Objection:
Seventh-day Sabbath keepers argue that a specific seventh day, originating from creation and repeating in cycles of seven, is the day that God blessed and that everyone should observe as the Sabbath. However, no one can definitively identify which day that is today, and changes to the calendar have further complicated the matter.
Answer:
Before we take this objection seriously, we would like to ask the objector a question: Why do you keep Sunday? If you answer as Sunday keepers have routinely answered through the centuries, you will say, “Because Christ rose on the first day of the week.” Indeed, we have never heard any other answer ever given. Then we would ask, Are you sure that you and your spiritual ancestors have been keeping the particular first day of the week that has come down in cycles of seven from the resurrection Sunday? You can hardly answer no, for that would be a dreadful indictment of all your Sunday-keeping forebears who generally succeeded in having men sent to jail if they failed to give due reverence to Sunday. If you answer yes, what becomes of your contention that time has been lost? Did the first day of the week come down safely through the centuries, but not the seventh day?
Strictly speaking, we need not take the discussion further. It should be time enough for us to examine this question of lost or scrambled time seriously when Sunday advocates are ready to admit that they are not sure they are really keeping the first day of the week. But so generally is the lost-time theory brought forth, when all other arguments against the Sabbath are lost, that we should probably give some attention to it.
What proof is offered that time has been lost? None whatever. We are supposed to believe that in the distant past, everybody woke up one morning and decided that Monday was Tuesday, or something like that, or that when the calendar was changed, the days of the week became confused.
Of course, we do not have a history that tells us everything that has happened since creation. But we know that when we come down to the time of Christ’s crucifixion, “the Sabbath day according to the commandment” was definitely known. That day was the seventh day of the weekly cycle, between crucifixion Friday and resurrection Sunday. That makes it unnecessary to peer into the vistas of time before Christ.
And what of the centuries since Christ? Have calendar changes confused our reckoning of weeks? Fortunately, we don’t need to be in doubt. Here are the facts: There has been one change in the calendar since New Testament times, from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, under which we live today. The change to the new calendar was first made in Spain, Portugal, and Italy in AD 1582 under an edict of Pope Gregory XIII.
For this reason, our present calendar is known as the Gregorian calendar. The correction of the calendar in changing from the old to the new called for the dropping out of ten days from the month of October. The result was that October 1582–in the countries that made the change–appeared as shown below:
| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 15 | 16 | |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
Thursday, the fourth of October, was followed immediately by Friday, the fifteenth. The result was that although certain days were removed from the month, the order of the days of the week was not interfered with. And it is the cycle of the week that measures off the Sabbath day for us. As the years passed, the other nations gradually changed to the Gregorian from the Julian calendar, as the former was called. And every nation, in making the change, employed the same rule of dropping out days from the month without touching the order of the days of the week.
But the case is even stronger than this. Not only was the week not tampered with in the revision of the calendar, but the idea of breaking the weekly cycle in any way was also not considered. Speaking of the variety of plans suggested for the calendar’s correction, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “Every imaginable proposition was made; only one idea was never mentioned, viz., the abandonment of the seven-day week.” – Volume 9, p. 251.
Why should time be lost? Who would want to lose it? Civilization and commerce have existed throughout the centuries, and can we not believe that those who lived before us were quite as able to keep count of the days as we are? Indeed, all wisdom and knowledge are not confined to the present century. Furthermore, accurate keeping of time records is vital in religious worship for Christians and Jews. Christianity and Judaism have come down through all the centuries since Bible times. They are probably the most definite links binding us to ancient times.
Would it be conceivable that all Christian peoples and Jews would lose the reckoning of the weeks, which would involve confusion for all their holy days? And if such a thought be conceivable, could we possibly bring ourselves to believe that all the Christians in every part of the world and all the Jews in every part of the world would lose precisely the same amount of time? To such incredible lengths must one go to maintain the idea that time has been lost!
Look at the question from still another angle. Ask the astronomer whether time has been lost or whether the weekly cycle has been tampered with. They will tell you no.
There is no uncertainty in tracing back the weeks to Bible times, and when we reach there, we read that the “Sabbath was past” when the “first day of the week”–the resurrection morning arrived (Mark 16:1, 2). If you wait until Sunday to rest and worship, you have missed the Sabbath, for the Word of God declares it is “past.”
