Halloween II - Samhain

Think you know where Halloween came from? Maybe you do. Or maybe you've just heard the same story repeated often enough that it sounds like history. Here are some quick facts and observations to separate the historical record from the Halloween mythology.

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In the previous post, we discussed who the Celts are and what the history of Halloween is. This time, we focus on Samhain. We shouldn't have to, but apparently, because of misinformation, we must.

Please take this quote from the Smithsonian (of all places) as our introduction:

"Halloween’s origins go back 2,000 years, to the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which marked their new year, according to National Geographic. Ancient Irish and Scottish people believed the veil between the worlds of the dead and living grew thin each year on November 1, allowing demons to roam the earth again. Along with displaying offerings and lighting bonfires for spirits, the Celts dressed up as the dead, hoping to blend in with real demons and therefore skirt spiritual confrontation."
-Rose Eveleth, “The History of Trick-or-Treating Goes Back Centuries” Smithsonian Magazine, originally published: October 18, 2012 | updated: October 24, 2023.

The Smithsonian is THE name in history in the United States, they had more than one person working on the article, and not just that, but National Geographic gets some credit. How on earth can it possibly be so wrong??
Yet it is. Let us turn aside and see.

What I am going to attempt to do today is give you a very, very simplified version of a very, very complicated topic. Anyone who studies Samhain professionally would likely tell you today's article is over simplified. Well, that's what you get in one blog post with scholarly material written for a casual audience. But I don't want to dive into details here. I only want to give you the overview that you need so you can better understand Halloween.

SAMHAIN HISTORY

What was Samhain? 

Samhain means "summer's end". It was the traditional last day of summer. The word is Irish. It might be better to think of it not as Celtic, since Celt is a very broad term, and instead think of it as Gaelic.
Besides the Gaels, no other Celtic group is known to have shared the concept of Samhain. This does not paint a picture of a day so widely popular that the Pope felt compelled to co-opt it.

We have no record from the Druids themselves. The oldest material on the Celts comes from the Greeks and Romans, but they do not mention Samhain. If the Druids marked the end of summer with a festival at all (and though it is reasonable, there is no solid evidence to prove they did) that doesn't establish that they called it Samhain, or observed it on October 31 or November 1.

The oldest material that mentions Samhain arrives several hundred years after the Druids disappear from the record. The word samhain (it was spelled in a few different ways, but it's all the same thing) appears in several old Irish texts. The only surviving copies of those texts are in manuscripts which date from the 1100s to the 1600s. But, scholars believe those manuscripts are copies of earlier material. Based on the language used, scholars estimate those texts to originally come from the 700s through the 1100s. Old, yes, but even that is solidly within the Christian era. (For more details on these texts, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

This dating causes scholars to debate whether that earliest material was preserved (yet heavily edited) by Christians or wholly created by Christians.

These oldest Irish texts can be divided into two categories: Irish non-fiction, and medieval Irish legends.

Legends
The medieval legends - where human armies battled fairies, a corpse asks for a drink, and a supernatural being puts people to sleep with music then burns their buildings - do treat Samhain like a holiday. But not a single word of ritualized begging or dressing up. Any claim of a pre-Christian Samhain holiday is based on legends. It used to be widely thought that the legends are traditions from ancient Druidic paganism that survived into the Christian era. With modern archaeology and textual criticism, many folklorists and historians are abandoning that position.

Narrative
The non-fiction (a dictionary, a martyrology, and a list of events) does not treat samhain as a holiday. It treats samhain as a timestamp; a way to point out that something happened at the end of summer. The non-fiction aren't about samhain, they only use that word. Like I said, as timestamp.

So, we really have two very different ways to understand Samhain: a "samhain" (lower-case s) time-stamp that means "the last day of summer" and falls on November 1 but has nothing to do with a festival, and a "Samhain" (upper-case S) holiday from medieval legends that may or may not have been real.
A real Samhain festival hinges on two things:
1) Do the legends contain truth here, or are they merely fairytales, and
2) Were the legends created from stories that survived from Druids, or were they invented by the Christians who wrote them.
We do not know for sure, but modern scholarship is moving in the direction of fairytales invented by Christians.

Why might Christians write such fairytales? One possible answer is because they wanted to explain and expand the history of Ireland. "Why is that building in ruins? Ah! Because of a great battle in ancient times between men and fairies."

So, we don't know if Samhain was a literal festival or not. But if it were, the strongest scholarly position is that Samhain was a seasonal festival in early medieval Ireland, associated with the end of the farming season and transition into winter, and marked by communal feasting and assemblies. In other words, something much like a harvest festival. How much of this reflects actual pre-Christian religious practice is uncertain.

When was Samhain?

The medieval Irish legends do not give a date for Samhain at all. The Irish non-fiction puts samhain on November 1, never October 31.

It is important to understand a few things.

• No one knows for certain exactly when summer's end was to the Druids. Remember, the Irish non-fiction, where the November 1 date comes from, was written by Christians during the Christian era. Exactly when the Druids believed summer ended is anybody's guess, but it could not have been tied to November 1 originally because the Druids didn't have a November.
• November is a Roman month. We don't know what calendar the Irish Druids used, but it is highly unlikely they used the calendar of their enemies. A Celtic calendar was found in France. It is a luni-solar calendar. But that could be specific to France. We have no such example from Ireland.
• When the earliest material was being created by Irish Christians, around 700-800 AD or so, they were using the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar we use today. Our November 1 today is 4 days ahead of November 1 from 800 AD. What was November 1 then would be November 5 now.

How was Samhain observed?

If we pull from the legends again, it was a time of feasting, royal gatherings, acts of courage, and, of course, encounters with fairies. There you go. Not so much like Halloween after all.
Again, not a single word of ritualized begging or dressing up.

Most of what people claim about Samhain and its traditions doesn't come from the oldest sources. It comes from material written much later, beginning in the 1500s. That's a pretty important distinction. The writers of that time were trying to reconstruct an ancient past they no longer understood, and they were doing it before modern historical and archaeological methods had been established. The disciplines of history and archaeology wouldn't become systematic, evidence-driven fields until the 1800s. Much of what earlier writers presented as pre-Christian Celtic history was actually speculation and romanticized reconstruction, not established fact. Rigorous disciplines did not correct the issues at first. On the contrary, well-known scholars like John Rhys and James Frazer made it worse. The idea that Samhain was the feast of the dead comes from James Frazer, as does the claim that the Catholic Church coopted Samhain and labeled it All Hallows. Specialists today are still working correcting the many misconceptions about this. Many of those claims from the 1500s through the early-1900s have since been disproved, abandoned as implausible, and rejected by modern scholars. Yet, articles like the one from the Smithsonian are helping to keep that questionable information alive.

Samhain is currently a festival for Wiccans and neo-pagans. No denying that. Some people use that as evidence that Samhain is ancient, and therefore Halloween is ancient ...and evil. But as I said in the last post, Druidism, and by extension Samhain, was recently reinvented. Most of these groups popped up in the 1700-1900s. That isn't evidence of ancient age at all. The Samhain they observe today bears little resemblance to the Samhain from the Irish legends. The same goes for Halloween. It was these groups who popularized many of the misconceptions about Halloween that this article was intended to clear up. (For more, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

I came across a woman on social media who was adamant that since Halloween is a high day for Satanists, it must not be touched by Christians. (Her real goal was to promote Old Covenant feasts.) I asked her, "If Satanists made the Feast of Tabernacles an annual high day, would you abandon it?" She adamantly rejected that notion. So, why should anyone else hold to a standard she herself doesn't stick to? In my experience, the people who fret most about pagan origins of holidays are far less concerned about paganism than they are about finding a wedge issue with which to promote their own system.

