Posted on 03/03/2024 3:31:37 PM PST by OneVike
Throughout His ministry, Jesus never once broke the fourth commandment which required that all Jews observe the Sabbath. He was after all Jew. However, He did give us a clue that a change to the Sabbath was coming. To make my point, you must first understand that the original manuscripts of the Scriptures were not divided into verses and chapters.
The Old Testament manuscripts were written by scribes for the religious leaders to study. The New Testament manuscripts were letters originally written to be dispersed amongst the believers to read. They were like the letters you receive today. Just a document written in sentences and paragraphs with no verse or chapter numbers.
So you really had to know the transcripts well in order find any information you needed. Finally in the mid 16th century a Frenchman named, Robert Estienne (better known as Robertus Stephanus), would divide the Scriptures into chapters and verses. So today we can find passages by memorizing chapters and verses.
Now I must say, that while I do believe every Word of the Bible is the inspired Word of God, I do not believe that Stephanus's choices of where he decided to split some sentences up into different verses or chapters were inspired. I say so, because there are many instances in the Scriptures where a reader can be distracted or even misled as to what the passage is conveying.
Case in point is chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew's Gospel. I personally believe that he made a mistake by ending Matthew chapter 11 at verse 30. It's my belief that chapter 11 should have had 8 more verses for a total of 38. Thus it would end after the following statement by Jesus,
“For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
(Matthew 12:8)
The following information is quite valuable in the apologetical debate on why so many are mistaken in their belief that Christians should observe Saturday as the Sabbath. Continuing on Jesus' statement in Matthew 12:8, I take you back to the end of Matthew chapter 11. Jesus had just finished telling the crowd that no one born of a woman is greater than John the Baptist, when He started telling everyone to come to Him for rest.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)
By speaking about the concept of rest, the audience He is speaking to would automatically think of the Sabbath rest which God gave them. They were first told about this gift when Moses presented the Ten Commandments God handed to Him for the people to follow. As Moses read the tablets, he said,
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20:8-11)
By the time Jesus started His ministry, the Israelites had been observing the Sabbath for almost 1480 years. They understood that it was a day of rest, even for the animals. A day they were to be free from the labors of life that kept them from communing with God. So, when Jesus starts talking about rest at the end of chapter 11, he continues his thought process on through to verse 8 of chapter 12. So when He calls them to come to Him for rest, and then claims He is the Lord of the Sabbath, it goes without saying that this is all one thought process and thus chapter 11 should have ended at verse 38, with chapter 12 actually beginning at verse 9 where Matthew wrote,
Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue.
(Matthew 12:9)
The next 20 verses do continue the matter of a rest, but not until Jesus moved to another site. Thus it then makes sense to split the chapter after Jesus made His statement about Him being the Lord of the Sabbath, and after he had arrived at a different location.
This is important, because when Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled all the requirements of the Law, including the one that calls for us to obey the Sabbath, since as He stated, He is our Sabbath. Just as we are not bound by going through a High Priest by offering a sacrifice, we too do not need to follow the Jewish Law. We can reach God through Christ, on any day at anytime we so desire. Without going through the commandments of the law which Christ abolished.
After 1480 years, the Jews showed they could not follow the Law, and with Christ fulfilling it and the ceremonial ones, we are free from it. So with Jesus, being the Lord of the Sabbath, we are free to chose any day, and anytime to gather for communion and celebration of Him with no more legalistic requirements to follow the old obsolete law.
Any Christian following any portion of the Law, is doing what Paul preached against when he chastised the Judaizers who tried to put the Christians back into bondage to the Law. This is one of the things he wrote to the Colossians about when he said,
Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths
(Colossians 2:16)
Paul also wrote that, if you observe any part of the Old Law, then you must follow it all. Does anyone truly want to be bound by the full weight of a law that God's own people could never follow? The answer is a resounding NO. Praise God, because we are free to worship HIM anywhere, on any day, at anytime by going through the One who fulfilled and abolished the law. Thus setting us free from a Law we could never dream of keeping.
The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
(Galatians 5:17:18)
Thus if you are not under the law, you are not under any obligations to any of the ceremonial requirements either. Nor are you bound by the Jewish Sabbath as I pointed out above from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Anyone who feels obligated to an abolished symbolism of the Old Law is keeping themselves from truly enjoying all the freedom God offers us through His Son's death and Resurrection.
