Most things in the Bible need to be studied carefully to make sense, such as Jesus’ High Priestly duties or prophecies foretelling His life, death, resurrection, and second coming; however, some things aren’t that hard to figure out but are hidden in plain sight. I’ll give you a few clues. I’m thinking of something mentioned 150 times in the New King James Bible. It’s associated with each one of Israel’s seven yearly feasts. It’s something Jesus did every week and so did every one of His disciples. It was instituted at creation, and it’s embedded in the 10-Commandments. It’s something Jesus made extra special just before His resurrection. Did you guess it yet?
The Bible is Clear
If there were no Satan and evil angels to deceive our world, and if there had not been a war in heaven wherein angles challenged God’s rule and questioned His authority, if there weren’t sides to choose from, and if we didn’t need to worry about the mark of the beast or the seal of God, then it might not matter which day you rest and worship on. But the Bible is clear: from cover to cover it says to remember the seventh-day to keep it holy. God went to great lengths to associate His greatest acts, His most majestic deeds with the seventh-day. Nowhere does the Bible direct the change from Saturday to Sunday; it was changed by Christian leaders about 300 years after Jesus died to avoid being persecuted with the Jews, and it was a slow change, first making both Saturday and Sunday holy and later emphasizing just Sunday, taking decades to implement. In like manner, Muslims chose to worship and keep holy Friday, not because the Bible says to, but because they too didn’t want to be identified with either Jews or Christians.
Jesus Observed It
Consider these thoughts. As a Jew, Jesus kept Sabbath his entire life, and so did His disciples, and after being captured in the garden of Gethsemane, after being tried by the Romans, after being flogged by Roman guards and hung on a cross, Jesus died and was laid in a tomb on Friday afternoon, just hours before the Sabbath began, and only then did He rest according to the Sabbath commandment until Sunday morning. Jesus’ last act before heading to heaven was to rest from all his work, to give more meaning, more significance, to link Himself and His deeds even more closely to the Sabbath command and give us an example. Why else would He wait a day and a half before rising?
Adam Observed It
The command to keep the 7th-day predates the 10-Commandments. It was given to Adam and Eve, and the world kept it for almost 3500 years before it was repeated on Mt. Sinai. And not until about 300 AD did it come into disfavor. With pressure coming from Sunday keeping pagans, and the need to distance themselves from Jews who were generally looked down upon and sometimes persecuted, with a lack of authoritative Scriptures being available, the masses had to rely on their leaders, and their leaders led them down the wrong path to Sunday’s rest and worship.
What is needed is a Biblical reading revival. We don’t know what to believe; we can’t tell which church is right, which speaker is right, without reading the whole book, in context, from start to finish, and probably more than once. Only then are we safe from error and deception.