Posted on 10/15/2001 6:54:40 AM PDT by malakhi
| Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams |
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Certainly. To Jews. Jesus said He did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. He also said that until Heaven and Earth pass away, not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass away. The point is, the Law was given only to the Jews. It was not given to the Gentiles. Gentiles are under no obligation to keep Jewish Law. In any case, when a Jew has received Christ as his savior and Messiah, he has passed from death into life in Christ, and is dead to the Law, and therfore no longer under it's power. The highest penalty for breaking the Law is death. After that, the Law has no power. In Christ, you have died to the Law, and to sin. Therefore, being raised to newness of life in Christ, you are free from the law of sin and death, and free from the commandments of the Law of Moses, also. The law of sin and death precedes the Law of Moses by quite some time, as it came into effect when Adam sinned. The Law was a covenant with the Chosen people of God, the Hebrews.
SD
Doug, it looks to me that you are a lot farther along then even you think, because you ask some great questions.
You have gotten some great scripture quotes already from others, and to them, they have completely answered all your arguments, but until a person knows personally what a Sabbath believer goes through trying to make sense out of the whole thing, then they have no idea of what you may be going through right now.
I have wrestled with it my whole life, and I really believe it stemmed from my early experiences when I was in my 20's, when I started reading the Bible by starting in Genesis.
The Bible was so alive to me, that I became a part of it, or as a new term is being used, "remote viewing", I was there with Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, when Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him, on through the flood, I knew Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and followed Joseph into Egypt, and followed Moses out with Israel and helped in all their problems and saw it through their eyes, and tried to see it through God's eyes.
I heard God tell Israel to take the promised land by running out all the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: Yes, I was there, and I was an Israelite and I related to them, but you know, years later when I began to ask my self from the bottom of my heart, what God wanted me to do, keep the Sabbath, or the first day of the week, I had to deal with my attachment to the weekly Sabbath first, and as I reflected back on it I discovered something that shocked me, and that was, I was not one of the Israelites fighting the Gentile masses, my ancestors were more then likely one of the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite that God was sending his people to fight.
I was not an Israelite, I was a Gentile, and later I saw that the Sabbath was for the Jews, as a memorial to bond them together as a people much as the circumcision did, it was to make anyone who didn't keep these same laws, foreign and in their eyes as unclean, strangers and aliens to the Jew.
I have never had a doubt that Saturday is still the same Sabbath that God rested on, and if we could go back in time in 7 day increments from the present Sabbath day the Jews keep, we would end up in the day that God rested sanctified and made Holy.
Rather then this post becoming too long, I will stop here and see where the conversation goes, but I simply wanted you to see where I am coming from and my background with the Sabbath.
I will try to answer any questions one at a time, and I feel I do have a special insight into the beliefs of Sabbath keepers and the special questions and concerns they have. JH (^g^)
My post was to the last few posts allend has made, not just one. I know he sees an inherent flaw in Proddies keeping a Sunday Sabbath, but the resolution to it (in his eyes) seems to be for all of us to join Saturday Sabbath organizations. The choices go from bad to worse.
And I think it perfectly clear he was not talking about someone properly saying the Rosary. He was talking about specific pagan practices he was familiar with but you are not.
P'raps you could enlighten us dumb uns.
You are correct that it was the emperor who had guaranteed him safe passage. Also, it was the Council of Constance, not the Council of Basle. Nevertheless, he was ordered arrested by order of the Bishop of Constance. Emperor Sigismund was angry at the arrest, but later said that he would not prevent the council acting against persons accused of heresy. The council condemned him as a heretic (and presumably washed their hands of him), and turned him over to civil authorities for execution.
Becky
I see your point. There is, of course, another route that he might take -- to accept the authority of the Church which changed the Sabbath. :-)
SD
Who says that we are celebrating the Sabbath when we go to church on Sunday? I have not been taught that that is what we were doing. We go to church to worship, learn and fellowship with other believers. The reason that we do it on Sunday, besides having the day off ;^), is because that is the day of the Resurrection.
-ksen
Romans chapters 4 through 6 address this whole question most eloquently and completely. No I did not mean to imply that since we are freed from the law of sin and death that we are free to sin all we want. Paul addresses that in romans 6:1-2.
My point is that in Christ, we are no longer bound by the Law if you are a Jew, and not now obligated to the Law if you are a Gentile. There are a lot of people out there that want to put Gentiles under the Law, who want to put a yoke and burden on them that God never intended for them to have. The Law is predicated on works as a means of salvation. If a man could keep the Law perfectly, he would be saved, but if he transgresses one part of the Law, he is guilty of all of it. Meaning that if he kept 99.9% of the commandments, but broke even one, then he would be counted as having broken them all. The point was to show man the futility of his own efforts to please God. Especially to the Jews, since they were (and are still) God's Chosen. but it is also an illustration and teaching tool for all men, that you cannot please God by your own efforts. That sums up all men into one condition: sinners in need of God's unmerited favor if they are to escape the certain penalty for sin.
2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man's eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ: 107
Those who lived according to the old order of things have come to a new hope, no longer keeping the sabbath, but the Lord's Day, in which our life is blessed by him and by his death. 108
2176 The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship "as a sign of his universal beneficence to all." 109 Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people.
Sunday worship is not to be thought of as occurring on the First day, but rather on the Eighth.
SD
I know you didn't. I'm trying to demonstrate a point that because something can be easily misunderstood is not a reason to shy from declaring it as true.
SD
See # 4175
So if DouglasKC were trying to keep the Sabbath then he would have to keep all those as well?
-ksen
Pssst Becky I think this scripture you posted is kinda threatening to the self-proclaimed scholarly intellectuals in here.
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