| Author | Message | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
Susan, you wrote, "Doesn't it seem amazing that a perfect, holy and sinless God, would do such a thing that was considered a sin?" Yes, amazing indeed. He also did it with ceremonially unclean foods -- such as pork and shellfish -- in Mark 7:19. And so, no it is not a sin to "break the Sabbath," for at best it was only a shadow pointing to Jesus Christ. It is not a sin to continue to keep the Sabbath either, if you're not doing so as a requirement. Read Romans 14 for that information. The point is that the Sabbath is not a requirement for those who are in Christ Jesus. But it is a requirement not to judge another Christian for keeping or not keeping the day. I loved your statement, "When you really grasp who Jesus is, it transforms everything in your life. The power of the Holy Spirit in us, can open our eyes to the truths of scripture like never before." And the more we read Scripture, especially the words and acts of Jesus, the more transforming the gospel can become in our lives. God bless you all the time, Susan, Jude | ||
| jtree |
One of my favorites I guess would have to be J. Mark Martin. http://www.sdaoutreach.org This is an excellent site with good information. I listen to the sad testimonies, as I can relate to them folks there. I too was lost. Please pray for me, as I witness to those in the newsgroups. | ||
| Colleentinker |
There will be an audio tape of Dale Ratzlaff's meeting at Trinity Church available. I believe Dale's planning to make it available through his website. Jude, I'm thrilled that you'll take notes and post a synopsis. We'll post it on a special page. Cas, I wish you could be here. I hope you can visit sometime and join us on Friday evening. Your wish that the doctrinal issues could be clearer reminded me of something Lydell posted sometime back. Sometimes God asks us to take a leap of faith before we fully understand. I remember Lydell saying God told her to put the Sabbath question in a "box" and just go on discovering him and worshiping him in the way he led them without fully comprehending the explanation of the Sabbath. In time, after obedience to the Holy Spirit's leading, the Sabbath began to make sense. I really believe that we can let our intellectual doubts and rationales become so big that we don't act in faith and in obedience to the Spirit. God doesn't give us total clarity on all the issues at once. Sometimes he wants us to walk where he leads before we understand all the eventual implications. The thing that we experienced was that God made circumstances very clear every time we were to make a move. We never really knew in advance what our next step or understanding would be. We only knew that bit by bit our spiritual understanding was growing, and each time we acted on our new insights and understandings, our next step became clear. God is offering you freedom, Cas. His Spirit is his law in your heart. His finished work is your rest. You can rest in his finished work just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. God's rest at creation was the promise of God's rest which he restored to us after the Cross. The actual Sabbath day for Israel was a type of the eternal, timeless rest of God's finished work. He has made our souls alive in him, and he has saved us. We can rest in joy and security! | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
Reviews Ch.9, ìSabbath in Crisis" by Dale Ratzlaff 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay Chapter IX -- ìParadox of Sabbath Lawî The incident of the healing of the man born blind could be headlined: JESUS BREAKS SABBATH BY OPENING THE EYES OF MAN BORN BLIND Amazing fact: Two thousand years ago God allowed a baby to be born blind. Not because of his or his parentsí sin, as the Pharisees maintained. But so that one day his eyes might be opened by Jesus and ìthe works of God might be displayed in him.î John 9:3 Not only that, but Jesus deliberately chose ìholy timeî to display these ìworks of Godî in open defiance of the laws of Moses against doing work on the Sabbath. SDAs claim that the Ten Commandments are the ultimate statement of law -ñ ìtranscript of Godís characterî (EGW) -- and that Jesus, by healing on the Sabbath, was only showing the Jews a more excellent way to keep the Fourth Commandment. One little problem: There is no exemption for the work of healing on Sabbath -- neither in the Fourth Commandment, nor in the Ten Commandments as a whole, nor in the entire Old Testament! A second little problem: Nowhere in the New Testament record is there any statement that Jesus ìwasnít really breaking the Sabbath. He was only trying to show the Jews a better way of keeping it.î Instead we find gospel writers stating flatly, Jesus broke the Sabbath. ìTherefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.î John 5:18. John doesnít say here, ìThe Jews INCORRECTLY THOUGHT he had broken the Sabbath!î Nor does he say, ìThe Jews MISTAKENLY THOUGHT that Jesus was making himself equal with God.