Where does the Pope get his authority?
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Brakelite
Well-Known Member
Nor was forbidding grandparents from eating their grandchildren for breakfast.
It isn't "a" Sabbath. It is "the" Sabbath which without hesitation, and without any impediment by God or man, comes around every 7 days.
The above is a fascinating dichotomy of concepts closely associated with Adventist theology. One, the forbidding of free worship, the other, the enforcement of worship. A number of salient points to consider here, both historically and prophetically.
In the book of Daniel, two very well known events took place. In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar built a gold statue, and passed a law requiring everyone, even foreigners, to worship this image. We all know the story, and the outcome. In Daniel 6, we find another very well known story of Daniel and his visit to the local zoo to spend time with the lions, as a direct result of his practise to confine worship according to His conscience, despite the laws forbidding it. Both these stories reflect ideas that have been repeatedly acted upon by despots and wannabe rulers throughout history, and millions have suffered for either refusing enforcement, or refusing compromise. And millions more have compromised, and obeyed, contrary to their personal scruples because of weakness, fear, deception, excitement, or peer pressure. This has been the case particularly in respect to Sabbath keeping.
During the various revolts by Jewish zealots at the time of the Roman occupation, the canary was used by the Romans as a weapon against the Jews. They would surround the synagogues and capture the occupants, or burn the building, or threaten to do so unless the names of the revolutionaries be given to the authorities. Early in the Christian era, the Sabbath was used to identity Jews from gentiles by the Romans. Christians, not wanting to be caught in the confusion, and identified as Jews, began holding services on Sunday. Of course, this was only in those places where the Romans held power, and by those who were willing to compromise their faith. otherwise, such as in Ethiopia and the eastern churches, the Sabbath was still observed.
When the papacy began to hold sway over the conscience of men, Sunday was adopted officially, (council of Laodicea) and the church began to persecute Sabbath keepers, while encouraging Sunday and discouraging the Sabbath.
In the new world, the Puritans enforced Sunday by law, even on non believers. The Blue laws are well known, nearly all the stars having being degrees of them, and many states still have them, and there are currently movers in summer quarters to reinstate them. Sabbath keepers were persecuted, and either fined or whipped, and some laws even tried the death penalty although I'm not sure if any court went that far.
The Adventist church is well known for its full support of religious liberty. That includes offering services such as the use of lawyers and counselors for Sunday keepers who are troubled by their employers. Freedom of conscience is at the heart of Adventists theology.
With all due respect, we don't need your permission to observe Sabbath.
No-one is saved by their obedience to the law. The just shall live by faith is an OT statement.
Hebrews 11
GRACE, DIVINE - JewishEncyclopedia.com
Complete contents the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.
What does this text mean?
Zechariah 14:5
You will flee by the valley of the Lord’s mountain, for the valley between the hills will be blocked, and the new valley between them will reach as far as Azal. It will be filled in, as it was by the earthquake, in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all his holy ones with him.
Zechariah 14:5
You will flee by the valley of the Lord’s mountain, for the valley between the hills will be blocked, and the new valley between them will reach as far as Azal. It will be filled in, as it was by the earthquake, in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all his holy ones with him.
Romans 14
J.B. Phillips New Testament
Don’t criticise each other’s convictions
14 1-4 Welcome a man whose faith is weak, but not with the idea of arguing over his scruples. One man believes that he may eat anything, another man, without this strong conviction, is a vegetarian. The meat-eater should not despise the vegetarian, nor should the vegetarian condemn the meat-eater—they should reflect that God has accepted them both. After all, who are you to criticise the servant of somebody else, especially when that somebody else is God? It is to his own master that he gives, or fails to give, satisfactory service. And don’t doubt that satisfaction, for God is well able to transform men into servants who are satisfactory.People are different—make allowances
5-9 Again, one man thinks some days of more importance than others. Another man considers them all alike. Let every one be definite in his own convictions. If a man specially observes one particular day, he does so “to God”. The man who eats, eats “to God”, for he thanks God for the food. The man who fasts also does it “to God”, for he thanks God for the benefits of fasting. The truth is that we neither live nor die as self-contained units. At every turn life links us to God, and when we die we come face to face with him. In life or death we are in the hands of God. Christ lived and died that he might be the Lord in both life and death.10-12 Why, then, criticise your brother’s actions, why try to make him look small? We shall all be judged one day, not by each other’s standards or even our own, but by the standard of Christ. It is written: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’. It is to God alone that we have to answer for our actions.
This should be our attitude
13 Let us therefore stop turning critical eyes on one another. If we must be critical, let us be critical of our own conduct and see that we do nothing to make a brother stumble or fall.14-20a I am convinced, and I say this as in the presence of Christ himself, that nothing is intrinsically unholy. But none the less it is unholy to the man who thinks it is. If your habit of unrestricted diet seriously upsets your brother, you are no longer living in love towards him. And surely you wouldn’t let food mean ruin to a man for whom Christ died. You mustn’t let something that is all right for you look like an evil practice to somebody else. After all, the kingdom of Heaven is not a matter of whether you get what you like to eat and drink, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you put these things first in serving Christ you will please God and are not likely to offend men. So let us concentrate on the things which make for harmony, and on the growth of one another’s character. Surely we shouldn’t wish to undo God’s work for the sake of a plate of meat!
