COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
We who have been Adventists have consistent questions the catch us off guard as we begin to process what we believed as Adventists. This week I received an email from someone who had, long ago, apparently seen a copy of Proclamation! in which I had written about Richard’s and my first deliberate “trampling” on the Sabbath.
That day remains vivid in my mind. We had been meeting with our neighbors—the family with whom we had studied the Bible for three years and had discovered that contextual reading of Scripture exposed our proof-texts as illegitimate arguments that disappeared when we read them in their context—on Sundays for over a year, having church together in our homes. Yet while we were meeting privately on Sundays, we continued to treat Sabbath like—well—SABBATH. Although we had stopped attending the Adventist church on Saturdays, still we just couldn’t quite treat the seventh day as a we used to treat Sunday: a day for yard work, laundry, and other chores.
Truthfully, we began to realize we couldn’t go on having two “days off” every week. We needed that weekend day to work in the yard and to accomplish other jobs that we couldn’t do during our work week.
Intellectually we knew that working on the Sabbath couldn’t be a sin…
Intellectually we knew that working on the Sabbath couldn’t be a sin, given what Paul explicitly teaches in Galatians, Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians along with the systematic explanations in the book of Hebrews and also in the words of the Lord Jesus Himself, but the embedded Sabbath-fear is deep, rooted somewhere below our conscious thoughts. Sabbath sacredness is essentially “tattooed” into an Adventist’s worldview. It provides the framework, like the hidden beams inside the walls of a house, that shapes all of one’s life and work.
One day Richard and I faced the problem head-on. We were becoming uncomfortable living in that transitional place that was neither keeping the Sabbath as we had always done, nor were we walking away from the day. We were continuing to treat Sabbath as—well—special. Those vague fears that maybe Sabbath WAS sacred were never far from our awareness. We finally admitted that we were hedging our bets. We could walk away from Adventism, we had decided, but were we really willing to walk away from SABBATH? Yet what if we abandoned Sabbath—and when Jesus came and judged the world, He would look at us sadly and say, “I gave you my special day; why have you given it up? You knew it was the one thing I asked you to do to show the world you loved me!”
We talked about our dilemma, and we agreed on one significant thing: we finally KNEW that the Lord Jesus had completed everything necessary for our salvation—and we also knew that He asked us to trust and believe Him. Nothing else. No behavior or practice contributed to our being saved or to staying saved. Faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus and entrusting ourselves wholly to Him was all He asked of us. In fact, John 5:24 was never far from our minds:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
These words of Jesus had completely new meaning for us now. They were no longer a metaphor of some potential future life but were an unconditional PROMISE that if we believed Him, He would at that moment give us new spiritual life and place us into eternal life at that very moment. It was logically clear to us that keeping the seventh day had absolutely no part to play in our receiving eternal life!
We agreed that the time had come to stop hedging our bets. We had to be all in if we were going to honor the Lord Jesus. We had to deliberately leave behind our Adventist structure and fears and trust the One who had already called us to Himself. He was asking us to let go of the Sabbath.
We realized that if we believed (and we did) that the Lord Jesus saved us completely when we trusted Him, then we had to make our conviction match our behavior. Familiar habits and fears had no place in our new lives centered on our Savior. We decided that the next Saturday, I would do the laundry, and Richard would mow the lawn. I chose to do the laundry because that was something I would NEVER have done on the Sabbath. Richard chose to mow the lawn as a public statement which our Adventist friends who lived nearby might see if they drove by our house as they sometimes did on Sabbath.
A surprising thing happened that next week. I was aware of the presence of the Lord with me through all that I did, every day. In fact, the reality of experiencing that deep rest in Christ was profound, and I found myself pondering the fact that this reality of walking through the week with Jesus palpably with me occurred only after I walked away from the Sabbath because I believed that Jesus had done everything that needed to be done to insure my salvation.
That next Friday Richard walked into the kitchen as I was doing dishes, and he said, “It’s a strange thing, but I’ve felt the presence of Jesus with me all week. In fact, I’ve felt His presence more strongly than I ever did on Sabbath—it’s been like what I always hoped to experience on Sabbath but never did!”
We knew that the Lord had confirmed to us, separately and yet together, that the Sabbath was not required of born-again believers. In fact, we began to realize what we see clearly now: within Adventism, the Sabbath functions as an idol. Among Christians the idea of a sabbath is not generally a salvific thing. In fact, Romans 14 makes it clear that keeping or not keeping a day is a personal decision—but it has no part in contributing to a person’s worthiness or readiness for salvation.
Adventism made the old covenant sign of Sabbath a requirement for salvation. It was the center pin of proving that one was among those who were safe to save. This function of Sabbath as the mark of those who were really going to be saved was anti-Christ. Sabbath, for an Adventist, is a “golden calf” that carries Adventism’s unique view of God. It is their central requirement for pleasing God.
When we meet the Lord Jesus, though, and realize that He fully paid for our sin and that, when we trust Him by faith, we literally pass our of death into life. We are born again and indwelled by the Hoy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13,14). We are saved—and the Lord asks us to give up everything except Him that had played a role in our lives that was part of our “salvation package”.
The freedom I found when I started that washer was the freedom of knowing that I was secure in Christ
The freedom I found when I started that washer was the freedom of knowing that I was secure in Christ, and all my old Adventist requirements and fears were gone. Jesus alone held me—and He held my husband as well. He gave us joy, and His Spirit confirmed in our spirits that we are children of God (Romans 8:16). We no longer keep the Sabbath; rather, the true Sabbath, the true Rest, keeps us!
