                                         

                            Why God Said Remember
                                 by Joe Crews


        Numerous surveys and questionaires have confirmed that the
        most popular form of modern skepticism is to deny the creation
        story.  Seventy-two percent of ministers interviewed expressed
        varying degrees of doubt that God actually spoke the world
        into existance according to the biblical account.  This fun-
        damental disbelief has led to the rejection of other foundati-
        onal doctrines of Christendom such as the virgin birth and the
        atonement.
       
        It is interesting to note that God apparently anticipated a lot
        of controversy over the Genesis record of fiat creation.  His
        claims of manufacturing all the staggering mass of matter by
        merely commanding it to exist-well,there would certainly be
        doubters and disbelievers of such an account.  And even those
        who read about it and believed it would soon forget the mira-
        culous fact under the confusing influence of a million false
        gods who would arise.
        
       So God needed to do something unusual to perserve the knowledge                                             
       of His mighty act of creation.  That power to speak heaven and
       earth into existence would distinguish Him from all the counter-
       feit gods and their deceptive claims.  What could He do that
       would constantly point mankind back to the focal week of creation
       when He forever established His divine authority.

                     Creation-The Mark of God's Sovereignty

       God chose to memorialize that convincing display of creative power
       by setting aside the seventh day of creation week as a holy day
       of rest and remembering.  It would constitute a tremendous safe-
       guard of God's sovereignty-a mark of His right to rule as the
       only true God.  It would, at the same time, stand as a devastating
       debunking of every god who has not created the heavens and earth.

       The writings of Old Testament prophets are saturated with reminders
       of God's peculiar powers of creation.  David wrote, "For all the
       gods of the nations  are idols: but the Lord made the heavens."
       Psalm 96:5.  Jeremiah expressed it: "But the Lord is the true
       God, he is the living God. ... The gods that have not made the
       heavens and the earth, even they shall perish. ... He hath made
       the earth by his power."  Jermiah 10:10-12.

       Did God Himself demonstrate an extreme urgency in keeping the
       truth of creation vividly before the eyes of the world?  Yes.
       To such a degree that He wrote into the heart of His great moral
       law the binding obligation of every living soul to keep the
       Sabbath holy, and thus, to acknowledge His divine authority.
       Within those eternal principles forming the foundation of His
       government and reflecting His own perfect character, God wrote
       these words:  "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
       Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:  But the seventh
       day is the sabbath of thy Lord thy God:  in it thou shalt not
       do any work. ... For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
       the sea, and all that in them is ... wherefore the Lord blessed
       the sabbath day, and hallowed it."  Exodus 20:8-12

       What an act to highlight the omnipotent work of creation!  Once
       a week, as the earth rotated on its axis, the Sabbath reminder
       would travel around the earth reaching every man, woman, and
       child with a message of an instant creation.  Why did God say
       remember?  Because to forget the Sabbath is to forget the creator
       also.

                        Conversion-Creative Power at Work

       Parallel to the accounts of a physical creation we find the re-
       cord of God's power to recreate the human heart.  Evidently, the
       two processes stem from the same omnipotent source.  It requires
       just as much power to effect conversion or recreation as to call
       something into existence by creation.  Said the apostle, "Put on
       the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true
       holiness. "  Ephesians 4:24 "

       Pointing beyond the mere fact of a physical creation, God spoke
       these words also, "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." Ezekiel 20:12

       Please note that a sanctified Sabbath was to be the mark of a
       sanctified people.  The word, "sanctify," meaning to set aside
       for a holy use (a day which spoke of God's creative power),
       served also as a reminder that God could set people apart for
       a holy use through regeneration or recreation.

       In the light of these facts, it is easy to understand why the
       devil has waged a continuing, desperate battle against the
       seventh-day Sabbath.  For almost six millenniums he has worked
       through pride of tradition, misinformation and relgious bigotry
       to destroy the sanctity of God's special sign of authority-the
       Sabbath.

