Sabbath Questions
My mom’s parents were converts to Adventism, so my mom was raised Adventist. I was also raised Adventist and went to Adventist schools until I was nine. When my mom and dad divorced, my mom left the Adventist church. She remarried, and my mom and step dad went back to being Adventist after I was married and left home.
I’ve been listening to and have been touched by your podcasts, and I’ve been binge-watching Former Adventist Youtube videos which are a real blessing.
My questions about the Sabbath are these: even if one were persuaded in his own mind that we should keep the Sabbath commandment, where are we commanded to go to church, worship, or convocate that day? Aren’t these just traditions established long after the Ten Commandments? Why are animals included in the commandment, and whom do they worship? How would it be possible to keep this commandment and not have one’s servants work if one is connected to public utilities that require someone to work to provide them to your house and the church?
Thank you for all that you do for God and man.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing, and thank you for sharing your story. Those years in the Adventist organization, whether they were a lifetime or just a few years, imprint us deeply. I’m convinced that they are so powerful because they are driven by a spirit; Adventism teaches doctrines of demons and shapes its people with a false worldview. Praise God you are questioning and renewing your mind with biblical truth!
You are correct to suggest that the Sabbath commands do not include commands to worship. The original command was to stay in one’s tent (Ex. 16:29). I suspect that the Sabbath worship idea grew out of the inter-testamental period when Judaism became formalized and the talmud and the rabbinic commentaries were written. The synagogue system developed then; it was never part of the law.
The commands against the animals working was not about worship per se but about REST. Sabbath was never a test for Israel; it was always a sign that they trusted God and kept the terms of the covenant. As long as they trusted Him and kept the covenantal terms, God worked on their behalf. He prospered them; He blessed them—and no one could ever say their success was because they worked harder or better than the pagans who were enslaved to their gods’ demands 24/7. So Israel and its servants and animals all had to rest. Israel had to trust God to provide for them.
Today the Sabbath absolutely cannot be kept. We live in a gentile world. We depend upon public servants keeping public utilities operating in order to live our lives. The Sabbath commands do not fit nor work in an urban society that depends on public utilities and infrastructure. Israel did not have those things. The terms of the Sabbath law were based on the lunar calendar and the new moons, and the weekly Sabbaths were indivisible from the commands for the monthly and yearly feasts as well as from the jubilee Sabbaths.
Any attempt today to keep the Sabbath requires making up new “laws” for it. Yet such laws are illegitimate because the law was a unit founded on the levitical priesthood. The Sabbath was a shadow just as were all the laws—they were shadows of the reality found in Christ Jesus! Today we embrace Him alone. If we add the law back in, we fall from grace. Christians, as our pastor once said, think of falling into sin as falling from grace. Yet what Galatians says is that to go back to the LAW is to fall from grace. Falling into sin is not falling from grace! Grace is God’s provision for all who believe in the Lord Jesus; sin is covered by grace when we trust the Son. Falling back onto the law, however, is to take ourselves out of grace and into some form of do-it-yourself “holiness”.
Need State of the Dead Resources
Do you have any good articles on soul sleep that you can recommend?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Here are some links:
- What Happens When We Die?
- Are Humans More Than Living Bodies?
- Absent From the Body, Present With the Lord
- In Death Are We Present With the Lord?
Born Adventist?
In listening to your podcast #5 today about the Great Disappointment, I noticed something from several of your guests that I’ve heard before. They state that they were “born Adventist”. One cannot be born Adventist any more than they can be born a Christian. It is something that has to be “accepted”.
I’m wondering if this is a traditional way of thinking for Adventists, something taught from birth. I’m sure they don’t realize what their words imply. They all seem to be true born again believers.
I also notice that you refer to your own beginnings differently. You state that you were “born INTO Adventism” which has quite a different meaning.
I’m just interested in your thoughts
Also in this podcast I really liked your son Nathanael’s response as to what he would like his daughter to know. He said he wants her to know that there is ABSOLUTE truth! If there are two differing “truths”, they cannot both be true. It is a wise thing to know and remember as we encounter Adventist apologists in family or friends.
