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February 06, 2012

UNDERSTANDING THE SABBATH (Genesis 2:1-3)


by Dr. John MacArthur


Please click on the title above to hear a superb, Bible-based sermon delivered by Dr. MacArthur on the Fourth Commandment (recorded live from Grace Community Church on Sept. 20, 2009).  It would be ideal for every current and former Seventh-day Adventist to hear this relevant presentation. Dr. MacArthur is pastor/teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California USA. MacArthur's radio program, "Grace to You," airs nationwide daily.  He is the author of more than six dozen books, and the founder/president of The Master's Seminary.


Moreover, the Adventist Sabbath is not the Bible Sabbath that Jesus and the Hebrew people observed before the New Covenant was inaugurated.  The Jewish weekly Sabbath, delivered by Moses to God's chosen people, was a lunar Sabbath fixed by the New Moon each month, and it changed every month to different days of the week. Interestingly, Seventh-day Adventists take great pride in the notion that they do not worship on the Pope's day (meaning Sunday). In reality, however, our SDA friends are indeed worshiping on a day (Saturday) that was arbitrarily re-positioned and decreed by Pope Gregory III in 1582, by skipping 10 calendar days, in the universally-accepted Gregorian calendar we have today.


Amazingly, official Adventism has chosen to worship on Sundays, in Samoa and nearby Tokelau in the South Pacific, when Friday (December 30, 2011) was deleted from their calendar due to the Samoan government moving the International Date Line for economic reasons. Samoan Seventh-day Adventist leaders insist that their recent compromise is really no big deal, but some members have voiced their disagreement with them. Their transition to worshiping on Sunday has not gone as smoothly as the leaders had anticipated.  Nevertheless, observing the weekly, festal Sabbath on Sunday is now their official stance.


With Samoan Adventists and non-Adventists now worshiping peacefully on the same day, the great SDA fear of an impending National Sunday Law has been quietly moved to the back burner. Will their Sabbath Schools now be called  Sunday Schools? Obviously, this major change will affect SDA outreach in the South Pacific islands of Samoa and Tokelau. It is important to know that the Israelites did not have a modern timepiece (clock or watch),  a man-made International Date Line, and a convenient calendar pinned to the flap of their tents like we use today.  All in all, one thing is very certain,  Seventh-day Adventists around the world are not observing the Sabbath on the same day and in the same way that Moses did.


Resting in Jesus, the true Sabbath Rest,


Dennis Fischer




courtesy of

DENNIS FISCHER MINISTRIES
Worldwide Chaplaincy Services
E-mail:  dfministries@gmail.com