Thursday, April 5, 2018

No Mention of Sabbath Untill Into Exodus Journey?



The Hebrews left Egypt on a Thursday night and marched and camped for a total of 38 days before they kept their first Sabbath, treating all the previous days of their journey the same in regard to travel and work. One week before observing the first Sabbath ever kept by anyone, they marched 20 kilometers from their camp by the Red Sea to the edge of the Wilderness of Sin, trampling on the 7th day of their week, arriving around 5 pm on the 31st day of their journey late that “Saturday” afternoon. That evening, God introduced the Manna Obedience Test to Israel, instructing them to gather daily an amount sufficient for their needs for one day, and that on the sixth day they were to gather a double portion in order to provide them with manna on the Sabbath, seeing as there would be none provided on that day. Critical thinking elicits the fact that you cannot keep the Sabbath holy without a preparation day before it. All the work has to be completed before sundown on the 6th day.
At this point in the Exodus journey, the Sabbath represented nothing more than the second of two obedience tests. It was not until a few weeks later when, at Mt. Sinai, the Sabbath was incorporated into the treaty between God and Israel known as the 10 Commandments. Like the ordinance of circumcision and the Jewish dietary laws, the institution of the Sabbath was designed to set the Hebrews apart from every other society on Earth, forming a protective social barrier that would severely restrict their interaction with the Heathen. Regarding these cultic Jewish rituals, a scholar once observed that people who do not eat together seldom become friends. If the Sabbath were a Creation ordinance with truly moral qualities, God would not have led His children out of Egypt without provision for keeping it every step of the way. Once, because of their sins, God seems to have threatened to take Israel’s Sabbaths away.
Hosea 2:11 (NIV) - 11 I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.
There is some evidence that this text may merely represent a prophecy of what would become of Israel’s sabbath system as a result of their disobedience, rather than an actual statement that God would specially intervene to take away their sabbaths. During their various captivities, Israel undoubtedly experienced disruptions of their Sabbath-keeping. In either case,  the adoption of the fixed calendar by their conquering nations made it impossible to keep the Sabbath as is was specified in the Law of Moses. In effect, they were forced to keep “Saturday” rather than the “Sabbath.” All of this Sabbath chaos illustrates the fact that the Sabbath is characteristically ceremonial rather than moral. For example, if Israel was committing adultery and fornication “too much,” God would not suspend the parts of the Law of Moses that forbid these sins. Not even God Himself can set aside or suspend moral laws because such laws are based on the natural laws of cause and effect.
Before the Hebrews left Egypt, the instructions God gave them regarding the keeping of the Passover Feast suggest that no Sabbath existed at that time. This feast was to last seven days, so whether a fixed or lunar calendar is used for our calculations, one of those days would have to have been a Sabbath-- if there had been a Sabbath in existence at that time. The preparation of food was allowed on all of the seven days of the Passover feast. By contrast , cooking on the Sabbath was forbidden. For the Sabbath, the cooking must be done on the Preparation Day, or the sixth day of the week. If there was no sixth day of preparation, there could be no seventh-day Sabbath because food would have to be prepared for the people on it. While permission to prepare food on the Sabbath may have been granted in connection with some of the Jewish feast celebrations that God added later, the only national feast week God had given them up to the time of the Exodus was the Passover.
As our study unfolds it will become painfully clear that Exodus 16 provides water-tight proof—not merely evidence--that no Sabbath existed before the giving of the Manna. We do not use the term, proof, loosely. What this fact means is that any argument for the existence of the Sabbath prior to the Exodus must be remarkably clear, or it is hardly worth discussing. Also, any pro-Sabbatarian arguments must be able to stand on their own with evidence gathered only from Genesis 1 through Exodus 16. In view of the absolutes of Exodus 16, Sabbatarians should not expect to be taken seriously if their approach involves taking references to the Sabbath from beyond the account of the Exodus journey and stuffing them back into Genesis 2. In order for them to provide meaningful support for their agenda, they must demonstrate clear Sabbath content in Genesis 2.
All it takes is a brief survey of Genesis through Exodus 16 to see that there is nothing of this sort available to Sabbatarians. At the same time, there is only a limited amount of evidence available to anti-Sabbatarians, such as the four of us, to actually prove that there is no Sabbath content in Genesis. This evidence in found in part in that Moses used special literary devices to limit the blessing, hallowing, and sanctifying (the setting aside) of that day to that ONE day ALONE. We will explain these indicators and how they work subsequently. Meanwhile, let us turn our attention back to the Exodus journey. God introduced the Sabbath to Israel as something new. The people acted as if it were something new— a stiff-necked and stubborn people testing the boundaries. Some individuals gathered firewood on that first Sabbath. They did so publicly. If the Sabbath had existed prior to Exodus 16, these offenders would have been stoned. The stubborn nature of the Hebrew people strongly suggests that if there were Sabbaths before Exodus 16, some of them would have tested God by breaking the Sabbath every chance they got; yet there is no record that God ever rebuked them for Sabbath-breaking prior to Exodus 16. Here is what the Law of Moses has to say about Sabbath-breaking:
Num 15:32 - 36 (NIV) 32While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
Think how bad the Exodus journey would make God look if the Sabbath had originated at Creation! Was He not powerful enough to control the events of the Exodus to provide for Sabbath-keeping, including, in each case, a Preparation Day? What kind of example would He have set for His people? Do God’s children only have to keep the Sabbath when it is convenient? Clearly, there was no Sabbath to break until day 38 of the Exodus. Sabbatarian apologist, Brendan Knudson, suggests the possibility that if there was Sabbath-breaking involved under God’s direction-- “The ox is in the ditch” principle excusing God for leading His people to trample on it. Our position is that God had enough power to halt all the forces of Evil and Nature to enable them to keep the Sabbath if there had been a Sabbath to keep, and that as a cognate requirement, He would have also given them preparation days to assure that they could keep their Exodus Sabbaths without preparing food or gathering firewood upon it. People get hungry on Sabbath whether food was prepared the day before or not.  
Everything we know about God’s character screams out that He would not lead His people to break an eternally binding moral law. This fact explains several mysterious things that honest-at-heart, thinking Sabbatarians have secretly pondered. Why is there no mention of the Sabbath in Genesis? Why did God give Abraham a surgical procedure (circumcision) as a “seal” for his descendants instead of the Sabbath, which was never even mentioned? Why was Sabbath-keeping not included in a list of basic laws that God gave to Noah around the time of the Great Flood? Why did St. Paul instruct the early church not to require Sabbath-keeping of the new Gentile converts (Colossians 2:14-17)? And why did St. Paul not list Sabbath-breaking in any of the several lists of sins he discussed in his writings? In Galatians St. Paul discusses the Christian's freedom from the “LAW,” and it is clear he is discussing moral, rather than ceremonial, laws because the example he cited was adultery. Yet in the same breath he explained that the Christian is not subject to the LAW, he gave a list of 15 sins that he said would keep a person from entering Heaven. Robert K. Sanders observes that in Romans 1:28-32 he listed 16 sins that were not mentioned in Galatians 5 and that he listed still more sins in Ephesians 4:25-32-- and that in all of these lists there is not a single mention of Sabbath-breaking. With all the sins that Paul’s writings mention-- which included sins of motive and omission in addition to the sins of commission that are the focus of the Decalogue-- it is difficult to imagine how an objective Bible student could think that the 10 Commandments were intended to represent a complete guide to morality or that the Sabbath-keeping should be transferred from Judaism to Christianity. Apparently God didn’t think so either because he gave additional moral laws to Moses after He wrote the 10 Commandments in stone, including prohibitions against fornication (a very different sin from adultery in Hebrew thought) and homosexual relationships.
------------------

