commandments; see Matt. xxii: 36-40; Luke x: 25-28; Rom. vii: 12; 1st Cor. vii: 19. The reason, no doubt, why Jesus never quoted the 1st, 2d, 3d and 4th commandments separately was because he never had occasion to use them for an argument with his hearers. Now this certainly explains Paul's meaning in Gal. v: 14, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” That is – this is the law respecting our duty to one another, as Jesus has taught us in Matt. xxii. This, then, is the law from the decalogue. Paul says this law is fulfilled by keeping it, while that which was added to the law (or covenant) is abolished; see Heb. ix. Then here the law of God is established, and not, as you say, abolished. This letter is dated at Rome, A.D. 58.

Fourth And Last Pillar For No-Sabbath, No-Commandments

2d Cor. iii. Here a host of second advent believers join in with you, and labor to prove that Paul has certainly and positively abolished the commandments of God. Yes, one of your old correspondents, G. Needham, of Albany, has publicly declared to the world that God told him so. Now if I prove him to have uttered a positive falsehood, I suppose he will still be considered in good standing, as a second advent lecturer and coadjutor in carrying forward this work of heresy. If God ever told him any thing about this text, he did not contradict Paul, who spake by the Holy Ghost. The principal verses to sustain this heresy, are 7, 8, 11, 13, 14th, “But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?.. For if that which is done away is glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious… And as Moses which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But their minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil, untaken away in the reading of the old testament, which veil is done away in Christ.” Now every bible student must admit that Paul was contrasting the ministration of the Jewish nation with that of his own, the Gospel ministration, (11th v.) under the two dispensations. If Moses' ministry was glorious, then is the Gospel much more so. Now that which was to be done away was not the decalogue itself, the ten commandments, but the ministration of it, which was emblematically illustrated by the glory of Moses' countenance, which was only for the time being. This clause refers expressly to the glory of his countenance, and not to the glory of the law on the tables of stone. So also the clause, “that which is abolished,” does not refer to the decalogue, but to the ministration of Moses, including what he writes to the Heb. ix: 9-11, and x: 1-10; see particularly 9th verse: “He taketh away the first that he may establish the second.” How? Answer – “I will put my law (the same law of the ten commandments) in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” viii: 10, 5-9. Again, “we are not without law to God, but under the law to Christ.” This certainly is the same law and so is the following, “Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid ye, we establish the law.” It is impossible for this to be the law of ceremonies in Moses' ministration, for that was nailed to the cross, certainly twenty-five years before. Here then it is plain, as in Heb. ix: 4, that the tables of stone, on which was the whole law of God, remained unmoved, to be written on our hearts. No other law of God can be found for this purpose. The 14th verse says, “which veil was done away in Christ.” Again, if the commandments were done away here, how could those “who teach them be of great esteem in the reign of heaven;” and how could they teach them without knowing the words from the decalogue? “The law of grace and the law of Christ” would darken counsel without knowledge. If the tables of stone were done away here, where are the commandments referred to so many times in the new testament for us to keep, and how useless for Christ to come at the first advent and write them in our hearts, if they were not to be kept. Now this epistle is dated at Phillippi, A.D. 60; twenty-seven years after the crucifixion.

The date of the other three Pillars, as stated, are, 1st, Rom. xiv: 5, 6, Corinthus, A.D. 60. 2d, Col. ii: 14-17, Rome, A.D. 64. 3d, Gal. ii-vi., Rome, A.D. 58. Now remember what I stated before, that if the commandments or Sabbath ever were abolished, the proof is contained in these four principal texts or Pillars, and it was all done at the crucifixion or death of Jesus; see Col. ii: 11, “nailing it to the cross,” (in A.D. 33). Now Paul's first letter to the Corinthians was dated at the same place one year before his second letter, A.D. 59. Here he says, chapter vii: 19, “circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the commandments of God.” Again, we will now go to the chapter to which you exultingly point your readers, for the abolition of this same law and commandments, viz. Rom. vii: 6, “But now we are delivered from the law,” &c. What law? Answer – the very same that you have had to make your four Pillars of, viz. the law of Moses, the Jewish ritual. “What shall we say then, is the law sin?” [You say it is.] Paul says, “God forbid,” and he quotes the tenth commandment to prove it; 7th verse, and then in the 12th directs us to the whole law of God, thus – “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandments holy, just and good.” Now, I say, here is testimony that all the opposers of God's law cannot impeach, and it utterly demolishes and overthrows every idea that has been presented for the last fifteen hundred years against the whole ten commandments and law of God. It nails the point down twenty-seven years after the Jewish rites and ceremonials in the law of Moses were nailed to the cross, as you and all of your faith say it was, and fully and clearly sustains all the scriptural arguments herein presented, as in Rom. iii: 31; xiii: 8-10, same year, and Gal. v: 14, two years before, and Eph. vi: 2, six years after. You may object to these dates. If they could be altered and carried back twenty years, it would not help your case, for without any date, a child might know that Paul was not even converted to Christianity until years after the ceremonial law was nailed to the cross.

