Thursday: The Attempted Change of the Sabbath
God’s law, the Ten Commandments, is still binding (see also James 2:10-12) , and that law includes the seventh-day Sabbath. Why, then, do so many Christians keep Sunday when there is no biblical justification for it?
Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com
Daniel 7 talks about the rise of four great empires: Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and then Rome, the fourth and final earthly empire. In a latter stage of the Roman Empire, a little horn power is depicted as coming up out this empire (Dan. 7:8) . It is still part of the Roman Empire, just a later phase of it. What else could this power be but the papacy, which arose directly out of Rome and, to this day, is still part of it? Wrote Thomas Hobbes in the 1600s: “If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof”. — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 463.
Read Daniel 7:23-25. What do these verses teach that can help us understand the origins of Sunday keeping?
The original language, Aramaic, shows in verse 25 that the little horn power “intended” to change the law. What earthly power can, indeed, actually change God’s law?
Though exact details are blurred in history, we do know that under papal Rome the seventh-day Sabbath was replaced by the tradition of Sunday keeping, a tradition so firmly entrenched that the Protestant Reformation kept that tradition alive, even into the twenty-first century. Today most Protestants still keep the first day of the week, rather than following the biblical command for the seventh day.
Read Revelation 13:1-17 and compare with Daniel 7:1-8, Daniel 7:21, Daniel 7:24-25. What similar imagery is being used in these texts that help us understand last-day events?
Using imagery directly from Daniel, which included imagery about the latter (papal) phase of Rome, the book of Revelation points to end-time persecution that will be unleashed on those who refuse to “worship” according to the dictates of the powers seen in the book of Revelation.
| How does Revelation 14:6-7 — especially verse 7, which reflects language taken from the fourth commandment (Exod. 20:11) — help show that the Sabbath will be crucial in this final end-time crisis over worship? |
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Why satan is against worship on the Sabbath?
Sabbath points us to God as Creator, Redeemer, and Restorer.
The consequences of discarding the moral law has far greater consequences than anyone of us can realize and understand.
I've always thought that the most powerful weapon in the world was the bomb and that's why I gave it to my people, but I've come to the conclusion that the most powerful weapon in the world is not the bomb but it's the truth
Andrei Sakharov
Sabbath points us to the truth about true worship.
Matthew 11:28
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
How can satan have us looking to Christ?
Let them go to church, attend prayer meeting and do some social work but make sure they don't talk about Him (Christ) hi
Let them defend their truth with each other but make sure they don't talk about the giver of truth.
Let them hate each other but do not let them talk about the God of Love.
Do not let them be found resting in Christ.
Do not let them be found sitting at the feet of Jesus.
Do not let them be still.
Let us examine ourselves
How many of us can be still especially with all the distractions.
We are so busy defending the truth while the giver of truth has been silent in our midst.
Prayer
God give us the strength to worship you in Spirit and Truth.
The truth is God is Love.
Love This!
I do believe that when we give our hearts to Christ totally each morning without reserve, we have shuned these snares of satan which you talk about. By thus doing it makes it easier to turn our bad habits over to Christ, we will thus have the desire to seek Him, we will see Him, and garner the strength from the Holy Spirit to tell the world what He has done for us. The statment, I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me, becomes a reality. Philippians 4:13.
May God help us to worship Him right. Obedience is more important than sacrifice! Let us be concerned with that. Obedience in love!
And to hearken is better than the fat of rams. But let us "hearken," via God's spirit in his son Jesus to focus by faith on the law of the spirit of life of his son Jesus.
This last Sabbath a group of friends and I had a very animated discussion about the change of the Sabbath, not from the traditional papal change made by Constantine etc., but by the change of days in the lunar calendar etc.,
Regardless of the perspective from which it is viewed these truths should keep us grounded.
1. God cannot lie.
2. He does not change.
3. He is not the author of confusion.
If we hold these truths in sincerity and truth, no matter which angle the attack comes from we will be prepared to reply with the truth as it is in Jesus. If no where else the Crucifixion of Jesus clinches the Sabbath truth in a way that is undeniable. Because it shows that Jesus followed to the very day, His Father’s plan, even in death. He was the Passover sacrificed for us, a ritual that was kept for fifteen hundred years.
Peter summarized it. We have not followed cunningly devised fables, but have obeyed the truth from the very mouth of God, written with His own finger on tables of stone. Indelible and enduring.
Satan didn't want us to be aware with what Jesus prepared for us, but we have to set up our mind on things which God command us to do ie, Ten Commandments under the love of God.
Maybe this question may past ssnet muster. Is it possible to identify that HORN whose legitimate dominion was taken away by Judgment and given to the saints of Christ, from the Word of God?
Fear and glorify God by remembering the sabbath day of the Lord, which He blessed and sanctified- not working on His holy day, as we've been commanded , but to rest and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountain of waters, and all that in them is.
The year can be explained scientifically---the earth completes a cycle around the sun in about 365 days. The month also can be explained scientifically---the moon goes through all its phases in about 30 days. The day can also be explained scientifically---the earth makes a complete turn on its own axis in about 24 hours. But the seven day weekly cycle cannot be explained scientifically. This phenomena of science in our universe and our earth can only be explained by God's word the bible----there it says in the very first book, genesis, that God created all things here in this earth in seven days. Then it goes on to say that he rested on the seventh one and also made it holy. Then in the very next book, Exodus, God gives his ten commandments to his servant moses and in the fourth one he states very clearly there to keep the seventh day holy by allowing man to work six days and resting on the seventh one. This seven day cycle called "a week," has been going on for millenniums and science has not been able to explain its seven day "repetitiveness" yet. Again, only the bible has its true explanation for it---God wants man to remember the seventh day and to also keep it holy and to also acknowledge him as creator and recreator via his son jesus "on that day every seventh day of each week."
Pete, many cultures used a lunar-solar calendar with 13 months (lunar cycles) in a year (solar cycle). The week was regarded as simply a convenient division based on the phases of the moon (waxing half, full, waning half, and new). I don't want to diminish the importance of the weekly cycle but we should not deny that there is a natural basis for it.