What Is God’s Rest for A
Believer:
the Sabbath Day or God’s
Sabbath Spirit?
Table of Contents:
My Testimony of How I Found the Truth Concerning
the Sabbath (1)
The Sabbath Day Law in the Mosaic Law Covenant (3)
The Mosaic
Law System Was Fulfilled and Abolished in Christ (7)
The Sabbath Was A
Shadow or Type of the Holy Spirit (12)
The
Seventh Day Was Not Keep or Celebrated as a Holy Day by the Patriarchs (15)
God’s Church Met in Many Holmes Every Day to Eat
Together, Pray, Preach, and Teach God’s Word (20)
The
Sunday Was the Day
Christ Rose from the Dead
The Sabbath vs the First Day of the Week in Church
History (24)
Will Jewish Sabbaths, New Moons, and the Feast of
Tabernacles Be Observed in the Millennial Reign of Christ as a Memorial (29)
A Note from the
Author: Since Almighty God, the Lord Jesus Christ, gives His Salvation
and His Word to all freely (Rev 22:17, Mt 10:7-8), this book, and all other
books, written by Harry A. Peyton are given without charge, and can be accessed
through the Internet at the following address: http://www.DoctrinesOfChrist.com.
Therefore, fell free to copy it in digital or written form, and share it with
others. Since this book is copyrighted, the author forbids any alteration of
its contents, and the reproduction of it in any form for Marketing Purposes.
This book may be placed on anyone’s web page, as long as my website address is
attached to it.
The author believes that the Word of God is infallible in
the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE it was written in, and all translations of the Bible
regardless of how good they may be are NOT. Since the author has implicit faith
in the infallibility of the Word of God, the author has formed his
beliefs firmly on the truth of the Bible. This author uses the ancient
ANTIOCHIAN LITERAL-HISTORICAL METHOD OF INTERPRETING THE BIBLE, which was used
by early Christian Prophets and Apostles of the Bible.
I definitely believe that the ancient Alexandrian Allegorical
Method of spiritualizing scripture, which was made popular by the ancient
Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus (13 BC – 50 AD) and later used by the
Ante-Nicene Catholic Priests, especially Origen and his student Clement of
Alexandria (200 AD), is an abomination to our Lord. Therefore, all scriptures
will be interpreted in a literal exegetical fashion, unless the language used
and the context demands a spiritual interpretation.
All CAPITALIZATION and ITALICIZATION in QUOTES used in this book
is always MINE. All Biblical quotes used in this book will be in dark red, and from the New King James version of
the Bible, unless another version is stated as the reference. The vast majority
of all translations of the Bible, as well as Hebrew and Greek Lexical definitions
and grammar, will come from BibleWorks computer software program
version 7.0. The author in most places will quote
verses from the Bible instead of commenting on a verse and giving a reference;
for He believes that the written Word of God’s has greater power to inspire and
enlighten a heart to understand and act upon truth, than the elegant oratory or
writings of any man.
If this book has been a blessing to my beloved readers,
and they would like to send an offering to the author, feel free to do so. If
anyone wishes to send any biblical or historical materials to the author, my
address is: 148 Little Creek Hills Rd.: Alto, NM 88312: Phone # 575-336-2800:
Email address: DoctrineOfChrist@Hotmail.com.
Special Note: Before I begin this Bible Study, I
want to make it clear that I do not have a problem with anyone keeping the
Sabbath Day, or any other day, as their holy day or day of rest, but I do have a
problem with those who want to make it sin if others do not keep the day they
chose as their holy day. I personally do not esteem one day above another (Rom 14:4-5, 13). To me every day is a Sabbath in which to be
holy, draw near to God through prayer, worship, studying the Bible, and doing
the will of God. Sabbath Keepers are the ones who put a stumbling block in the
path of God’s Children to sin, by telling them they are committing sin by not
keeping their holy day. They openly declare that one is breaking the Fourth
Commandment if they do not keep Saturday as their Sabbath. Therefore, this book is a rebuttal and
refutation of this doctrine of devils. The Author definitely believes that the
Sabbath Day was FULFILLED in God’s true REST, that is, the Holy Spirit of God
that all true believers will receive!
My Testimony of How I Found the Truth Concerning the Sabbath
On the 16th
of March in 1971, I became a Child of God and entered into Jesus’ New Covenant
through the New Birth. Two and half years later, I did a study on the Sabbath
Day. After I finished this Biblical Study, I decided to visit an orthodox
Jewish Rabbi in
“What day of the week is the
Seventh Day in
After the Rabbi
heard these questions, he laughed and said: “When you are in the wilderness,
you pick out a day and keep it from sunset to sunset!” The wilderness he was referring to was any place
outside of
After this I
went to a Seventh Day Adventist Pastor, and asked him to teach me what he
believed about the Sabbath. After he taught me for about two hours, he then
showed me a film on the Mark of the Beast, in which the Mark was a Law given by
Roman Emperor Constantine, and later confirmed by the Catholic Church in their
decrees, which demanded that all Christians worship God every Sunday in place
of the Jewish Sabbath Day; he also told me that one day in the future all of
mankind would again be forced to keep Constantine’s LAW. He then concluded by
quoting James 2:10 to me: “For whoever keeps
the whole law and yet stumbles in one point,
he has become guilty of all.” After
that he told me if I did not keep Saturday as my Sabbath, I was guilty of
breaking the Fourth Commandment, and no sinner could inherit the
I then
proceeded to ask him the questions I asked the Rabbi. He did not or could not
answer any of them. All he could say was, according to his belief, the Sabbath
was from Friday 6 PM to Saturday 6 PM. I then pressed him to produce historical
evidence, that is, a historical calendar that went back to that time period,
which he could not. I then said:
“Evidently you cannot prove that our Friday at 6 PM through Saturday 6 PM
is the same day that God gave to the Children of
I then told
him: “The
infallible Word of God declares: ‘If
anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also will drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is
mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger;
and he will be tormented with fire
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the
Lamb. And the smoke of their torment
goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, those who
worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name’ (Rev 14:9-11). Therefore, there is no repentance for anyone who takes the
Mark of the Beast! They are definitely lost, if Sunday worship is the Mark of
the Beast!”
This pastor then changed his story and made
the Mark of the Beast a future Law by some future world government, who would
demand all people to worship their god every Sunday. I then asked him: “Where in the Bible does it say
that the Mark of the Beast is Sunday worship?” This Seventh-Day Adventist Pastor could not
produce one scripture. I then told him: “Since you cannot produce one scripture that
proves your doctrine, how can you tell Christians that they will be lost if
they do not keep Saturday as the Lord’s Sabbath! Not only this, but you cannot
produce any evidence that Saturday, on our calendar, is the Sabbath the
Children of
This author
definitely believes it is acceptable to God for His Children to pick out a day
of the week, that is, a Sunday, Saturday, or any other day of the week as a day
to REST from all physical work, as long as they do not make it a Law for all
other Christians to follow, or say that Christians are sinning before God if
they do not keep their day as the Holy Day of each week! To me, every day is a
holy day; a day to be holy before our God, and a day to pray, study the Bible,
worship, serve, and love our Savior and God: “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30)!!
The Bible
teaches that God’s Children should not judge each other, when it comes to the
matter of Holy Days (Rom 14:1-6, 13). The only
reason why I have written this book is because Sabbath Keepers have declared
that those who do not keep the Sabbath Day, that is Saturday, as God’s Holy Day
of each week are sinning, that is, they are breaking the Fourth Commandment.
Therefore, this book is a rebuttal and refutation of that doctrine of devils.
The Sabbath was
a Law given by God in the Law of Moses to God’s Old Covenant Children: “Moses
called all Israel, and said to them: ‘Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in
your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them….
The LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of
the LORD your God. In it you shall do
no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your
female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your
stranger who is within your gates,
that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And
remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God
brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm;
therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deu 5:1, 12-15).
What does the
word Sabbath mean? The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, by Dr. R.
Laird Harris, defined Sabbath (shaw-bath') to mean:
“cease, desist, [or] rest” (#2323.0). It means the same in both noun and verb forms. No Christian, under the New
Covenant of the Holy Spirit, could ever doubt that the Sabbath Day under the
Mosaic Law System was celebrated by God Jewish Children on the Seventh Day of
each week, WHATEVER DAY that was on our calendar of today.
No Christian would also deny the biblical fact that the Sabbath Day, under the Old Mosaic Law
Covenant, was a command from God to the NATION of ISRAEL, for every Israelite
had to observe it; for it was a sign, seal, and a perpetual covenant between the NATION
of ISRAEL and God (Eze 31:12-18). It was a
day that they had to rest and cease from all their physical labors (Exo 23:12; 34:21; Deu 5:13-14), and anyone found working on the Sabbath was put
to death (Num
15:32-36; Exo 35:1-3).
The real debate
between Christians today is not that God gave the Sabbath Day Law to the Nation
of Israel, or what regulations God gave in the mode of keeping it, but whether
or not the Sabbath Day Law of the Old Mosaic Law Covenant is in the New
Covenant Laws of Christ! IF the Sabbath Day command that was given to
My readers
should remember that according to the Bible and Church History the Day of
Pentecost marks the beginning of the New Covenant, and the
This Bible
study is given to help God Children to understand that the Mosaic Old Testament
Sabbath Day Law was fulfilled in the REST the Holy Spirit brings to all
believers in our Savior and God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the Sabbath was
God’s SIGN and SEAL to His Old Testament Children, the Holy Spirit is God’s SIGN
and SEAL to His New Testament Children (2Co 1:21-22; Eph 1:13; 4:30; Mk 16:17-18). Just as God gave the Sabbath Day as a means to
sanctified His Old Testament Children (Eze 20:12), the Holy Spirit sanctifies all of God’s New Testament Children in Christ (Rom 15:16; 1Co 6:11). God’s New Testament Church kept every day as a
Sabbath Day, whereby they rested in the Holy Spirit, worshipped, and drew nigh
to God.
