Hi again. I was doing some more Bible reading and it occurred to me that the only bondage that the Jews were in were because of the the excessive laws added to Gods commandments by the Jews. For example, Jesus apparently had no problem breaking the Sabbath as defined by the Pharisees. In Matthew 12, the disciples are picking grain out of a field and eating it as they pass by. The pharisees notice this and are pissed because they say it violates the Sabbath. Jesus (who is GOD remember) says basically "Bullcrap, that's not what we meant when we said to observe the Sabbath...you guys have added stupid crap to it and are hypocritical to boot."
I was doing some reading and I saw that the Pharisees had added all kinds of restrictive regulations and laws to the Sabbath so that it really was a burden to try and keep it.
Which brings me to another question. If God and Jesus make up the Godhead, and God himself declared that the 7th day is the Lords Day of Rest (Exodus 20:10) then Jesus (who is God) can't be keeping it because he's a Jew, he must be keeping it because he's God and that's Gods day of rest.
Nowhere did I say the body is all bad and evil, and the soul is pure but it is trapped in this human body. I insinuated that all bad is represented in our body, but not all in our body is bad.
Sorry, I must have read more into what you said than what you said.
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^)