The Anti-Evolution Commandment

[Dr. Shane]

I was listening to Franklin Graham on the radio this morning try to explain why Sunday is the Lord's Day.  It was painful to listen to him grasp at straws in trying to make a New Testament connection to Sunday sacredness.  But is it really that important?  God-fearing Christians have been honoring Sunday for centuries and there are millions today that still do.  What difference does it really make?

 

I don't believe that keeping the seventh day (Saturday) holy is a salvation issue unless a person feels completely convicted to do so and is rebelling against the Spirit of God.  In my study of the Bible I find there are many things God allows us to do which He is not too supportive of.

 

Throughout the centuries God has allow polygamy.  That was never His ideal.  God started marriage in the Garden of Eden with one man and one woman.  That was and still is His ideal.  However God allowed polygamy.  God also allowed divorce which Jesus said was due to the hardness of man's heart.  Divorce was never God's ideal but was allowed.  God also allowed meat-eating.  Humans were created vegetarians and were not given permission to eat meat until after the Flood.  Later God tried to return men to vegetarianism by feeding them manna in the wilderness.  God also blessed the prophet Daniel physically and mentally because he chose a vegetarian diet.  So there is a pattern where God allows things such as polygamy, divorce and meat-eating even though they are less than His ideal.  It seems that God has allowed Sunday keeping among Christians but we cannot assume that means He has blessed it.

 

The Bible teaches that God's people have always kept Saturday holy as His day of rest and worship.  The first evidence of the early church keeping Sunday may well come from Irenaeus - a second-century church father.  Prophecy in both Daniel and Revelation foretold of a period of time that the church would enter into apostasy and the traces of that can be found just after the last of the apostles died.  It continued through the Dark Ages and until Martin Luther was able to use the technological advance of the printing press to spread the message of forgiveness by grace.

 

Biblical truths did not all come at once with Martin Luther.  He was God's man for the hour with a very important message.  Salvation is the free gift from God and cannot be bought with earthly treasure.  About 200 years after Luther God called John Wesley with another important truth.  He emphasized the teaching of prevenient grace which teaches God loves every person and longs salvation for them but has given each free will to accept His offer of grace or reject it.  Then, about another 200 years later God brought the Sabbath truth to light.

 

Why?  If the Sabbath wasn't such a big deal for the 2nd and 3rd century Christians nor for Martin Luther or John Wesley, why would God bring it to light in the 1800s?  Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" was  published in 1859.  The Seventh-day Adventist church was organized in 1863 by Joseph Bates, James White, Ellen G. White and J. N. Andrews.  The purpose of the church was to declare the soon, literal coming of Jesus Christ and to point people to worship the Creator and Redeemer.  The seventh-day Sabbath is the only doctrine that calls for action on the part of the believer which demonstrates the belief that Jesus, in conjunction with God the Father and Holy Spirit, created the Earth and all of the universe.  The Sabbath message flies in the face of evolution.  The Sabbath message goes hand in hand with the call in Revelation chapter 14 to worship the Creator.  The reason given in the Fourth Commandment for honoring the Sabbath is that God rested on it after creating the world and life on it.  Creation is the mark of God's authority and the seventh-day Sabbath is memorial of it.

 

The Apostles never honored Sunday as the Lord's day.  Much is written in the New Testament on the issue of circumcision.  The fact that so little is recorded in the New Testament about the Sabbath is strong evidence that it was a non-issue.  Circumcision was for the Jews.  The first person to be circumcised was Abraham - the father of the Jews.  The Sabbath is for all of humanity.  The first person to honor the Sabbath was Adam - the father of the human race.  Circumcision is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments.  More words are dedicated to the Sabbath Commandment than any of the other nine.  Jesus said He was the Lord of the Sabbath.  That must mean that the Sabbath is the Lord's day.  

*This was originally posted by me as a Facebook note June 19, 2012.

[Rahab]

God says it is a sign between his people and Him. By keeping the Sabbath it means we are God’s own.