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Being Troubled About the Sabbath
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Q: I am a saved Christian, but I am being bothered by Seventh-day Adventists. They keep telling me that I must keep the 7th day Sabbath. They point to Isaiah 66:23 to "prove" that in the even in the New World God's people will still keep the Sabbath. Can you give me a good response to their use of this passage?
A: I know it is easy for me to say this but…don’t let those folks bother you. Colossians 2:16 says, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:” I’m not sure how much help I will be, but I would say that Isaiah 66:23 is an odd proof text for observing the Sabbath day in the Church Age because folks are also coming to worship the Lord “from one new moon to another.” Are we to meet together every new moon because folks are doing that in the Millennium? People are observing the feast of tabernacles in the Millennium (Zechariah 14:16-17 “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.) Are the Adventists observing that today? There are a lot of things that will happen in the Millennium related to worshipping the Lord that are not practiced by God’s people in the Church Age. You might ask them if Adam, Noah, Enoch, Seth, Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob kept the Sabbath day. These folks lived BEFORE the giving of the law. Did they observe the Sabbath day? No, as a matter of fact they didn’t. They knew nothing about it. In fact, no one knew anything about the Sabbath until Moses went to the top of Sinai and God told him about it!—Nehemiah 9:14 “And madest known unto them thy holy sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant.” From the creation of the world to the giving of the Law is quite a large gap of time, and no one living during that time, no matter how godly they were, observed the Sabbath! Finally, I would point out that not only did the Sabbath begin when God told Moses about it on Mount Sinai, but the Sabbath was a sign between God and ISRAEL (not a bunch of Gentiles)—Ezekiel 20:12-13 “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them. But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness: they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my sabbaths they greatly polluted: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them in the wilderness, to consume them.” And Paul made it abundantly clear in 1Corinthians 1:22 that signs are connected to the Jews—“For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.” Why would a bunch of Gentiles think that they could take something that was given to the Jews? I hope this has been helpful. Bro. Karl Lohman
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