Saturday is the Real Sabbath
BAD ARGUMENTS FOR 7TH DAY SABBATH
WHAT IS THE SABBATH?
The word Sabbath means
rest. To do unnecessary work or severe
work on the Sabbath is certainly to desecrate it. The purpose of the resting is to edify the
mind with spiritual things and to make time for others. Christian hypocrites say that we may cease
Sabbath-keeping for we have to move with the times. They know that there is not much work that
has to be done on a Sunday. It can be
left for another day. There is a lot of
value in the Sabbath and for Christians to break it and bless its being broken
shows that they would permit infanticide to keep up with the times which
frequently translates as, “Let us to what everybody else does whether it is
right or wrong.”
Seventh-Day Adventism and Armstrongism or the Worldwide Church of God teach that God
wants Christians to continue having the Sabbath on a Saturday as the Torah, the
first five books of the Bible, the book which God wrote, decrees. The Jews observe the Sabbath on a Saturday. Christians, of course, claim that Jesus moved
the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.
Some Christians believe that there is no Sabbath at all for Christians
but that the Lord’s Day is just for public worship and its observance
completely optional.
SIGN FOREVER
The
Old Testament says that the seventh-Day Sabbath was a sign forever (Exodus 31)
because it was the seventh day, the day when God rested after making the world
(v17).
Christians say that it was a sign forever though
it has been switched to Sunday. The
problem is that it cannot be the sign the scriptures intend it to be if it is
held on any other day than a Saturday.
Think about it.
It was a sign for
The New Testament calls the Church the New
Israel so it is still to be kept sacred by the Church. The Bible says it is not a picture of
The New Testament insists on keeping the
commandments of God which are at the very least the Ten Commandments (James
2:10-11) which is strange if fourth, keep the Sabbath day, was dropped. It goes on as if nothing was dropped and of
course nothing was. If God had intended
to abolish the Sabbath or change it – the fourth commandment does not just say
keep the Sabbath but it says to keep the seventh day as Sabbath – he would have
either put something else in its place perhaps, pray together once a week or
keep a Sabbath day every week.
Hebrews 10:8 says that an Old Testament
prophecy that God would put the commands of the Law in the minds and hearts of
his people refers to the Christian Church so it proves the Sabbath was still in
force for it was one of the things that the Old Testament prophet meant by
commandments. The Sabbath law along with
the other nine was spoken by God on Mount Sinai to the people which shows how
solemn the ten commandments were and how they cannot be changed and how they
are to be preserved even if the Law disappears which cannot happen (page 27,
Which Day is the Christian Sabbath?). He
did not reveal the others in such a strong way.
It may be objected that only
Remember, the non-Hebrew slaves they had
had to honour the Sabbath because it is forbidden to tolerate anyone who did
not live the way of the Lord (Leviticus 17; Deuteronomy 13). Non-Hebrews were allowed to enter Moses’ true
Church under certain conditions (Deuteronomy 23).
God in Isaiah 56 says that in the future
eunuchs and Gentiles who keep the Sabbath and offer animal sacrifices will
please him by doing so. He did not say a
new Sabbath or anything so it is the seventh-day Sabbath that he means. He said “the Sabbath” not “a Sabbath”. Remember, that is the least complicated
interpretation so it is the one that is meant.
This is still future for the Jews excluded non-Jews and eunuchs. Christians might try to say that he only meant
that they will do it and their conduct pleases him if it is sincere but he is
not saying what they will do is objectively right. But God said all this would take place after
he makes saints of his people by saving them in which time he promised that his
truth would be accepted (Isaiah 55).
Top of the Document
CHANGE OF LAW?
Christians ignore the Jewish
Law claiming that Jesus did away with it.
Christians argue that Jesus did not rescind
the laws about right and wrong in the Torah but the laws that dealt with
liturgy such as the Seventh-Day Sabbath.
They argue that the law of the Sabbath would be written in the hearts of
those who were never taught by God if it were a moral law if religion is true
for a day is needed to spend with God and devote to him. (In other words, they would figure out from
reason and the influence of the Spirit that a day of rest and prayer was
needed). But all recognise the need for
a day of rest and freedom to think about oneself so this argument is
wrong. The need for a Sabbath day is
moral law. The Sabbath was not a mere
ceremonial law that could be changed but a moral one, which was therefore
immutable. And the fact that pagans may
not have felt they should rest and worship on Saturdays does not affect our
argument for the point is that a Sabbath is needed not what day it should be
on.
