LET GOD BE TRUE

CHAPTER XIII

THE SABBATH:
IN SHADOW AND REALITY

IN SIX days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." (Exodus 31:17) His resting or desisting from work was because he had brought to pass his creative work as he had purposed, and hence he ceased from his creative work as respects the earth. At such height of accomplishment he surveyed his finished earthly work; and "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good". (Genesis 1: 31) For such reason, then, Jehovah God could feel refreshed, that is, he could enjoy the exhilarating pleasure of having accomplished his will. It must be that only as regards our earth did he desist from creative activity, having finished his work to the extent that he desired. It is neither reasonable nor Scriptural to think he halted operations as respects all the rest of his universe.

² "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) This "seventh day" on which God desisted from his work toward our planet is not to be understood as a 24-hour day. This seventh day stands related to the preceding six days of creation; and all the evidence is to the effect that all of those six preceding days were much longer than 24 hours each. In fact, they were great periods of time thousands of years long. Measured by the length of the "seventh day" on which God desists from work and is refreshed, each of those days was 7,000 years long. Man being created toward the close of the sixth day, he was put upon the earth toward the end of 42,000 years of earth's preparation. So in course of time the grand cycle of seven "days" will add up to 49,000 years. The Bible time-schedule indicates that slightly more than a thousand years of this great cycle remains yet to be run.

DAY SANCTIFIED

³ Shä-băth' is the particular Hebrew word used at Genesis 2:1-3 which is translated "rested", and the English word sabbath is drawn from it. Certain religionists argue that there, at man's very beginning, God fastened the sabbath-day law upon his human creatures; and they call Genesis 2:1-3 to their aid as

proof. Let such persons and all others take note that the day that God blessed and sanctified back there was not a 24-hour day. It was and is yet the "seventh day" of time-length equal to that of each of the six preceding days of creative work. The way the seventh-day sabbath-keeping religionists calculate, they claim man was made after the animals on the sixth 24-hour day of creation. If so, then the first full day of man's existence had to be a sabbath rest-day for man without his having completed or even begun a week's work, and he rested before he began working. However, the Bible makes it plain that God's seventh day is longer than from sunset to sunset, just as the word day could not mean a 24-hour period when Genesis 2:4 says: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (A.S.V.) According to the Scriptures the "seventh day" is still continuing on the part of the Creator, Jehovah God.

⁴ At the beginning of the day God blessed it, pronouncing it good and to his glory and for the benefit of faithful creatures. At its ending, about a thousand years from now, the day will likewise be blessed; for the present cursed conditions will then be entirely removed. He sanctified this day to his holy purpose, in that from its very beginning he ordained that it should vindicate him as the Creator of that which is good and vindicate him as the Maintainer and

Preserver of such good. And the end of this "seventh day" will yet prove that his original purpose in making this earth and putting man upon it has not been blocked but has been gloriously realized in full proof of his Godship, supremacy and all-power. By the end of this "seventh day" the earth will be a beauteous paradise, everywhere like Eden's garden. It will be filled with righteous human creatures, all in harmony with the Creator and acting as his representatives in having dominion over the birds, fishes, and other living things which creep about upon the earth.

⁵ When God blessed the perfect Adam and Eve and gave them his divine mandate to fill the earth with righteous offspring and to subdue the earth and have dominion over the lower living creatures, God included no command with reference to a sabbath-day observance. The temptation by Satan, and the sin by Adam and Eve, did not have to do with breaking any 24-hour-long sabbath law. If God did not give them such a law in Eden before they sinned, then certainly he did not give them such a law after driving them out of Eden as sinners. There is no record that he did so. — Genesis 2:15-17; 1:28.

⁶ What, then, about the number seven which occurs 61 times in the book of Genesis alone?

For instance, with regard to Noah: He and his family and the animals went into the ark during a seven-day period. "It came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth." (Genesis 7:1-10) Noah's ark grounded on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year. After waiting for the waters to subside Noah sent out a raven and a dove. The dove returned. "And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark." After its return with an olive leaf in its beak, Noah "stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more." Then, a full solar year after having been shut up in the ark, Noah and his family and the animals left the ark of preservation. (Genesis 8:4) The foregoing account reveals that Noah divided up the time into periods of seven days, but it does not show he and his family kept a strict sabbath-day rest on the seventh day, doing no work thereon. In the everlasting covenant which God made right afterward and symbolized by the rainbow He made no reference to any sabbath-day observance; and in repeating the divine mandate to Noah and his sons he did not include any command as to sabbath observance. This was not because they had already been keeping a sabbath law down till then so that the law needed no repeating; but it was certainly because no such sabbath regulation had been put upon men till then. — Genesis 9:1-17.

⁷ Genesis 26: 4, 5 is no proof that Abraham was under a sabbath-keeping law. God's commandments to him included none concerning a seventh-day sabbath-keeping. God's commandments to his obedient creatures are not the same at all times, but some are commanded to do certain things and others are not. Only Abraham was commanded to offer up his beloved son as a burnt-offering, but none of God's servants since Abraham have been so commanded. Abraham was commanded to be circumcised first after he was 99 years old; but no follower of Christ need be circumcised. — Genesis, chapters 17 and 22.

⁸ The later evidence is against any argument that Abraham was under a sabbath-day obligation by express commandment of God. While the seventh day of the week may have been looked upon as specially marked by God with his favor, that does not prove he had enjoined a seventh-day commandment upon Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When the sabbath-day law did not apply, it was no law-breaking not to keep sabbath. Hence Abraham's righteousness was no more dependent upon sabbath-keeping than upon his first being circumcised. — Romans 4:3-13.

INTRODUCTION OF REST DAY

⁹ The Hebrew word shăb-bäth', meaning "ces-

sation; rest", occurs first at Exodus 16:23, and it marks the time of introducing the sabbath law, to the Jews. (Exodus 16: 23-30) By miraculously keeping manna from falling on the seventh day, God enforced the seventh-day sabbath law that he had just announced to the Jews. Whereas it was given informally out in the wilderness, the sabbath-day law was embodied in the law code which Jehovah formally gave the Jews by Moses when inaugurating the law covenant at Mount Horeb. It was made the fourth of the Ten Commandments there given, and was stated in 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 a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."  — Exodus 20:8-11, A.S.V.

¹⁰ Now note the record at Deuteronomy 5:1-15: "And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, 0 Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and observe to do them. Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Jehovah made not this covenant

with our fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. Jehovah spake with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire . . . , saying, I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. . . . Observe the sabbath day, . . . remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." — A.S.V.

¹¹ In those words it distinctly says that Israel's forefathers, including most prominently of all Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the twelve sons of Jacob, were not under this law covenant. Those forefathers were under no obligation to do what the Fourth Commandment says, namely, keep the weekly sabbath-day holy by a complete rest on it. But, as Moses further said to their descendants: "And [God] declared unto you his covenant, . . . and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. And Jehovah commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it." (Deuteronomy 4:13,14, A.S.V.) The sabbath commandment was thus a component part of God's covenant with Israel, and it could not be separated from that covenant. The Gentiles were not and never have been under God's Fourth Commandment of the covenant. "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judg-

ments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them." — Psalm 147:19, 20.

¹² The sabbath was a distinguishing feature of Jehovah's covenant arrangement with Israel alone: "Verily ye shall keep my sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; ... It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." -Exodus 31:13-17, A.S.V.; see also Ezekiel 20:12 and Nehemiah 9:13,14.

ARE CHRISTIANS UNDER SABBATH-LAW

¹³ Why did Jesus observe the Jewish sabbath-law, especially by going to synagogue on that day and preaching? (Matthew 12:1,9; Mark 1: 21; Luke 4:16, 31) Why did Paul go into the synagogue on the sabbath days, "as his manner was," and preach and reason with the Jews there? (Acts 13:14, 44; 16:13; 17: 2; 18: 4) We reply: "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." (Galatians 4:4,5) Hence Jesus was obliged to keep that law, as long as he was in the flesh. He was circumcised in the flesh and kept passover and other feasts. Hence his keeping the Jewish sabbath does not mean his followers must do so, no more than his be-

ing circumcised and keeping Jewish feasts requires his disciples to do so. He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (Matthew 5:17) His coming to fulfill such law and the prophets proves that the law covenant and the sabbath obligations are not binding upon his disciples who follow after him.

¹⁴ Destroying the law by breaking God's law covenant is far different from fulfilling it and thus moving it out of the way and lifting its obligations from his disciples. Certainly the 'fulfilling of the prophets' made their prophecies a thing of the past and no longer applying or requiring fulfillment. Likewise the fulfilling of the law makes it a thing of the past and relieves his followers from its requirements. Hence, in order to fulfill the law and the prophets, Jesus by Jewish birth was "made under the law". To illustrate: The law commanded the yearly celebration of the passover over a slain lamb. Jesus did not destroy the passover celebration, but moved it out of the way by fulfilling it, in that he became the real passover Lamb, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." — 1 Corinthians 5:7; John 1: 29; also Ephesians 2:13-15.

¹⁵ Just as Jesus went to synagogue on sabbath days to preach to the crowds there, as he was anointed with God's spirit to do (Isaiah

61:1-3; Luke 4:14-21), just so, too, the apostle Paul went to synagogue to preach, on the sabbath day when the Jews met there.

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE

¹⁶ At Colossians 2:12-18, Paul writes to followers of Christ: "Ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; . . . Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." At Galatians 4: 9-11 he asks certain deceived ones: "How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." Since God has taken the Jewish law covenant with its Ten Commandments out of the way by nailing it to the tree on which Jesus died, the Christians must observe, not the law-covenant shadows, but the reality.