You may contradict Paul if you will, and call out all your professed second advent adherents and brethren, (whom you say will not see much of any difference on this subject after they have examined the new testament,) and they will not in the least strengthen your arguments unless G. Needham should come out again and publicly declare that God also told him that Paul's testimony respecting his law and commandments, was not to be credited. And this he can as readily establish as he can his first blasphemous assertion. You might still go on and contradict James' perfect, royal law of liberty, whose testimony is to the same point and in the same year, and tell John the beloved disciple also, whose testimony is thirty years beyond James', that he ought to have called his old commandment, which he received from the Father, “which ye have heard from the beginning,” (1st John ii: 7, and 2d epistle, 4-6 verses.) “The law of grace.” because that would eventually be the right name that you should give them in 1847, after you had been designated one of the two great reformers in the world, to give light on the second coming of Christ, and so make him and James, who had heard their Lord declare that he had kept his Father's commandments; and Luke and Matthew testifying to his declaration that “the law and the prophets hung upon them,” and that the teaching and keeping of them would ensure “great esteem,” and “eternal life in the reign of heaven,” he would most likely have cited you to the epistle again, and said, read your sentence: “He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandment is a Liar and the truth is not in him.”

I should not be at all surprised if you called all this inferential, irrelevant New Testament testimony, because your grand object is to destroy the seventh-day Sabbath. If the Sabbath is not to be found in the commandments of God, then where is it to be found?

If those to whom I dedicate this work believe that I have proved beyond controversy that the commandments are valid and still to be kept, as the Revelation also teaches, xii: 17; xiv: 12; xxii: 14; then they are a perfect law, and cannot fail in one point without risking our salvation. Then the seventh-day Sabbath is included or the testimony of Jesus and his Apostle would be false. Again, there is but one Sabbath that was ever required to be kept, in the bible, and that is

THE SABBATH

Jesus kept the Sabbath, and when he was giving them the signs of his coming and the end of the world, he pointed them at least thirty-five years after his death, to the very same Sabbath. On the 29th of June last, you replied to J. Gifford's inquiries on this point, and perverted the word, and called the, their Sabbath. You also say, “The day before the resurrection was the Jewish Sabbath, which Christ kept in the tomb. When that Sabbath ended, the law of types ended, and of course the typical Sabbath ceased – a new dispensation commenced on the first day, which should be observed in commemoration of the death of Christ, until he come.” Now look at your zig-zag course. First, that the whole law with the decalogue was nailed to the cross. But here, to get rid of this brother's argument, about the Sabbath being kept the day before the resurrection, and after the crucifixion, you stretch out the Sabbath in the fourth commandment about twenty-seven hours, (as long as you wanted it,) and then put it back with the other nine that died the day before. Here too, you say, “ended the law types, and of course the typical Sabbath,” and then about twelve hours after a new dispensation commenced. Your argument looks like this – the Jewish dispensation ended at the preaching of Christ. Oh no, it was at his death – where the law of Moses, with the commandments of God, were all nailed to the cross. But stop again – the Sabbath did not end, nor the types, until twenty-seven hours after; and finally – come to think of it – the dispensation did not end until about twelve hours after that, when Christ arose. Surely J. Turner, with all his mesmeric influence, could not do much better. How much better to follow Paul in Col. ii: 14, “blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances (the ceremonial law) and nailing it to the cross” on Friday, the 14th day of the first month, “finished” at 3 o'clock, P. M. – John xix: 30; Mark xv: 33, 37. Again, you say “the Jews were so tenacious about the strict observance of their Sabbath, that they would have prevented the disciples fleeing on that day, had they made an attempt to do so; hence for their own salvation, Christ taught his disciples to pray that their flight might not be on that day, not because it would be wrong to save their lives on that day, which the Sabbatarian view seems to teach.” In the first place Christ never intimated a word about their Sabbath; it was the Sabbath, the same that he had kept. Your sophistical argument about their flight, &c. &c. touches not the main point. Christ did here recognize the Sabbath of the Lord thirty-five years beyond the time which you say it was abolished. At that time, if it never did before, as you have it, it belonged as much to the Gentile as the Jew, unless you make another attempt to stretch out the Jewish dispensation thirty-five years to cover it. His disciples certainly kept the Sabbath, the day after his death, and you cannot prove by the scriptures that the disciples ever held a meeting but once of an evening on the first day. Therefore you must be very much pushed for a Sabbath, to continually call that day one, as you do, at the same time reiterating, “we want none of your inferences!” Luke also recognizes the Sabbath twenty years beyond the resurrection, and shows that Paul kept it, and the Gentiles also. – Acts xiii: 42, 44. You attempt to destroy all this proof too, because you say this was the Jews' day for worship, and Paul could get a better hearing. Don't you see that the Gentiles invited him to preach to them – they kept the same day, 44th verse. See xvi: 13; here they are by the river's side. Paul's manner was to reason with them on the Sabbath; see xvii: 2, and xviii: 4, 11. So was it the custom of the Saviour; Mark vi: 2, and Luke iv: 16, 31. Now if all this is not New Testament evidence enough for honest believers, in the absence of any other testimony for an abolition, or change of the Sabbath, then it is because men would rather pervert the word of God than keep it.

