What I have learned about the Sabbath

[Treefarmer]

I was born into a non-religious family. We never attended any church services when I grew up.
I was educated in public schools which taught atheism and secular humanism.
There I learned that I had descended from apes, and I acted accordingly.

When I was 18 years old Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me in a miraculous way, but He did not then tell me His name.
He very gently and slowly built up a spiritual relationship with me and I was eager to explore and learn more about Him.
Over time I learned that He is known by many names: Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Yahushuah, Kinsman Redeemer, Shepherd, the Lamb, and many others.

He gradually unfolded His plan of salvation before me and the more I learned about it, the more I knew that I wanted to be saved.

I was in my late thirties when I made my public decision for Him through baptism by immersion in water.
I understood this baptism to be a symbol of my union with Christ and His bride the church, the forgiveness of my sins, and a confession of my faith in His death and resurrection.

For my re-birth I accepted His love, His law, and His will for my life.
Being rather inexperienced in most points of His law and His will for me, I began the learning process which will last a lifetime.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

I will soon be 44 years old and I wrote down what I have learned about the Sabbath of His fourth commandment.
I pray that this will be inspirational for some of my fellow servants in Christ.

TheSealOfGod.pdf

Bright blessings to all

[martin earl]

Thank you Treefarmer. My only question is, how do we know what "day" of the 7 is actually the Sabbath? Much like I cannot bear false witness to the day (or night) of my birth, I cannot say what day it is today.

Do I just work 6 days and have my own Sabbath?

[Richard Earl]

Thank you Treefarmer.

I've been trying to determine which day this really is. Is it Saturday or Wednesday?

Remembering Sabbath

Does anyone know how accurate this link is?

[Hbert997]

Thank you Treefarmer.

I've been trying to determine which day this really is. Is it Saturday or Wednesday?

Remembering Sabbath

Does anyone know how accurate this link is?

Determining if Saturday is truly the Sabbath is very quite simple...

The Jews have been observing it for many centuries before the time Y'shua arrived over 2000 years ago...and they've been observing it since that time until today, all without interruption and confusion. If they had been observing the Sabbath on the wrong day, don't you think the Son of YHWH, Mashiyach Y'shua would have corrected them? He corrected them on MANY things, but didn't tell them they had His Day wrong!

And the Sabbath wasn't (and isn't) just for the Jews. Adam and Eve weren't Jews and they rested on the 7th day. Noah wasn't a Jew and he did too...as did Abraham, Issac and Jacob...all of which were NOT Jews. Jews didn't exist until the tribe of Judah...and as such, was only 1 of the 12 tribes of Israel. Soooooo, the 4th Commandment given at Mt. Sinai has existed since the 7th day of Creation and has been YHWH's weekly "date" with his people...you and me...a Holy, Set-Apart Day. And the 4th Commandment is only one of 10 which is only 10 of 613 of which make the entire Torah...and that my friends...is THE LAW spoken about throughout the entire bible, the Tanakh (old) and the B'rit Chadasha (renewed covenant/new testament), not just the 10 Commandments.

And while I'm not an SDA, Michael Scheifler's Biblelight.net website has this research regarding the Sabbath accuracy issue:

(quote)
Jesus Knew And Kept The Sabbath Day.

Since Jesus was God, he knew exactly which day was the genuine seventh-day sabbath -

Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

Jesus Himself was a keeper of the seventh-day sabbath. Now, if the Jews had somehow lost track of the sabbath day since the time of Moses, Jesus would have certainly corrected them, but this was not necessary, since they were already observing the right day. As this establishes a firm reference point in history, it remains for the skeptic to try and prove that the Jews, and the rest of the world, somehow collectively lost track of the seventh day Sabbath in the 2000 years since the time of Christ, a period which is very well documented.

The Gregorian Calendar Reform

Sometimes people will say the calendar reform in the Middle Ages must have altered the weekdays as we know them, so we cannot be sure which day is the seventh day. Again people that think this have not researched the issue.

