God Did Not Protect the Seven-day Week

JIM BABER | Christian Apologist and Host of the Academy Apologia YouTube Channel

I have never been an Adventist, but the subject of historical calendars and time have been a subject of general interest of mine for years. I had a book on the history of calendars (1) for many years in my stack of books to read, but never seemed to find the time. However, in 2019 I began studying and engaging Adventists in Christian apologetics. Engaging Adventists means discussing all things Sabbath-related, so my interest in time and calendars grew immensely. I moved this book on historical calendars to the top of my reading list. It was obvious after reading this book that the history of calendars and time presented problems for Seventh-day Adventists. This book and the subsequent research resulted in several YouTube videos which are summarized below.

The Adventist divinely-inspired source, Ellen White, teaches “The weekly cycle of seven literal days, six for labor and the seventh for rest, which has been preserved and brought down through Bible history, originated in the great facts of the first seven days.” (2). To this day it is Adventist dogma that the Sabbath they currently observe follows in an unbroken sequence the seventh-day of rest recorded in Genesis 2:2. What I learned from this book and the subsequent research has proven Ellen White and Adventism wrong. The seven-day weekly cycle was never a universal constant and has been broken throughout history many, many times.

The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1946 revealed a first century B.C. calendar controversy between two Sabbath-keeping Jewish communities: the Essenes and the Pharisees (3). The Essene community was highly critical of the Pharisees for the frequent changes they made to the calendar. The Pharisees frequently added and subtracted days to the calendar, while the Essene community did not believe the calendar should undergo manipulation. The Essene community believed the calendar they followed was written on divinely ordained “heavenly tablets” (4) and should never be changed. “The Pharisees held their time-reckoning to be God given” (5), and they believed that their authority, invested in them them through Moses, allowed them to change their calendar. This Pharisaical authority is documented and explained in the Mishnah. The Mishnah details the strict process for observing the new moon (6), which is the start of a new month. The new moon, or new month, must be physically observed by an appointed council of witnesses. If there was only one witness on the council who was unable to observe, or if weather prohibited the physical sighting of the new moon by the council, then the Mishnah demands the calendar be intercalated by adding a new day to the last week in the current month and thus delay the start of the new month. Any calendar system which adds individual days to the calendar forever changes the seven-day cycle from that point onward.

Pharisees Routinely Changed the Calendar

The Pharisees also routinely changed the calendar to ensure the Day of Atonement “should not be observed either on Friday or on Sunday” (7), and when it did, they added the appropriate number of days to the previous month which then shifted the date of the Day of Atonement, thus ensuring the celebration was not on a Friday or Sunday. These two Sabbath-keeping communities, Essene and Pharisee, maintained two completely different calendar systems. The Essene calendar was based on the pseudepigraphal book of Jubilees and followed a strict and unchanging 364-day annual cycle, which is not an accurate or precise measure of time. The Pharisee calendar routinely added and subtracted days, thus shifting the weekly cycle. The supposed unbroken seven-day cycle as taught by Ellen White and currently in Adventism has been proven to be a false teaching. The Mishnah permits an ever-changing calendar by adding days which did not exist to the current month, and the Pharisees added and removed days to ensure the Day of Atonement celebration did not fall on a Friday or Sunday. The static 364-day calendar of the Essene community was not an accurate annual calendar and quickly became out of sync with the seasons.

Ellen White, in the quote above, has obligated the biblical God to divinely create and maintain an unbroken seven-day weekly sequence. However, there is no promise by the biblical God to create and maintain such a calendar system. The biblical God is not the “god” of Ellen White and Adventism. The Adventist “god” of Ellen White promised he would ensure an unbroken seven-day weekly cycle, but this Adventist “god” has failed as demonstrated by the Sabbath-keeping Pharisees who routinely added and subtracted individual days to the weekly cycle. Ellen White has created a “god” to suit her own desires and violates the very commandments she claims to uphold: “You shall have no other gods before me.”— Deuteronomy 5:7 (ESV) The “god” of the Seventh-day Adventists is clearly not the True God of the Bible.

I have observed in my studies of Adventist literature, that once Ellen White has written on a subject, future Adventist writers take the liberty to elaborate further on the topic. While conducting research in Adventist literature on calendars and time, I frequently came across such statements by Adventists who make even more emphatic calendar claims:

”When God introduced the weekly cycle at creation, he made it a permanent eternal institution.” (8)

“The continuity of the weekly cycle has never been altered since God, who started the week said, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (9)

These two Adventist quotes are simply the further manifestation of the fabricated and counterfeit Adventist “god.” Adventism through its own manmade theology demands a worldwide, universal seven-day-a-week calendar. If the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27) as Adventists teach (incorrectly), then this Adventist “god” must create the basis and ability for man to observe the Sabbath this Adventist “god” demands, and that means a universal and unaltered seven-day weekly cycle. But Adventist literature paints a completely different and contradictory picture. Adventist literature admits there have been many nations that either did not identify weeks in their calendar systems or, if they had weekly cycles, their weekly cycles were not seven-day weeks. The Adventist “god” failed to ensure a permanent and unaltered weekly cycle:

“In the past the Chinese have paid no attention to the days of the week. They had no weekly cycle. They went by the days of the month only.” (10)

“It should be kept in mind that among pagan peoples and in other nations, coexistent with the seven-day weekly cycle there have been periods of time other than the seven-day week. For example, the ancient Babylonians had a five-day period of time, the ancient Egyptians a ten-day period, and the Romans eight and nine-day periods. Similar periods have existed in other nations. It is the religion of God and the Bible that has preserved in unbroken sequence for all time and for all mankind the historic weekly cycle.” (11)

Adventist theology (Mark 2:27), not biblical theology, commands all mankind to keep the Sabbath, but in order to keep the Sabbath or consider keeping the Sabbath, then the calendar system must have Sabbath days and seven-day weeks. History is full of nations and people groups as indicated in the two quotes above who had no weeks or Sabbaths in their calendar systems. The Seventh-day Adventists claim their “god” created a “permanent eternal institution” (12) consisting of a seven-day cycle, and a “continuity of the weekly cycle has never been altered” (13), but their literature is full of examples of nations and people groups upon whom the Adventist “god” was unable to enforce a seven-day permanent cycle. Adventism has created a “god” and then made demands upon this “god” that this “god” was unable to enforce. The “god” of Adventism is proven again not to be the God of the bible.