I now offer two more pieces of evidence. One comes from the mouth of our LORD Jesus Himself, when the rich young ruler asked, "what must i do to have eternal life?" Jesus replied to him;
You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,' 'Honor your father and your mother and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
(Matthew 19:18-19)
The second one comes from Paul's letter to the Jewish Christians in Rome, we learn, not from what he wrote, but rather what he did not write when he listed the commandments we should obey. Mind you, Paul was once a Pharisee of Pharisees, a man who persecuted Jewish converts to Christianity for violating the commandments. So, let us look at what Paul left out when he wrote about the commandments we are to obey in his letter to the Romans.
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," "YOU SHALL NOT MURDER," "YOU SHALL NOT STEAL," "YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS," "YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
(Romans 13:8-11)
It should be enough to read what Jesus said on this matter, but we also see Paul then teach that which our LORD HIMSELF said. So I ask you, what is NOT included in this list of commandments from Jesus and then Paul about which commandments we should obey to have eternal life? It is the Sabbath. If Paul himself is not obeying the Sabbath, than why would any born again Christian want to follow a regulation from a law that is obsolete? Obsolete, because Jesus fulfilled the letter of the law and became our Sabbath rest.
So many fail to understand that as a Jew, Jesus had to fulfill both the legal laws and ceremonial laws in order to abolish them, because all the high priests and all the blood they spilled never satisfied the law completely so it was never fulfilled. Yet the nano second he died, the curtain separating the inner and outer room was torn by GOD from top to bottom. Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Law. Thus the new dispensation began that set us free from the law written on stone and the ceremonial regulations. Today we are justified, "Just As If We Have Not Sinned." We are cleansed by HIS blood and freed by the atoning work on the Cross.
Thank GOD we are free, free at last. Free from observing anything the old law said we had to do. Thus our Sabbath in now in Jesus, Who allows us to come straight through HIM as our mediator to GOD. Jesus is our traveling Tabernacle who resides in us, and thus our Sabbath it eternal. Eternal in that everyday is a Sabbath for us, and at any moment we can worship HIM, because we now worship HIM in Spirit and in Truth.
Yet there is more, because when we read what the author of Hebrews wrote, which most scholars agree was an epistle specifically written to the Jewish believers who were still struggling with the confines of the Mosaic law.
In that He say, "A NEW COVENANT, He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
(Hebrews 8:13)
There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.
(Hebrews 4:9-11)
Finally, I share with you what was in the letter from the first council ever held by the elders of the church when the question arose about whether or not Gentile believers should be circumcised. In the letter they pointed out what they should follow, and keeping the Sabbath was NOT among the things they were instructed to follow. Anyone who claims the Sabbath must be kept by Christians, I would suggest you take it up with Peter and James who oversaw the council meeting on what rules the Gentile believers should follow.
Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas who was also named Barsabas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren. They wrote this letter by them: The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, To the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia: Greetings. Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, "You must be circumcised and keep the law"—to whom we gave no such commandment— it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.
(Acts 15:27-29)
Praise God we are free from the bondage of a system that not only whitewashed our sin until a new animal was slain for it's blood to be spilled and sprinkled upon the mercy seat inside the inner room behind a curtain, but also held us hostage to worshipping together only on the sabbath. Once that curtain in the inner room was torn from top to bottom by GOD HIMSELF, we were set free to now enter into the presence of our LORD through our LORD, and commune with our LORD at any time on any day. Thank you JESUS!
SDA is as close as it gets to being correct in all things as followed by Hebrews pre-Pharisees. I was commenting, maybe badly. My point was the SDA is wrong to judge others walk. It is not the job of Christians to judge others. It is our job to set an example, and live our best to what we believe. Just that narrow criticism. I try imperfectly, to live by the precepts as taught by Moses, with Christ as the sacrifice. The only things not needed anymore are blood sacrifices, and a Priest class to lead us. IMO. Christ ended the need for Sacrifices, but all else is to be commemorated, which means keep in memory, so as to know “the days and hours”. You see, if a believer “watches” and knows the memorial of “days” will be surprised. They will know it is close. The reason why we can’t absolutely KNOW, is because the calendar is not exact. It goes by the equinox, the first sighting of the moons, and counting days. That is where I am coming from. You can’t print a Calendar in 2023, to show the true date of Passover, or other Holy days. They happen when you observe the signs Father gave to us, just like the Seasons.