The calendar reform of 1582 was initiated by Pope Gregory XIII because the calendar established by Julius Caesar, was not accurate and stable. This was due to the fact that the Julian calendar added a leap day every 4 years, without exception, and this resulted in adding too many days than required for an accurate solar calendar. The Julian calendar had commenced the 1st of January of the 46th year before the birth of Christ (the 708th from the foundation of Rome). At that time the Spring equinox fell on March 25th, but because of the Julian calendar's inaccuracy, it had gradually drifted earlier over the years to March 10th or 11th by 1582. This error was important to the Catholic church, because under the solar Julian calendar, the date of Easter (the most important date to the church), was gradually creeping farther and farther (earlier and earlier) away from the time of year set by the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., when the equinox fell about March 21st. Easter was then to be observed by Roman Catholics on the first Sunday after the full moon occurring after the Spring equinox, except when that coincided with the Jewish Passover, in which case Easter was delayed to the following Sunday.

To correct this perceived Easter problem, Pope Gregory XIII (Inter Gravissimas) returned the Spring equinox to March 21st by decreeing that Thursday, October 4th, 1582, would be followed not by the 5th, but by Friday, October 15th. He jumped the calendar 10 days numerically, but did not change the weekly cycle of days.

So that this correction would be maintained, the Pope then decreed that leap years would occur only when the year was divisible by four, and only the centennial years that were divisible by 400 would be leap years. During a leap year, one day is added to the month of February (the 29th), as a correction. This method of calendar keeping was gradually adopted across Europe, and the world, and is nearly universal today.

England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752. By that time, eleven days had been gained so Wednesday, September 2, was followed by Thursday, September 14. The eleven days were skipped, but the weekly cycle of days, Sunday through Saturday, remained unchanged throughout the Middle Ages. (The French Revolution was a notable exception, when for a period of 14 years (1792-1806) a ten day week was adopted, the tenth day being the day of rest).

Inquiries made in 1932 to the United States Naval Observatory, in Washington D.C., and the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, England, have also confirmed that the weekly cycle of 7 days as observed today has not been altered, and remains as it has been since before the time of Christ.

So both history and the Bible make it quite clear that Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday is indeed the seventh day, which has been kept by the Jews for millennia, even to the present day. The true seventh-day sabbath of God has not been lost. Our Saturday is the same day of the week today as the seventh-day sabbath of creation.

(end quote)

[Richard Earl]

Determining if Saturday is truly the Sabbath is very quite simple...

The Jews have been observing it for many centuries before the time Y'shua arrived over 2000 years ago...and they've been observing it since that time until today, all without interruption and confusion. If they had been observing the Sabbath on the wrong day, don't you think the Son of YHWH, Mashiyach Y'shua would have corrected them? He corrected them on MANY things, but didn't tell them they had His Day wrong!

And the Sabbath wasn't (and isn't) just for the Jews. Adam and Eve weren't Jews and they rested on the 7th day. Noah wasn't a Jew and he did too...as did Abraham, Issac and Jacob...all of which were NOT Jews. Jews didn't exist until the tribe of Judah...and as such, was only 1 of the 12 tribes of Israel. Soooooo, the 4th Commandment given at Mt. Sinai has existed since the 7th day of Creation and has been YHWH's weekly "date" with his people...you and me...a Holy, Set-Apart Day. And the 4th Commandment is only one of 10 which is only 10 of 613 of which make the entire Torah...and that my friends...is THE LAW spoken about throughout the entire bible, the Tanakh (old) and the B'rit Chadasha (renewed covenant/new testament), not just the 10 Commandments.

And while I'm not an SDA, Michael Scheifler's Biblelight.net website has this research regarding the Sabbath accuracy issue:

(quote)
Jesus Knew And Kept The Sabbath Day.

Since Jesus was God, he knew exactly which day was the genuine seventh-day sabbath -

Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

Jesus Himself was a keeper of the seventh-day sabbath. Now, if the Jews had somehow lost track of the sabbath day since the time of Moses, Jesus would have certainly corrected them, but this was not necessary, since they were already observing the right day. As this establishes a firm reference point in history, it remains for the skeptic to try and prove that the Jews, and the rest of the world, somehow collectively lost track of the seventh day Sabbath in the 2000 years since the time of Christ, a period which is very well documented.

The Gregorian Calendar Reform

Sometimes people will say the calendar reform in the Middle Ages must have altered the weekdays as we know them, so we cannot be sure which day is the seventh day. Again people that think this have not researched the issue.

