Godsloveandlaw's Blog

As we have posted before, Satan has been active in these last days. One of the most talked about latest ploys is the idea that the true “Sabbath day” is not really Saturday at all. YouTube, Blogs, Facebook, email, you name it, the word is out there that we as Adventists are being hood winked. We got the day all messed up! Why we are dis-honoring God Himself!

Is it truly so?

But do not for a moment think God did not know about this ploy. Yes indeed! What you are about to read is deep and profound.The following is a report made in 1940 by Victor Houteff.

We often read where our prophetess Ellen White was gifted of God. Especially when we learn that such beautiful and profound writings came from a 3rd grade educated woman! God did it again, brother Houteff had a 4th grade education. It seems God made these lowly educated servants, an example of His power, His ability, His omniscience.

If you’re impressed, by all means copy and spread this report. Satan may very well send his workers your way with this ploy. You can effectively shut them down with this report. Be Blessed.

"The Weekly Cycle Is Neither Solar Nor Lunar. 

The Sabbath on which the Lord rested was exactly six days after the moment creation began; then, on the seventh day He rested (Gen. 2:2).  Had He, though, blessed a day which is ruled by the moon, He would have then rested the tenth day, for the moon was not created until the fourth day of creation. (See Genesis 1:14-19.)  But keeping a Sabbath on the seventh day from the creation of the moon would not have been in commemoration of  creation, but in commemoration of the moon!

   The first Sabbatical week of creation's being three days older than both the sun and the moon, makes it clear that neither of the luminaries can regulate the week of creation.  Such a regulatory force would of necessity have deprived Time and Creation of the first three days, leaving them as a phantom "lost period."

   The two foregoing paragraphs completely invalidate the idea of the week's being dependent upon the monthly orbit of the moon, and render unnecessary any further discussion of the subject.  For the sake however, of clearing some other controverted points, as well as for saving ourselves time later on in answering detailed questions on this subject, we submit the subjoined observations.  From them the reader is asked to consider that if a lunar sabbath were correctly  named, should it not be named, not the sabbath of creation, but rather

Only a Planetary Sabbath?

   The Lord having rested on the "seventh day," not on the tenth, the weekly cycle began with the first day of creation, whereas solar and lunar time commenced three days later.  A sabbath which is governed by either a solar or a lunar calendar, though, could never memorialize the week of creation, but rather only the planets themselves, and therefore, if correctly named, must be called "planetary."  Then, too, the monthly revolution of the moon round the earth, not coordinating  with the daily revolution of the earth round the sun, as already pointed out, makes it

Impossible to Keep a Planetary Sabbath.

   The fact that the moon takes longer than 28 days to complete its revolution round the earth, then were we to standardize the seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first, and the twenty-eighth days of the lunar month, for the observance of  the Sabbath, as the misnamed booklet advocates, we would not have kept up with the moon anyway, for the lunar month is not  actually 28 days, but approximately 29-1/2 days.

   A lunar sabbath must necessarily coordinate with both lunar and solar time.  But a sabbatical month (28 days) falls 1-1/2 days short of a lunar month (29-1/2); and a sabbatical year (12 x 4 = 48 weeks; 48 x 7 = 336 days) falls 18 days short of a lunar year (354) and 29 days short of a solar year (365).  So at the close of each sabbatical year, the lunar sabbath-keeper, in order to keep time with the weekly cycle, as well as with the rotation of the earth and of the moon, would have to make the earth stand still 29 days and the moon 18 days.

This analysis corroborates the fact that the weekly cycle cannot be governed by the motion of either the moon or the sun, but only by the power of God, which brought forth the first day of creation, three days before there was either sun or moon.  And so, as we are again shown, the Sabbath is a memorial, not of the sun or the moon, but of creation.

   There is no doubt in the minds of any that the Jewish and Apostolic churches in Christ's time were keeping the right Sabbath day; and that the zeal which the Roman Emperor, Constantine, had for the Christian faith would have absolutely forbidden him to abolish the Christian's calendar and to establish another which would annihilate both the Sabbath of creation and their memorial of the resurrection.

   Surely no one supposes that had he done such an impious thing, the Christians would have honored him so greatly as to call him a saint and to fix the twentieth day of May as his festival, which some observe even until this day. (See Twentieth Century Cyclopaedia, Vol. 3,p.13)

   Indeed, the Christians would have made so much of his sacrilege that no conceivable circumstance could have concealed the blasphemous act from the prying eye of history.  But such an entry is not to be found in

History's Record.

