really uphold the Sabbath, do you? I mean, it's kind of a confusing issue.

For example, there are several here, may or may not be Christian, who are alway quite thoughtful in wishing others a good Sabbath. And Art (BillingDreamer) just posted a lengthy bit of Biblical inforamtion regarding the Sabbath. So apparently it holds some 'sentimental' value somewhere.

But it's not really practiced any more, is it. I mean, according to some, all the Old Testament 'procedures and policies' went by the wayside when the New Testament was formed.

COULD this be one of those 'little' meaningless doctrines that people do not agree on? If it's so meaningless, why does it divide those who 'claim' they alone adhere 'properly' to scripture?

Such a confusing issue, this whole Sabbath thing.

I'll take a day off anytime. Call me chribudajew if it keeps me in a warm toasty bed on a cold January morning.

Jesus was not born on Dec. 25th. I guess if you believe in the sabbath, it does not matter when you keep it as long as you do, right? You may be alone, and find it hard to sell your HR department at work, but hey...

Sabbath in our town is many celebrated by the Jehovah Witness' or 7 Day Adventist Groups. They go around knocking on peoples doors handing out there literature...to each their own.....

The point of the Sabath is to rest, and acknowledge God.

God created the heavens and the earth in six days, on the seventh day he rested.

In the begining of Genesis it explains:

Day1: Light and darkness were created
Day2: Sky and water were created.
Day3: Sea and land were formed
Day4: Sun,Moon, and stars preside over day and night to mark off seasons, days, and years.
Day5: Fish and Birds were created.
Day6: Animals, Man,and Woman were created.
Day7: God rested and was pleased.

this is my thoughts on the sabbath: I believe we should worship the heart of the rule not the rule, to many times people get caught up in rule and really dont have a understanding the heart behind the rule...for me these scripture sums up the sabbath and it gives me insight on the heart of the sabbath

1At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath."

3He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6I tell you that one[a] greater than the temple is here. 7If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. 8For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

9Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"

11He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

13Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.

John 9:16
Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."
But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.

There is another passage where Jesus chides the Pharisees about "What if one of you has an oxen fallen into a ditch. Do you not pull him out on the sabbath?" or something to that effect.

Yes, keep the sabbath as a matter of principle but remain practical about it. At least that's my interpretation of it.

I could probably be swayed by the "Old Testament/New Testament" argument too. Yeah, some of the legal-eese was tossed when Jesus was crucified. Numerous verses talk about us being "Dead to the Law" now.

As far as dividing people who claim to be "more gooder" than you.... screw 'em. Who has time to waste on self-righteous twerps?

Well so far I see a great reverence given to words. But what about modern day actions?

Repeating words without interpreting them to your own lifestyle tells me nothing.

How do YOU keep the Sabbath? and how do you reconcile your actions with the actions of those versus we have seen?

Aaronzdad,

My last post was written as yours was being posted. Thanks for letting me know how scripture of the Sabbath relates to your views.

The belief in the Sabbath is the basis for the "Blue Laws", that Bars are no permitted to be open on Sundays. I think other stores weren't allowed to open either a while back, but they've let up on the "Blue Laws" quite a bit.

Banks are still closed on Sundays in most places, and I think that was all started because of religious beliefs. It probably continues today just out of sheer momentum. People get used to certain patterns and fall into ruts that are hard to get out of.

I'm not sure how much religion had to do with it, but I think we can all be thankful that we aren't expected to work continuously without any days off!

In fact, in this day an age its aburd that we have to work as much as we do. Modern industrialization was supposed to make life easier. Shouldn't we be examining why that never happened????

I'm forget about religion, why doesn't progress = a better life????

Something's clearly wrong!

I think backing your words up with scripture is very important therefore I will alway use scripture when I speak on a topic...but I'll try to explain, Im not great with words so here we go...How I observe the sabbath???????????? I take time out of this busy life to focus on God...sometimes its every day other times its once a week....its a time of singing and giving God his praise and honor,its a time of reflection,its a time of self examination, its a time to try to line myself up with God plans, not running around worry about the everyday task that plagues me day in and day out...I think the heart of the sabbath was to know that God demands his people attention and how much he longs to spend time with us. Sometime I think we just get to busy to sit down and spend time with God and then we wonder why we dont have direction or why we worried all the time...I hope this clears it up for you Peace and love!