The calendar reform of 1582 was initiated by Pope Gregory XIII because the calendar established by Julius Caesar, was not accurate and stable. This was due to the fact that the Julian calendar added a leap day every 4 years, without exception, and this resulted in adding too many days than required for an accurate solar calendar. The Julian calendar had commenced the 1st of January of the 46th year before the birth of Christ (the 708th from the foundation of Rome). At that time the Spring equinox fell on March 25th, but because of the Julian calendar's inaccuracy, it had gradually drifted earlier over the years to March 10th or 11th by 1582. This error was important to the Catholic church, because under the solar Julian calendar, the date of Easter (the most important date to the church), was gradually creeping farther and farther (earlier and earlier) away from the time of year set by the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., when the equinox fell about March 21st. Easter was then to be observed by Roman Catholics on the first Sunday after the full moon occurring after the Spring equinox, except when that coincided with the Jewish Passover, in which case Easter was delayed to the following Sunday.

To correct this perceived Easter problem, Pope Gregory XIII (Inter Gravissimas) returned the Spring equinox to March 21st by decreeing that Thursday, October 4th, 1582, would be followed not by the 5th, but by Friday, October 15th. He jumped the calendar 10 days numerically, but did not change the weekly cycle of days.

So that this correction would be maintained, the Pope then decreed that leap years would occur only when the year was divisible by four, and only the centennial years that were divisible by 400 would be leap years. During a leap year, one day is added to the month of February (the 29th), as a correction. This method of calendar keeping was gradually adopted across Europe, and the world, and is nearly universal today.

England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752. By that time, eleven days had been gained so Wednesday, September 2, was followed by Thursday, September 14. The eleven days were skipped, but the weekly cycle of days, Sunday through Saturday, remained unchanged throughout the Middle Ages. (The French Revolution was a notable exception, when for a period of 14 years (1792-1806) a ten day week was adopted, the tenth day being the day of rest).

Inquiries made in 1932 to the United States Naval Observatory, in Washington D.C., and the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, England, have also confirmed that the weekly cycle of 7 days as observed today has not been altered, and remains as it has been since before the time of Christ.

So both history and the Bible make it quite clear that Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday is indeed the seventh day, which has been kept by the Jews for millennia, even to the present day. The true seventh-day sabbath of God has not been lost. Our Saturday is the same day of the week today as the seventh-day sabbath of creation.

(end quote)

Thank you for this information.

[Treefarmer]

Thank you Hbert997 for the link and the info.

I agree with the assessment that our days can be identified with accuracy.
As I pointed out in my writing, I believe that the seven day creation week is an immutable framework which holds the entire creation, heavenly bodies and all, in place. The sun and the moon would go out of whack, or cease to exist, before the weekly cycle of day-1 through day-7 would fall apart.

When I was in my early twenties, long before I ever picked up a Bible to read, I became intrigued by man-made versus natural features. At the time I believed that everything in nature had evolved very slowly, or "naturally", by random chance according to the theory of evolution. I was not aware that it's a theory as it had been taught to me as a "fact".

I was noticing that at the end of extended wilderness hikes, when I got back to a trail head again, man-made features such as fire pits and rock retaining walls stood out like sore thumbs to me. I developed the idea that these man-made features were "artificial", as opposed to the "naturally evolved" features, such as mountains, the earth, animals, flowers, water, creeks, clouds, etc.
Something about this distinction between "natural" and "artificial" kept bugging me and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

At this point my Elohim revealed some truth to me which I had no other way of finding out at the time.
In a vision, He took me on a mini-tour of outer space and showed me that what I perceived as "naturally evolved", the moon and the sun in this case, was created, or "artificial" according to my way of thinking.
This totally blew my mind at the time, as I was not aware of the creation account.
Later He showed me some more things about His creation which convinced me that the earth, moon and sun were not "evolved" naturally, as I had thought.
It was not until seven years later though, when I read the book of Genesis, that the full import of what He had shown me began to completely sink in with me.

Based on what He has revealed to me, there is now no doubt in my mind that He keeps His protecting hand over certain created features of our world.
One such feature is the seven-day weekly cycle and the reliability of our calendars for week-day identification purposes, another one is the accuracy and reliability of His written Word even in translation (Textus Receptus), as well as the existence of a number of His witnesses in every age.
The gates of hell cannot prevail against these because He doesn't allow it.

It is written:
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God [is] faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear [it].
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry."
1 Corinthians 10:13-14

Shabbat Shalom

[Hbert997]

...another one is the accuracy and reliability of His written Word even in translation (Textus Receptus)....

