God gives foundational truth in the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. If one uses only the Greek scriptures, the New Testament, to guide them in their instruction as to how to worship God acceptably, they quickly find that those who use the entire Bible, all the Word of God, to formulate their beliefs, doctrines and religious practices differ greatly from them in those beliefs and doctrines they hold to be true and in force for believers to keep and observe today.
When anyone argues that the Sabbath is a Jewish holy day, given solely to the Jew and for the Jew to keep, they display a profound ignorance of scripture. The Sabbath was not made for the Jew, but for mankind and was sanctified as such by the Creator at the very beginning of creation – many long centuries before the first Jew was ever born. “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And ON THE SEVENTH DAY God ended His work which He had done, AND HE RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY from all His work which He had done. THEN GOD BLESSED THE SEVENTH DAY AND SANCTIFIED IT, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (See Genesis 2:1-3, New King James Version).
There is no scripture in all the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament, that says God at any time desanctified His holy Sabbath day or removed His blessing from it. NONE! No scripture says that after Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection the seventh day Sabbath became common and ordinary, no longer holy, no longer blessed just another ordinary day of the week. And no scripture calls Sunday, the first day of the week, holy or blessed, or sets it apart from all other days of the week as a day of worship. There are some modern editions of the Bible where the producers of such “Bibles” change the wording of some passages of scripture in the New Testament to make it appear that Sunday indeed did become the “Christian” Sabbath, but anyone who has an interlinear Greek/English New Testament, can compare these texts and see that these modern Bible “translators” have departed from the Greek text and have paraphrased these passages, corrupting the texts. (An interlinear Greek/English New Testament is a New Testament that is written in Greek with the English translation for each and every word printed below each Greek word. I have possessed two such New Testaments, and they are invaluable in discerning just what the New Testament writers actually wrote.)
When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others JEREMIAH (note that well) or one of the prophets.” (See Mathew 16:13-14).
You, who fancy yourselves to be Bible scholars, to YOU I address this question: Why did some think Jesus Christ might be the long dead prophet Jeremiah? After all Jeremiah had walked this earth, performing his ministry over SIX HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUS TO CHRIST’S BIRTH! The Jews of Jesus day and time knew that quite well. Why on earth then would some of them upon hearing and seeing Jesus Christ have the thought pop into their heads, “Hey, that fellow speaks like what is written in the writings of the prophet Jeremiah?!” Jeremiah did no miracles, so it wasn’t their observation of Jesus’ miracle ministry that caused them to think of Jeremiah. NO, IT IS WHAT HE SAID AND TAUGHT!!!! That’s what caused many who HEARD Him to think, “This holy man sounds like Jeremiah,” so much so that some said, “He IS Jeremiah,” evidently come back from the dead! It is understandable why some thought Jesus might actually be Elijah due to a prophecy uttered by the prophet Malachi about four hundred years previously. (See Malachi 4:5).
It is through Jeremiah and Isaiah that your Creator spoke forth His mind quite clearly and dogmatically on how He viewed the Sabbath. The scribes of Jesus’ day, those who really had a keen knowledge of what God had said and revealed to His people through those prophets, when they heard Jesus teach, it is they who said, “It’s Jeremiah!”
Friend, if you value your relationship with your Creator at all, take the time now to turn to the 17th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah and read verses 19 through 27 slowly and carefully. In the 4th verse of the 17th chapter of Jeremiah, God says to Judah, “You have kindled a fire in my anger which shall burn forever!” What had they done that became the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. After all, God had extended His mercy to them time and time again, generation after generation, century after century. What had they done that caused God to finally say, “I am as angry as I can get!!” Now read Jeremiah 17:19-27, and God help you to understand.
Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley