Objection 40: Seventh-day Adventists declare that the Sabbath was intended for all men in all lands. But it is evident that it was intended only for the Jews in the little land of Palestine. How could anyone keep the definite seventh day Sabbath up in the Arctic circle, where there is six months day then six months night? Or how would a person keep track of the order of the days of the week in traveling around the world, for you lose a day if you travel in one direction and gain a day if you travel in the other direction?
The fact that the sun never sets for some months in the arctic and antarctic, and then never rises for a long period in these places, bears not on whether all people were intended to keep the Sabbath, but much more on whether anyone was intended to live permanently in such inhospitable places. As near as we can tell, no one has ever lived permanently at the North Pole, and until very recently, no one ever lived on the continent of Antarctica.
We note however, that arctic and antarctic explorers and scientific teams do keep track of the days and weeks, and record in their diaries what they did on certain specific days. Obviously, it is possible to keep track of days and months even in these strange and forbidding parts of the earth.
If a Sabbath keeper should find himself in that weird world of ice and had any fear that he had lost his reckoning of the weeks, he need only go to a mission conducted for the Eskimos by some Sunday keeping church and compare his reckoning with theirs.
And what of the problem of traveling around the world in relation to keeping a correct reckoning of the weeks? The simple fact is that wherever we find ourselves, the people around us will have kept track of the days, and one day will be the Seventh Day. That is the day the traveler should observe, even if he cannot count off seven days from the Sabbath he observed on the other side of the world. We note, once again, that this objection is never urged against Sunday-keeping travelers, only against would-be Sabbath-keeping jet-setters. But if it is an objection to Sabbath-keeping, it is an objection to Sunday-keeping by the same token and to the same extent.
The objector will probably now say: “The facts are that the people in one part of the world cannot keep the Sabbath at the same moment of time as the people in other parts of the world, because, for example, the people in Europe begin their day several hours earlier than we in America. What are you going to do about that?”
The Sabbath commandment says nothing about keeping the Sabbath at the same moment of time everywhere over the earth. It simply commands us to keep “the seventh day.” And does not the seventh day arrive everywhere over the earth? It does, just as Sunday does for the Sunday-keepers.
When we reach any country in our travels we find all the people there-scientists and laymen, Jews, Christians, and infidels-in perfect agreement as to the days of the week. Indeed, this is probably one of the few facts of everyday life in which such a mixed group are in agreement. Ask them separately or collectively, and they will all give the same answer as to when the seventh day of the week arrives.* Then how simple is God's command to keep “the seventh day.” Once again, neither of these objections are deemed applicable to invalidate Sunday-keeping, only Sabbath-keeping.
*Nichol’s assertion in the above paragraph is, alas, no longer true. Some Pacific Islanders have, in fact, taken issue with a governmental decision to move the International Date Line, so that there is, in fact, disagreement as to what is the Seventh Day among some Seventh-day Adventists on some Pacific islands. More about that here.
Our position, which again is discussed here, is that Sabbath-keepers should keep what is officially deemed Saturday, the seventh day of the week, wherever we are, regardless how vexing we find a seemingly unnecessary movement of the International Date Line.
