Sabbath Meditation #22 – Protection Against Self-Slavery

by Kelly McDonald, Jr.

“If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, and the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, 14 then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” (Isaiah 58:13-14).

Consider Western culture for a moment.

In Western culture, we have a life full of stuff/things. There’s a gadget for almost every need. They appear to make life more convenient and easier; in many cases they do.

We also have an endless number of events that we could attend. There are concerts, sporting events, shopping events, political events, festivals, parades, marches, special classes, and the list goes on and on. There is an event or cause for nearly every interest a person could have.

In addition to events, there are also many avenues for personal pursuits and achievements. There are college degrees that can be earned, positions available within civic organizations, job promotions, and so forth.

These are all a part of the “world” or kosmos in which we live.  If allowed to continue unchecked, they will create an almost continuous state of motion and unending busy-ness. They will make us slaves to self.

In Genesis 1:27-28, God gave mankind dominion over creation. Since then, we have exercised that authority to establish structures and civilizations. We have created things to serve us. Unfortunately, the world created by humans has slowly taken dominion over us. The things made by humans rule over the creators. It has devolved to the point that our modern world has diminished the importance of the Creator God.

In the beginning, mankind only had the things which God made; this was the sole delight of Adam and Eve. As time has passed, we have created things to which we take delight. In Isaiah 58:13-14, we learn that we should find our joy in the LORD on the Sabbath. We are asked not to seek our own purposes, delight or way. Even our words are supposed to be directed away from personal pursuits and towards His work in our lives. When we do so, we will reap rewards from Him. In Isaiah 58:14, God shares special blessings we receive from honoring the Sabbath.

There must be a point at which the busy-ness of our modern world stops so that we can focus on the higher purpose for which we were created. The Sabbath gives us this opportunity on a weekly basis. Spending the time to honor God in this way will refocus us from the temporary world created by people to the Creator of the Universe. It allows us to stop and reflect on God’s direction for our lives while separated from our own pursuits. We can then pursue Him without the distractions of the human-created world.

A life guided only by self-centered pursuits will lead to endless activity with little thought of God’s plan. Don’t be enslaved; allow the author of freedom to liberate you from this kosmos and even free you from yourself.

We will continue this thought even deeper in a future Sabbath meditation.

Selah.

Kelly McDonald, Jr.

BSA President www.biblesabbath.org

The Sacred Name Movement

By Ruth Fink

“The Sacred Name Movement began in the late 1930s when members of the Church of God, 7^th Day, began to think on the question posed by the wise man in Proverbs 30:4: ‘What is his name and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?’

But the ground work was being laid almost a century earlier when, in 1857, Alexander MacWhorten of Yale University wrote a book called The Memorial Name, which he believed was Yahveh. Around the turn of the century, the Hebrew scholar F.L. Chapell delivered 6 lectures on the names of the deity; these were published in 1911. Dr. Chapell referred to the stir caused by the publication of MacWhorten’s book and said, “But there has been, especially during the last fifty years, a great interest among the scholars in this name” (The Standard Bearer, Dayton, Ohio, 911).

Research revealed that the Hebrew form of the name of the Most High was four Hebrew letters (tetragrammaton) transliterated variously as…”

(this article is an excerpt from the Sept 1988 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 7, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/tss_377Sept1988.PDF

Historical Understanding of I Timothy 4:1-5

By Kelly McDonald, Jr.

In I Timothy 4:1-5, Paul warned us about a false teaching that would infiltrate Christianity. In these verses, he wrote:

“1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

Note: The Greek phrase translated as “last days” can also mean “latter days” or in the days after his writing.

The hypocritical teaching that Paul foretold would have two main errors: 1) forbidding marriage and 2) forbidding clean animal meat.

The first historical fulfillment of these verses occurred in the second century AD. This is among the proofs that the Pastoral epistles were written in the first century by Paul. If this heresy started while he was alive, then he would have described the heresy as existing in his day.

The past few months we have reviewed the false teachers and false doctrines that arose in the second century. Marcion was the most famous of these. But there were other false teachers who began their destructive heresies at a similar time frame. Like some of the others we described, they were Gnostics.

In this same letter, Paul warned Timothy: “Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge…” (I Timothy 6:20). Most Gnostics viewed the material world as evil but the spiritual world as good. To this end, they rejected marriage because reproduction made more material beings. They were lax in their morals since the material world was already evil. They focused highly on knowledge, but neglected Biblical precepts relating to lifestyle.