"The use of the week was introduced into the Roman Empire about the 1st or 2nd century of the Christian era from Egypt and had been recognized independently of Christianity before the Emperor Constantine confirmed it by enjoining the observance of the Christian Sabbath.  With the Mohammedans the week has also a religious character, Friday being observed by them as a Sabbath." -- Twentieth Century Cyclopaedia, Vol. 8, p. 487.

   "The period of seven days...was used by the Brahmins in India with the same denominations employed by us, and was alike found in the  calendars of the Jews, Egyptians, Arabs and Assyrians." -- Standard Dictionary, definition "Calendar."

   "The week is a period of seven days having no reference whatever to the celestial motions, -- a circumstance to which it owes its unalterable uniformity.  It was employed from time immemorial in almost all eastern countries; and, as it forms neither an aliquot part of the year nor of the lunar month, those who reject the Mosaic recital will be at a loss, as Dalambre remarks, to assign it to an origin having such semblance of  possibility." -- Britannica Encyclopedia.

   "It is our pleasure (such is the Imperial style) that all the nations, which are governed by our clemency and moderation, should steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans; which faithful tradition has preserved; and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of Apostolic holiness. 

According to the discipline of the Apostles, and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; under an equal majesty, and a pious Trinity.  We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and as we judge, that all others are extravagant mad-men, we brand them with the infamous name of Heretics; and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellation  of churches." -- Gibbon's Rome, Vol. 3, p. 81. (Milman edition.)

   This historical record plainly shows that the weekly period of seven days has continued unbroken from time immemorial, that Rome did not abolish the Christian week but the Roman, and that the one which took its place was the same as the Jewish, or the Christian.

   Even the lunar-sabbath advocate, himself, unwittingly admits that Constantine, in the days of his conversion to Christianity, discarded the eight-day week and adopted and confirmed the seven-day week -- the week of creation: "These three witnesses [The New International Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Encyclopedia  Americana]," says the brochure, "tell us that the Romans did not have seven days to their week, nor their astrological names, till the days of Constantine, but that up to that time they had eight days."--The Sabbath of Creation, p. 24.

   Though the nations of today do not follow the Biblical monthly calendar, that in no wise alters the fact that the original weekly cycle has never been changed.  And as it is entirely independent of both the solar and the lunar calendars had God not preserved it intact throughout all the ages, the saints, now in "the times of restitution of all things," would have great difficulty to restore it and to vindicate its integrity.  Thus it is seen from every test put to it, that such a lunar  sabbath is unbiblical and unhistorical and the closer it is brought to the light, the plainer it will be seen to be

Even More Illogical.

   It is true that the ceremonial system (younger than the Sabbath institution, and set up because sin entered into the human family) was in some respects subject to lunar laws; but the seventh-day Sabbath's being established, not in relation to sin, but only in relation to the perfect work of creation, could no more be governed by the law of sin than it could by the law of the moon.  The Sabbath institution is senior to the ceremonial institution and has nothing to do with the law of sin, as has the Sanctuary.  The Sabbath, therefore, cannot bow down in subservience to an institution which is not only its junior but which also owes its existence solely to sin!

   Again we see that this author's theory of a "Planetary Sabbath" is blasphemous as well as unreasonable and futile.

   The theorist has used the writings of certain historians, but let the student of Truth closely examine the quotations, and he will find that they do not support the theory any more than the Bible supports it, which leads to

The Theorist's Main Trouble.

   Going off on such tangents is due to shallow reading and to interpreting the words of others without digging deep enough to find the thought of the original authors.  And the main reason that advocates of error stay in their errors is that most of them are determined at any cost to stand by their self-made theories!  And that is their main trouble.  But we hope and pray that these mistaken  brethren will welcome the Truth as contained  in the plain, pointed, unglossed, and fundamental facts set forth in these pages, and allow It to lodge in their hearts.  Thus only may they be led to walk in the light and to find rest in Him Who is anxious to lead us into all Truth, and Who therefore, sends this

Counsel And Appeal.

   Watch your steps, and pay no homage to either a moon or a sun sabbath-day.  For by sacredly honoring such a common day, you would be worshiping those things which were created in the last three days of creations's week; namely, the planets of the heavens and the creatures of the sea, the fowls of the air and the creeping things of the ground, the beasts of the field and the mortal man of clay!

   Follow the leadership of God instead of the leadership of the moon.  Be ye not idolators, for "...it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered:  and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land." Zech. 13:2." (Tract 10, p.32-40)