| Author | Message | ||
| Gcfrankie Registered user Username: Gcfrankie Post Number: 846 Registered: 1-2007 |
As I have been learning more about the old testament I have come to the conclusion that the SDA's are not worshiping on the right day. The way I understand it is that each new month starts at the New Moon and the sabbath day follows 7 days later etc until the next new moon. Is this correct? Gail | ||
| 1john2v27nlt Registered user Username: 1john2v27nlt Post Number: 367 Registered: 5-2009 |
I have been coming to the same conclusion, or question as I have been reading & rereading the Bible. J9 | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13267 Registered: 12-2003  |
Yes, I believe you're right. Israel had a lunar calendar, and the Sabbath was determined each 28 days by the new moon. We have a Roman, solar calendar, and the days are completely different. Adventists make a point to say that the days have been in place since creation, that the seventh day has never changed, etc etc. But that is not true. The lunar calendar which ancient Israel used figures the weeks differently from the solar calendar. And ancient Rome had 11-day weeks for a time. The days of the week have never been set in stone. We live in a thoroughly gentile world now; the Jewish lunar calendar is gone. At best we can say that the Jewish Sabbath is relative, that depending on the world and the prevailing calendars, they keep the Sabbath to the best of their ability with altered calendars. But the fact is that God has ordained a gentile world for now, and the seventh day now is not the same as the seventh-day Sabbaths of Israel. Colleen | ||
| 1john2v27nlt Registered user Username: 1john2v27nlt Post Number: 368 Registered: 5-2009 |
I am reading a book right now titled: The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It is about the Hmong people in the USA whose cultural beliefs put them in clashing conflict with the American medical system & social agencies. There was a great influx of these people into the US in the Merced CA area in the 1980s. The thing is, as I'm reading about their culture & beliefs it's like the biblical times are being described - 2000 to 4000 years later. One interesting thing for me was to read about their lunar driven culture, time of day reckoned according to the cock' crowing; along with belief that epilepsy is a spirit manifestation ( which they revere, many shamans are epileptics.) They also offer sacrifices of animals. In modern America. Has me pondering things such as the topic of this thread. There are still many in the world who live as they did in biblical times. When they read or hear the scriptures read I bet they can relate in a way that we cannot. And without calendars or clocks, they would definitely function similarly to the Israelites as scripture tells us. It is opening my understanding as I read through the bible again. J9 | ||
| Bobalou Registered user Username: Bobalou Post Number: 87 Registered: 2-2005 |
Lets say SDAs are worshiping on the original day given only to the Israelites just for argument sake. I suggest to them that those in New Zealand, Australia, and west to Sinai are not. I posed this post yesterday on a couple of forums. Thought you might like to digest it. The dilemma for those SDAs who live in Samoa is that the International Date Line has been moved and the churches have to decide which day is going to be the 7th day. Actually no one should have any problem since the Sabbath has been abrogated along with the remainder of the OC law, but some insist it is eternal and will, till death do part them, observe it, so it does become an issue. I see a much bigger problem that has faced SDAs since the get go and that is the Sabbath law began atop Mt Sinai. Everyone West of Mt Sinai naturally observe it as the sun sets in their local meridians. This should be so until the sun sets at Sinai the next day, but it is not. Every one West of Sinai would trail behind as the Earth revolves, but they don't. The dilemma comes with New Zealand and West to the Sinai meridian. They start their Sabbath a day early because of the man made International Date Line. I would like to ask all the SDAs who frequent this site how to resolve this problem. All those living West of the International Date Line are worshiping on Friday until they get to Sinai which is the original spot where the Sabbath was given to the children of Israel. Ellen White and her little flock kept the wrong Sabbath hours for about six years. When someone explained to them they were wrong they immediately changed the starting and ending times. Is someone in the flock willing to stand up and correct this wrong? Ellen lived in Australia for quite some time and was guilty of observing the wrong day. Wonder why her angel didn't give her a vision? | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13280 Registered: 12-2003 |
Great points, Bobalou. Richard recently studied a lunar chart on a Jewish website dedicated to the subject of Sabbath and the new moons, and he learned that when Rome occupied the Holy Land, the Pharisees, who were centered in Jerusalem, decided they had to get along with Rome, so they agreed to adopt the Roman calendar. Meanwhile, the Jews in Galilee were of a different mind, and they did not adopt the Roman calendar at the time the Jerusalem sect did. They retained the lunar calendar for years. The conclusion of all this is that the biblical Sabbath has ultimately been all but lost. The Bible clearly articulates the keeping of Sabbath according to the months determined by the new moons. Thus, the actual "new moon" day was a sabbath to the Lord. The seventh-day Sabbath then occurred on the seventh day after the new moon. In this way, the sabbaths moved around through the days of the week and were not fixed the way we think of them. Adventists have been wrong all along about the seventh day Sabbath being fixed from creation. The Jews did not have a fixed seventh-day Sabbath; they had fixed new moons, and sabbaths rotated around the new moon schedule. Moreover, Scripture never said the Sabbath was to begin at sundown Friday. There was only one feast day where this designation is articulated in Scripture, and I can't remember if it was passover or something else. But the Sabbaths were "days", and evenings in Hebrew were not the days. Days were defined by the time the sun was up. Keeping Sabbath from Friday sundown did become a Jewish tradition, and Adventists did get this idea from that Jewish tradition, apparently. But this tradition was not spelled out in Scripture. It may have been one of the rabbinic rulings that emerged during the inter-testamental period when the synagogues were formed... EGW certainly failed to get the real facts from her inspiring angel... Colleen | ||