It is written:
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God [is] faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear [it].
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry."
1 Corinthians 10:13-14

Shabbat Shalom

Treefarmer and all...yes, Shabbat Shalom! And what a wonderful experience you had above

This thread is fascinating and instructional and hopefully also for all who read and/or participate.

I think it vital to be like a "Berean"...as we are told by Rav Shaul (Paul) to be like them...Acts 17:11 "For the Jews there were nobler than the Jews of Thessalonica; and they gladly heard the word from them daily, and searched from the Scriptures whether these things were so." (AENT/Aramaic English New Testament)

You raise an interesting topic...the Textus Receptus (TR) and its "accuracy and reliability". Here's a question for you: are you then supportive of Greek primacy?

[allodial]

Perhaps this is relevant...

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Luke 12:27)

[Treefarmer]

Treefarmer and all...yes, Shabbat Shalom! And what a wonderful experience you had above

This thread is fascinating and instructional and hopefully also for all who read and/or participate.

I think it vital to be like a "Berean"...as we are told by Rav Shaul (Paul) to be like them...Acts 17:11 "For the Jews there were nobler than the Jews of Thessalonica; and they gladly heard the word from them daily, and searched from the Scriptures whether these things were so." (AENT/Aramaic English New Testament)

You raise an interesting topic...the Textus Receptus (TR) and its "accuracy and reliability". Here's a question for you: are you then supportive of Greek primacy?

Interesting question, thank you Hbert997; I had never even heard of "Greek primacy" before.

I did an internet search and this is a short definition I found on enotes dot com:
"Greek Primacy is the view that the New Testament or its sources were originally written in Koine Greek. It is generally accepted by most scholars today that the New Testament of the Bible was written primarily, if not completely, in Koine or common Greek.[citation needed] Greek Primacy is asserted over and against Aramaic primacy and Hebrew Primacy."

Unfortunately I have no information on which language(s) the NT was originally written in, but I can tell you why I think that the Textus Receptus is "accurate and reliable."

Sometime in 2001, after I had begun to take an interest in the Bible (I had a NIV translation at the time), my Elohim showed me a very puzzling vision.
In the vision I and two good (atheist) friends of mine were on a quest for survival in the setting of man-made urban structures in different stages of decay. The vision ended with our exciting discovery, in the sub-basement of one of the structures, of an ancient treasure chest full of precious stones, gold, silver, and jewelry, which was the only thing of lasting value that could save us there.

At the time, I had no idea what the vision meant. It's meaning unfolded for me over the course of many years, through the physical manifestation of events from the vision in my own life, as well as answers to my prayers for clarification.
The urban structures symbolized the law and government of this country, and the treasure in the sub-basement symbolized the Word of God in the form of Incun. 1454.B5 in the Library of Congress and the Textus Receptus in the 1611 KJV. My Elohim showed me that I can rely on these for the knowledge which leads to salvation, freedom and everlasting life.

This does not mean that the Textus Receptus or Gutenberg Bible are the best translations. It just tells me that I can rely on them to be "a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path" in spite of their well known shortcomings.

I am not much of a book learner, but I benefit from the written Word of God when it resonates with my life experiences, of which frequent prophetic dreams and visions of a personal nature have always been a part.

I emphasized "personal nature" because I want to make it clear that I am NOT a prophet. My Elohim gives me these visions for my own guidance only, and they are mostly irrelevant to everyone else.
Nor do I think that my experiences are unique or based on any special skills (I have no special skills); I believe they are due to the fact that we live in the time described by the prophet Joel in chapter 2 of his book.

I have also learned, the hard way, that not all the dreams I ever had were from Yehovah. Some came from a spirit from below. This is why His written Word is so important to have:
"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, [it is] because [there is] no light in them."

I have learned to be a Berean and a fruit inspector

Shalom

[Anthony Joseph]

The Hasidic, Talmudic and most other "practicing" Jews honor and keep the Sabbath on the seventh day (Saturday) and yet they mostly deny Yehoshuah as the Son of God, our Savior, the Messiah and the CHRIST.

If keeping the Sabbath is a sign/seal of those who are of the elect of the Divine Creator Yehovah and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, then how do those that openly and vehemently deny Yehoshuah exhibit that sign/seal of Yehovah Elohim?