Tag: Sabbath

Oct 21 2005

Missing Sunday Mass a sin?

The Mass

Unless there is a good reason not to, refusal to worship with fellow Christians must be seen in a negative light – it is not good for the Christian, and it is not good for the fellowship of the Church. It is in that sense that not going to church is considered to be a sin. That is the moral sense that existed when the Sabbath was in force as well, and while the timing on the 7th day is no longer of importance to Christians, the same moral requirement to worship God applies to Christians on Sundays, Easter, Christmas, and any day when the faithful gather together as a group to celebrate some aspect of Christ’s life and work. For those who still keep the 7th day, God will judge their hearts, not their calendar, and so the same moral principle would apply to them regarding the Sabbath.

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Oct 21 2005

Pope Sylvester I – who changed the Sabbath?

Michael Scheifler has a “rebuttal” on his website to something I wrote. He claims that the pope who changed the Sabbath to Sunday was Pope Sylvester I. In light of the teachings of Ellen White, and in light of history – as taught by real historians – this cannot be seen as more than a failed attempt to make the argument seem viable. But it is not viable.

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Aug 19 2005

Isaiah 66 – from one sabbath to another

“From one week to another, and from one month to another…” NOT thinking of the Jew’s weekly feasts or monthly feasts, but simply of the continual passing of times of continual worship to YHWH.

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Aug 05 2005

“Whatever happened to Sunday?”

Sometimes we should look past Adventism’s devotion to the Sabbath and see in it their devotion to God.

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Aug 05 2005

Why Do We Worship on Sunday?

Sunday, not Saturday, is the Christian Sabbath. To continue to observe the fourth commandment on the last day of the week is to deny, by implication, the coming of Christ and his once and for all redemptive work. On the other hand, observing Sunday testifies to the fact that Christ has conquered sin and death so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

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Jul 14 2005

Bacchiocchi on the 58th General Conference

Doctor Bacchiocchi, don’t confuse type and antitype. Don’t try to prove your Sabbath theology by discrediting the New Testament’s fulfilment of the Old by means of false dichotomies used to water down the prophetic fulfilment of David’s words in Christ.

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Jun 27 2005

Samuele Bacchiocchi and HH Pope Benedict XVI

The papacy features a lot in Adventist prophecy, and it’s not surprising that Dr Bacchiocchi has taken the opportunity of the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI to promote Adventism’s anti-Catholic views. But this statement of his shows his extreme ignorance of the two men.

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Jun 17 2005

Monetary offerings on the Sabbath???

I find it odd, as a frequently used argument by Adventists is that the offerings on the first day of the week mentioned in 1 Cor 16:2 were put aside on the first day because collecting them on the Sabbath would have been breaking the Sabbath. Are Adventists today breaking the Sabbath by taking up such collections? Or is it just a bad argument?

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Dec 31 2004

Testimony of an ex-Adventist #6

Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and to those whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said: Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, he He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.

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Dec 31 2004

The Sabbath and the Catholic Church

… by Dan Severino, circa 2004 – I used to be a member of the Worldwide Church of God. I returned to the Catholic Church about a year and a half ago. My mother is a member of one of the branches of this organization and the attached article is a rough draft I’m sending her to explain the Catholic position. … This paper will, as clearly as I am capable, explain the Catholic position. I will use Catholic documents; e.g. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the papal letter of Pope John Paul II entitled Dies Domini – On Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy, various writings of Catholic scholars, secular historians, Protestant scholars, as well as the Sacred Scriptures. Even though you may not agree with the conclusions, you will understand the Catholic position.

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Dec 27 2004

To whom was the Sabbath given, as a sign of what?

These verses point out that the Sabbath was a sign between GOD and ISRAEL, that it was given as a sign of the OLD COVENANT, and that this covenant was NOT made with their fathers. Scripture speaks of God giving ISRAEL the Sabbath, not MAN, and NOT anyone before the time of Moses. It was to the people at the time of Moses that God first made known his Sabbath. With these verses, and a total lack of any text in the Bible that indicates anyone prior to Moses knew about the Sabbath, anyone without an agenda to push the Sabbath would come to the obvious conclusion that the Sabbath was given first to Moses.

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Apr 11 2004

Matt 5 – will the law never pass away?

Russian Jewelled Icon of Christ Pantocrator

Matt 5:17-19 is actually a key verse for refuting the Adventist position. Jesus says that not one jot or tittle will pass from the law UNTIL all is fulfilled. This implies that a point WILL come when ALL IS fulfilled. Let’s look at texts like Heb 7:12, 2 Cor 3:6-14; Heb 7:12; John 19:28-3, and Acts 15 (where a law given directly by God to Abraham, and called a perpetual law for ALL Abraham’s generations, is abolished by a council of the Church.) Here we get told directly that the law HAS changed (those are the words straight from Hebrews,) so we HAVE to wonder what Jesus meant. He said the heavens and the earth would be replaced with a NEW heaven and a NEW earth in that text, and only THEN could the law change, and here we see the law has changed ALREADY … so what he said MUST have come to pass … so, did we just miss the end of the world, or not?