And you can prove that the Sabbath day we worship today is still based on the one that Moses got from God? And that people didn’t lose count or mess it up during the Babylonian captivity?
Or that Pope Gregory got it correct when he made the Gregorian calendar?
The principle is one day of seven as a day of rest. Why is it so critical for some people that it MUST BE the exact day that God did it?
And since it’s about rest, how did it morph into *Must be THE only day to worship God and if you don’t, you’re going to hell*?
Refer to my above post.
Who does God think He is, anyway. Demanding worship on a certain day commemorating Creation.He sounds like a legalist. A Pharisee. One day is as good as another.
And what's this about adultery? If we're consenting adults, what difference does it make? And lying, everyone lies, so what's the big deal? No murder? Forgive your enemies? Has God been cut off in traffic? Did you see how that guy was driving? The world would be safer with him off the streets.
These are just some talking points for those not making it to Heaven. yeah, you may get a glimpse of it but no entry.
Adam and Eve got the death sentence for eating from the wrong tree. Maybe God really is serious about these Ten Commandments. Nah, the preacher said we're okay. Don't sweat it. He wouldn't lie.
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So, what calendar is correct? Greek, Babylonian? Sumerian? Julian or Gregorian? Maybe we should follow the old Hebrew calendar based on the moon and not the sun.
...
Here is a good start within the scriptures that get one started on the basic template.
Ezekiel 46:1
This is what the Lord GOD says: “The gate of the inner courtyard facing east shall be shut for the six working days; but it shall be opened on the Sabbath day and opened on the day of the new moon.
Instructions pretty simple
Gate open- New Moon (New month) day
Gate shut- work days 1-6
Gate open- 7th Day Sabbath
The problem with trying to use another calendar, even the Jewish calendar,at the same time, is one runs out of days of the week to include the New Moon Day,6 work days and Sabbath.
That’s 8 days, not seven, according to scripture.
So, one could ask the Sovereign what is a New Moon Day if it’s not one of His 6 work days or His Sabbath.
The world runs out of days to explain.
He doesn’t run out of days..
And if you extend the pattern after the first 8 days of a month, you may find it interesting what happens in the 2nd work week, days 9-14..
Especially with regards to Passover being on the 14th..
The day the Lamb dies for the sins of the whole world.
The 6th work day on the bible calendar.
Just like Friday is the 6th day on Rome’s calendar.
Then take note that Passover and Good Friday don’t always match..
The problem isn’t with the bible calendar.
The bible calendar tells His story.
From birth all the way to the future Glorification.
He lives in Phil’s world
Humans placed the “dateline” in the Pacific, if they had placed it in the Atlantic, the Sabbath would be on a different day. It’s not about the day!
Please tell me what you thought was so snarky, as I was doing my best to simply report. It is, after all, our job to live in holiness, but I have no idea how I would compare, nor is that of any ultimate concern as that is for Christ to judge.
And yes, Jesus DID have to follow all the Laws.
The Torah has its conflicts in application as this instance exemplifies. Exodus 16:29 clearly says no one is to leave his abode. Yet He did. The Torah also says to love one another and to gather for worship. So He did.
That conflict leaves us with something with which to wrestle, hopefully to grow as a consequence. In leaving His home and going to synagogue, Christ did not adhere to the letter of the Law in Exodus 16:29, but chose to abide by its customary understanding as a time for community worship. I am certain He knew about the conflict with the letter, but also held love and community worship as superceding Commandments given that the 'shelter in place' instruction was given in Sinai where there was no house of worship other than the Tabernacle which was reserved for holy days. I suspect the choice was in love as a matter of teaching, which He certainly did once there. Yet there is no doubt some accused Him of a holier-than-thou attitude given what He said that day at the bema.
It's up to us to make the best of such conflicts and resulting disagreements. It is to my mind what liberty is all about.
Can you provide Scripture references to show that God DEMANDED worship on any certain day commemorating creation?
