The Sabbath

[Guest]

Well I don't know what that was all about but I think both points have been made.

[Guest]

Michael pk,

You obviously do not know how to differentiate between a positive command and moral law (or natural law, as it was once called). It would help you a whole bunch if you did.

The Ten Commandments and The Law of Moses were given to the Jews, and them only. See Exodus 20:2. Did God bring you out of Egypt? I challenge you to find one place in the Old or New Testaments where non-Jews were ever berated for not keeping the sabbath.

Shabat (sabbath) still means seventh; nowhere in the New Testament was it changed to any other day. If you think you must still keep the sabbath, no other day is optional.

[Guest]

This forum seems to be people sharing together beliefs/doctrines
is this considered fellowship? I thought so!

[_Steve]

I don't quite catch the meaning of the last post. Do we consider this fellowship? I doubt that we consider a web forum to provide full-orbed fellowship, such as can be enjoyed by people who see each other face-to-face on a regular basis, and have the ability to serve and edify one another in everyday situations. That is what I would consider to be fellowship.

There is a measure of kinship experienced here, however. The purpose of this forum was never to provide every aspect of Christian fellowship that one could find in a local assembly. Our aim is somewhat narrower. The original purpose of this forum was for people to post Bible questions and to receive answers—from me and from others. Since not everyone agrees on the answers to certain questions, we have always welcomed dissenting opinions—though preferably from people who are biblically literate and mature enough to offer their views in a spirit of Christian charity. Therefore, there is indeed an exchange of viewpoints here.

One point that our sabbatarian friend definitely sees differently than I do has to do with the ability (or inability) to sanctify every act to the Lord (1 Peter 1:15). He is quite certain that a person cannot concentrate on the Lord while working at his vocation, and that there is something irreverent about working "for money," which makes such acts a profanation of the sabbath when done on that day.

I know that not all who regard themselves as Christians share in my assumptions about this, but I have always believed that true Christians do everything they do, whether in word or in deed, to the glory of God. They choose their (money-making) vocations according to this principle, and conduct themselves while at work according to the same principle. The hours they spend at work are seen as God's hours, spent serving the Lord (Col.3:22-23), and the money made in these activities is also the Lord's. Short of this being the case, working a job certainly is working for "selfish ambition," and ought to be discontinued as quickly as possible—not only for one day a week, but for a lifetime. "He who has entered into His rest has ceased from his own works..." (Hebrews 4:10).

Sabbatarians must always resort to a certain arbitrariness in deciding which parts of the sabbath law ought to be observed and which ought not. There is no more biblical defense for observing one sabbath rule than there is for observing all of them. Starting a fire, preparing meals and finding pleasure are all among the things forbidden to be done on the sabbath, in one place or another, in scripture.

"Making money" is actually never mentioned as a forbidden activity. If it were, then the salaried pastor, who preaches on the sabbath (or on the Lord's Day, depending upon the denomination) is violating the sabbath by performing his professional duties (if preaching has become a "professional duty" for the preacher, he may indeed be vioating something in scripture, but it isn't the sabbath law). Yet to give the preacher a pass on this, because his work is "ministry," presupposes a dichotomy between secular and sacred vocations. I don't recognize this dichotomy as being scriptural.

Thus, as the priests continued their work on the sabbath and were guiltless (since they were engaged in God's work), so might any Christian work on the sabbath and be guiltless, since his work is also God's work.

Jesus did not specify that His Father only engaged in "salvation work" on the sabbath. His Father, He observed, did the same kind of work on the sabbath as He did any other day. This would include God's "secular" activities, such as keeping the stars and planets on-course, holding together the nuclei of every atom, feeding the wild birds, clothing the grass, etc.

Jesus' act of healing a lame man (John 5) is not necessarily "salvation work" any more than is a mother's wiping a child's runny nose or changing a diaper. The salvation of souls is not more directly advanced by such healing than by a Christian man's supporting his family, church and missionaries by his pulling of a shift at General Motors, serving as God's agent there, and using the money to promote God's Kingdom.

Thus, a life truly sanctified to God will be as sanctified on Tuesday or Thursday as it is on Saturday or Sunday, and will be as devoted to God while emptying a waste basket as when singing a hymn. There is no hour of any day in the life of the believer when he/she is "off-duty" in terms of his/her obligation to please God and to do the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Lord of every day—"even the sabbath."

The whole moral law is summed up in the command to love one's neighbor as oneself (Rom.13:8-10/ Matt.7:12). This is why one should not have to tell true Christians to avoid "lying, stealing and coveting" (since these things are violations of the law of love). Without being told, a person who loves his neighbor would feel an instinctive aversion to stealing from or lying to him.

