Some Christians don’t like to celebrate the events in Jesus’ life, and they follow a pseudo-Jewish calendar that includes passover and the other Jewish holy days.
Tag: Holy Day
Dec 02 2016
Christian holy days – a gift to Jesus
Adventists, and others, dislike the way the Catholic Church has set aside various days of the year for celebrating Jesus Christ. They label such things as “pagan” even if they aren’t pagan at all. (The word “pagan” is a synonym for “Catholic” amongst many of this crowd, irrespective of actual religious origins of any practice or teaching.)
Apr 02 2016
Col 2:16 – a weekly sabbath reference or not? Part 2
Several times in the Old Testament, and twice in the New Testament, we see Israel’s holy days listed in various time-based sequences, usually from frequent to infrequent (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, multi-annual). Not every list covers all 5 frequencies, but you see that they are listed in a logical order.
Mar 31 2016
Col 2:16 – a weekly sabbath reference or not? Part 1
Col 2:16 is therefore best interpreted as: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an [annual] holyday, or of the new moon, or of the [weekly] sabbath days” … thus following a time-line of annual, monthly, weekly.
Jan 19 2007
“The Sabbath, is of utmost importance!!”
One of the comments there is worth highlighting. It’s a wonderful example of how the Sabbath gets read into the New Testament Christian life without biblical support. “Sure, Korsman is right about there being no command in the New Testament to keep the Sabbath, and no clear cases where the New Testament Christians kept it …” Stark admission. But that’s where it ends.
Dec 22 2005
Adventist Christmas
Sadly, some Adventists do not celebrate Christmas. They associate it with Catholicism, and therefore consider it to be a corrupt expression of our Christian faith. … I wish all Adventists and non-Adventists a very blessed Christmas this 25 December – the sending of Our Lord – as they celebrate the Incarnation.
Nov 05 2005
From sunset to sunset
This is the passage that Adventists follow in their sunset to sunset idea of the Sabbath. Most of them don’t realise that this is part of the Mosaic law that they consider abolished, because it does not refer to the Sabbath, but to the Day of Atonement. The author cleverly conceals this fact with “…” and then lies about what the passage is describing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apr 11 2004
Rom 14:5-6 – do we need to keep the Sabbath?
The important phrase is “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” If Christians were expected to observe the Sabbath, Paul would be encouraging them to keep the Sabbath, trying to convince them of a certain point of view, not giving them freedom to do what they feel is right. He would not say that both those who ate meat and those who did not eat meat both gave thanks to God, right alongside saying those who keep the day honour God by doing so, and those who don’t also honour God by not doing so, if the Sabbath were indeed as important as Adventists claim it is.
Apr 11 2004
Col 2:14-17 – does this refer to the 7th day Sabbath?
Paul starts by mentioning that the law is nailed to the cross, and he goes on to mention a few laws as examples. One law that he mentions is the Sabbath. Sabbatarians try to argue that this word does not mean the 7th day Sabbath in this context. That argument is unscriptural and illogical for two main reasons.
Jul 19 1998
Is the Sabbath moral or ceremonial law?
Seventh-day Adventists teach that the moral law laid down by God through Moses is still intact today, and must be kept (though they, unlike their founder Ellen White, do admit that salvation does not come through the keeping of these commandments.) They also teach that the ceremonial laws laid down by God through Moses are no longer in effect today – we need no longer observe ritual purification like the ancient Israelites did, nor need we sacrifice lambs at Passover. However, they teach that the Sabbath, because it is part of the Ten Commandments, is part of the moral law, and not part of the ceremonial law. Are they right ? I had a debate on IRC with several Adventists defending their views, and managed to get nothing out of them except the claim that the Sabbath was moral law because it was part of the 10 Commandments. But they were totally unable to explain WHY.
