Jesus is coming. . .soon! Are you ready?

1. Jesus is coming. . .soon! Are you ready?

2. Is the first-day the valid day of worship for Christians?

3. Bible “Evidence”? “But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them [the Gentiles], and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” Acts 15:5

4. Bible “Evidence”? “Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: but that we write unto them . . .”

5. Bible “Evidence”? “. . . that they abstain from [1]pollutions of idols, and from [2]fornication, and from [3]things strangled, and from [4]blood.” Acts 15:19, 20

6. Bible “Evidence”? “Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” Acts 15:10

7. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? What makes a law “ceremonial”?

8. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? Ceremonial laws had to do with the “conception of sin as uncleanness, rendering the sinner therefore unfit for the presence of God.”

9. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? They were laws intended to “lead to a true conception of repentance, as including both the seeking of atonement through sacrifice and restitution for a wrong that was committed.” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

10. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? “The change from the seventh to the first day was authorized [in the thirteenth century] by making the Sabbath a Jewish ceremony and the fourth commandment . . .”

11. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? “. . . a ceremonial law. This, however, raised the problem of a ceremonial law in the midst of the moral law.” Daniel Augsburger“The Sabbath and Lord’s Day During the Middle Ages”

12. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? “Sabbath, it was asserted, should lead the Christian to think of Christ’s rest in the tomb, or the moral duty to desist from sin, and of the future blessedness in heaven. The bond with Creation had been totally lost.” Daniel Augsburger“The Sabbath and Lord’s Day During the Middle Ages”

13. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? What makes a law “moral”?

14. Is Sabbath “Ceremonial”? Moral law reveals the will of God as the rule for the disposition and conduct of all responsible beings toward Him and toward each other. Moral law is therefore a rule of living, conformable to righteousness. Webster’s Dictionary (1913 edition)

15. Did the Roman Catholic Church change the official day of worship from Seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday??

16. The Roman Catholic Church A.D.1054

17. Did the Roman Catholic Church change the official day of worship from Seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday??

18. Gospel Opponents • Pharisees • Gnostics • Antinomians

19. Gnostic Roots “Alexandria [was] one of the greatest university cities in the world at the beginning of the Christian Era. Here nearly every religion had its school of learning, and here the teachers and the students of these different faiths . . .”

20. Gnostic Roots “. . .mingled and discussed their philosophies and religious ideas. As a result, they fused their beliefs into a conglomerate mass of opinions that later spread throughout the Christian church.” W.E. StrawOrigin of Sunday Observance, p. 39 (1939)

21. Gnostic Roots “In general it may be said that Gnosticism led the way in the amalgamation of Christian and pagan thought and life that was to transform the religion of Christ and His apostles into the Christianity of the third and following centuries.” Albert Henry NewmanA Manual of Church History, vol. I, p. 194 (1906)

22. Gnostic Roots Gnosticism = “the thought and practice especially of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis (knowing)”

23. Gnostic Roots Early influential “Christian” teachers: • Justin Martyr (A.D. c. 103 – 165) • Clement of Alexandria (c.150 – c. 215 ) • Irenaeus (2nd century AD – c. 202 ) • Origen (c. 185 – 254 ) • Augustine (was a Manichean; A.D. 354 – 430)

24. Gnostic Philosophy Gnosticism didn’t completely reject the OT teachings, but reshaped and altered those teachings to their own purposes, mixing their pagan mystical ideas with the truth of the Bible.

25. Gnostic Philosophy Dualism – • Views the physical world as essentially evil • “Good” rests only in the mystical “spirit” realm • “Salvation” comes through escaping the evil power of matter

26. Gnostic Philosophy • Docetism – • A belief in early Gnostic Christianity that Christ only seemed to have a human body and to suffer and die on the cross; Christ’s humanity was thus a mystical manifestation of “spirit”

27. Gnostic Philosophy • Antinomianism– • It made no difference to the “spiritual man” whether he sinned with his body or not; breaking of the moral law to show freedom from the restrains of the Creator was considered a solemn obligation

28. Gnostic Philosophy “The Nicolaitans distorted in an antinomian sense the doctrine taught by Nicolaus, who in all probability proclaimed the liberty of the gospel, as his fellow-deacon, Stephen, did. But the liberty claimed by the Nicolaitans was liberty to sin.” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

29. Countering Gnosticism “In the First Epistle of John there is a distinct polemical purpose. There is no book of the New Testament which is more purposeful in its attack of error. There is ‘the spirit of error’ (1 John 4:6), opposing the Spirit of truth. . . .”