Basilides and Saturninus were two of the men who began to spread heresy during the time of Hadrian (117-138 AD) and continued to do so into the reign of Antonius (138-161 AD). Below we have four quotes from contemporary authors who describe the leaders who practiced and taught the heresy of I Timothy. 4:1-5.

“…They declare also, that marriage and generation are from Satan. Many of those, too, who belong to his school, abstain from animal food, and draw away multitudes by a feigned temperance of this kind” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk 1, ch 24, sec 2).

“But one Saturnilus, who flourished about the same period with Basilides, but spent his time in Antioch…And he affirms that marriage and procreation are from Satan. The majority, however, of those who belong to this (heretic’s school) abstain from animal food likewise, (and) by this affectation of asceticism (make many their dupes)…” (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, bk 7, ch. 16).

“49. There are some who say outright that marriage is fornication and teach that it was introduced by the devil…60. But those who from a hatred for the flesh ungratefully long to have nothing to do with the marriage union and the eating of reasonable food, are both blockheads and atheists, and exercise an irrational chastity like the other heathen…102…They say: Man became like the beasts when he came to practice sexual intercourse…And if the serpent took the use of intercourse from the irrational animals and persuaded Adam to agree to have sexual union with Eve, as though the couple first created did not have such union by nature, as some think, this again is blasphemy against the creation. For it makes human nature weaker than that of the brute beasts if in this matter those who were first created by God copied them….104. Furthermore they wish to maintain that the intercourse of man and wife in marriage, which is called knowledge, is a sin; this sin is referred to as eating of the tree of good and evil, and the phrase ‘he knew’ signifies transgression of the commandment….” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book 3, ch 17, sections 49, 60, 102, 104).

“We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion, more continent than the apostle, prohibits. For the apostle, although preferring the grace of continence, yet permits the contraction of marriage and the enjoyment of it, and advises the continuance therein rather than the dissolution thereof” (Tert, Against Marcion, 5:7).

In these quotes, especially the one from Clement of Alexandria, the heretics had some strange reasons for rejecting marriage. Some of them thought that the serpent beguiled Adam and Eve to have relations with each other; they claimed that this was eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is totally inaccurate and relies on a highly allegorical interpretation of Genesis chapter 3.

These false teachers were partially motivated by dualist Gnosticism, which we will review in an article next month.

While this heresy started in the second century, it would manifest itself again in later times. Centuries later, the Roman Catholic Church would adopt the policies of forbidding priests from marrying and forbidding food on certain days of the week (such as Friday and Saturday).

Kelly McDonald, Jr.

BSA President – www.biblesabbath.org

Historical Perspective on Romans 10:9

By Kelly McDonald, Jr.

“…because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved…” (Romans 10:9, ASV)

“yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ…” (I Cor. 8:6, NIV).

Being a Christian is more than just going to church. It is something that we must confess and then live according to that confession. According to the Strong’s Concordance, the Greek word translated as confess means to “assent, covenant, confession, or promise.”

When we turn away from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light, we must learn to confess Jesus as our Lord. When our old friends try to pull us back into the world, we must confess Jesus is Lord and stick to that confession with our lives. We must learn to testify as to what He has done for us as Lord and Savior. He is our source!

In the first century AD, to confess Jesus as Lord had an entirely different meaning. The Romans called their Emperors ‘savior, god and lord’. This started with Octavian Augustus;  people made sacrifices to him as they honored him with these titles.

This continued for many years afterwards, including (but not limited to) the reigns of Claudius (41-54 AD), Nero (54-68) and Domitian (81-96) (Deissmann, vol. 1, p 357; P.Oxy. 1.81). To early Christians, to confess Jesus as Lord took on a whole different meaning than we might think today.