Research in Adventist literature also yielded one more interesting “fact.” Adventist literature teaches their “god” was a Sabbath keeper:

“According also to the record in Genesis 2: 2, which states that God rested, or kept Sabbath,” (14)

“God rested on the seventh day. That made that day God’s rest day, or Sabbath. The resting was a fact. It will be forever a fact that God rested on that day. To change the record would make it a lie. It can no more be changed than the date of a man’s birthday.” (15)

Adventist “god” Is a Man

Seventh-day Adventists are quick to cite Mark 2:27 and follow-up with saying “The Sabbath was made for man.” This is an incorrect conclusion to reach when understanding this passage, but I will for this moment only, adopt their view. Mark 2:27 means the Sabbath was made for man. I will now create a syllogism (16) based on Adventist teachings. A syllogism by definition has two premises followed by a conclusion. For the conclusion to be true, the two preceding premises must also be true. I now present two premises followed by a conclusion:

1. The Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27)
2. The Adventist “god” observed a Sabbath
3. Therefore, the Adventist Sabbath-Keeping “god” is a man

Adventists cannot escape the conclusion that their “god” is a man. No Adventist will deny the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), and no Adventist can deny their literature taught their “god” is a Sabbath-keeper. I have several more quotes where Adventist authors make their “god” a Sabbath keeper. Given that the two premise statements are true, there is only one conclusion: the Adventist “god” is a man. The true God of the Bible is not a man. In this exchange between Balaam and Balak, God clearly states he is not a man:

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?— Numbers 23:19 (ESV)

The God of the Bible is not a man, but the “god” of Adventism is a Sabbath-observing man—and the “god” of Adventism is a false god.

In summary, the Seventh-day Adventist belief in an eternal and unbroken weekly seven-day cycle has been broken. The Essenes and the Pharisees each followed different calendars, and both were professing Torah Sabbath-keepers. The Pharisees changed their calendar frequently by adding or subtracting days, and the Essene calendar at a static 364-day cycle is completely unworkable. Any calendar which adds or subtracts days upsets the previously established weekly cycle. Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath theology goes astray when Adventism claims its “god” created a permanent and unchangeable seven-day cycle at creation, but Adventist literature refutes their own claim by citing nations who did not have seven-day weekly cycles. Lastly, the Adventist “god” is described in Adventist literature as a Sabbath-keeper, and when this is paired with the Adventist understanding of Mark 2:27, Adventism actually makes their “god” into a man because “he” is a Sabbath-keeper. This research has further convinced me that Adventism has created a “god” to suit their unbiblical Sabbath theology, and the “god” of Adventism is not the One True God of the bible. †

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Endnotes

1. Duncan, David Ewing, Calendar – Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year, New York: Avon Books, INC, 1998.
2. White, Mrs. E. G., The Great Controversy Between Christ and His Angels and Satan and His Angels – Chapter Eight. “Disguised Infidelity”, Signs of the Times. 20 March, 1879, p. 90.
3. Oberman, Julian, “Calendric Elements in the Dead Sea Scrolls”, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 75, December 1956, pp. 285-294.
4. VanderKam, James C. A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 1-21. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018, p. 299.
5. Oberman, p. 291.
6. Danby, Herbert D.D. The Mishnah – Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes, London: Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 191.
7. Ibid. Oberman, p. 293.
8. Gilbert, Fredrick C. “Can Time be Lost – Can we be sure that today we have the exact weekly cycle established at the creation of the world?”, Signs of the Times. 10 September ,1929, p. 6.
9. Wickman, Paul, “A Rocket Bomb!”, The Youth’s Instructor. 23 January, 1945, p. 3.
10. “Chinese Convert makes Weekly Calendar Device”, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 17 January, 1929, p. 24.
11. Johnson, Alvin W. “Calendar Reform and Religious Freedom – Part 2”, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. 11 March, 1954, p. 6.
12. Ibid. Gilbert, p. 6
13. Ibid. Wickman, p. 3
14. Corliss, J. O. “The Sabbath Story Simply Told”, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 4 October, 1917, p. 10.
15. Wilcox, Milton C. “The Sabbath in the Dispensations”, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. 15 February, 1923, p. 8.
16. Syllogism Definition: https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/syllogism

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Videos

Defeating Adventism # 184–“Sabbath Refuted | Seventh-day Adventist Supposed 7-Day Cycle Falls to Ruin”

Defeating Adventism # 185 – “Sabbath Refuted | Seventh-day Adventist 7-day cycle refuted in 1582 A.D.”

Defeating Adventism # 186–“Sabbath Refuted | Seventh-day Adventist “God Ordained” 7-day Week Fails”

Defeating Adventism # 187–“Sabbath Refuted | The Seventh-day Adventist “god” is a Sabbath Keeper”

Defeating Adventism # 188–“The Seventh-day Adventist false “god” rested in Genesis 2:2”