Cliff2, jochanaan and BrightCandle,
Why is it in regards to the Sabbath that you suddenly choose to stare yourself blind against the "chapter and verse" of the Bible, and ignore its Spirit as if there were no such thing and as if it didn't influence your thinking about other matters? Did Jesus also send the Spirit out among his flock to "remind and teach" them, or just his recorded words? How did Christians manage to believe Paul's words, do you think? Which chapters and verses did he quote to prove God commanded circumcision to be discontinued, if that's all you would have accepted as his audience?
You have been incited against Christians who have a different understanding of the Sabbath, the same way Christians were sometimes incited against Jews. But while you are quick to point out anti-Semitism, and to see it as a reason for this "heresy", as Dr Bacchiocchi and Ellen White did, you are blind to your own judgements, even though they are having exactly the same effect on the unity of genuine Christians.
You demand texts to prove strawmen - the strawman in this case being that Jesus came to fulfil the law with more laws, "commands" as you call them. Another strawman is that you keep the 4th commandment better on the Saturday than anybody could keep it on the Sunday or any other day of the week - as if your memory of the heavenly Sabbath is better on Saturday than someone who remembers it with exactly the same spirit on any other day.
The clear command Christ gave was to love one another (John 13:34), and Paul affirmed this: "for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law" (Rom. 13:8). You love to quote Jesus: "If you love me, you will obey what I command", but I haven't seen one of you finish with his words: "This is my command: Love each other" (John 15:17).
It seems you wish to make the Sabbath a stumbling block for people who wish to enter God's kingdom, the same way the Pharisees did. As if you cannot - may not - love those who don't keep the Sabbath as you do, as if they have to enter God's rest by way of a particular day, and not by way of a particular person: Jesus Christ. You deny that it pertains to salvation, but your actions say something else. Midnightcry said something earlier: "I think this will be a dividing issue in the church in the future." Only if you want it to; only if you think it should. Only if you drive it like a wedge between Christians (calling one side "apostate" and even "children of Babylon", which is what Ellen White believed, like Joseph Smith and other restorationists). The implications to those who you say are not keeping the whole law are clear, even if it's hard for you to say it out loud. The purpose of the law was to discern between those who are guilty or innocent, between the righteous and the condemned. But if your claims are sincere - that our salvation is not at stake - then the issue isn't the law at all, and it is a question of hearts and minds: how we understand the significance of what Christ did and consistently apply it to our lives. Then the motivation for driving in this wedge isn't "the law" or your righteousness and our alleged apostasy, but a simple lack of trust - and I would even say lack of faith - in the incredible and complete efficacy of God's grace.
Like I said before: the moral content of the Sabbath is Christ, the One who gives rest to those who are burdened. That is something that not a Sunday, not a Saturday, nor a whole weekend or months of rest can provide to someone who is pursued by sin and condemned under the law. Israel could rest from their slavery in Egypt, in recognition of God's grace, but they could not rest from sin. You would have us commemorate their rest, as if God never provided something better and everlasting, a Sabbath not contained in any chapter or verse or law, but that every chapter and verse and law in the Bible sought to achieve.
I'm not making a call for mindless tolerance. Their is certainly no place for lawlessness in Christ. But for you who emphasize the Saturday as an everlasting Sabbath, and who define holiness in old covenant terms, I ask to dispel the appearance of hypocrisy: where is the "chapter and verse" that commands you to stop keeping every command that was ever given to Israel for keeping the Sabbath (or any of the other 613 laws, for that matter)?