This study will
reveal that God gave the Sabbath Day to the Children of Israel in the Wilderness
because of the hardness of their hearts and their unbelief, but this was not
God’s perfect will, for God really wanted to give them His TRUE REST, that is,
the Holy Spirit (cp Heb 4 with Isa 28:9-12, 1Co 14:21-22 & Acts 2:4). These verses will be thoroughly examined later.
Just as God could not give the Children of
This truth can
clearly be seen when: “Moses went up to God, and the LORD
called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of
Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on
eagles' wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey
My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above
all people; for all the earth is Mine.
And you shall be to Me a
Therefore,
because of the hardness of their hearts and rebellion towards YHWH, their God
could not give them His Holy Spirit or make them a NATION of PRIESTS; all He
could do is to take the tribe of Levi
and make them His priests. The Bible
definitely reveals that the Holy Spirit
is God’s true rest, and not some day of the week, and every day is a
Sabbath Day to the Children of God when they are resting in God’s Spirit.
From the Book
of Acts until the Book of Jude, which contain the Laws of Christ, NO WHERE can
we find ONE LAW concerning the keeping of the Sabbath Day. Surely if the Old
Covenant Sabbath Day Commandment was a Law that was pass on into the New
Covenant, surely the APOSTLES who gave us the New Covenant Laws of Christ would
have MENTION it and declared it to be sin not to keep it, as they did with the other NINE Commandments. Surely any intelligent Christian would ask the
question why the APOSTLES of Christ would mention NINE Commandment, as being in
the Laws of Christ in the New Testament, and leave out the Sabbath (Rom 3:21-22; 13:9-10; 1Co 6:9-11;
8:5-11; Ga 4:8-11; 5:19-21; Eph 6:2; Ja 2:7, 11; 4:2-4).
Not only this,
but when the APOSTLES, ELDERS, and the entire Church in Jerusalem meet in the
First Church Council to settle the debate whether or not the Gentile Churches
of Christ should keep the Law of Moses, which included the Sabbath Day Law in
it. The Bible recorded this event this way: “And
certain men came down from
But some of the sect
of the Pharisees who believed rose up, saying, ‘It is necessary to circumcise
them, and to COMMAND them to KEEP the
LAW of MOSES [which
included the Sabbath Day].’ Now the apostles and
elders came together to consider this matter…. Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole
church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and
Barnabas, namely, Judas who was also
named Barsabas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren.
They wrote this letter by them:
The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, To the brethren who are of the
Gentiles in
Therefore, the
Apostle, Elders, and the entire Church Body of Jewish Believers decided through
the leading of the Holy Spirit that the Gentiles Churches of God did NOT have
to KEEP the LAW of MOSES, including the Sabbath Day Law! This was truly amazing
for God’s Jewish Churches PROBABLY kept the Law of Moses, including the Sabbath
Day, because they were trying to win their fellow Jews to Christianity, who
lived in
If Jewish
Christians did not keep the Law of Moses perfectly, or place themselves under
the yoke of the Mosaic Law, they would have not converted one Jew to
Christianity; for they would have been considered Law breakers by the Jews who
were living under the bondage of the Old Mosaic Law System. This is why the
apostle Paul said: “to the JEWS I became as a JEW that I might WIN Jews; to those who are UNDER the LAW, as under the Law, that I might WIN those who are under the LAW” (1Co
9:20).
Consequently,
every Seventh Day Law Keeper, who believes their doctrine is a matter of
Salvation, should ask him or herself did the Apostles, Elders, and the Church
in Jerusalem commit sin by not demanding the Gentile Churches to keep the Law
of Moses, which contain in it the Sabbath Day Law? If they truly believe that
any Christian of today, and in times past, committed
sin by not keeping the Fourth Commandment, then they must say that the
Apostles and the early Christians did commit sin!!! Oh, what an awful statement
and predicament the Sabbath Day Keepers would find themselves in!
What about my
beloved readers, do you believe the infallible APOSTLES, who were definitely
taught by our Lord and Savior and led by the Holy of Spirit of God, made a
mistake? If so there goes the infallibility and inspiration of the Bible! There
is absolutely no contradiction between the REST of the Old Covenant Sabbath Day
and its New Covenant fulfillment in Christ through the REST of the Holy Spirit!!!
Those Sabbath
Keepers, who live under the Mosaic Old Covenant Law System, teach that the New
Covenant began with Jesus’ birth and that He kept the Sabbath Day Law. Jesus
did keep the Sabbath, and the reason why He did is: He lived in a time when the
Old Mosaic Law Covenant was still in effect. The New Covenant did not begin in
Jesus’ life time, for the infallible Word of God declared:
“For where
there is a testament [will or covenant], there must also of necessity be the
DEATH of the testator [i.e. Christ]. For a testament is in force AFTER men are DEAD, since it has NO POWER at all while the testator [Christ] lives” (Heb 9:16-17); also “IF Christ is NOT RISEN, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…. And IF Christ is NOT RISEN, your faith is futile; you are
still in your sins” (1Co 15:14, 17).
Therefore, it
took the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to
bring in or establish the New Covenant! As a result, no Sabbath Keeper could
claim that Christ keep the Sabbath in the New Covenant period. If Christ did
not keep the Sabbath Day, under the Old Mosaic Covenant, then He would have
been a sinner, and His precious blood would not have been able to save anyone.
Christ had to fulfill the Law, and
not break it, before He could change the Law! Jesus Christ, the one and only
God, who gave the Law to Moses, said it this way:
“Do not think that I came to destroy
the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to FULFILL. For
assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle
will by no means pass from the law till all is FULFILLED” (Mt 5:17-18). Paul taught this same truth when he wrote: “For
the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a CHANGE of the LAW. For He of whom these
things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at
the altar. For it is evident that our
Lord arose from
No Sabbath
Keeper cannot deny that Jesus left out the Sabbath Day or Fourth Commandment
when naming the Commandments of God (Mt 19:16-19; Mk 10:19; Lk 18:18-20). In the Epistles that the APOSTLES wrote to God’s
Churches, the Sabbath Day Law is NOT given, or even mentioned, when they named
the Commandments! Since this is the truth, every
honest hearted Child of God should ask him or herself this question: why did
they not mention the Sabbath Day, if they truly believe it was a sin not to
keep it? The only time we find
the Sabbath Day mentioned during the Church Age is in the Book of Acts, that
is, when the apostle Paul went to Jewish synagogues, and other places where
Jews meet to pray, to try to CONVERT them to Christianity (Acts 13:14-44; 16:13-15; 18:4). The Sabbath Day is also mention
in: Colossian 2:16-17 where it is revealed as a TYPE of
the Holy Spirit.
If the Fourth Commandment is a
Law that must be kept in the New Covenant, then why did great Jewish apostle
Paul give each Child of God in each Church an option to esteem or not to esteem
one day above another? Paul said it this way: “Receive one who is WEAK in the faith, but NOT to disputes over doubtful things. For one
believes he may eat all things, but he who is WEAK eats only vegetables…. One person [i.e. one who is weak in faith] esteems one day ABOVE another; another esteems every day ALIKE. Let each be FULLY CONVINCED [plerophoreo] in his own mind…. [For] he who DOUBTS is condemned if he eats [or keeps or not keep a certain
day], because he does not eat [or keeps or not keep a certain
day] from FAITH; for whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:1, 5, 23). The verb “plerophoreo” is: in the present tense, imperative mood, passive voice, and 3rd
person singular. Drs
Friberg defined this verb as: “of
persons to be fully convinced, be completely certain, be fully assured” (#22166).
If it is a sin for God’s Children
not to keep the Sabbath day in New Testament times, Paul would have never told
the Church: let each one of you be fully convinced, assured, or certain
concerning your choice, for if you doubt your choice it is sin. If not keeping the Jewish Sabbath Day is a sin,
surely Paul would have told believers who esteemed every day alike: the Law of
Moses commands you to keep the Sabbath Day! The only problem with this is:
there is no place in the New Testament where Paul, or any other apostle, ever
gives such a command! If Paul, or any other apostle, believed that lie of
Satan, they would committed a grievous sin by not giving and enforcing that Law
on the Gentile Churches of God, who knew nothing about keeping Jewish Sabbaths
as a holy day.
The
Mosaic Law System Was
Fulfilled and Abolished in Christ
What Sabbath Keepers willing forget, or they are just
plain ignorant of: is the fact that God connected Eternal Life with the keeping of all
of the Law of Moses under the Old Covenant. This is why God had to abolish the
entire Mosaic Law System, and not just the ceremonial ordinances. For as long
as the Law was in effect, Jews of the past and present could be saved WITHOUT
CHRIST’S SACRIFICAL ATONEMENT, just by keeping the Laws of Moses. This truth
can clearly be seen in the following passages of scripture:
God told the
nation of
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lived in a
time when the Law of Moses was still in effect, confirmed this truth when a
Jewish lawyer stood up to test Him by saying: “Teacher, what
shall I do to inherit Eternal Life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in
the LAW [of
Moses]? What is your reading of it?’ So he answered and said, ‘You
shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And He
said to him, ‘You have answered rightly; do this and you will LIVE [Eternally]” (Lk
10:25-28).
Our Lord and God confirmed this truth again when
a certain rich man said to Him: “Good
Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?’ So He said
to him… ‘if you want to enter into [Eternal] life, keep the commandments.’ He said to Him, ‘Which
ones?’ Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’
‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father
and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 19:16-19).
Let my readers take note, the 4th Commandment or Sabbath Day Law was
not mentioned in either of the above scriptures!
Therefore, it is very evident that our Lord
connected Eternal Life with keeping the works of the Law under the Mosaic
Covenant. God offered Eternal Life under the Old Covenant to the Jews on the
condition that they earnestly strive to keep the Mosaic Law System. One should
keep in mind that no one could be saved or have Eternal Life under the New
Covenant, until Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead (Heb 9:15-17; 1Co 15:14-18).
Once the New Covenant began on the Day of
Pentecost, the Mosaic Law System began
to be abolished, whereby no one could be saved by keeping the works of
the Law any longer. According to
Who or
what was this Stumbling Stone? The apostle Peter said it was Christ (1Pe 2:6-8). Because these Jews rejected Jesus
as their Messiah and Savior, and His gospel, they were lost. No one can be
saved without the ATONEMENT of Christ, no matter holy they may be and how many
commandments they kept! Paul confirmed this
when he said: “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them
that are lost” (2Co 4:3); and “For by grace [Christ] you
have been saved through faith [in His gospel], and that not
of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).