       As a mark of God's right to rule, the Sabbath challenged Satan's
       boast that he would take God's place.  Said the adversary, " I
       will exalt my throne above the stars of God. ... I will be like
       the most High."  Isaiah 14:13,14.  Satan actually wanted to be
       worshipped.  To accomplish this, he had to nullify God's claim
       as the rightful ruler.  God's authority rested on His claim to
       be the Creator, and the Sabbath was the mark of that authority.
       By destroying the Sabbath, Satan would prepare the way to set
       up a counterfeit government based on counterfeit claims of au-
       thority symbolized by a counterfeit day of worship.

                          The Battle Over Authority

       It is fascinating to look over the ages and see the outworking
       of the great controversy between Christ and Satan.  The contest
       has always focused upon the issue of authority.

       The strategy of the evil one has been a two-pronged attack on
       God's claim to be the creator.  First, by the theory of evolution
       with its humanistic doctrine of natural selection.  Second, by
       an age-long effort to destroy the observance of the seventh-day
       Sabbath, the mark of creative power.

       We can only say in passing that each of these hellish attempts
       to discredit God's authority has produced a bitter success be-
       yond all expectation.  Millions have been turned into religious
       skeptics and agnostics as a result of Darwin's doctrine of or-
       ganic evolution.  Denying any fall of man which would necessi-
       tate a Saviour from sin, evolution struck at the plan of red-
       emption as well as the fact of creation.

       In a similar vein, Satan's attacks on the Sabbath have led
       millions to disobey the one commandment in the Decalogue which
       God has made the specific test of obedience to the entire law.
       A sucessful plan to subvert the loyalty of millions who were
       devoted to the true God required a masterpiece of satanic st-
       rategy.  It would take time.  It would involve centuries of
       deceptive mind-bending.  There would be no dramatic turn from
       serving God to serving Satan.  The secret would be to win
       obedience through religious subterfuge.  Satan understood the
       principle of Romans 6:16 long before Paul ever penned the
       words, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants
       to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?"

       Obedience is the highest form of allegiance and worship.  If
       Satan could create an issue that would cause people to dis-
       obey God, he had an even chance of winning their obedience to
       his cause.  The decisive contest would take place over the law
       of God.  It constituted the foundation of God's government.
       How could Satan destroy confidence in the law and make people
       obey him instead?  And which commandment should he attack?
       Obviously, the one which pointed to God's creative power and
       His right to rule.  As the idendtifying sign of the true God,
       the Sabbath has always been an object of satanic hate.  God
       had chosen the Sabbath as a test of loyalty to His law in the
       Old Testament:  "That I may prove them," said the Lord, "whether
       they will walk in my law, or no."  Exodus 16:4

                          The Test Point of the Law

       Since God had made the Sabbath the test point of all the Ten
       Commandment, Satan determined to make it the giant issue of the
       ages.  By destroying the Sabbath, Satan would be prepared to
       launch his super-plan to claim obedience to a counterfeit day
       of worship.  Manipulating the weakness of a compromised Chri-
       stianty which had slowly acceded to pagan influences, Satan set
       up his masterpiece- a worldwide church-state-which would ruth-
       lessly enforce compliance with his counterfeit system of worship.

       For over a thousand years, beginning with the so-called conve-
       rsion of the pagan Emperor Constantine, the dark history of
       apostasy unfolded.  Almost the first act of the newly-professed
       Christian emperor was the make a law against Sabbath-keeping and
       to institute other laws requiring rest on the first day of the
       week, a wild solar holiday dedicated to pagan sun worship.

       We will not dwell, at present, upon the well-documented history
       of the papal church councils which enforced the observance of
       the pagan Sunday on pain of death.  The facts are well-known
       to those who have been willing to search the records with an
       open mind.  During the fouth and fifth centuries, the first
       day of the week was exalted by papal decree to displace the
       true Sabbath of the Bible.

       Unfortunately, prejudices and false information have led thou-
       sands of Christians to close their eyes to the overwhelming
       historical evidences of this substitution.  The roots of their
       prejudice are not hard to identify.  Satan has worked too long
       on his opposition systen to allow it to be rejected easily.
       Through the ages he has perfected a series of subtle false
       arguements to bolster obedience to his counterfeit day of wor-
       ship.  He still hates the Sabbath which identifies the true
       God.

       Only as we expose these attacks on the seventh-day Sabbath will
       we be able to understand why millions continue to observe the
       first day of the week, a day for which there is not a single
       supporting Bible text.  No one disagrees with the meaning of
       God's handwritten law, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the
       Lord ... in it thou shalt not do any work."  Yet millions do not
       obey it.  No one can refute the overwhelming evidence of Sunday's
       pagan origin, yet millions keep it instead of the plainly comm-
       anded Sabbath of the Ten Commandments.  Why?  I repeat, the reason
       is rooted in the clever arguements of Satan which have created
       a climate of prejudice against the holy Sabbath of the Lord.
       We shall now examine some of the major fallices of those arg-
       uments.

                    The Sabbath Was Made Only for the Jews

       This falsehood has gained such strength that multitudes of Chris-
       tians refer to it as the "Jewish Sabbath."  but nowhere do we
       find such an expression in the Bible.  It is called "the sabbath
       of the Lord," but never "the Sabbath of the Jews."  Exodus 20:10
       Luke was a Gentile writer of the New Testament and often made
       reference to things which were particuliarly Jewish.  He spoke
       of the "nation of the Jews," "the people of the Jews," "the
       land of the Jews," and the "synagogue of the the Jews." Acts 10:22;
       12:11; 10:39; 14:1.  But please note that  Luke never referred
       to the "sabbath of the Jews," although he mentioned the Sabbath
       repeatedly.

       Christ clearly taught that "the sabbath was made for man." Mark
       2:27.  The fact is that Adam was the only man in existence at the
       time God made the Sabbath.  There were no Jews in the world for at
       least 2,000 years after creation.  It could never have been created
       for them.  Jesus used the term "man" in the "generic" sense, re-
       ferring to mankind.  The same word is used in connection with the
       institution of marriage which was also introduced at creation.
       Woman was made for man just as the Sabbath was made for man.  Cer-
       tainly no one believes that marriage was made only for the Jews.

       The fact is that two beautiful, original institutions were set up
       by God Himself before sin ever came into the world-marriage and
       the Sabbath.  Both were made for man, both received the special
       blessing of the Creator and both continue to be just as holy now
       as when they were sanctified in the Garden of Eden.

       It is also interesting to note that Jesus was the One who made the
       Sabbath in the first week of time.  There was a reason for His
       claim to be Lord of the Sabbath day (Mark 2:28).  If He is the
       Lord of the Sabbath day, then the Sabbath must be the Lord's
       day.  John had a vision on "the Lord's day," according to Rev-
       alation 1:10.  That day had to be the Sabbath.  It is the only
       day so designated and claimed by God in the Bible.  In writing
       the Ten Commandments, God called it "the sabbath of the Lord."
       Exodus 20:10.  In Isaiah He is quoted as saying, "The sabbath,
       my holy day."

       But we must not overlook the fact that this God who created the
       world and made the Sabbath was Jesus Christ Himself.  John
       wrote:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
       God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with
       God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any
       thing made. ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
       (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
       the Father), full of grace and truth."  John 1:1-3, 14.

       Paul clearly identified Jesus as the Creator, "... his dear Son:
       In whom we have redemption through his blood. ... For by him
       were all things created."  Colossians 1:13-16.

       For Christians to separate Jesus from the Sabbath is a tragic
       mistake.  For He is the Author, the Maker, the Sanctifier, and
       the Architect of the Sabbath.  To discount the blessing which
       He placed on that day is to deny His Authority.

       This argument has led many to believe that the Sabbath existed
       only for a limited period of time following creation.  But is
       this a fact?  Actually, the Sabbath could never be just a type
       or shadow of anything, for the simple reason that it was made
       before sin entered the human family.  Certain shadows and typical
       observances were instituted as a result of sin and pointed fo-
       ward to the deliverance from sin.  Such were the sacrifices em-
       ployed to symbolize the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God. There
       would have been no animal sacrifices had there been no sin.
       These offerings were abolished when Christ died on the cross,
       because the types had met their fulfillment (Matthew 27:14-16).
       But no shadow existed before sin entered this world; therefore,
       the Sabbath could not be included in the ceremonial law types
       and shadows.

       Paul referred to the temporary system of ordinances in Colossians
       2:14-16 as being "against us" and "contrary to us."  He tied it
       to the meat offerings, drink offerings, and yearly festivals
       of the law that was "blotted out."  It is true he referred to
       sabbaths also in the text, but take careful note that he called
       them "sabbath days which are a shadow of things to come."  Were
       some sabbath days blotted out at the cross?  Yes, there were at
       least four yearly sabbaths which came on on certain set days of
       the month, and they were nailed to the cross.  They were shadows
       and required specified meat and drink offerings.  All of these
       annual sabbaths are described in Leviticus 23:24-36, and then
       summarized in verses 37 and 38:  "These are the feasts of the
       Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer
       an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and
       a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing
       upon his day:  BESIDE THE SABBATHS OF THE LORD."

       The scripture plainly differentiates between the annual, shadowy
       sabbaths and the weekly "sabbaths of the Lord."  The ceremonial
       sabbaths were blotted out at the cross; they had been added as
       a consequence of sin. But the Sabbath of the Ten-Commandment
       law had been hallowed before sin was introduced and was later
       incorporated into the great moral law written by the finger
       of God.  It was eternal in its very nature.


                        Just Keep Any Day in the Seven
                                                        
       By this argument Satan prepared the world to accept a substitute
       in place of the Sabbath God had commanded.  Upon the tables of
       stone God wrote the great, unchanging law of the ages.  Every
       word was serious and meaningful.  Not one line was ambiguous or
       mysterious.  Sinners and Christians, educated and uneducated,
       have no problem understanding the simple, clear words of the
       Ten Commandments.  God meant what He said and He said what He
       meant.  No one has tried to void that law as too complicated to
       comprehend.

       Most of the ten begin with the same words:  "Thou shalt not,"
       but right in the heart of the law we find the fourth commandment
       which is introduced with the word, "Remember."  Why is this one
       different?  Because God was commanding them to call something to
       memory which already existed but had been forgotten.  Genesis
       describes the origin of the Sabbath in these words, "Thus the
       heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
       And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made. ...
       And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that
       in it he had rested from all his work which God created and
       made. " Genesis 2:1-3"

       Which day did God bless and sanctify?  The seventh day.  How
       was it to be kept holy?  By resting.  Could any of the other
       six be kept holy?  No. Why?  Because God commanded not to rest
       those days but to work.  Does God's blessing make a difference?
       Of course.  This is why parents pray for God to bless their ch-
       ildren.  They believe it makes a difference.  The seventh day is
       different from all the other six days, because it has God's
       blessing.

       Some more questions:  Why did God bless the day?  Because He
       had created the world in six days.  It was the birthday of the
       world, a memorial of a mighty act.  Can the Sabbath memorial
       be changed?  Never.  Because it points backward to an accomp-
       lished fact.  July 4 is Independence Day.  Can it be changed?
       No.  Because the Declaration of Independence was signed on July
       4, 1776.  Your birthday cannot be changed, either.  It is a
       memorial to your birth, which happened on a set day.  History
       would have to run through again to change your bithday, to
       change Independence Day, or to change the Sabbath day.  We can
       call another the Sabbath, but that does not make it so.