î John could not possibly be more clear and blunt: * Jesus BROKE the Sabbath. * Jesus MADE HIMSELF EQUAL with God. This gives Jesus the right to break the Sabbath and allow, even instruct, others to do so. Examples of the kinds of work involved: * Reaping and threshing grain. Matthew 12:1. * Healing. Matthew 12:9-15 and many other places. That healing was clearly work and was therefore clearly breaking the Sabbath is betrayed by the the reaction of the head personage in the community: ìIndignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler [church pastor equivalent] said to the people, ëThere are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.î Luke 13:14, NIV. * Carrying a load (mat or bedroll). John 5:8-21. * Making clay or mud (to be used as a poultice-type healing agent). John 9:14. A third little problem: SDAs claim that the Jews of Jesusí time made the Sabbath more restrictive. But in fact, some of the additional rules actually liberalized or eased the absolute strictness of the command. For instance, law of Moses stated, ìFor the LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread [manna] for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.î Exodus 16:29, NKJV. If SDAs were to take this literal commandment to heart, they would have to stay home indoors for 24 hours from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. They wouldn't even be allowed to go to church! The same dilemma existed for the Jews of Jesus' day. The rabbis eased that absolute restriction by allowing for a ìSabbath dayís journeyî -- a bit over half a mile -- so that God-fearing Jews could go to synagogue on the Sabbath day. This term appears in Acts 1:12: ìThen [the apostles] returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath dayís journey away.î Acts 1:12, NAS. If Jesus' purpose wasnít to break the Sabbath, but to restore it to its original condition, then he would have had to denounce this ìSabbath dayís journeyî as being unscriptural in that it appears nowhere in the law of Moses. Then -- to restore Sabbath-keeping to its original practice, as per current SDA teaching -- Jesus would have had to demand that people, including his Gentile followers, remain in their homes for the 24 full hours of the Sabbath. Obviously Jesus did not do that. Nowhere does the New Testament say that Jesus was trying to restore the practice of Sabbath-keeping to its literal form precisely as Moses commanded it. Instead, Jesus dealt with Sabbath-keeping law just as he found it praciced in his time. Knowing that healing on Sabbath was unlawful, he asked the Jews,ìWhich is lawful to do on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?î You can be sure that if healing on Sabbath was allowed and even demanded by the law of Moses, the Jews would have not only allowed it, but they would have demanded it as well. These religious leaders KNEW the letter of the law very very well. Jesus asked this rhetorical question not because the the letter of law of Moses allowed for healing on the Sabbath. He asked it the law DID NOT ALLOW for healing on the Sabbath. The same can be said for Jesusí other Sabbath-breaking actions/allowances/instructions: reaping, thrashing, mixing a "medicinal" poultice, and carrying a load. None of these is allowed by the letter of the law of Moses. And so SDAs come wrongly to the conclusion that Jesus came to RESTORE law-keeping to its original practice as recorded in the Old Testament. Jesus did NOT come to restore the law to some supposed pristine state. Jesus came to FULFILL the law and then, having fulfilled it, to TAKE IT OUT OF THE WAY BY NAILING IT TO THE CROSS. Colossians 2:14. Not the eternal moral aspects of the law: having love for neighbors and enemies, practicing justice, showing mercy, not murdering or stealing or coveting or committing adultery, etc. But the ceremonial aspects: Sabbath-keeping, distinguishing clean from unclean foods, circumcision, and all the hundreds of other laws that basically have nothing to do with what the gospel is all about: ìPure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.î James 1:27. Grace and peace to you all, Jude 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay 7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay7thDay Read "Sabbath in Crisis" for yourself. Write Life Assurance Ministries, P.O. Box 282, Sedona AZ 86340. Or call 1.520.282.4319. Do not go gentle into SDA night, Rage against the dying of the gospel light, Jude | ||
| Lori |
