7 Facts About the Seventh Day

Adapted from Why God Said Remember by Joe Crews.

Part of Satan’s strategy to destroy humanity’s trust in God has been to attack His claim as the Creator. Obviously, the theory of evolution is part of this deceptive and soul-destroying effort. With its amoral humanistic emphasis, Darwin’s doctrine has turned millions into religious skeptics and enshrouded in darkness their need for the Savior.

Yet while many Christians rightly denounce this unscientific belief, ironically, many are still falling into the devil’s trap of denying God’s sovereignty over the earth. That trap is the ages-long effort to twist and destroy the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath.

Through Satan’s false information and man’s trust in traditions over the sure word of Scripture, millions of Christians have been led to discount or even reject the importance of observing the Sabbath. “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord: … in it thou shalt not do any work” (Exodus 20:10).  No one disagrees with the clear meaning of this text, yet millions are finding ways not to follow it.

Why? The general Bible ignorance of the church and the clever arguments of Satan have created a climate of prejudice against the holiness of the seventh day in favor of the observance of Sunday. So in the interest of promoting God’s law over the theories of men, let’s take a moment to rediscover some amazing facts about the seventh-day Sabbath.

Fact #1: The Seventh-day Sabbath Establishes God’s Sovereignty
Why does Satan hate the Sabbath so much? Because the Sabbath identifies the true God and His claim of ultimate sovereignty.

God certainly anticipated the controversy over the Genesis account of Creation. He knew that after the fall of man, there would be doubts about His claims of manufacturing all the staggering mass of matter by merely commanding it to exist.

To safeguard His sovereignty, He established a mark that denoted His absolute right to rule as Lord. He chose to memorialize His display of creative power by setting aside the seventh day of the Creation week as a holy day of rest and remembering.

God wrote these words: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the 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 20:8–11).

Once a week, as the earth rotates on its axis, the Sabbath reminder travels around the earth reaching every man, woman, and child with the message of an instant creation and the one who did the creating.

Why did God say remember? Because to forget the true Sabbath is to forget the true Creator.

Does it really matter that much? See “The One Unimportant Commandment?” below.

Fact #2: The Seventh-day Sabbath Was Made for Everyone
A multitude of Christians call God’s fourth commandment the “Jewish Sabbath.” But nowhere is this expression found in the Bible. The seventh day is called “the sabbath of the Lord,” and it is never called “the sabbath of the Jew” (Exodus 20:10).

Luke, a Gentile writer of the New Testament, often refers to things that were particularly Jewish. He writes of the “nation of the Jews,” “the people of the Jews,” “the land of the Jews,” and the “synagogue of the Jews” (Acts 10:22; 12:11; 10:39; 14:1). But he never refers to the “sabbath of the Jews,” although he mentions the Sabbath repeatedly.

Christ also taught that “the sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27). Adam and Eve were the only two people who existed when God actually established the Sabbath. There were no Jews in the world until 2,000 years later, so it was never meant just for the Jews. Jesus uses the term “man” in the generic sense, referring to all mankind. The same word is used in connection with the institution of marriage that was also introduced at creation. Certainly no Christian can believe that marriage was made only for the Jews.

Fact #3: It’s Not About Just Keeping Any Day
Every word of God’s Ten Commandments was written by His own hand in stone. Every word is serious and meaningful. No line in them is ambiguous or mysterious. Sinners and Christians, educated and uneducated, are not confused about the words “seventh day.” So why do they discount those words if every other word in the commandments is considered to be ironclad?

Satan wants the world to accept Sunday as the day he has chosen for worship, but any day will do for him so long as it means we’re breaking God’s command.

Genesis describes the origin of the Sabbath like this: “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. Parents pray for God to bless their children because they believe it makes a difference. The seventh day is different from all the other days because it has God’s blessing.

Has God ever given man the privilege of choosing his own day of rest? No. In fact, God confirms in the Bible that the Sabbath is a matter settled and sealed by His own divine power. Read Exodus 16. 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 manna overnight without spoilage; (3) but when they kept manna over the Sabbath, it remained sweet and fresh!

But some Israelites had the same idea as many Christians have today. They felt that any day in seven would be okay to keep holy: “It came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.” What happened? “And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?” (Exodus 16:27, 28).

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 (Hebrews 13:8).

But why the seventh day, exactly? See “Why the Seventh Day?” below.

Fact #4: We Know the True Seventh Day
Some reject the seventh-day Sabbath over the belief that we cannot know which day it falls on today, so picking any day should be okay. But this is fallacy. Here are four proofs that identify the true Sabbath.

1: According to Scripture, Christ died on Friday and rose on Sunday, the first day of the week. Practically all churches acknowledge this by observing Easter Sunday and Good Friday. “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 preparation, and the sabbath drew on. The women also, which came with him 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” (Luke 23:52–56).

