Take Back the Sabbath (America will follow)

For the past few decades the persecution of Christianity around the world and in most notably in the United States of America occurs on daily basis. Christians protest over abortion, euthanasia, parental rights, removing the Ten Commandments and other Christian symbols from public view. It is not difficult to see why this is happening if we open our eyes and seek the truth.

Christians have allowed themselves to be persecuted because our actions bear little resemblance to what we are supposed to believe. We scream and decry about the Ten Commandments being removed as we have allowed them, with all hypocrisy, to become insignificant by breaking them on a daily basis. Is it any wonder that the secularists are winning!

Christians have the power to restore this country to the principles of Christianity that this nation was founded on and made it great for two centuries. We can do this without legislation. We can do this by living within the dictates of the Ten Commandments. The trouble is that it will take some sacrifice and sacrifice is a hard sell in these times of convenience over discipline.

Christians can take back America and let the secularists know that God is back in charge. We have to live our lives as though all ten of the Commandments share equal weight. We cannot pick and choose which ones we, as Christians will adhere to.

The first thing we need to do is Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day. This means much more than showing up at church for an hour. In fact, I do not read anything about attending church in any of the Commandments.

Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD, your God. No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your beast, or by the alien who lives with you. In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

It was not that long ago that the Sabbath was holy. In my lifetime I remember when grocery stores were closed on Sunday. One food chain opened on Sunday and the rest, driven by greed and to provide convenience, followed suit. The explosion of other retailers joining in was unstoppable. Now every Mart, Depot, Club and Warehouse in America is open on the Sabbath and Christians flock to them in droves after church services. By our quest convenience we have rendered the Sabbath to the status of insignificant.

Inspired by our lust for convenience, retailers have opened their doors on Sundays and their employees must work on the Sabbath. This is not a very Christian directive. Christians were lured by the ease of being able to shop on the Sabbath.

Over seventy five percent of Americans consider themselves Christian. Imagine if we sacrificed a little convenience and did a little planning ahead and stopped shopping on Sunday. Retailers would be forced to shut down on Sunday and their employees could honor the Sabbath.

As government intrudes into our lives and our pocketbooks to feed its insatiable desire to control every aspect of our lives some feel the need to work on the Sabbath to make ends meet. For the consumers whose lives are filled with cluttered calendars and not enough time to get everything they need and want to get accomplished, the idea of Sunday shopping is, shall I dare say, a Godsend.

If many of us were to be asked to work on Sunday we would object, maybe we might even use the excuse that it is against our religious beliefs. If we were told that our job was at risk if we did not show up, we probably would cast aside the religious belief for job security. Are we not putting others in a position that we would not like to be in ourselves?

Perhaps we need to slow our lives down and discard activities that are not really important in the whole scheme of things. Like I said previously, this will not be an easy sell.

So while we Christians get all bent out of shape and in an uproar over abortion or Terri Shiavo, or the removal of Christian symbols in America we really have to open our blind eye and see that perhaps the reason that the world has a changing view of Christians is that we do not live up to all of the principles outlined in the bible, just the ones that seem to get us emotionally charged. Do we not pick and choose which Commandments we will adhere to?

If we are willing to sacrifice a little bit we can change this country, without creating new laws. If all of the Marts, Depots and Warehouses shut their doors on Sundays because the return on the investment will no longer be there we would still be persecuted. This time we will hear cries from the secularists about how they can't shop on Sunday any longer because the Christians are no longer being hypocritical and are living up to their principles. We could sit back and rejoice that we did not need another of man's laws to make it happen.

Perhaps if we were to use some discipline and practice some self-restraint and lived by all of the Ten Commandments we would not need the multitude of pharmaceuticals to alter our collective consciousness.

It is not hard to see where we, as a society went astray. The secularists have simply been dividing and conquering the Christian belief system. Once the lure of convenience of being able to ignore the Commandment of keeping holy the Sabbath took hold is it any wonder that the other Commandments would be easier to render insignificant?

Honoring thy Mother and Father, not killing, not stealing, not bearing false witness, not coveting our neighbor's wife or goods have all been deemed irrelevant. A quick scan through the news channels will bear witness to this fact.

I imagine that if people stayed home and honored the Sabbath there may be some repercussions. Families might wonder who these other people are that share the same roof. We might actually slow down our lives a bit and think about where we are going. We might actually begin to change America back to the principles upon which it was founded.

The Roman Catholic church, despite its pretentious claim, is not the authority behind the change of the Sabbath from the 7th day to the 1st day (or Lord's Day). Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath (Mk 2:28), indicated the change himself by rising from the dead and showing himself to his disciples on the first day. His next appearance was on the first day of the following week. Thereafter the apostles, and the church in general, gathered on the first day of the week for worship and celebration of the Lord's Supper (Ac 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2). This day was known to the apostolic church as "the Lord's Day" (Rev 1:10). It has always been so observed by the church, including the Protestants at the Reformation.

At the same time, the obligations of the 4th Commandment are perpetual, since it is part of the moral law (as opposed to the ceremonial law exemplified in the temple worship). The observance of the Sabbath was a creation ordinance patterned after God's own rest at creation, and was not an original Mosaic institution. The reasons for the Old Testament 7th day Sabbath (rest and worship) are precisely the same as the reasons for the Lord's Day. It is therefore evident that Christ, consistent with his Lordship over it, changed the Sabbath from the 7th day to the 1st day as a memorial of his resurrection, and that the obligations of the Old Testament Sabbath now pertain to the Lord's Day.

Three cheers for Hobby Lobby and Chic-filet, courageous businesses in a time of moral declension in society, and doctrinal anaemia in the church. May God bless them.

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