20b-23 I freely admit that all food is, in itself. harmless, but it can be harmful to the man who eats it with a guilty conscience. We should be willing to be both vegetarians and teetotallers if by doing otherwise we should impede a brother’s progress in faith. Your personal convictions are a matter of faith between yourself and God, and you are happy if you have no qualms about what you allow yourself to eat. Yet if a man eats meat with an uneasy conscience about it, you may be sure he is wrong to do so. For his action does not spring from his faith, and when we act apart from our faith we sin.
Colossians 3:23 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,
quietthinker
Well-Known Member
I am also interested in the award....who issued it or is it just flagrant self promotion with a total disregard for what is truth?
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
A rather extreme response considering that no Sabbath observance was ever mandated to Christians….you dodged the point. A distraction doesn’t give us answers to the question. Since you provide no proof from the Bible that Christians, the majority of whom were gentiles, were told to keep the Sabbath, we remain without scriptural evidence that what you claim is true…..but as I said, there is no law against it so we are all free to do as our conscience dictates…..it should however be in accord with Bible teaching.
There were several Sabbaths observed by the Israelites.…were any of them more or less important?
As stated a Genesis 2:1-3…
”Thus the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. 2 And by the seventh day, God had completed the work that he had been doing, and he began to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had been doing. 3 And God went on to bless the seventh day and to declare it sacred, for on it God has been resting from all the work that he has created, all that he purposed to make.”…..But nothing in the Bible record says that God directed Adam to keep the seventh day of each week as a sabbath.
Deuteronomy 5:15….“You must remember that you [Israel] became a slave in the land of Egypt and Jehovah your God proceeded to bring you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. That is why Jehovah your God commanded you to carry on the sabbath day.”
Here Jehovah connects his giving of the sabbath law with Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, not with events in Eden.
Yes, we see that no compromise with any pagan practice was given either by Daniel or his three companions. All escaped death because they refused to taint their worship with pagan practices. But this has nothing to do with Sabbath observance.
The very reason why they were in captivity in the first place was because they violated one of the Sabbath Laws….that of letting the land rest every 7 years. On the 6th year God would provide abundant harvests so that there was plenty of food stored to see them through the 7th fallow year.
But prior to Israel being given God’s law through Moses, no servant of Jehovah was told to observe “the Sabbath”….it was a law for Jews, not Christians…not Gentiles.
And with all due respect, the Bible is our sole authority, and it is the arbiter of what God requires us as Christians to do…..there is only one observance mandated for Christians…..and that is to memorialize Christ’s death, which Jehovah’s Witnesses will do after sundown on the 24th of March this year. That is the day of the anniversary of Christ’s death this year…..and because the Jews used a lunar calendar, we have to calculate the precise date according to their calendar not ours. Christendom is a week too late with their “Easter” celebrations, which makes it rather pointless.
The law has been done away with by Christ’s sacrifice….if you are not Jewish and you wish to observe “the Sabbath” when it was never mandated to Christians like it was to Israel, then there is no impediment to your doing so, but the very name of your church makes the Sabbath your main focus…..when it never was for Christians.
The data promotes Jesus Christ. I'm not selling anything and the data is not about me so it's not self promotion. I think it would be evil to stop promoting Jesus Christ and spend the rest of my life promoting the trinity that is totally BS.
One can promote Jesus Christ without misrepresenting awards, accolades or how a book is received. Misrepresentations can't promote Jesus Christ. Deception can't glorify God.
quietthinker
Well-Known Member
Peter....it appears you are only convincing yourself and then using the decoy of the trinity. Your insistence in avoiding answering our question re your claimed award sets a precedent of how you operate.
You see me when you look at my book. Yet it's a great mystery to me because I don't write about me. I write about Jesus Christ. On just about every page I mention him somehow. And you want me to downgrade that writing. That's evil.
Most of what I see coming from your folks on this site is pure deception. You don't know what part of the Scriptures are addressed to you. You don't know who the son of God is. You teach Jesus is not the Christ, but somehow he belongs to a three-headed pagan structure. You have no idea how to walk by the spirit because you believe you are a sinner saved by grace. And then you want to tell me I'm involved in deception because I have a marketing advertising company to promote against the deception you teach.
Actually, I want to tell you you're involved in deception because you falsely claim, both on this thread and on your website, that your "book" won an award.
If I claimed that I wrote an award-winning book, wouldn't it be fair to ask me about it -- and call me out for lying about it if it turned out to be untrue?
Brakelite
Well-Known Member
You repeat several times that the Sabbath "was never mandated for Christians", yet don't explain why that should have any impact on the practises of today's Christians. I mean, why would it need to be mandated again? Wasn't Sinai enough? Oh, but the law was done away with at the cross you say. Tell me. How long was the commandment against murder done away with? One day? A month? Several years until such time as an apostle mentioned that murder was still bad? Did anyone really need reminding of that? Were Christians murdering one another and needed to be reminded that God frowned upon such things? Same with adultery, theft, covetousness, lying. Did the law cease for a period of time in condemning such practises?