Jude, I want to thank you for sharing the book "Sabbath in Crisis", you are writing about it, just when I need to hear it, again. I don't know what has happened with you all regarding the Sabbath. But I continue to be plagued by it and the uncertainty of what is right and what is wrong and what is ok and what is not and does the scripture really mean that? I had come to the understanding of Jesus as my Sabbath rest and felt grounded against what I was raised knowing. However, it seems as though, since Satan can no longer use the SDA message to make me stumble. He is now using the very people that I felt like I was joining in a 'freedom in Christ'. These are close friends that are non SDA, that know about my struggle with my family in leaving the church. In describing to them some of my conversations with my family, I have found, they don't understand the fulfillment and 'throwing out' (Gal. 4) of the old law (including 10 commandments) anymore than Adventist. They still hold that the 10 commandments are valid just as they were written, that the observance of the 'Sabbath day' was changed to Sunday in celebration of the Cross. Which brought me back to the same confusion all over again!!!! Everytime I think I finally understand and am fully convinced regarding the Sabbath, something like this happens and I'm filled with doubts all over again. Does this happen to anyone else? ---Non-SDA's offer much the same argument in defense of the 10 Commandments as SDA's----"well, if you do away with the 10 then you have no rules to live by, you can just go out and murder and steal, etc....." They don't see that the NT laws of love (love God, love your neighbor as yourself) do not allow these things. Example: You can rationalize, even with a small child, about taking a toy that belongs to someone else, by reversing the situation and asking them if they would like a child to take their toy from them without asking. Would they like that? Would that make them feel loved, to have someone take it without asking? My three year old can tell that he wouldn't like it and he wouldn't feel loved and that NO he won't take the toy without asking because they would be sad. This to me is all the law of love that Jesus tried to show over and over and over again. And just as they were too blind to see back them, so are the people that are living today. Well, in writing this I have answered my own question..........I don't even need to post it for feedback now........but I will because if there is someone out there with the same nagging doubts, maybe it will help..... I have learned one thing through this experience (my search for truth).........the only person you can trust is GOD. Well meaning people will try to direct you, but you still have to take everything before God and raise it up before him and say, "Father, is this true?" And, if it is, he will give you that "peace" and if it isn't, he will show the truth. God keeps having to answer the same questions for me. I feel like a preschooler that keeps asking the same question over and over again, just to make sure the answer is STILL the same. Thanks so much for all of you that post here, the gospel message shines through in the things that you write! And, its been a source of encouragement to me!!! Lori | ||
| Lydell |
Well, Lori, praise God for helping you to see truth. Isn't he kind and patient! I think the experience that you had with your friends is a fairly common one across the Christian church, in America anyway. You can see it in the big turmoil over the importance of posting the 10 commandments in schools. It's so easy when folks start focusing on jumping on that bandwagon to take their eyes off the greater lesson to be learned. The law itself has no power to make people obey it. The law was given to drive the unbeliever to Christ. It is not, as you have realized, the "standard for our conduct". It was the tutor who took us to the real teacher, Christ. (Gal. 3 and 4) Now that we have the Spirit of God living in us we are to be listening to Him for our guidance and our "standard". As you said, His standard is the same spirit that was behind the whole law...love. And living by the Spirit will take us into a much deeper realm of behavior than just 10 rules. Maybe the Lord has given you that group of friends for you to help them come to understand this whole concept. Maybe you can point out to them that they are incapable of ever keeping perfectly the 10. If they cannot keep them perfectly then they automatically stand condemned before God. And they will always have a feeling of condemnation inside. But the Bible says that there is no condemnation for us when we are in Christ Jesus, so their understanding must have a problem in it somewhere. As for your feeling of turmoil, I'd asked my pastor about how one can tell when you are struggling with an issue if the churning is from God or from satan. His answer was that if it is from God then you will have a feeling of being driven to draw closer to God in hope and knowing that you will be okay in His hands. And if the feelings are satan at work then you will always have a feeling of condemnation and/or hopelessness because it will be turning your eyes to look at yourself and your own lack of power. I fear I didn't express that as clearly as I could. Someone else want to take a shot at the wording? Sometimes the stuff in my head doesn't come out quite right! ha | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
Lydell, Please don't put yourself down. As far as I am concerned, you have "said it" well. And given the perspective of the unique and very special person that you are, no one could have said it better or even as well! I just praise God to have you as a fellow citizen in the kingdom of God that is within and among all of us who worship Jesus Christ. Jude |
