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Why does the Sabbath matter?

UKChristian

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Hello all. Please be aware I am asking this respectfully. I am not a troll and I am genuinely interested in your answers. I've just taken a 'What Denomination Are You' quiz and I came out Seventh Day Adventist which surprised me. I'm not sure that's accurate but it has prompted me to try and discover more about adventism. At the moment I know little about them other than they're largely vegetarian and, I thought, more conservative than my way of thinking(this is why I'm posting in the progressive Adventist forum). I have just found out pacifism is a big thing in the Adventist church as well.

All this I'm comfortable with. What I don't get, is why is what day you worship so important to Adventists? I understand there are Biblical arguments that the original day of worship was a Saturday, but for me, Sunday is not important. It just happens to be when the majority of church services are held. I worship God every day. Why is the day of worship so fundamental to the Adventist faith?

Again I do not mean to cause offence and hope I haven't done so. I'm asking this out of genuine interest.
 

maco

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God defines the seventh day as blessed, sanctified and holy. The words blessed, sanctified and holy have meaning to God and instill a sense of value to what they define. The seventh day is part of creation itself and testifies of creation and bears witness to God as Creator and Satan hates that. Honoring the seventh day identifies you with God's kingdom people. Honoring the seventh day, because of what it represents in this present evil age, is like wearing an American flag on your shirt in Iraq. Satan is working hard to do away with anything that testifies of God in the world. When the seventh day was changed from the seventh day to the first day much persecution, torture and death followed that change. Today, God's people are comfortable with Sunday observance and soon they will be comfortable with same sex marriages.
 
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Steve Petersen

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Hello all. Please be aware I am asking this respectfully. I am not a troll and I am genuinely interested in your answers. I've just taken a 'What Denomination Are You' quiz and I came out Seventh Day Adventist which surprised me. I'm not sure that's accurate but it has prompted me to try and discover more about adventism. At the moment I know little about them other than they're largely vegetarian and, I thought, more conservative than my way of thinking(this is why I'm posting in the progressive Adventist forum). I have just found out pacifism is a big thing in the Adventist church as well.

All this I'm comfortable with. What I don't get, is why is what day you worship so important to Adventists? I understand there are Biblical arguments that the original day of worship was a Saturday, but for me, Sunday is not important. It just happens to be when the majority of church services are held. I worship God every day. Why is the day of worship so fundamental to the Adventist faith?

Again I do not mean to cause offence and hope I haven't done so. I'm asking this out of genuine interest.

It matters because it is a foretaste of the World to Come!
 
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OldStudent

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To me there are two major tributaries toward an answer to your question then there are a few additional streams to consider. I’ll set these in three posts. The angles I present are from a rather recent and fresh look at the topic for myself. I was raised in SDA schools but very little of what is here came from the “official” channels. However, I don’t think there would be any disagreement. To me it sure makes a whole lot more sense. While my approach is relational, it makes careful use of doctrine (teaching) to discover and shape the understanding. I try to avoid being "doctrinal" (“it’s the law!”).

Let’s start from the beginning. We need to put two things together. In John 1:1-3 and Colossians 1:16 we learn that all things were made by Christ. So if we peek to the era before creation there was nothing – only God. Now let’s factor in 1 John 4:8, 16 – “God is love.” Given that in some ways we were made in ways that resemble God we can get some sense of the “love” thing: we crave relationships, to love, to be loved, to be held in honor, respect, value, to share. So before creation God found Himself in a desert for relationships. So the need for expanded relationships urged Him to solve the problem. After due planning He began to express His desires. There is evidence the work was done in stages. The first expressions created immense real estate. Then life forms of some variety came into existence – in general we call them angels. At some point His attention focused on a little planet toward the edge of a galaxy. Genesis 1 records how that work progressed. Until that last item on day six He spoke and whatever simply appeared. For that last item we see God go to a muck pool, apply His hands and form one one of a kind being – man (together male and female). With this creation He took special care and gave them special qualities.

Now we come to day seven. It doesn't appear that much happened. God rested. He didn't do anything but set aside the time for special purpose (Genesis 2:1-3). But that purpose was the very reason for creation: fellowship, time for nothing but thought, time for conversation – a date for people in love (romance may be a small part of it). It is the exclamation point defining the week. It is really the crown of creation.

God thought so highly of it that He carefully wrote it out on stone in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). He pointed back to creation for its origin and purpose. When Moses recited the Commandments in Deuteronomy 5 he changed the Sabbath. He pointed to release from slavery – redemption, salvation. When Jesus said, “It is finished” on the cross He entered rest and rested over the Sabbath. There are, then, multiple instances of consecration of this weekly slice of time.
 
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OldStudent

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The second key to understanding the Sabbath is Jesus. Church leaders were becoming uneasy with perspectives of His teaching, His growing popularity, and some peculiar behaviors. One Sabbath Jesus and His disciples were caught picking grain from a field for breakfast. This was common practice any other day. The summary statement is: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath" Mark 2:27, 28. He is the Creator of the Sabbath. He is Lord even of the Sabbath. Therefore He is free and qualified to do and say as He chooses. Indeed, if you do a search on “Sabbath” and collate all the stories you will discover that indeed there in no other clause of the Law He so deliberately, repeatedly set the table for conversation. Most of the incidents were confrontational. At times He placed His ministry at risk even eliciting death threats. He even got other people in trouble over it yet they took no offense for it.

