Objection 32: If Paul were living, he would condemn Seventh-day Adventists in the same terms as he condemned the Galatians. (See Gal. 4:9-10.)
The passage in Galatians reads: “But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days, and months, and times, and years.”
We have earlier found (under Objection 7) that the yoke of bondage was the endless series of ceremonial observances, particularly in view of the fact that those rites had been heavily encrusted with rabbinical (traditional) teachings.
It is evident that Paul is not here speaking of the moral law, for the Ten Commandment law, particularly the Fourth Commandment, deals only with one day, the weekly seventh-day Sabbath. Paul must be speaking of the other laws, including the ceremonial laws, where we do find commands regarding, “days, and months, and times, and years.”
How could Paul possibly say that the seventh day Sabbath was one of “the weak and beggarly elements,” and that the keeping of it would bring men into “bondage”? Paul was the man who instructed Timothy that, “all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” 2 Tim. 3:16. To call the weekly Sabbath “weak and beggarly” would be an attack on the whole moral law.
Paul would have been guided, in his appraisal of the weekly Sabbath, by the prophets’ appraisal of it. Isaiah, for example, declares that the Lord calls the Sabbath “my holy day,” and then appeals to us to call it “a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable.” Isa. 58:13.
Christ died on the cross to redeem men from sin and to sanctify them, to blot out from this world everything that relates to sin, and to restore this world to its original Edenic glory. Why, then, would Christ seek to abolish the Sabbath, which God set aside and hallowed in the sinless beauty of Eden? The Sabbath is not a post-Fall accommodation of sin. Sabbath objectors make no serious attempt to face this question.
There is another question we would ask: If Paul would indict those who keep the Sabbath, why would he not also indict those who keep Sunday? Is there not as much the keeping of a day in the one case as in the other?
But let us take the matter a little further. Paul's indictment is against those who observe a variety of days and seasons, which Seventh-day Adventists do not do. We do not observe the liturgical calendar, with its holy days and seasons; we do not observe Advent, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, or Easter. We keep only one day holy. We thus could not be a target of Paul’s warning about observing “days and months and times and years.”
We wonder, however, what Paul might say if he could speak today to Sunday-keeping Protestants, who are giving ever-increasing attention to a variety of religious days and seasons. One current Protestant paper, under the title “The Increasing Observing of Lent,” remarks: “Lent has a most important place in the calendar of the Roman Catholic, the Greek Catholic, the Episcopalian, and the Lutheran Churches,” and then goes on to add that “in our churches there is an increasing acknowledgment of Lent.”
Another Protestant paper is not content simply to promote the observance of Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Christmas, and Lent, but wishes to add another. It regrets that “Ascension Day” has not loomed more largely in Christian thought and the calendar of the churches. The editorial states what it believes the observance of Christmas has done for men, and likewise the observance of Easter and other days, and goes on to argue that the observance of Ascension Day would further enrich the spiritual life of Christians.
This is the same kind of reasoning that governed the theologians of the Middle Ages as they kept adding one holy day after another, building the crowded calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, which was so sweepingly indicted by the great Reformers. Yet we are not quoting from a medieval Catholic writer, but from an editorial in the Christian Statesman, the official organ of the National Reform Association, which works for rigid Sunday laws throughout the whole United States!
If Paul's words have a present-day application, the unbiased reader to judge as to which group would be indicted, Seventh-day Adventists or the Sunday-keeping Protestant bodies? In view of the fact that Adventists are often considered defective in their Christianity because they do not observe Good Friday, Easter, the Lenten season, or any special days or seasons, we would ask: Why should Adventists be indicted for failing to observe a variety of days and seasons, and at the same time be indicted by Paul as being guilty of that very thing?