September - October 2000 The Sabbath Sentinel

President's Letter . . .

The Issue by Dr. Sidney Davis

"The Sabbath question is to be the issue in the great final conflict, in which all the world will act a part. Men have honored Satan's principles above the principles that rule in the heavens. They have accepted the spurious Sabbath, which Satan has exalted as the sign of his authority. But God has set His seal upon His royal requirement. Each Sabbath institution, both true and false, bears the name of its author, an ineffaceable mark that shows the authority of each." ¹

There have been letters that have come to me expressing concern that my articles are taking the direction of The Sabbath Sentinel away from its primary focus of the Sabbath to dwell on promoting the Biblical festivals. I would like to assure our readers and supporters that this is not my agenda. My bringing to attention the subject of the festivals is not with the intent of promoting the festival issue, per se. My articles are written to discuss the need to reexamine areas of long held traditional doctrines and biblical interpretations whose anti-Semitic bias is inconsistent with our commitment to honor the Sabbath as the sign of our loyalty to the creator. In this regard my articles focus on two major issues confronting Sabbatarians:

1. The Pope's attempt to make Sunday the fulfillment of the Sabbath;
2. The larger implication of the Sabbath/Sunday issue for the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, as well as Judaism and Christianity.

Though there are some of us who understand the continuity and the relevancy of the Biblical festivals as valid as is the Bible Sabbath, it is not my intent to turn The Sabbath Sentinel into a platform to advance or force the festival issue upon those whose conscientious convictions or theological views differ. The Sabbath is "the issue." My focus on the festivals relates to meeting the arguments of the new covenant theology (NCT) teachings against the Sabbath truth. It is time that we, as Sabbatarians, recognize that the arguments that have been traditionally used to defend the Sabbath are not meeting the challenge being made against the Sabbath by the NCT. It is time that we, as Sabbatarians, recognize that an inherently contradictory Sabbatarian theology can not stand up to the sophisticated arguments now being brought against the Sabbath truth. Ellen White wrote a very significant statement that we all, regardless of our Sabbatarian tradition, would do well to heed: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life." Every position of truth taken by our people will bear the criticism of the greatest minds; the highest of the world's great men will be brought in contact with truth, and therefore every position we take should be critically examined and tested by the Scriptures. Now we seem to be unnoticed, but this will not always be. Movements are at work to bring us to the front, and if our theories of truth can be picked to pieces by historians or the world's greatest men, it will be done."²

The arguments that have been traditionally used against the Sabbath truth have their origins in anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. We, as Sabbatarians, recognize this and are able to illustrate this well. The religious roots of anti-Sabbatarian arguments come from the "theology of contempt" of anything Jewish or relating to Judaism. The political and religious pressures that saw the early church turning away from its Judaic roots had nothing to do with Bible doctrine. They had to do with the persecution, discrimination, condemnation and the ostracizing of the Jewish people. This led to the disenfranchising of, not only the Jewish Christians from the primitive church, but also the abandoning of her Jewish Lord. Both the church of God and Israel's messiah have been substituted or replaced with a "gentilized" and paganized counterfeit. The falling away of the church is its racist abandonment of her native Jewishness and her Biblical Judaism.

There is a supposed conflict that is said to exist between the Old Testament, as a dispensation of Jewish legalism and law symbolized by the Old Covenant "Jewish" Sabbath (Saturday), and the New Testament as a dispensation of Christian liberty and grace-symbolized by the New Covenant "Christian" Sabbath (Sunday), which has as its origin the teaching of contempt against Jews and Judaism.

This is poignantly illustrated in Pope John Paul II's designation of the seventh day, not as the Bible Sabbath, but rather as the "Jewish" Sabbath and of the first day as the "Christian" Sabbath. The Christian church has long developed a semantic, a theology, and a hermeneutic that has served to justify it's historic anti-Judaism and hatred of the Jewish people. The Pope's frequent reference to the seventh day of the week, Saturday as the "Jewish" Sabbath and to the first day of the week, Sunday, as the "Christian" Sabbath in his May 31, 1998 pastoral letter "Dies Domini" (The Lord's Day) should be alarming to all Sabbath keepers. Why? Because he completely ignores the primacy and the historic continuity of the Bible Sabbath in the Christian church. As he seeks to unify Christians based upon the prevailing religious and cultural prejudices of the majority against Judaism, the Pope calls for the nations of the world to enact civil legislation that would promote Sunday keeping, under the pretext that Christians merit civil protection to exercise religious rights. This anti-Judaic religious prejudice is supported by a Christian theology that sees this issue as essential to the spreading of the "new covenant" gospel of "grace" over the "old covenant" legalism of "law." The logical implication of this is that the Sabbatarian position is one of "law" (or legalism) and the Sunday keeping position is one of "grace." By his inference of the Sabbath as "Jewish" and Sunday as "Christian," he states that anyone keeping the Bible Sabbath of the creation cannot be a "true" Christian. He is, in effect, "stigmatizing" Sabbatarians with the prejudices of Christians against the Jews.