This is clear evidence that Jesus died the day before the Sabbath! The day of His death was a “preparation day” because it was the time to get ready for the Sabbath. Notice, then, 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 resting on Saturday. The very next verse says, “Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared. … And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre” (Luke 24:1, 2).

2: The calendar has not been changed so as to confuse the days of the week. Just as we know that Jesus and His followers observed the same day as Moses, we can be positive that our seventh day is the same day Jesus observed. Pope Gregory XIII did make a calendar change in 1582, but it did not interfere with the weekly cycle. What did Gregory do to the calendar? He changed Friday, October 5, 1582, to be Friday, October 15, 1582. He did not affect the weekly cycle of days.

3: The Jews have observed the seventh day from the time of Abraham, and they still keep it today. An entire nation of people, all around the world, continue to observe a Sabbath they have known for more than 4,000 years.

4: Over 100 languages on 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 languages originated long ago, Saturday was recognized as the Sabbath day and was incorporated into the very name of the day.

Fact #5: The Sabbath Is Not a Memorial of Deliverance Out of Egypt
This is a belief taken and twisted out of the Old Testament: “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 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 manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember 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 stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:14, 15).

Some people suggest this means 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 (Exodus 20:11) reveals the seventh-day 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, 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 servants by giving them Sabbath rest.

It was not unusual for God to harken back to the Egyptian deliverance as an incentive to obey other commandments. In Deuteronomy 24:17, 18, the Bible says, “Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge. … Thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command 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 reason for them to deal 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, “I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt … ye shall therefore be holy.” No one would insist that holiness did not exist before the Exodus or that it would be ever afterwards limited only to the Jews!

Fact #6: The Sabbath Is Not Meant to Memorialize the Resurrection
It is true that Jesus rose on a Sunday. It is one of the pivotal moments in the history of the world.

But nowhere does the Bible hint that we should keep Sunday holy. Many other wonderful events occurred on certain days of the week, but we have no command to keep them holy either.

There is, of course, a memorial of the resurrection commanded in the Bible, but it is not to determine a new day of worship. Paul wrote: “Therefore 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 resurrection. However, the Sabbath is a memorial of creation.

Still have a question about this? See “The Upper Room” below.

Fact #7: The Sabbath Will Be Celebrated for Eternity
The Sabbath is an arbitrary arrangement of God that serves a powerful purpose. It is His claim — His seal — over the world and all human life. It is also a sign of the redemption He offers to every single one of us.

Surely this is why God will preserve Sabbathkeeping throughout eternity. That’s right! “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, 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” (Isaiah 66:22, 23).

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

Trust and Obey: There Is No Other Way
It is easy to understand why the devil has waged a continuing, desperate battle against the seventh-day Sabbath. He has worked through the pride of tradition, misinformation, and religious bigotry to destroy the sanctity of God’s special sign of authority — the Sabbath.

But with these Sabbath facts in hand, may God grant every Christian the courage to honor the Sabbath commandment as His special test of our love and loyalty.

It might be a duty to keep the seventh-day holy. But it should not be a burden. In an age of false gods and spirituality, of atheistic evolution, and the stubborn traditions of men, the world needs the Sabbath more than ever. It is more than just a test of our loyalty to the Creator. It is more than just a sign of our sanctification through His power. It is His promise of a lasting, eternal gift of restoration.

Confusion in the Cemetery

By Pastor Doug Batchelor

An Amazing Fact: In 1876 a handful of mobsters botched a morbid plan to kidnap the body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it ransom. The hapless grave robbers were arrested just a few days later. Fearing another attempt, the government secretly hid the body of the sixteenth president in an unmarked grave for 25 years. Then in 1901, under the urging of Robert Lincoln, the president’s only surviving child, Lincoln’s body was dug up and placed inside a steel cage, lowered into a 10-foot-deep vault, and buried under tons of concrete. He’s still there today, in his tomb, on the grounds of Oak Ridge Cemetery. So do the dead care when their remains are disturbed? There’s no evidence that Abraham Lincoln ever complained about all the odd grave shuffling.

One of the most important subjects in life is to understand what happens when it’s over. Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion about death, inside and outside the church, which makes it very difficult for the average person to understand such a vital subject.
Perhaps the greatest understatement ever would be to say that death is unpleasant. In our culture, when people die, we quickly cover them up and whisk them away. We don’t want to think about death, especially when it comes to those we love and ourselves. But the topic must be faced, not only for the practical reason that we’re all touched by it eventually, but because understanding the truth about death is actually good news if you have everlasting life.
It’s not hard to see why people are so confused about what happens when we die. Even the many and varied tombstones at graveyards reveal this state of confusion. For example, one tombstone might read, “Father is sleeping now in the arms of Jesus, waiting for the resurrection trumpet.” But a few tombstones over, one reads, “Mother is now singing on golden streets with the angels.”
So which is it? Are the dead sleeping, waiting for the resurrection, or are they alive somewhere? If so, what are they doing? There is a debate about the afterlife, even among good and honest Christians. This brief study on death will help you see what the most important document in human history —the Holy Bible —really says about the subject.

