THE 7th DAY SABBATH ... IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

The "week" of 7 DAYS is a period of time unique from all others. A "day" is set by the rotation of the earth. A "month" by the movement of the moon around the earth, a "year" by the earth circling the sun....

But the establishment of the "week" relates to only one thing: God establishing a period of time in honor of the creation of this planet. Every 7th day, every Saturday since creation, has been "the Sabbath of the Lord." Days were marked from sunset to sunset. [LEV 23:32]

Genesis 2:2 says that God ended His work on the seventh day, and He rested on the seventh day. He pronouned his blessings upon the seventh day, and sactified it... no other day got this kind of attention.

After Moses had led the children of Iseral out of their Egyptian captivity, the Lord "put it into writing." High upon Mount Sinai Moses received the Ten Commandments, and it's the 4th commandment that states very clearly just how special is the Lord's Sabbath:

Exodus 20:8-11 tells us to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall we labor and do our work, but the 7th day is the Sabbath Day of the Lord our God. We should do no work on it, nor our children or our servants or our animals or any visitors in our homes. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the seas and all within them, and rested the seventh day -- God BLESSED the Sabbath Day, and HALLOWED it. [Key points to remember are remember and Sabbath; here is shown the why.]

God did not "rest" because he was tired... God doesn't get tired. The Sabbath was to be a day of rest for all mankind, a constant memorial to mankind's creation, and our Creator.

The Bible comes in two testaments, and both witness to mankind certain messages about God. It's said "the Bible's a book with the answers in the back," we're gonna see how true that is. But both the Old and New Testaments must be studied to understand God.

Just how insistent was God in showing Isreal that the Sabbath was important? Very. The Sabbath ran from SUNDOWN FRIDAY to SUNDOWN SATURDAY, and it's decribed in great detail in the old testament.

Those who rejected observing the Sabbath faced being case out and even stoned to death. It's written down in Exodus 31:4, and this approach was necessary because the Israelites had to learn quickly how to obey... They had spent years and years in slavery, and the only way to get their attention and respect was to make it a clear-cut stright forward matter of life and death... they obesevered the Sabbath... or they died. These guys wandering in the desert were quite rebelious and quick to forget who got them out of the mess. The 40 years of wandering aimlessly was to have all the old people who caused the problem to begin with die off, then the next generation was delivered.

God made it absolutely clear that he meant business about observing the Sabbath, repeatedly. Another example is found in Exodus 16 where the Lord supplied manna from heaven to feed all his people as they headed for the promised land. For years and years they made use of this whitish flake that could be baked into bread, but on the day before the Sabbath they were to gather a double portion -- for none appeared on the Sabbath day, because no work, no gathering, was to be done on the Sabbath day. [EXO 16:22-32]

Note several things here. First the Jews were known for their excellent record keeping. Missing a Sabbath or festival was not good. They have maticulously maitained their records ever since. Also, these people collecting manna were still rebelious, they knew the 'rules' and tried to break them. If anyone collected too much, in order to save on collecting the next day, the stuff rotted and became infested with worms before it could be used the next day. This always happened, with the exception of the day before the Sabbath, this was the only manna that would keep long enough to be used the next day.

What we need to comprehend and understand is just how important the Sabbath was before and after Christ came into the world. The fourth of the Lord's ten commandments contains the Sabbath commandment and is the ONLY ONE that bears the mark and The Seal Of God. See, a Government Seal is used to officially identify national laws and authorize legal documents, and must contain the law-giver's Name, Title, and Territory over which he rules and has authority. The Lord created the heavens and the earth, and in the fourth commandment alone we find both the Sabbath commandment AND "The Seal Of God:"

"The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God:... for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them is, and rested the sevethday; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath and Hallowed it." [ EXO 20:10-11 ]

Every seventh day was a sign of the covenant between the Lord and His choosen people -- for nearly 6,000 years God's been keeping track of days in multiples of sevens. Now: the Bible constains a very special time prophecy. The prophecy deals with the Anti-Christ, and it just so happens that this prophect appears in the Bible a total of seven different times.