How the Sabbath was Spirited Away

That was a rousing number. I think it woke everybody up. I hope they stay that way for the remainder of the message. Maybe we'll have an interruption and we'll have another rousing halfway through the sermon, okay? Brethren, in history, it's interesting that one sure sign when people begin to fall away has to do with ceasing to keep the Sabbath day. We had one of the hymns talking about the Sabbath day. Why is that so? And how does this occur? Why is it that as soon as people start fading off and falling away, the first thing basically that they leave is the Sabbath day? We know many years ago quite a number of people fell into that trap. The good thing is that there is a type of a paper trail. We can trace it back to follow how this occurred and how it is done. I'm not talking about just a couple of decades. I'm talking about from the time of Jesus Christ to our day. There's a paper trail. There's information that will show you how this was done. We can find this paper trail, this information in God's word and also in church history. And it's so important never to allow that great deceiver, Satan, to trick us as he has for so many centuries, as members of the church have had to face this.

So it's important to understand three arguments that are used to abolish or to spiritualize the Sabbath away.

And we should understand the reasoning, the way people rationalize this conclusion they come to. And we know Satan has deceived the whole world.

In Revelation 12.9, it says he has deceived not part of the world, but the whole world.

It's uncanny, but after Satan's first success with his first lie to Adam and Eve about the tree of good and evil, and there wasn't any real problem with eating it and look at the benefits you're going to get, he succeeded in deceiving Adam and Eve.

And as a result, he succeeded in having Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden of Eden, where they wouldn't have access to the tree of life. After all, Satan was trying to distract Adam and Eve from focusing on the tree of life.

And so he instead talked about the tree of the science of good and evil. So usually Satan wants to distract you from God's teachings and give you an alternative teaching that might seem much simpler, much easier to follow.

But once Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, then Satan would focus on a second commandment that God gave Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Not the one about eating from the tree of good and evil, but about the seventh day.

Because that is also an original commandment from the time of creation, the creation of Adam and Eve. Let's go to Genesis 2 to see that this isn't something that you find midway through the Bible, but at the very beginning.

And actually, some Bibles actually have chapter 2 verses 1 through 3.

It is part of chapter 1 because it continues talking about that first week.

It says in chapter 2 verse 1, Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.

Now this is what applies to human beings.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, which means separating it for holy use.

Because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

So we see this is one of the creation ordinances, one of the laws that God established at the very beginning.

And Satan was running a pretty good record.

He was one for one.

When God told Adam and Eve, don't take of this tree of the science of good and evil, Satan was able to deceive Adam and Eve.

Now, the second law that God gave, he talked about multiplying and doing these things, but that's more of a natural development. He also set aside this seventh day to keep holy from the very beginning.

And of course, it was something special for mankind because God had made it holy. This is holy time.

And as we see in the book of Genesis during the time of Noah, let's go there to Genesis 7.

It says here, verse 11, In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, so you can tell they already have a calendar and they have months and days and they have weeks as well.

It says, In the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened.

And so we see here that they have a calendar and that they also keep the seventh day week, as we can see here in chapter 8, where it says, verse 6, So it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made.

Then he sent out a raven which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried upon up from the earth. He also sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground, but the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot.

And she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and drew her into the ark to himself. And he waited another seven days. And again he sent the dove out from the ark.

Verse 12, and he waited yet another seven days and set out the dove. So you see here, seven days has to do with the week that we call today. We can either say, let's wait seven days, or we can say, let's wait a week. But the point is that this was established at the time of creation. The seventh-day cycle would continue throughout history, and the Jewish people have preserved that calendar all the way up to the present. There's no time when that was lost. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were chastised many times because God says, you're not keeping my Sabbath days.

Well, if they didn't know what day it was, they couldn't be guilty of it. They knew when it was the Sabbath day. They knew when they were working on that day, when they were violating that day. So this has continued on to this time.

And so Satan focused once Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden on this second commandment, because he wanted human beings to break it, to change it. And so he was up to the task. He went back to his old tricks. He never took off his eyes from the seventh-day Sabbath, because, of course, he's the adversary. He wants to change things. Notice in Exodus 31 that at that time, God was going to bring his people into the Promised Land, and the Sabbath was to be honored.

Exodus 31, verse 13, God spoke to Moses, saying, Speak also to the children of Israel, saying, Surely, my Sabbaths, you shall keep. This is the word.

He's dealing with the seventh day of rest. For it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. So it's interesting God sanctifies a day, but he also sanctifies people who keep the Sabbath day. It is not the same to keep Sunday, which is a man-made day, from one that God sanctified. The Sabbath will always be holy, whether one keeps it or not. It's just a question of, are you going to respect it or you're not. That's up to you. It's not up to anyone else. It's up to you. Whether it's something that you're going to obey and reap the consequences or disobey and reap the curses.

Notice, continuing in verse 17, it says about the Sabbath, It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. So God here reminding them the importance of the Sabbath day is a sign. It's a relationship that a person establishes with him. It sets the person apart as far as mankind is concerned. Let's go to Isaiah 56, 1-7, because the sign is between God and his people, and all the world is invited through their conversion to keep the Sabbath day. Yes, the way would be through becoming part of God's people, but it's an invitation to all the nations. They could have humbly repented of their pagan ways and accepted the Sabbath day and received the sign of sanctification from God. Notice in Isaiah 56, Isaiah 56, in verse 1, the whole chapter of Isaiah 56 is an invitation to the world to keep the Sabbath day.

Isaiah 56.

Starting in verse 1, Someone who isn't part of physical Israel, who has joined himself to the Lord, so you can always do it. It doesn't matter in ancient times. A Chinese could have come in and accepted the way of God, and he, through repentance and circumcision, he would have become an Israelite. God is not just separating certain people. You have to become part of the community of Israel. But God never shut off.

He never blocked other people from coming, and that's why he's saying here, the son of a foreigner. So he says here, Who has joined himself to the Lord, saying, The Lord has utterly separated me from his people. Oh, I'm not part of Abraham's descendants. I'm not part of the people of Israel. Well, God says, Don't say that. Nor let the eunuch say, the person who here cannot have children, Here I am a dry tree.

I don't have much hope. For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose what pleases me, and hold fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house, and within my walls a place and a name, better than that of sons and daughters. Doesn't matter that they never had children. He says, You're going to have a name greater than a person who has had many children. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Also, the sons of the foreigner, who joined themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast my covenant, even them I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.

And so he's making this invitation available to everybody. Sabbath is not just for the Jews. It's always been from the time of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were not Jews. The house of Judah wasn't going to rise until thousands of years later. But it's an invitation to all of mankind. And notice the importance of the Sabbath when Jesus Christ returns and establishes his kingdom. First, let's go to Ezekiel 20, because it shows here God's indictment against his people, because they did not respect the Sabbath day. And then we're going to see what it says when Christ returns in his kingdom. Ezekiel 20, verse 18. This whole chapter has to do with God's indictment against Israel for violating his Sabbaths and other commandments.

Ezekiel 20, verse 18. God is speaking. But I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols. Talk about the Egyptian religion. I am the Lord your God. Walk in my statutes. Keep my commandments and do them. Hallow my Sabbath, which means honor it, respect it as something holy, and they will be a sign between me and you that you may know that I am the Lord your God.

God repeats this time and time again throughout Scripture. Notwithstanding, the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to observe my judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. But they profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my fury on them and fulfill my anger against them in the wilderness. Nevertheless, I withdrew my hand and acted for my namesake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the Gentiles, in whose sight I had brought them out.

Eventually God had to intervene, and that's when He allowed the Babylonians to come. The Assyrians, even before that, taking in captivity first to the north tribes of Israel, and then finally Judah itself was taken by the Babylonians. So we see God means business. In Ezekiel 44, it shows here when God is going to return and establish His kingdom here on the earth. Notice what it says in Ezekiel 44, verse 23 and 24. Talking about those that are going to be future priests in His kingdom.

It says, And this is talking about the future kingdom when He establishes that Jerusalem with Jesus Christ governing. So the Sabbath is not going anywhere. It is holy. It will always be holy as long as human beings are on this earth. Just a matter of whether we respect it or we disregard it. Now, in the New Testament, Christ restored the Sabbath to its original purpose because Pharisees had established man-made regulations about the Sabbath, made it into a big burden, and Christ restored it back to a day of rest, a day of recovery, of worship, of honoring God, and not be worried about many minute details.

At the time that Christ was on earth from the records that we have, the Pharisees had established that you couldn't carry anything on yourself that weighed more than two figs, or else you were violating the Sabbath. And they constantly were attacking him for man-made regulations, which he never accepted. They're not in the Old Testament. They weren't established by God. Notice in Matthew 12 that Christ restores the Sabbath to its original intent.

And we're very thankful for that because we don't have to worry about the Pharisaic and rabbinical laws governing the Sabbath day. We just have God's Word to govern it. In Matthew 12, verse 1, it says, At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. This normally would be barley, because that was the main crop they had in those days. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

But it was just according to their own man-made regulations. But He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath in our blameless?

Because they have a lot of ceremonies to do on the Sabbath. Sacrifices continue during that time, and they have to take care of things. But God gave them an exemption because the temple was something that had to be maintained on the Sabbath. And so as long as it was this holy work in the temple that God had established, they were faultless.

They weren't violating the Sabbath. And then he goes on to say, Yet I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple. Talking about he was greater than the high priests and any of those other priests that were there. But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless. They weren't guilty of violating God's laws.

If you're hungry, you're able to eat on the Sabbath day. You don't have to starve. You can get something there. And as his disciples mentioned, it's important too to comment that when Christ said that in this place there is one greater than the temple, he is saying that he himself has God's representative on the earth. And from the ministry of Melchizedek, that he was the one that established it and is continuing it, that he and his disciples were doing God's work on the Sabbath.

And they had a right to eat. They weren't there taking a big threshing rod or blade and cutting and doing all this work on that time. No, they were just taking some of the heads of the barley and eating them. But the Pharisees were condemning them because they considered they were threshing. They were harvesting at that time, which is something absolutely ridiculous.

Christ goes on to say, verse 8, For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. He is the one in charge. And he is the one that established it in the Old Testament. He is the one that was there with Israel and following God the Father's instructions. So he knows how to keep the Sabbath day.

He didn't have to consult with the Pharisees about the right way of doing it. And we see the church also keeping the Sabbath day. Paul was very faithful as he visited the Gentiles. Let's go to Acts 17. It says in verse 2, He said about teaching on Sunday, or the first day of the week.

Also, back in chapter 15 of Acts, where they have the first general conference of elders in Jerusalem. And after James gives the conclusion of it, it says here in verse 21, He says, For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath. The term synagogues here is used for an assembly place. He's not talking about, well, the Jews are keeping it. No, he's talking about the brethren in their assemblies. Keep the Sabbath and listen as God's word is expounded on all of these principles. James in chapter 2, verse 2, uses the term that brethren, when one person comes into your assemblies, he uses the same word, synagogue, there.

Because synagogue just means assembly. Later on, it'd be used as the term for church or ecclesia. But it means the same thing. It means an assembly of called-out people. And so James says that the Gentiles are going to learn more how to apply these things as they go to services on the Sabbath and will understand better how to apply God's laws. So if Sunday was being kept, they wouldn't have used this idea that, well, the Gentiles that are converted, they're no longer going to Jewish synagogues.

The Jews were persecuting the church. James was not going to a Jewish synagogue on the Sabbath day. He was going to the assembly where Christian Jews were assembling. Because they were already. If you believed in Jesus, you would be expelled from the synagogue. So here he's talking about on the Sabbath in the assemblies. They're going to learn more about how to put into practice these principles. And one last scripture here in Hebrews 4, which shows that the Sabbath is still binding.

Hebrews 4, verse 9. It says, There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. If you have other versions, here I have the believers. Let's see. BBE version, which is, I believe, the Bible and believers version. It says, The term rest here, sabbatismos, means the keeping of the Sabbath day. And it's talking about the Sabbath is still to be kept, especially since the prophetic meaning is still to be accomplished. It says here, verse 10, For he who has entered his rest, about keeping the Sabbath, has himself also seized from his works as God did from his, respecting that creation ordinance.

Where God rested and we are following God's example in that way. So how was the Sabbath spiritualized away in those first centuries and up to today? Would you like to know? That's what we want to cover in the rest of this sermon. It's very important for you to know how Satan cleverly, as a very clever lawyer, was able to come up with three main arguments.

Nothing against Tom. All right, here Joel Thomas. We've got good lawyers too, but Satan knows the law very well. He knows all the loopholes. So he came up with basically three clever arguments that have been repeated through the centuries to be able to get people to quit observing the Sabbath day. Now, during those first four centuries, the Sabbath was still being kept by a majority of Christians, except for those in Rome and Alexandria. Those were the two centers of Catholic religion. They had switched over to Sunday. But it's still very interesting to read some of the historians in what is the fifth century, that are still saying that the Sabbath is still kept in most of the places except for Alexandria and Rome.

There's a historian of that time called Socrates Scholasticus, around 440 AD. He wrote, For although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries of the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this. So he's saying, well, we've got these two big centers that don't do it, but still the Sabbath is respected throughout that Roman Empire.

Solzemann is another historian of around that same time, and he says the same thing. Those were two documents that were not destroyed by the Roman Church at that time, that still are there as a witness. And by the way, they were found in the Vatican archives. They had not been destroyed. The quote from Socrates Scholasticus is found in his book, Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, Section 22.

So how was it changed? What are these three big arguments that have been just regurgitated time and time again throughout history? Again, the chief heretic behind the big change was Augustine of Hippo, 354 to 430 AD. He was the first one who spiritualized the Sabbath in such a way that it had a great impact.

He was the first to bring up the clever argument that since the Sabbath day at creation did not mention an evening like the rest of the days, that it didn't have an ending. So the Sabbath became an eternal rest. The Sabbath was spiritualized away, became a mystical aspect which is preserved. The argument is of an unending Sabbath, that once you're in Christ, you just continue. The Sabbath is just every day of the week. It's still going on from the time that God created it because He didn't say an evening and morning were the seventh day, which is absurd because in the fourth commandment it says that God rested on the seventh day.

And guess what? There was a day after that. It didn't continue on through time, but somehow this started this spiritualization of the Sabbath day. In his book Confessions, Augustine mentions that it doesn't have an ending. Have you ever heard that argument? Oh, the Sabbath is something that just continues on. It doesn't matter what day, because in Christ all the days are the same and the Sabbath is a continuation of every day.

Then what became the second big argument was after Constantine established the Sunday Law in 321 AD.

So now the teachers of the church needed some backing for keeping the Sunday, which Constantine had established to the venerable day of the sun, because he was a sun worshiper. But since he had accepted Catholicism as the religion of the empire, they had to now massage this to see how we're going to justify this point. And so they applied the second argument, which is called the one-in-seven-day argument. Now, God really, what he's talking about is, as long as you keep one day in seven holy, it doesn't matter really what day of the week it is. John Chrysostom, around 440 AD, came up with that argument, which he said that what is important is the one-in-seven days. And so Sunday, being the first day of the week, can replace Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, because it's still one in seven. Why make a big deal what day of the week it is? Since that's what's important, we have spiritualized the Sabbath into the one-in-seven days. Have you ever heard that argument? And then, during the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian, introduced another argument to spiritualize away and abolish the Sabbath. And that is dividing the Sabbath into two parts. One is the moral part, and the other is the ceremonial part.

Thomas Aquinas said that what is important is the moral part of the Sabbath day, which is the need to rest and to worship. But the ceremonial part is the seventh day. It's fixing a certain day of the week to do this. So he said, well, what is now established is the moral part of the Sabbath day, not the ceremonial part. He had quite a bit of uncertainty when he wrote this, because he knew it kind of contradicted things, that if it's the moral that is important and you're not fixing a ceremonial day, how do you fix the Sunday without that becoming ceremonial?

But pretty soon people forgot about Aquinas' doubts, and they said, boy, this is good. The moral versus the ceremonial. So that started becoming this third argument.

I have a book here which is called The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions, and it has several authors. Tamara Eskenazi, Daniel Harrington, and William Shea. And it's called The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Tradition, and it contains some of this information that I'm giving to you. One section is written by Samuel Bakiochi of Andrews University, the Seventh-day Adventist scholar in history, and he has a very important section. And we really miss Samuel Bakiochi because he was one of the finest historians of his day and was able to just cut through a lot of this double talk and really get down to the heart of the matter.

Bakiochi mentions in page 81, he says, Thomas Aquinas' moral ceremonial distinction of the Sabbath became the standard rationale for defending the church's right to introduce and regulate the observance of Sunday and Holy Days. This resulted in an elaborate legalistic system of Sunday-keeping akin to that of the rabbinical or Pharisaic Sabbath. The Catholic Church ended up saying, well, since we're going to keep the moral and we determine when to do it, we're also going to determine what to do on Sunday.

And so they had all of these ceremonies that you're supposed to go and you're supposed to make the sign of the cross and take holy water and communion is taken at that time and people have to chant certain things. So he said, we have the right because now we determine how people rest and how they worship. We decide when to do it and what they're to do. And they added all of these man-made regulations about Sunday. I know my mother, being Catholic, when I was growing up, women had to wear veils to the Catholic Mass.

And many other things that you weren't supposed to eat meat on Friday because you were preparing for Sunday and they thought Christ had died on Friday, so you basically eat fish on that day. Now, next in line in history, as we trace, as I mentioned here, the paper trail, in the 16th century, another variation of these three arguments was made against the Sabbath, this time by Martin Luther. Now, he accepted some of the idea of Augustine. He was an Augustine monk before he changed. And so he believed that the Sabbath had no binding because it was in the Old Testament.

Sunday was retained by Luther. He said the Sabbath had been specifically given to the Jewish people. And so Sunday would be the new day, not as the Christian Sabbath, but as a, he quoted, a convenient day ordained by the church. He's talking about the Lutheran church. For the sake of the imperfect laity, which are the lay people, and working class who need, quote, at least one day in the week to rest and attend divine service. So he took some of these arguments from Augustine, and also the idea that this one in seven is important, but that Sunday, he didn't consider it was holy.

It was just a convenient day. So Lutherans always looked at it as a day to go to church, but you can do physical labor. You don't have to worry about resting completely on that day. And it became just a day to worship for approximately one hour.

This position was largely determined because he thought that everything that was laws in the Old Testament had been done away, and now we just have the New Testament to guide us. He said, the Sabbath is altogether an external matter, like other ordinances of the Old Testament, now made free through Christ.

So we see this argument of basically the two testaments in the Bible are in opposition. And you've got to get rid of this other one. This is the argument that the Old Testament laws are abolished, and only the New Testament teachings are valid. This is the New Covenant theology argument that was used in 1995 to confuse people.

Well, Sabbath is something old. It was just for that time. It was only for the Jewish people. Now we're free. It's just one in seven. So we can choose our day of worship, and Sunday is the day that we choose, and we have this freedom because that has been abolished. Another stream of thought during Luther's day was given by his counterpart in the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin. Now he used another argument because for Luther, you can't have the two testaments together. You've got to abolish one and then use the other.

Calvin, on the other hand, wanted to use both of them and unite the two. So that's what he did. He didn't separate the Old Testament and the New Testament, but instead unified them through spiritualizing the Old Testament. So Calvin considered that the Sabbath commandment still had meaning for a Christian, but Sunday is a legitimate successor of the Sabbath.

Again, quoting from this book by Bakiyoki, he says about Calvin, in his effort to maintain the basic unity of the Old and New Testaments, Calvin Christianized the law, spiritualizing, at least in part, the Sabbath commandment, proposing a new version of Aquinas' distinctions between moral and ceremonial aspects of the Sabbath.

So you are to rest on Sunday, keeping the moral part of the Sabbath, resting on that day, worshipping on that day, but now doing it on Sunday. Presbyterians, Puritans, Baptists subscribe to this argument. They keep Sunday in a very strict way. While Lutherans, Catholics, and many evangelicals, other groups as well, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, subscribe to Luther's radical separation of the Bible, where the Old Testament laws have been abolished. That's why if you go, Jehovah's Witnesses say, oh, the law has been done away. See, those that say the law has been done away, they're in Luther's camp.

This is the argument that is used. Now, if you're more akin to Calvinist thinking, which are the Presbyterians and many of the groups, well, they say we're retaining the sanctity of the Sabbath day, but transferring it over to Sunday. So they're much more strict.

They're the ones that want to keep the blue laws. No businesses on Sunday are to be open and many of these types of thoughts. So what is the logical outcome? You have, basically in the world, in Christianity, two ways to observe Sunday. One is the Lutheran and Catholic and many evangelical way that the law has been done away. That's Old Testament. Have you ever heard that argument? Well, we've got the new covenant now and the old covenant's been done away, and nothing there is really binding on people.

It doesn't say anything about, well, can we go and kill people? Can we steal? Can we lie? Of all Ten Commandments, the only commandment they have a problem with is the fourth. Because if you ask any of these Lutherans that have said that the Old Testament law has been done away with, well, let's see the first commandment. Should we have any other God but the true God? No, no, that's still important.

Well, should we make idols and statues of God or anything dealing with God? Oh, no, no, we shouldn't do that. Can we take God's name in vain? The third commandment? Oh, no, no, no. How about should we still honor our father and mother, the fifth commandment? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Are we supposed to be able to just kill another human being? Oh, no, no, that's right.

The sixth and the seventh. Well, can we still commit adultery? Oh, no, no, no. And can we go ahead and steal from our neighbor? Oh, no, no, please. No, keep that one, too. Can we lie and have false testimony? Oh, no, no, that's still there. And how about, can I lust after my neighbor's goods and my neighbor's wife and everything that he had?

Oh, no, no, please keep that one. What's the one that Luther used to destroy all of that for the fourth commandment? And so what he did was he abolished the fourth commandment, and then they raised up the rest like they don't have connection among themselves, these Ten Commandments. So that doesn't work. And how about the Calvinists, which has to do with all of these groups that became Presbyterians and Methodists?

Well, they're stricter, like the Puritans were, because they said, oh, no, we do accept that the Sabbath is still something that we should honor, but we have spiritualized it and just retained the moral aspects. So we can transfer the sanctity and the rest and the worship of the Sabbath day into Sunday.

So these are the two. And if you ever meet people that are called Christians, because evangelicals also are more of the Calvinist group, you can say, oh, okay. So they are more from the Calvinists. They spiritualize the law. Whereas the Lutheran stream of thought is that you abolish it, and then you just resurrect what you want in the Old Testament. That doesn't have to do with the Sabbath day.