Thank you and Nikki again for your podcasts.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: You ask an excellent question. The best way I can answer it is to say that Adventists think of their Adventism almost as an ethnicity. It is not something that they have to “accept” unless they come in from “outside”. “Sunday Christians” are not full Christians in Adventist thinking.
Since Adventists have no understanding of the new birth, they do not understand even the idea that a person is not a Christian until they are born again. Adventism is an adoption of a worldview and a system of living, and if one is born into it, he is an Adventist. Oh, of course, they will say their children need to “accept Jesus”, but accepting Jesus does not make one more or less Adventist.
Adventists actually refer to themselves internally as “Adventist Christians”. Thus, if they personally “accept Jesus” (which is not trusting in the gospel of the Lord Jesus but is accepting the Adventist paradigm of believing that Jesus died for them and then showing they love Him by keeping the Sabbath and observing the health laws), they are then more fully “Christian”. But their Adventism is more of an ethnicity, living within the Adventist subculture and accepting the Adventist worldview which says humans have no immaterial spirit, that the Sabbath is eternal, that Satan is the final sin-bearer (the scapegoat), and that Jesus was fallible and could have failed in His mission.
So, when people are born into Adventism, they are Adventist, as when a Jewish child is born to secular Jewish parents, he or she is Jewish. This fact of “Adventist ethnicity” is one of the reasons it is so very hard to leave. It feels as if one is giving up his or her personal identity.
I was more Adventist than I was American, more Adventist than woman or mother or wife. I was more Adventist than teacher or editor. I was ADVENTIST as my primary identity. If felt as if I were losing myself when I left. Adventists born into Adventism do not have to accept Adventism any more than a child born in America has to accept Americanism. It is their primary identity. If they become religious Adventists and are baptized as Adventists and become “officially” Adventists registered on the books , these facts make them more sincere, more secure in the organization, but their worldview is Adventist whether they are religious Adventists or not.
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I love the questions from the first inquirer! Though I think he/she may have left a significant word out of the initial question, which reads: “…even if one were persuaded in his own mind that we should [not] keep the Sabbath commandment, where are we commanded to go to church, worship, or convocate that day (Sunday)?” The question would make more sense (to me) if the word “not” were included. That is, “If I were to agree that the Sabbath is no longer required, why should I gather together on Sunday as if there were some law demanding that?” I hope I understand the question correctly. The answer is not complicated for Gentiles, but it can be complicated for Adventists and other Saturday Sabbatarians. Pardon me for plugging my book, but the other intelligent questions are answered in my book, The Sabbath Complete and the Ascendancy of First Day Worship.
The question is somewhat “legalistic” in orientation. People who love God and want to obey Him, want to know what He requires. In the OT, He required a lot of worship. But that worship was for the large part representative. The Sabbath-keeping specified by the law was different than the synagogue practice that developed later. Not that this was a bad thing, because the synagogue gatherings on the Sabbath (though not required by the law), became the foundation for first-day worship of Christians. Prima facie, it may appear that Christian gatherings on Sunday is based on a tradition, rather than on “law.” We get baptized as a legal requirement and participate in the Lord’s Supper, but is there more to first-day gatherings of the church than simply keeping a tradition? The answer is “Yes!”
In a nutshell, the first day of the week was laden with theological importance in the law of Moses, being the eighth day (I am avoiding Scriptural references, because they are all in my book). Christ’s resurrection on Sunday, the first day of the week, was actually the first day of the Feast of First Fruits, which followed a Sabbath. And the gift of the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost, a first day of the week (Sunday). So, Sunday was given prominence in the law and foreshadowed significant events relevant to the new covenant. Because of this association with the law, the apostles quickly realized that first-day significance also came from the light of the first day of creation. Christ is the Light that makes believers in Him, “new creations.” The records from Paul and Luke indicate the prominence of first-day gatherings; John introduces the new term, the “Lord’s Day;” and the author of Hebrews gives what may be an apostolic command to “not forsake the gathering” that Christ-followers were accustomed to, because to do so, would indicate a disavowal of Christ.
First day worship for Christians is not simply that the apostles whimsically picked a day of the week, just to keep the unity of the faith (as if any day would do). The day of the week (Sunday) was God-ordained, because He forecasted it in the law! You can call it an apostolic tradition, but this “tradition” has God’s fingerprints all over it. Hope this helps.