       Did God ever give man the privilege of choosing his own day
       of rest?  He did not.  In fact, God confirmed in the Bible
       that the Sabbath was settled and sealed by His own divine se-
       lection and should not be tampered with.  Read Exodus 16 con-
       cerning the giving of manna.  For 40 years God worked three
       miracles every week to show Israel which day was holy.  (1)
       No manna fell on the seventh day.  (2) They could not keep it
       without spoilage, but (3) when they kept it over the Sabbath,
       it remained sweet and fresh.

       But some Israelites had the same idea as many modern Christians.
       They felt that any day in seven would be alright to keep holy:
       "And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people
       on the the seventh day to gather, and they found none.  And
       the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my comm-
       andments and my laws?" Exodus 16:27,28.

       Get the picture?  These people thought another day could be                           
       kept just as well as the seventh day.  Perhaps they were pla-
       nning to observe the first day of the week, or some other
       day which was more convenient.  What happened?  God met them
       and accused them of breaking His law by going forth to work on
       the seventh day.  Would God say the same thing to those who
       break the Sabbath today?  Yes.  He is the same yesterday,
       today and forever--He changes not.  God made it very clear
       that, regardless of their feelings, those who go forth to
       work on the Sabbath are guilty of breaking His law.  James
       explains that it is a sin to break even one of the Ten Comm-
       andments:  "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet
       offend in one point, he is guilty of all.  For he that said,
       Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill.  Now if thou
       commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a trans-
       gressor of the law."  James 2:10,11.

                            
                             We Can't Locate
                          the True Seventh Day

       This is a fallacy that has comforted many in their disobedience
       of the forth commandment.  It is just not true.  Here are four
       positive proofs which identify the true Sabbath today:

       1.  According to the Scriptures, Christ died on Friday and rose
       on Sunday, the first day of the week.  Practically all churches
       acknowledge this fact by observing Easter Sunday and Good
       Friday.  Here is the Bible evidence:  "This man went unto Pilate,
       and begged the body of Jesus.  And he took it down, and wrapped
       it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone,
       wherein never man before was laid.  And that day was the prep-
       aration, and the sabbath drew on."  Luke 23:52-54.
       Here is proof that Jesus died the day before the Sabbath.  It
       was called the "preparation day" because it was time to get
       ready for the Sabbath.  Let us read the next verses:  "And the
       women also, which came from Galilee, followed after, and beheld
       the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.  And they returned,
       and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day
       according to the commandment."  Verses 55, 56.
       Please notice that the women rested over the Sabbath "according
       to the commandment."  The commandment says, "The seventh day is
       the Sabbath" so we know they were observing Saturday.  But the
       very next verse says "Now upon the first day of the week, very
       early in the morning, they came into the sepulchre, bringing the
       spices which they had prepared. ... And they found the stone
       rolled away from the sepulchre."  Luke 24:1, 2.
       How clearly these three days are described for us.  He died Friday,
       the preparation day, commonly  called Good Friday.  He rested in
       the tomb on the seventh day, Sabbath, "according to the comm-
       andment. "  That was Saturday.  Then on Sunday, the first day of"
       the week, Easter Sunday to many, Jesus rose from the grave.
       Anyone who can locate Good Friday or Easter Sunday will have
       absolutely no difficulty finding the true Sabbath.

       2.  The calendar has not been changed so as to confuse the days
       of the week.  We can be positive that our seventh day is the
       same day Jesus observed when He was here.  Pope Gregory XIII
       did make a calendar change in 1582, but it did not interfere
       with the weekly cycle.  Our present Gregorian calendar was
       named after him when he made that small change in 1582.

       What did Pope Gregory do to the calendar?  Before 1582 the
       Julian calendar had been in effect, instituted by Julius
       Ceasar about 46 B.C. and named after him.  But the Julian ca-
       lendar had calulated the length of the year as 365 1/4 days,
       and the year is actually eleven minutes less than 365 1/4
       days.  Those eleven minutes accumulated, and by 1582 the num-
       bering of the calendar was ten days out of harmony with the
       solar system.  Gregory simply dropped those ten days out of
       the numbering of the calendar.  It was Thursday, October 4,
       1582, and the next day, Friday, should have been October 5.
       But Gregory simply made it October 15 instead, dropping ex-
       actly ten days to bring the calendar back in harmony with
       the heavenly bodies.  Were the days of the week confused?
       No.  Friday still followed Thursday, and Saturday still fol-
       lowed Friday.  The same seventh day remained, and the weekly
       cycle was not disturbed in the least.  When we keep the sev-
       enth day on Saturday, we are observing the same day Jesus kept,
       and He did it every week according to Luke 4:16.

       3.  The third evidence for the true Sabbath is the most con-
       clusive of all.  The Jewish people have been observing the
       seventh day from the time of Abraham, and they still keep it
       today.  Here is a whole nation-millions of individuals-who
       have been counting off time meticulously, week after week,
       calendar or no calendar, for thousands of years.  Could they
       have lost track?  Impossible.  The only way they could have
       lost a day would have been for the entire nation to have slept
       over for an extra 24 hours and for no one ever to tell them
       about afterwards.

       There has been no change or loss of the Sabbath since God made
       it in Genesis.  The origin of the week is found in the creation
       story.  There is no scientific or astronomical reason for mea-
       suring time in cycles of seven days.  It is an arbitrary arra-
       ngement of God and has been miraculously preserved for one
       reason-because the holy Sabbath day points to the creative
       power of the only true God.  It is a sign of His Sovereignty
       over the world and over human life; a sign of creation and
       redemption.

       Is this not the reason God will preserve Sabbathkeeping thr-
       oughout eternity?  We read in Isaiah 66:22, 23:  "For as the
       new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, saith the
       Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.  And it shall
       come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one
       sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me,
       saith the Lord."

       The Sabbath is so precious to God that He will have His people
       observe it throughout all time to come in the beautiful new
       earth. If it is so precious to Him, should it not be precious
       to us?  If we are going to keep it then, should we not keep
       it now?

       In an age of false gods, of atheistic evolution, and traditions
       of men, the world needs the Sabbath more than ever as a test of
       our loyalty to the great Creator-God and a sign of our sanct-
       ification through His power.

       4.  Proof number four lies in the fact that over one hundred
       languages of the earth use the word "Sabbath" for Saturday.
       For example, the Spanish word for Saturday is "Sabado," meaning
       Sabbath.  What does this prove?  It proves that when those hun-
       dred languages originated in the long, long ago, Saturday was
       recoginized as the Sabbath day and was incorporated into the
       very name of the day.


                         The Sabbath Was Only a Memorial
                           of Deliverance Out of Egypt


       
       This strange idea is drawn from a single text in the Old Testa-
       ment and is disstorted to contradict many clear statements about
       the true origin of the Sabbath.  The text is found in Deuteronomy
       5:14, 15:  "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy
       God:  in it thou shalt not do any work, nor thy manservant, nor
       thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy
       cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-
       servant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.  And re-
       member that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that
       the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand
       and by a streched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded
       thee to keep the sabbath day."

       Some people draw from this text that God gave the Sabbath as a
       memorial of the Exodus from Egypt.  But the Genesis story of
       the making of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3) and the wording of
       the fourth commandment by God Himself (Exodus 20:11) reveals
       the Sabbath as a memorial of creation.

       The key to understanding these two verses rests in the word
       "servant."  God said, "Remember that thou wast a servant in
       the land of Egypt."  And in the sentence before this one He
       reminds them "that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest
       as well as thou."  In other words, their experience in Egypt
       as servants would remind them to deal justly with their se-
       rvants by giving them Sabbath rest.