Thanks to advanced studies in Hebrew linguistics we now know that there is no possibility that the Sabbath ordinance was imposed on God’s people until the time of the Exodus. We also know that Heathen societies that predated Exodus Era Israel had a “sabbath” concept based on the four phases of the moon and fertility themes. The next logical step requires the obvious conclusion, and that  is that the sabbath of propitiation and fertility associations that was so prevalent in the societies that predated ancient Israel could not have developed as the result of some kind of “dim memory” of the “original Sabbath” in the Garden of Eden. No such thing ever existed!  Additionally, some historians see evidence that this lunar-fertility sabbath was part of the Egyptian culture when the Hebrews were their captives.
The next logical step is to conclude that the evidence available to us suggests that when God gave Israel its sabbath system, His thinking was that He would take a useful but purely heathen concept, redeem it, wash it clean of its fertility and superstitious connotations, and present it to Israel in the glorious and holy form in which came down to them from Mt. Sinai-- The Mountain of the Moon.  It would appear that while it was washed of its Heathen connotations, its association with the four phases of the Moon was retained. After all, in Genesis, Chapter One, God stated that the sun and moon were given to the human race to determine “sacred times.” The lunar connection with the Sabbath, then, did not need to be cleansed as it reflected His provision for time-keeping for all peoples for all time from the beginning of time. The earliest societies on Earth had retained the memory of the lunar method of time reckoning that God had given to the world in the very beginning. And this memory was not a “dim” one either.  With each appearance of the Moon, all the people on the Earth recognized the existence of God's long-lasting timepiece.