Here are two quotes about Domitian: “With no less arrogance he began as follows in issuing a circular letter in the name of his procurators, ‘Our Master and our God bids that this be done.’ And so the custom arose of henceforth addressing him in no other way even in writing or in conversation…” (Suetonius, On Domitian, 13.2)

“For he even insisted upon being regarded as a god and took vast pride in being called ‘master’ and ‘god.’ These titles were used not merely in speech but also in written documents.” (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 67.4.7)

Some Roman emperors required that subjects of the empire confess that Caesar is their Lord! The alternative could be imprisonment, torture, and/or even death. Josephus records that about 70 AD some Jewish people died simply for refusing to call Caesar Lord. We have a quote below:

“Moreover, it came to pass that many Jews were slain at Alexandria in Egypt after this…For though all sorts of torture and ill-treatment of their bodies were devised, they could not get any of them to confess or be willing to say that the emperor was their lord, though that was all that was required of them, but they maintained their own opinion in spite of all the distress they were brought to, as if they received these torments and fire itself with bodies insensible of pain, and with a soul that all but rejoiced under them. But what was most of all astonishing to the spectators was the courage of the children; for not one of these children was so far overcome as to call the emperor lord.” (Jewish Wars, 7.10.1; Shilleto’s version, pp 168-169).

When we look at these facts, we can see that Paul’s exhortation in Romans 10:9 has a much deeper meaning. To the early Christians, to confess Jesus as Lord was more than just a saying. It was the confession that you only acknowledged one Lord. This meant your life was in danger. It was a confession that you were willing to suffer and even die for Jesus.

One specific example from the pages of history is Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John. He was martyred around 155 AD. This occurred during the reign of the Emperor Antoninus who also was called lord by people (P.Oxy., 2.174). A brief account of his death is given below:

“…it being a great Sabbath, and he was met by Herod, the captain of police, and by his father Nicetes, who took him into their carriage, and sitting beside him endeavored to persuade him, saying, ‘For what harm is there in saying, Lord Caesar, and sacrificing and saving your life?’ He at first did not answer; but when they persisted, he said, ‘I am not going to do what you advise me.’…Polycarp said, ‘Eighty Six years have I been serving him, and he has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?’…But the proconsul said, ‘I have wild beasts; I will throw you to them unless you repent.’ But he said, ‘Call them; for repentance from better to worse is a change we cannot make. But it is a noble thing to turn from wickedness to righteousness.’… “24. But he [the Roman proconsul] again said to him, ‘If you despise the wild beasts, I will cause you to be consumed by fire, unless you repent.’ But Polycarp said, ‘You threaten a fire which burns for an hour, and after a little is quenched; for you know not the fire of the future judgment and of the eternal punishment which is reserved for the impious. But why do you delay? Do what you will.’ (Eusebius, Church History, 4.15.15-24).

Polycarp requested to be burned with fire and died a great hero of the Lord. He was also martyred on the Sabbath.

Another example is from the Silitian Martyrs, who were put to death in about 180 AD. Saturninus was the Roman proconsul and he interrogated Speratus and other Christians in an effort to convince them to give up the faith. We have an excerpt below:

“Saturninus, the [Roman] proconsul, said: ‘We, too, are religious, and our religion is simple; and we swear by the genius of our lord the Emperor, and pray for his welfare, which also ye, too, ought to do.’

Speratus said: ‘If thou wilt peaceably lend me thine ears, I will tell thee the mystery of simplicity.’

Saturninus said: ‘I will not lend my ears to thee, when thou beginnest to speak evil things of our sacred rites; but rather do thou swear by the genius of our lord the Emperor?’

Speratus said: ‘The empire of this world I know not; but rather I serve that God whom no man hath seen nor with these eyes can see. [I Tim. 6:16.] I have committed no theft; but if I have bought anything I pay the tax; because I know my Lord, the King of kings and Emperor of all nations…’ (English from Joseph Ayer, A Source Book for Ancient Church History (1913), pp 66-68).

The Roman proconsul ordered Speratus and his friends to be put to death. Polycarp, Speratus, and other martyrs, refused to call a man their Lord. Paul’s words come to life with these examples.

We live in a time where so many are cheapening the grace of God. This has caused many to proclaim that Jesus is their Lord, yet living as if He is not their Lord.

These historical examples help us to realize that to confess “Jesus is Lord” is a very serious and sober action. To confess Jesus as our Lord is to admit that we have no other lords or masters in our lives. We are confessing that He is our source, provider, and protector – not human governments and their rulers. It is to confess that we are willing to suffer and die for our Lord, as He was willing to do the same for us.

Kelly McDonald, Jr.

BSA President www.biblesabbath.org

The Curse of the Law

By Brian Jones

“‘Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law…’ (Gal. 3:13).