Life and the Human Soul
Before we can understand what happens at death, we need to understand the basics of how life happened. The Bible tells us that when God made Adam in the garden of Eden, the man became a living soul. “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).
Notice it doesn’t say that God “gave man a soul,” but rather, “man became a living soul.” The dust from the ground (the body), combined with the vital breath of life from God, produced a soul.
When someone dies, it is creation in reverse. “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). The spirit that returns to God at death is the energizing breath of life given by God in Genesis 2:7.
“All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils” (Job 27:3). Here Job is talking about “the breath of life” mentioned in Genesis 2:7. In fact, it’s the very same Hebrew word in both passages. At death, the body returns to dust, the breath of life returns to God, and the human soul ceases to exist.

An Eternal Reward—the Afterlife
Nobody is suffering in hellfire today, and the vast majority of people who have died are not in heaven. This might shock you, but it’s exactly what the Bible teaches.
“Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be” (Revelation 22:12). Everyone gets his or her reward when Jesus returns. It’s important to understand this because Jesus hasn’t returned, has He? Judgment Day is still in the future.
“So man lies down and does not rise. Till the heavens are no more” (Job 14:12 NKJV). The dead do “not rise” from the grave until the heavens are no more. When will the heavens be no more? “The day of the Lord will come … in which the heavens will pass away” (2 Peter 3:10 NKJV). The heavens pass away on the day of the Lord, when Jesus returns to the earth. Until then, the dead do “not rise” from the grave.

But aren’t there people in heaven now?
Yes. A few. They are the exceptions. The Gospels tell the story of the transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus on the mountaintop. They were real and in the flesh. Jesus spoke with them; the apostles saw them. They had come from heaven to offer encouragement to Jesus. But how did they get to heaven?
In 2 Kings 2:11, the Bible tells us that Elijah was caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Elijah went to heaven, even though he didn’t die. Moses died first, but the Lord raised him up and took him to heaven (Jude 9).
In Matthew 27, during the time when Christ died on the cross, there was a strong earthquake, and many of the graves around Jerusalem opened up. Many of the saints who had died—patriarchs and prophets who lived prior to the time of Christ—were raised in a special resurrection. It doesn’t name names, so we don’t know who they were. But the Bible says they came out of the graves after His resurrection and went into the holy city where they appeared to many.1 At the ascension of Christ, they ascended with Him.2 These resurrected humans were what the Bible calls the first fruits of Jesus’ successful mission.

Empty Cemeteries
When you go to the cemetery, does it ever make you feel creepy? Especially around sundown, are you afraid that some ghost is going to lunge out from the grave and grab your ankle? We’ve been trained in our culture to think that the dead aren’t really dead. But the Bible teaches the dead don’t come back. They can’t communicate. They certainly don’t haunt cemeteries!
Have you ever gone to bed and woken up, thinking you had only slept a short while, then you peek at the clock to discover it was hours longer than you thought? You have no awareness of time in sleep. That’s how the Bible describes the sleep of death. For the saved and the lost, it’s the same.
“Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Psalms 13:3). Death is called “sleep” over and over again in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus clearly referred to death as “sleep” when speaking about Lazarus. “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11). The apostles took Jesus literally, so Jesus clarified for them that Lazarus was, indeed, dead.
It took Jesus four days to get to Lazarus’ tomb. Lazarus’ body was decomposing, turning back into dust. Martha was even afraid of the stench of an open tomb. They reluctantly rolled away the stone, and Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” That’s what Lazarus did.
I believe Jesus allowed Lazarus to be in the grave for four days so there would be no doubt that Lazarus was very dead. Some skeptics suggest that other resurrections in the Bible were probably due to coma, arguing the people weren’t really dead yet. But Lazarus had been embalmed and wrapped up. If he had been alive, he would surely have suffocated to death! The stench of his decomposing body wafted out of the open tomb and gagged them. But Lazarus came out alive at Jesus’ command.
If that happened today, FoxNews and CNN would have called Lazarus for an interview. What do you think would have been their first questions?

• What happened?
• What did you see?
• What did you do?
• Who’d you meet?
• What was it like to be dead?

