The Eden Day-Line Theory
(Source The Bible Echo, January 28, 1901. High-lighting added by Sabbath Issues editor.)
WE are living in times when not only many old errors are being revived and strenuously advocated, but when many new and strange theories are being advanced and seeking recognition. One of the latter is that Eden, or the place where Eden is supposed to have been located, marks the place at which the true day-line should be drawn, instead of the point in the Pacific where the streams of emigration have come together.
In the first place it may be noticed that the whole theory is based upon an assumption. Its advocates assume that the day-line must be where man was placed in the beginning, and where Christ lived when on the earth; but the Bible does not say so. They have to assume the very point that they try to establish and prove.
In the second place, the theory, if correct, and had it been carried out by a sinless race, would have caused confusion from the very beginning. It cannot therefore be of God, for God is not the author of confusion. The theory is that where Eden was, that marks the place of the true day-line. Every new day should begin there; westward from this point the reckoning should be twenty-four hours in advance of that immediately eastward. In other words, if one of Adam’s sons had taken up his home one mile west of Eden, and another taken his up one mile east, they would needed to have reckoned themselves as living in different days, though living only about two miles apart. While standing under the same shining sun, the one to the west would have called a certain day the first day of the week, while the one to the east would have called the self-same day the seventh! To be more specific, they could not have met together for worship and kept the same Sabbath, though living only two miles apart. One would have needed to have kept his Sabbath twenty-four hours before the other kept his!
As all can readily see, this would have created confusion, and made a most unhappy and unseemly division in the Adamic family. The place which above all others on earth should have been marked as a place for family reunions and harmony in seasons of worship, would have been the place of confusion and division.
Adam was to be the father and king of the whole human family. Eden was given to him as his permanent home. His descendants would naturally scatter and make homes for themselves in all directions from Eden. Adam being father and king, and Eden being his home, his descendants, had the race not fallen, would naturally have come to him, and thus to Eden, for Sabbath services, family reunions, etc. In order that there might be harmony and a united service, they would all, from which ever quarter they might have come, needed to bring the same day with them, and all reckoned days the same when they arrived there. But this would have been impossible had they considered Eden as the place of the day-line, and went out reckoning different days on different sides of Eden.
It would be the most natural thing in the world, for men, as they migrated from Eden, to take the Eden day with them, no matter which way they travelled. When, in the course of their emigrations, they met on the other side of the earth, they would, of course, find themselves twenty-four hours apart. But this would not matter, as that would not be the place for general meetings or Sabbath services. But of all places upon the earth, Eden, the birthplace of the race, should be the place of harmony of days and unity of reckoning. But the Eden day-line theory would make it the place of utmost confusion. On the very opposite side of the earth from Eden, therefore, at the point where the streams of emigration would meet, we would naturally conclude would be the natural and proper place for the day-line. And that is where Providence, nature, emigration, and common-sense have fixed it, in the broad waters of the Pacific.
Another argument greatly confirmatory of this position is the fact that this will be the very condition and arrangement of things in the new earth, when Eden is restored. The Edenic site will be a place of general meetings and harmony in reckoning of days. This is shown from the Bible. When Christ descends at the close of the millennium, His feet will touch the Mount of Olives, which will spread out and become a great plain, preparatory to the descent and final resting- place of the New Jerusalem. Zech. 14:4,8-9; Rev. 21:2. Zechariah 14:16 shows that this is the place where the people will assemble from time to time to worship God; and Isaiah 66:22-23 says that in the new earth all flesh shall come from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, to worship before the Lord. Those who come from the east will bring the same day with them as those who come from the west. All will keep the same Sabbath at Jerusalem, not two different days, as they would necessarily if that was the place to locate the true day-line. The day-line will be on the very opposite side of the earth from Eden and Jerusalem.
The Eden day-line theory, therefore, is as wide of the mark as it possibly can be. It has neither Bible, common-sense, nor historic facts to support it. It is only one more of the many other like modern delusions and winds of doctrines brought in to evade the cross of keeping the true seventh day Sabbath, to confuse the minds of the simple, and to nullify God’s message for this time. It bears no stamp of truth or divinity about it. It teaches that in all the countries east of Palestine over to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the people are wrong in their reckoning of the days of the week; that they are one day ahead of time; that what they call Sunday is in reality the seventh day Sabbath, and that therefore the people in India, China, Siberia, the East Indies, Japan, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and many of the islands of the Pacific should keep Sunday as the true seventh day! The people of all these countries constitute about one half the population of the globe. The Sabbath of the Lord, according to the Bible, is the seal of God; the false Sabbath is the mark of apostasy. If, however, what is called Sunday in these countries is the true Sabbath and seal of God, what, pray tell, is the mark of apostasy? Any doctrine which nullifies to half of the world the very pith and point of the last message God has for the entire world, cannot be of God. It deserves to be consigned to the silent shades of oblivion, as unworthy the serious consideration of any sane, thinking man.
by W. A. COLCORD.
Originally published in The Bible Echo, January 28, 1901 (PDF file). [Unfortunately WordPress will not accept a date earlier than 1902] See other issues of the Bible Echo and Signs of the Times in the Adventist Archives.
