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THE PART OF THE STORY YOU WERE NEVER TOLD ABOUT THE SABBATH
“Remember the sabbath day,
to keep it holy. Six days shalt
thou labour, and do all thy work: 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: 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”. Exodus 20:8-11 “The Sabbath is
the great question, to unite the hearts of God's dear waiting saints.” A Word
to the Little Flock, pg. 18 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS–ENIGMA OF THE AGES
Man has many ways of regarding the Ten Commandment Law. Many who believe in the scriptures acknowledge that it is from God and ought to be obeyed; at least most of it. They can agree on nearly the whole law and even the most ardent putter forth of the idea ‘we are not under law but under grace’, will quickly use it as an authority to enforce a point in spite of their previous claims.
Many
philosophers will say it was made up by Moses and no more binding today than any
other law from ancient times. However all men do recognize within themselves a
certain ‘natural law’. THE NATURAL LAW
It
is not difficult to find many people, Christian and otherwise, who will tell
you that the Ten Commandments are a valid and important moral law. They will
especially say that about the last six, the second table. The theorizing person
will be quick to tell you that the law of love; ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself’, covers all of them, and of course, they are correct. Nearly every
person born into this world has a ‘Natural Law’ within him that tells him
that to do these things is somehow intrinsically wrong and undesirable. The odd
person born with no such sense is somehow less than human.
Even in the darkest heathendom some basic sense of right and wrong and a
code of moral behavior is found and they are remarkably the same worldwide.
Unless the inner voice has been silenced through long transgression, it is
understood ‘naturally’ by men that to kill, or steal from his neighbor is
wrong, and though cultures may vary on the number of wives that is acceptable for
a man to have, no culture believes that a man should just have any woman he
wants.
What
about the first table of the law? Well even there the Bible tells us that the
existence of God is impressed on every man through the observation of God’s
created works.
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” Romans
1:20
So
we can see then to fail to recognize a ‘higher power’ or to blaspheme
the name of that ‘higher power’ is universally recognized as wrong behavior.
Also with a bit of reasoning on his own part man can of himself figure out that
to worship an object made by his own hands is somehow illogical. So we can see
the first table recognized as well.
WHAT
ABOUT THE 4TH?
If
I were to go as a missionary to a far away ‘dark’ corner of the uncivilized
world, I could no doubt be justified in saying to a person there, “Why do you
steal from your neighbor? Doesn’t your own heart tell you that is wrong?” I
could probably also say to him “Why do you blaspheme the ‘Higher Power’
that you know created you?” He would know what I was talking about. But what
if I told this uncivilized heathen man, “Why do you continue to do your
ordinary work on this holy day? You should know that is breaking God’s law.”
Would he know instinctively what I was talking about? No, he would not.
And
that brings us face to face with a Big Difference between the 4th commandment of
the Sabbath and the rest of the two tables of stone. In order for a man to know
about the keeping of a Sabbath, it must be revealed to him by someone else—either by God directly or through His word or by another man who has had this
revealed to him.
IS CLAIMING THAT IT IS THE SAME
LOGICAL?
Down
through the years, Sabbath keepers and the promoters of the Sabbath, have done
something that is really rather illogical, they have tried to prove that the
Sabbath is no different than any other of the Ten Commandments. But when you
really take a good look at it, it is obvious that it is very different, and in
many ways. For one thing the others say ‘do this, or don’t do that’ but
the Sabbath commandment says ‘Remember’. It was reminding the people of God
of something they should be aware of and should continue to be aware of.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?
Let’s
take a look at a quote from an interesting source: The
Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests:
"The
point of difference (between the Sabbath commandment and the other nine, is
evident. The other commandments of
the Decalogue are precepts of the natural law, obligatory at all times and
unalterable. Hence, after the
abrogation of the Law of Moses, all the ten commandments contained in the two
tables are observed by Christians, not indeed because their observance is
commanded by Moses, but because they are in conformity with nature, which
dictates obedience to them.
"This
commandment about the observance of the Sabbath, on the other hand, considered
as the time appointed for its fulfillment, is not fixed and unalterable, but
susceptible of change, and belongs not to the moral, but to the ceremonial law. Neither is it a principle of the natural law; we are not
instructed by nature to give external worship to God on that day, rather than
any other." (Translated by
J.A.McHugh and C.J. Callan, 1958, pp. 397-398.
