Caller: Hi Pastor, my question is Which day is the Seventh day? The seventh day in America is different from the seventh day in Australia. If God really rested on the seventh day, then when was it He rested, was it in Australia or in America? Two: What is God doing after the seventh day? When it gets to the seventh day, does He rest? If He rests, does He use the American seventh day or Australian seventh day?
Pastor Doug: Alright, lets hold on for a second here you’ve given us plenty to think about. The first part of that question is when you’re saying the seventh day in Australia is different—if you look in the dictionary in Australia, and I’ve been there, as well as a dictionary in America or any other part of the world, where it defines the days of the week, the seventh day is what we commonly call Saturday, both in North America and in Australia.
Now, it is true that because of the time line as the earth turns that it is different days, different times in different parts of the world. But in all parts of the world the sixth day is followed by the seventh day. The weekly cycle hasn’t changed. So, wherever you are, whenever it gets to Saturday or the seventh day, that’s when the seventh day comes.
Caller: It looks like if God rested, like the Bible is saying, if He created the whole world, like the first day…
Pastor Doug: I see what you’re saying. Alright, so did God rest on the seventh day in the Garden of Eden or in another part of the world?
Caller: In another part of the world—that’s right.
Pastor Doug: Well, when God created the world, I believe that the central—you know how they have Greenwich Mean Time?—Greenwich Mean Time in the New Earth would have been in the Garden of Eden because that’s where God began the cradle of civilization and that’s where times began and days and evenings and mornings began. But see, man cannot live in many parts of the world in the same time. Man always exists in one day at a time.
Now, of course, there are those rare cases where a person might cross the international date line but my question would be, you know, the Sabbath is God’s idea, it’s a day of rest, so these anomalies—sometimes people give me a question, Kennedy, they’ll say “How do they keep the Sabbath in a space shuttle where in one day they orbit the earth twenty times?” Well, I don’t know. If I were them I’d pick one of those days that’s the closest to the seventh day and just rest twenty-four hours as you circle the planet. So you’ll always find anomalies like that but the principle is that God wants us to rest, to worship Him, to let our animals and our employees rest, and it’s a day for rest and worship. We can always look for loopholes and things that are difficult.
Caller: Yeah, I’m sorry, but what I’m trying to say is so we can choose a day and say this is the seventh day and rest?
Pastor Doug: No. God never says, ‘On A seventh day’. God says that He blessed THE seventh day not A seventh day. And if you look in the encyclopedia or the dictionary, it’ll tell you the seventh day of the week is what we commonly call Saturday. The first day of the week is Sunday, that’s why the resurrection is on the first day of the week.
Co-Host: And the name ‘Saturday’ came much later. Sunday was the day of the sun. It came from Roman names, yeah. So the names of the days actually came later, but God ordered them one through seven.
Pastor Doug: I hope that helps you a little bit, Kennedy. Now, incidentally, we have a book called “Is Sunday Sacred” and it deals a little bit with some of these issues, and we’ll be happy to send that to Kennedy.
Co-Host: Kennedy, if you’ll call our resource operators and ask for the book called “Is Sunday Sacred”, we’ll send it out to you tonight at 800-835-6747. Hopefully that will help to resolve the issues for you.