How did *a day of rest* morph into *God demands worship on one day a week* and *Must worship on last day of the week or go to hell*?
Still waiting for answer to the other questions from post 154, which I notice you STILL haven't answered.
And you can prove that the Sabbath day we worship today is still based on the one that Moses got from God? And that people didn’t lose count or mess it up during the Babylonian captivity?
Or that Pope Gregory got it correct when he made the Gregorian calendar?
I have personally showed you more than once that the 7 day weekly cycle has never been interrupted. The Sabbath has been kept and documented UNINTERRUPTED since Sinai. If you wish, I’ll find the thread and post it. Just let me know.
——>Can you provide Scripture references to show that God DEMANDED worship on any certain day commemorating creation?
Yes. The 4th commandment CLEARLY commemorates creation, and CHRIST as our CREATOR. Then, through Moses, God says this in Leviticus:
Leviticus 23:3Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, AN HOLY CONVOCATION; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.
——>The principle is one day of seven as a day of rest. Why is it so critical for some people that it MUST BE the exact day that God did it?
Because God commanded it. However, feel free to do whatever you want.
Which post?
Then why will we be keeping it in heaven (the ones that make it there, that is)? And you think God isn’t serious about transgressing his law/Sabbath? Look at verse 24.
Isaiah 66:
23And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.
24And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.
Here’s another reference to Creation, worship, and the Sabbath:
Revelation 14:6And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, 7Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
And those who will be in heaven (commandment keepers)
12Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.
Those who claim to follow Christ, yet wantonly break His commandments, will not be in heaven.
Your post saddens me and I feel very very sorry for you. All I can offer you is my prayers your eyes be opened and heart touched. Please, I am done with this thread because it wearies me.
Phil’s world,
The 7 day cycle gets interrupted with His New Moon Day(New Month Days)
Every month, there is at the start, one new moon day.
Then 6 work days.
Then 1 Sabbath.
Then 6 work.
Then 1 Sabbath
Then 6 work.
Then 1 Sabbath
Then 6 work.
Then 1 Sabbath.
Then looking for the new moon..
If one wants to take a quick accounting of the above, there are 29 days accounted, and the moon phase is about 29.5 days, so it means that one would start looking for the next sighting of the moon on the 29th day of His months.
1 new moon day
24 work days
4 Sabbath days
= 29 days
What’s interesting in those numbers is one can see 24 and 4 used in the Book of Revelation.
Detailing 24 elders and 4 Beasts around the Throne, with the Lamb in the middle
1 New Moon Day- Throne- where the First and Last sits
24 work days- 24 elders
4 Beasts- 4 Sabbath’s
With the Passover Lamb in the middle of the 24 elders and 4 Beasts, just as Passover is in the middle of His 1st month, and every month on His calendar.
There hasn’t been a continuous 7 day period from the start.
And the Pope and the Roman Beast certainly haven’t been in charged of or placed in any authority of time except through Satan.
They are guilty of changing time and law.
——>There hasn’t been a continuous 7 day period from the start.
Sure there has, and it all started with the creation “week”, ending in the 7th-day-Sabbath.
Ask any Jew. They’ve been keeping the 7th-day-Sabbath, UNINTERRUPTED, since Sinai.
NAVY DEPARTMENT
U. S. NAVAL OBSERVATORY
WASHINGTON, D. C
13 March 1932
Your letter of 25 February, 1932, containing questions on the continuity of the weekly cycle is at hand.
As to Question (1) - I can only state that In connection with the proposed simplification of the calendar, we have had occasion to investigate the results of the works of specialists in chronology and we have never found one of them that has ever had the slightest doubt about the continuity of the weekly cycle since long before the Christian era.
As to Question (2) - There has been NO change in our calendar in past centuries that has affected in any way the cycle of the week.
As to Question (3) - The answer is implied in the answer to question (1).
Through the courtesy of the Superintendent, Captain Hellweg, I am inclosing an article on Calendar Reform, published by Admiral Upham. that might be of interest to you.
I am also returning your very interesting debate with Mr. Katsman. It was very considerate of you, for which I thank you.
Sincerely,
James Robertson,
Director American Ephemeris.
Mr. F.D. Nichol,
The Advent Review & Sabbath Herald
Takoma Park, Washington, D.C
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