Despite the fact that this is one of the most public miracles of Jesus, and all the Gospel writers knew about it, we find nothing regarding Lazarus commenting on his experience.
Lazarus has the answer to the biggest question in history! But there’s no comment. Why? Jesus tells us Lazarus was asleep. Lazarus had a fever, he was sick, he lost consciousness, and eventually he died. He didn’t know anything until, all of a sudden, he woke up feeling great, wrapped up in something like perfumed first-aid bandages. He didn’t know what was going on. He was hearing Jesus call him. That’s all he knew. He stumbled to his feet and shuffled to the shiny entrance. To him it was like waking up from a nap.
Some believe that while the body might perish, the soul remains conscious. But the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6, “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.”

Talking to the Dead
Paul, to the Thessalonians, writes about death, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep” (4:13). Paul wants you to understand the truth about death because not understanding this opens you up to deception in the last days.
In fact, there are several prominent television programs that feature folks who allegedly talk to or “channel” the dead. Some of them reveal things only loved ones would know. According to the Bible, it’s not dead people. It is either trickery or Satan’s minions. They know a lot about us, even our secrets. They can use these bits of knowledge to trick you into thinking you’re talking to your dead loved one.
I miss my brother Falcon and would love to talk to him. But I can’t. He’s dead. If anyone appears to me with red hair and freckles claiming to be my brother, as much as I miss him, I know from the Bible it’s not my brother. Either my mind is playing tricks on me or it’s the devil.
There are hundreds of scriptures on the subject of death, so how can the church be so confused on this topic? How has the devil been able to bamboozle Christians? Why has he bothered to put so much energy into deceiving the church on this subject? Because he’s going to use it to his advantage before Jesus comes again! “In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1).

Why the Truth About Death Is So Important
Of course, you’ve heard reports of near-death experiences, of people on the operating table who floated around the room. Yet researchers have shown that when people temporarily stop breathing, they will quickly build up too much carbon dioxide in their system and hallucinate. Some have interpreted these events as visions, but it’s dangerous to base your theology on an operating table dream or hallucination.
“He said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets” (1 Kings 22:22). There are going to be in the last days lying spirits in the mouths of false prophets. Revelation 16 says these unclean spirits go forth to the kings of the earth, working miracles to deceive. That will have a trickle-down effect and deceive people into thinking they should embrace a certain theology based on the testimony of demons posing to be the spirits of the dead.
“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders” (Matthew 24:24). The spiritualism infecting the church today is going to be used by the devil in the last days to deceive, similar to how he deceived Saul. Israel’s troubled king, in the desperation of his last days, went to see a witch. He saw a devilish apparition, not the dead prophet Samuel, that greatly discouraged him, and he committed suicide the next day.
How can we avoid being deceived in the last days? “They received the word of God with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). The Word of God is our only sure foundation. “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). It doesn’t matter if it looks and sounds just like your departed grandma or Mary the mother of Jesus, and it knows all the intimate secrets only they would know. If someone dead appears to you, it’s of the devil or your brain is not functioning properly.

The Fate of the Righteous
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Jesus made it very clear that this resurrection is in the last days …

“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;” [the first resurrection] “and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” [the second resurrection, at the end of the thousand years] (John 5:28, 29).

“This is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40 NKJV, my emphasis). The words of Jesus could not be clearer! How many are raised when they die? None. The saved are raised up at the “last day.”
One more: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:22, 23 NKJV). The dead believers are raised at Jesus’ coming!
The Bible promises that one day, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4). Unfortunately, death is a reality in our world today—and it does and should cause us sorrow. But, most important, you don’t need to be afraid of death. Jesus promises, “He who has the Son has life” (1 John 5:12 NKJV).
That life begins now because Christians don’t die permanently! You might experience a momentary dreamless sleep, but Jesus will awaken you on that great day. You don’t need to be afraid of death if you have Jesus. So I invite you today to accept the fullness of His Word and take His grace into your life.

 A Misunderstood Bible Passage Regarding Death
How do we explain what Jesus told the thief on the cross? “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). It seems, at first glance, that Jesus is telling the thief that on that very day, both of them will be in heaven together. This is an unfortunate mistranslation. The original Greek had no punctuation, so translators had to guess about where to place a comma. They decided on the common rendering of the text.

But they got it wrong. It should read: “Verily I say unto thee today, shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Jesus is saying, even though right now I don’t look like a king, I’m telling you right now that because you called me Lord and King, you’re going to be with me in heaven.

We know it’s a misplaced comma because Jesus didn’t go to heaven that day! Three days after that promise, Mary saw Jesus after His resurrection and grabbed hold of His ankles. He said, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father” (John 20:17). He could not have been in heaven on Friday! The Bible makes it clear that the thief did not go to heaven with Jesus Friday afternoon.