From: Lying for God: What Adventists Knew And When They Knew It!


37 comments:

DennisCDiehl said...

In the fairy tale the author says"......they marched 20 kilometers from their camp by the Red Sea to the edge of the Wilderness of Sin, trampling on the 7th day of their week, arriving around 5 pm on the 31st day of their journey late that “Saturday” afternoon."

hmm...very interesting. I was always under the impression that it was just Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua, Caleb and a few other leading Israelites who arrived around 5 pm and that the other 2 plus million arrived a little after 9:45 pm with some of the old and infirmed hobbling in until after midnight. :)

And too...."The very people who had been delivered out of Egypt by mighty miracles soon mumbled and grumbled about God and His provision for them! God said none of those grumblers would enter the Promised Land. Only Joshua and his good friend Caleb would enter (Numbers 14:21-24, 30), because Joshua and Caleb followed God whole-heartedly (Numbers 32:12). After forty years of wandering, the entire generation of Israelites who were delivered from slavery had died, except Joshua and Caleb. It was the children who had been born during the wilderness years who were left now."

Sad those who packed up and left Egypt all got to die in the wilderness because they grumbled about things like oh say... food and water, or wishing they were back in Egypt where at least there was a Safeway or Giant Eagle. Terrible people. So ungrateful . And to think it was only a 9 day walk to the Promised land if Moses had a better map instead of wandering for 40 years in the wrong direction. Seems more like a trick than a deliverance.

If you ask me, I think 6th century BCE priests , bored out of their minds and in captivity decided to write a huge pedigree for a meager cultic people and see if it stuck. Sad too one has to wander through this exegesis of Genesis to try and figure out what God wanted or didn't want. I still say a real God should just man up and speak up loud and clear, yet today, with what exactly He/She wants with out all the opportunities to get it mucked up and end up either not chosen or in the wrong church thinking you found the right one which is also a fairy tale evidently if I go by my own experience.

All God has to say is "...and I'll see you in church on ...Sunday or Saturday" Easy!

Anonymous said...

You would think that God would make everything plain and simple so that there is no confusion. But all you see in the world of religion is confusion. Could it be that religion is just something invented by humans? God is not the author of confusion, right?

DennisCDiehl said...

Anon 327, who obviously can't sleep either said:

God is not the author of confusion, right?

Evidently God IS the author of confusion, but only in a religious sense and context.

Anonymous said...

"One week before observing the first Sabbath ever kept by anyone,..."


seriously???

so, Adam & Eve don't count?

