The advocates of the seventh day sabbath make a very broad claim. They claim that the command to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy (the fourth commandment of the Decalogue given at Sinai) has been binding on all people throughout all ages and will continue to be in force as long as time shall last. In other words, they claim that it has been binding throughout each of the dispensations already mentioned. With the diagram (p. 144) to keep these three periods before our minds, let us examine the claim in the light of the Bible. IV No Sabbath for Man During First 2,500 Years First of all, I emphatically deny that God commanded anyone to keep the sabbath before the children of Israel were led out of Egypt. According to the Seventh Day Adventists, the “fourth commandment” was in force at least 2,500 years before it was made known. This could not be. Moses wrote the book of Genesis. He probably wrote it after the law was given at Sinai. It covers almost the entire patriarchal period. _In this book the word “sabbath” is not found at all!_ Genesis 2:2 says that God rested on the seventh day, but it does not say that he told Adam and Eve to rest; neither does it call the seventh day the sabbath. “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Please note that that is _not a commandment_; it is a statement of facts. It is a statement of the fact that _God_ rested on the seventh day and a statement of the further fact that (at some later date) he sanctified and blessed the seventh day. There is no commandment in that Scripture. Furthermore, the very tense of the verb used in verse 3 shows that he did not sanctify the day at the time he rested. Note this tense: “because in it he _had rested_.” It does not say “because he was resting” but “because he _had rested_” on that day. The very tense of the verb shows that after God himself had rested on the seventh day, _at some later time_, when he could refer to the fact that he had rested in the past tense, he sanctified that day. Genesis does not say _when_ he sanctified it. Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 reveal that he sanctified it as a day of rest for the Jews in the wilderness when he gave the law at Mt. Sinai, after he had led them out of Egypt. The seventh day was sanctified at the close of the patriarchal dispensation, _at least 2,500 years after the world began_.