Protestants still follow the pope

So Gerhard,
When do you suggest we worship if not Sunday? How about Tuesday night? Saturday morning? Oh I hope so, then we can watch 60 minutes we now miss because of Sunday evening.

 

You know, it never ceases to amaze me. All these records of our Lord's resurrection were all written for our encouragement. He died to take away our sins. He rose again that we may be justified before God. But all we can do is argue and condemn one another because we choose one day over another. Has our Lord died in vain? He created one day in the week for our rest and regeneration and we insist on making it a day of labour. It reminds me of that story my old boss told me of the time during the last war in London.

He was walking along the road and was approached by a man in darl long overcoat and flat hat. He said. "Would you mind coming with me?" So he followed him through the dark alley ways and up some stairs and through a door into a room. There he saw a group of people sitting in darkess. The man asked my boss, "Would you mind switching on the light for us". So he obliged. It was then he saw that the group of people were orthodox Jews. They explained to him that it was the Sabbath and on the Sabbath they were not meant to do any work and switching on the light was work.

We have all been made free from sin so that we may serve him with freedom. Now we serve Christ in the spirit of the law. Not necessarity in the letter. I wonder how these rules of the Sabbath, whatever day it falls on, can be applied to doctors and nurses and the emergency services? And also the electricity companies and other services and professions which we in this modern age depend upon? Our Lord said on the Sabbath, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath......." Which strictly speaking, he did.

 

Grahame, great post! My sentiments exactly. I appreciate all your posts. Thank you!:wavey:

 

You have changed what the Bible says to suit your own purposes. You need to study Genesis chapters one and two. God worked six days and rested on the seventh, the seventh being the last day of the week, not the first day of the week. The first day of the week is Sunday in case you hadn't realized that yet. Once you understand that fact the reading of the English language will become much more simple for you.
To emphasize ti again for the Sabbath-Day challenged:
Seventh Day of the Week = Sabbath
First Day of the Week = Sunday

Here are some scholarly comments to help you along in your understanding:

 

Very true. And according to Paul in 1Cor 11 HE ALSO gave us the Lord's Supper to commemorate that historic salvation event - celebrated as often as we might like to do it.

No problems with that at all.

The issue here is not "how many times each week or month or year may I celebrate the Lord's Supper" - you may do it daily if you so desire.

The issue is "and may I also turn a blind eye to Christ's own Holy day given as His Memorial of HIS creative act in Genesis 1. Made FOR Mankind only to be ignored BY anyone who so desires"...

It is only THAT part that we are debating in truth...

Christ argues this point very stringently in Mark 7 with those who found a "nice reason" to replace the commandments of God with man-made tradition.

"In vain do they worship me teaching for doctrine the commandments of men" Mark 7:6-11

True enough -- it was the "Seventh-day Sabbath" that was sanctified "Therefore He blessed the Seventh-day and made it holy".

So then -- comitting adultery but doing it out of love for our neighbor??

Or do you mean - NOT lusting AND not actually comitting adultery??

the one who argues the latter is arguing in favor of God's Word. The one that argues for the former is simply tring to get out of God's Word.

But Christ said in John 10 "The Word of God can not be broken".

It remains.

1. God said it "falls on the SEVENTH day" are we free to "edit" what He said now??

WE ADMIT that Christ rose on the FIRST day -- are we now QUESTIONING if Christ actually rose on Sunday?? Week-day one???

2. Christ stated that the Priests are laboring on Sabbath and in the PRE-Cross full acceptance (non-debated time for ACCEPTING the 4th commandment) the priests are NOT considered by God to be in violation of HIS Command. I think the same applies to all emergency services.

the Jews charged that Christ BROKE the Law of God. Christ argues that He did not "THINK NOT that I have come to abolish the LAw of God I have not come to abolish but to FULFILL" -- those who agree with the Jewish accusers that what Christ was doing was BREAKING the Law that He PERFECTLY FULFILLED were charging that his life and sacrifice was not a PERFECT SINLESS Law-fulfilling offering - but a polluted law-breaking offering.