Not many generations ago the majority of the Christian world believed in the sanctity and perpetuity of God’s moral law. Among those who held this view (e.g. Matthew Henry, John Wesley, Adam Clarke, C.H. Spurgeon, Chas. Finney, Albert Barnes, D.L. Moody, etc.), virtually none remotely supposed that Christians are saved by their obedience to the law, but that obedience is the fruit of spiritual conversion. They clearly recognized that we are saved by grace through faith, and that no of ourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast (Ephesians. 2:8-9).

But contemporary theology, being affected by the skepticism and relativism that has permeated Western philosophy since the mid-nineteenth century, has called into question the authority of God’s moral law, branding it as legalistic, harshly restrictive, dispensational (ergo, dispensable), and applicable primarily to the Jews until Christ’s death on the cross. This position, known as anti-nomianism, has led many to impose an interpretation on certain Bible texts, especially those in Paul’s letters (2 Peter 3:15-16), that is wholly…”

(this article is an excerpt from the June 1989 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 9, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/tss_386June1989.PDF

Sabbath Meditation #21 – The Morality of the Sabbath

by Kelly McDonald, Jr.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:8-9).

When we think about the Sabbath, many people will say, “Well, God doesn’t care which day we rest on. One day in seven is all that matters.” Let’s seriously consider this line of reasoning with two of the other Ten Commandments.

Does God care whose property you have in your possession? (Your own or someone else’s?)

Does God care whose spouse you take home with you? (Your own or someone else’s?)

Again, most Christians would agree that God does care whose property you have in your possession. They will agree that it matters whose spouse you take home with you. For some reason, many will make an exception to the Sabbath. The Ten Commandments are absolute.

Just as God cares that we only possess our own property and that we stay faithful to our own spouse, He cares what day we rest upon. Since He saved us, we are called to be like Him (Leviticus 19:1-2).

The seventh day is called Sabbath of the Lord our God. It isn’t our day. He gives us six other days to do our work. The seventh day is sanctified unto Him.

Just as there is only one Lord God, there is only one day that God set apart for the Sabbath (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset). If we do not obey the Bible on this subject, then we have broken it. The morality of this commandment is set in stone in the same way as the other nine.

Consider the absolute nature of the Sabbath commandment, especially throughout the Bible. You will find that just as God and Christ never change, so it never changes. Truly, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath – today, yesterday, and forever (Mark 2:27-28, Heb. 13:8).

Selah.

Kelly McDonald, Jr.

BSA President – www.biblesabbath.org

The 2^nd Century Rise of Anti-Sabbatarians (Part 2 of 2)

By Kelly McDonald, Jr.

Last week, we looked at the Anti-Sabbath teachings that began to crop up in the second century (CLICK HERE to read part 1). Many of them had anti-Semitic rhetoric attached to them. Another anti-Sabbath belief that started in the second century is the view that every day is holy or every day is common and no holy days exist anymore.

The first hint of this viewpoint is from Justin the Martyr, who we discussed in the first part of this series. In his work Dialogue with Trypho, Trypho observed that Justin observed no day as the Sabbath, no festivals, and no commandments.

“Justin: Is there any other matter, my friends, in which we are blamed, than this, that we live not after the law, and are not circumcised in the flesh as your forefathers were, and do not observe sabbaths as you do? Are our lives and customs also slandered among you?….

Trypho: …But this is what we are most at a loss about: that you, professing to be pious, and supposing yourselves better than others, are not in any particular separated from them, and do not alter your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no festivals or Sabbaths…you yet expect to obtain some good thing from God, while you do not obey His commandments….” (idem, chapter 10).

In this dialogue, Justin admitted that he did not keep the Sabbath. However, his statement cannot be universal to all Christians of that time, as he admitted previously that there were Gentile Christians still honoring the Sabbath. Other primary sources agree that Christians kept the Sabbath (as we will review later). Justin probably referenced the majority of Christians in Rome.

Among the greatest proponents of the view that Sabbaths no longer exist were those educated at the School of Theology in Alexandria, Egypt. The two most popular teachers from this school were Clement of Alexandria and Origen.

Clement of Alexandria – 180s AD

Clement of Alexandria was a self-avowed Gnostic. In the second part of our three part series on heresy, we reviewed the beliefs of Gnosticism (click here to read that article). Gnosticism became very popular among Christians during this time.

Clement said: “Hosea 14:9 says the prophet, showing that the Gnostic alone is able to understand and explain the things spoken by the spirit obscurely…” (Stromata, 6:15). He and others like him added their beliefs into the Bible to justify their viewpoints.