The book Not Under Law which argues that
the Old Testament is meant to be relevant today (page 4,6,16) and that the view
that it is a thing of the past is heretical.
The book states that Mark 10:19 shows that Jesus believed that the moral
side of the Law, the Torah, was still in force but that the ceremonial side of
it was not. It states that according to
John 4:21-24 when he told the Samaritan woman that the value of
The book on page 16 admits that the liturgy
laws like the diet ones were tied up with morality. It was immoral to break the liturgy or
ceremony laws. The error in the books
conclusion is that a difference, between moral and ceremonial, is made into a
distinction. It is like stealing and
adultery being condemned by the moral law.
They are different things but they do not imply that there are two moral
laws. They both reflect the moral law,
“What God commands is right”.
Jesus said that eating unclean food by itself
doesn’t make you morally unclean. It was
moral uncleanness he was talking about.
The Jews misinterpreted the Torah and held that to eat pigs was
necessarily the same as having a selfish hard heart. As a Jewish minister or Rabbi, he made all
foods clean meaning he was abolishing the Jewish tradition. He never dissented from the rule of the Torah
that eating such food is unclean in the sense of dirty. He only rejected the idea that such food is
morally dirty. He would have agreed that
somebody eating pig would become morally unclean not because of the pig but
because of the disobedience to conscience.
Jesus never said that
Clearly the moral and ceremonial sides of
the law though different were inseparable.
John 5:18 says that Jesus broke the Sabbath
by healing a paralytic. John meant that
Jesus broke the Sabbath tradition that such things do not be done. Jesus indicated elsewhere that healing was
not breaking the law of God about the Sabbath but only the overly strict rest
required by man-made tradition. This
Colossians verse does not prove that Jesus abolished the Sabbath. John said that Jesus was sinless which he
could not be if he literally broke God’s Sabbath law.
“In Matthew 12, Jesus let the apostles pick
up food on the Sabbath though it was forbidden by the Law. The Law didn’t even allow you to light a fire
on the Sabbath day. This proves that the
Sabbath was changed.”
The Law did not forbid what the apostles
did. And though it is true that the Law
says that you are not to burn things on the Sabbath day it only means that you
shall not kindle the fire for the Jewish tradition was to keep the fire alive
from the day before. A fire burning is
not work for us and if the logs are near the fire there is very little work to
do. If the Law had gone that far it
would have instructed that nobody was allowed to speak or get out of bed on the
Sabbath.
The apostles did not break the Law
concerning the Sabbath for they were on their way to worship and were only
picking the grain as they went along (page 83, What Day is the Christian
Sabbath? Worldwide
Jesus told the Jews that when his apostles
were hungry he let them pick some food as they walked through fields on the
Sabbath day and said that the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath
and that he was Lord of the Sabbath. He
did not mean that as Lord he could change the rules for the Sabbath for he kept
the Sabbath himself and never questioned it.
He meant that he was the one who was honoured by the Sabbath. He certainly did not mean he could do away
with the Sabbath for he claimed to be love and he was after saying it was out
of love for man that there was a Sabbath at all. His denial that the Sabbath was just a symbol
of the ceremonial law that could be done away is seen when he says the Sabbath
was created for utilitarian reasons which takes away the only basis the Christians
have for abolishing the Sabbath: that it was a picture that Jesus did away with
when he fulfilled the picture. Also how
could Jesus say he was Lord of the Sabbath in the sense that he could alter the
way the Sabbath was observed when the issue at hand was not disobedience to the
Sabbath but disobedience to manmade Jewish rules about the Sabbath?
COLOSSIANS 2
The view that the Sabbath
has been done away and now we can celebrate and worship on a Sunday and may not
even have to keep the regulations about rest is commonly believed. This stance is based on Colossians 2:16
alone. This verse says that nobody is
bound to keep Sabbaths because they were signs of the body of Jesus. The Jewish
Sabbath is not a sign of the body but of the creation and so it cannot be
meant. Exodus in the ten commandments
says that the Jewish Sabbath is in remembrance of creation and the day God
rested. This implies the Sabbath should
be kept by the whole world for the whole world was created. Colossians is referring to unscriptural
Sabbaths. Sunday is an unscriptural
Sabbath.