A secular and ironic account of the “David Nield’s Day-line Doctrine” may be found at New Zealand Papers Past site with the title, “New Zealand Prophet Mystifies Melbournians.” Apparently Davied Nield preached that the New Zealanders and Australians were keeping Sabbath on the right day (Sunday).
Also see advertisement in Papers Past for Davied Nield’s “Church of God Tabernacle”
We have re-published this article from the January 28, 1901, issue of The Bible Echo for the benefit of our readers.
There had already been agitation over the Eden Day Line for some time before this was published. In fact, Ellen White’s letter from a few months previous to this article, as published in Selected Messages III, p. 317, seems to be referring to this theory, since there was no agitation over the actual date line that would have resulted in Seventh-day Adventists keeping Sunday as the Sabbath. Unfortunately, the editors of Selected Messages inserted a title of “The Question of the Date Line” which just confuses the issue.
For your convenience, we have high-lighted the sections that describe what this theory actually taught.
The saying is that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. So we ask our readers, What can we learn from this bit of history?
The question for us is what we can learn from this little bit of history from more than 100 years ago.
I go further than Pr Colcord. Any doctrine which nullifies to ANY PERSON in the world the very pith and point of the last message God has for the entire world, cannot be of God.
The SDA Church has a vital warning message to every nation kindred tongue and people. How can the SDA leadership, with responsibility for facilitating that, justify making a decision that caused even a small number of Seventh-day Adventists in a few Pacific Islands to begin keeping Sunday?
P.S. Colcord was not just a pastor – http://sqheritage.adventist.org.au/president-william-allan-colcord
Thanks, John, for this interesting little bit of additional history. In the brief article to which you refer, it is mentioned that “in 1902 William Colcord served as the third president of the Queensland Conference.” I also find it significant that he spent much of his time opposing the enforcement of Sunday laws.
It seems that history is repeating itself, and Colcord’s article is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1901.
Having read the Sabbath Sunday issue I would like to say if Jesus’s death and resuraction are the tow main important aspects of survation then the days to rest should be Friday and Sunday not any other day of the week.
More historical writings on the subject of the “day line” by William Henry Branson
Written in 1933
So there we have it. The world being round, it is impossible to obey God’s law in respect to the Sabbath, says Mr. Canright. Strange that God should have made a Sabbath for a world which He knew to be round, isn’t it? But there is a still stranger thing. That is, that this very same identical earth that is so round, and which rotates so fast that one cannot possibly keep the Sabbath, presents no difficulties whatever to the person who desires to keep Sunday! This we also are taught by Mr. Canright, for in the same chapter in which he attempts to prove that on account of the earth’s being a globe the Sabbath cannot be kept, he confidently informs us that Sunday can be kept. Note his teaching on this point:
He further says:
He explains that the difficulty about keeping the Sabbath is the existence of a “day line,” and that this jumps about so from place to place that “there is no possible means of fixing the day of the original Sabbath.”-Ibid., p. 184.
Surely this reasoning is more profound than enlightening. Just how it is that Saturday cannot possibly be kept on a round world, but Sunday can be, is, to say the least, a bit confusing. Does he perhaps mean that on Sunday the earth flattens out, and thus the difficulty is overcome for the day, and that it then resumes its globular form until the next Sunday rolls around? Or does the day line stay fixed on Sunday, so that the particular day can be located, and move about only on Saturday, making it impossible for that day to be found? In any event, there is evidently no difficulty experienced in locating Sunday in any part of the earth, for, according to Mr. Canright, “from the days of the apostles the Christian church has, with one consent, served the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, or Sunday.”
“From the days of the apostles.” This covers a period of nineteen hundred years. And, says he, during this period Britains have kept Sunday. They have done it, he claims, “With one consent,” that is, Christians in America, Europe, Australia, China, wherever they have been found during these nineteen hundred years, have all agreed on the question of which day was Sunday. They have done it “with one consent,” with no mix-up over a round world, a day line, lost time, or any of these scary hobgoblins; they all agree that Sunday, the definite day upon which our Lord was raised, can be found, yea, has been found, and is everywhere known. Upon this all have been agreed for nineteen hundred years; and yet, would you believe it? The seventh can neither be found nor kept! The world is too round. Time keeping has not been accurate enough. Day lines move about so. The north and south poles present serious obstacles; and there are so many reasons-not the least of which is the fact that men invent such arguments for the press purpose of getting rid of a plain command of God with which their lives are not in harmony.
Surely this kind of reasoning answers itself. What candid person would say that Sunday can be kept on a round world that has a day line, but that Saturday cannot? What advantage could one day possibly have over another this respect?
Seventh-day Adventists have never claimed that the Sabbath could be kept in all parts of the world at the same moment of time. They may be illiterate, as Mr. Canright tries to make them appear, but their ignorance does not quite reach to the point where they fail to recognize that each day of the week travels around the earth, and that the Sabbath therefore does not come to people in all places at once, and therefore cannot be kept by all people at the same time. What they do claim is that wherever one may be, in the Orient or Occident, he can keep exactly the same day as his fellow Christians keep on the other side of the world, but his keeping of the day must be at the time when the day comes to him, and has no relation to the question as to when it comes to those in other countries. {1933 “In defense of Faith”, page 199-201}
Another one of our pioneers had something very explicit to say on the subject of the Eden day-line: