“The fear of God
no longer disturbed them. Satan was
at the head of the nation, and the
highest civil and religious
authorities were under his
sway.” GC 28,29.
“Fear ye not Me?
Saith the Lord: will ye not tremble
at my presence?” Jeremiah 5:22.
“The Lord
reigneth; let the people
tremble.” Psalms 99:1.
“And to this I
will look, regard, respect: to the
poor and beaten, smitten, afflicted
in spirit, and he trembles, is
anxious, is fearful, comes to
trepidation, upon My Word.”
Isaiah 66:2
[Hebrew.]
Tinkering With the
Fear of God
From time to time in
the past, I visited Structure
bookstores. I was profoundly
disturbed by just the titles of
various books I saw. I do not know
all the ins and outs of what are in
the books. Like John the Baptist, my
soul abhors even being exposed to it.
The titles were bad enough-Who’s
Afraid of the Old Testament God?
Who’s afraid of the Judgment?
Just the titles appear to be designed
to mock the Biblical fear of God. If
one trembles before the Living God
one would never use such titles. The
Quakers were so named because in 1650
George Fox admonished Justice Bennet
to tremble before the Word of the
Lord.
God wants us to have a
holy awe, a holy fear, a trembling at
His Word, a healthy, holy fear of His
power and judgments. Book after book
in other sections of the store
demonstrated an effort to tinker with
people’s perception of God. It
is terrifying to see what is
happening to a Structure that
receives honor from men, and does not
seek the honor that comes from God
only.
Forming God in
Man’s Image
There is a reason why
the First Angel’s Message
commands, “Fear God.” It is
precisely because men in the last
generation do not fear God.
They want to adapt and form God in
their image, according to their
likeness, just like the ancient
Greeks with their gods. They want to
fit God into their world, instead of
them fitting into and submitting to,
God’s world. They want God to
serve them and their interests,
rather than for them to serve God.
This is the essence of idolatry.
Infinite, Incredible
Power To Those Who Truly Fear God
However, there is
infinite, incredible power to the man
who truly fears God, who in
submission to the King of the
universe surrenders to God’s
power, presence, authority, and rule.
This is the man that God can work
with, that God can save. God can pour
His power and love into such a vessel
that has new wineskins to receive the
new wine.
Oliver Cromwell, a
farmer gentleman, by faith in God and
His providence, challenged the
King’s treason, and rose to
become the Lord protector of all
England, inspiring the entire world
with respect and fear of Protestant
England. He is an example of such a
man. Milton wrote,
“Cromwell, our
chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only,
but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and
matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth
thy glorious way hast ploughed.
- John
Milton
To effect this entire
submission to God is why John the
Baptist willingly, by his own choice,
lived in the depths of the wild
wilderness, alone with God.
Imbedding Idolatry
Into the Requirements of Society
The problem of making
God into man’s image extends
itself into ecclesiastical
structures. This happened in
Jesus’ day. For Jesus, “As
the condition of the people began to
open to His mind, He saw that
the requirements of society and the
requirements of God were in constant
collision. Men were departing
from the Word of God, and exalting
theories of their own
invention…They did not know the
freedom of spirit that would come to
them by serving God in truth. Jesus
had come to teach the meaning of the
worship of God, and He could not
sanction the mingling of human
requirements with divine
precepts.” DA 84.
Taught Directly By God
This is why John and
Jesus did not attend the rabbinical
schools. Regarding John we read: “The
training of the rabbinical schools
would have unfitted him for his work.
God did not send him to the
teachers of theology to learn how to
interpret the Scriptures. He
called him to the desert that he
might learn of nature and
nature’s God. DA 101.
The conceptions of God
formed in the soul from the Word,
from God, from nature, are of supreme
consequence.
Messianic Jews are Now
Challenging the Timing of the Sabbath
Messianic Judaism is
changing Judaism’s Ancient
Stance on the Seventh-day Sabbath
For many decades,
Sabbath-keeping Jews have joined with
Seventh-day Adventism in opposing
Sunday Laws. Orthodox Judaism has
been a bulwark against Sunday
legislation, joining with seventh-day
Sabbath Keeping Christians to oppose
Sunday Laws.