I put it to you that all those, from the time of Adam to the present day, who exercise their faith in God's word by obedience to God's commandments, is a Christian. It was Christ who stood on Sinai and presented the ten commandments to Moses. It was Christ who gave the system of sacrifices and priesthood, and who built the sanctuary, as the remedy for transgressing those ten Commandments. It was the Remedy that was nailed to the cross. The laws of God remained throughout, and remain today. And they weren't just for the Jews. The Remedy is for all of mankind, because all of mankind has sinned. We know this because the ten commandments condemn us, informing us of our sin. "For without the law there is no knowledge of sin". Even the apostle Paul said, "I would not have know lust, except the law said, thou shalt not covet". Was that law only speaking to Paul? Or does it speak to us also? Did the law only speak to Jews before the time of Christ, or was the law given that gentiles also may know the will of God, understand their obligations, and repent? Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah. What did they repent of unless Jonah spoke to them of their sin? And how did they know it was sin except the law said, "thou shalt not covet, steal, lie, kill, worship idols, marry your grandchildren etc etc. " And don't think for a moment that the gentiles didn't know about the Sabbath. KJV Isaiah 56:3-4
3 Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.
4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;
quietthinker
Well-Known Member
Now here comes the blaming and the better than thou attitude......it all builds a case not in your favour Peter
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
No, actually it is the scriptures that tell us that “Christ is the end of the law”.
Col 2:13-17….
”And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (ESV)
It was the written detailed law that governed every aspect of their lives….and they had no choice in that, being born into a chosen nation whose laws were binding on all, with no choice to disobey for any reason.
If you talk to Orthodox Jews today, they are still horribly shackled to the law that has them performing like seals before they walk out of their front door in the morning. It’s a slavery to something Paul called weak and ineffective (Hebrews 7:18-19) because the Law made no one perfect…it just reinforced the reality of their inability to keep it, reminding them daily of their need for atonement in order to have their sins forgiven….but the animal sacrifices were not the permanent solution…..Christ’s sacrifice was.
All of the those things were covered by Christ in his teachings…..’the law of love’, which all Christians, regardless of their nationality or former mode of worship, were now under a new covenant with only two laws governing all that they did…to ”love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength”….and to “love our neighbor as ourselves”.
One cannot carry on any sinful conduct without disobeying one or both of those laws, now governed by a Bible trained conscience. There is no need of a written law anymore, and we have a choice regarding all the principles embodies in those two laws, especially those that have no direct statement about how to carry them out.….e.g. should a Christian celebrate Christmas or Easter? Should they observe the Sabbath? What is the basis and origin of those things? We need to do our homework.
Having a good grasp of the big picture, should guide us in all we choose to do. It is our choices and what motivates them, that form the basis for Christ’s judgment.
The principles of the law, never went away…they were carried though all of Christ’s teachings. But “the Law“ was not just the 10 Commandments…..those principle hold true in all ages.
The Ninevites were moved by Jonah’s preaching and repented for a while….but later fell back into their old ways and God carried out his punishments, because now they had no excuse.
Just like the people of today in this “time of the end”, with the preaching of the Kingdom and warning of God’s judgment before Christ returns to make an accounting with them. They will have no excuse either.
The “stranger” who “joined himself to the Lord“ would be referring to Jewish proselytes who became “Jews” in all their practices, but not according to their lineage as “sons of Abraham”.
Continuing on in that passage if you read it all in context, it goes on to say….in verses 6, 7….
“As for the foreigners who join themselves to Jehovah to minister to him,
To love the name of Jehovah
And to be his servants,
All those who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it
And who hold fast to my covenant,
7 I will also bring them to my holy mountain
And make them rejoice inside my house of prayer.
Their whole burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.
For my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.”
The law of God through Moses governed all they did as well….but they chose to become worshippers of Jehovah, like we do…..God had reason to love them more than those who had no choice...and who merely performed because they were told to. This is why then the new covenant was superior to the old one. Both served God’s purpose in their own era.
There is a big picture Brakelite….you seem to be missing it.
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quietthinker
Well-Known Member
You say you are a worshipper of Jehovah but cannot tell me of him when asked. Don't you find that odd?
You are full of words but what is it in essence your'e trying to communicate?
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
LOL…it is not my job to give you comprehension…if you cannot comprehend what I have clearly stated then what is there left to say ? Seriously….what part of “Christ is the end of the Law” do you fail to understand?
There is no Sabbath observance mandated for Christians like it was for the Israelites. Christians are under a new covenant, with new laws……old covenant, old law, fulfilled….now obsolete.
quietthinker
Well-Known Member
So you prattle on with irrelevancies turning simple things into complexities and then charge me with failing to understand (a typical projection) all the while advertising your inability to tell me of Jehovah.....you know, the one you claim to be a witness of
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