Sabbath In the New Covenant?
I’ve just came across a debate between Chris Rosebrough and Jim Stanley in regards to the subject of the Sabbath on YouTube and am curious about some of the subjects which they mentioned in their debate.
- Is it against the law for the gentiles to keep the Sabbath?
- Who was the new covenant given to?
- If we are drafted into spiritual Israel, then we are obliged to keep the law or the Sabbath?
While listening to their debate, it seems that we are to keep the Sabbath in the new covenant. Is this right?
Please help me solve this concern.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing. You are bumping into the internal problem among Christians which is related to the covenants. The typical reformed position is that, similar to Adventism, there is just one eternal covenant, and the Mosaic covenant was “added” to the Abrahamic covenant, and the Decalogue now applies to everyone who believes. Lutherans (such as Chris Rosebrough) have a slightly different view of this question and see the distinction between the law and grace more nearly like we former Adventists see it…
Here’s the problem as I understand it: most of these traditions retaining the law in some form are cling-ons from the reformers who came out of Catholicism and never completely re-examined the issue of the covenants. The Catholic tradition is very much like the Adventist one and the Reformed position: they hold to something called “covenant theology”, or the idea that the decalogue remains in place as a rule of faith and practice for the church and defines Christian behavior. Yet the New Testament adamantly teaches against this idea.
There is a body of scholars who, over the past several decades, have developed a system of theology called “new covenant theology” which teaches, as we do, that Jesus fulfilled the law and became the new lawgiver giving us the law of Christ, and establishing Himself at the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5–7) as the one who told the Jews, “You have heard it said…but I SAY UNTO YOU…” The expanded demands of the law of Christ as established by Jesus and by the epistles give the standards for the church—but these rules do not apply to those not born again because the sins of the flesh and of the heart cannot be overcome by the willpower of determined obedience. They can only be accomplished by being born of God. In our natural dead-in-sin state, we cannot please God…
The belief in a “Sabbath” for the church is not a result of New Testament Scripture but of tradition. It is a bit amazing to me that literal TRADITION has affected Christian practice so much.
In answer to your questions: the New Testament read in context without allegorizing clearly explains that the law was given to Israel; gentile believers were never required to keep any part of the law (as per the books of Galatians, Hebrews, and Acts 15. Also 2 Corinthians 3, Ephesians 2 and Colossians 1).
We have the words of Scripture. It is very clear that the law is obsolete (Heb 8:13) and we live under a new covenant in Jesus’ blood, not under the law. We are not to take the requirements of the law onto ourselves when we have been made alive in Christ. The law was given to Israel who was not born again; the “born again” phenomenon which Jesus told Nicodemus was the requirement to see the kingdom of God could not become reality until He had died and risen from death. This is a new covenant phenomenon, and the law no longer has authority over those who have been born again. The sign of the Mosaic covenant, the law, is fulfilled in Jesus who ushers us into eternal life—rest from all of our work to please Him and to qualify for salvation—when we believe and receive the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The church is not drafted into “spiritual Israel”; this idea is at the heart of covenant theology. Israel is Israel. The church is a NEW creation, those who are literally created new (think Genesis creation) when we believe in Jesus and are made alive in Him. The church is not just gentiles, either; it is both Jews and gentiles who believe. Jews have no need to be grafted back into Israel; they ARE Israel. The church is a new creation.
What we ARE grafted into, as Romans 11 explains, is the olive tree of God. God’s “olive tree” is not Israel; it is His own purposes. Read Romans 11. Verses 11 and onward explain that God’s call and gifting are irrevocable. Gentiles who believe are not grafted into Israel—into Moses—but into God’s tree nourished by the root, and the root is not Moses and the law but the Patriarchs. We all are nourished not by Israel but by the promises made to Abraham BEFORE there was an Israel.
Unbelieving Jews who were broken off God’s olive tree can, if they don’t persist in unbelief, be grafted back into God’s olive tree, and gentiles who were grafted in but become arrogant toward Israel and God’s purposes, can be cut off.
The promises made to Abraham are what ALL believers inherit, but we gentile believers do not inherit God’s specific physical promises to Israel, promises including the land and having a kingdom ruled by a King in the line of David. Ultimately, in the new heaven and earth, the kingdom of God will be eternal with Him dwelling with all His people, but now, the church is a separate body from Israel. Both Jews and gentiles can enter, but the church is not “spiritual Israel”. It is the body of Christ on the basis of Jesus’ shed blood and His victory over death. The law, given to sinful Israel to define them as a nation and as God’s people, has been made obsolete in the Perfect Israel: Jesus the Lord who fulfilled the law and its curse. Yet God will still fulfill His promises to Israel.