Hint: It was not.

In Christ,

Bob

 

this is one of those times I am in full agreement with DHK as it pertains to the days of the week. I agree completely that Christ was raised on Sunday and that is week-day-one.

I also agree that friday-evening to Saturday evening is the Sabbath of the Sabbath commandment.

Those who see DHK and I differ on every point (practically) when it comes to this subject - do not see us differ on this point. And in fact this is a point that is held in common by the majority of Sunday-keeping Christians AND the vast majority of Sabbath-keeing Christians.

It is not accurate to portray some dispute here on whether Saturday is the Seventh-day as being characteristic of differences between the two groups of Christians.

---

having said that -- I am very curious about DHK's endorsement of Acts 20 (however he may choose to spin the act of EACH individual laying by themselves in STORE - savings so that no fund raising needed to be done at some future time when Paul arrived) -- as if a PRACTICE SEEN in Acts is sufficent support for doctrine. When I point out that the "sola scriptura" practice in Acts 17:11 and the "SABBATH after SABBATH" practice of acts 13 should be fully accepted in the SAME way - DHK stone walls.

In Christ,

Bob

 

have I got good news for you...

 

Graham argues that God did NOt say "this is the Sabbath" but rather stated the commandment as "pick one day in seven".

Bob points out that in Exodus 16 God said "TOMORROW is the Sabbath" and in the weekly cycle manna fell on 6 days but not on THE seventh-day for 40 years!!

Graham then switches points -

Pentecost was 50 days after Passover - SOMETIMES passover was on a Friday - sometimes it was not. You can hardly argue that Pentecost was teaching a WEEKLY first-day observance in the OT.

I see so Christ said "The Sabbath was MADE FOR MANKIND" Mark 2:27

but Graham says "the Sabbath was NOT MADE FOR MANKIND"????

the choice in that case is left as an exercise for the reader.

In 1Cor 7 we are told "Neither circumcision no non-circumcision is of any mattter but what matters is the KEEPING of the Commandments of God".

In Rom 3:31 Paul says "Do we then make VOID the LAw of God by our faith?? God forbid!! In fact we ESTABLISH the Law of God"...

Yet you argue "we pay no attention at aLL to the Law of God"

Where do you get that?

both Romans 3 and Galatians 3 flatly deny this. BOTH of them argue that the Law BINDS ALL MANKIND showing that ALL are sinners.

(In the case of the lost)

And in Heb 8 we are told that the LAW of God is "WRITTEN on the heart" under the New Covenant.

So it is applied to ALL the WORLD in one way in Romans 3 and Galatians 3 and it is applied to all saints in James 2 and Heb 8.

Rom 10 fits with Rom 7 (quoting the ten commandments) and Rom 13 (quoting the Ten Commandments) and Romans 3 (endorsing the Law of God) because the term for "end" is the term for "goal" or point. It means that the Law points to Christ -- it does NOT mean to contradict the rest of Romans by arguing that Christ abolished HIS OWN WORD (Hint: His Word is LAW).

Indeed - He FULFILLED the command of Lev 19:18 that we must Love our Neighbor as ourself - but FULFILL does not mean ABOLISH.

He FULFILLED the command of Deut 6:5 to Love God with all of our heart -- but FULFILL does not mean ABOLISH.

As 1John 2 points out "the one who SAYS He knows Christ aught also to WALK as Christ WALKED".

Text please.

It was the Seventh-day because as Christ said "The Son of Man is LORD of the Sabbath" and as Isaiah says Is 58 the "Sabbath is the HOLY day of the LORD".

There is NTHER assignment for "LORD's Day" given in all of scripture.

Those who WANT that day to apply to something OTHER than what scripture says - have a long way to go.

He used the term Christ used for it in Mark 2:27 and the one that Isaiah used in Isaiah 58 and the one that Sabbath Keeping Christians often use for it.

They use BOTH as did John.

In the gospel of John we find him referring to it as Sabbath and in Rev as "The Lord's Day". John 19:31 and about 20 times in the Gospel of John he references "Sabbath".

