Yet again, as far as lawfully breaking the Sabbath, you …

Comment on Christians and the Sabbath by Sean Pitman.

Yet again, as far as lawfully breaking the Sabbath, you have to admit that Jewish law itself allowed for breaking the Sabbath to relieve suffering – of either man or beast. This is an uncontested fact for which there is really no honest debate. So, clearly, the Sabbath can be “lawfully broken” under certain circumstances – in order to avoid breaking the higher Royal Law of Love. And, the relief of suffering isn’t the only “lawful” circumstance when the Sabbath can be broken. Other circumstances include the activities of those who are directly in the service of God doing God’s work. As previously mentioned, this included the priests who broke the Sabbath day doing the work for the temple services (Matthew 12:5). Again, the Sabbath is “lawfully” broken here – and the Jews already understood this. This is the argument Jesus used to defend his disciples for picking and eating some wheat on the Sabbath when they were working with Jesus serving the people. It’s all part of “doing good” and going on God’s missions on the Sabbath – and all such reasons are valid reasons, before God, for lawfully breaking the Sabbath command. And, importantly, none of this was new. Jesus wasn’t presenting anything really novel here since He Himself argued that everything that He was doing was right in line with the Law that the Jews themselves claimed to follow. The Jews of His day had simply perverted the Sabbath and the original intent of God for Sabbath observance. What the Jews in Christ’s day were doing was, in fact, not “lawful” to do on the Sabbath since they were actually harming people on the Sabbath and hindering the work of God on the Sabbath. Now that is something that is not at all “lawful” to do on the Sabbath – or any other day for that matter.

As far as the Saturday night prayer meeting, I’m sorry if I misunderstood you, but it seemed to me like you said that the disciples of Jesus worshiped together on Sunday. Well, the one example of this is found in Acts 20:7 – which was a Saturday night meeting that lasted till midnight because Paul had to leave on a trip the next morning. Clearly then, this doesn’t remotely trump the statements regarding regular and even “customary” Sabbath observance by the apostles – including Paul.

As far as the “shadow laws” mentioned in Colossians 2:17 and Hebrews 10:1, these refer to those laws that specifically foreshadowed the life and death of Jesus. Hebrews 10:1 is very clear in this regard, speaking of “the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year”. The animal-based sacrificial system, and the laws surrounding it, were indeed meant to foreshadow the life and death of Jesus. However, this isn’t true of the commandments of the Decalogue which are eternal moral laws that don’t foreshadow anything. They are their own reality – based on the Royal Law which is, itself, equal in authority and eternal nature with God Himself – since God is Love (1 John 4:16). In fact, you yourself accept that nine of the Commandments of the Decalogue are in fact still binding on the Christian – that these nine were not “shadow” laws. You’re just hung up on one single commandment found within the Decalogue that you claim is the only one included in the Ten that is, somehow, a true “shadow” law. I’m sorry, but that conclusion of yours is simply nonsensical from everything that the Bible has to say about the Ten Commandments and the Sabbath and everything that historical evidence has to say of the views of the apostles and the early Church.

As far as the term “anthropos”, it can be used in a singular or pleural sense. So, context is important to understand here. As used in Mark 2:27, the meaning is very clear in the original Greek:

καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς τὸ σάββατον διὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐγένετο οὐχ ὁ ἄνθρωπος διὰ τὸ σάββατον

The translation is as follows:

And he said to them, The Sabbath was made for the man, and not the man for the Sabbath:

Now, look in the very next sentence where Jesus referred to Himself as “the son of man” (Mark 2:28). The word Greek word for “man” here is the same word “ἀνθρώπου” or “anthropos”. Certainly then, you’re not suggesting that Jesus was claiming here to be the Son of the Jews? – right? Rather, Jesus is clearly claiming here to be the Son of mankind – of Adam in particular. He is in fact the “second Adam” (1Co 15:45-48) and is therefore the representative of all of mankind – not just one particular special group of human beings. In fact, other passages also use the term “anthropos” to refer to “mankind” as well. As another example of this, consider the passage in Matthew 4:4 where Jesus says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The word for “man” here is “anthropos”. Yet, it is very clear that Jesus is not suggesting that this only applies to Jews or to any one particular “man”. Clearly, in context, Jesus is saying that this applies to all of mankind – to include you and me. The same thing is true for John 2:25 where John writes, “He needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Again, the term used here is “anthropos” – clearly extending to all of mankind rather than being limited to the Jews or any one particular individual. Another example is Hebrews 2:6 / Psalms 8:4 which says, “What is man, that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man, that you care for him?” Again, the word for “man” used in Hebrews 2:6 “anthropos”. Yet clearly, in context, the reference here is to all of humankind – not to just a single individual.