Everything we and our brothers and sisters in Christ say about the law still needs to be verified by Scripture. I have a suggestion for you: get a notebook and begin copying the book of Galatians into it. Ask God to teach you what He knows He wants you to understand. This book, read in context, is profound and has elicited much anger and confusion among those who fear that giving up the law will yield anarchy. Yet giving up the law when we are indwelled by the Lawgiver will not yield anarchy. It will yield an even more personal and deep transformation to the will of God. After you do Galatians, move to Hebrews and do the same exercise. Copy it and pray. Then go to 2 Corinthians 3, and to Ephesians and Colossians. And so on.
Scripture will not lead you astray. It may reveal reality that many Christians attempt to morph through allegorizing the words, but God gave us the words He wants us to know. Words matter, and context is everything.
For further understanding, check out this video by Dale Ratzlaff: Does The Sabbath Continue in the New Covenant?
If You’re Dating an Adventist—Don’t Go There!
I have written you in the past and am writing again because I am really enjoying all the Lord our God has given you to share.
I was reading through this past issue of Proclamation! magazine as I usually do. I then stumbled on a link, and I found myself taken to a couple of articles addressing Christian women dating or engaged to Adventists.
I felt compelled to read.
As I have told you before, I was blind—very blind—when I married my husband (whom I love very much) who is an Adventist. I, too, thought he was pretty much Christian.
That is, until I accidentally—and I mean accidentally—stumbled across your Former Adventist Podcasts.
I believe to this moment, being a Christian believer in the gospel that Jesus’ atonement was finished once and for all at the cross, that God wanted to show me what my husband truly believes.
We would stay awake for hours in the night discussing—and even arguing—about the Sabbath, the law, and the nature of man.
I couldn’t understand, when reading even Romans 5:12 and 13, how we both saw Scripture so differently even though we were reading the same words. He is STILL, to this day, baffled as to why and how—in his words—“the Bible is crystal clear, yet you don’t see it the way I do!! HOW is that possible??””
My Christmas this year—2022—was terrible. We had A HUGE argument which caused me to storm out of the house angry at God as to why 2 Corinthians 5 is so hard for my husband to see. Paul is clear that we HAVE an immaterial spirit separate from the body!
I confess I was not acting in any way godly. He shouted that I am WRONG, that EGW is not Adventists’ source of truth, nor is she the eyes of their worldview. He said I am reading lies and believing lies and that everything I was taught and learned is NOT the truth. He accused me of being deceived.
He even told me that he looked up Dale Ratzlaff’s net worth. “He’s making way too much money, so it’s too fishy for me even to listen to him,” he said. (He had previously asked me to send him some information on what I’ve been learning through Former Adventist, so I sent him some teachings from Dale Ratzlaff which I found so informative, biblically sound, and truthful. Since Dale is a man, I thought my husband would really take a look at what he said.)
I admit this argument did not come from a place of humility or bear the fruit of the Spirit!
My joy for Christmas was squelched because, he said, it’s a “pagan holiday”; how could I love it so much!??
My anger towards God overflowed, and I left and needed to be alone on Christmas Day for a bit of time to cry and to pray and to ask for forgiveness and also to ask God, “Why??”
I know you don’t have a magic bullet or a word that will change my husband’s mind at all. I know I have to give him to God. That part has been really hard for me. My nature is that I want to fix it, but I can’t. No one can. Only God Can.
Please keep sharing what you have been teaching women and men who are thinking of marrying an Adventist: seriously ask God to show you truth, and reconsider.
My main point in this specific email is to show that I’m living proof. If you marry an Adventist, you’re in for a roller-coaster ride.
The fact is, what you teach is the truth! Adventism is NOT Christian. I am living this sad reality and experiencing how unequally yoked we really are.
I can’t share with him my new discoveries of what I’ve learned biblically for fear of a fight.
I know deep down in his heart he so desperately wants me to convert to Adventism. I can feel that, even though his words say otherwise. He’s even told me that he prays and asks God to show him where he’s wrong.
I’ve held my ground, but I’m getting tired (not that I want to convert), and it’s only been two years.
It’s really hard to be a Christian married to an Adventist.
I really do love A LOT of aspects about my husband: his kind heart and his willingness to take care of me; he’s a hard worker, and he enjoys his step kids (my kids), and I enjoy his daughter.