It is agreed by careful Bible interpreters
that nothing in Colossians 2:16 cancels the Sabbath though many of them still
think the Sabbath has been switched to Sunday (page 120, Encyclopaedia of Bible
Difficulties). For us it is enough that
Colossians still believes in a Sabbath to prove that the Saturday one might
still be in force.
Let
us look at it more deeply. Paul or an
impostor in his Colossians 2:16,17 says that because Christ has overcome the
hostile forces that “Therefore” we must let nobody judge us “with regard to a
feast day or a New Moon or a Sabbath.
Such [things] are only the shadow of things to come, and they have only
a symbolic value.” Because before this
writer wrote that the demands of the Law had been done away in the death of
Christ people suppose that he must mean the Jewish Sabbath and feasts. But between them both is the assertion that
Jesus overcame the hostile powers which many heretics at Collosae
at the time were worshipping. Many
heresies did and still do combine paganism with its belief in many gods, some
of whom are malignant, with Christianity.
This means that the connection they make may be incorrect. They put the verse in the wrong context. Instead of telling us that the Sabbath and
feasts are abrogated Paul, or the writer, may be saying that the Sabbaths and
feasts of the hostile powers are not binding.
The “Therefore” goes with the bit about the conquest.
Seventh-Day Adventists say the passage only
forbids the special Sabbaths or the extra ones invented by the Jews. Against this it is argued that Paul or the
writer would have been clear on what he meant by Sabbath so he must have
abolished the seventh-day one as well.
They say he was declaring all Sabbaths, God’s and man’s across the board
to be abolished. But that would have
done away with the Sunday Sabbath he allegedly wanted the people to observe
too. And yet people using this argument
want to believe Sunday is the Sabbath!
If it doesn’t abolish Sunday as the Sabbath how can we say it abolishes
Saturday as the Sabbath?
The Adventists also stated that the
Saturday Sabbath was kept before the Law was given and even by Adam and
Eve. The Bible does not mention anybody
keeping the Sabbath before the coming of the Law but that proves nothing. Genesis says that God sanctified the
seventh-day before he made Adam which means he set it apart for holy use. He spoke face to face with Adam so Adam would
have known he did this. So it is
reasonable to suppose Adam did keep the Sabbath. It follows that the Adventists are
right. Why would God set apart that day
then if he was not going to institute the Sabbath until the Law came
later? When the Sabbath existed before
the Law it must be an everlasting duty upon us.
It is nonsense to object that no instructions were given for the Sabbath
day before that so there could have been no Sabbath for God making the day a
holy day of rest said it all. It was a
day for rest and prayer.
Another objection is that the Israelites in
Now when Christianity commanded us to
observe the Sabbath from the very beginning though it has disagreed on what day
the Sabbath falls on, it is clear that this verse does not mean the true
Sabbath (whether it be the Saturday Sabbath or the Sunday) one but false
Sabbaths and not the traditional feasts of the Jews but the newly invented
ones. A false Sabbath would be a day
kept for prayer and resting by allegedly divine command that has no divine
authority at all. Even false Sabbaths
have value but only as symbols. All
pagan and heretical practices contain a morsel of truth that gives them great
meaning as metaphors. The people Paul
was writing to were guilty of idolatry and mixing Christianity with
heathenism. They were condemned for
inventing festivals of idolatry.
The author of Colossians is not saying that
since the Sabbath and the feasts have only symbolic value they should not be
kept. He may be hinting that the
heretics gave them some other kind of estimation, a magical one. He was against the implementation of
unnecessary rules and the condemnation of those who did not keep them. He does not want people judged for bypassing
them.
If the verse relates to the seventh-day
Sabbath being out the door then it would say so clearly. The author knew that some heretics would
argue on the basis of the text that it was wrong to have an obligatory Sabbath
day at all and therefore he could not afford to be ambiguous. Read the words, they could mean that there is
to be no Sabbath at all when you read them out of their religious context which
refers to pagan practices. So, he was
not being ambiguous for he didn’t mean the scriptural Sabbaths and feasts.