Hint: John is writing long AFTER the resurrection.

Indeed - an assertion that you can not prove from scripture. I prefer my doctrines "sola scriptura".

In Christ,

Bob

 

I think I can guess.
The SDA's primary reason for worshipping on Saturday is so that they can worship before the SuperBowl on Sunday :laugh:

 

Graham admits that he DOES know which day of the week is the SEVENTH and which one is the FIRST

How nice that - that little debate point has been resolved.

Moving on...

I am more than glad to agree with you that after the time of the Apostles some "traditions" of man began to spring up that can not be found in scripture.

No lo contendo

WE find a lot about it in the Gospels and we find that the COMMANDMENTS OF GOD ARE to be kept in places like 1Cor 7.

But it IS true that the 3rd commandment "Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" is never QUOTED word-for-word in the NT.

Is this a "Whatever is not repeated get's deleted" argument I see you inserting into the NT??

In Christ,

Bob

 

in Acts 15 we see the argument made that the Gentiles will be "hearing Moses preached in the synagogues EVERY SABBATH".

And in Acts 13 WE SEE the Gentiles IN the Synagogue SABBATH AFTER SABBATH hearing just what James SAID they were hearing.

Furthermore - in Acts 15 we DO NOT see James telling the Gentiles to "Honor their Father and mother" or to "Love God with all their heart".

Acts 15 is NOT a "mass reduction of the scriptures of God for Gentiles" as it turns out.

It SPECIFICALLY deals with the issue of "do Gentile NEED to become JEWS" which is what circumcision symbolized according to Eph 2.

It was never commanded of OT Gentiles and in Acts 13 we find that it was also not commanded by the NON-Christian Jews of their Gentile fellow believers.

Nope.

The Sabbath given to Adam in Gen 2 is referenced in Exodus 20 as "historic fact". Exodus 20 is not of the form "I have just invented the Sabbath it turns out to be the 7th day of the week so start keeping it from now on".

Rather it is "REMEMBER the Sabbath" (in fact they arlready had the system of manna and sabbath keeping BEFORE Exodus 20) and it points to the Gen 2 CREATION WEEK fact saying "For in SIX days the Lord... and RESTED the Seventh-day therfore the Lord BLESSED the Sabbath day and MADE it Holy" speaking of the day given to ADAM in Gen 2.

Hence Christ can rightly say in Mark 2:27 "the Sabbath was MADE for MANKIND"

And as Isaiah 66 points out "from Sabbath to Sabbath shall ALL MANKIND come before Me to Worship".

That is conjecture - not scripture. The difference is huge.

Non-Jewish Sabbath keeping promises are in Isaiah 56-58.

And of course we have Isaiah 66 "From Sabbath to Sabbath shall ALL MANKIND come before Me to Worship".

What an intertesting contradiction of scripture.

God said of Abraham "HE KEPT My COMMANDMENTS and STATUTES and LAWS" Gen 26:5 just as God commands Israel to do in Deut 27:10

But Grahame said he did not.

I find that facinating. But not half as facinating as the fact that when confronted with this Grahame is likely to toss his own argument out the window and reject the Sabbath anyway - no matter if his point is valid or not.

And that is what really intrigues me about our shared human nature.

Why do we do things like that??

Anyway Grahame - I am enjoying this spirit of yours and at least some honest (if not a bit mistaken) debate points against the 4th commandment.

More as time permits.

In Christ,

Bob

 

I have been Busted.:type:

 

Fear of what? God being mad at me because I don't go to church on Saturday? Preposterous. Fear of being identified with Roman Catholicism? Nope. So, tell me, O All-Knowing One, fear of what?

 

Well, we keep both Saturday and Sunday. Where some keep Wednesday night we Keep Saturday, so I guess I am covered. No wonder Bob and I are friends.

