Sabbath observance isn’t complicated or mysterious. The Sabbath was and …

Comment on Christians and the Sabbath by Sean Pitman.

Sabbath observance isn’t complicated or mysterious. The Sabbath was and is intended by God to be a special day, every week, free of secular activities and pursuits that is entirely devoted to spending time with and thinking about Him as the creator and redeemer – and doing the works of God which include relieving the suffering of fellow human beings and even animals. That’s what it means to “keep” the Sabbath day holy to God as a day of rest from one’s own secular activities and a way to recharge one’s spiritual batteries.

As far as your repeated argument that the Sabbath was only made for the Jews, I’ve already covered this in some detail. As already mentioned, not even Martin Luther believed that – arguing that the Sabbath was in fact made in Eden in memorial of creation as cited in the 4th commandment itself and as expressed by Jesus when He said that the Sabbath had been made for mankind (anthropos). Even the Eastern Orthodox Churches continue to recognize the 7th-day Sabbath as a holy day (Link) – that none of the Ten Commandments were done away with at the cross…

Your argument that Jesus was, in fact, trying to “change the Sabbath” simply isn’t true. Jesus never said that He was trying to either change or do away with the Sabbath. On the contrary, Jesus perfectly kept the Sabbath as God originally intended for it to be kept – and as the Jews themselves had in their own law. As Jesus carefully explained, everything that He did on the Sabbath had always been “lawful” for everyone to do on the Sabbath – according to Jewish law. As “Lord of the Sabbath” Jesus was simply stating that He had personally created the day to be a blessing for everyone – not the curse and burden that the Jews of His day had made of it. Yet, you keep arguing that Jesus “broke the Sabbath” in an effort to change it. Of course Jesus broke the Sabbath – but not in an effort to change it. You continue to ignore Jesus’ own claim that He broke the Sabbath “lawfully” – according to the understanding of the Jews themselves. He broke the Sabbath as anyone else could break it – lawfully. Do you really not understand that it is and always has been “lawful” to do good on the Sabbath? – to save life and relieve suffering rather than to kill or allow suffering to continue on the Sabbath day? That’s always been a valid reason, before God, to “break” the Sabbath – since the Royal Law of Love, the fundamental basis of all law, always trumps everything else. Jesus explained this in detail if you care to read what He actually said. This does not therefore mean that the Sabbath can be “lawfully” broken for any reason whatsoever. It can only “lawfully” be broken for very specific reasons, according to the Royal Law, as Jesus repeatedly explained and as the Jews themselves understood.

As far as the Talmud, it teaches that Abraham kept the entire Torah before it was given to the Jewish People at Sinai. The Midrash says that Isaac kept the laws of shchitah (kosher slaughtering), and Jacob kept the laws of Shabbat – before the giving of Torah at Sinai. In other words, essentially all of the patriarchs were keeping the Torah before Moses came along – according to Jewish literature anyway.

Of course, the “Talmud” itself was written after Christ and is not recognized as canonical by Christians – or even some modern Jews for that matter. Yet, the Talmud is still of historical interest when it comes to Jewish thinking and understanding of the Torah.

The older compilation of the Talmud is called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Talmud Yerushalmi. It was compiled in the 4th century AD in Galilee. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled about the year 500 AD, although it continued to be edited later. The word “Talmud”, when used without qualification, usually refers to the Babylonian Talmud. While the editors of Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud each mention the other community, most scholars believe these documents were written independently. In any case, it is the Talmud, not just the Medrash, that argues that Abraham kept the entire Torah:

Yoma 28b Rab said: Our father Abraham kept the whole Torah, as it is said: Because that Abraham hearkened to My voice [kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws]…

Raba or R. Ashi said: Abraham, our father, kept even the law concerning the ‘erub of the dishes,’ as it is said: ‘My Torahs’: one being the written Torah, the other the oral Torah.

http://juchre.org/talmud/yoma/yoma2.htm#28b

Of course, you argue that the Medrash “is of no value at all” – which would seem to be the case for the Talmud as well? Again, however, the value of the Talmud (and the Medrash) is in understanding the view of the Jews themselves regarding the origin of the Torah. Philo also, who lived during the time of Jesus, wrote that the Sabbath was created for all of mankind, not just the Jews, in memorial of creation. Clearly, then, this was the common understanding of the Jews themselves – particularly during and after the time of Christ.