In his Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties,
Gleason W Archer writes that the word translated Sabbath in the verse which is sabbaton should be translated as the more accurate
Sabbaths. The Hebrew religious calendar
had Sabbaths other than the seventh-day Sabbath. These Sabbaths were supposed to be the days
of the Feast of Tabernacles and Unleavened Bread both of which ran for eight
days each (page 120). Now all these days
must be kept to obey the Bible (Deuteronomy 16 requires that the Feast of
Booths be kept for 7 days).
We must realise that the author was
unlikely to have meant these days after the feasts if he had already declared
the feasts to have been abolished. If
the feasts are done away then why keep the days after them which are related to
them? This would make it more likely
that the verse is against the man-made Sabbaths and feasts of the heretical
Christians.
After what he wrote, the author said that
these things were shadows of what was to come and the reality is the body of
Jesus. So, he could not have meant the
Sabbath and the feasts commanded by God in the Law for they did not all picture
the sacrifice of the body of Jesus. The
Sabbath pictured the completion of creation.
The Bible feasts and Sabbaths were not
pictures of the atoning and saving work of Jesus because not keeping them holy
brought very harsh penalties with it.
God wouldn’t come down that heavy on mere pictures or symbols especially
when he never said anywhere in the Old Testament that the feasts and Sabbaths
never symbolised anything about the Messiah Jesus or anybody.
Before (2:8) and after (2:22) what the
author wrote about the Sabbath and the feasts he condemns human traditions so
the context is about man-made doctrines and rites. So how can Christians say that the condemned
Sabbath and feasts were those commanded by God in the Law of Moses?
The Christian interpretation of Colossians
rests on one thing only. The assumption that the early Christians did not
retain the Jewish feast days and the Sabbath.
If they had they would have known that Colossians was not telling them
to stop. So since the days were not
abolished explicitly it is obvious that the Christians would have carried them
on. Colossians condemns man-made
Sabbaths – such as the man-made feasts and holydays of obligation of the Roman
Catholic Church on which work is forbidden – therefore it condemns the purely
man-made Sunday Sabbath.
ROMANS 14
Christians object to the
Bible teaching that we have to keep the seventh day holy. “Romans 14:5-8 says that the Christian should
not esteem one day more than another implying that the Sabbath laws are
abolished.” We don’t know what is meant
by esteem here. It is likely means that
every day should be treasured and dedicated to good works not just the
Sabbath. This teaching is compatible
with having a Sabbath day. The working
days are for worshipping God by working and the Sabbath for worshipping God a
different way and doing the more passive kinds of good works like helping
others to rest and resting yourself so that you will be able to serve others
better.
If Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday
that does not prove that he wanted it to be the new Sabbath. The Saturday Sabbath can be a memorial of the
resurrection even if it is not the day he rose.
Nobody can argue that Jesus needed a memorial day that badly that he had
to change the day for the Sabbath.
Moreover, it is not days that commemorate but what people do on those
days.
APOSTLES AND THE SABBATH
Did the apostles keep the
Sabbath after Jesus left? Even if they
didn’t that doesn’t prove they were right.
The apostles had a very difficult job to do and they claimed to be without
error only in giving official revelations from God. They could only leave the essentials of the
faith.
In Acts 1:12 we read that the apostles
travelled for one day on a Sabbath after Jesus ascended into Heaven. The Law forbade this because it was walking
too far. Exodus 16:9 said a man must
stay near home on the Sabbath day. But
the Law made allowances for emergencies.
The apostles had to do a lot of travelling that day for their lives were
at risk and they needed to keep their whereabouts under wraps. Also, priests were allowed to work and offer
sacrifice on the Sabbath day and the apostles would have seen themselves as
exceptions to the law because it was more important to go out and see Jesus
ascend and worship with him than to sit in a house. And also the law in Exodus 16:9 really only
means avoid as much travelling as possible.
How do you know the apostles didn’t keep it even then?