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Apr 11 2004

Isaiah 66 – Sabbath keeping in heaven?

Adventists will tell you that this passage, particularly verse 23, shows that in the Kingdom of God, we will be keeping the Sabbath. That is a typical Sabbatarian twisting of that text. The text says that people worshipped FROM one Sabbath TO the next. It does NOT say that people worshipped ON one sabbath AND the next. If you understood Hebrew and/or English grammar, you would realise that this refers to continuous worship on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and again the next Saturday … from the one given point in time until the next given point in time. This verse is talking about perpetual worship, not worship on Saturdays only. And why is the Sabbath used as a delineation of the unit of perpetual worship ? Well, the book was written by Isaiah, a Sabbath keeper writing to Sabbath keepers. It is only natural that he would use imagery that they would understand. But it is dishonest to interpret this text as claiming that the Sabbath will be kept in the Kingdom of God, because that is NOT what the text says at all. Go back and read it for yourself.

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Apr 11 2004

Gen 2:2–3 – Did Adam keep the Sabbath?

Sabbatarians often use this text to show the importance of the Sabbath, and even that Adam kept the Sabbath. But the words “Adam knew about the Sabbath” are not in the text. The text does NOT say that Adam rested. It says that GOD rested.

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Apr 11 2004

Acts 18 – do Christians keep the Sabbath in Acts?

Yes, 72 Sabbaths spent preaching to unbelievers in a service organised by unbelievers. That was not a Christian worship service. In fact, every single such Sabbath gathering mentioned in Acts is of the same type – a NON-Christian service that some Christians were also attending to witness to those who had not yet accepted Christ. If your local Adventist pastor spent 72 Sundays preaching to Sunday-keepers in a Sunday-keeping church hall, would he be keeping Sunday? No … by the same logic, these texts are not evidence of Sabbath observance by Paul or other Christians.

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Apr 11 2004

Acts 17 – do Christians keep the Sabbath in Acts?

Adventists state that it was Paul’s manner to witness in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and from that they conclude that he worshipped there too at the same time. The text does not use the word “worship” and the word “manner” does not imply worship either.

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Apr 11 2004

Acts 16 – do Christians keep the Sabbath in Acts?

Acts 16:13 is different to the other references to the Sabbath in Acts, but nothing in this text suggests this was a Christian worship service. Yes, it was the Sabbath, but that is simply the day of the week on which it occurred. Just like at times other days of the week are named, there is NOTHING in this text that implies that this was a Sabbath service. Christians can and do worship on ANY day of the week – this was nothing special.

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Apr 11 2004

Acts 20:7 – a service on the first day of the week?

Acts 20:7 refers to a Christian worship service that was held on the first day of the week. According to the text, the service began AFTER the sunset which signaled the start of the first day, so it wasn’t even a continuation of a service that began the day before. A look at the grammar of the text in a reliable English translation, and better still, the original Greek, will prove wrong the claims by some Sabbatarian groups that this was a Sabbath service that extended into the next day – the text is explicit that the Christians only gathered for the service AFTER the first day had already begun.

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Apr 11 2004

Hebrews 4 – what is the Christian Sabbath?

Hebrews goes through a list of OLD Covenant signs and compares them to the NEW Covenant reality. If Hebrews is to be consistent in its treatment of these Old Covenant signs, the Sabbath must be treated the same was as circumcision, lambicide, and priests. Adventists claim that the Sabbath is different in this case, that it continues for Christians today, based on Heb 4:9.

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Apr 11 2004

Gal 4:10-11 – do we need to keep the Sabbath?

Paul was writing to Gentile Christians who had converted from paganism and adopted a strict Jewish way of life – going from one pointless extreme to another. They were keeping Jewish law strictly, so the days they kept were not pagan holy days. If we read the preceding chapters, we will see that Paul is talking here of the same ritualistic trappings, only this time in Judaism. He mentions circumcision in chapter 2 and he mentions the observance of days in chapter 4. The Gentiles had fallen for the heresy preached by the pro-circumcision party, which included the observance of the Old Covenant holy days – see Gal 2. They had previously been slaves to a similar mentality under their pagan beliefs – obsession with ritualistic observance of days. Paul comments on this in verse 8, and then comments on their newly acquired bondage to elements of Judaism such as he mentions in verse 10 – days, months, seasons, years.

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