Posted on 02/18/2015 5:44:53 PM PST by RnMomof7
So why the blasting and blustering just because someone discusses the history of the practice and why one chooses to observe it differently?
Yeah, that was there all there was to this thread, right?
Read the first comments. Nah, why bother with it...
BTW: I don’t gripe, I comment. In this case, I’m commenting on your gripe.
Who do you think you are?
On what basis do you accuse me of not following Mt.6:16-18?
“Shallow” is the least of my worries.
But, about that beam in your eye....
You made the claim in defence of fasting that it was taught in the Bible. I simply said it’s rather shallow to use scripture to defend it but not use scripture for how it should be done. Scripture says do it in secret not this “in your face” public display.
What “this”?!?!?
The Ashes are a “dust to dust” reminder at the beginning of Lent.
There is NOTHING “in your face” about what we choose to do individually during Lent.
Matthew 6:16 "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
A long article which essentially says “I don’t observe lent because Catholics do.”
So what is your point?
I’m teaching this very passage to an Adult Education class next week.
It was read from the pulpit last week.
What part do you think I or the Church is violating?
What is my point? It’s not my point. Read the verse again. Especially verse 17-18. Is that how you are doing it?
From your post #66:
“Appealing to what the Lord said is rather shallow when you don’t even follow what He said about how to do it.”
Was I not supposed to assume this was aimed at either me or the Catholic Church or both?
Did you read the verses? Do you do it in secret? You appealed to what the Lord said to fast but you don’t appeal to the Lord on how to do it. Catholics don’t do it in secret so the world doesn’t see. They make a spectacle of it. They don’t wash their face. They smudge ashes on it so people can see.
ohhh......
you mean to suggest that Protestants and Non-Denominationals participate in this practice of fasting during Lent but keep it secret.....
You are ridiculous!
The INSTRUCTION is not what is to be “in secret”.
It is the individuals act.
How could I say that Larry? If it's secret and just between them a God as it's supposed to be how would anyone know? Now Catholics on the other hand put it out one the web what they are giving up.
A lot of people do a lot of things they’ve been instructed not to do.
Telling folks you’ve given up chocolate is NOT the instruction given by the Catholic Church.
So, if you’re not done with this bit of ridiculousness....I am.
Well, I don't think you're doing the grading here, so I won't take it that I have failed the Lord in bringing this to your attention, whether or not you agree.
The point I was making is that the Lord's Day of Remembrance now for Christians falls on the first day of the week, and counts as a Sabbath, if one so desires.
This day of being summoned to meet as a body of The Christ visibly was established to remember the day that Jesus arose from the dead ones by the power of the Holy Ghost. On that day He ascended to Heaven as High Priest--forever displacing all other previous high priests--to offer His Life-giving Blood as the single sufficient sacrifice for us forever, receiving from The God His Father's full approval; and by means of the reconciliating acceptance of The Father, He opened up the way into Heaven for all who have ever persistently believed in Him.
So Resurrection Day was a day of worship, with The Blood Sacrifice, and a day of submitting His Own Wounded Body as a Living Sacrifice for the final decision by The God Almighty as to whether His Righteous Demands had been met, and whether His Holy Wrath was fully assuaged, and an offer of peace proffered. That transaction made it a Holy Day of Worship, a true Sabbath.
The custom of gathering together of the believers on that day of the week began when Jesus, returning as Lord and Priest, was seen first by Mary Magdalene prior to His ascension to offer His Blood, then afterward by Cleopas and a fellow traveler (likely his wife Mary, Jn. 19:25).
"Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Mt. 18:19-20 AV).
In this passage, two believers accompanying each other were being discipled by the risen Christ. They asked the Master to tarry with them. He acquiesced, then broke bread with them so they could recognize Him, then He disappeared. Was this the first meeting of His Church? Perhaps, or perhaps not. but it was a gathering at which He selected to appear and preach, on the very day of His appointment as a High Priest. He had returned after successfully executing His commission as Advocate with The Father.
But the more significant event, memorialized as the day of the first meeting of an ekklesia of believers on that momentous occasion of Spirit-birth and Spirit-baptism of 120 members, who were summoned because Jesus had commanded them to meet together to receive energizing dunamis power, that day is the day on which His Eternal Church was born, on the first Pentecost after His Passion. Of course, by the Law this was also a Sabbath, always occurring on the fiftieth day from the eating of the Passover lamb, and hence in this particular year of Jesus' death it was on the first day of the week.
The feast of weeks, Pentecost, a Sabbath, was a day of holy convocation, when the whole "church" of observant Jews from everywhere in the world was summoned (if they could) to meet at the Temple, the only location.
Of course, the Company of believers were gathered together with one accord to observe the Pentecost day; and they were in one place according to the command of Christ (two or more), which made them an ekklesia.
This was the day also of the first unprepared but effective preaching of the Gospel by the now (finally) Spirit-filled Simon Peter who exercised the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (not the keys of the Kingdom of God, Jesus has never let go of them) calling humans to repent/believe, be saved, and be baptized into discipleship in Christ's service.
From this time on, though believing Jews may have observed the Jewish weekly seventh-day as a Sabbath, the People of the Way also congregated on the first day of the week to perpetuate the Remembrance Supper of worship of the Lord Jesus Messiach, and to receive public instruction in the commands of Christ, as He had ordained the Apostles and their disciples to do.
At another time Luke recorded a typical instance when the disciples of the local assembly at Troas regularly met by mutual agreement (which then was a commandment to all as to the day to assemble) Paul preached to them, on into the night.
"And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight" (Ac. 20:7 AV).