You also continue to cite the argument that, “Jesus kept the law to release us from its obligations” and that this concept took a while for the early Christian Church to understand. Of course, what you really mean to say is that Jesus only released us from just one of the obligations of the moral law – just one. The only law you have a problem with in the Decalogue is the Sabbath – the only one that says to “remember.” You cite Colossians 2:16 in support of this conclusion of yours – without addressing the counterarguments I’ve presented regarding Colossians 2:16 (that Paul is speaking about ceremonial Sabbaths and ceremonial observations of the Sabbath which are a “shadow” of things to come). Paul was by no means trying to set aside any of the Ten Commandments, much less the weekly Sabbath Commandment, since these commandments are not “shadows” of a future event, but are eternal in nature – set in place from the very foundations of creation. The weekly Sabbath, in particular, is a memorial of a past event – the creation week. It cannot then be rationally said to be a “shadow of things to come.” Those ceremonial laws and temple services and animal sacrifices that foreshadowed the coming of Christ, His life, and His death, are clearly what Paul is talking about here.

Still, you claim, with seeming sincerity, that the earliest Christians met on Sunday and observed communion (as opposed to Sabbath), but this was a rarity for the early church recorded in the Bible. The vast majority of worship services mentioned in Acts, dozens and dozens of them, took place on Sabbath – as always. On one occasion when a Sunday service is recorded (Acts 20:7), this event took place on Saturday night and lasted late into the night, till midnight, because Paul had to leave town the next morning (Sunday morning). This was the last time many would get to personally see and hear Paul. So, of course there was a late evening meeting after the Sabbath. The rest of the time, of course, it was Paul’s regular “custom” to worship with fellow believers (both Jews as well as gentiles) on the Sabbath. And, as I’ve clearly shown in my article above, Sabbath observance, along with eventual Sunday observance, continued on for most of the early Christian Church for hundreds and hundreds of years. That would not have happened if the Apostles of Jesus had taught their followers that the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue was no longer binding…

As far as Sunday observance, of course, I agree with you that there is absolutely no biblical mandate in this regard. However, it is a historical fact that the Catholic Church did in fact create such a mandate on their own – outside of any biblical mandate.

As far as your argument of a resurrection “without any judgment”, you can’t be a “saint” without some kind of judgment being made in your favor – since judgment “begins with the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17). Judgment is not always negative. As the Bible points out, “judgment is given in favor of the saints.” (Daniel 7:22). Of course, no one will be negatively judged, or “condemned” who claims Jesus as their savior and takes on the robe of Christ’s righteousness. Anyone who does this receives a positive judgment and will be saved. Of course, those who reject Jesus and who refuse to obey His commands and who not will accept the grace offered to them by God, will be negatively judged and will experience the deeds of their own hands back upon their own heads – followed by the second eternal death.

Remember now that I’m not suggesting that one keeps any of the commandments of the Decalogue in order to earn one’s own salvation. Salvation is a gift of God that is entirely undeserved and that cannot be earned. It is a free gift that must simply be accepted in order for salvation to be realized. Keeping the Sabbath never saved anyone – as I’ve previously mentioned. Never committing adultery doesn’t save anyone either – or avoiding murder. The Law cannot save you. Only Jesus can save you. However, once you realize that you are saved and that God does love you and wants the best for you, the grateful Christian will naturally want to keep God’s Laws and Commandments – and will receive Divine Power to actually do so. Keeping the Law is only “impossible” by human effort – and that includes all of the Ten Commandments (not just the Sabbath). It simply isn’t possible to actually keep the Royal Law through human effort alone. One cannot self-generate true disinterested love for one’s neighbor. That’s simply beyond human capabilities. However, it is not by any means impossible to keep the Royal Law, along with all of the Ten Commandments, through Divine Power – as Jesus kept the Law. This Power is offered as a free gift to us if we will only accept it.

The fact is that we are “co-workers” with Jesus in our own salvation – despite your argument to the contrary. Our job, as free moral agents, is to simply accept what Jesus did for us and open the door when we hear Him knocking on listen to that “still small voice” speaking to us. Jesus already did the heavy lifting. Yet, we have a part to play in our own salvation. We can either accept or reject the gift that is freely offered to us – and that is our part to play. Of course, in accepting the gift of salvation, the honest Christian will in fact strive to keep all of the commandments of God through His grace and Power.