Clement is the first writer to indisputably use the phrase “Lord’s Day” to refer to the first day of the week. His justification is derived from Plato and the number eight.

“And the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out and arrive in four days. By the meadow is to be understood the fixed sphere, as being a mild and genial spot, and the locality of the pious; and by the seven days each motion of the seven planets, and the whole practical art which speeds to the end of rest. But after the wandering orbs the journey leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and day….” (Stromata, Chapter 5, 14).

It is hard to imagine how a pagan philosopher like Plato could be used as a source used to justify Christian practice. Why might Clement do such a thing? In this time period, the Old Testament was being devalued as the sole background source for the New Testament. As this development occurred, these Gnostic writers had to find some other source that they could claim as a derivative of Christian practice. For some writers such as Clement, philosophy filled the gap.

The theology of Clement was sometimes confusing and not always consistent. Among his other questionable statements, he said that philosophy was given to lead the Greeks towards righteousness (ibid, 1:5). He also stated that the sun was created as an object of worship (ibid, 6:14, 7:7). In another place, he claimed that the true Gnostic does not honor specific days. We have an excerpt from him below:

“Now we are commanded to reverence and to honour the same one, being persuaded that He is Word, Saviour, and Leader, and by Him, the Father, not on special days, as some others, but doing this continually in our whole life, and in every way…Whence not in a specified place, or selected temple, or at certain festivals and on appointed days, but during his whole life, the Gnostic in every place, even if he be alone by himself, and wherever he has any of those who have exercised the like faith, honours God, that is, acknowledges his gratitude for the knowledge of the way to live” (Stromata, 7, 7).

One of the students that followed Clement, Origen, would continue this kind of reasoning and popularize it even more. He lived from 185-253 AD. We have an excerpt from him below:

“If it be objected to us on this subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for example the Lord’s day, the Preparation, the Passover, or Pentecost, I have to answer, that to the perfect Christian, who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s, and he is always keeping the Lord’s day. He also who is unceasingly preparing himself for the true life, and abstaining from the pleasures of this life which lead astray so many — who is not indulging the lust of the flesh, but keeping under his body, and bringing it into subjection,— such a one is always keeping Preparation-day” (Origien, Against Celsus, 8:22)

Origen allegorized away any day with special significance and ranked them all the same. He thus contradicted the example of Christ and the early Apostles, who clearly made the distinction between days that were holy and those that were not. They clearly all kept the Sabbath (see Mark 2:27-28, Acts 13:13-48 for two examples).

Conclusion

In the second century, virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Sabbath teachers arose within the Christian community. While they still called themselves Christian, they abandoned many key principles taught by the early Apostles.

The two cities where these teachers had the most influence: Rome and Alexandria. According to the Church Historian Sozomen (approx. 400 AD), these were the first two cities to stop keeping the Sabbath. They were the only cities not known to have a Sabbatarian population in the fifth century. Here is an excerpt from his work on Church History.

“For although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this. The Egyptians in the neighborhood of Alexandria, and the inhabitants of Thebais, hold their religious assemblies on the Sabbath, but do not participate of the mysteries in the manner usual among Christians in general: for after having eaten and satisfied themselves with food of all kinds, in the evening making their offerings…” (idem, bk 5, ch 22)

Pay close attention to the words of this historian. He recorded that Rome and Alexandria were the two cities that ceased to honor the Sabbath; this means at one time they did it! He also noted that they did not stop honoring the Sabbath because of any scripture, but because of a tradition. Jesus warned us about the traditions of man that contradict the commandments of God (Matthew 15:1-20).

Today, people use similar arguments to Marcion, Justin, Clement or Origen in some attempt to explain away the Sabbath. They think that they have received or developed some great revelation concerning this subject, when in fact they have not. They are continuing arguments and lines of reasoning which began not with the first Apostles, but with second century teachers.

Despite the false teachings about the Sabbath, there were still those who stood tall for the seventh day of our Lord. In a previous blog, we looked at Theophius of Antioch who defended God’s commandments and the Sabbath during this time period (CLICK HERE to read that blog).

Next month we will look at the anti-Sabbath attitude that was prevalent in Roman culture during the first two centuries AD.

Kelly McDonald, Jr.

BSA President – www.biblesabbath.org