True Bread said...

someone wrote:

The next logical step is to conclude that the evidence available to us suggests that when God gave Israel its sabbath system, His thinking was that He would take a useful but purely heathen concept, redeem it, wash it clean of its fertility and superstitious connotations, and present it to Israel in the glorious and holy form in which came down to them from Mt. Sinai-- The Mountain of the Moon.



WOW....!!!! we finally have the Creator Himself posting on Banned.....glad I don't need my bibles anymore, or faith, etc...I can just come here and read directly from the source....



TK

Anonymous said...

"In Galatians St. Paul discusses the Christian's freedom from the “LAW,” and it is clear he is discussing moral, rather than ceremonial, laws because the example he cited was adultery. Yet in the same breath he explained that the Christian is not subject to the LAW, he gave a list of 15 sins that he said would keep a person from entering Heaven."

There is an artifical division reflected here between the "moral" and "ceremonial law". Those monikers may make it easier for writers to refer to laws but this terminology is not rooted in the Bible. And the citation of a so-called "moral" law does not make the topic just the "moral" law. That is a logical fallacy.

Paul affirms 15 sins in the follow up. Re-affirmation is a principle accepted by the Christian church in the NT. A re-affirmation does not reinstate the entire law including the Sabbath - that again is a logical fallacy.

And, Dennis, Fairy Tales have a meaning - oftentimes the collective wisdom of a people. Counting the hairs on Rumpelstiltskin's beard and missing the point will really get you nowhere - although you may end up being a champion whisker counter.

RSK said...

No, you have to follow the link being quoted to read directly from the source. :)

Timothy Kitchen Jr said...

Genesis 2:2-3

Genesis 2:16-17 God teaches Adam the Choice of the TWO TREES. Obey God's Word or do it your way, stemming from your own thoughts.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Romans 5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.


1 John_3:4 Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
(Exodus 20:Exo 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Exo 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Exo 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Exo 20:6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Exo 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Exo 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exo 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Exo 20:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.)



Mark 12:31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
(Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Exo 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.
Exo 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Exo 20:15 Thou shalt not steal.
Exo 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Exo 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.)


1 John_5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.

The Sabbath was from the Beginning. God's Law was since Before Adam(2 Peter 2; Remember 1 John 3:4 on what sin is). It didn't start from the Exodus. God's Law was not the Law of Moses.

Anonymous said...

Well Tim, not one single thing you posted had anything to do with the sabbath being kept until Moses descended down off the mountain. Even then, it was a command ONLY for the Israelites and no one else. Nice attempt though.

Timothy Kitchen Jr said...

Re-read what I posted(looking up the scriptures), maybe you'll catch what I'm saying. But I'm not here to give understanding to those God hasn't open their minds to understand. God can only give understanding. We first must believe God's Word for God to give us understanding.

My point was that The Sabbath was since the Beginning. God kept it. God commanded his children, His people to keep it. And God hasn't changed.

Mal_3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not;

1 John_5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.

1Jn 2:3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
1Jn 2:4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
1Jn 2:5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
1Jn 2:6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.

Did Christ keep the Sabbath? If so, we are commanded to keep it today!
Mar 2:27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
Mar 2:28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Luk 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

Luk 4:30 But he passing through the midst of them went his way,
Luk 4:31 And came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the sabbath days.


It does not only apply to the Children of Israel in Moses's time, but to every Christian walking as Christ walked.

RSK said...

If I remember the chronology correctly, there were around 2,500 years between Adam's creation and the Exodus.

Anonymous said...

2,500 years of no sabbath keeping!

True Bread said...

No Mention of Sabbath Untill Into Exodus Journey? (sic)


It's pretty well spelled out in Gen 2, there skippy....

Hard to imagine the Creator of the universe going through all of the trouble creating everything, including angels and then mankind, without having the wherewithal to actually teach A&E about the seventh day....not to mention the the calendar etc....

And why would the LORD warn Cain about sin in Gen 4:7, if He hadn't told them about the commandments...??? Hmmm.....

