Fear God

“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:

 

1. 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.
2. The weekly cycle stands, as God created it in Genesis chapters one and two, in its own integrity.
3. 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.
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. 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.

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