Dear Hope and Household: Truth is very vital to every one of us, as has recently been emphasized by the investigation of quiz shows.
We deny Jesus on our calendars by naming the seventh day "Saturday," instead of "Sabbath."
When we call the seventh day "Saturday." With "In God We Trust" on all our coins, we are "speaking lies in hypocrisy," which the Spirit told Paul would occur in the latter times.
It began with Charlemagne; called "The First Christian Emperor." In order to have one religion, he took the name Christian and the sacred day of the Sun-Worshippers, is what histories tell us. Now modern "One Worlders" are trying to get a new world calendar with an 8-day week every year and two in leap years, which would cause the Sabbath and Sunday to wander through the week as the years go by.
According to "The Authentic Jones Report," more than 100 ancient and modern languages have always had the seventh day named "Sabbath." Russia is one of them. So let us all use our influence to get the Sabbath on our calendars with no change in the sequence of days. -- Mary Esther Armstrong, Kewanee, Illinois.
Hope's Suggestion
There have been so many blunders and changes through the ages that who can tell which day is actually the Sabbath? It seems more important for each one to observe a Sabbath according to his beliefs. Prior to Christ's time calendars of a sort were used, and altered from time to time. Julius Caesar, about Christ's time, added a February 29 every four years. Other Caesars named months after themselves and changed the order of the months. Pope Gregory in the 1500's decided the February 29 was getting us too far ahead of the sun, so he decreed that we would drop Leap Year Day in any turn of the century not divisible by four (that is, there was Leap Year in 1600, not in 1700 nor 1800 nor 1900, but there will be one in 2000). Then along about George Washington's time we dropped 11 days and called what had been February 11 February 22. So you see many changes have altered the calendar and the Sabbath may not have kept in the regular pattern all the time. And the way March acted in 1960, it began to look like the old Earth had slipped a cog again and we'd better call March a winter month.
Sunrise and sunset and the cycle of the seasons are natural phenomena, but most of the arrangements concerning time are man-planned for convenience -- our clocks and watches, time zones, time tables and such. Those who talk of changing the calendar are trying only to bring time measurements into enough conformity that the whole world can abide by one system. Maybe there should be no change; maybe the change you mention is not the best one. But there is nothing in any of the plans that would prevent anyone from keeping his Sabbath, that I can see. -- Hope.