God's Code of Laws in the New Testament

“Why do ye transgress the commandments of God.” – Matthew xv: 3.

“What is written in the law, how readest thou?” – Luke x: 26.

“Even as I have kept my Father's commandments.” – John xv: 10.

“Yea, we establish the law.” – Rom. iii: 31.

“The law is holy and the commandment is holy.” – Rom. vii: 12.

“Not subject to the law of God.” – Rom. viii: 7, also xiii: 8-10.

“But the commandments of God.” – 1st Cor. vii: 19; 1st Tim. i: 8.

“For whoever shall keep the whole law,” &c. – James ii: 10.

Moses' Code of Laws, by Jesus and His Apostles

“That is written in their law, they hated,” &c. – John xv: 25.

“Justified by the law of Moses.” – Acts xiii: 39.

“It is written in your law, I said, ye are gods?” – John x: 34.

“Have ye not read in the book of Moses.” – Mark xii: 26.

“Judged according to our law.” – Acts xxiv: 6.

“Out of the law of Moses.” – xxvii: 23, and xxi: 20, 22, 24, 28.

“And your law.” – Acts xviii: 15. Paul.

This and much more could be given to show the clear distinction that Jesus and his Apostles and the Jews always kept up between the law of God and the law of Moses. This is why so much confusion pervades our minds, when we read Paul to the Cor., Rom., Gal., and Col. If we carefully read his letter to the Hebrews, his Jewish brethren, we shall see a clearer distinction. In the 7th chapter, and first part of the 8th, he describes the priesthood; the change to Christ in his sanctuary in the heavens, and then the second covenant, the law of God written on our hearts. 9th chapter explains the first covenant, with its appendages, and the change. 10th chapter shows that these appendages never could make us perfect. 9th verse speaks of the change; 16th verse of the law of God again, and the 28th of the law of Moses. These four chapters will give more light respecting the two codes of laws; how one is abolished, except the types, and the other established, than all that ever I read from the pens of these no-commandment professors. May God help us to see the clear light.

To the Editor of The Bible Advocate

Sir – I was very glad when learned that your columns were to be opened for the discussion of the Sabbath question, for I thought if you would allow this subject to be fairly brought out, God's holy law would be vindicated and more strictly revered; but I soon see this was, and would be, an unequal warfare. To prevent any one's writing but C. Stowe of N. H., you say her argument will cover, or about cover, the whole ground in favor of the Jewish, or seventh-day Sabbath, and then no one else, until some one had replied against it, &c. This was very well, but I soon perceived that you did not keep the ship on her course. The first part of C. Stowe's article, to cover the whole ground, has never yet appeared, and should it come forth at this late hour of the discussion, it would probably avail as much as you mean it shall in its isolated state. But to prevent what you did publish for her, in the same paper, (Sept. 2d,) you gave your own unscriptural view, to go with it. This, of course, still more prejudiced your hearers, as you had before that stated objections. I am not sorry, however, that it is still going on in some shape, if it is partly in disguise. We hear that you have now on hand five times as much matter against the Sabbath as you have for it. This is all natural enough, God's word has ever been advocated by the minority. And when such blasphemous language against the Saviour we are looking for, was permitted to blacken your columns, and again reiterated that he was right, and you not only let it pass unnoticed, but was endeavoring to screen him by withdrawing his real name from God's children. The inference is, and must be, strong against you. Look at your position now! THE BIBLE ADVOCATE!! Show if you can the chapter and verse where the Bible allows any man to advocate God's word, that ever withheld his real name and where those that stood in high places were trying to screen them, because as we should have a good right to suppose, that they were in fellowship with their doctrine. How do the columns of THE BIBLE ADVOCATE look now, since you have opened the way for them to follow your unrighteous course, to debase and still hold up God's holy law as a Jewish ritual, that had been abolished. It looks to me like the same horn that is to “prevail against the saints until the ancient of days comes.” “He thought to change times and laws;” (God's laws without doubt.) He, then, through this agency, has been blackening your columns with his iron hoof. The Devil has been too long engaged in this war to pass any one's enclosure, who has left his gate open, without walking in and taking possession. How could you be so careless or wilful, after warring with him as you have done in the past, to leave the way open for him to tread you down. Another thing: In your paper of Dec. 23d, you say, “Br. Turner, have you sent your second article on the Sabbath? We have not received it.” Why in so much haste for this wonderful promised article, to overthrow history, after he has overthrown himself by the bible? Why not publish some of the so much manuscript you have already on hand? I cannot help thinking, after all, that you have no faith in your own argument of a no-Sabbath, no-commandment system, hence this partial call for J. Turner to speak again. His view is really the very thing! It is just as it used to be. If T. has got it right the discussion is forever ended, and we have always been right, but did not know it; if we had, we should not have resorted to these puzzling arguments of Paul to prove that there is no Sabbath, to get clear of plain, bible doctrine!