And why did the LORD flood the entire earth because "every intent of the thoughts of his (mankind's) heart was only evil continuously...??? Hmmmmmm......

And how did Noah find grace in the eyes of the LORD...??? Hmmmm.....

Now you have to also wonder why would Lot be baking unleavened bread in Gen 19:3.....hmmmm because maybe the Angel of the LORD to him about the feast of ULB...??



Get the picture.....??




TK

Anonymous said...

"...Regarding these cultic Jewish rituals ... "

Yes ... Judaism is a cult. A supremacist cult that says "WE are the chosen people, chosen by God to RULE over YOU." Supremacism is, by definition, the belief that one people has some divine or inherent right to RULE over others. The KINGDOM of God was about the RULE of some people over others. In the New Testament, Christians will rule because Jews rejected Jesus. In the Old Testament, THE JEWS WILL RULE all gentiles. Talmudic Jews say gentiles are ANIMALS--they have no soul--and only Jews are human. So, they pay lip service to "human rights", which to them means JEWISH rights, not rights for any Gentiles.

Anonymous said...

False Bread wrote:

"WOW....!!!! we finally have the Creator Himself posting on Banned.....glad I don't need my bibles anymore, or faith, etc...I can just come here and read directly from the source...."

Or, read from the Source calling himself True Bread, a title of Jesus.


Timothy Kitchen Jr said...

God kept the Sabbath. Read Genesis 2:2-3. God sanctified the day, set it apart. That does not mean for one time only. He told the Children of Israel that it was to be kept FOREVER! Now why would God keep it one day, then stop. Then 2,500 years later tell His people, His Nation, that it was to be kept forever? All the while, He himself never keeping it, since he kept it only that one time. That is nonsense! He kept it since he sanctified it! And has ever since! He commanded his children to keep it.

Anonymous said...

You can spend 30 lifetimes studying this stuff and still not know the truth.

Anonymous said...

"We first must believe God's Word for God to give us understanding."

1) Why should we believe it if we don't understand it?

2) How do we know it is the word of God and not the words of a Jewish Supremacist?

Anonymous said...

"Luke 4:30 But he passing through the midst of them went his way"

Not God's way?

Anonymous said...

"If I remember the chronology correctly, there were around 2,500 years between Adam's creation and the Exodus."

How many years were there if you don't remember?

Anonymous said...

"Mark 12:31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

Love thy true NEIGHBOR, not thy lying back-stabbing phony hypocritical progressive enemy. No commandment is greater.

Anonymous said...

If Tim Kitchen actually believes Herb's teaching that the creator was Jesus, then there is no way possible that Jesus would have kept sabbath, since he is the sabbath rest. Why would he keep himself? Just because Jesus rested, sorry I mean Christ rested, does not say anywhere that it was a command for humanity till Moses received the 10 commandments, the rule of law to specifically set the Israelite's apart from the heathens around them. Because the Israelite's were so rebellious they need rules and regulations lorded over them, not so for those who are in Christ. Those laws are only for those who are still in rebellion against God's grace and mercy. You need to get your nose of of Herb's crap and start learning about the New Covenant WITHOUT any Armstrongite booklets to tell you want to believe.

Byker Bob said...

How does an omnipresent being keep the sabbath? If He literally stopped working, all of the natural laws of science and physics which maintain the universe would be suspended, and everything we know would cease to exist. Hypothetically, if God tied Himself to planet Earth and Earth’s particular field of relativity for the purpose of sabbath keeping, which time zone? Jerusalem?

The keepers and editors of the ancient scrolls most likely back-edited the sabbath into the creation narrative during the Babylonian exile and captivity, or during the time of the Hasmonean kings of the intertestamental period. When the Levites and priests wrote the calendar as nature unfolded, the sabbath was counted off directly from the new moon.

BB

Anonymous said...

Byker, and others here, I have a question. Maybe the Kitchens will jump in to explain, but I'd like to hear from others as well.