Here the verb is in the perfect tense, a passive participle, implying that this was not just a catch-as-you-can occasional event, but one performed on the first day of the week once at the outset of the local assembly's inital meeting, and with a set ongoing first-day-of-the-week recurrence every week thereafter. It was not called "sabbath," but that does not preclude the possibility that it could have been titled "sabbath" as a remembrance of the day on which the first prototype church body was initiated--a lawful Sabbath of holy convocation, the Pentecost.
This prevalence of this custom was seen when Paul instructed the Gentile Corinthian church:
"Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.
Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come" (1 Cor. 16:1-2 AV).
That is, he was expecting that congregation of saints to be bringing an extra voluntary token of support for their Jerusalem brethren, to be brought to each weekly meeting. This speaks to the theme that the relocation of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian day of assembly for worship and teaching had taken place.
Now, from the first week of the Creation until now, the seventh day has always been a Sabbath, always set aside to acknowledge and honor The Creator by all that seek to acknowledge and reverence Him. But that is not the only Sabbath appointed by Him for a holy convocation. On some occasions, a day may be a double Sabbath, as it was when the first day of Passover (a Sabbath) coincided with the normal weekly seventh-day Sabbath, as it did the year that Jesus was crucified. The Disciple/Apostles of Christ had authority to bind or loose on earth things which are already bound or loosed in the sphere of God's Heaven, and that authority has permitted the establishment of the first day of the week, once and for all time, as the day on which Christians everywhere observe a Sabbath, a day to honor and worship The Christ by reserving it as the agreed day of assembly.
When the religion spread over the Gentile world, the Christians' preference for a day of rest and meditation influenced the common customs such that the first day of the week became the accepted holy day for Christians, and their influence forced the society to set aside the first day of the week as a holiday for all. No longer was it to be conforming to the old pattern in which each day of the week was given to recognizing one of a host of various false gods, and without any excuse to cease laboring every day of the week. (And now in a post-Christian era, it is trending into that unchristian pattern again.)
It is true that cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses, the followers of Herbert Armstrong, the adherents of Ellen White's theology, the Seventh Day Baptists denomination, not to mention the traditions of Christ-denying Jews, they all wish to make the seventh day of the week an essential feature of their praxis of sabbatarianism. But they fail to admit that if they intend to be sabbatarians according to the Jewish observance, they must not only observe the seventh-day sabbath according to the Mosaic law (which they do not):
"See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day" (Ex. 16:29 AV).
That is, one may not be going to any church meetings, but is to stay at home and rest on the Sabbath, not doing anything but the most indispensable labor. And not only that, but they must take on the burden of observing all the Law, without fail. And that, of course, is nonsense, when Jesus the Perfect Son of Humans has Himself completely fulfilled the Law for every one, for ever.
Is the first day of the week "the Lord's Day," and if one wishes, a sabbath (which term I choose personally not to use)? I believe the answer is yes, and it provides the context which the previous commenters were addressing, as follows:
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The topic of this thread was the article "Why I Don’t Observe Lent."
(subtheme: "The practice of self-denial is to be the daily experience of the believer.")
posted by RnMomof7
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The thesis and antitheses:
jlindseyx42: Morality and goodness are totally divorced from any and all religions. Maybe some people take comfort in going to an ornate building on Sundays and with their fingers crossed behind their backs profess a belief in Santa Claus.There’s nothing wrong with that, whatever gets you through the night. (Post #13)
Salvation: Are you saying that you don’t believe in obeying the Commandment: "Keep holy the Lord’s Day?" (Post #15)
CynicalBear: Where does it say that? Not once in scripture does it call the first day of the week "the Lord's day". (Post #16)
imardmd1: It was on this first day of the week that John received the Word of the Apocalypse from The Christ:
Rev. 1:10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
Cynical Bear: Nice try but a huge fail. . . . Follow whatever made up religion you want but don't twist God's words in an attempt to make someone believe it's God's way.
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When you interjected your opposition into someone else's dialog, was your comment relevant or well-founded? I thought not, so I responded by disproving your premise with relevant Scripture.
Your following response to my correction was not well-founded, either, and you also accused me of having a made-up religion, of twisting God's Words, and of making an attempt to get someone to believe something false.
Hence my response to you is this long defense. You now have a chance to reevaluate your position and come to grips both with God's Word and the way Christ's instructions about His church were put into effect by the Apostles, of which Paul was one (and Matthias was not). He gave them the authority to establish the meeting day of the local church, to recognize it as a sabbath, to call it "the Lord's Day" for Christians, and to command it to be attended. This is a refutation of your admonishment to the contributors of a discussion in which you were not even a participant, and a reproach for your acrid dismissal of my suggestion to you.
So that's the point at going to great lengths to lay this out in an orderly fashion for every one that might be interested in the matter.
But there's something else that troubles me, and that is your recurrent occasions of addressing my observations with words that leave me with the impression that you may have some kind of burr under your saddle, and denigrating retorts, which need to be taken care of before you embarrass yourself even more, for it does not look like a brother in Christ addressing another in the public eye. It will be interesting to see how you respond to that.
Sorry that it has been so long before I've been able to take the time to formulate this, but I've been ill and then trying to catch up with other loose ends because of it.
What I can say is that as a Christ-follower, I see every day as a Sabbath, a day to be set aside by Him, a day to be holy for His use, till He comes. But the day in which the believers identifying with Christ are to physically assemble for Remembrance, instruction, and fellowship is the first day of the week.
<<"Are you saying that you don’t believe in obeying the Commandment: “Keep holy the Lord’s Day?”>>
The commandment was to keep the Sabbath not "the Lord's day" and it had nothing to do with Sunday. See! It was simple as that.
You want to stay with scripture? Don't try to claim Sunday has anything to do with the commandment to "keep the Sabbath" and don't try to claim the comment by John that he was "in the Lord's day" meant it was Sunday. You have no proof of that.
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