Do any SDAs keep the Sabbath?

Claudia T,
I recommend you discover for yourself the reason why you may celebrate God's Holy Sabbath Day, and not depend on the fashionable motivations for it of two centuries ago, when a world-view quite Christian-faith strange and unlike, was the order of the day. Mrs White was a true child of her age. I personally have no apetite for the philosophy of her age. Go back to the New testament Scripture - they come before the Old Testament Scriptures - "before Moses, I was". Find Christ your only why and wherefore for Sabbath's respect.

 

Your words, "If true Sabbath is resting with the Lord and the Lord comes to us by means word. Wouldn't we be observing the Sabbath everytime we spend time in the word?" sum up the persistent issue regarding the Sabbath Day in Christian Faith. The core of the problem with it lies in the identifying and equalising 'the Sabbath' with 'the Rest'. Hebrews 4 gives the best solution to that problem; it uses different words of different meaning for these concepts, respectively 'sabbatismos'-akeeping of the Sabbath Day, and, 'katapausis/anapausis'-rest. "Rest" in every instance of its use identical with Jesus Christ. Then "BECAUSE OF the REST Jesus had given them (the People or Church)"; and, "BECAUSE OF" the fact HE who had given them Rest, "HIMSELF entered in into His own REST as God", "THEREFORE there remains for the People a keeping of the Sabbath Day". This Hebrews 4 verses 8, then 10, then 9 in between. It gives you the reason, the essence, the grounds, why, 'If true Sabbath is resting with the Lord and the Lord comes to us by means of the Word, we would be observing the Sabbath everytime we spend time in the Word'.

 

Upon further reflection, what you wrote makes absolutely no sense. Particularly since the passage you quoted is refering to the life in the new heaven and earth. There is no mention of a Sabbath day as in calendar day in the passage.

 

Greetings

I don't read Claudia's stuff. If she cannot have the common respect to enter into a bona fide exchange, then let her post all she wants. May she and BobRyan can get into their own cut and paste exchanges.

Lloyd

 

Quoting Claudia T, "Claudia_T
Member
Member # 8583

posted September 19, 2005 10:11 PM
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Just one more thing about the Sabbath.

If you keep the Sabbath as it was meant to be kept, and if you keep the true Sabbath, the 7th Day Sabbath, then it puts things into perspective for you.
You set aside this special day of the week, to think about God, to ponder His power in Nature, His creative powers. And then you will come to understand and believe that God has the same creative powers to RECREATE you into His image, which is the object of Jesus dying on the cross for us. Not just to forgive us for our sins but also to redeem us from our sinful ways... to change us, to regenerate us.

Here is a typical example of SDA thinking about the Sabbath.
First observation: "you keep the Sabbath ".
The OT Commandment tells me "God rested the Seventh Day and THEREFORE thou shalt". But more important, The OT Commandment does not say God created and therefore .... It says "In six days God created ... and on the Seventh Day God rested: THEREFORE the Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God".
SDA's make the Sabbath Day man-centred and creation-centred whereas the OT Commandment makes it God centered and of Divine essentiality.
Recenthly when I showed this to an SDA Pastor with a Masters, he just would not budge, but went and made an exhaustive study of the Hebrew, only to prove "it is impossible" - creation was the actual reason for being of the Sabbath Day given.
I through up my arms asking, Why!? What do you get?
You get precisely what is distinguishable from reading Claudia's passage. You get a self-righteous man-delighting and flattering Sabbath-appreciation - which is no appreciation of the Sabbath Day of the OT Commandment, but the very depreciation of it from something from grace, to something of works.
I better send this post now, so as to keep it short and pithy as far as possible. One could read a whole theology on a hundred points in just this little quote from Claudia T - a theology to explore the Sabbath's Christ-centeredness, and therefore not for self-indulgence or self-inflatedness.

