Why It Should Be The Sabbath And Not Sunday That Is ‘Important’ To The Ch

Why It Should Be The Sabbath And Not Sunday That Is ‘Important’ To The Church

We suppose an importance of the Day, for the Church as for the believer’s individual life of faith.

Through study of the Scriptures, contemplation and debate, the Christian Day of Worship-Rest has emerged and proved itself to those who devoted themselves to the research of it, an essential, integral and vital prerequisite for, and part and distinctive of the Christian Church and Faith.

Immediately the question arises as to how it came about it is the Sunday and not the Sabbath that emerged the Day of Worship-Rest of the Christian Community?

The dual answer to this question, the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ the Head of the Church on the First Day, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Body of the Church on the First Day, invariably follows most naturally.

And this answer, it is always assumed first, is derived from the Scriptures and its record of the history of Jesus Christ on earth, which unequivocally tells us He rose from the dead on the First Day of the week, Sunday.

Now these answers are accepted ample and authoritative to explain the importance of Sunday.

But claim by this very same argumentation the Sabbath (the Seventh Day of the week) is indicated the Day of Worship-Rest of the Christian Faith, and it is rejected and judged a weak and beggarly principle!

So, back to the Scriptures is the only option – which by the overwhelming majority of Sunday-resurrection proponents (both Sunday-keepers and Sabbath-keepers), is beforehand considered the preposterous demand of the ‘legalist pot-stirrer’!

One needs no great imagination to form an idea of the immense difficulty facing an address of such biased tradition.

 

That song that goes, I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me! goes around in my head.
Bob, the Passover Feast was observed once yearly, but every Sabbath Day! Have you forgotten there is a Ten Commandments that does not have the creation as a reason for God's Sabbath Rest Day, but Redemption? Have you forgotten God commanded it be observance on every Sabbath Day the Seventh Day of the (creation) week?
I could not understand if you could forget.
Now you make a case for the week's origin at creation. But are you blind that God through the Exodus most effectively made a (new) case for the 'seven-day-time-cycle' of the week? God introduced and re-instituted the Sabbath - which had been FORGOTTEN and NEGLECTED and DISCARDED through aeons of ungodliness.
Then although the DAY was 'remembered' by the Jews for a few hundred years, they seem to completely have forgotten its ESSENCE of Sabbath-REST, which AS SUCH, again had been FORGOTTEN and NEGLECTED and DISCARDED through aeons of ungodliness.
The came Jesus, and as Paul says, came faith! And again the Sabbath was made known unto the People of God. And you may read exactly HOW in Hebrews. This - the final time - God made known His Holy Sabbath Day in the escceding greatness of His power when He raised Christ from the dead, "in Sabbath's-time"! Here are three Scriptures converging: Ephesians 1:19f, Mt.28:1, and Hebrews 4:8, 10, and 9.

 

In the event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ the yearly and the weekly Sabbaths converged on and in the Seventh Day of God's NOW finished and perfected creation - "ALL the works of God" - HB.4:4-5. "THUS God concerning the Seventh Day Spoke" - of old (OT) and, "in these last days ... through the SON"!
The Christian Sabbath is the NEW-Covenant Sabbath Day - the Day of God's ultimate and final rest in and through and for the sake and of Christ. The Sabbath Day since has NO honour, and has NO virtue, other than what it received by Jesus Christ, other than what serves the glory of God IN THE FACE OF JESUS

 

Bob, I don't want to convince you of Sunday - I want to convince you of the CHRISTIAN Sabbath Day "the Sabbath of the LORD your God". We Christians pray to Christ "my Lord and my God"! We worship Christ - not the Ten Commandments like the unbelieving Jews do. Even the Law can be object of idolatry! The pure Law of God if receiving of the honour due to Christ only, is worshipped as an idol.
I love Ignatius in his Letter to the Magnesians on this point! He bemoaned the fact some Christians "Sabbathised ... not according to Christ". "The Prophets" though - in CHRISTIAN faith, says Ignatius - "Sabbathised according to the Lord's LIFE". And that he has the Lord's resurrection in mind with the word 'dzohntes' - "life" goes without saying.
Don't misunderstand Ignatius for talking about Sunday - he does not. It is a Sunday-lie!

 

Quoting Bob Ryan as saying, ... the Scriptures and its record of the history of Jesus Christ on earth, which unequivocally tells us He rose from the dead on the First Day of the week, Sunday.
Which unequivocally is the lie of lies, 'TRANSLTED' INTO the Scriptures.
I say "INTO the Scriptures" for two reasons: First, because it is NOT what the TEXT says in Mt.28:1; Two, because FROM the Scriptures only the Sabbath awaited the Promises of God - NEVER the First day of the week.
These are the two pillars of the Christian Distinctive of the Sabbath.
I, Mr. Nobody, but in the Name of God, challenge the world on strength of these two pillars, so help me God!

 

The list in Exodus 20 is from the account of God speaking it directly.

The list in Deut 5 is said IN the TEXT to be given 40 years after that initial event. IT is NOT an edit or "re-write" of Exodus 20 (obviouslyl) so the 4th commandment REMAINS as God gave it.

What you see in Deut 5 is an ADDED reason for KEEPING the creation-week 7 day cycle on THE very Sabbath that God specified. The ADDED reason for the Hebrews was their release from slavery BUT THEY DID NOT celebrate the passover every week!

And that point is abundantly clear to BOTH Jews and Christians.

Fortunately we need not debate such a clear point.