Revo

Abra, just to clarify...you stated:


" I'm not sure how much religion had to do with it, but I think we can all be thankful that we aren't expected to work continuously without any days off! "


You can thank unions for that Abra...and paid holidays...and insurance availability... and time and a half overtime... and a forty hour work week...

And now, you can thank the systematic dis-memberment of unions for the backwards progress in these areas... a 40 hour work week will soon be a thing of the past...

Off subject...ooops...

Sundays are great days to fish!!!

Revo,
You do a fine job representing yourself and thank-you for sharing YOUR words on the topic.

Abra, You are correct about the blue laws. That was one confusing issues. For thousands of years the Sabbath was this great holy day of rest - but how is it that once such a FIRMLY stipulated and adhered to 'Word of God' can become something, negligable?

I'm wondering, how many Christian doctrines actually CHANGED? They surely must have, to allow so many Christians, not only to work on Sunday, but to spend the whole day 'shopping' (after church)which requires that OTHER Christians work that day, just to serve them?????

In my honest opinion I see Christianity today as nothing more than the remnants of a religion that once was. A religion that was based largely on superstition and authoritarianism that suppressing monarchies held over the masses to control them.

Most people have no clue what life was really like only a few centuries ago. Religious beliefs ruled the world largely up until the time of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and even then they were slow to change. In fact it they didn’t change until much later

Historians don’t give credit to true enlightenment (the realization that the world isn’t really ruled by superstitions) until the French Revolution which occurred after Newton. And that was only the beginning of thing.

Religion has been in serious declined for the last 3 centuries, and that decline has been accelerating over that time. In the past century alone religion has taken a severe nose dive with respect to people actually believing in it in a formal way. And rightfully so!

Consider This,..

The transistor was invented the same year I was born! Modern technology that we have come to take for granted today is all a product just the last half of this last century!

Old superstitions are out the window. Sure people still cling to the idea of a God, but they most certainly don’t think like people of old did. No way. It’s utterly impossible for them to think like that today.

Louis Pasture didn’t make his discoveries until the 1800’s! Prior to that people still believed that flies miraculously emerged from rotten meat. They had no clue that flies laid eggs and that sort of thing. I’m this is how ignorant the world was. People genuinely believed in miracles because they believed the world to be full of miracles every moment of every day! They had no clue what disease was, etc. They were truly ignorant and completely dependent on a believe in superstition. Sure there were those who didn’t believe this way, people like Copernicus, Galileo, Gregor Mendel, and many other scientists and philosophers always existed throughout all of history. But I’m talking about the masses in general. People in general attributed everything to gods, spirits, magic, and demons. This was the belief of how the everyday world actually worked!

People don’t believe that now. People today realize that there are rational understandable explanations for these things and that we can even control them to a large degree. We have eradicated many diseases that were commonplace. And we have good ideas of what causes others even if we haven’t yet been able to find ways to prevent or cure them yet. I mean, even if we can’t stop something like AIDS we still understand that it’s a virus. It’s like a train coming at you on the tracks. Just because you know what it is doesn’t mean that you are going to be able to stop it by sticking out your foot in front of it. But just because you can’t stop it doesn’t mean that you don’t understand what it is.

The point is that years ago (and not that long ago) people genuinely didn’t understand anything about how the world works.

In less than 300 years they figured it out. And in less than 50 years they used that knowledge to build all manner of machines that perform “miracles” every single day! We don’t think of them as miracles simply because we understand how they work now.

My point it, that superstition is out. Intelligent understanding is in. And we aren’t going to go back to our old ways. At the rate that religion is deteriorating it will never make it through this millennium. It’s almost dead coming into the millennium.

People might argue that “Christianity” still holds a large part of the population!!!

But that’s a farce. All that means is that if you take a survey most people will label themselves “Christian”, but in truth they don’t believe in the original religion one iota. Maybe they still hold out hope in a God and an everlasting life. But do they really believe in the religious doctrine in detail? No way!

It’s just a shadow of an ancient manmade God.

And most people realize it, they're just having a hard time admitting it even to themselves. Most of them have "discarded" the organized religion and just claim a belief and alliance with Jesus. It's become like Linus' Security Blanket. They refuse to let go of it, but don't really use it.