On the other hand, one would have to be told if sabbath observance were required (since it is neither instinctive, nor relevant to love for one's neighbor). If one were to counter that sabbath observance is essential to loving God, I would have to say that this is only so if God commands it. If God has not commanded that a day each week be set aside for special rest, one who loves God would not instinctively know this, nor think to do so.

Interestingly enough, lying, stealing and coveting are expressly mentioned in the New Testament as sins, but there is no mention, nor even a hint, to indicate that Christians are under some expectation to observe a sabbath day.

I do not share the writer's convictions that the sleaziness of our culture, the public's opinion of the President, or the ugliness of the war in Iraq have any direct relationship to the church's failure to preach sabbath observance. Neither Jesus nor the apostles saw any need to preach sabbath observance, and yet the early Christians were under no false impressions of Tiberius, Pilate, or Nero.

I think our churches and society would be much better-off, if only the churches were to be faithful in teaching the same things that Jesus and the apostles taught. It is the neglect of these things, I think, that is to be blamed for the state we are in as a church and as a nation.

[Guest]

my final comment on all this is that sabbath is a gift.

if you wish to spurn it you are fools. tragic fools. but still fools.

you also are selfish since your private spirituality deprives the community of a chance for fellowship on a particular day, whatever they might choose.

you all seem to be in a private spiritual bubble, with no concern about community.

each one gets off on God whenever and however he wishes. no concern for joint fellowship. just kind of chaotic. that's how it looks to me.

and i find that very very sad.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Like I said, in the end it should be up to the individual. But since this is a discussion forum, and we are here to discuss, we try to look a both sides of the issue. The best way to do this is to point to scripture to make our case either way. Please consider the passages we brought up. If you don't agree that's your liberty, but at least try and understand why we might come to the conclusion we do about the Sabbath.

May God bless you michael pk

[Guest]

thanks for your replies. i can see your perspective better. i am sorry for my intolerant tone. i dont want to be legalistic about sabbath, but i do wish there were a time of more spiritual unity amongst believers.

perhaps the truth is that we live in a terribly fractured world. people work at home and have wildly differing schedules. there are few churches that are doctrinal sound. we all are in a sort of chaotic void. maybe the best sabbath fellowship we can hope for is on forums like this one.

again thanks for your patience with me. you guys are an anointed bunch and God bless you.

i wish to raise the following question about Biblical interpretation, and i don't know where to post it. so here it is, and maybe you can help me out with the right posting location.

i wrote this to harold camping of family radio in oakland california. he has some solid ideas but also some pretty wild ones. he says NONE of the olivet discourse has happened, at least until ten years ago. he says that Not one stone etc did not occur with jerusalem's destruction but rather is a prophecy of the future apostasy of the Christian church. he says all christian institutional churches today are apostate because they dont preach:

1. honouring sunday as a holy day of the Lord
2. women having to cover their hair in church
3. no divorce and no marriage after divorce
4. and most of all the going forth of the gospel.

he says that the churches are no longer a tool of evangelism and that is mainly done today through the electronic media like the internet and radio. he says the Lord commands all true believers today to leave the church, and this is the secret meaning of the Lord when he said to flee jerusalem when you see the armies surrounding her. meaning when the armies of apostasy surround all the established christian churches, all true believers must flee them. we can and should have home fellowships and churches, but we musnt put pastors elders and deacons in authority over us since they all are apostate.

he has a really interesting teaching about the age of the earth being 13,000 years. he derives this from the pre-flood biblical geneologies. his radical idea is that when it says A gave birth to B in year X and then A died in year Y, it means that A gave birth to B's ancestor in year X, but B himself actually was born in the year that A died. this stretches out the chronology considerably since it reduces the overlap between subsequent generations. he claims that there is substantial archeological evidence that the Flood took place long before the time Bishop Usher calculated. i would appreciate if you all thought about this and can give me some feedback. here is Mr. Camping's e-mail if you wish to write him:

info@familyradio.org

bless you all for your insight.

for Christ's Glory,
michael pk

now here is what i wrote to Mr. Camping:[/b]

To Harold Camping of http://worldwide.familyradio.org/zusa/

Dear Mr. Camping,

thank you for sending me your article about The Biblical Calendar of History:

http://worldwide.familyradio.org/zusa/g ... tents.html

i understand your desire to state that each person in the pre-Flood generations marked a distinct era. however i find your exposition of the verses giving the age at which each subsequent generation was born as not being literal but figurative to be forced.

you state that the actual explanation of verses such as the following in genesis 5:

9And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan:
10And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:
11And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died.

is that Enos begat the ancestor of Cainan at age 90, but Cainan himself was born the year Enos died at age 905. this seems to be a very forced interpretation. can you clarify this for me better?

you base your claim on the fact that the verse does not state that Enos named Cainan, and therefore you surmise Cainan was not actually born in the year 90 of Enos' life. rather Cainan's lineage was established in that year.

you also seem to rely on archeological evidence that the Flood occurred long before the year in which Bishop Usher calculated it.

does the archeological evidence absolutely prove this? this seems to be the main support for your interpretation of the Genesis geneologies.

thank you for your help. you must understand that your claim that the Biblical age of the earth is 13000 years is simply amazing and demands extreme justification.

blessings to you in Christ

[Guest]

i dont want to be legalistic about sabbath, but i do wish there were a time of more spiritual unity amongst believers.