During the Spanish
Inquisition, many Jews lost their
lives because of their adherence to
the seventh-day Sabbath. However, the
phenomenon of “Messianic
Judaism” is changing all of
that.
There are many very,
very precious and sincere souls in
the Messianic movement. They are very
dear to our heart. They are studying
the Bible with an intensity that puts
many of the professed people of God
to shame. However, they have no
idea where their movement is taking
them. It is taking them away from
the Lord of the Sabbath, and from the
Sabbath of the Lord.
Messianic Jewish Rabbi
Asserts That Gentiles Are Not
Required to Keep the Seventh Day
The first indication
that we received of a change in
Messianic Judaism regarding the
Sabbath was on Ten Commandments’
Day when Rabbi Kurt Schneider, a
Messianic Jewish leader, asserted
that Gentiles are not required to
keep the Sabbath (Shabbat) on the
seventh day (according to God’s
commandments), but were free to
simply observe one day in seven. As
long as they observed the principle
of one day in seven that was all
right, it is asserted.
Of course, this is old
apostate protestant thinking, which
is an effort to avoid the testing
truth of the observance of the
Sabbath on the only day that God has
blessed and sanctified as His Sabbath
in the moral law-the fourth
commandment- the day that Jesus kept,
the day that Jesus declared that He
was Lord of the Sabbath. Mark 2:28.
Some Messianic Jews
Assert That the Weekly Cycle is
Determined by the New Moon
The next stage in the
evolution of the thinking of
Messianic Judaism is the concept that
the weekly cycle is determined by the
crescent of the new moon. This
position holds that the week has been
all messed up by paganism, with pagan
names for the days of the week, and
that the only God-ordained ways of
determining when the week starts is
by the crescent of the new moon. To
attempt to buttress this position
they refer to Genesis 1:14. They also
attempt to blend the seventh day
Sabbath with the ceremonial Sabbaths
of Leviticus 23.
The Weekly Cycle Began
Before There Was A Moon, and Stands
to This Day With the Seventh Day As A
Memorial of Creation
The answer to this new
position from the Bible is simple:
- God began
the weekly cycle some days
before creating the moon,
which was created on the
fourth day. Thus, the weekly
cycle began its institutional
status before the moon was
created.
- The weekly
cycle stands, as God created
it in Genesis chapters one
and two, in its own
integrity.
- The
seventh-day Sabbath is the
seventh day of the weekly
cycle, and is the memorial of
creation. Exodus 20: 8-11.
From creation until today
there has been an unbroken
weekly cycle, for there have
always been seventh-day
Sabbath keepers from Adam
until today.
- The weekly
cycle and the seventh-day
Sabbath stand in their own
integrity, as evidence that
God is the Creator, for they
are not tied into any
physical phenomena except for
the
“evening-morning”
cycle of the days of the week
(“and the evening and
the morning were day
one,” etc).
- In
Leviticus 23, the chapter
begins with a general
announcement by announcing
that the feasts are holy
convocations (verse 2). Then
the seventh-day Sabbath is
mentioned as a holy
convocation, as tied
into the weekly
cycle-“Six days shall
work be done: but the seventh
day is the Sabbath of rest, an
holy convocation; ye shall do
no work therein: it is the
Sabbath of the Lord in all
your dwellings.”
Leviticus 23:3. Then,
the next verse introduces the
specific feasts: “these
are the feasts of the Lord,
even holy convocations, which
ye shall proclaim in their seasons…”
and it goes on to describe
the Passover, and other
feasts which are part of the
ceremonial law.
- Jesus kept
the seventh-day Sabbath on
earth as recently as 2,000
years ago. Since then, there
has been an unbroken line of
seventh-day Sabbath keepers.
Just as the weekly
cycle of the week began before there
was even a moon, and just as the
seventh-day Sabbath has on a weekly
basis commemorated creation week, the
very fact that we today have a seven
day week is a continual reminder of
the great truth that God created the
earth and all that is in it, the sun
and moon also, and the seventh-day
Sabbath, in one week-in seven days.
This is a weekly reminder of the
Creator, of the creation, and of the
seventh-day Sabbath.