Bakiyoki mentions in page 87, he says, the result of this confusion is that most Christians today, as in the past, have no clear ideas why they should observe Sunday as a holy day. And consequently, they end up treating it as a holiday. Just a day, hang out, don't work, do your thing on Sunday, go to church, but the rest of the day is available to do what you want. And of course, as the society becomes more relaxed in keeping norms and rules and separating itself more from religion, now just about everything is open on Sunday. There is nothing special about that day. I don't think football players are resting on Sunday, are they? Beating themselves up and all of this and everything else. So you see these arguments, it's a hypocritical system. They pay homage to the letter, or rather the spirit, that, oh yes, we're still having a resemblance of the Sabbath day, but in actual fact, they're stepping all over, even trying to keep Sunday holy. Most people don't do that today. Now it's interesting, Bakiyoki brings up three points, and I've added one, which he says, how can we reverse what has happened in all of these centuries? He says, number one, recognize separating the Sabbath into a moral and ceremonial division is not warranted, nor is it supported by the Scriptures. There's no place in the Bible where it tells us that the Sabbath is in these two parts, and one is moral, and the other one is ceremonial. No, it's just one day, and it is a day of rest, and it is a fixed day. It doesn't work in any of the other days of the week. So that is a specious and false argument. The seventh day is what is taught in Scripture, not spiritualizing it away into one in seven days. That as long as you keep one in seven, you're okay. That's Satan's argument. That's not found in the Bible. That's a clever excuse in explaining away what the Scriptures say. Number two, understand the historical process of this change. Actually, the first big blow to Sabbath-keeping was by Emperor Hadrian in 135 AD after the revolt of the Jews, he suppressed the Sabbath-keeping throughout the Empire. The Jews became an isolated group, a group basically shunned by the rest of the Roman Empire. And in particular, Hadrian focused upon suppressing the Sabbath day. So this is where some of these Gentile Christians started saying, boy, if we had another day of the week, we should do a better job. We're not going to be persecuted with the Jews. And guess what? We can have our own identity. And that way, we're not going to be bunched up with the Jews, whom they got to hate. As it is brought out here, it says, with Constantine's declaration in 321, it encouraged a Christian theology of separation from and contempt for the Jews. So it was easy to substitute, then. The Sabbath substituted for Sunday, and instead of having the Passover, you had Easter Sunday, which people observe today in the world. Number three, the recovery of the seventh-day Sabbath as a creation ordinance for all of mankind is important to understand. It would bring Christians and Jews together, eliminating the stigmas of contempt for the Jews, to bring back the holiness of the Sabbath instead of a Sunday holiday, and to realize the prophetic role of the Sabbath day, that it points to that coming millennial kingdom of God, that thousand-year reign. It looks like we have six days of the week, each one representing a thousand years. So the seventh day is also representing Christ's rule on this earth.

And the fourth point, which I add, is that the Sabbath has always been the sign of God's people instead of the mark of the beast.

It's inconceivable that the woman riding the beast, mentioned in Revelation 17, would keep the Sabbath.

She has kept and enforced Sunday keeping since mounting the beast.

Remember the European empire with the church establishing its center there in Rome, and then for these different restorations or resurrections. So far, we have been able to trace nine of these resurgence in history. There's one more left when the woman is going to mount the beast for the final time. That time is going to be the worst in earth history.

And we don't know how close it is, but we know the European Union, the Vatican, they're all together. And it's just a matter of time before everything falls into place.

So that is going to be a test ahead for God's people. Looking at Revelation 14, 12.

Why does God describe God's people in this way? Revelation 14, verse 12.

It says, Here is the patience or endurance of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. These people are keeping God's commandments and having the faith of Jesus in them. Jesus is living through them. We respect all Ten Commandments. We're not keeping just nine of them.

This is why God tells us there in Revelation 18, verse 4, that we can't be part of this Babylonic system of society. It's going to suffer a big collapse in the future. Notice Romans, Revelation 18, verse 4, because God is going to intervene just like he did with Israel.

Remember what he did with the Ten Tribes of Israel? And then Judah, he's going to do it on this earth. He says, verse 4, And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. All of this deceitful instruction.

We are not to participate, and that system lies.

That is the way, brethren, through Satan's clever arguments.

We covered three main ones. First was to spiritualize the Sabbath, to call it a perpetual rest, to just say what's important is one in every seven days, doesn't matter if it's the seventh day or the first day or the third day, whatever.

Secondly, to divide the Sabbath into two parts, the moral and the ceremonial, and say what we want to keep from the Sabbath is just the idea of resting and worship in one day.

One in seven is what's important. And the third argument is simply to abolish it, to say it's just an Old Testament law that has been done away, and to spiritualize away this Sabbath day.

So, brethren, don't let anyone ever deceive you with these false arguments dealing with God's Sabbath.