¹⁷ Showing that God's "seventh day" of rest continues 7,000 years, Paul writes, at Hebrews 4: 9: "There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God." (A.S.V.) In the surrounding verses Paul makes no reference to keeping a 24-hour seventh-day sabbath. Instead, he quotes Genesis 2:2: "And God did rest the seventh day from all his works"; which fact began applying over 4,000 years before Christ. Next, Paul refers to God's words at Numbers 14:28-35, that unbelieving Jews should die in the wilderness and not enter and find rest in the Promised Land; which sworn declaration of God was made over 1,500 years before Christ. Then Paul quotes David's words at Psalm 95: 7-11: "Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, . . . unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest"; which psalm of David was written about 1,077 years before Christ. So, from about 4,000 B.C. down to 1,077 B.C., Jehovah God is still speaking about his rest, which in David's day was already almost 3,000 years long. Then what?

¹⁸ Then Paul himself writes, still speaking about entering into God's rest; which makes God's resting-time down to Paul's day more than 4,000 years long, for Paul wrote Hebrews

more than 40 years after Christ's birth. Furthermore, Paul's words about Christians' entering into God's rest still apply, that is, apply now and today, in the 1940's, which is nearly 6,000 years from the time of Genesis 2:2. And now the battle of Armageddon is near and Christ's reign of 1,000 years will begin immediately thereafter, during which time the redeemed humankind will be given the privilege of entering into God's rest. All of this, therefore, extends God's rest to a length of 7,000 years. And this makes up the length of the "seventh day" on which he rests, sanctifying the day for vindicating himself as Creator.

¹⁹ From that standpoint Hebrews 3:13-19 and 4:1-11 can now be understood, from which we quote: "For we who have believed do enter into that rest; even as he hath said [about 1500 B.C.], 'As I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest': although the works were finished from the foundation of the world [about 4000 B.C.]. . . . He again defineth a certain day, To-day, saying in David [about 1000 B.C.] so long a time afterward (even as hath been said before), To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For if Joshua [Moses' successor] had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward [about 400 years afterward, in David's time] of another day. There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered

into his rest [God's rest] hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from his. Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example [given by the unbelieving Jews] of disobedience." — Hebrews 4: 3-11, A.S.V.

²⁰ Hence Christians, every day that they exercise faith and obedience through Christ, are keeping sabbath, God's sabbath or rest. They esteem no day of a week above another. (Romans 14: 4-6) They give diligence to hold their faith and to keep faithful in God's active service as His witnesses, so as not to fall away and fail to enjoy complete rest with God during his day, which is not yet done.

²¹ Let us keep in mind that the Jewish law covenant set forth a "shadow of good things to come, and not the very image [or reality] of the things". (Hebrews 10:1) Of what good things to come was the Jewish weekly sabbath a shadow? It being the seventh day of a week, the weekly sabbath foreshadowed the last 1,000 years of God's rest-day of 7,000 years. That thousand years God has assigned to the Lord Jesus Christ, to reign then without disturbance from the Devil's organization in either heaven or earth. Such 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ, as foretold at Revelation 20:1-6, begins after Satan is bound; in other words, after Armageddon, which battle all signs indicate will begin inside our generation. — Revelation 16:14-16.

²² That will be a glorious sabbath-day for humankind. It will be the sabbath of which Jesus spoke in a prophetic way when he said: "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." (Mark 2:27,28) Christ Jesus was greater than the temple at Jerusalem, in which the Jewish priests under the old law covenant seemed to profane the sabbath day by carrying on their sacrificial duties and yet were blameless. (Matthew 12:1-8) Christ Jesus is the Head of the great spiritual temple of God made up of "living stones", his disciples. Hence God has appointed Christ Jesus to be the Lord of the antitypical sabbath, namely, the 1,000-year period of the Kingdom.

²³ Because the Jewish sabbath foreshadowed this Kingdom sabbath, Jesus on the weekly sabbath-day did many works of healing and of delivering believing persons from the bondage due to the Devil. He healed the blind, raised up the crippled, and, when criticized by the religionists for curing an infirm woman, he said: "Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?" (Luke 13:16) Thus Jesus foreshadowed what wondrous works of deliverance and relief he will do on the 1,000-year sabbath-day when he reigns as Lord, raising even the

dead from their graves. God made or ordained that coming sabbath-day for man, for man's benefit, and not for man's oppression. Hence the believing and obedient ones then on earth will enter into a rest from slaving toil and from bondage of sin, Satan, totalitarian rule and religion. And inasmuch as God commanded that sabbath-breakers of the old law covenant be killed, so those refusing to keep the Kingdom sabbath by faith and by ceasing from selfish works of sin and religion will be executed by the Lord of the sabbath and will be destroyed eternally. — Exodus 35: 2.

²⁴ Thus, at the close of Jehovah's 7,000-year sabbath or rest-day, his earthly creation and humankind upon it will be perfect, pure, and fully enjoying his blessing, just as when he finished his work at the end of the sixth creative day. Foreknowing this, Jehovah God could keep on resting all during this long sabbath day. (Genesis 3:15) And thus, due to his kingdom under Christ, all of Jehovah's earthly works will show forth his handiwork and be for an eternal vindication of his name. His good purpose in making this earthly creation will not have failed, and in this triumph of success he reaches the end of his 7,000-year sabbath-day greatly refreshed.