Christians say that the New Testament says
that Sunday is the Sabbath for the collection was taken that day and so it must
have been a public collection (page 118, Encyclopedia
of Bible Difficulties) for why just privately collect on a Sunday when you can
do it any day? Only 1 Corinthians 16:2
mentions the collection but it does not say it can only be taken during divine
service. It could have been a private
collection made from house to house the day after the Sabbath for it was
regarded as sinful to collect on the Saturday Sabbath. And Corinthians never says that this
collection arrangement on that particular day was universal. To work out that Sunday is the Sabbath from
it is just getting carried away. The
collection was prepared the day before the Sabbath, Friday, for people only
know what they can give at the end of the working week and it was not collected
until the day after the Sabbath by the collectors out of deference for the
Sabbath rest.
It could be argued that the collection was
against the rule of avoiding needless work on the Sabbath so that this was not
the Sabbath.
There is no reason to think that the
breaking of the bread was the Eucharist so how dare the Christians say that the
breaking of bread on the first day means that it is the Sabbath. And if it were the Eucharist, it makes no
difference. It must have been a love
feast in which bread was shared. Jesus
broke bread this way a few times the post-resurrection times (implying by the
way, that the Eucharist was not a sacrament when it could be replaced by merely
sharing bread).
Some say that the Bible only intended the
people who lived in the
The Hebrews were not allowed to light the
fire on the Sabbath day which is taken to imply that the Sabbath was for the
Here is a faulty argument for the first day
Sabbath.
“Paul was one week at
This appalling argument comes from Archer’s
book (page 118). It is not disclosed why
Paul stayed a week or why the service was on Sunday or why Paul didn’t wait
until the day before. You cannot build
arguments on silence.
The Jews believed that Saturday started on
our Friday night. But the service could
have been held late on Saturday night.
In Jewish reckoning of time the service therefore took place on Sunday
the first day of the week. But for the
people of
Verse 7 merely says that they met on the
first day to break bread that is all. We
read in the book of Acts that the early believers kept all things in common and
were virtually a convent. They probably
just broke bread before going to work to remember the rising of the Lord
because it was convenient and they virtually lived together anyway. You cannot
infer a Sunday Sabbath from that. The
Jews broke bread at special feasts so you don’t even know if this bread
breaking was a Eucharist. They said,
“Blessed are you O Lord our God king of the universe who brings forth bread
from the earth”, and then they broke the bread and shared it.
There is no evidence in the Bible that God
does not want Christians to keep the Saturday Sabbath. But there is more evidence that there is no
evidence.
LORD’S DAY
We
are continuing our examination of the claims that the Jewish Saturday Sabbath
is abolished by God.
Christians argue that Sunday is the Lord’s
Day – it is called that in the Bible – so it’s the new Sabbath. Where in Revelation 1:10 is it written that Sunday
is the Lord’s Day? And yet this text is
supposed to be an authority for the Sunday Sabbath. Early tradition outside the Bible said that
the Lord’s Day was Sunday. The Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, for example. But these books differed from Christ’s
religion. The Didache
denied the last supper and Barnabas gave outlandish and imagined
interpretations of scriptural symbolism that was not even there. We cannot rely on them.
If the Lord’s Day is really Sunday then
that does not mean that Sunday was the Sabbath.
The Lord’s Day could be an optional day for remembering the resurrection
of Jesus in public worship. There is no
value in the objection that the Lord’s Day could not be kept as a day of rest
for that presupposes it was intended to be a day of rest. It may not have been. The working week started on Sunday in those
days for Jews. Besides, the Christians
could have killed two birds with the one stone.
What is Saturday evening to us is Sunday to Jews. So a Christian could honour the Lord’s day on
Saturday evening. This would also be
honouring the Sabbath for the Christians might have believed the Sabbath didn’t
end until midnight Saturday. Why would
they use two different ways of reckoning time?
The answer is that it could have been a type of liturgical calendar. For
Catholics, Saturday ends at midnight and yet they worship on Saturday evening
for according to Jewish tradition that is Sunday. The Jewish Sabbath begins on
sundown Friday and finishes on sundown Saturday for that was how they measured
their days. So the Christians could have
kept the Lord’s Day on Saturday night.