Because I understand how an Adventist needs to systematically learn that the Sabbath belongs to an obsolete covenant (Hebrews 8:13) and that the Lord Jesus is all we need to be reconciled to God, I am sharing in this article the letter I received this week along with my answer to the writer.
Come to Jesus—and release your grip on the beloved Sabbath idol. The freedom, the joy, and the tangible presence of the Lord Jesus will surprise you when you trust Him enough to stop hedging your bets and rest in Jesus alone.
What Freedom Does Sabbath-Breaking Demonstrate?
I contacted you because of an article which I believed that you might have written soon after you left Adventism. As I recall that article, it was on the front page of a newsletter…In it you described how, when you first became free, you were standing in front of your washing machine on a Saturday morning, getting ready to push the “start” button.
What you said was something along the lines of, “I was ready to push the ‘start’ button to demonstrate my freedom under the new covenant.” Those were probably not your words but close. That’s what I wanted to hear again.
So what I ask you now is, what freedom were you demonstrating by pushing that “start” button?
What got me started into this whole thing a few weeks ago was when I was getting ready to teach a Sabbath School lesson (part of the series on Exodus). Some point was made about the Sabbath, and I remembered you pushing that button. I wondered, are there groups of people today (who used to worship on the seventh-day Sabbath) that now celebrate a weekly sabbath in a divine worship service on Sunday? On a search engine, I typed in “Dale Ratzlaff” (or some spelling of his name) and his obituary came up along with your name as editor. When I saw your name, it rang a bell, and I decided to contact you.
So, my second question is, do you and your husband celebrate a weekly Sabbath by attending divine worship service on Sunday?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: The entire issue of “Sabbath” hangs on an understanding of the biblical covenants. Adventism did not teach us the covenants as the Bible teaches them. The Mosaic Covenant, of which the Decalogue were the very “words of the covenant” (Ex 34:27, 28), was given to Israel and did not exist prior to Sinai. God created that covenant for Israel and set up conditional terms: blessings for obedience, and curses for disobedience. The law was not eternal; it was written FOR Israel, and it was given at a specific time: 430 years AFTER Abraham UNTIL the Seed would come (Galatians 3:15–22).
The Sabbath was specifically given as then sign of the Mosaic covenant in the typical fashion of ancient Hittite suzerain-vassal treaties. Ex. 31:13 identifies Sabbath as a sign for Israel. It was never a test, and Hebrews 3 and 4 explain that the sacred day is no longer required of Christians who have trusted the Lord’s finished atonement and have been born again. There is a New Day—TODAY— appointed so that if one has not heard the word and believed, do so TODAY. When we believe, we enter God’s rest. Therefore, there remains a Sabbath-like rest (sabbatismos-Heb. 4:9) for those who are God’s people through faith in the finished work of Christ. Colossians 2:16, 17 explains that the reality of all the sabbaths—yearly, monthly, and weekly—is realized in Christ, never a day. There is no new covenant, New Testament command for believers to keep a day, nor is there any mention of Sabbath-breaking in any New Testament list of sins.
The freedom we experienced when we left the Sabbath was the freedom of being alive in Christ. He released us from the law; our justification is entirely His work, and He has caused us to pass out of death into life (John 5:24) and has transferred us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).
We do not observe a weekly Sabbath as in honoring a holy day, but we do worship on Sundays at a non-denominational church which we planted in Loma Linda. Our pastor is Gary Inrig, the pastor under whom we first sat when we began attending a Christian church. He has taught us to study and love God’s word and to believe the words of Scripture.
I have signed you up for our weekly newsletter, Proclamation!, which will come to your email inbox every Friday with articles and links to our current podcasts and videos.
We do a weekly video podcast addressing each week’s Sabbath School lesson, and we publish an article which is essentially a script of each week’s commentary. I suggest that you might enjoy those videos: Former Adventist Fact Check. I will forward you last Friday’s Proclamation! email which has the link to the podcast. Our YouTube channel is Former Adventist, and the playlist for the Sabbath School lessons is Former Adventist Fact Check. You might also enjoy our weekly Former Adventist Podcast in which Nikki Stevenson and I are currently studying through Romans. We have many podcasts there including a series through the 28 Fundamental Beliefs and a series on the covenants.
The bottom-line issue is trusting Jesus alone. Adventists (I speak from experience) do not realize that the Sabbath functions as an idol in their lives. When we realize that the Lord Jesus has literally taken our sin into Himself and endured God’s wrath for it, that He died our death and broke the curse of death on the third day because His blood was sufficient to pay for all our sin—when we trust Him and release our sin and ourselves to Him alone and let go of all our behaviors that we thought were associated with being fit for heaven—we receive, literally, His life in our spirits, and we pass from death to life. We experienced the rest we always hoped to find on Sabbath the entire week after deliberately “breaking” the Sabbath because we trusted our Lord Jesus to keep His word and to be all He promised that He is.
Dale Ratzlaff’s book Sabbath In Christ is a must-read; it addresses all our Adventist questions and arguments. It is now online here:
We have many articles addressing Sabbath issues and questions on our website at this page:
https://lifeassuranceministries.org/category/adventist-doctrines/the-sabbath
I highly recommend that you spend some time with Dale’s book and peruse our videos on the Sabbath on our YouTube channel. And here is the link to the Former Adventist Fact Check podcasts:
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