In Christ,

Bob </font>[/QUOTE]Indeed it is most intreguing we actually do debate it, it is such a clear point the Sabbath throughout the Bible is essentially eschatological. In other words, is prophetic, promisary, and the very differences of the Sabbath anacdotes and commandments confirming! Read Karl Barth, for example, where he treats on the Sabbath Day, and Jonathan Edwards.
But take the very first introduction to the Sabbath day in Gn.2, and you cannot see it "has got everything wholly and without reserve to do with Christ" (Karl Barth)? But Hb.4:4-5 ... where do you find better prove or prove to the contrary the Sabbath Day of God IS ESCHATOLOGICAL - that is, pointing to jesus Christ?
If only you could stop grinding gravel between your teeth, and discovered the Bread and Water of Life digests and nourishes better, you will enjoy and celebrate your - no God's Sabbaths - because of Him and for being filled to divine and overflowing fulness by Him, Jesus Saviour God and Head of the Body of Christ's Own (Col.2:17).

 

Actually the saints listed in Hebrews 11 were OLD TESTAMENT Sabbath keeping saints worshipping the TRUE God in TRUE faith (as Heb 11 points out).

Notice that the entire Gospel argument in Gal 3 is made from the OT texts of those OT SAINTS in Heb 11?

ONE Creation-week Sabbath!, ONE Gospel!, ONE way of salvation in all ages.

It is actually pretty simple.

See?

In Christ,

Bob </font>[/QUOTE]Here in South Africa we have an advertisement on TV, where the one bloke tells the other, Bob, o Bob! I can't help thinking of it, while I sighed the same words, having read this post of yours.

Bob, I'm not advertising Sunday or the First Day or this day under the name of 'the Lord's Day' - I'm talking the same Day of the week you do and the Jews do - the SEVENTH DAY OF THE WEEK! But I am NOT talking the same - in nature and essence - Sabbath: the stuff the Sabbath Day is filled with!
I'm talking THE Sabbath Day of CHRIST'S fulness, the Day of God's finishing "all the works of God" IN HIM! The Jews cannot; neither can you, because you believe and keep the same Day as well as the same Sabbath as do the Jews - because "the Law the Law" AS MRS WHITE TOLD YOU PEOPLE THE SEVENTH DAY ADVENTISTS! Listen to her!

 

Quoting Bob Ryan,
QB, But there is no requirement that it must always happen on Friday evening or that it happen weekly. QE.
Can you explain the difference in logic of your argument here and Sabbath-protestors' logic when they refer to Gen 2 and say 'There is no requirement that the Sabbath must always happen on the Seventh Day or that it must always happen weekly'?
Of course there is no direct instruction - it just so happened but never without God' providence over all things with regard to His worship! Read the story of the Exodus, how, as soon as they were delivered, the israelites sang the song of Moses. Would not the Christians, as soon as they were delivered sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb .... Rv.14 of all texts!

 

Never argued about that, Bob. No need! The Sabbath could just as well have been forgotten completely - Christ established it once for all, and that is what counts and where it begins. In any case for Christian faith.

But you might understand Mrs White's logic better than mine. Didn't she tell the SDA Church specifically that "more light" on the "Sabbath truth" would still come? You know she did, of course. Well now, do you reckon she would have objected that "the Light of the world" being Christ, "more light" on the "Sabbath truth" would be more of Jesus Christ about the Sabbath Day, and more of Him as the "Basis" (your word) of it? I think she would be the last person to object.

Where I think she would have started to object, is precisely where Seventh Day Adventist usualy start to object when confronted with the 'salvific value' (an own idiom I think of the SDA Church) of the Sabbath.
The SDA's agree up to the point where Jesus' "healing ministry" on the Sabbath Day confirms the sanctity, blessedness and fulfilment of it - the three main components of the Genesis 2 Divine 'making' of the Sabbath Day. I say they wholeheartedly underscore!

But the moment the ultimate of God's sanctification, blessing and fulfilment through Jesus Christ of the Sabbath Day appears, their feet freeze and their lips turn white and blue. Because that moment is the resurrection of God of Jesus Christ from the dead "in Sabbath's-time"! Then they as one side with the pope and his lackeys, denying the Sabbath every bit of the honour it derived from Jesus' merit only to grace the day of the lord sun with it.

 

Bob,
I feel very bad that I referred to the SDA Church at all.
I should have faced you straight in the eye.
Pardon, I plead.
My objective is singly that God may be glorified in the face of Jesus Christ through the vital essential of the Day of Day of Worship for the People of God .

 

Again, I do agree with everything you say. The Sabbath is believed and kept because on it God rested from all His works He HAD DONE, in other words, HAD created, or, as the KV puts its it, had MADE. But that's not all. God RESTED the SEVENTH Day, and THEREFORE, "... remember ye the Sabbath Day". The glory of the former, is completely engulfed in the glory of the latter - God's Rest, as motive for and reason of the Sabbath's sanctity, blessing, rest, and FINISHING - which happened in Jesus Christ finally while in the flesh and nature of a Human Being only. Had it not been for the event of this Man - God become a Man - creation would NOT have been, but would have sunk into oblivion, unfinished, desacreted, cursed, and hell itself. Jesus DECLARED: "I finish my Father's works", and, "the third day (according to the Scriptures) I FINISH"; "My Father and I both work yet". And all this working of God was the end-finishing of all the works of God as Hb.4:4-5 states. God made His word true, once for all - i.e., finally AND originally - ("I amd the Beginning and the End") in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead "In fulness of Sabbath's-day ... the First Day (of His created worlds) BEFORE ...". HERE, IN THE NT, GOD'S SABBTH DAY COMES FIRST, THE SEVENTH DAY BEFORE THE FIRST DAY of the week. The very same day as in the OT, but now glorified and invested with an honour it before did not have.