It would seem that the Lord’s Day is not
the Lord’s Day unless it is not wholly devoted to prayer but there is no
evidence that this was the understanding of the
And nowhere does the New Testament say that
it was a Christian’s duty to worship in public on the Lord’s Day. It could just have been a day in which there
was no resting or compulsory Church attendance but which was called the Lord’s
Day in commemoration of the resurrection.
Acts 15 shows us that the Gentiles went to
Jewish Christian synagogues on the Jewish Sabbath without the apostles
complaining. The apostles attempted to
settle a dispute about the burden of the Law on non-Jews and insisted upon a few
rules in which the Sabbath was unmentioned.
Does this mean that the Sabbath is done away? The apostles were dealing with a difficult
situation as best they could and mightn’t have been able to enforce any more
rules. Also a Sunday Sabbath would be as
bad a burden as a Saturday one. Perhaps
they took it for granted that the Sabbath would remain and that Sabbath was the
Saturday one. The Saturday Sabbath was
not abrogated and was obligatory to Gentiles too. It could be said that since the Sabbath was a
day of rest and worship that it was not a burden. The apostles were dealing with burden laws
and so this would mean the Sabbath wasn’t being excluded when they decreed what
rules Gentiles must keep.
In Acts 15, one of the four rules was to
keep away from blood and another was to avoid sex outside marriage.
The sex out side marriage being mentioned is
interesting. Catholics say we are bound to
keep the moral side of the Law of Moses for that hasn’t been abolished but we
can ignore the ceremonial side, rites and Sabbaths etc, for it has been
abolished. If this distinction was made
by the apostles then why do they have the ban on fornication in? The Church says banning fornication is about
banning what is evil not what is just ceremonial. But the fact that the apostles included it
shows that they made no difference between the moral and ceremonial law at
all.
Did banning them having sex outside marriage
mean they could kill and steal if they wanted?
No.
Singling out fornication may mean that sexual
sin is the worst sin for it is the only possibly objectively wrong thing that
was condemned. But the singling out of
things like eating blood etc when something more important could have been
chosen shows that the apostles were doing what they could in a crisis situation.
We
have a case in Acts 15, where the apostles for expediency and because they could
do no better, had to pick four rules out of the Law to bind Gentiles to. What they did shows us that they believed the
ceremonial law of not eating blood and the moral law of fornication being bad
were equal in value and that the ceremonies were not done away. By implication, the Sabbath was in force for
the Gentiles though it wasn’t time to get them to keep it or because it was not
a burden they were keeping it anyway.
Some Christians say it is an error to
believe that the Sabbath has been moved from Saturday to Sunday for what is
observed on Sunday is just for our own good and we don’t have to do it though
we are commanded to met together when we can (page 7, Sunday or Sabbath). But this eliminates one of the ten commandments! Jesus certainly said we have to keep the
commandments. He never mentioned the
Sabbath one true but there were others he never mentioned too and he certainly
did not want them abolished.
The Sabbath could not picture Christ in any
obvious way. Those who say it did and
therefore that it is needed no more and abolished since Christ has come and we
don’t need pictures any more are talking nonsense (page 11, Sunday or Sabbath).
Some argue as follows. The Sabbath was
obligatory on pain of death and a day of physical rest. It typified salvation by works. The Lord’s Day commanded in the New Testament
is so different that it is clear that the Sabbath must have been abolished
(page 12, Sunday or Sabbath). This
reasoning is deceptive because we know little about the Lord’s Day. Nowhere is it said that we didn’t have to
rest as much as we can on that day.
BAD ARGUMENTS FOR 7TH DAY SABBATH
Watch
out for the wrong arguments for the Seventh-Day Sabbath.
Acts 13 where non-Jews beg Paul to return
to preach the next Jewish Sabbath does not prove the Saturday Sabbath was still
in force for their reason is not stated.
We don’t know why Paul agreed to wait a week to evangelise. It could be that Paul had to wait until he
got them all together.
Paul preaching on every Sabbath (Acts 18)
proves nothing for it was the day to talk to Jews when they were all gathered
together. Acts 18 says Paul worked
during the week and went to church on the Sabbath. It does not say he worked every day including
Sunday so it is no proof against the Sunday Sabbath.