30. Countering Gnosticism “ ‘Many false prophets are gone out into the world’ (1 John 4:1), and this from the church itself, ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us’ (1 John 2:19); and these false prophets are distinctly named ‘the antichrist’ (1 John 2:22) . . .”

31. Countering Gnosticism “. . . and ‘the liar’ (same place), and ‘the deceiver and the antichrist’ (2 John 1:7). This peril, against which the apostle writes, and from which he seeks to defend the church, was Gnosticism.” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

32. Countering Gnosticism “John refers to his opponents’ [the Gnostics] use of such phrases as ‘I know God,’ ‘I abide in Christ,’ ‘I am in the light.’ The apostle therefore describes these lofty claims as false, because those who made them possessed neither love nor obedience.” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

33. Two Systems “The situation in Rome and Alexandria, however, was not typical of the rest of early Christianity. In these two cities there was an evident early attempt by Christians to terminate observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. . .”

34. Two Systems “. . . But elsewhere throughout the Christian world Sunday observance simply arose alongside observance of Saturday. . . .The earliest direct evidence for Christian weekly worship on Sunday comes from second century Alexandria and Rome.” Kenneth A. Strand“The Sabbath and Sunday From the Second Through Fifth Centuries”

35. Two Systems “During the first two centuries there developed two separate and distinct types of Christian worship. The one in Syria and Asia Minor held to the old orthodox ways of life, and adhered to the Sabbath and primitive Christianity. . .”

36. Two Systems “. . .The other from Alexandria and Egypt allowed many Gnostic and foreign sentiments to enter, and with them Sunday worship and other foreign practices unknown in the apostolic church and opposed by the early apostles.” W.E. StrawOrigin of Sunday Observance, p. 75 (1939)

37. Gnostic Influence “Their matter-despising dualism always implied an alteration of the Biblical doctrines of man, of Christ, and especially of creation. As a consequence, in these Gnostic circles [of influence]. . .”

38. Gnostic Influence “. . . honoring the seventh-day of creation week became not merely an option that might be dispensed with in the spirit of Christian ‘freedom’ (as often held today), but one [obligation] that must necessarily be set aside. . . .”

39. Gnostic Influence “. . .The seventh-day Sabbath was for them a celebration of the despised material world, created by inferior and fallen powers.” Aecio E. Carius;“Gnostic Roots of Sunday-Keeping”

40. Gnostic Influence For the Gnostic Christian “the act of the highest God” was demonstrated in the production of light. “Light signified, for all Gnostic and related systems the essential nature of the true God.”

41. Gnostic Influence “Matter is the opaque substance that plunges the world into darkness as earth is interposed in front of the sun at dusk.” Aecio E. Carius;“Gnostic Roots of Sunday-Keeping”

42. Gnostic Influence To observe the seventh-day Sabbath was for these Gnostics a burden to be avoided because to them it was paying tribute to the fallen supernatural powers of the universe who were responsible for the creation of evil matter.

43. Gnostic Influence “They celebrated the Sunday of every week, not on account of its reference to the resurrection of Christ, for that would have been inconsistent with their Docetism, but as the day consecrated to the sun, which was in fact their Christ.” General History of the Christian Religion and ChurchAugust Neander, p. 194 (1851)

44. Gnostic Influence “The Gnostics believed that seven angel-creators – corresponding to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon – made our world.” Sabbath and Sunday in Early ChristianityRobert L. Odom, p. 96 (1977)

45. Gnostic Influence The earliest known rationale for Sunday worship appears in the writing of Justin Martyr. His “rationale is grounded, not in the first place on acommemoration of the Resurrection, but on a celebration of God’s creation of light . . .”

46. Gnostic Influence “. . .‘Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world.’ (First Apology, 67).” Aecio E. Carius;“Gnostic Roots of Sunday-Keeping”

47. Gnostic Influence Gospel of Barnabas 15:9 states “We keep the eighth day with gladness, on which Jesus arose from the dead.” Translated by J.B. Lightfoot

48. Legacy of Paganism?

49. Origins of Weekday Names

50. Origins of Weekday Names “This particular astrological system therefore owed its origin to four distinct nationalities. The conception of the influence of the planets was Babylonian; the mathematical working out of the order of the planets was exclusively Greek. . .”