Paul spoke
of
Because of this great truth, the great apostle
Paul was always fighting and writing against Jewish Christian Pharisees, who taught that all
Christians had to keep the entire Mosaic Law System to be saved (Acts 15:1-29); and it appears that things have not changed
much today, for the Sabbath Christian Law Keepers still make the Sabbath Day a
prerequisite to salvation. Sometimes you wonder if they are reading the same
Bible you are. If they are, they are not rightly dividing the Word of Truth by
comparing scripture with scripture.
The great apostle declared that these Sabbath
Keepers are blinded by the veil of the Mosaic Law system. Paul declare
that the Old Mosaic Covenant, which contained the Ten Commandment, was
fulfilled in Christ through the New Covenant of His precious blood. For the
above reason, this GLORIOUS COVENANT was done away with in Christ. Paul said it
this way:
“Now if the ministry that brought death, which was ENGRAVED in letters on
STONE came with glory, so that the
Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory,
fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit [i.e. in New Covenant] be even more glorious…?
And if what was FADING AWAY came with glory, how much greater is the glory of
that which lasts” (2Co 3:7-11, NIV).
Paul
said the same thing, when he told the Church in
God confirmed
Paul’s teaching on the abolishment of the Sabbath, and other Laws of Moses, when
He spoke through prophet Hosea and said: “I will also cause all her mirth to
CEASE, Her FEAST DAYS, Her New Moons, Her SABBATHS, [and] All her appointed feasts” (Hos 2:11). The
Greek OT Septuagint read this way: “I will take away all her gladness, her feasts, and her
festivals at the new moon, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies” (The English Translation of The Septuagint Version of
the Old Testament by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton).
What can be
clearer than this prophetic prophecy? God said He would some day abolish or do
away with all their Sabbath Days and even all their Feasts. If this did not
happen when the New Covenant began, as the apostle Paul above declared, or even
in 70 AD, than please tell me when in history was this prophecy fulfilled?
God, no doubt, decided to abolish His own laws on:
Incense, Sabbath Days, New Moons, and the
convocations of Passover, Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement because of
the unrepented sins of Israel. In fact, they became so sinful in His sight that
they made keeping of His laws an abomination to Him. This is why God thundered
out: “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is
detestable to me. New Moons, SABBATHS, and convocations, I cannot bear your
EVIL assemblies” (Isa 1:13, NIV).
Paul
speaking of salvation in Christ alone told the Galatians: “By
the deeds [or works] of the Law [system of Moses] no
flesh will be justified [saved or have Eternal Life] in
His sight, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). Therefore, the Law was not their
Savior, for it was powerless to save anyone. The Jews, like Law Keepers of
today, did not realize: “The Law [system of Moses] was
our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be
justified by faith” in the gospel of Christ (Ga 3:24); and “What purpose then does the law serve?
It was ADDED [i.e. given to
The moment a Holiness Preacher declares that the
Mosaic Law System was fulfilled and abolished in Christ, Sabbath Keepers wail
out and say: “You mean there are no Laws of
God today. There is nothing that can be considered as sin. Are you saying that
it is no longer sin to violate the Commandments of God? In other words, it is
no longer a sin to steal, commit adultery, murder, and so on.” The
Holiness Preacher than responds: “God forbid! The Laws of Christ
in the New Covenant mentions Nine of the Ten Commandments and many other
Commandments as sin.” No one can dispute the fact that the apostles never mentioned the 4th
Commandment in any of their epistles, but they definite mention as sin the
other Nine Commandments. The following is the proof:
First Commandment: 1
Corinthians 8:4-6: “Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol
is nothing in the world, and that there is
NO OTHER GOD but ONE. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in
heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is
ONE GOD, the FATHER.”
Second Commandment: 1 John
5:21 : “Little children, keep yourselves from IDOLS;” and Romans 1:22-25:
“Professing to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an IMAGE made like
corruptible man -- and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts,
to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for
the lie, and WORSHIPED and SERVED the CREATURE rather than the Creator.”
Third Commandment: Romans
2:23-24: “You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God
through breaking the law? For ‘the NAME of God is BLASPHEMED among the Gentiles
because of you,’ as it is written;” and James 2:7: “Do they not BLASPHEME that noble NAME by which you are
called?”
Fifth Commandment:
Ephesians 6:2: “HONOR your FATHER and MOTHER,’ which is the first commandment with promise.”
Sixth – Tenth Commandments: “For the commandments, ‘You shall not
commit ADULTERY’ [Seventh Commandment], ‘You shall not MURDER’ [Sixth Commandment], ‘You shall not STEAL’ [Eight Commandment], ‘You shall not bear FALSE WITNESS’ [Ninth Commandment], ‘You shall not COVET’ [Tenth Commandment], and if there is any other
commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the
fulfillment of the law” (Rom 13:9-10). Compare all of the above commandments with the Ten
Commandments given in Deuteronomy 5: 6-21.
The New
Testament Commandments cover much more than these nine commandments, for
example: Galatians 5:19-21: “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are:
adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred,
contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions,
heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell
you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the
kingdom of God.”
Romans
1:26-32: “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women
exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men,
leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men
with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty
of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do
those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness,
sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors
of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving,
unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those
who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also
approve of those who practice them.”
Do you
Sabbath Keepers think for one moment the great Jewish apostle accidental missed
mentioning the Sabbath Day Law of the OT in this, and all other lists, of SINS
that are in the Laws of Christ in the NT. I ask you, where in any of the
epistles of the apostles, do you find them ever mentioning the Sabbath Day,
especially not keeping it as sin? Where do these inspired men of God eve
include the Sabbath Day Law into the NT Laws of Christ? Since you cannot find
one place in the Epistles of the Apostles, why do you insist in making it a sin
not to keep the Sabbath Day? Where do you find anywhere in the New Testament
that our Savior or any of His apostles threaten Christians with any
penalty, punishment, or curse for not keeping the Sabbath Day, as you find in
many places in the Old Testament against the Jews?
The apostle Paul warned Sabbath Keepers that they
would be lost if they did not repent of their false doctrine. The apostle said
it this way: “I marvel that you are turning
away so soon from Him [God] who called you in the grace of Christ,
to a DIFFERENT GOSPEL, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you
and want to PERVERT the gospel of
Christ” (Ga 1:6-7); and “I do not set aside
the grace [i.e. salvation] of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law [of Moses], then Christ died in vain” (2:21);
and “You
OBSERVE [Jewish] DAYS and months and seasons and
years. I am afraid for you…. Tell me,
you who desire to be under the Law [of Moses], do you not hear the Law?” (4:10-11, 21); and “You have become estranged [i.e. alienated] from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by Law [i.e. the Law of Moses]; you have FALLEN from GRACE” that is, the SALVATION of Christ (5:4).
Summary:
Paul emphatically told both Jewish and Gentile Christians that God was no longer
offering Eternal Life through the Mosaic Law System; for it was a schoolmaster
to point or lead them to Christ. In other words, because people are not
perfect, no one could keep the Law perfectly, regardless of how hard they
tried. Because we all have sinned, we all need a Savior to redeem us from our
sins and the curse of death that came through the Law. The Law showed man that
he was a sinner and that he need the grace of Christ, which under the Old
Covenant was contained or hidden in the types
and shadows of the sacrificial laws.
Since the New Covenant began, God’s grace
can only be received by faith in Christ and our obedience to His New Birth
message, which is how we receive, become partakers of, or enter into Jesus’
death, burial, and resurrection; (for a comprehensive study
on how to receive Eternal Life, read my book on my website entitled: Preacher, What Must I Do to Receive Eternal
Life).
Therefore, the entire Mosaic Law System,
including the Sabbath, had to be abolished, so Eternal Life could come through
the atonement of Christ. All the types and shadows mention in the Mosaic Law
System were fulfilled in Christ. The Law began to be eradicated on the Day of
Pentecost and was completely abolished in 70 AD,
when the city of Jerusalem and the Temple was destroyed by the Roman Army under
General Titus.
The apostle Paul, no doubt referring to the
prophecy
of Hosea
2:11, interpreted it to mean that the Sabbath Day, along with all the
other Laws of Moses, was fulfilled and abolished in Christ’s atonement. Paul
speaking of Christ wrote: He “CANCELED the WRITTEN CODE, with its regulations [i.e. the Mosaic Law System], that was against us and that stood opposed
to us; He took it away [i.e. ABOLISHED IT], nailing it to the cross….
Therefore [i.e.
because of the above truth] do NOT let anyone judge
you by what you eat or drink, or with
regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a SABBATH DAY. These are a SHADOW [skia] of the things that were to come; the REALITY [i.e. what they represent], however, is found in CHRIST” (
Drs. Friberg defined the Greek word skia as: “prophetically, of the relation of TYPE to antitype foreshadowing
(Col 2.17)” (#24566). Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary defined the word
“type” as: “a person or thing (as
in the Old Testament) believed to foreshadow
another (as in the New Testament).”
Therefore, accord to the great apostle the religious
festival (such as Passover, Pentecost, Day of Atonement), the New Moon
celebration, the Sabbath Day,
and Animal Sacrifices were all fulfilled and abolished in Christ, not only
this, but all of these things were a prophetic
TYPE or SHADOW of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. For
example: God speaking of the purpose
of the Sabbath said: “I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a
sign between them and Me, that they might
know that I am the LORD who SANCTIFIES them” (Eze 20:12). Paul
told God’s Children they were “washed,” SANTIFIED,”
and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by
the SPIRIT of our God” (1Co 6:11). Just as God sanctified
or set Israel apart from the world through Sabbath observance, God set the Church
apart from the world “through SANCTIFICATION by the SPIRIT” (2Th 2:13).
Just as
Israel’s obedience to God’s Sabbath Day Law brought God’s blessings and the
seal of approval on their individual lives (Deu 28:1-14), God’s
NT People’s obedience to the Gospel of Christ brought God’s seal of approval on
their lives, which was the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Paul said it this way: “after listening to
the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation-- having also believed, you
were SEALED in Him with the HOLY SPIRIT of promise” (Eph 1:13); and God “SEALED
us and gave us the SPIRIT in our
hearts as a pledge” (2Co 1:22).
God gave
the Sabbath Day to be a REST to His OT people: “Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh day shall be a holy day
for you, a Sabbath of REST” (Exo 35:2). The Sabbath Day REST was without a doubt nothing but a SHADOW or TYPE
of the TRUE REST Christ would give
His New Covenant Children. Did not our Lord and Savior say: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you REST. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am
gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find REST for your souls. For My yoke is easy
and My burden is light” (Mt 11:28-29).
According to the Bible, Jesus’ REST comes through His Holy Spirit. The prophet Isaiah
speaking of how the Holy Spirit would come and bring REST to God’s New Covenant
Children said: “Whom shall He [God] teach knowledge? And whom shall He make to understand DOCTRINE…? For with
stammering lips and another TONGUE He
will speak to this people, To whom He said, ‘This is the REST with which You
may cause the weary to REST,’ And, ‘This is
the REFRESHING’; Yet they would NOT hear” (Isa 28:9,
11-12).
The
apostle Paul interpreted this prophecy and applied it to receiving the Baptism
of the Holy Spirit, in which a New Covenant Child of God could SPEAK in a LANGUAGE that he
or she has NEVER LEARNED, that
is, through the power of the Holy Spirit!! Paul said it this way: “In the law [i.e. the Book of Isaiah] it is written: ‘With men of other [i.e. UNLEARNED] TONGUES and other lips I will speak to this people; And
yet, for all that, they will NOT hear Me,’ says the Lord. Therefore TONGUES are
for a SIGN, not to those who believe
but to unbelievers [i.e. unbelievers in this
DOCTRINE]; but
prophesying is not for unbelievers but for those who believe” (1Co 14:21-22).
According
to Isaiah and Paul, some of God’s New Testament Children would NOT believe the
above DOCTRINE or TEACHING. It is
a real tragedy that some of God’s Children will miss out on God’s True Rest
because some preacher taught them wrong! Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost when God first
poured out His Holy Spirit REST on
His New Covenant Children. Dr. Luke recorded this event this way: “And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other [i.e. UNLEARNED] TONGUES, as the SPIRIT gave them utterance [i.e. the Language to speak in]” (Acts
2:4).
Jesus interpreted Isaiah’s prophecy of how the REST of the Holy Spirit would be given this way: “The
Spirit [Pneuma] breathes where He desires, and the voice [phone
also means language] of Him you hear, but you know not where He comes, and
where He goes, so is everyone having received birth from the Spirit [Pneuma]” (Morris’ Literal Translation of the Bible; also see The Interlinear Bible by
J. P. Green).
The apostle Paul compared the REST of the Sabbath Day to the REST of the Holy Spirit in the Third and Fourth
chapters of Hebrew. From the time the Children of
Paul said
it this way: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:
‘Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts AS in the
REBELLION, in the day of trial in the Wilderness,
where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years.... So I
swore in MY WRATH, ‘They shall NOT ENTER [i.e. RECEIVE] MY REST….’ And to whom did He swear that they would NOT
enter His REST, but to those who did not
obey? So we see that they could NOT enter in because of unbelief” (Heb 3:7-9,
11, 18-19).
Since God gave the Children of Israel the Rest
of the Sabbath Day in the Wilderness, which they had for forty years, the REST
God wanted to give them could NOT have been the REST of the Sabbath Day. The apostle Paul, after he
established this infallible truth, then goes on to teach God’s New Testament
Children about God’s TRUE REST that can only come though His Holy Spirit, which is so much greater
than any Sabbath Day Rest could ever be. In Hebrews the 4th chapter,
Paul warned some Christians about failing to walk in God Spirit, whereby they
would miss out on REST the Holy Spirit gives. In other words, when a believer
receives the Holy Spirit, the Spirit will lead them to cease from their own works of righteousness
and REST in God’s Spirit. Paul said
it this way:
“Therefore, since the promise of
entering HIS REST still stands, let US be careful that none of you [i.e. Christians] be found to have fallen short of it. For WE also have had the gospel preached to US, just as they [i.e. those in the Wilderness] did; but the message they heard was
of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now WE who have believed ENTER that REST, [if this Rest is not God’s Holy
Spirit, then what rest is Paul referring to,] just as God has said, ‘So I declared on oath in My
anger, ‘They [i.e.
those in the Wilderness] shall never enter MY REST.’ And yet His work has been finished since the
creation of the world. For somewhere [i.e. Gen 2:3] He has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘And on the seventh
day GOD RESTED from all His work.
And again in the passage above He
says, ‘They shall never enter My Rest.’ It still remains that some [Christians] will enter that Rest, and those [in the Wilderness] who formerly had the gospel
preached to them did NOT go in, because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day, CALLING IT
TODAY, when a long time later He spoke through David [Psa 95:7-11], as was said before: ‘Today, if you
hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest,
God would not have spoken later [i.e. through David] about another day. There remains,
then, a [true] Sabbath-Rest for the people of God;
for anyone who enters God’s Rest also rests from his OWN WORK, just as God did
from His. Let US, therefore, make every effort to enter that Rest, so that no
one will fall by following their example of disobedience” (Heb 4:1-11).
Paul could not have referred to the Sabbath Day
Rest as the Christian’s REST, for he kept the Sabbath Day as a Pharisee, and
the Children of
The Seventh Day
Was Not Keep or Celebrated as a Holy Day by the Patriarchs
Sabbath
Christians, who are still living under the Jewish Old Covenant of the Mosaic
Law System, defend their belief by falsely claiming that the Patriarchs, such
as Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all other pre-flood fathers
keep the Sabbath as a holy day. Therefore, they claim that the Sabbath Day is
an eternal Law of God that applies to all ages of the human race. They teach
that the word “remember” used in Exodus 20:8 refers to a command or law God gave to Adam at
creation, and later to the Patriarchs.
A close
examination of this doctrine will reveal that it is not true, for the word “remember” in that passage of scripture, definitely refers
to Exodus 16th chapter, where the word Sabbath first appears in the
Bible. The Law of the Sabbath and the Law of Manna were the first
laws God gave to the Children of
Exodus
16:23-27: “Then he [Moses] said to them, ‘This is what the LORD has said: Tomorrow is a Sabbath
rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD.
Bake what you will bake today, and
boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept
until morning….’ Then Moses said, ‘Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath
to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather
it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none.’ Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none.”
Evidently, this Sabbath Law was NEW to the Children of
Exodus
16:28-31: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘How long do you refuse to
keep My commandments and My laws? See! For the LORD has given YOU the Sabbath; therefore He gives YOU on the
sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain
in his place; let no man go out of
his place on the seventh day.’ So the people
rested on the seventh day. And
the house of
When the
Children of
In verse 8, God reminded them to keep the Sabbath
Day Law or Commandment He gave them during the time of the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. In verse 11, God gave them
a REASON why He wanted them to cease from their works and rest on the Sabbath
Day. God said it was because He ceased from His works and rested at that time.
Since the Bible teaches: “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” to the
Lord (2Pe 3:8). It
could be that the Seventh Day was a type of the REST God will give in the
Millennial Rein of Christ through the Holy Spirit; and the six days of creation
is a type of the length of time, that is 6,000 years, God has given man to rule
himself on the earth.
Another possible reason why God mentioned the 6
days of creation is: God want all of His Children to KNOW that He created the
entire universe in SIX literal DAYS, and NOT through billions of years of
evolution as ancient pantheistic religions and modern-day paleontology religion
teaches. He also wanted them to know that on the seventh day He ceased and
rested from all of His creative works.
Regardless of what reason or reasons God had in
mind in mentioning the Seventh Day of creation in the 4th
Commandment, the fact remains, nowhere in the above passage of scripture, or in
any other place in the Bible, did any of God’s prophets or apostles ever
declare that the Sabbath Day Law, that God gave to the Children of Israel in
the Wilderness, was a Law he gave to Adam or any of his descendants before that
time. Because of this truth, the word “remember” used in the 4th
Commandment must be referring to Exodus the 16th chapter.
Is it not strange that Sabbath Day Keepers, in
their writings on the Sabbath Day, neglect to inform their readers that the 16th chapter of Exodus is the
“For the origin of the Sabbatic institution we must go
to the earliest record of time, when our first
parents came from the hand of their Maker…. An institution thus early ordained for the benefit of mankind,
must have been honored by the pious worshippers of God from the time it was ordained…. The fourth commandment was ordained at the creation.
It commences with the command to ‘Remember the
Sabbath to keep it holy….’ He identifies the day he commands them to
keep, with the original Sabbath: and
thus removes all doubt as to the regular
succession of the Sabbath from the beginning of the work of creation.”
Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi, a Professor of
Theology and Church History at Andrews University, in an internet article
entitled Current Sabbath Issues,
also attempted to prove the Sabbath Law was given at Creation to the human
race. He wrote: “The first argument used to negate the university and
continuity of the Sabbath is the denial of its creation origin. The argument
attempts to prove that the Sabbath is not a creation ordinance for humanity but
a Mosaic command given to the Jews.
The major
argument in supp[ort of this thesis is the absence
of an explicit command to observe the seventh day in Genesis 2:2-3. it is said that there is no command for mankind to rest in the
Genesis account. Also that there is nothing
expressly mentioned regarding man in the seventh-day-creation rest. This argument ignores five important
considerations. First, Genesis is not a book of commands but of origins. NONE
of the TEN COMMANDMENTS are ever MENTIONED in Genesis, yet we know that their principles were known because we
are told, for example, ‘Abraham obeyed my voice and
kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws’ (Gen 26:5).
It is evident Abraham knew God’s
commandments and laws, though no
reference is made to them in the book of Genesis” (www.sdanet.org/atissue/sabbath/bacchiocchi-2.htm).
Out of
the so-called “five important considerations,”
Bacchiocchi only uses scriptures to support two
of them, and the other three are nothing but mere assumptions without any
support whatsoever! Therefore, let us examine his supposedly scripture support.