Of course, since you are a fan of dictionary definitions you might ought to actually read the dictionary definition of anthropos:

Noun:
ἄνθρωπος • (ánthrōpos)

1. human being, person (as opposed to gods); man, woman
2. (philosophical) man, humanity
3. (sometimes in the plural) all human beings, mankind

See also: Link

Again, notice that the term “anthropos” can be either singular or pleural in meaning. The same is true for the English word “man”.

So, understood in proper context, the Greek used in Mark 2:27 is quite clear. Jesus is obviously saying here that the Sabbath was made, originally, for humanity at large, not just for the Jews. It must, however, be pointed out that another interpretation is very probable – which adds additional emphasis and insight into the creation origin of the Sabbath. As noted above, the literal reading of Mark 2:27 says, “the Sabbath was made for the man, not the man for the Sabbath.” The article “the” is present, preceding the word “man”. The term “The man” is the characteristic designation of Adam in the creation account. These precise words “ho anthropos” occur repeatedly with reference to Adam (Gen 1:27; 2:7-8, 15, 18 in the LXX). Given the cumulative evidence for a reference to creation already noted, it seems clear that Christ was saying, and was clearly understood by His listeners as saying, that the Sabbath was originally made for Adam – and through extension for all of humankind that descended from him. After all, in Genesis 5:2 God referred to both Adam and Eve by the same name – He “called their name Adam.” It is for this reason that the Strong’s (H120) definition of the Hebrew word “adam” is “ruddy”… “that is, a human being (an individual or the species, mankind, etc.). In other words, in this context the term “the man” means “Adam”, which in turn was the term originally used by God for “mankind”.

As far as salvation is concerned, Sabbath observance doesn’t and never did save anyone. It doesn’t matter if someone observed the Sabbath during Mosaic times and was therefore not executed. This doesn’t mean that that person will therefore be saved in heaven. These are not equivalent situations – as I’ve tried to explain. Avoiding death here on Earth by obeying the letter of the law isn’t the same thing as obeying the Spirit of the Moral Law and gaining eternal life with God. The situation with Adam and Eve was also different, fundamentally different, from our current situation. You see, Adam and Eve were originally created perfect – naturally in line with the Royal Law. This is not true for us today. We are born with a strong natural tendency to act contrary to the Royal Law. So, by not eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve naturally remained in a loving relationship with God – since they were originally made to be naturally loving. However, when they did choose to eat of the fruit that God had forbidden, they fell out of the loving relationship with God and into deliberate rebellion against God – i.e., “sin”. At this point, rebellion against, not love for, God became natural for humanity. Mankind gained a natural tendency to be unloving and selfish. It is for this reason that the relationship between God and humanity cannot be healed or reconciled by “keeping” a commandment like the Sabbath, because the problem with humanity and the origin of sin within humanity goes much deeper. That is why the only way the relationship could be restored, the only way mankind could resist the natural tendency to be selfish and unloving, is through the life and death of Jesus which allowed God to step in and re-give us the ability to truly love again. This is the reason why keeping the Law doesn’t save anyone since keeping the letter of the Law, by itself, doesn’t make you loving. That is why salvation from our lethal selfishness only comes through the gift of God that was made possible by the death of Jesus on the cross. Yet, the entirely free gift of salvation can be rejected and a person can choose to be lost – to seek after selfish desires again and exclude him or herself from a relationship with God and choose, instead, to end up in oblivion.

Regarding your reference to John 3 and how a person can be saved, you do realize that being “born again” doesn’t guarantee that you will not, at some future point in time, choose to reject your new birth and turn against God once more? As already mentioned, this is the reason why Ellen White rejected the popular concept of “once saved always saved” and promoted instead the concept of a “present assurance” of salvation. You can know for sure, right now, if you are or are not in a saving relationship with God. Beyond this, if you want to remain in this saving relationship with God, if you want to maintain your “new birth”, you must die to self on a regular basis, daily or even multiple times a day if necessary, because your old self is always there trying to gain the mastery over you again. Discipline is required, on our part, to maintain our relationship with God so that He can be free to enable us to deny our natural selfish desires. As Paul explains (1 Corinthians 9:27), you, as a free moral agent, must deliberately choose, everyday, to remain in your walk with God and continue to listen to your conscience. This is our part to play in our own salvation. Otherwise, you will fall away from your walk with God and be lost. The same is true for me.

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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