| 1john2v27nlt Registered user Username: 1john2v27nlt Post Number: 372 Registered: 5-2009 |
I recently found this website from a post regarding the Samoan issue over dropping Friday Dec 30 from their calendar: http://world-calendar.info/feasts.htm What I can't quite figure out about the New Moon Sabbath is if the new moon day is counted as day 1 or if it is a separate day added in with the counting beginning after that? I'm not sure how valid this website is. I'd like to know a little bit more. Will you do an article on this sometime in Proclamation? J9 | ||
| Leonie Registered user Username: Leonie Post Number: 32 Registered: 10-2011 |
Sabbath-observance is a problem, period! I live above the arctic circle, and right now we don't see the sun at all. When Ellen was confronted with the question about how to keep the Sabbath in arctic areas she simply answered that people were not supposed to live so far north! In summertime, the sun never sets..... Adventists here (up north) have come up with different solutions. Some keep the sabbath from around 12'ish, because that when it starts to get darker (we have about 2-3 hours of daylight even if the sun is not here), others keep the sabbath from 6 to 6, based on when the evening naturally starts on TV, or when the sun would naturally set in Israel. The fun thing is that those who keep it from 12 to 12, keep most of their sabbath on friday! And can go straight out to shop right after church on saturday. The conclusion in my town has been that everyone has to follow their conviction, and that people should not judge each other based on which solution they choose. Here they do not see the time you keep the sabbath as a question of salvation , strange as it may sound. The important thing is to keep the sabbath - and THAT is a quesion of salvation..... Similar problem as the samoan problem, although this is a more permanent problem..... Monica | ||
| Bobalou Registered user Username: Bobalou Post Number: 88 Registered: 2-2005 |
"Keeping" Sabbath in a misnomer anyway. No one keeps it. They observe a day. Ever tried to keep your mind on Holy things for the 24 hour period? | ||
| Butterfly_poette Registered user Username: Butterfly_poette Post Number: 124 Registered: 5-2011 |
I had never thought about the different calendars until recently. Too bad SDAs didn't think of that in the first place. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13292 Registered: 12-2003 |
Monica, that is so interesting! Sabbath-keeping really breaks down when you look at it closely. The notion that it is permanent and eternal just does not hold up. I remember that, as an Adventist, these issues seemed inconsequential. We were essentially made to feel that if we committed to every seventh day, we'd be good to go. Except that the seventh day had to be Saturday...wherever we were. Huh? You know what really hit me when I began to realize that the ancient Jews kept a lunar calendar, and the figuring of Sabbath was directly related to the new moons? That calendar has been all but lost, although there are small groups of people who are studying/resurrecting the idea, including some reactionary Adventists who believe the SDA organization is apostate. There are also some Jewish groups studying it. Anyway, what really it me is that our sovereign God, in dispersing the Jews after AD 70, also allowed the lunar calendar to disappear. He saw to it that the world, with the inauguration of the church, became primarily a "gentile world". The "times of the gentiles" of which Jesus spoke in Luke 21:24 is the time we live in since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Here's what Jesus said:
So along with Acts 15, where the apostles with the Holy Spirit decided not to require that gentile converts keep the Law in order to be Christians, God also made a thoroughly gentile world where it would be essentially impossible to observe the sign of the old covenant: the Sabbath. He had ushered in the new covenant, and the structure that organized the old covenant was dismantled. Colleen | ||
| Lucybugg Registered user Username: Lucybugg Post Number: 308 Registered: 2-2007 |
Colleen, I got chills when I read the above post! Gonna share this with the hubby and boys.... | ||
| Katarain Registered user Username: Katarain Post Number: 9 Registered: 1-2012 |
I got into a discussion with a coworker about the Sabbath recently. I mentioned that my beliefs on the subject were still in flux. She showed me a pamphlet from her church a few days later that contained her church's reasoning for keeping Sunday, and it had to do with the Apostles in the New Testament meeting on the first day. It occurs to me after reading this post that you can't prove the first day is Sunday either, since the first day would have to be the first day after the new moon. Just thinking... | ||
| Katarain Registered user Username: Katarain Post Number: 10 Registered: 1-2012 |
Finally found a website discussing this. I figured that someone had probably refuted it, or tried to. Frankly, I've never studied this idea, so I am neither for or against it. But here's the site, in case you're interested. It looks like a Messianic Jewish site. http://www.seedofabraham.net/SabbathLunar.html | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13306 Registered: 12-2003 |
Of course, one cannot prove Sunday is the first day of the week, and it doesn't matter. In fact, the Roman calendar during the time of the early church sometimes had eight days and sometimes had 11 days. In fact, some of the early church fathers spoke not of meeting on the first day but on what they called "the eighth day". Justin Martyr is one of these. The point simply is that there is no holy day since Jesus fulfilled all the shadows of the law. The early church met on the first day because Jesus rose on the day after Sabbath...not because it was Sunday or because it was the first day or the eighth day. Neither did His resurrection make it holy. Jesus is holy! They were celebrating Him! Colleen | ||
| Skeeter Registered user Username: Skeeter Post Number: 1741 Registered: 12-2007  |
 Amen Coleen ! It is JESUS that is important, not a day of the week. | ||
| Katarain Registered user Username: Katarain Post Number: 36 Registered: 1-2012 |
I spoke with a Jewish friend of mine about this. She is either Orthodox or very close to it, and she had never heard of the Sabbath being determined by the new moons. Of course, it is possible she had simply never heard of it, but I think that if we really wanted to know, I think it makes sense to consult Jewish records and history. This, of course, has nothing to do with whether or not we're supposed to keep it. |