The Pope maintains that Sunday keeping began as a celebration of Christ's death and resurrection. He wants to restore the appreciation of Sunday keeping as a day celebrating the resurrection. John Paul II's theology, though appealing to the very essence of the Christian gospel for its authority, lacks biblical and historical support. For at least three centuries after Christ's death the festival of the Passover was still observed according to the Jewish liturgical calendar on Nisan 14 after the vernal equinox (irrespective of the day of the week), and not on the "Easter" Sunday after the full moon. It was the anti-Semitic policies of Constantine that brought about this radical change of the church's liturgical calendar, with the cooperation of the bishops of Rome at the council of Nicea in 325 AD.

When we look at how, historically, the church began to distance herself from her Jewishness-which in reality was from her Biblical foundation-we find that she allowed the state's political power to influence her doctrines. Sabbatarians are well able to show from history how the legal and liturgical change of the Sabbath to Sunday occurred. But we need to emphasize as well that the change did not occur because of any theological argument, such as the law being "nailed to the cross," (Collosians 2:15) or "abolished in ordinances" (Ephesians 2:15) or "added because of transgressions" (Galatians 3:19), or any of the "proof text" reasons Protestant evangelicals now use against the Sabbath. These changes took place for one reason, because of hatred for anything Jewish and the Jewish people. The theology to justify this change came later.

As we see the origins of the anti-Sabbatarian argument, how can Sabbatarians in good conscience use these very same arguments to defend the Sabbath at the expense of the Biblical feasts? Isn't it time to reexamine our theology? If the arguments against festivals observance are valid, then are not the very same arguments against the Sabbath just as valid? They are based upon the same rationale, the same theology, the same proof texts. This is why consistency demanded the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) gave up both the Sabbath and festivals when confronted with the arguments posed by the NCT. The arguments of the new covenant theology apply equally to both. There is no discrimination based upon an unbiblical separation or division of God's law. The artificial separation of God's law that makes a distinction between the Sabbath as a moral precept, and the festivals as ceremonial precepts, originate with a anti-Judaic view of the law advanced by St. Thomas Aquinas that sought to do away with the Sabbath.³

Yet, we Sabbatarians "new model" St. Thomas Aquinas' theology to maintain our Sabbatarian view, while condemning the festivals, even though the Bible and history show that the primitive church observed both for three hundred years! Isn't there something wrong with this picture? I am trying to bring to attention a Sabbatarian theology on the Sabbath and God's law that is inconsistent and contradictory-which is revealed not only in our doctrinal positions but our misinterpretations of certain proof texts in support of them.

The issues that led to the abandonment of the Sabbath for Sunday and the Passover for Easter have their origins in the "teaching of contempt." This is why the Sabbath/Sunday question has profound implications for understanding and defining the whole relationship between the Old and New Testaments; as well as between Judaism and Christianity.

The "teaching of contempt" reduced the Sabbath to a temporary ordinance, deriving from Moses and enjoined exclusively upon the Jews as a trademark of their wickedness. Justin Martyr (about A. D. 150), a saint for the Catholic Church, expresses this view most emphatically, saying: "As I stated before, it was by reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other precepts, God imposed upon you [Jews] the observance of the Sabbath as a mark."⁴

The reduction of the Sabbath to a trade mark of Jewish depravity marks the beginning of a "Christian" theology of contempt for the Jews that has plagued Christianity throughout the centuries. Today this theology of contempt is well reflected in other Biblical doctrines and interpretations which are widely held by Christians-and even Sabbatarians. Examples of such are the difference between the Old and New Covenants as one of "Law" versus "Grace," and the false and unbiblical concepts of the law as two monolithic divisions of "moral" and "ceremonial."