 

I am curious to your reference to Acts 20. I already gave my statement about it, and backed it up with various commentators. You seemed to agree with it, having said that "the first day of the week consistently means Sunday." You agreed with me on that point. However it seems to me that you are speaking of 1Cor.16:2, when Paul advised the Corinthians to lay in store on the first day of the week. I did give an explanation for that also. If first day of the week means first day of the week, or Sunday, then what is the problem? They gathered together on the first day of the week, brought what they had gathered, for that was the time when Paul would meet with them, as was his custom. According to verse one he had the same custom throughout all the churches of Galatia. Remember that the Book of Acts is a book of transition. Paul went to the Jews first. That is true. But the Jews rejected his message, and he went to the Gentiles. He is the Apostle to the Gentiles, and had no need to keep the Sabbath. Thus the evidence in Acts 20 along with 1Cor.16:1,2 point to the believers gathering on the first day of the week as the Scripture says.

 

No I don't reject the Sabbath. I believe that Christ is our Sabbath. The Sabbath is the shadow, the type of things to come, of the great antitype who is Christ. As Christian believers we are in that Sabbath and thus await the great eternal Sabbath (rest) in heaven. We meet on the first day of the week. The day our Lord rose from the dead in remembrance of what he accomplished on that day, the day of his resurrection. The type, the shadow is now past. Now we are "in Christ" who is our peace and our rest. We have ceased to work for our salvation. That is one reason I believe that there is so little spoken of about the Jewish Sabbath in the New Testament. For the attention is now passed from the law onto Christ.
By the way Abraham was saved through faith and not by the keeping of any law. For the New Testament clearly states that "The Law was given by Moses". Not Abraham. So those verses you quoted when you stated

could not have meant those laws that were given in Exodus. For the simple fact that they had not yet been given to Israel at that time. It also said he "Obeyed my voice and kept my charge". Paul the apostle actually used Abraham as an example of salvation "before" the law was given by Moses. He did this for the specific reason of proving that salvation is by the grace of God through faith and not by the law. That law was given by to the people of Israel. We must move on from those shadows into his glorious light of the gospel of God which is through Christ. Why is it that mankind always wants to put themselves back under the law? As if they are trying to prove that they are worthy in some way, even if it is by keeping the Sabbath day. What are you going to do to those who work on the Sabbath? Stone them as they did under the law?

 

Melodramatic much?

 

Sorry about that. Yes I do agree with you that week-day one is Sunday (how else am I going to get to the point that the Seventh day Sabbath is Saturday??) and that Christ was raised on week-day one -- resting on the Seventh day.

And I may have mistaken my comments for 1Cor 16 on "each one saving by himself" as an individual savings at the start of each week, with the fact that one time on a Sunday the church gathered for a farewell service.

But my guestion to you from Acts 20 remains - even if you could stretch this one-time farewell service into a weekly farewell service held every week, every year on Sunday - doesn't this go against your rule of using practices SEEN in acts as a basis for doctrine?

Is there some text saying "It was Paul's custom to meet with the church every Sunday"?? If so your argument would be well served if you quoted it.

If you are saying that it was Paul's custom to meet with all churches he visited every Sunday and that you have such a text -- it would serve you to quote it.

You are telling the story the way we would EXPECT to find it in scripture IF IT were true that the Gentiles were not expected to be meeting on Sabbath. That is why the Acts 13 "SABBATH AFTER SABBATH" sequence where Gentiles ARE accepting the message and Jews REJECTING it stands out as a great contradiction. What SHOULD have happened on that Sabbath where the JEWS were not cooperating - Paul should have said "FINE -then to the REST I say come join us tomorrow for more Bible study as we are now meeting on week-day one. And in fact I tell you all that Week-day One turns out to be the LORD's Day".

What a golden opportunity to SEE the very claims people want to insert into the text today - and yet it is glaringly absent. IN FACT what we see in Acts 13 is that the Gentiles CONTINUE to have "SABBATH AFTER SABBATH" services even AFTER the Jews point out their opposition to the message.

How instructive.

There is no weekly gathering at all mentioned in 1Cor 16 and Acts 20 is a one time farewell service lasting until midnight. (and if this is in fact Saturday evening then it means they spent all Sunday on a road trip rather than resting and worshipping)

In Christ,

Bob