Notice the interesting use of the term "natural law" here!)
In
explaining, or explaining away, the Ten Commandment moral law, philosophers can
wax eloquent in showing you how every part of it can be explained by the
‘Natural law’ to be found in what they believe to be man’s basic inner
goodness. These concepts they will say, have just evolved along with man’s
civilization and it is no proof at all of the existence of a Creator God to whom
we are personally answerable.
HOW HAS IT BEEN TRADITIONALLY TREATED?
Down
through the ages, especially in the Christian era, this ‘differentness’ of
the 4th commandment has been largely equated with being inferior—of
lesser validity. (see quote above) Many will tell you that Moses made a mistake
and stuck something of the ceremonial law in the middle of the moral code and
somehow it just don’t belong there. But although we can all agree if we will
admit to the obvious, that the 4th commandment is ‘different’,
does it necessarily follow that it is inferior? Perhaps this very differentness
might indicate an even higher level of ‘spirituality’ than the other nine?
“One
thing is certain: it is no insignificant problem logical man finds himself
facing from the moment the Sabbath enters upon the arena. First it is with visible pleasure our mini-Kant of the 1980's
lets his mini-brain go on juggling with those admirable commandments of the
Decalogue, one after the other, until, all of a sudden, he stumbles over a huge
rock somebody has left right in his passage.
That is the Sabbath commandment, to him a most awkward "foreign
body" defying all common rules of rational philosophy…How much more
reassuring it would be, to the most independent spirits among us, if we could
just have a slightly modified formulation of the fourth commandment to grapple
with. For instance: "Remember the day of rest." Full stop. Or
still better: "Remember a day
of rest". Or why not simply?
"Remember to rest".
That
would seem quite a roomy way of putting it, would it not, and comparatively
inoffensive to all sensitive souls. You
would not even have to be a good humanist in order to find that reminder
meaningful and harmless. Any
logician with some mysterious preference for the indefinite, the vague and
reducible, would feel that this was a commandment he could manage to handle.
And men with a passion for Western self-sufficiency would be quite happy,
too. For a commandment of that kind
would be nothing more than what any sensible man could manufacture all by
himself.”
Carsten Johnsen.
THE SEAL OF THE LAW
For
one thing the candid reader of the Ten Commandments would have to admit that
nowhere else in the Law are you given the Authority behind that Law. Remove the
4th and the law could be the product of any source, human or
otherwise. Only in the 4th do we see the Name, Rank and Authority of
the Lawgiver. He declares Himself to be God, the Creator of all things and
therefore exerts His right to Authority and His privilege to ‘give a direct
order’ so to speak.
THE GOD OF CREATION VS. THE GOD OF EVOLUTION
We
see something else here when we really begin to take note of the words of this
fabulous fourth commandment; Here is displayed information that man has no way,
either scientifically or intuitively of knowing unless God were to reveal it to
him. That is Who created him and How. Not even by tradition from his elders
could man have known how the creation was done—as no man was there until the
end of it. The Sabbath is the ‘evidence’ so to speak of how God created the
world—In six days he made—and rested on the seventh.
When
man was made, he was placed into a complete and perfect environment—no loose
ends, no half finished tasks. Man’s very first full day on this earth was the
Sabbath and a revelation from God as to how creation took place. Even then, man
had no way to ‘prove’ whether God was telling him the truth or not. He took
God’s word for it that it was done that way and the ‘evidence’ God was
pleased to give of the truth of creation was—the Sabbath—as He joined with man
in contemplation of the job well done.
Evolution
cannot account for either the seven-day week or the Sabbath! How could any such
concept have ‘evolved’ or come from the contemplation of man’s own mind?
It tells us something about what kind of God our Creator is also.
We
often oppose evolutionistic theory by saying how degrading it is to us as humans
that we should be said to have evolved from the lowest forms of life, but how
much more degrading is it to God, the Creator Himself, to say that he would
create in such a slipshod, bumbling way of trial and error? What kind of a
monster-god would choose long years of trial and error, suffering and death, to
gradually bring about an improving but never finished world? How could any such
thing ever be termed ‘good’ or ‘very good’? PERSONALISM VS IMPERSONALISM
Here
we see something else that is plain in the Sabbath commandment and nowhere else
in the Law—that is the Personhood of God. The 4th commandment is a
Person, giving a personal directive, to other persons that are under His authority,
because He made them. The Sabbath commandment cannot be explained by an
impersonal, mindless, spiritualized, all invasive power source—which is what
philosophers and pagan minds delight to make God out to be. The fourth
commandment is a call to realism in a concrete world of reality, a world of days
and weeks, a world of work and rest, a world of bodies and beating hearts, a
world of children, servants and animals.
In
this day and age in a world where the needs of the individual are seldom even
considered and where we are more and more being reduced to an impersonal number
in some master-computer somewhere, the Sabbath command with its personalized
invitation can hit us in one of two ways; it’s either an unwelcome shock, or a
blessed relief—the ‘rest’ that remains for God’s children.
A PERSONAL DIRECTIVE FROM A PERSONAL GOD
It
is a literal appointment, in literal time, give by a literal Person, to literal
persons, to meet with Him—their Creator, in a mutually satisfying way and have
literal fellowship. The Creator, who has the literal authority to make such an
appointment is hereby showing His very real and literal interest in the
creatures He has created. There is nothing vague or shadowy here, nothing of the spiritist’s ghostly world of the ‘Idea’ or pure ‘soulism’.
Right
away as we are confronted with this commandment we are faced with a test of
faith. We either believe God and obey or we have to try dozens of ways to get
rid of that rock of offense right in our pathway—that disturbing, literal
Sabbath! Just as Christ said He was a ‘Rock of offense’, so also is His
Sabbath.
The
Sabbath speaks of a God that wants—nay desires passionately to be with His
created little ones. A God that relates personally to us, and wants us to relate
personally to Him. The ‘rest’ spoken of is to have the trusting joyous
togetherness of the infant asleep in his mother’s arms. Our Immanuel; God with
us! PAN-SABBATISM?
One
of the ways people try to spiritize away their literal obligations is through
‘Pan-Theology’. In Pantheism they say God is everything and in everything—God is everywhere—but the actual outcome of that concept is that God is
nowhere.
“Now,
what all those "pan-isms" actually say is very much the same thing.
It could be epitomized in one sentence:
"It all makes no difference whether there is sin in your life or
not." Why does that make no
difference? "Because with God
and with the world nothing makes any difference.
For God is the world, and the world is God. The holy is common (profane) and the common is holy. It is all one huge mass. There
is no distinction worth mentioning. For
personalism is a bad dream and an anomaly. Just as the holiness of the Sabbath has 'spilled over' into all the other
days, so God's holiness has `spilled over' into the whole world. Personal responsibility is an evil which has luckily been overcome."
This is what all pan-holy-ism says and means.” Carsten
Johnsen,
To
be holy means something must be set apart as holy, and it must be set apart from
something. If everything is ‘holy’ then nothing is really holy. If God is
everywhere and in everything, then God is really nowhere and nothing. He does
not exist as a personal Being.
So
also to claim ‘All days are holy’ means that no day is holy, to be holy
something must be set aside from the common—if all is holy, then ‘holy’
becomes a meaningless concept.
The
very literal, everyday language of the 4th commandment shouts of
reality—it speaks of everyday things and the separated thing—the seventh day
set aside from the common as Holy time—Sacred to a Personal God.
…MUST
BELIEVE THAT HE IS!
In
Hebrews there is this interesting text:
“But
without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him”. Hebrews 11:6
Here
we see Faith. God is not satisfied with any less than service born of Faith—wholehearted, willing service given by hearts responding in grateful love to His
Great Love is the only thing He wants from man. No forced service, no prideful
offerings of the self-exalting creature is of any value with Him.
All
the other commandments can be spiritualized and philosophized from the mind of
man into vague, shadowy pan-principles. BUT to really keep the 4th,
even to accept that one is obligated to keep it literally as given, lays bare
our true attitude towards the Giver of that command. Do we see God as a Personal
Being who has a right to our personal service and loves us personally? Or do we
see that ‘God’ is an impersonal general principle, a sort of ‘first
cause’, vague, shadowy and not really impinging on our day to day affairs.
To
really keep the Sabbath of the Lord, one must have faith that God is a
real person, to whom he or she owes personal service and to whom he or she is
personally accountable.
THE FINAL TEST—COULD ANY COMMANDMENT HAVE
BEEN USED?
I
have heard it said from the pulpit that God could have chosen any one of the
commandments for a final test; a final ‘tool’ to separate His true children
from the professed. But from what we have seen in this study—and we have only
touched the surface of the facets of the ‘fabulous 4th’—this is
just not so. All the other commandments man can claim to arrive at through his
own reason, all others can be kept by people who do it for their own reasons—having nothing to do with a heart relationship to a personal God.
The Sabbath of the Lord thy God is different. Man does not arrive at it
naturally, and man cannot even keep it properly unless he has faith that God
exists as a Person in reality.
WHY
IS THE 4TH UNIQUE?
“In
this connection, let us consider what M.L. Andreasen states in his book:
'The Sabbath, Which Day and Why' (1942). "Breaking the fourth
commandment is not like breaking some of the other commandments."
“Andreasen's
idea corroborates what we have arrived at in a previous chapter.
The Sabbath is essentially different, somehow. Breaking it, is not, for
that reason, a less serious matter or a less remarkable sign.
Rather the opposite:
a man
may commit manslaughter in a fit of anger; he may, as a result of sheer
rashness, take God's name in vain; or he may succumb to the temptation, suddenly
presenting itself, to yield to some overwhelming sensual passion.
But a failure to keep the Sabbath, according to Andreasen, rarely comes
into that category. Sabbath-breaking
does not have the excuse of sudden passion or of inordinate desire.
It is not like most other great sins or destructive habits: "It is
rather a symptom of spiritual decline, of departure from God, of estrangement
from the promise—of a sickly Christian experience." Carsten Johnsen "The Sabbath command
is the only commandment in the observance of which God could join man. It would be highly improper to speak of God as keeping the first
commandment: `Thou shalt have no
other gods before Me.’ So it is with the second and the third.
Again it would be highly irreverent to speak of God as keeping the last
six commandments. A moment's
reflection will make this clear. Stealing,
lying, adultery, all these have no place with reference to God. But there is one commandment in the observance of which God could join
man: the Sabbath commandment.
Man can keep it; God can keep it.
Thus
the Sabbath is the meeting place of God and man." (The Sabbath, which Day and Why? (1942)
p. 32). THE TEST THAT REVEALS THE HEART’S
DIRECTION
Man
can give all kinds of ‘lip service’ to God; he can pontificate great moral
sentiments and noble principles. He can recognize a ‘higher power’ and then
design it in his mind in any direction that pleases him. He can claim great love
and sympathy with his fellow men and do great deeds of humanitarian efforts. He
can make great personal sacrifices for his beliefs and speak great swelling
words of vanity that move multitudes. He can even celebrate ‘God’ and have
an exciting time just ‘praising his God’.
But
when he is faced with this literal command for the literal seventh day, this
very personal appointment with the Personal God of Creation to Whom he is
responsible—that is, as we say, ‘where the rubber meets the road’.
Immediately the true child of God is separated from the proud, independent
pagan. The child will gladly obey his loving heavenly Father and rejoice that He
has been so considerate as to set time aside so His little created other-ones
can enjoy fellowship with Him. He will be filled with love and joy for such a
privilege.
PAGAN PRIDE VS LOVING OBEDIENCE
The
Pagan Pride of the unrenewed heart will never consent to simply accept a literal
directive like the 4th commandment and respond with loving obedience,
rejoicing in the goodness and mercy of his heavenly Father in giving such
personal care to His little other ones.
The
proud pagan replies, “Who is God that I should obey him? I can’t see any
logical reason why I should be tied to such a literal, spiritually inferior idea
as keeping a particular day holy. OK, I tell you what, I’ll keep a day, but
I’ll choose one that’s more suitable to my own self. After all, I can accept
the principle of this thing; it’s just its literalness that I can’t go along
with. I’ll choose a day and not only do things for God on that day; I’ll
even force everybody to recognize it as well. Just watch my zeal for God!” THE JEWISH SABBATH
Just
what is the Jewish Sabbath in contrast to the true Sabbath of the Lord? Well the
Jewish Sabbath in Christ’s day had become something very different from what
it was meant to be. The Pharisees were very zealous to ‘keep’ the Sabbath
and had actually succeeded in making it at least appear to be part of the
ceremonial law. They heaped their own traditions of rules and regulations around
it until any chance that the true Child of God might recognize the loving face
of his Heavenly Father in this weekly event was pretty well negated.
When
Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, He was
trying to show that God’s purpose in placing the Sabbath as a memorial in time
was to bless man, not to burden him. He also told them they lacked mercy in
their lives and that they did not know Him or His Father in heaven. They had
made the Sabbath part of their proud, self-sufficient hypocrisy, even though
they ‘kept’ it, the joyous fellowship of the created little ones with their
great Creator Father, they never knew.
We
can keep the 'Sabbath of the Jews' today; when we look upon it as a duty we
perform for God. It becomes like Cain’s offering, something to exalt ourselves
and earn merit with an authoritarian God. But only the loving service of a
willing heart means anything to God.
Imagine
a loving father making time to spend with his dear children. He plans to pack as
much love and delight into the day as possible and then, when he tells his
children about it, they respond, “But Dad, do we have to? Do we have to spend
that time with you? We have our friends and we’d just rather be with them.”
Can
you imagine the heartache in that loving Father’s breast that his children
didn’t want his fellowship?
What
about if the children said, “Sure, we know about fatherhood, you are our
father, but we prefer to think of it in terms of a basic ‘fatherness’ in
general, not such a personal thing as it seems to be with you. We can go about
our own ways and think now and then about the concept of ‘fatherness’—we
prefer it that way. We find this spending actual time with a real father just
too unspiritual for our taste.”
Here
the father isn’t even recognized as a person! A STORY ABOUT OBEDIENCE
The
story is told in various forms about a man who had bought a lovely farm for his
son and told him, “I will give you some instructions on how to plant the crops
on this farm and I will come back in a few months and if you have followed my
instructions, I will deed the farm to you to be yours.”
The
son readily agreed and the father delivered to him a list of instructions. The
days went by and the son was following the list to the 'T' in every directive. He
could see the wisdom of his father in what he had planned, but one day as he was
preparing to plant one of the fields, he saw that his father wanted a crop there
that the son felt was just not suitable. “It will never grow properly in this
particular field”, he reasoned, “Dad must have made a mistake—I know what
crop is best to be put here so I will plant that.”
The
day appointed came and as the father came to inspect the farm, his son assured
him that he had followed his every directive. The father systematically went
around the property checking the various fields against the list he had given to
the son. All went well until he came to the last field and saw there a crop that
he had not ordered.
“What’s
this all about?” he asked the son.
“Oh
Dad”, replied his boy, “All the orders you gave me were just great Dad,
except for this one, the crop you had said to plant just was no good for this
field, but I obeyed you in all the rest.”
“No,
son”, said the father sadly, “You didn’t obey 'me' at all, your own
logic accepted to do what I had said, but here you showed clearly who you were
really following, it was your own will all along.”
THE
PAPAL SABBATH
Of
all the days of the week there is only one that in no way could have been the
Sabbath, the memorial of creation, and that is the 1st day. God could
have made everything in one day and rested on the second, or any other number,
but the first day could never have been the Sabbath!
The 4th commandment says ‘Remember’; it draws attention to
something established by God from the very beginning.
It was made by the Word of God.
What
about Sunday? It has evolved gradually, silently, slowly intruding its defiance
into the customs of man until we see the ‘Man of Sin’ exalting it and
himself above all that is called God.
A Roman Catholic book,
entitled 'A Sure Way to Find
Out the True Religion,' says: "The
keeping holy the Sunday is a thing absolutely necessary to salvation; and yet
this is nowhere put down in the Bible; on the contrary, the Bible says,
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep is holy' (Exodus 20: 8), which is Saturday,
and not Sunday; therefore the Bible does not contain all things necessary to
salvation."
This
is only one out of many similar citations that might be given, but is sufficient
to show that in the observance of Sunday the Catholic Church deliberately
repudiates the Word of the Lord, and sets itself above it. It has placed its sabbath on an entirely different day from the Sabbath of the Lord—a day which
even God Himself could not possibly have made His Sabbath, since on it He began
His work—in order to emphasize its claims to be above God.
It would teach men that they are to obey the church rather than God. Notice that the citation speaks about necessity of "keeping 'holy' the Sunday." But God has not made the Sunday holy. In fact, the Bible knows nothing about such a day. It does know the first day of the week, which it calls a working day, but the Sunday, a day composed of parts of two days, was made in Rome. The only day that God has ever spoken of as holy is the seventh day of the week. That day He Himself has made holy, and all He asks of us is keep it holy "But since God has not made the Sunday holy, it follows that if man is to keep it holy, a man himself must make it holy. All the sacredness in the world that Sunday has is that which man gives to it. The Sunday sabbath, therefore, stands as the sign of man's pretended power to make things holy. For if man can make one thing holy, it is evident that he can make anything holy. If man can make and keep a day holy, then he can make and keep himself holy. The papal sabbath is thus the sign of the pope's claims to take the place of the Lord as the sanctifier of sinners. While the seventh day is the sign of God's power to save by His own works, the Sunday is the sign of man's assumed power to save himself by his own works, entirely apart from and in spite of the Lord.” E J Waggoner, 'The 3 Sabbaths' THE SABBATH OF YOUR LORD
I
remember years ago my husband-to-be was working in another city many miles away.
Each week there was one day when he would come out and we could be together for
that day. How precious did the
hours of that day become to me. Everything in the whole week centered upon being
ready for that day when the joy of just being with my beloved was mine. Whether
we went walking or sang hymns or just sat and talked together, it was all a
delight—the highlight of my whole week.
Suppose
someone had told me, “You know, you don’t really need to spend that day with
him. Don’t you think he is being kind of arbitrary to expect you to drop your
activities and spend a whole day with him?” I can tell you, I would have told
them they were out of their mind if they thought I would fail to meet the
arranged appointment!
God
means the Sabbath to be just that kind of joy to us. A more personal arrangement
cannot be conceived of—to spend time together—just our Creator-Father and us
in loving fellowship. FAITH OR NON-FAITH
The
judgment is a real event and real evidence that can be seen by all is what will
decide our destinies. God knows all hearts and could just decide without making
a dividing test for mankind, but He has chosen to do things in a way that all
created intelligences can see by the choice we make, what our hearts really
believe. It’s merely a matter of faith—we either believe God or we don’t—it’s just that simple.
“I
saw that the holy Sabbath is, and will be, the separating wall between the true
Israel of God and unbelievers; and that the Sabbath is the great question, to
unite the hearts of God's dear waiting saints. And if one believed, and kept the
Sabbath, and received the blessing attending it, and then gave it up, and broke
the holy commandment, they would shut the gates of the Holy City against
themselves, as sure as there was a God that rules in heaven above.”
A Word to the Little Flock pg. 18 THE GOLDEN CLASP
The
Sabbath is a ‘golden clasp' to bind our hearts to God and also to unite our
hearts together here in holy fellowship. It is this ‘crowning jewel’ of the
Law that binds God’s children here to the great family in heaven. It is much
more than a duty, much different than a ceremony, and certainly never a burden!
It is a family matter; a heart affair with God and will be a heart affair with
each one of His loving children.
“Here is our test which God has made, and He will fulfill His word, if
human agents will show their love to God in keeping all His commandments. If
they reverence the Sabbath, which is engraved on the first table of stone, they
will keep the first three commandments, and the last six will reveal the duty of
man to his fellow man; for the Sabbath sign is the covenant between God and man.
It is the golden clasp which unites man to God in supreme obedience and
reverence, and which unites man to his fellow man.” Ms 45, 1900.
("What Is the Chaff to the Wheat?" typed July 26, 1900.) Manuscript
Releases Volume Five pg. 89
“The
Sabbath is a golden clasp that unites God and His people.
But the Sabbath command has been broken. God's holy day has been desecrated. The
Sabbath has been torn from its place by the man of sin, and a common working day
has been exalted in its stead. A breach has been made in the law, and this
breach is to be repaired. The true Sabbath is to be exalted to its rightful
position as God's rest day.
“In
the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah is outlined the work which God's people are
to do. They are to magnify the law and make it honorable, to build up the old
waste places, and to raise up the foundations of many generations. To those who
do this work God says: "Thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath,
from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy
of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor
finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou
delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places
of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it." Verses 12-14." 6 Testimonies, pg. 351
When
you read this, it brings to mind a Father waiting patiently in the old family
homestead, watching and longing for His wayward children to come home; To return
to the safe and tried paths of His tender care; To come back to His heart of
love for them.
Is
the Fabulous 4th different? Yes, and what a glorious difference for
the true Christian child of God! “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3
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