       In similar vein God had commanded, "And if a stranger sojourn
       with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him ... for ye were
       strangers in the land of Egypt."  Leviticus 19:33, 34.

       It was not unusual for God to hark back to the Egyptian del-
       verance as an incentive to obey other commandments.  In Deu-
       teronomy 24:17, 18, God said, "Thou shalt not pervert the
       judgement of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; not take a
       widow's raiment to pledge. ... Thou wast a bondman in Egypt,
       and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence:  therefore I
       commanded thee to do this thing."

       Neither the command to be just nor to keep the Sabbath was
       given to memorialize the Exodus, but God told them that His
       goodness in bringing them out of captivity constituted a
       strong additional reason for their dealing kindly with their
       servants on the Sabbath and treating justly the strangers
       and widows.

       In the same way, God spoke to them in Leviticus 11:45, "For
       I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt. ...
       ye shall therefore be holy."  Surely no one would insist that
       holiness did not exist before the Exodus, or that it would
       be afterwards limited only to the Jews, to memorialize their
       deliverance.

                             Keep Sunday in Honor
                              of the Resurection

       It is true that Jesus rose on the first day of the week, but
       nowhere is there the slightest intimation in the Bible for
       anyone to keep that day holy.  The basis for Sabbathkeeping
       is the direct handwritten command of God.

       Many wonderful events occurred on certain days of the week, but
       we have no command to keep them holy.  Jesus died for our sins
       on Friday.  That is probably the most significant event in all
       of recorded history. It marks the moment my death sentence was
       commuted and my salvation assured.  But not one Bible text hints
       that we should observe this day of such great significance.

       It was a dramatic moment when Jesus rose from the grave on that
       Sunday morning, but there is not a scintilla of biblical evi-
       dence that we should observe it in honor of the resurrection.

       Not one instance of Sunday observance has been found in the
       recorded Scriptures.

       There is, of course, a memorial of the resurrection commanded
       in the Bible, but it is not Sundaykeeping.  Paul wrote:  "There-
       fore we are buried with him by baptism into death:  that like
       as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,
       even so we also should walk in newness of life."  Romans 6:4.

       Baptism is the memorial of Christ's death, burial and ressur-
       ection.  Those who believe that Sunday observance honors His
       ressurection cite the upper room meeting of the disciples on
       the same day He arose from the grave.  To them that gathering
       was to celebrate His resurrection.  But when we read the
       Bible record of the event, we discover that the circumstances
       were quite different.  Luke tells us that, even though the
       diciples were confronted with the eyewitness story of Mary
       Magdalene, they "believed not,"  "After that he appeared in
       another form unto two of them, as they walked into the
       country.  And they went and told it unto the residue:  neither
       believed they them.  Afterward he appeared unto the eleven
       as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief
       and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had
       seen him after he was risen."  Mark 16:12-14.

       Obviously, none of those upper room disciples believed that He
       was raised, so they could not have been joyously celebrating
       the resurrection.  John explains their reason for being to-
       gether in these words:  "The doors were shut where the dis-
       ciples were assembled FOR FEAR OF THE JEWS."  John 20:19.

       Thus, we have examined the major arguements used against the
       observance of God's holy Sabbath day. Not one of the objections
       provides a scintilla of evidence that God ever changed His
       mind about the Sabbath.  When He wrote the word "remember"
       into the fourth commandment, it was in reference to the same
       seventh day that appears on our wall calendar.  Neither men
       not demons can diminish the validity of that eternal moral
       law.

       May God grant each one of us the courage to honor the Sabbath
       commandment AS heaven's special test of our love and loyalty.
       As we have discovered, when Jesus returns, we will keep that
       same Sabbath with Him, ages without end.  Even so, come Lord
       Jesus.

                                                  Copyright 1980 by
                                                  Joe Crews
                                                  All Rights Reserved

                                                  Published by:
                                                  Amazing Facts, Inc.
                                                  P.O. Box 680
                                                  Fredrick, MD. 21701