Jesus keeping the Sabbath or the feasts is
not evidence of their validity for Christians today because even God would not
object to a person keeping them if they wanted to as long as they did not feel
obligated or make them something harmful or heretical.
It is said that the seventh-day Sabbath was
not a day for worship but of rest and that since the New Testament has a day
for worship, that that day cannot be the Sabbath. But the Law says that its Sabbath is sacred
to God which only makes sense if it is a day for him and to spend in quietness
thinking of him and praying.
Exodus 20:10 has God saying in the ten
commandments that even foreigners among the people of Israel who didn’t believe
were not allowed to work on the Sabbath.
This shows that the Sabbath commandment was thought to be for all
nations not just Judaism. They could
have let their slaves and foreigners work as long as it didn’t affect the
Israelite wish to relax on the Sabbath.
It made sense to leave the foreigners to deal with the emergencies on
the Sabbath. It didn’t happen which
shows that Jesus was wrong to challenge the Jews of his day for saying it was
right to forget about emergencies on the Sabbath day. God really was as strict as the Jews
said. God forbade good works on the
Sabbath so today the Church letting some people work on the Sabbath shows that
the Church is disobedient to God. God
after all refused to do any good works on the Sabbath day during the creation
and Exodus says Saturday must be kept as a strict Sabbath of rest because God
rested that day. He didn’t even need to
rest but he rested that day to mark it out as the Sabbath. No power on earth could possibly change the
Sabbath day to Sunday for the Sabbath is about the creation not the
resurrection. God went to too much
trouble to mark out Saturday as the Sabbath day for it to be any other
way. It seems unimportant to us but to
him it was extremely important.
The religions which observe the Saturday
Sabbath are right to say that the Bible did not authorise the Christian Church
to switch the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.
By the way, the doctrine that Sunday observance is the Mark of the Beast
reposes on the prophetic delusions of Ellen G. White who formed Seventh-Day
Adventism and not on the Bible though she claimed that it alone was the word of
God.
CONCLUSION
The
Jewish Sabbath is still in force.
Christians should be resting and worshipping on a Saturday.
WORKS CONSULTED
Alleged
Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley,
Christ
and Violence, Ronald J Sider, Herald Press,
Christ’s
Literal Reign on Earth From David’s Throne at Jerusalem, John R Rice, Sword of
the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
Early
Christian Writings, Editor Maxwell Staniforth,
Penguin,
Essentials,
David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder &
Stoughton,
Eunuchs
for the
God’s
Festivals and Holy Days, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God,
California, 1992
Hard
Sayings Derek Kidner InterVarsity
Press,
Jesus
the Only Saviour, Tony and Patricia Higton, Monarch,
Kennedy’s
Murder, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Martin
Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of
Moral
Philosophy, Joseph Rickaby SJ,
Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans, Green and Co,
Not
Under Law, Brian Edwards, Day One Publications, Bromley, Ken, 1994
Radio
Replies Vol 2, Frs Rumble
and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
Sabbath
Keeping, Johnie Edwards, Guardian of Truth
Publications,
Secrets
of Romanism, Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux
Brothers,
Set
My Exiles Free, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill
& Son Ltd,
Storehouse
Tithing, Does the Bible Teach it? John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Sunday
or Sabbath? John R Rice, Sword of the
Lord,
The
Christian and War, JB Norris, The Christadelphian,
The
Christian and War, Robert Moyer, Sword of the Lord Murfreesboro
The
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
The
Enigma of Evil, John Wenham, Eagle, Guildford,
The
Gospel and Strife, A. D. Norris, The Christadelphian,
The
Jesus Event, Martine Tripole SJ,
Alba House,
The
The
Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM Press,
The
Plain Truth about Easter, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide
The
Sabbath, Peter Watkins, Christadelphian Bible
The
Ten Commandments, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide
The
Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of
The
World Ahead, November December 1998, Vol 6, Issue
6
Theodore
Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer,
Those
Incredible Christians, Hugh Schonfield,
Vicars
of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books,
War
and Pacifism, Margaret Cooling, Scripture Union,
War
and the Gospel, Jean Lasserre, Herald Press,
When
Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor
Books,
Which
Day is the Christian Sabbath? Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide