I'm responding to your post against my better judgement because I know how you view the Scriptures. But for the sake of those you are leading astray I will respond.
I'm willing to accept the Scriptures as they read, with no need to force an alternate meaning onto them. That is the antithesis of leading anyone astray.
If Joshua had given them rest? This has nothing to do with the day that God blessed, sanctifed and called holy at creation.
You had made a point based on a link between
sabbatismos and the sabbath, when no such relationship exists.
Sabbatismos is used only in Hebrews 4:9 -no where else- and is referred to as "
another day", differentiated from anything the children of Israel had before the death of the Messiah, spoken as "
a promise remains of entering His rest" in Hebrews 4:1.
And yes, God's rest is the day sanctified in the first week of creation. That was His rest, and not man's rest that wouldn't be ordained until Moses. Hebrews 4:4 quotes directly from Genesis 2:2 to show the origin of God's rest, and this chapter refers to the provocation experience recorded in Numbers 14 as another example of a singular rest that has no relation to the sabbath. God's rest never ended since the seventh day of creation, and has never repeated as the sabbath did every week.
All throughout the Bible we find God using holy and sacred things to help us understand our relationship with Him but this does not nullify the sacred and holy things. It would be like saying marriage is no longer needed because God only used it to help us understand our relatinship with Him.
The word, sabbatismos is a direct referrence to the literal Sabbath day but the word, anapano is a referrence to the inward rest Jesus gives us in that we don't have to run around trying to be accepted by God because we are accepted in Christ. Jesus taught about Sabbath keeping all throughout the New Testament and He always referred to it has a litteral day.
Matthew 12:11-12 Then Jesus said to them, "What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? "Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.''
As you mentioned,
sabbatismos draws on God's rest that began the seventh day
of creation, showing it has no relation to the seventh day
of the week. Jesus taught about the law and the various components of it during the tenure of the first covenant, but there is no longer a temporal sabbath after the first covenant expired and we were given entrance into God's eternal rest, the assurance of an eternal inheritance:
Hebrews 9
15 ¶ And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
16 For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.
17 For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives.
18 Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood.
It was the death of Jesus Christ that established the new covenant in His Blood; before this event the law mediated by Moses retained jurisdiction and Israel's transgressions under it had not yet been redeemed. After the resurrected Jesus opened the comprehension of His disciples, you will not find the promotion of the sabbath in Scripture any more.
Luke 24
44 Then He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."
45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
God is still opening the comprehension of those earnestly desiring fellowship with God in His redemption. We do not need the message of a false prophet that detracts from communion with Him.