These and other aspects of our theology need to be seriously reexamined. Our inability or refusal to do so will find our Sabbatarian "theories of truth [being] be picked to pieces" by New Covenant theologians. As one Sabbatarian writer so aptly stated: "Through human instrumentalities he [Satan] has cast contempt upon the Sabbath of Jehovah, and has stigmatized it as "the old Jewish Sabbath." Thousands have thoughtlessly echoed this reproach, as if it were something attached with a great weight in argument; but they have lost sight of the fact that the Jewish people were especially chosen of God as the guardians of His truth, the keepers of His law, the depository of His sacred oracles. They received the lively oracles to give unto us. The Old and New Testaments both came through the Jews to us. Every promise in the Bible, every ray of light which has shone upon us from the word of God, has come through the Jewish nation."⁵

This stigmatization of the Sabbath as the "Jewish" Sabbath is the strategy of the mounting attack against the Sabbath from the Papacy, evangelical Christianity and former Sabbatarians. The origin and basis of this attack is rooted in anti-Judaic theology.⁶ Our underestimating the strength of the NCT arguments against the Sabbath truth, and our inability or unwillingness to face the same issues within our Sabbath keeping fellowships, will leave us vulnerable to such attacks and ultimately handicap the effectiveness of our world witness. In order for such a witness to be effective or valid, we must begin to recognize the need to "turn our hearts" and dialog with the Jewish community with whom our observance of the Sabbath finds a common identity. We cannot safely ignore the far reaching implications and issues which led the second largest Sabbath keeping organization in the world-next to the Seventh-day Adventist Church-to abrogate the Sabbaths. Because of them, we now find many Sabbatarians embracing the deceptive teachings of counterfeit "new covenant" theology.

The time has come for Christians to reject the theology of contempt for the Jews, which has caused untold damage to Christian beliefs and practices, and to recover the Jewish heritage of the Christian faith. After all, Jesus' twelve Apostles, and the thousands who responded to the Messianic proclamation, were "believing Jews" who lived in accordance to the principles of the Law (Acts 21:20). My articles call for an examination of these issues and to help Christians to see the need to overcome centuries of deeply ingrained anti-Judaism and to rediscover the Hebraic foundation of the Christian faith.

Therefore, while we may ignore these things "the issue" will not go away. Seventh-day Adventists may find comfort in making a new convert every 28 seconds. But burying our head, like an ostrich, in our numbers and evangelical successes will not insure us from "the issue" that would cause the greatest shaking that Ellen White prophesied would to occur in the church. Whether or not you believe in the prophecies of E. G. White, the shaking has already begun-and it will not confine itself to the SDA church, but it will reverberate throughout the whole Sabbatarian world.

"The law of God is made void, and even among those who advocate its binding claims, are some who break its sacred precepts. There will be an army of steadfast believers who will stand as firm as a rock through the last test. But where in that army are those who have been standard-bearers? Where are those whose voices have sounded in proclaiming the truth to the sinning? Some of them are not there. We look for them, but in the time of shaking they have been unable to stand, and have passed over to the enemy's ranks."⁷

We, as Sabbatarians, may take refuge in our organizational integrity, infrastructures and institutions but I say to you remember the WCG. None of us are exempt from the encroachments of the NCT upon our churches and memberships that overtook our brethren and which continue to reverberate throughout the Sabbatarian world. Those who think that I am merely trying to advance the festival issue are totally MISSING THE POINT. The great controversy over the law of God is being fought on the battle ground of the Sabbath issue. The law of God is not just "the Ten commandments" but is that great compendium of truth that our Jewish brethren call the Torah. It is not just "the Ten Words" but "every word that procedeth out of the mouth of God," the commandments, statutes and judgments.

My calling attention to the festival issue is merely a device. It is being used to call a moratorium on the traditional Sabbatarian view of the law that we have inherited from medievalism, and that mitigates against our being able to witness and dialog with our Jewish brethren, prevents us from "proclaiming the Sabbath more fully" to "every nation and kindred, and tongue and people" of the world in clear and consistent tones. It must be understood that the "new covenant" is nothing but experientially internalizing all of the precepts of the "old covenant," whose object was always to produce a holy character and a holy people and not just a definition of a faith determined by a set of rules. Now is not the time to allow our theological and denominational prejudices to distract us from "the issue".

1 Ellen G. White, The Signs of the Times, March 22, 1910.

2 Ellen G. White,Evangelism, Review and Herald, Washington, DC 1946, p.69.

3 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.

4 Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath To Sunday, Biblical Perspectives, Rome, 1977, p.255.

5 E.G.White, The Signs of the Times, November 12, 1894.

6 See Samuele Bacchiocchi, The Washington Post, Saturday, January 23,1999.

7 E. G. White, An Address in Regard to the Sunday Movement, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, December 24, 1889, paragraph 12.

TSS

September - October 2000 The Sabbath Sentinel