Perhaps this place is just one of the thousands of spiritually unified pockets of believers you are wishing for.

[_Steve]

Hi Michael pk,

I can sympathize with the complaint that there is insufficient Christian unity to be found on a given day of the week, and I think this problem is due to a number of factors:

1) The divisions in the body over doctrines of secondary importance has prevented many Christians from meeting with others who hold different opinions from their own. The result is that there may be ten congregations in the same town that have 12 to 50 people in them, but meeting in buildings that could accommodate all of them at the same time. They won't share a building (which could be financially advantageous) nor will they merge their groups or meet regularly with each other, because the respective pastors would then lose their unique influence over their respective little flocks, and their people might be exposed to (and convinced of) doctrines contrary to their own. To avoid such a disaster, the groups remain insular. It may be a good thing for Christians to have their primary fellowship in smaller gatherings—even in living rooms—but they should not be separated from other brethren on the basis of fear and distrust. Also, groups of small groups gathering together into occasional larger assemblies can be very encouraging. If the only fellowship we have is with a handful of close friends, it is easy to begin to feel like an elite and marginalized micro-community. Adults sometimes find this smallness more gratifying, since they often have a wider group of contacts at work or in the community, from which they do not mind retreating into their fellowship enclave. However, I know from experience that most kids raised in such protective isolation either pick-up a religious elitist/separatist spirit, resulting in a personality less adaptable to situations and relationships of a broader adult life, or else they are eager to bolt from the group, and never look back, as soon as they are old enough to get out and satisfy their curiosity about what "normal people" do for fun. Occasional gatherings of a larger sort (a few hundred, perhaps) can satisfy the need for broader fellowship, provide a larger pool of Christians from which to select close friends, and give a sense of being part of something more mainstream and significant, rather than growing up to think that they were raised in a peculiar little cult.

2) Fellowship can be hard to find also because many of those who were once "converted" have since "reverted" to worldly pursuits. "The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches" have choked out the seed. They do not hunger for times of corporate worship, biblical exhortation and intrusive relationships with other believers. This can be the fault of the manner in which they were evangelized, in that they may never have really been confronted with the claims of Christ's lordship over their lives, or else it may simply be that the world's pull has gradually seduced them away from their former godly commitments.

3) The problem may also be that those who do not regularly attend church have not found the churches to be places where genuine spiritual nurture takes place. In such cases, it is not that the believer has backslidden, but that the churches have backslidden. It is often the most spiritually-committed people who have withdrawn their families from the institutional churches, simply because they have not found the churches to be safe spiritual environments for their children's nurture.

I believe that all of the above factors exist, and I hope that all of these things may someday change for the better. In the meantime, thirsty Christians are scratching around for living water wherever they can find a few drops. Forums like this one, I trust, may provide an occasional draught for spiritual sustenence in the emergency. Let's pray that the time will come when local spiritual assemblies will see fit to minister to these needs so that face-to-face fellowship can be enjoyed, as was the case in better times.

As for Harold Camping. I share some of his concerns about churches, but he uses much too broad a brush in painting the modern clergy. I know many pastors and elders in various churches who are not at all "apostate." However, many are. One's personal experience will often color one's perception of the state of the churches. It is easy to become cynical.

However, I agree with you that Camping's biblical exegesis is "stretched" to the point of "straining." With all due respect to the brother for the good work he has done, I have reached the conclusion that he is not as mentally stable as he once was. There is some virtue in some of the stands he takes, but little validity in his biblical exegesis, in my judgment.

[Guest]

I believe that all of the above factors exist, and I hope that all of these things may someday change for the better. In the meantime, thirsty Christians are scratching around for living water wherever they can find a few drops. Forums like this one, I trust, may provide an occasional draught for spiritual sustenence in the emergency. Let's pray that the time will come when local spiritual assemblies will see fit to minister to these needs so that face-to-face fellowship can be enjoyed, as was the case in better times.

i think the above statement is very profound and captures my feelings exactly.

thank you and bless you.

michael

[Guest]

Michael,
I'm glad you are still here. I also share in the frustration that is the local church. My local church is planning on building a bigger building complete with a gymnasium. They call it "God's Vision".
I must have missed that God wanted us to take out loans and build huge monuments, calling them the Church. It's painful to watch.