Mr. Bacchiocchi admitted that the Ten Commandments
are NOT mentioned in the Book of
Genesis! But after he makes this confession, he then contradicts himself by declaring Abraham knew them because God gave
them to him and his forefathers. If Mr. Bacchiocchi really believed this lie,
why did he NOT give ONE commandment or law that Abraham was suppose to have
known. The Word of God definitely reveals that God did NOT give Abraham the Ten
Commandments, but He did give him the following commandments and laws:
God’s
COMMANDMENTS to Abraham: “Get out of your country
[1st
Commandment], From your family [2nd Commandment], and from your father's house [3rd Commandment], [and go] to a land that I will show you [4th Commandment]” (Gen 12:1,
NIV). Later on
God gave other COMMANDMENTS to Abraham:
“Take now your son, your only son Isaac,
whom you love, and go to the
God also
gave Abraham LAWS to follow for the Covenant of Circumcision, which were: “God
said to Abraham: “This is My
covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after
you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised [1st Law]….
He who is eight days old among
you shall be circumcised [2nd Law]…. And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of
his foreskin, that person shall be cut
off from his people [3rd Law]” (Gen 17:10, 12, 14).
Abraham obeyed God’s Laws of Circumcision by taking: “Ishmael his son, all
who were born in his house, and all who were bought with his money, every male
among the men of Abraham’s house, and circumcised
the flesh of their foreskins that very same day, as God had said to him.
Abraham was ninety-nine years old
when he was circumcised in the flesh
of his foreskin” (Gen 17:23).
Dr.
Bacchiocchi continued: “The clinching witness for the
creation-origin of the Sabbath is the testimony of Jesus himself. In refuting
the charge of Sabbath-breaking levelled against His disciple, Jesus referred to
the original purpose of the Sabbath ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’
(Mark 2:27). Christ’s choice of words is significant. The verb ‘made-ginomai’
alludes to the original ‘making’ of the
Sabbath [his
interpretation not lexical fact] and the word ‘man-anthropos’
suggests its human function. Thus to establish the human and universal value of
the Sabbath, Christ reverts to its very origin RIGHT AFTER the creation of
man…. The consistent witness of the Scripture is that the Sabbath is a creation
ordinance for the benefit of humanity.”
What Bacchiocchi fails to mention is the word
Sabbath is not used in God’s Genesis discourse, but as I stated above, it is
first used in Exodus the 16th chapter. I believed Dr. Jay P.
Green, Sr. gave the best translation of this verse in his Interlinear Greek-English New Testament: “The Sabbath came into to being [i.e. existence] because of man, not man because of the Sabbath.”
Therefore, Jesus’ primary emphasis is
NOT on WHEN the Sabbath originated, but
WHY it came into existence. In other words, God did not create mankind because
He had a day in mind for them to keep! God brought the Sabbath Day Law into
existence so man could have a day to rest his body on, which would be a type of
the TRUE REST God would give His Children through the Holy Spirit.
Dr.
Bacchiocchi distorted explanation of the above verse does not even consider the
full context of the above verse. The Pharisees put so much emphasis on the Sabbath
Day that to them man was much less important. No doubt they thought, as many
Sabbath Keepers do today, that God made man because He needed someone to keep
His LAWS, which included the Sabbath Day Law. These Laws would show God’s power
and authority over mankind.
According
to this view point, God would be an egomaniac who created humans so He could
rule over them. Believe it or not, some people have this distorted view of God.
God is NOT an egomaniac, Lucifer is! God created man because He wanted someone
to give His love to and receive their love in return (Deu 6:5;
1Jo 4:19; Jn 3:16). This is why God gave the First Commandment.
Let us
not forget, the Apostle Paul taught that from Adam to Moses there was NO Laws
of God in effect: “Therefore, just as through one man
sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men,
because all sinned. (For until the Law [i.e. the Law of Moses] sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is NO LAW.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the
transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Rom 5:12-14). The
only precept I can find in the Bible that God gave to man was: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed” (Gen 9:6).
Therefore, the Bible explicitly reveals that the
Sabbath was not a Law or Command God gave Adam and Eve and their descendents to
obey. There are no scriptures that teach that doctrine. The following passage
of scripture also teaches that Adam,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all
other godly men before Moses did NOT keep,
or even knew, about the Fourth Commandment:
“Moses summoned all the Israelites and
said to them: Hear, O Israel, the laws and rules that I proclaim to you this
day! Study them and observe them faithfully! The LORD our God made a COVENANT
with US at Horeb. It was NOT with OUR FATHERS that the LORD made this COVENANT,
but with US, the living, every one of US who is here today” (1985 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Bible).
In AD 150,
Justin Martyr of
Justin
continued: “Those [Jews] who have
persecuted and do persecute Christ, if they do not repent, shall not inherit
anything on the holy mountain. But the Gentiles, who have believed on Him, and
have repented of the sins which they have committed, they shall receive the
inheritance along with the patriarchs and the prophets, and the just men who are descended from Jacob, even although they neither keep the Sabbath, nor are
circumcised, nor observe the feasts. Assuredly they shall receive the holy
inheritance of God” (Vol 1, Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr with
Trypho, A Jew, chp 26, pp 406, 408).
Justin in a chapter entitled The Law Had An End In Christ
declared: “As, then, circumcision began
with Abraham, and the Sabbath and
sacrifices and offerings and feasts with
Moses, and it has been proved they were enjoined on account of the hardness
of your people’s heart [i.e.
the Jewish people], so it was necessary, in accordance with
the Father’s will, that they [i.e. the above Laws of God] should have an END in Him who was born of a virgin, of the
family of Abraham and tribe of Judah, and of David; in Christ the Son of God,
who was proclaimed as about to come to all the world, to be the everlasting law
and the everlasting covenant, even as
the fore mentioned prophecies show.
And we,
who have approached God through Him, have
received not carnal, but spiritual
circumcision, which Enoch and those like him observed. And we have received it through baptism,
since we were sinners, by God’s mercy; and all men may equally obtain it” (Vol 1,
Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr with Trypho, A Jew, chp 43, pg 426). As I
have already proven above, God had to abolish to Old Covenant, with its entire
Mosaic Law System, so Eternal Life could come through Christ’s atonement.
In AD 180,
Bishop Irenaeus of France writing against the heresies of his day wrote: “And that
man [Abraham] was not justified by these things [i.e. circumcision and the Sabbath], but that
they were given as a sign to the people, this fact shows, that Abraham himself,
without circumcision and without
observance of Sabbaths, ‘believed God, and it was imputed unto him for
righteousness; and he was called the friend of God….’ Moreover, all the rest of the multitude of those
righteous men who lived before
Abraham, and of those patriarchs who preceded Moses, were justified independently of the things above mentioned [i.e. circumcision and the Sabbath], and without the law of Moses. As also
Moses himself says to the people in Deuteronomy: ‘The
LORD thy God formed a covenant in Horeb. The LORD FORMED NOT this covenant with
YOUR FATHERS, but for you” (ANF, vol 1, Irenaeus Against Heresies,
bk 4, chp 16, pp 992-994, sec 2-5, AD 180).
In 200 AD
Tertullian, a Bishop in Carthage, North-Africa, writing against the heresies of
the Jews wrote: “Let him [i.e. a Jew] who contends
that the Sabbath is still to be observed as a balm of salvation,
and circumcision on the eighth day because of the threat of death, teach us….
For if circumcision purges a man, since God made Adam uncircumcised, why
did He not circumcise him, even after his sinning, if circumcision purges…?
Therefore, since God originated Adam uncircumcised, and unobservant of the Sabbath,
consequently his offspring also, Abel,
offering Him sacrifices uncircumcised,
and unobservant of the Sabbath, was by Him commended….
Noah also uncircumcised yes, and unobservant of the Sabbath, God freed from the deluge. For Enoch, too, most righteous man, uncircumcised
and in-observant of the Sabbath, He translated from this world;
who did not first taste death, in order that, being a candidate for eternal
life, he might by this time show us
that we also may, without the burden of the law of Moses, please God” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, Part One, VII An Answer to
the Jews, chp 2, pg 287).
God’s Church Met in Many Holmes Every
Day to Eat Together,
Pray, Preach, and Teach God’s Word
The
Church that the apostles established did not esteem one day above another. The
Church in each city was divided into
many different groups. The saints meet in DIFFERENT HOMES with
one or more pastors over them. They met EVERY DAY for
prayer, worship, preaching, teaching, fellowship, and eating together in their
Love Feast. If I understand certain scriptures correctly, all the congregation
of the Church in one city did meet together in one place every Sunday, that is, on the First
Day of the week, which was Resurrection Day. This will be discussed later.
Let us now examine the scriptures that reveal the early
Acts
2:44-47: “Now all who believed were
together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods,
and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So CONTINUING DAILY with one
accord in the temple, and breaking bread from HOUSE to HOUSE, they ate their
food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with
all the people. And the Lord ADDED to the [Jewish] CHURCH DAILY those who were being saved.”
Acts
16:5: “The [Gentile] CHURCHES were strengthened in the faith, and INCREASED in number DAILY.”
Hebrews 3:11-14: “Therefore,
holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, …EXHORT ONE ANOTHER
DAILY.”
Romans
16:3-5: “Greet Priscilla
and
Colossians
4:15: “Greet the brethren who are in
Philemon
1:2: “To the beloved Apphia, Archippus our fellow soldier, and
to the CHURCH in your HOUSE.”
Since
the assemblies of God in each city met DAILY, there
was a great need for many preacher and teacher in every congregation. This no
doubt was one of the reasons why the apostle Peter declared every born-again
Child of God a Priest of God or the Clergy of God. Peter said it this way:
“As NEWBORN BABES, desire the pure milk of the
Word that you may grow thereby…. You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a HOLY PRIESTHOOD, to
offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…. But you are a chosen generation, a ROYAL PRIESHOOD, a holy nation,
His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you
out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1Pe 2:2, 5, 9-10). This
was the fulfillment of the promise God made to His people in Exodus 19: 3-6.
