Special rest days in connection with the yearly festival cycle, not related to the seventh-day Sabbath or to the weekly cycle. Each of these other sabbaths, or days of rest, fell on a fixed day of the year, and thus on a different day of the week from one year to the next. They are therefore properly called annual sabbaths, in contrast with the weekly Sabbath. These days, on which work was forbidden “beside the sabbaths of the Lord” ( Lev. 23:38 ), were:
15th day, 1st month—1st day of Unleavened Bread ( Lev. 23:6–7 ).
21st day, 1st month—7th day of Unleavened Bread ( Lev. 23:8 ; cf. v 11 ).
6th day, 3rd month—Day of Pentecost ( Lev. 23:16 , 21 ).
1st day, 7th month—Feast of Trumpets ( Lev. 23:24 , 25 ).
10th day, 7th month—Day of Atonement ( Lev. 16:29–31 ).
15th day, 7th month—1st day of Feast of Tabernacles ( Lev. 23:34 , 35 ).
22nd day, 7th month—7th day of Feast of Tabernacles ( Lev. 23:36 ).
In his monumental work History of the Sabbath pioneer SDA scholar J. N. Andrews set forth several reasons for making a distinction between these annual sabbaths and the seventh-day Sabbath of the weekly cycle. The annual sabbaths, he pointed out, were part of the ceremonial system that pointed forward to the life and death of Christ, and ceased to have meaning when He expired upon the cross. Furthermore, he noted finally, the full ritual observance of these annual sabbaths lapsed with the permanent cessation of the Temple services at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (1862 ed. , pp. 87–92).
This was not, of course, original with Andrews. He himself cited a passage from William Miller ( p. 87 n ), and probably Miller got the idea from some Protestant writer before him, for standard Protestant creeds have stated that the Ten Commandments were not abolished. In the first issue of the first Sabbathkeeping Adventist periodicals James White had answered the objection with the argument that the Sabbath is not a “shadow” ( Present Truth 1:10, August 1849), also at greater length, citing several ceremonial sabbaths ( ibid. 1:52, March 1850).
While the weekly Sabbath was ordained at the close of Creation week for all humanity, the annual sabbaths were an integral part of the Jewish system of rites and ceremonies instituted at Mount Sinai, which belonged exclusively to the Hebrew people in OT times, which pointed forward to the coming Messiah, and the observance of which terminated with His death on the cross.