We are told that God worked for six days, then rested on the seventh day.
We are told that this is the pattern for God's people, as well.
We are told that for God, a thousand years is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years.
We are told that God has a 7,000-year plan. Here's where the problem comes in.

In that 7,000-year plan, we are told that God has been resting for 6,000 years, and that He plans to Work on Day 7, during the Millennium. Isn't that exactly backwards? If the weekly Sabbath pictures God's rest which we are to emulate, doesn't the ACOG teaching about the 7,000 years ending with the Millennium contradict the church's Sabbath teaching?

Even if we speculate that the plan is for man to do his work for 6,000 years, and then to rest from his own works during the Millennium under God's guidance, haven't we proved that God Himself does not keep a Sabbath rest? If God rests on the Sabbath, the ACOG Millennium teaching collapses. If God does not rest on the Sabbath, then any number of other ACOG teachings come apart. Which is it?

Byker Bob said...

Well, 8:12, there are scholars of ancient Hebrew who teach that the word translated as “rest” in Gen. 1 does not mean literal rest. This makes perfect sense because God is spirit and does not require rest. Thus, it means that God’s work of creation was finished in 6 days, so He “ceased” working. Rested = ceased. In a court of law: “I rest my case” does not mean that an attorney is fixin’ to take a nap! It means he or she has finished presenting the case.

We can also know, nearly 50 years after the fact, that “6,000 years for man, 1,000 years for God” is an extrabiblical theory, or guess. It is not a biblical fact or truth. The bogus Armstrong prophecy mold is based largely on that theory, which is why it has not and will not come to pass. Once the tribulation begins, everything is governed specifically by math, per Revelation. Then we have a time table, and can know certain things. However, the date that the tribulation begins is not governed by math, or Jesus would most certainly have known when it would occur. The tribulation will begin when Father God has determined that He can no longer tolerate the condition to which mankind has sunken. And, that is a judgment call. Math has nothing to do with it.

Legalists, literalists, want us to believe that they have all the answers, and that you must obey them to be spared from the tribulation, and to enter the kingdom. They do not. The prophecies of the Armstrongs and the entire Adventist movement have failed. This is not a “delay”. It is a full-blown Deut. 18:22 situation!

BB

Anonymous said...

Gen 19:3 and DULB, True Bread?
Nothing against DULB, but I think you're stretching it with that one.

Anonymous said...

That's a massive SDA resource, three quarters into it it says this:

1981 – Robert D. Brinsmead, a highly controversial independent Seventh-day Adventist theologian with a large following in the United States in earlier years, publishes his classic paper, “Sabbatarianism Re-examined.” Brinsmead’s paper, the writing of which is evidently prompted by his keen perception that Dr. Bacchiocchi's 1977 book came closer to destroying the case for Sabbatarianism than to defending it, refutes Bacchiocchi's fanciful Sabbath theology and painfully exposes the impossibilities of Sabbatarianism. A brilliant writer, Brinsmead disproves the entire Sabbath concept with the most up-to-date scholarly research and lock-step logic.

1981 – Dale Ratzlaff, who is later to be described by SDA Bible professor Judd Lake as the “fountain head of all [SDA] critics,” leaves the Church because he cannot find biblical support for the Church’s Doctrine of the Investigative Judgment (Sanctuary Doctrine). He continues to keep the Sabbath for a while and later writes his devastating critique of the Investigative Judgment entitled Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists. Later, he will publish a comprehensive anti-Sabbatarian book entitled Sabbath in Crisis, which is now renamed Sabbath in Christ. (See also 1990) His book on the Sabbath will later become one of two documents written by former SDA authors that influence The Worldwide Church of God to turn its back on the Sabbatarian heritage it had shared with Seventh-day Adventists from the very beginning. (See also1995.)

