“I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in THE ISLE that is called PATMOS, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on THE LORD’S DAY, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last; and, What thou seest, write in a book.”[409] This book is dated in the isle of Patmos, and upon the Lord’s day. The place, the day, and the individual, have each a real existence, and not merely a symbolical or mystical one. Thus John, almost at the close of the first century, and long after those texts were written which are now adduced to prove that no distinction in days exists, shows that the Lord’s day has as real an existence, as has the isle of Patmos, or as had the beloved disciple himself. What day, then, is intended by this designation? Several answers have been returned to this question. 1. It is the gospel dispensation. 2. It is the day of Judgment. 3. It is the first day of the week. 4. It is the Sabbath of the Lord. The first answer cannot be the true one; for it not only renders the day a mystical term, but it involves the absurdity of representing John as writing to Christians sixty-five years after the death of Christ, that the vision which he had just had, was seen by him in the gospel dispensation; as though it were possible for them to be ignorant of the fact that if he had a vision at all he must have it in the existing dispensation. Nor can the second answer be admitted as the truth. For while it is true that John might have a vision CONCERNING the day of Judgment, it is impossible that he should have a vision ON that day when it was yet future. If it be no more than an absurdity to represent John as dating his vision in the isle of Patmos, on the gospel dispensation, it becomes a positive untruth, if he is made to say that he was in vision at Patmos on the day of Judgment. The third answer, that the Lord’s day is the first day of the week, is now almost universally received as the truth. The text under examination is brought forward with an air of triumph as completing the temple of first-day sacredness, and proving beyond all doubt that that day is indeed the Christian Sabbath. Yet as we have examined this temple with peculiar carefulness, we have discovered that the foundation on which it rests is a thing of the imagination only; and that the pillars by which it is supported exist only in the minds of those who worship at its shrine. It remains to be seen whether the dome which is supposed to be furnished by this text is more real than the pillars on which it rests.