The
apostle Paul speaking of the ministries of God’s Priesthood that took place DAILY in Church services wrote: “When you assemble, each one has a psalm,
has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all
things be done for edification…. Let two or three prophets [propheteuo i.e. preachers] speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a
revelation is made to another who is seated, let the first keep silent. For you
can ALL prophesy [propheteuo i.e. preach] one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted” (1Co 14:26, 29-31).
Louw-Nida
Greek-English Lexicon defined the Greek word “propheteuo” as: “to speak under the influence of divine inspiration,
with or without reference to future
events - 'to prophesy, to make inspired utterances” (#33.459).
Drs. Friberg in his Analytical Lexicon to the New Testament defined it
as: “speaking with the help of divine inspiration, proclaim what God
wants to make known, PREACH, expound (AC 2.17; 1C 11.4)” (#23648).
There
can no doubt that the many assemblies in each city had many preachers and
teachers. Paul confirmed this great truth when he told the
In my book entitled, The Heresy
of the Nicolaitans, pages 12-13 and 32-34, I wrote the following
about the ministerial structure of God’s early Apostolic Pentecostal Church:
“Professor Philip Schaff, in his History
of the Christian Church stated: ‘The sacred office [of a Bishop] is in its
divine origin and import… was separated by no impassable chasm from the body of
believers. The Jewish and later Catholic antithesis of clergy and laity has no
place in the apostolic age…. In the apostolic church, PREACHING and TEACHING were
NOT confined to a particular class, but EVERY CONVERT could proclaim the gospel to unbelievers, and EVERY CHRISTIAN who had the gift could pray and TEACH and EXHORT in
the congregation. The New Testament knows no
spiritual aristocracy or nobility, but calls all believers ‘saints,’ though
many fell far short of their vocation. Nor
does it recognize a special priesthood in distinction from the people, as
mediating between God and the laity. It knows only one high priest, Jesus
Christ, and clearly teaches the universal
priesthood, as well as universal kingship, of believers. It does this in a far deeper and larger sense than the
Old; in a sense, too, which even to this day is not yet fully realized” (vol 2,
pg 124; vol 1, pp 486, 504).
“Professor Schaff speaking of the origin of the
Nicolaitan Monarchical Bishop doctrine wrote: ‘The distinction of a regular class of teachers from the laity became
more fixed and prominent. This appears first in Ignatius [90 AD], who, in his high Episcopalian spirit, considers
the clergy the necessary medium of access for the people to God.... He is also
the first who uses the term ‘Catholic Church,’ as if episcopacy and catholicity
sprung up simultaneously… From Ignatius onward [in the Catholic Churches]; the two terms [bishop and presbyter] are distinguished and designate two offices;
the bishop being regarded first as the head of a congregation surrounded by a
council of presbyters....’ Lightfoot well expresses it ‘The episcopate was
formed, not out of the apostolic order by localization, but out of the
presbyterial by elevation; and the title [bishop],
which originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the
chief among them” (vol 2, pp 125, 145; vol 1, pg 495).
“Church historians have repeatedly confirmed the
apostles’ doctrine of many bishops over a local congregation in their histories
of the early Christian Church, which shared equal authority over the
congregation of God. Professor Arthur C. McGiffert in his book, A History of
the Christian Church in the Apostolic Age, declared, during the age of the
apostles: ‘the churches, so far as we are acquainted with them, were ruled each
by a number of bishops.... They served the local congregation primarily, not
the universal church, and their official position gave them no rights in other
congregations” (pp 671, 670).
“Dr. [Adolf]
Harnack speaking of Ignatius and the Nicolaitan Catholic Church stated: ‘As
early as the second century the [Catholic] Church had conquered the people.... By the opening of
the third century [200 AD], no layman ventured any longer to call ecclesiastics,
‘brethren.’ The layman is a layman because he has not been set apart from the
people by ordination…. After the close of the second century [the Monarchical]
bishops were the teachers, high priest, and judges of the church. Ignatius
already had compared their position in the individual church to that of God in the church collective” (The
“Worldwide revival will only be a dream and not a reality, as long as pastors and denominations deny God’s people the rights to perform their God ordain priesthood ministry! I should also add that as long as we have ‘God on a time clock,’ whereby we only have services one or two day a week for an hour or two, instead of 7 days a week, God will never demonstrate His power in our services through the Gifts of the Spirit in a consistent manner. As long as we follow this Catholic Nicolaitan pattern for having services, there will never be a need to have thousands of God’s ordain priests to minister in God’s Church.”
“I certainly would not want to stand before God and
have Him ask me why I taught and practiced the Nicolaitan doctrine!! Why I
hindered His people from becoming His oracles? I am not in any way diminishing
the great duties, responsibilities, and privileges of God’s holy bishops, for I
have served as a pastor and assistant pastor in several congregations, but I
must place this God ordain office in a biblical and historical context. I can
honestly say and my conscience bear me witness, that after 35 years of studying
the Bible and history, that I did not know this truth until 1990. Believe you
me when God revealed this to me, it was quite a shock! I did not want to
believe it at first, but like a bloodhound with his nose to the ground,
sniffing out the trail of a fox, I could not rest until I tacked down the
truth!”
The
The whole Church, or all of God’s people,
seems to have gathered together in
1 Corinthians 11:18, 20, 33-34: “For first of all, when you COME TOGETHER as a CHURCH, I
hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it…. Therefore
when you COME TOGETHER in
Acts
20:7, 11: “Now on the FIRST DAY
of the week, when the disciples CAME TOGETHER to break bread, Paul, ready
to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight…
and talked a long while, even till daybreak,
he departed.”
Collections
for the poor was taken up every Sunday: 1 Corinthians 16:1-3: “Now concerning the
collection for the saints, as I have given ORDERS to the CHURCHES of Galatia,
so you must do also: On the FIRST DAY of
the week let each one of you lay
something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections
when I come. And when I come, whomever you approve by your letters I will send to bear
your gift to
Hebrews 10:24-25: “Let us consider one another in order to stir up
love and good works, not forsaking
the ASSEMBLING of OURSELVES TOGETHER, as is
the manner of some, but exhorting one
another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
I personally do NOT esteem one day above
another, but the Bible definitely teaches that Jesus rose on the 1st
day of the week or Sunday, that is, somewhere between 6 PM and 6 AM Nisan the
19th. According to the Bible, when Mary Magdalene and
the other women got to the tomb at sunrise 6 AM, Jesus was already raise for
the dead: “Now when the Sabbath was PAST,
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of
James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very
early in the morning, on the FIRST DAY of the week, they came to the tomb when
the sun had risen” (Mk 16:1-2).
Since the Jewish day begins
in the evening or sunset
and goes to sunset the next day, Jesus died and was
buried about 3 hours before the 16th of
Nisan
began. In other words, Jesus died at the END of the day on Wednesday Nisan the
15th.
According to Matthew it was “on the FIRST DAY of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the
disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do You want us to prepare for
You to eat the Passover…?’ So the
disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover. When
evening had come, He sat down with the twelve” (Mt
26:17-20). Now the first day of Unleavened Bread began at
evening time on the 14th of Nisan, which was a Monday night. This
means that Jesus ate the Passover on the 15th of Nisan, which was a
Tuesday night.
Anatolius,
a bishop of Laodicea around 270 AD, speaking of this wrote: “The Word of
the Gospel which says: ‘Moreover, on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus.’ And there is
no doubt as to its being the
FOURTEENTH DAY on which the disciples asked the Lord, in accordance with the
custom established for them of old, ‘Where wilt Thou
that we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover…?’ The best-known historiographers of the Jews, and by the Seventy
Elders, it has been clearly determined that the Paschal festival CANNOT be
celebrated at the equinox….
It was lawful to
celebrate the Passover on ANY DAY when the fourteenth
of the moon happened AFTER the equinox.
Following their example up to the present time all the bishops of
Jesus speaking of the
length of time His body would be
in the tomb said: “For as Jonah was THREE DAYS and THREE NIGHTS in the belly
of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be THREE DAYS and THREE NIGHTS in the
heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40; also see 27:39-40; Mk 14:58; 15:29: Jn
2:19-21). According to
Mark, Jesus told the apostles that: “the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected
by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and AFTER [meta] three days rise again” (Mk 8:31; also Mt 27:63). Therefore, Jesus had to rise after 6 PM on the
19th of Nisan when the 1st day of the week was just
beginning!
On the Hebcal Interactive Jewish Calendar website (http://www.hebcal.com/hebcal/)
the following calendar for the month of April in the year 32 AD can be found:
Gregorian Year April 0032
or Hebrew Year 3792
|
||||||
|
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
|
11 13th of Nisan, 3792 |
12 14th of Nisan, 3792 |
13 15th of Nisan, 3792 |
14 16th of Nisan, 3792 |
15 17th of Nisan, 3792 |
16 18th of Nisan, 3792 |
17 19th of Nisan, 3792 |
According to NASA’s Lunar
Eclipse Data, there was an eclipse in the: Astronomical year 0032 (AD), April 14, Universal Time
09:05 (AM), Lunar Eclipse Type T (Total), Saros 61, Gamma 0.102, Penumbral Magnitude 2.701,
Umbral Magnitude 1.670, Semi-Duration Total 112 minutes, Semi-Duration Partial 51 minutes, Greenwich Sidereal Time (UT) 13.4, Moon’s Geocentric Right Ascension 13.37,
Moon’s Geocentric Right Declination -8.7 (http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEcat/LE0001-0100.html).
The Sabbath vs the First Day of the Week in
Church History
The disciples of Moses and the Jewish Law
System declare that the Jewish Sabbath or the Seventh Day (Saturday) was first
changed to the First Day or Sunday as the day of rest by
Bishop
Ignatius of Antioch Syria writing to the Magnesians in 107 AD wrote: “If,
therefore, those [Jews] who were
brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new
hope, NO longer observing the Sabbath,
but living in the observance of the Lord’s
Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death,
whom some [Jews] deny, by
which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be
found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master…. Let every friend of
Christ keep the Lord’s Day as a festival,
the resurrection-day [i.e. Sunday], the queen and chief of all the days [of the week]. Looking forward to this, the prophet declared, ‘To the end,
for the eighth day,’ on which our
life both sprang up again, and
the victory over death was obtained in Christ,
whom the children of perdition [the
Jews],
the enemies of the Savior, deny” [ANF, vol 1, The Epistle of Ignatius, To the Magnesians, chps 9-10, pp
131-133].