 

Second observation, "then it puts things into perspective for you".
Now read Cladia's 'perspective', and pronounce it to yourself - What is it in one word? I cannot find another word than, Pietism! Just ego-centred Christianity.
Look for the loudest crying absentee in the chorus of witnesses of the Sabbath Day. YOU WON"T FIND IT! THIS, is what I have told the SDA's (I have a family full of them, and many I must say dear friends from among them, and very special foes!) I tell them? Where is Christ in His resurrection from the dead in your Sabbath theology. It is my most urgent question for you!
Here is the STANDARD answer I or anyone else SHALL get: 'The resurrectio is but a bare fact of no impact, implication value or meaning as far as the Sabbath is concerned. Jesus rested on the Sabbath in the grave, so exampling to us that we should rest on the Sabbath Day'.
Well, who can blame anyone receiving this answer, for throwing out the baby with the bath-water and sommer the tub with it!

 

That, quickly, brings me back to the heading of this present thread, Does ANY SDA keep the Sabbath?
I must say the vast majority do because they are kept by the clergy in total ignorance about the Sabbath's true Christian nature. Then if you do get an inkling of this true meaning of a truly Christian Sabbath faith or Sabbath keeping, unfortunately mate, I can't see how you could be counted an SDA!

 

Now back to that typical SDA-'perspective on the Sabbath',
"You set aside this special day of the week, to think about God, to ponder His power in Nature, His creative powers. And then you will come to understand and believe that God has the same creative powers to RECREATE you into His image, which is the object of Jesus dying on the cross for us. Not just to forgive us for our sins but also to redeem us from our sinful ways... to change us, to regenerate us."

Consider: "And then you will come to understand and believe that God has the same creative powers to RECREATE you into His image..."
"Into His image" - I have said enough on that.
"...that God has the same creative powers to RECREATE..."
This is the BIG enigma for me. On the one hand, this is one perspective on the Sabbath; but they have books fulls of denying the Sabbath 'symbolic meaning' - thousands of arguments and propagators who urge the Sabbath isn't 'ceremonial' or 'sacrificial' and therefore doesn't have prophetic properties. In plain language, the SDA's say, the Sabbath doesn't "point to Christ" like the ceremonial and sacrificial laws do.
But here you read it yourself, them saying, the Sabbath giving a perspective "that God has the same creative powers to RECREATE".
What's the enigma in it? The Sabbath gives perspective that God has the power to recreate (me, man, believer) but His power to raise - 'recreate' - Jesus from the dead - that is too far fetched! That is the enigma to me, that God just has enough power to recreate me - the Sabbath tells me; but not that He raised Christ from the dead by the very same power and that that exactly is the perspective THE SABBTH GIVES! Not so extreme! the SDA's say. That is - to quote them in answer to me - "presumption"!
My reply: If Sabbath's belief prohibits Chist Jesus its end, its the end to me as far as the Sabbath is concerned.
Fortunately, I have found the Sabbath RECEIVED its true and essential Christian character and bearing on practicle Christian faith and life from NOTHING, but Jesus Christ and from Jesus Christ precisely in resurrection from the dead!
That's why I insist the Scriptures say what they say and with meaning what they say, that "God thus concerning the Seventh Day somewhere (which is everywhere in the Old Testament Scriptures as well as in the New Testamernt Scriptures) SPOKE: And God on the Seventh Day rested from ALL His works" - which incluides first and last "the EXCEEDING greatness of His power which He WORKED to-us-ward (savingly) WHEN HE RAISED CHRIST FROM THE DEAD".
(SDA's and other Christians get so ANNOYED when I use Ephesians 1:19f in connection with the Sabbath Day!

 

Toe close my posts on this thread today, "...to RECREATE you into His image, which is the object of Jesus dying on the cross for us."
READ the poverty of SDA-ism. I have fererred to it from the 'perspective' of the positive. Here the reader sees it from the perspective of the negative: just READ the poverty: "... which is the object of Jesus dying on the cross for us" nevr oh never which is the object of Jesus RISING FROM THE DEAD for us!
Because it would imply Jesus should have risen from the dead "IN SABBATH'S FULNESS" - but that "is impossible" because "the Sabbath has no symbolical meaning". (Only where it suits them; and why only where it suits them? For two reasons, One, That they have a prophet who says He rose on the First Day of the week - 'the Spirit of Prophecy which cannot lie. Two, That they have a doctrine which says that Christ did not in resurrection from the dead finish ALL the works of God, but that Christ only "STARTS" there to finish Atonement even today two thousand and more years later.)