Oh ...

I concede at the working on Sunday being attributed to the union cause... ooops...

The rest is true though...

Redy you have to remember that "Christianity" and "Religion" were used for hundreds of years as crude weapons to usurp power from the people and hold the masses in what was essentially slavery. The Bible and God's will was only transmitted through a few powerful church leaders who were in cahoots with the ruling class at the time.

Just rent the movie "Luther" (2003 with Joseph Fiennes) to have a look at the way changes were finally made.

The Legalism so rebuked in the New Testament became a way of life for illiterate peasants chained in their ignorance by a few power-mad rulers who called themselves "righteous" and "Christian". No, not every monk or priest or church leader was corrupt but in the big picture the overall effect was anything but demonstrative of God's love and forgiveness.

Legalism is still alive and well today. Just look around at all the judgmental quacks screeching about how they're better Christians than someone else because they tithe 10% or they go to church more often or they don't smoke or they dress differently.... or they keep the sabbath better.

The Bible makes it plain: Man sees the outside but God sees the heart.

One thing that always struck me as odd is that the God of the Bible always seems to focus on the individual and an individual’s salvation. Like humanity as a whole is not even an issue. It’s all about saving the souls of individuals, or on individual behavior.

In fact, this issue has been brought up by man scholars. Carl Sagan pointed out that the Bible basically has absolutely nothing at all about what the goals of humanity in general should be.

Like Carl Sagan I feel the same way. Had the book really been from our creator you’d think it would contain a message for humanity as a whole, hoping that collectively we’d grow up to a point where we could look at this goal collectively. I think mankind certainly has reached that level of maturity, the problem is that the Bible is completely devoid of any mission for humanity as a whole. It’s entirely based on saving individual souls.

Because of this, it really does convey a subconscious idealism in people that we are all living in a giant fish bowl waiting to be individually harvested by God based on our individual behavior.

This kind of egocentric value system is actually quite detrimental to the bigger picture of humanity.

Also, if you stop and think about it. If a God had written the book it would make sense that he would address humanity as a whole (which the book never addresses). But if men wrote the book to intimidate the masses to keep them under the thumb of their authority then it makes perfect sense! Why would they bother addressing any goals for humanity as whole? They don’t want people to think that way. They want them to submit to the authority of the church, not to go off thinking they already have a purpose without the church!!!

Every time I ask a question about the Bible, I look at it from both perspectives. And this is what I call having an open mind. I look at it from the perspective that it’s genuinely the word of God, and then I look at it from the perspective that it was written men to control the masses.

Then I ask, which author would have written these stories the way they are written????

In almost every case I have to say that it makes much more sense to me that men made the stories up to control the masses.

Witness do not observe the Sabbath

SDS do not go door to door

Art

It is not confusing in the Bible. It is confusing because of man's teachings about it.

The Sabbath was so important to God that He included it as one of the ten commandments. It was so important to God that He sent Israel into captivity and they are lost to history to this day because they failed to keep it.

The Sabbath is so important to God that He actually says it is His sign or His mark. Further, the Scriptures speak of a wicked Beast power coming at the end who would have his own mark, or sign. This Beast would change times. The mark of the Beast already exists. It is just not enforced by law just yet. As Daniel writes:

The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time (Daniel 7:23-25).

So, God thinks it is important. The enemies of God think it is important, but we have been fooled into thinking it is simply a technicality.

Art

There is real meat in this post. I wish I could get something like this on my thread.

Anyway, in prophecy a day is pictured as a thousand years. Thus the Sabbath pictures the last thousand years (the millennium) of a 7 thousand year plan of God. Thus, it's theme is freedom from bondage, healing, peace, prosperity, and rest from all the wars, sickness, and famine that have plagued mankind because we have not followed God's way.

For this reason, Jesus was keeping the Sabbath, but not in the letter, but in the spirit of the Sabbath.

Art

There was no New Testament for decades. All that time, the people observed what they always had. Changes only came hundreds of years later when the pagan Roman Emperor allied with the Church.

The Sabbath has always been kept by the faithful. Today there are millions of people who are not Jewish who keep this day holy.

Art