"LET THERE BE LIGHT" Ministries
THE DAY OF WORSHIP GOD HAS CHOSEN, part 6 quotes
1) Anciently the day of worship became a sign or a mark between the followers of God and the followers of other gods, and this fact continues to this day.
“Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I [am] the LORD that sanctify them....And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I [am] the LORD your God.” Ezekiel 20:12, 20.
2) Another major reason people use against keeping God’s seventh-day Sabbath day holy is:
Since the Bible declares that a day with the Lord is “as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8), then each day of creation did not occur within a literal 24 hour period, but over 7 consecutive 1000 year periods. This would then mean that God’s Sabbath day today is not a literal 24 hour period which is to be kept holy on the seventh day or Saturday of each week, because God’s true Sabbath represents the 7th millennium on the earth.
On the first day of creation it was declared that “the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5). The second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth creation days also had the same “evening and morning” cycles. The seventh day in this creation week was also called a “day”. The Hebrew word for “day” for this seventh day Sabbath is word #3117 in the Strong’s Exhaustive Hebrew Concordance, and it translates and means “from one sunset to the next”. This means that the word “day” used here is referring to a 24 hour period covering the beginning of the night time – or in the evening, as well as the beginning of the day time – or in the morning. Therefore the seventh day or the Sabbath could not have been over a 1000 year period. Science also disproves this particular belief.
On the third day of creation, God divided the waters from each other, then brought forth dry land, and then God commanded that “grass, and herb yielding seed...and the tree yielding fruit” be brought forth upon this barren landscape, “and it was so” (Genesis 1:11). All kinds of trees, bushes, vines, grasses and other living plants were created fully mature and covered all the dry land of the earth on this third day. Science has proven that all these living plants specifically breathes in and lives on carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then gives off oxygen as a by-product of their cellular functioning. But that’s not all that these plants need to live on.
On the fourth day, God spoke into existence the moon, the sun, and all the other stars to fill the expanse of space in our particular small portion of residence in the vast universe. God then made the greater light of the sun to “rule the day” (Genesis 1:16) of this earth for 12 hours (John 11:9), and the lesser light of the moon and the stars “to rule the night” (Genesis 1:16) of this earth for another 12 hours. These greater and lesser lights worked to further “divide the day from the night” and “the light from the darkness”, as well as being “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14, 18). These heavenly bodies ruled over their 12 hour portion of the day and the night, which reinforced the fact that each complete day was only 24 hours in length, and not an extended period of time – including 1000 years.
Science has proven that all the trees, grasses and plants require sunlight in order to photosynthesize and continue their cellular functions, and they would quickly die away if this sunlight was deprived for any extended length of time. This means that if each day of creation was indeed a thousand years of literal time, then the living plants on this earth which were all created on the third day would have long since completely died away before the sun was finally created on the fourth day!
3) Where did this teaching and belief - that we no longer need to keep holy the seventh-day of each week as the Sabbath of God because the 7th day of creation covered 1000 years - first originate from?
Hippolytus of Rome (about 200 A.D.)
“And 6,000 years must needs be accomplished, in order that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day "on which God rested from all His works." For the Sabbath is the type and emblem of the future kingdom of the saints, when they "shall reign with Christ," when He comes from heaven, as John says in his Apocalypse: for "a day with the Lord is as a thousand years." Since, then, in six days God made all things, it follows that 6,000 years must be fulfilled.” Hippolytus, in Fragments from the Scriptural Commentaries of Hippolytus, On Daniel, Second fragment - Of the visions, #4, From Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0502.htm, accessed 1-14-21.
St. Victorinus (about 270 A.D.)
“Wherefore to those seven days the Lord attributed to each a thousand years; for thus went the warning: "In Thine eyes, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day." Therefore in the eyes of the Lord each thousand of years is ordained, for I find that the Lord's eyes are seven. Wherefore, as I have narrated, that true Sabbath will be in the seventh millenary of years, when Christ with His elect shall reign.” St. Victorinus of Pettau, On The Creation of the World, in Early Church Fathers, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VII, at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.vi.i.html, accessed 1-14-21.
Even though the belief that each day of creation took 1000 years each to complete is not explicitly taught in the writings of these above Catholic authors, yet the idea that the true seventh day Sabbath of God represents the 7th 1000 year cycle is clearly taught. It was from this foundation that the teaching and belief that God’s followers do not need to keep holy only the seventh day of every week as a Sabbath of God because the true Sabbath day is a 1000 year period, was later based upon. This shows that the foundation for this belief is not modern at all, because it has been around since the third century A.D. And that this belief is not found written in the Bible at all, or even backed by science, but was first found based upon the writings of Catholic church fathers. Thus this belief is not a doctrine of God taught in the Bible, but is Catholic in origin.
This then means that when any Protestant or non-Catholic believer uses the argument that God’s true seventh-day Sabbath is not a 24 hour period to be kept holy each Saturday because the Sabbath represents a 1000 year period, they are forced to rely upon the foundational teachings of Catholicism and not the truth of God’s holy Scriptures in order to do so!
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