Just before His death He included a passing comment about the Sabbath. Matthew 24:20. He assumed Sabbath would be valid, honored after His death.

So we see the Sabbath was of great interest and value to Jesus.
 
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OldStudent

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If you search “Sabbath” outside the Gospels you will discover several instances in Acts. Some indicate extended periods of time.

Look that first angels message in Revelation 14:6, 7. He is presenting to the world the everlasting gospel. In part, He calls for worship of "Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” Notice the creation and Sabbath language.

For many centuries Sabbath observance was almost lost. Soon after the reformation a group discovered the Sabbath again and boldly incorporated it into their faith and practice. This group became known as the Seventh-day Baptists.

In the early 1800s God drew the interest of many people to the prophetic books. Jesus was soon to enter a final phase of His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. This would be one of the final steps preceding the Second Coming – Second Advent. (That's another thread.) Toward the middle of the century a Seventh-day Baptist lay-lady took an Adventist pastor to task for missing the Sabbath. Sure enough. She had a point. The Adventists slowly grew through the mid-19th century. Much as they didn't like the idea it became apparent that for them to carry out the calling God had on them they needed to formally organize. They knew their primary focus was the soon coming of Jesus. They also knew that an important qualification of God's people in this time was the keeping of all the commandments. The Sabbath commandment was/is the one being so sorely short changed. Putting this together in 1863 they did organize and adopted the name "Seventh-day Adventist."

In Isaiah 66:22, 23 we discover that the Sabbath will be observed in the "new heavens and the new earth."

These posts are very brief but I hope they give you a useful overview.

Thanks for asking.
 
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LarryP2

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Any argument that Christians must keep any part of the Mosaic Law is just dishonest about the structure and implementation of the Old Testament law, and indicates a severe ignorance about its applications. There are 613 Commandments, all of which are equally important, and all of them must be kept. Or none of them. There is NO distinction in the Mosaic Law between "ritualistic" and "moral" law. Sabbattarian Christians conjure up that self-serving distinction purely out of convenience. They have picked a few of the 613 Commandments seemingly at random, based on the ones that happen to tickle their fancy. That is willfully dishonest to the intent of the Law.

If you were to approach an rabbinical expert on the Mosaic Law, and announce self-righteously that you are "keeping the Ten Commandments," they would look on you as though you are mentally deranged. Under Mosaic Law, there is no such a thing as the "Ten Commandments." What we know as the "Decalogue" is subsumed into the overall structure of the 613 Commandments. Judaism does not regard the "ten commandments" as anything particularly unique or special in relationship to the other 603 Commandments. They are merely ten among many other laws of equal importance.

Out of the mandatory 613 Mosaic laws, Sabbattarians pick and choose a tiny handful that happily coincide with their overall goals of preening self-righteousness over other Christians. They flatter themselves all too easily. If you understand the way the Mosaic law works, all they have merely done is make themselves looks bizarre and foolish. The Apostles repeatedly denounced such behavior as "Judaizing." The Apostles were experts on the Mosaic Law. Sabbattarians are not.

For Christians, Colossians 2:16-17 means what it says.

For Christians, the AD 50 Council of Jerusalem emphatically means what it says: Gentile Christians shall not be bound by the Mosaic law.

Any argument that the Sabbath is a memorial of Creation indicates an profound ignorance of the original Hebrew that both Genesis and Exodus were written in. The writer of the book of Genesis took great pains to make it clear that the Sabbath did not begin at the 7th day of Creation. Hebrew scholars have made that point absolutely clear. The Sabbath commandment was not given to the Children of Israel until at least a month after their delivery from Egyptian slavery. Meanwhile, they would have unintentionally broken the Sabbath at least four times during their crossing of the Sinai. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone kept the Sabbath prior to Sinai. NONE!

Christians began worshiping on Sunday no later than 1 week after the Resurrection. Christ then Ascended on a Sunday. The Day of Pentecost, the Church's Birthday was on a Sunday. It would have been BIZARRE if the early Christians had continued to keep the Sabbath, given the impact those three events clearly would have had on them. Why were all the early Christians in one place on a Sunday when the Day of Pentecost took place? Because they had started doing so in honor of the Resurrection. By the Day of Pentecost, it was an entrenched Christian custom already.

The SDA argument that Constantine unilaterally destroyed the Sabbath has been forcibly disproven by their own Sabbath Expert, Samuelle Bachiochi.

The argument for keeping just one pet commandment out of the 613 simply denigrates the obvious meaning of the crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost. It is a Salvation by Works theory of "Partial Atonement." It is an argument that one must keep the entirety of the Mosaic Law, because Christ's sacrifice is not enough. Fortunately for Christians, even Christians who keep the Sabbath aren't even CLOSE to meeting that burden.

If you want to keep the Sabbath and the rest of the laws and have an ounce of integrity, you must go through the full-scale conversion process to Judaism that is mandatory. It is extremely highly-unlikely any Sabbattarian Christian would do that. For an unconverted Gentile to keep the Sabbath is such a serious offense against God and a defilement against the Sabbath, an observant Jew is required the impose the Death Penalty!.

Christians who keep the Sabbath are as bizarre as if they suddenly developed a yen to sacrifice some animals in their backyard temple. Or kept the Feast of the New Moons.
 
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