Our kids, though, even feel the difference between us.
He and his daughter go to church on Saturday, and we don’t participate with them any more.
A house divided cannot stand.
So, if you ever share this email, I emphasize what I’m sure others have also poured out of their hearts about this same situation.
As I think about the letter last week from the person dating an Adventist, I want to strongly advise: unless this Adventist is curious and searching truthfully and asking questions, DO NOT go there. Love them and leave them to God!
Please keep us in your prayers! Please!!
Divorce isn’t an option for either of us; I just needs God’s strength and peace and love.
Pray I stay consistent in my actions, that God will give me humility and love towards my husband. Please pray that I can love him as God does, and that I can really give him to God.
He may never come to the true gospel of Christ, and I need to be okay with that. But, through this, God has shown me so much, and I have never read my Bible in my life the way I am reading it now. I’m meditating on His word daily. This situation has pushed me to search and read, and read and search.
Also, it is pushing me closer to Jesus!
Thank you for reading and listening.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: It is so good to hear from you again!
I am so sorry about your Christmas and about the tension in your home. I am so, so sorry. The Lord sees and knows, and He is holding you. I understand how frantic and trapped you feel at those times when your husband does not understand what you are trying to share. The Lord knows how to keep you faithful and never to stop working in your husband’s heart.
I don’t know what your husband found online about Dale Ratzlaff’s net worth, but I can tell you that he has never made more than a small stipend from Life Assurance Ministries. He is now 84 years old and is recovering from chemotherapy for lymphoma. Dale is an honest and kind man who has a deep core of integrity, and he has never used his ministry to take advantage of people.
Your testimony is poignant and also filled with faith. Praise God He has you in His hand.
He is not finished dealing with your husband! I pray the Lord will comfort you and ground you deeply in truth and reality and guard your heart. I pray He will open your husband’s heart to the gospel of Jesus’ death for the forgiveness of his sin, for Jesus’ burial, and for His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture. We serve a faithful Savior.
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Regarding dating an adventist,
You are not alone in this dilemma, I married my Adventist husband not knowing what it meant to be SDA. This was before the internet, I’d never heard of SDA, and he did not participate in his faith for many years before or after we were married. About ten years ago he decided he was seeing signs of the end times in world events, and wanted our family to start observing Sabbath and studying the Bible. Shortly though, it became as you wrote. So much of what you said has been my experience also. He unilaterally did away with Christmas & the ‘pagan’ tree even though we had celebrated it with our kids for years. The arguing and disagreements, and in my case my husband would yell and be incredulous at how I could ‘be so stupid’ when the ‘truth’ had been presented to me so many times, etc. This had not been his personality before. Everything he considers ‘worldly’ is off limits or we can expected an angry face and a lecture. We read the same Bible, but our interpretations are very different, and he insists I’m Wrong and that my beliefs are satanic, and that I, like you, are deceived.
I don’t know you or your family, and I can only offer you my experience, which sadly, has grown worse over the past ten years, and we may soon be ending our marriage because of it. I hope your situation will not follow our same path, it has been heartbreaking for all of us. We do not go to church with him, and he has told our kids that ‘God is disappointed in them’. I do not believe that a husband’s arrogance, hostility, anger and hurtfulness could in any way come from a genuinely Christian heart.
I’m so grateful for the resources and wisdom available through this ministry. I’ll pray for us both and for our husbands and families.
Finally, anyone who is not an Adventist- please, I beg of you, do not become yoked to someone of that denomination. Even if it does not seem to be an issue in the early days, it could become the biggest problem you’ll face, even worse if you have children.
Dear If your dating an Adventist…,
Thank you for sharing your story. I could feel your sadness. About 2 years ago I was dating an Adventist. I had read about SDA in Walter Martin’s Kingdom of the Cults maybe 35 years ago and thought SDA’s were evangelical. I began to hear things that just sounded “off”. We tried to go through the Book of Galatians together but they were just blind to what I thought were plain English words.
I found Life Assurance and was put in touch with Richard Tinker who so graciously spoke with me and firmly but gently warned me about proceeding in this relationship. Later I spoke with Rick Barker (who writes for Proclamation and like me is a confessional Lutheran). Rick further confirmed that a union between us would probably never work esp. if we wanted to be of one heart and mind in joint ministry and service. It was not easy but by God’s mercy I dodged a bullet. I feel your heartbreak. You will be in my prayers.
In His Tender Mercies,
Recovering Lutheran