 

Answering Chemnitz's last post, quoting from it, "Carefull reading of the law will show that not once is the seventh day named. The law only says work six days and on the seventh rest."
Now careful, Chemnitz! Do not contradict yourself so! Here you yourself say reading of the law will show that ... (t)he law only says work six days and on the seventh rest. Does "on the seventh rest", imply rest on the Seventh DAY? This is human language Chemnitz, it to a surprising large degree consists of 'ellipses' - the supposing for real the presence of something unsaid. What's the use of commanding to rest the seventh if not the Seventh Day after THE "six days thou shalt WORK"?

I still say what you have at first said, implies that you accuse God of legalism. Now you accuse God of making senseless laws to confuse people rather than direct them in His ways.

But remember the Giver of the Sabbath Day's Command - Jesus God's Christ. He perfectly was aware of the Day He was the Lord of. So stop your excuses, and so stop your self-justification. It won't pay off; or it will, but not to your good!

 

I am not making excuses, I am merely pointing out the fallacy of your instance on the observance of a specific day. I have not accused God of legalism, I have accused you of legalism, unless you are trying to tell me you are God. I would be the first to say that God is strict in his laws and rightly so. At the same time He has given Christians great freedom in Jesus Christ, for in Christ I am no longer under the law.

At the same time I am reminded that Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, did not reprimand the disciples for doing work on the Sabbath.

Again there is nothing in the Law that says which day has to be the "7th day." There is nothing confusing about it. Work six days and rest on the 7th regardless of which day of the week it falls on.

 

Christ the Creator GAVE US His own Seventh-day Holy day as a "MEMORIAL" of His creative act in making life and SHOWING His Role as our LORD and Creator.

That was His FIRST role with us and as we see in Rev 14 it is His CONTINUING role "WORSHIP HIM WHO MADE the heavens and the earth"

Degrading His command regarding that role and/or degrading His ROLE as creator - does NOTHING to uplift His ADDED role as our Savior!

How this simple concept keeps getting glossed over - I will never understand.

In Christ,

Bob

 

"Remember A SEVENTH day as you please"??

When it rained manna on EVERY DAY but Sabbath - and a double portion on Friday that was preservable through the Sabbath -- did it "MATTER" which day God's people SELECTED for themselves?

When Sabbath breaking penalties were announced by God - did it MATTER which day God's people SELECTED for THEMSELVES?

When God said "TOMORROW IS THE Sabbath" Ex 16 - did it MATTER which DAY God's people selected for themselvs.

When Christ said in Mark 2 that He was Lord of THE SABBATH - did He mean THE SABBATH that His primary audience knew about? (That would be key in exegesis).

Where do you get the notion that scripture DOES NOT SHOW US that THE SABBATH was an ACTUAL fixed day of the week?

What Bible does not include the OT and Gospels and Acts 13??

In Christ,

Bob

 

#1.You are free to point out where the Bible shows God specifying what a "Sabbath day's journey should be" if you can find the text.

#2. Criticizing someone who attempts to love his fellow man for not "doing it perfectly" is not an argument AGAINST LOVING our neighbor - yet you are using such reasoning as an argument against Christ the Creator's memorial of creation.

What kind of reasoning is that?

[/quote]Link
In Acts 15 we read:
20. But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
21. For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.


This is the reference to reading on the sabbath. Notice that Moses was preached 'from old time.' in the synagogue every sabbath. The synagogue tradition goes back to sometime during the captivity. It had been around for hundreds of years when James wrote this. The Diaspora had been living in Gentile cities throughout the empire for hundreds of years, meeting in the synagogue every sabbath, and hearing the words of Moses read over and over again.

So this passage clearly does not say that the decree-- which had not been written when James spoke these words-- was to be read on the sabbath.
[/quote]

True. The devastating case this text makes against non-Sabbath keeping is that James brings this fact (that we SEE in Acts 13) about Gentiles being instructed in the Synagogues on Sabbath as a POINT to address the concerns of those who were arguing FOR Gentiles needing to be Bible-based, (as in OT scripture which is all they had). This point of consolation is devastating to the argument that the Gentiles were in total rebellion against Christ the Creator's Ten commandments or at least His Sabbath Commandment.