1982 – Robert D. Brinsmead publishes another block-buster paper on the Sabbath, “A Digest of the Sabbath Question.” This paper provides additional scholarly proof for the points he made in his 1981 paper and is written in his usual brilliant style. These two papers confront SDA leaders with biblical and historical evidence that prove that Sabbatarianism is impossible― not merely questionable.


1995 – The Worldwide Church of God renounces Sabbatarianism after studying the writings of former Adventists, Robert D. Brinsmead and Dale Ratzlaff. This repudiation of Sabbatarianism represents one of the most significant events in the history of modern Christianity. Since the Seventh-day Adventist Church and The Worldwide Church of God ultimately developed out of one group of Advent believers immediately after the Great Disappointment of 1844, the implications of this development are devastating to Adventism.



RSK said...

Considering a 24-hour day could only be measured by an observer on the Earth's surface (any point in space or on another planet's surface will mark the intervals differently or not at all), isn't that a non sequitur anyway? Did God just adopt this notion based on the Earth's rotation and decide it applied everywhere?

RSK said...

I did not recall the exact number given by the biblical chronology, and I know both dates are disputed anyway, so there was little point in my trying to calculate the exact number on the spot just for a blog comment. Certainly more than a millenium, though. A long time between "God's perfect creation" and the giving of the Law.

Anonymous said...

RSK, you surely have heard ACOG ministers speculate that spirit beings will eventually be given their own planets (not quite the Mormon idea, but in some ways eerily close). What will happen to the weekly and annual Sabbaths if they must be observed on the planets around Orion or Vega? For that matter, how will Christians on Mars observe the Moon(s?) to do the various calendar determinations? Will they celebrate their "annual" Sabbaths half as often as on Earth, or will they use a special liturgical calendar that sometimes requires two Days of Atonement in one orbit around the Sun?

Anonymous said...

A further comment on what RSK wrote.
As fas as I can determine God does not reside on our earth. How long is a day with God? Is one lived on Mercury a day (meaning a full rotation on its axis) would be 58.646 earth days, on Venus a day would be equivalent to 243 earth days and Mars would be 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds. The Bible indicates God lives in the heavens, where exactly we don’t know. So is a day with God the same as our day. Is time only for our planet? Seems like we encapsulate God Into our our limited thinking.
Jim-AZ

Ronco said...

Trivia Time!

Name the Apostle that exhorted the early Christians to keep the Sabbath.

R.L. said...

There's trouble right off the bat with this article:

The Hebrews left Egypt on a Thursday night....

Really?!?! Any scripture to back that up? That takes a link to a second article, which seems to have flawed math by computing Nisan as a 29-day month instead of a 30-day month.

Anonymous said...

"1990 – Dale Ratzlaff publishes his anti-Sabbatarian book, Sabbath in Crisis...Among the sources he studied were the Brinsmead papers. As a result of this study, he rejected Sabbatarianism and began to work on Sabbath in Crisis...appears to be one of the most complete treatises on the impossibilities of Sabbatarianism available today. Together with the Brinsmead papers, Sabbath in Crisis/ Sabbath in Christ has led the way in forging the current anti-Sabbatarian movement that is threatening the very existence of Adventism, particularly in North America."



"1995 – The Worldwide Church of God renounces Sabbatarianism after studying the writings of former Adventists, Robert D. Brinsmead and Dale Ratzlaff."

SHOWS HOW SLOW and DULL OF MIND TKACH and his BOARD OF DIRECTORS were:
TOOK THEM 14 YEARS TO GET UP TO SPEED ON the LATEST SCHOLARSHIP!

RSK said...

Maybe its a holdover from when "heaven" was "up there" instead of "out there"?

RSK said...

That and since the sun and stars werent created until the "fourth day", how do you determine its day four? Does God have a sleep cycle to go by? (Not to mention how do plants not freeze instantly, die and disintegrate with no sun and so many other issues with the "Creation Week" account, but...)

Byker Bob said...

They’d been programmed to reject that kind of research, 10:20. Conservative people are generally very slow to accept or embrace change. The fact that it took 14 years is actually a tribute to their caution.

BB