As far as “perfection” is concerned, it wasn’t Ellen White, it was Jesus who said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Jesus wouldn’t have said this if it wasn’t possible for us to be “perfect” (for where we are in our walk with God) if it was in fact “impossible” like you seem to be suggesting. It is only impossible, you see, with our own independent efforts. However, if we let God into our lives, we no longer have to live in sin. It’s a promise and a gift of God that He will Himself give us the ability to break free from our rebellion against the Royal Law and enable us to actually love our neighbors as ourselves and to actually keep all of the commandments of God.

As far as your claims regarding the teachings of Mrs. White on perfection and salvation, you are simply misreading Mrs. White here. While she recognized the fact that a free moral agent is always free to reject a gift that was once accepted (she didn’t believe in the doctrine of “once saved always saved”), she did teach that the Christian is able to have a “present assurance” of salvation. In this line, she specifically said that we should never say, “I don’t know whether I shall be saved or not.”

No one can make himself better, but we are to come to Jesus as we are, earnestly desiring to be cleansed from every spot and stain of sin, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are not to doubt his mercy, and say, ‘I do not know whether I shall be saved or not.’ By living faith we must lay hold of his promise, for he has said, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool’ (ST, April 4, 1892, par. 3).

“The message from God to me for you is ‘Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out’ (John 6:37). If you have nothing else to plead before God but this one promise from your Lord and Saviour, you have the assurance that you will never, never be turned away. It may seem to you that you are hanging upon a single promise, but appropriate that one promise and it will open to you the whole treasure house of the riches of the grace of Christ. Cling to that promise and you are safe. ‘Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.’ Present this assurance to Jesus, and you are as safe as though inside the city of God” (10MR 175.1).

Look not to self, but to Christ. He who healed the sick and cast out demons when He walked among men is the same mighty Redeemer today. Faith comes by the word of God. Then grasp His promise, ‘Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.’ John 6:37. Cast yourself at His feet with the cry, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’ You can never perish while you do this–never” (DA 429.1).

Note that it is a present assurance that is open to the Christian. As long as you depend on Him in active faith, you have the assurance of His acceptance (virtually the same promise found in John 6:37).

Your claim that there were those saved by keeping the letter of the Law “between Sinai and Jesus’ death” is also mistaken. Those people could only receive eternal life as we can receive it – through the unmerited grace of God alone which was made possible by the promise of the sacrifice of Jesus on their behalf. Without the fulfilment of that promise, without the actual cross of Christ, no one could have been saved – period. Everyone’s salvation is and was always dependent upon what Jesus did for everyone on that cross. No one will end up in heaven and say, “I earned this myself because I kept the Law.” No one has ever kept the Law without God’s help… which is how Jesus Himself kept the Law.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Christians and the Sabbath
Response to a comment of a friend of mine posted in another forum:

    “Before the way of FAITH IN CHRIST was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, UNTIL the way of faith was revealed. The law was our guardian UNTIL Christ came; it protected us UNTIL we could be made right with God through FAITH. And now that the way of FAITH has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. For you are all children of God through FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS.” Gal3:23-26

Faith is certainly what saves. This has always been true since the very beginning. Even those righteous persons who lived before Jesus was born into this world as a human being, even Moses or David for instance, were not saved by the works of the Law, but by Faith. The purpose of the Law was never to save, but to convict the sinner of a need of a Savior – since all have sinned against the “Royal Law.” It is faith in the Savior that saves. The work of the Law, carefully considered, is to lead us to know that our only hope of salvation is faith in what Jesus, our Savior, did for us and is doing for us. Yet, this faith does not nullify the Law or make the Law pointless when it comes to its job to constantly remind us of our need of a Savior – a saving Power outside of ourselves. Rather, the Power realized through this faith actually enables us to keep the Spirit of the Law as it was originally intended to be kept – through selfless love for God and for our neighbors.

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, makes this point particularly clear:

Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law. – Romans 3:31

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts… If a man who is not circumcised keeps the requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? – Romans 2:13-15, 26

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! – Romans 6:15

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” … So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good… For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. – Romans 7:7, 11, 22-25

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit… The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. – Romans 8:3-4, 7

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. – Romans 13:8-10


Christians and the Sabbath
The Mishnah Superior to the rest of the Talmud?
According to the authors of “Lying for God” (Kerry Wynne and Larry Dean), the Mishnah was considered superior to the rest of the Talmud:

Recall that the Pharisees rejected the Talmud as merely the production of Human opinion, although the stewards of the oral law had, in their minds, placed the Mishnah within the body of Jewish oral law call the Talmud.  When Jesus told His followers to obey the teachings of the Pharisees, by the process of elimination we have no other possibility left than that Jesus instructed His followers to obey the teachings of the Mishnah and to reject all ther parts of the oral law.