Barnabas an
Alexandrian Jew, who lived in the times of Trajan and Hadrian (AD 117),
in his epistle wrote: “The Jewish
Sacrifices Are Now Abolished: For He hath revealed to us by all the prophets that
He needs neither sacrifices, nor burnt-offerings, nor oblations, saying thus, ‘What is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me, saith
the Lord? I am full of burnt-offerings and desire not…. Incense is a vain abomination unto Me, and your new
moons and SABBATHS I cannot endure.’
He has therefore ABOLISHED these things, that the NEW LAW of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation” (ANF, vol
1,The Epistle of Barnabas, chp 2, pg 262).
Barnabas continued: “THE FALSE AND THE TRUE SABBATH: The Sabbath is mentioned at the
beginning of the creation [thus]: ‘And God made in six days the works of His hands, and made
an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.’ Attend,
my children, to the meaning of this expression, ‘He
finished in six days.” This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years….
Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things
will be finished.
‘And He rested on the
seventh day.’ This meaneth: when His Son, coming [again], shall destroy the time of the wicked man, and judge
the ungodly, and change the sun, and the moon, and the stars, then shall He
truly REST on the seventh day….
Further, He says to them, ‘Your new moons and
your Sabbath I cannot endure.’ Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are NOT acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, [namely this,] when, giving REST to all things, I
shall make a beginning of the eighth day,
that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day [Sunday] with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose
again from the dead. And when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the
heavens” (ANF, vol 1, The Epistle of Barnabas, chp 15, pp
279-280).
Mathetes,
written around AD 130, wrote: “Christians do NOT observe the same
forms of divine worship as do the Jews….
The Jews, then, if they abstain from [certain kinds of]… meats, and their superstition
as respects the Sabbaths, and their boasting
about circumcision, and their fancies about fasting and the new moons, which
are utterly ridiculous” (ANF, vol 1, The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, chps
3-4, pp 60-61).
Justin Martyr
in AD
150 wrote: “Weekly
Worship of the Christians: And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country GATHER TOGETHER to ONE PLACE, and the memoirs of the
apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits;
then, when the reader has ceased, the president
verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good
things. Then we all rise together and pray,
and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in
like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the
people assent, saying Amen…. Sunday
is the day on which we all hold our
COMMON ASSEMBLY, because it is the first
day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made
the world; and Jesus Christ our
Savior on the same day rose from the dead” (ANF, vol 1, The First Apology of Justin, chp 67, pp 354-355).
Justin Martyr
in his discussion with Trypho, a Jew, declared: “Justin
Concludes that the Law Had an End in Christ: As, then, circumcision began with Abraham, and the Sabbath and sacrifices and offerings and
feasts with Moses, and it has been proved they were enjoined [i.e. started] on account of the hardness of your people’s heart, so it was necessary, in accordance
with the Father’s will, that they should have an END in Him who was born of a
virgin, of the family of Abraham, and tribe of Judah, and of David” (ANF , vol 1,
Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr with Trypho, A Jew, chp 43, pg 426).
“Is there any other matter, my friends, in
which we are blamed, than this, that we live not after the law, and are not
circumcised in the flesh as your forefathers were, and DO NOT observe Sabbaths as you do” (chp 10, pg
387). “The command of circumcision, again, bidding [them] always circumcise
the children on the eighth day, was a TYPE of the true circumcision, by which we are circumcised from deceit and
iniquity through Him who rose from the dead on the FIRST DAY after the Sabbath, [namely
through] our Lord Jesus Christ. For the FIRST DAY after the Sabbath,
remaining the first of all the days, is called, however, the eighth,
according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and [yet] remains the first” (chp 41, pg 424).
Irenaeus, a
bishop in
Tertullian in
AD 190 wrote: “The Holy Spirit upbraids
the Jews with their holy-days. ‘Your Sabbaths, and new moons, and ceremonies,’
says He, ‘My soul hateth.’ By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange,
and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, Part One, The Apology, chp 14, pg 134). “We make Sunday a day of festivity. What
then? Do you [Jews] do less
than this…? You who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your
proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest” (ANF, vol 3, Tertullian, Part One, IV, The Chaplet, or De Corona, chp 13,
pg 234).
“An Answer to the
Jews, Of the Observance of the Sabbath: It follows, accordingly, that, in so far
as the abolition of carnal
circumcision and of the old law is
demonstrated as having been CONSUMMATED
[i.e. completed] at its specific times, so also the observance of
the Sabbath is demonstrated to have
been TEMPORARY…. Manifest accordingly it is, that the precept was not eternal
nor spiritual, but temporary, which
would one day cease” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, Part One, VII, chp 4, pp
290-291).
“An Answer to the
Jews, Of the Abolition and the Abolisher of the Old Law: Therefore,
since it is manifest that a Sabbath
temporal was shown, and a Sabbath eternal foretold; a circumcision carnal
foretold, and a circumcision spiritual pre-indicated; a law temporal and a law
eternal formally declared; sacrifices carnal and sacrifices spiritual
foreshown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given carnally,
in time preceding, to the people Israel, there was to supervene a time whereat
the precepts of the ancient Law and
of the old ceremonies would CEASE,
and the promise of the new law, and
the recognition of spiritual sacrifices,
and the promise of the New Testament,
supervene… predicted by the prophets…. The old Law has CEASED, and
on the other, that the promised new law
is now in operation.
And, indeed, first we must inquire whether there be
expected a giver of the new law, and an heir of the new testament, and a priest of the new sacrifices,
and a purger of the new circumcision,
and an observer of the eternal Sabbath,
to SUPPRESS the old law, and institute the new testament, and offer the new sacrifices, and REPRESS the
ancient ceremonies, and SUPRESS the old
circumcision together with its own Sabbath,
and announce the new kingdom which is not corruptible. Inquire, I say, we must [know], whether this giver
of the new law, observer of the SPIRITUAL SABBATH, priest of the eternal
sacrifices, eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom, be come or no: that, if he is
already come, service may have to be rendered him” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, Part One, bk 7, chp 6,
pg 294).
“When, again, he [Paul] mentioned ‘certain false
brethren as having crept in unawares,’ who wished to remove the
Galatians into another gospel, he himself shows that their adulteration of the
gospel was not meant to transfer them to the faith of another God and Christ,
but rather to perpetuate the teaching of the law; because he blames
them for maintaining circumcision,
and observing times, and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish
ceremonies, which they ought to have known were now ABROGATED, according to the new dispensation purposed by the
Creator Himself, who of old foretold this very thing by His prophets.
Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have passed away. ‘Behold, I will do a new thing.’ And in another
passage: ‘I will make a new covenant, not according
to the covenant that I made with their fathers, when I brought them out of the land
of Egypt’ In like manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant,
‘circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away
the foreskins of your heart.’ It is this circumcision, therefore, and
this renewal, which the apostle insisted on, when he FORBADE those ancient ceremonies concerning which
their very founder announced that they were one
day to CEASE; thus by Hosea: ‘I will also cause
all her mirth to CEASE, her
feast-days, her new moons, and her SABBATHS, and all her solemn feasts.’
So likewise by Isaiah: ‘The new moons, and SABBATHS,
the calling of assemblies, I cannot [stand],
AWAY WITH your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul HATETH.’
Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded
all these things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation [rejection or abandonment]… branding as false both apostles and brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back the gospel of Christ
the Creator from the new condition
which the Creator had foretold, to the old
one which He had DISCARDED” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, The Five Books Against Marcion, bk 1, chp 20, pp 537-538).
“Have returned ‘to weak and
beggarly elements….’ He [Paul] tells us
himself clearly enough what he means by ‘elements,’ even the rudiments of the law: ‘Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years,’ the Sabbaths, I suppose, and ‘the
preparations,’ and the fasts, and the ‘high days.’ For the CESSATION of even
these, no less than of circumcision, was appointed by the Creator’s decrees,
who had said by Isaiah, ‘Your new moons, and your Sabbaths, and your high days I CANNOT bear; your fasting, and feasts, and
ceremonies my soul hateth;’
also by Amos, ‘I
hate, I despise your feast-days, and I will not smell in
your solemn assemblies;’ and again by Hosea, ‘I
will cause to CEASE all her mirth, and her feast-days, and her Sabbaths, and her new moons, and all her
solemn assemblies.’ The institutions
which He set up Himself, you ask, did He then destroy? Yes… but this is not the place to
discuss the question why the Creator ABOLISHED His own laws” (ANF, vol 3,
Tertullian, The Five Books Against Marcion, bk 5, chp 4, pg 808).
Origen writing
in AD 200 declared: “It was only a few persons at that time, viz., the
prophets themselves, and scarcely another individual out of the whole nation,
who were able to look beyond the mere corporeal meaning and discover something
greater, i.e., something spiritual,
in the law or in the prophets; but now there are countless multitudes of believers who, although unable to
unfold methodically and clearly the results of their spiritual understanding, are nevertheless most firmly persuaded that NEITHER ought circumcision to be understood
literally, nor the rest of the Sabbath, nor the pouring out of the
blood of an animal, nor that answers were given by God to Moses on these
points. And this method of apprehension is undoubtedly suggested to the minds
of all by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (ANF, vol 4, Works of Origen, Prologue of Rufinus, bk 2,
The De Principiis, chp 7, pg 592, sec 2).
“For it is there related that Jesus said: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into
all the truth….’ And when we inquire what were the ‘many things’ referred to in the passage which Jesus
had to say to His disciples, but which they were not then able to bear, I have
to observe that, probably because the apostles
were Jews, and had been trained up according to the letter of the Mosaic law, He was unable to tell them what was the true law, and how the Jewish worship CONSISTED in the PATTERN
and SHADOW of certain heavenly things,
and how future blessings were foreshadowed
by the injunctions regarding meats and drinks, and festivals, and new moons,
and Sabbaths…. He postponed such a
task to a future season to that, namely, which followed His passion and
resurrection” (ANF, vol 4, Works of Origen, Origen , Origen Against Celsus, bk 2, chp 2, pp
877-878).
