Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Lying For God: What Adventists Knew About the Sabbath and Lied About




Here is a document concerning the Seventh Day Adventist chruch, of which Armstrongism is a branch of, deliberately LIED about the sabbath being kept in Genesis


LYING FOR GOD: What Adventists Knew And When They Knew It!  
8th Edition – August 1, 2014   
By 
KERRY B. WYNNE 
B.A., English & history (1970 & 1972), Pacific Union College M.A., educational administration, Andrews University (1978) 
WILLIAM H. HOHMANN B.A., theology, Ambassador College (1976) 
ROBERT K. SANDERS Founder Of Truth Or Fables.Com 
DUANE JOHNSON Independent Biblical Researcher and Author   
Part I – Verdict: No Sabbath In Genesis 
Part II – Ellen White And Her Enablers 
Copyright 2014


THAT SABBATH ABANDONMENT WAS VIRTUALLY IMMEDIATE  

A variety of Early Christian writers documented that Christians chose to worship on Sunday, beginning in 70 AD and continuing until the Roman Catholic Church came into existence hundreds of years after “Sabbath abandonment” was universal (140 AD). Using their excerpts to support either point of view is filled with risks and challenges.  Great caution must be observed.  Cox (The Literature of the Sabbath Question, 1865) provides evidence that the writings of the early fathers have been heavily edited and even “tampered with.” There are translation problems with documents believed to be legitimate, and some of the documents are believed to be fraudulent. Our research suggests that the biggest mistake Sabbatarians make in using these excerpts is their failure to understand that many of these writers discuss the term “Sabbath” in the context of the Sabbath festival (such as whether or not to fast) and not in the Jewish sense of a day that is intrinsically holy and requires resting upon it by Divine law. At the same time, taken as a whole, these excerpts demonstrate that the Christian Church during its first 500 years or more worshiped on Sundays and celebrated the Sabbath festival at selected times of the liturgical year. If they rested on these Sabbath festivals, it was because of the festive nature of the tradition, and if they worshiped on them it was because it was a festival established as a tradition to keep alive the memory of the Creation Week. The Lord's Supper was often celebrated on this festival. From the Jewish perspective, the early Christians, then, “broke” the Sabbath on all the Saturdays of the year that were not set aside as a Sabbath festival, and they “broke” it on the Sabbath festival days because the festive activities were not what the Law of Moses would have allowed on the weekly Sabbath of the Decalogue. While these writers had the advantage of perspective that living very close in time to the days of the apostles, they did not have access to the large body of the  research that has been done on this subject over the last nearly 2,000 years.  While a study of the opinions of the early fathers is useful, it is important to keep in mind that a number of biblical concepts and themes
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are opposed to Sabbatarian thinking. Just one example is the principle that observing the ordinance of circumcision was a prerequisite to keeping the Sabbath. Do not suppose for a moment that SDA leaders, historians, and theologians are not keenly aware that the Christian writers of the second and third centuries were not virtually unanimous in their disdain for the Jewish concept of Sabbath-keeping. Michael Morrision of Grace Community International comments that SDA Theologian Mervyn Maxwell, in his book, Early Sabbath-Sunday History, concedes that second and early third-century writers had basically the same negative attitudes toward the Sabbath (see part 3, note 27) and summarizes this concept as follows: These writers taught that the new covenant had put an end to the old law — and that now the new spiritual Israel, with its new covenant and its new spiritual law, no longer needed the literal circumcision, literal sacrifices, and literal Sabbath. Barnabas observed that God "has circumcised our hearts." Justin referred triumphantly to the new spiritual circumcision in Christ. Irenaeus taught that circumcision, sacrifices, and Sabbaths were given of old as signs of better things to come; the new sacrifice, for example, is now a contrite heart. Tertullian, too, had a new spiritual sacrifice and a new spiritual circumcision. Each of these writers also taught that a new spiritual concept of the Sabbath had replaced the old literal one.... This supplanting of the old law by the new; of the literal Sabbath by the spiritual, was a very Christ-centered concept for these four writers. God's people have inherited the covenant only because Christ through His sufferings inherited it first for us, Barnabas said. For Justin the new, final, and eternal law that has been given to us was "namely Christ" Himself.  It was only because Christ gave the law that He could now also be "the end of it," said Irenaeus.  And it is Christ who invalidated "the old" and confirmed "the new," according to Tertullian. Indeed Christ did this, both Irenaeus and Tertullian said, not so much by annulling the law as by so wonderfully fulfilling it that He extended it far beyond the mere letter. To sum up: The early rejection of the literal Sabbath appears to be traceable to a common hermeneutic of Old and New Testament scriptures. -  C. Mervyn Maxwell in Maxwell and Damsteegt, Early Sabbath-Sunday History," (pp. 154-156)

14 comments:

  1. Christ and the early church kept the seventh day Sabbath.

    It was instituted on the seventh day of creation week in Genesis.

    God gave it again at Mount Sanai to the "Israelites...12 tribes of Israel (Jacob), after leaving Egypt. The tribe of Judah, (Jews, which the name refers also to Benjamin and some of Levi) is what is meant by "Jews".

    So, not just a Jewish thing.

    This isn't Armstrongism, it's in the Bible.

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  2. What some 1st century Christians did, or what the "early church fathers," may have done however, are irrelevant to a sabbatarian of the Armstrongist variety, if not of the Adventist variety.

    Armstrongists suppose that there was an original "righteous," but lost, Mosaic worship. Then they suppose Jesus came to restore that. All they want to know about is Moses and (maybe) Jesus. They certainly have no respect for the "early church fathers."

    However, if the OT is factual, by now we should have found bits of it written in cuneiform orthography on clay tablets. Of the 23,145 verses the OT, not a single one can be securely dated prior to 600 BCE (Ketef Hinnom), and no OT book can be securely dated prior to 250BCE (4QExodf). The complete absence of the Israelites in all the annals of archaeology suggests the OT is a response to Babylonian exile, composed c.600-250BCE.

    There are many problems with the NT also. The fact the NT texts were all written in Greek and mostly cite from the Septuagint suggesting the NT was written in a Greek-speaking region, perhaps Alexandria, not an Aramaic-speaking region. The ~295 year long gap between Jesus supposed crucifixion in ~30CE and the early church fathers assembling the Christian canon following the Council of Nicea in 325. In this gap a body of Christian writings developed that comprises at least 171 books, out of which the early church fathers fished out 27. And even if they did choose "correctly," (assuming there's any such thing as an "authentic" NT book) there's no guarantee that by the early 3rd century CE that those books that were selected had not been "tampered with."

    And even if we did have the original, inerrant "word of god," we still wouldn't know what it meant. The bible is one of the most flexible volumes ever composed. The NT was written by Jews for Jews, and originally had a Jewish meaning, albeit, a fringe Judaism. But by the time of Emperor Theodosius' Edict of Thessalonika in 380, the Romans had given that religion, and its texts an anti-semitic meaning, turning whatever the NT texts might have originally meant completely upside-down. In fact, if 1st century Christians, sabbath-keeping and Sunday-keeping alike from 70CE were transported to our time, whatever they had to say would almost certainly be a mixture of pagan, Jewish, and Christian mysticism, and thoroughly heretical to modern Christianity.

    Armstrongists say they don't like gnosticism, not realizing that they are gnostics. Sabbath-keeping is just one of the rituals they assume will lead to esoteric epiphanies. Despite the ease of getting facts these days, Armstrongists prefer to imagine there's a "true" form of Mosaic worship that was restored in the 1st century. They prefer to think that the Apostle John was exiled to Patmos, where he wrote the book the Revelation and then canonized the NT (though that supposed canon is identical to the one by the early church fathers. They suppose there's a "true" calendar that tells you the "true" dates to keep the "true" festivals on. It's a puzzle, and if YOU manage to put all the pieces together "just right," for long enough, something incredible is going to happen. Of course, besides the fact that it won't, this is a gnostic approach.

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  3. I am so glad that I am out of this Sabbath debate. I choose when I need to rest. Do you really think that if there is a god that he really cares when we rest?

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  4. In one of the earliest Christian documents, Galatians, Paul states:
    "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I RECEIVED IT BY REVELATION from Jesus Christ."
    He then proceeds to cut down the Sabbath and the laws of Moses.
    So he is no better than Mohammed and Joseph Smith who didn't like the religion of their culture and then CONVENIENTLY "received" "revelation" that Yahweh had changed his mind on stuff they didn't like.

    Which unproven supersession theory do you believe? Christianity? Islam? Mormonism? none of the above?

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  5. Why would any thinking person care what Irenaeus or Tertullian wrote or taught? What makes them an authority much less any of the early "Church Fathers" that the evil Catholic Church points to? I was raised Catholic and I have I first hand experience of their crazy, distorted view of God.
    As bad as the Sabbath was over emphasized in COG, I was freed from a more corrupt understanding as to why humans exist. I never worshiped the Armstrongs or any minister or human. It’s best not to trust humans. Having Faith in Christ our Savior and Creator is a sure thing.

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  6. Just because something is "in the Bible" doesn't make it good!

    Infanticide?
    Hatred?
    So many atrocities?

    It's good to know that much that's in the Bible comes from pre-Judeo-Christian sources, and is a product of those times.

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  7. " It’s best not to trust humans. Having Faith in Christ our Savior and Creator is a sure thing."

    I agree with the first part, that it's best not to trust humans. But that leads to a bump in the road before you get to the second part. How do you know about "christ"? Well, didn't other humans tell you about him, you know, the ones who it's best not to trust? How do you know this "christ" gonna save you? What makes you think he's a creator? Did "christ" tell you these things himself? Or did you hear about it from other humans?

    So, on the one hand, you don't trust humans. But on the other hand, you're willing to say that some things they've told you are "a sure thing." How do you know the times when they're telling you "a sure thing" from the times when you don't trust them?

    *Tilt*

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  8. If anyone can prove without a doubt that the seventh day Sabbath was NOT in force beginning on the seventh day of the creation week in the Bible, then I guess I will be stupid if I keep holding on to those verses in Genesis that prove it:

    King James Bible...

    And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

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  9. ...which came first, creation week or the Jews?

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  10. I protest!

    The Seventh Day Adventists know nothing.

    It all started with William Miller.

    Did he even keep the Sabbath?

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  11. old EXPCG hag wrote:

    "If anyone can prove without a doubt..."

    Can you prove without a doubt that God doesn't scratch his ass?

    If not, then I'll keep on believing it.

    Disproof is often very hard.

    The important question is whether you can prove that the Sabbath is commanded for Christians. The evidence is greatly lacking.

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  12. To be blunt, the NT is so ambiguous on the question (we don't see James railing "The people of the world are willing to acknowledge the other nine commandments - but the Sabbath command is the one they positively REBEL against! It is THE ONE that is the crucial test of obedience! It IDENTIFIES those who have surrendered their wills to God - who OBEY God, regardless of persecution or cost!" at the Council of Jerusalem.

    Frankly, its ambiguous enough that I'm forced to say "if its so damn important, you think it would be recorded in at least one letter to the Gentiles..."

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  13. The important question is whether you can prove that the Sabbath is commanded for Christians. The evidence is greatly lacking.

    August 9, 2014 at 3:42 PM

    DERP, SERIOUSLY?

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  14. Changing times and laws not biblical traditions of men

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