Also the LEVITICAL law about not eating meat with blood in it - seems to be UPHELD.

That is merely "wishfull thinking" as you gloss over the argument that James makes to SUPPORT the fact that Gentiles WILL be educated in the scriptures WITHOUT having to become JEWS -- because of the preaching of scripture in the synagogues every Sabbathh (See Acts 13 for an examaple of GENTILES being trained then EVEN WITHOUT the unbelieving JEWS being interested in the Bible teaching on Sabbath!)

Hey - something we agree on!

Indeed NT law places no more/less constraints on Gentiles than were ALREADY IN place upon them in the OT.

The OT never insisted that Gentiles be circumcised but we DO SEE ALL the World involved in Sabbath keeping in Gen 2 and in Isaiah 66 "FROM Sabbath to Sabbath shall ALL MANKIND come before Me to Worship".

And Christ said "The Sabbath was MADE FOR MANKIND" Mark 2:27.

The point is clear in PRECROSS texts - the Gentiles WERE included in the CREATOR's memorial of CREAITON.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Neither was the Lev 19:18 law about "Loving your Neighbor as yourself" nor the Deut 6:5 law about "Love God with all your heart" included in that Acts 15 statement.

When you leap off the cliff of making the Acts 15 statement an exhaustive list of all doctrines for Gentiles -- you have to toss out almost the entire New Testament.

BUT if you STAY with the CONTEXT of Acts 15 so that it only specifies the UNIQUE problem with the Gentile saints as viewed by the Jewish saints -- suddenly ALL the BIBLE is in focus and ONLY the issues stated IN the chapter are being sorted out.

#1. The point James makes in Acts 15 is SOLVING a problem. He is seeking a SOLUTION not just babbling the daily news or minor items of cultural interest.

#2. IT HELPS SOLVE THE PROBLEM addressed in Acts 15 to OBSERVE the Acts 13 fact that GENTILES are being instructed in God's Word in the Synagogues!

AND that this happens "predictably" and "dependably" on Christ the Creator's Holy Day "Sabbath" -- not merely "day number seven".

BTW "Sabbath means REST" -- not "SEVEN".

ADAM kept Sabbath in Gen 2 (even Moody recognizes this) as the FIRST FULL day of Life in that SEVEN day Creation week. And "Adam is the ancestor of all gentiles" as you point out for Noah.

In Christ,

Bob

 

ascund,

I am sorry that I do not often enter into "discussions" with people on this message board. Its just that people such as "prophecy nut" can be really unnaturally rude for no apparent reason, which turns me off. Plus, some of the posts I have read in some places are really quite nutty, at least in my opinion. And so I tend to just put down my own opinion on a subject and if anyone wants to read it, thats good, but if not then thats their choice. It doesnt offend me in the least if someone doesnt answer me or if they dont want to read what I have to say.

I think that people on these types of message boards seem to have a tendency to nit pick at some really irrelevant points also. And I think personally that it is "disrespectful" to treat the Word of God as if it were some sort of a "game" that you play by debating it to death and picking it to pieces... instead of actually trying to save people and help them to put things into proper perspective so that they will be undeceived. I think lots of the debating that goes on at many of these message boards are more based in ego-centeredness than anything else.

Anyway, excuse me if I dont participate much in it. I guess it is partially, as you accuse me of, a "lack of respect" on my part, as to the reason I dont.

But the biggest reason I hardly ever partipate in these "debates" (arguements) is due to a lack of time. I value time and believe God holds us responsible for how we make use of it. I spend lots more time on people who have never heard the Gospel message than I do on people who just bicker back and forth about the Bible and who already know about the Bible and can read it for themselves.


Claudia

 

Indeed they did - because as Peter said in 2 Peter 1 - they viewed the "Scriptures" as INSPIRED and NOT a matter of one's own interpretation.

As James QUOTES the OT text in James 2 and SHOWS that they valued the Word of God.

As Paul REFERENCES the text of the Ten Commandments in Eph 6 showing the FIFTH commandment "As the FIRST commandment with a promise" - not only does he appeal to it - but also to the ORDER in the list of TEN in which it is found!!

Yes indeed the DID TEACH the Gentiles the Word of God! No Disagreement there.

In Christ,

Bob