“Thus was he [John
the Baptist] born to make ready for the Lord a people fit for Him,
at the END of the [Mosaic] Covenant now grown old, which is the END
of the Sabbatic period. Hence it is
NOT possible that the rest after the Sabbath should have come into existence
from the Seventh [Day] of our God;
on the contrary, it is our Savior who, after the pattern of His own rest,
caused us to be made in the likeness of His death, and hence also of His
resurrection” (ANF, vol 10, Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of
John, bk 2, chp 27, pg 588).
“Our Passover is sacrificed for us, namely Christ.
Another feature of the Jewish festival is unleavened bread; all leaven is made
to disappear out of their houses; but ‘we keep the
feast not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth….’ Since these
serve for a pattern and a shadow of the heavenly ones we spoke of, and NOT only such things as food and drink and new moons and Sabbaths, but the festivals also, are a shadow of the things to come” (ANF, vol 10,
Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, bk 10, chp 13, pg 683).
Hippolytus
writing in AD 225 wrote: “And 6,000 years must needs be accomplished, in order
that the Sabbath may come, the rest,
the holy day ‘on which God rested from all His works.’ For the Sabbath is the type and emblem of the
Cyprian AD 250
wrote:
“For in respect of the observance of
the eighth day in the Jewish
circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and
in usage; but when Christ came, it
was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth
day, that is, the first day after
the Sabbath, was to be that on which
the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the SPIRIT, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure CEASED when by and by the truth came, and spiritual
circumcision was given to us” (ANF, vol 5, The Epistles of Cyprian, Epistle 58, pg
765, sec 4).
Victorinus AD
declared: “Christ Himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by His prophets that ‘His soul hateth;’ which Sabbath He in His body ABOLISHED…. Wherefore, as I have narrated,
that true Sabbath will be in the seventh
millenary of years, when Christ
with His elect shall reign” (ANF, vol 7, Victorinus, On the Creation of the World,
pg 710-711).
Eusebius
writing in AD 325 wrote: “Some excellent men lived before the flood, others of
the sons and descendants of Noah lived after it, among them Abraham, whom the
Hebrews celebrate as their own founder and forefather…. They did NOT care about
circumcision of the body, neither do
we. They did NOT care about observing
Sabbaths, NOR do we. They did NOT
avoid certain kinds of food, neither
did they regard the other distinctions which Moses first delivered to their
posterity to be observed as symbols; NOR do Christians of the
present day do such things” (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol
1, The Church History of Eusebus, bk 9, chp 4, pp 163-164).
Emperor
Constantine’s decree on Sunday Worship: “He [Emperor
Constantine] ordained, too, that one day should be regarded as a special occasion for prayer: I mean
that which is truly the first and chief of all…. Accordingly he enjoined
on all the subjects of the
The Catholic
historian Socrates Scholasticus (AD 412) wrote: Some Christians “have not
taken into consideration the fact that when Judaism was changed into
Christianity, the obligation to observe the Mosaic law and the ceremonial types
ceased. And the proof of the matter is plain; for no law of Christ permits
Christians to imitate the Jews. On the contrary the apostle expressly forbids
it; not only rejecting circumcision, but also deprecating contention about
festival days. In his epistle to the Galatians he writes, ‘Tell me ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear
the law?’ And continuing his train of argument, he demonstrates that the
Jews were in bondage as servants, but that those who have come to Christ are ‘called into the liberty of sons.’ Moreover he
exhorts them in no way to regard ‘days, and months, and years.’
Again in his epistle to the Colossians he distinctly
declares, that such observances are merely shadows: wherefore he says, ‘Let no man
judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of any holy-day, or of the new
moon, or of the Sabbath-days; which are a shadow of things to come.’ The
same truths are also confirmed by him in the epistle
to the Hebrews in these words: ‘For the priesthood
being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.’
Neither the apostles, therefore, nor the
Gospels, have anywhere imposed the ‘yoke of
servitude’ on those who have embraced the truth….
The Savior and his apostles have enjoined us by no law
to keep this feast: nor do the Gospels and apostles threaten us with any penalty,
punishment, or curse for the neglect of it, as the Mosaic law does the Jews. It is merely for the sake of historical
accuracy, and for the reproach of the Jews, because they polluted themselves
with blood on their very feasts, that it is recorded in the Gospels that
our Savior suffered in the days of ‘unleavened
bread.’ The aim of the apostles was not to appoint festival days, but to teach a
righteous life and piety” (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol
2, The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, bk 5, chp 22, pp
312-313, AD 412).
Will
Jewish Sabbaths, New Moons, and the Feast of Tabernacles
Be
Observed in the Millennial Reign of Christ as a Memorial
The Word
of God definitely teaches that in the Millennial Reign of Christ all flesh,
probably living in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, will come to Jerusalem
every Sabbath Day and New Moon to worship Christ. It also teaches that once a
year, during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the entire world will come
to
“For as the NEW HEAVEN and the NEW
EARTH Which I will make shall remain before Me,’ says the LORD, ‘So shall your
descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from ONE NEW MOON to ANOTHER, and from ONE SABBATH to
ANOTHER, All flesh shall come to worship
before Me,’ says the LORD. ‘And they shall go forth and look Upon the
corpses of the men Who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not
die, And their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isa 66:22-24).
God speaking through the prophet Zechariah stated
this truth this way: “And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the
nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from YEAR to YEAR to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the FEAST of TABERNACLES. And it shall be that whichever of the families
of the earth do not come up to
When our Lord returns to the earth with His Saints
to set up His Millennial Reign, He and His saints will rule the earth with a
rod of iron, that is, open sin will not be tolerated anywhere. Evidently,
during this time when Lucifer is chain up, man’s real enemy will be his own
flesh, his old nature; for when righteousness reigns, some men or nations will
rebel against our Savior and not want to come to Jerusalem ONCE A YEAR and
worship Him at the Feast of Tabernacles: “He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word
of God. And the armies in heaven,
clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out
of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And
He Himself will RULE them with a ROD of IRON” (Rev
19:13-15); also “And HE who OVERCOMES,
and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations –
HE shall RULE them with a ROD of IRON; They shall be dashed to pieces like the
potter's vessels' -- as I also have received from My Father” (Rev 2:26-27).
The Bible reveals that God will create a New
Heaven and Earth when He returns to the earth, as Christ, at the end of the
Tribulation Period. Christ’s Millennial Reign will begin immediately after: “For behold, I create NEW HEAVENS and
a NEW EARTH; And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be
glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, And her people a joy. I will rejoice in
Therefore,
what conclusion can we reach from the above passages of Scripture? Why will
Christ reinstate Sabbath Days, New Moons, and Tabernacle feast days that He
ABOLISHED in the Church Age, which were nothing but SYMBOLIC expressions of the
ministry of Christ (Col 2:14-18; Heb 10:1)? Could it
be that these types or symbols of Christ will be used as a memorial to the Lord,
in which all mankind would remember His LOVE for them by what He did through
His sinless life, atonement at Calvary, and the pouring out of the REST of His
Holy Spirit? Let us not forget that the Lord’s Supper, we all celebrate today,
is such a memorial; do we not remember His LOVE for us every time we partake of
the bread and unfermented wine (grape juice), which
represented His broken body and shed blood.
It
appears to me that the Sabbath Day keeps in the Church Age have made the same
mistake as the Old Covenant Jews, that is, they failed to recognize the end of
one age and the beginning of another. In other words, they, like the Jews,
failed to recognize that the Old Covenant, with its entire Law System, has been
abolished, and the New Testament Laws of Christ is what we observe and live by
today. As I stated at the beginning of this book, I have no problem with anyone
keeping the Sabbath Day, or any other day, as their holy day or day of rest,
but I do have a problem with those who want to make it sin. To me, and to many
one God Jesus’ name Pentecostals, every day is a Sabbath in which to be holy,
draw near to God through prayer, worship, studying the Bible, and doing the
will of God. Amend!
Books Written by the Author and
Given Away on His Website:
A Biblical,
Medical, and Psychological Account of the Sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ
The Heresy of the
Nicolaitans
Biblical
Creationism vs Pantheistic Theories of Evolution (Nature Worship)
A Prophetic History of God’s
Apostolic Pentecostal Church (The Seven Prophetic Periods of the Church Age)
The Mysteries
of Prophecy Revealed
What Do You Mean I Must Be Born Again?
Preacher, What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?
A Historical Record of Speaking in Tongues
The Mysteries of the Godhead Revealed
A History of Oneness
Throughout the Centuries (Baptism in Jesus’ Name, the Godhead in Christ)
What Happens to
Man’s Spirit, Soul and Body Immediately after Death?
What Is Lost Man’s Eternal
Destiny? (Immediate Annihilation, Eternal Torment, Torment for a Time
and Then Universal Salvation, or
Torment for a Time and Then Annihilation)
The Mysteries
of the Spirit and Soul of Man Revealed (What Are They? Does Each Nature of Man
Have Mind, Will, and Emotions?)
Holiness: God’s Beauty
College
What Is God’s Rest
for the Believer: the Sabbath Day or God’s Sabbath Spirit
How to Study the Bible
A Calendar of
Biblical and Historical Dates and Events Beginning with the Creation of Adam
The Heresies of the
Pharisaical Jewish Ebionites
William Marion
Branham: His Life, Teachings, and Demonic Spirit-Guide
Nutrition and Nutritional
Charts
Law vs Grace or Works vs Faith
Water Baptism: the Essentiality, the Mode, and the Formula
Glossolalia: Ten Steps of Faith to Receiving the Baptism
of the Holy Ghost
Glossolalia and the New Birth
Benefits of
Salvation and the False Doctrines that Hinder It
Eternal Life vs Eternal
Death
Christ’s Loving
Servant,
Harry A. Peyton
148 Little
Creek Hills Rd.
Alto, NM 88312
Telephone # 575-336-2800
Internet Address: DoctrinesOfChrist@hotmail.com
Website:
DoctrinesOfChrist.com