You said you couldn't understand why some Adventists felt those verses were talking about the end of the earth. Now you're saying you don't know any Christian that feels that way?
No I never said that, you have a real problem misquoting me, and that should not be a problem in a written medium like this, you could simply quote me and then no one would have to depend on your memory or non memory of the words. The fact is that most all Christians think that those verses are describing at least the siege of Jerusalem and others the idea of last days tribulation also. That includes non Adventists also, clearly they don't look at the verses as indicating it is meant to convey the continuation of the Sabbath command for Christians. So the question was to you how do you see the Sabbath mention there in respect to a tribulation in the Last days? Do you still have travel restrictions that would somehow stop you from fleeing a presumably worldwide persecution, or is this limited to a certain city that you could travel away from. Just what does the verse mean to you in that context of an end time tribulation, the only thing I can think of is if you still held to some type of travel restriction on the Sabbath.
Why was Christ concerned about practices of the Sabbath at all if He knew it was going to be nailed to the cross with Him?
I don't know why you keep bringing that up as it was not the text we were talking about, rather the text was let no man Judge you on the days you keep, festivals, new moons and Sabbaths. But to help you out no commandments were nailed to the cross. What was nailed to the cross was our guilt of violations of the law. In other words it was forgiven if we should accept the forgiveness offered.
Since I better answer all your questions:
Why would people that didn't believe Christ was the Messiah listen to His prohecy anyway? Some guy claiming to be the Son of God. They didn't listen to Him about other things, so how did they all know when to flee and decide to listen this time if they didn't believe in Him?
Even if some did not believe He was the messiah that does not mean that they did not believe Him as a prophet. Who knows, we can only guess who even heard what he said, the account in the gospels was not written until after the fall of Jerusalem even according to most conservative scholars who date the books of the Bible. It was a siege by Rome against a Jewish uprising and it is not surprising that over the time of several years before the final siege people could see that the Jews rebellion was not going well.
I totally admit that I've rambled a few times. I don't understand the whole hangup on Jew vs Christian when ANYONE can accept Christ as their Savior and become a Christian, so I had to get a little side-tracked to address that issue.
Well taking A&P you should have learned this by now. Words have meanings. And a word does not have a meaning until the word is created and used with a meaning. You will find as you study history that there were several types of Christians as well as several types of Jews. Thus they have further names created to identify their postitions as well such as gnostic Christians. There were Ebionites who were Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah but also maintained that all Jewish laws and traditions be maintained. The point is words have meaning.
But speaking of not answering questions...you've skipped a few of mine. Did the WORD "Christian" have to be mentioned in the Bible before someone could actually become one?
Yes, because before that they were called followers of the Way, disciples or apostles of simply people who recognized Jesus as rabbi, teacher or master. Christian is a word used to describe those followers. The people could certainly follow Jesus but they were not called Christians.
I've also asked you what you think the definition of a Christian is.
Of course I did in fact answer that question all the way back in post 6
I said:
No that would be totally out of the context of what He was saying in that verse. The only way you can get that is by reading something into his words. A Christian is one who follows Jesus Christ like the Apostle Paul who is the one who wrote the verse about not judging people about festivals or new moons or sabbath days. Clearly Paul did not feel it was necessary to carry on all Jewish traditions even though Jesus practiced them during his time on earth. Otherwise he would not have been so hard on the Judizers.
http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=33280948&postcount=6
RC, I have another question for you. You go to an Adventist church every Sabbath. I'd like to know the reason you do that.
There are a number of reasons, there are also a number of churches with Saturday evening services here also, if going to a church on saturday was the issue I could go to them. But it is not. Reason for going to a church have many factors and it is pretty much never just about what day the church meets. As you could fulfill the rest requirments at home and you could meet with other believers at any number of times. We don't live the way they did in the pre printing press days when you had to go to the synagogue to hear scriptures read to you because there were precious few copies.
If I'm not reaching out to people in the right way and you know of a better way, I am really asking you to please share your view here.
Simply pay attention and you will see that indeed there are better ways, reasonable ways and ways that build peoples understanding.