Originally posted by BobRyan:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />DHK said --
there are portions of the law that do not apply to Gentiles, such as keeping the Sabbath. It applies only to the Jews (Exodus 31)
I "suppose" if we ignored Isaiah 66 "From Sabbath to Sabbath SHALL ALL MANKIND come before Me to Worship"...</font>[/QUOTE]It's always nice to take Scripture out of its context to justify one's position, however unbiblical it may be. Durint the Tribulation Period (also called Jacob's Trouble) Christ is going to come specifically for the nation of Israel (so then all Israel shall be saved [Isa.11:26]). Then, shortly after that we will enter into the Millennial Kingdom where Christ will reign for a thousand years. During that period of time the Sabbath will be re-established. But for now Israel, as well as her offerings, have been set aside. There is no Temple now. There will be a Temple in the Millennial Kingdom. There is no Sabbath now. There will be in the Millennial Kingdom. God is not dealing with the Jewish nation now. He has called out a nation unto himself out of the Gentiles (both Jews and Gentiles) that all who believe in Christ shall be saved--not become Jews and worship the Sabbath. We are not Jews. We are Christians. The Sabbath was given to the Jews, the nation of Israel. Isa. 66 only verifies that even further. It doesn not apply to the Gentilies. We are living in a Gentile age, not the Millennian Kingdom.
And IF we ignored Mark 2 "The SABBATH was MADE for MANKIND"
Good point! What was Jesus teaching? Why not quote the whole passage?
Mark 2:27-28 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
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and not man for the Sabbath
In other words man was not made to be a slave to the Sabbath as the SDA's teach. This blows the SDA's teaching away. The SDA's teach that man is a slave to the Sabbath. Christ taught the very opposite. We are not in bondage to the Sabbath. We are not obligated to keep the Sabbath in any way.
And if we ignored Gen 2:3 where God MAKES MANKIND and then MAKES the 7th day a Holy day...
So what? And he created the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Does that mean on every fourth day (Wednesday) we should worship the sun, moon and stars. There is no command here to worship on the Sabbath.
Then we could take that snippet approach to Exodus 31 and "pretend" the scope mentioned there is the LARGEST scope for the application of the Sabbath that we knew about in scripture.
Now, God takes the Sabbath Day and gives it to the nation of Israel as a sign to them and their generations--a sign of the covenant between them and Jehovah forever. He never rescinded that covenant. But you want to do away with the Scripture. Have you ripped it out of your Bible yet?
But to do that we would have to agree to ignore a lot of "inconvenient scripture".
It is only inconvenient to those who try to force Sabbath-keeping on the rest of mankind, when the Bible does not teach such.
Having said that - this argument is NOT unique to SDAs!! That is the same argument you see the Sabbath keeping NON-SDAs using!
Then they are wrong too. For the Bible gives no such command for any Christian to keep the Sabbath. That is plain and simple.
And you see a somewhat similar argument EVEN among NON-Sabbath keeping non-SDAS if they ALSO are among those that claim to honor the TEN Commandments (the D.L. Moody thread might be used as "evidence" in that case).
Man can believe what he wants. I believe in sola scriptura. What saith the Lord? The Bible teaches that keeping the Sabbath was a sign betweeen Jehovan and the nation of Israel and for their generations forever, not just for a temporary periond of time, but forever. I am not a Jew. The Sabbath was not given for me.
So -- the bottom line is -- there is a dirth of focus on anything like "evidence" to support the title/topic of this thread in the OP.
The bottome line is that the SDA's don't have a case at all when it comes to their insistence on keeping the Sabbath. It was a sign of the covenant given to the Jews. You are not a Jew.
DHK