The audio for this devotional is not available for now, but you can have your device read it to you.
Reading options
Verse:It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin... But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. —Luke 23:54–56, NIV
In a world with many different time zones, how can God’s people properly keep the Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday (Nehemiah 13:15–22; Luke 23:54; Leviticus 23:32)? Around the globe, some people are resting on the Sabbath, while in other places, they are still working! Living on a spherical world has caused two major issues that humankind had to settle. One was to define the reference point from where time should be marked. After considering several options, on October 13, 1884, the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, defined the prime meridian as a straight vertical line from the North Pole to the South Pole, passing through the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, London. At longitude 0°, the prime meridian at Greenwich separates east from west in the same way that the equator separates north from south.
So, Greenwich Mean Time became the reference point for our world’s system of twenty-four different time zones.
Another decision that had to be made was where the transition from one day to another should occur. This was eventually resolved with the establishment of the international date line (IDL), a vertical but zigzagging line passing through the middle of the Pacific Ocean halfway around the world from the prime meridian.
Much of it aligns with longitude 180°, but it occasionally deviates to avoid crossing through some small territories and island groups.
Crossing the IDL going east, one must subtract a day; but crossing it going west, one must add a day. This imaginary line allows all the world’s time zones to remain in their respective real times. Some critics argue that the IDL is a conspiracy against Sabbath observance, but it affects all days of the week, including Sunday.
God created a spherical world requiring different time zones, and we cannot treat it as if it were flat. The commandment to keep the seventh-day Sabbath holy does not require uniformity in time. We are to observe the Sabbath whenever it comes to us, regardless of the time zone in which we find ourselves.
In all parts of our spherical world, we can enjoy God’s blessings reserved for those who faithfully obey the Sabbath commandment, just as Christ’s disciples did after His death on the cross (Luke 23:54–56).