The Mishnah rejects the idea that the Torah existed before Moses. (Link)

This argument seems a bit strange for several reasons.  First off, the Mishnah was collected and committed to writing about 200 AD and forms the first part of the Talmud. Orthodox Judaism believes that Moses received the Torah (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) from God and that he wrote down everything God spoke to him. However, they also believe that God gave Moses explanations and examples of how to interpret the Law that Moses did not write down. These unwritten explanations are known in Judaism as the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah was supposedly passed down from Moses to Joshua and then to the rabbis until the advent of Christianity when it was finally written down as the legal authority called Halakha (“the walk”). The two main sections of the Oral Torah are the Mishnah and the Gemara.

The Mishnah (משנה, “repetition”) essentially records the debates of the post-temple sages from AD 70—200 (called the Tannaim) and is considered the first major work of “Rabbinical Judaism.” It is composed of six orders (sedarim), arranged topically…

After the Mishnah was published, it was studied exhaustively by generations of rabbis in both Babylonia and Israel. From AD 200—500, additional commentaries on the Mishnah were compiled and put together as the Gemara. Actually, there are two different versions of the Gemara, one compiled by scholars in Israel (c. 400 AD) and the other by the scholars of Babylonia (c. 500 AD). Together, the Mishnah and the Gemara form the Talmud (Link).

Clearly, then, the Mishnah was not in written existence until after the time of Jesus. The claim, then, that Jesus recognized the Mishnah as authoritative, but not the rest of the Talmud, isn’t entirely accurate.  Beyond this, Jesus rejected many of the traditions of the Pharisees in His own day as being inconsistent with the Law of Love and the original intent of God for His own Laws. This is the reason that Jesus was in constant conflict with the Pharisees and their burdensome laws.

The fact of the matter is that the Gemaric part of the Talmud does, in fact, recognize the existence of the Torah, including the Sabbath, before the time of Moses. And, there is no reason to selectively reject certain views proposed by the Talmud. Beyond this, the Mishnah itself also directly claims that Abraham, despite having lived many generations before Moses, had already been a follower of the laws that were eventually delivered on Sinai – in their entirety:

We find that Father Avraham observed the Torah [hatorah] in its entirety before it was given, as it is said: “Since Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my observances, commandments, statutes and my teachings [toratai]. (Gen. 26:5).

M Qiddushin (Kiddushin) 4:14 (Link – starting at 9:00 of 9:25)

This, of course, directly undermines the above-cited claim that, “The Mishnah rejects the idea that the Torah existed before Moses.”  Rather, the Mishnah specifically argues that Abraham observed the entire Torah before it was given to Moses – including the Sabbath.


Christians and the Sabbath
@Kerry Wynne:

You also argue that:

“ANOTHER PROBLEM FOR DR. PITMAN IS THAT THE NAZARENES WERE KNOWN TO HAVE KEPT THE SABBATH ACCORDING TO THE LUNAR CALENDAR. THEIR SABBATHS WERE VARIABLE/ADJUSTABLE.

And, what evidence do you give for this claim? – in your latest LFG book? As far as I can tell, it is based largely on John Keyser’s book, “From Sabbath to Saturday” where a statement from Clement of Alexandria is referenced as follows:

“Neither worship as the Jews; for they, thinking that they only know God, do not know Him, adoring as they do angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon be not visible, they do not hold the Sabbath, which is called the first; nor do they hold the new moon, nor the feast of unleavened bread, nor the feast, nor the great day.” (Stromata, Chap. 5)

In your latest edition of LFG, you interpret this statement as follows:

This clearly indicates that at this time the weekly Sabbath was still dictated by the moon’s course.

Well, not quite. Certainly, this passage does not trump the numerous statements from many authors concerning the regular weekly cycle of 7 fixed days followed by the early Christians (including the Nazarenes) – along with a fixed Sabbath day every 7th day. Therefore, what Clement is most likely talking about here is one of the annual sabbaths – like the “Feast of Trumpets” (which happens to fall on “the first” day of the month of Tishrei).

Again, the evidence against the whole “Lunar Sabbath” concept for the Jews and early Christians is so strong that your continued promotion of it further undermines your overall credibility.


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