Did Irish Celts believe the dead walked the earth on Samhain?
Yes and no. Remember in the last post where we learned that Celts are a people group, and Celt is not the same thing as Druid? The Irish really did believe the dead walked among the living. It's true! ...But probably not the Druidic Irish, because it looks like this is a later development.
As I said, this claim comes from James Frazer. None of the oldest material supports this. The ancient Greek/Roman sources tell us the Druids believed in reincarnation. The medieval legends do not portray the dead returning to the earth. What they do portray is the human and fairy worlds coming close. The fairy world was a dangerous place but not a horrific place. Quite the opposite.

"The Irish otherworld was no hell, either. In medieval tales, it is a sunny place in perpetual spring. Everyone who lives there is beautiful, powerful, immortal and blond. They have good teeth. The rivers flow with mead and wine, and food appears on command. No sexual act is a sin. The houses sparkle with gems and precious metals. Even the horses are perfect."
-Lisa Bitel, "The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween", on USC Dornsife, October 29, 2024.

It was Christians who clearly believed in an afterlife and a realm where the dead are. It was All Saints' Day that honored and brought the mind to the realm of the dead. "Memento mori." Taken together, this information strongly indicates this 'dead walk the earth' superstition developed from Irish Christians not Irish Druids.

Was Samhain a demon lord?
No. I wanted to include a mention of this because it superbly illustrates the problem of bad source material and common knowledge. That claim originated with one Charles Vallancey, a self-taught authority in Irish history. Vallancey mythologized Samhain into a demon lord and paired him with Satan. His claims about Samhain were false, and even his contemporaries knew it. Later, James Bonwick borrowed and added to Vallancey's ideas with even more horrific etymology, which made it into publications from other authors, and eventually resources like the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition. Still more authors picked this up and put some lipstick on it, which was read by the likes of Herman Hoeh, and it all somehow made it into Chick Tracts, the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, and the movie Halloween II.
And, like many other claims about Samhain, it was never true to begin with. (For more, see "Samhain Lord of the Dead".)

CONCLUSION

What did we learn about Samhain? The real story is not at all what you've been told. If you go with the version found in non-fiction, then it was simply the last day of summer. If you go with the version in legends, then it was a time of fairies and kings. It was only after that when we start to see costumes, bonfires, and worlds of the dead. But then, after 1500, the back story was considerably altered (one might say, retconned).

To have any hope whatsoever of understanding the history of Samhain and Halloween, you absolutely must, at the very least, understand the timeline (the dates given here are very rough):

• 200 BC–400 AD: Druidism was practiced in the British Isles, and we know next to nothing about it.
• 400–700 AD: Christianity flourished among the Celts of the British Isles.
• 700-1000 AD: We get two versions of Samhain from this period: the non-fiction, where it's a timestamp, and the legends, where there be fairies.
• 1000–1500 AD: Christianity develops many traditions and customs, some of them bizarre to our modern minds, including getting dressed up and going door-to-door.
• 1500–1950 AD: Some individuals reconstruct Druidism into a new, highly romanticized version that never existed before. Some widely-recognized scholars appear and inadvertently make the problem worse. New religions emerge based largely on these reconstructions, popularizing them.
• 1950 AD–present: Scholars reverse course, stripping away much of the mystique surrounding this reinvented Druidism. The debate about the real Samhain continues.

Articles like the one from Smithsonian Magazine, citing National Geographic, which we saw at the start of this post, blend all these periods together and treat everything as if it were ancient and Druidic. It simply wasn't. They also seem to treat the word Celt as synonymous with pagan. It just isn't. This misshapen version is the one you see in popular knowledge.

Here's the thing ... I have given you links in this series so that you can chase down every claim I've made. I encourage you to follow those links and see for yourself. When you happen across some "helpful' peddler of paganism on the internet who is trying to convince you that all the elements of Halloween come from Samhain, and you are worshipping Satan because of it, you feel free to ask them if they can prove their claims - not from some magazine article, but from primary source documents or trusted secondary source material.

Next time, we will look into those modern Halloween traditions that we are told were born of pure evil. Were they?

Other posts in this series:
Halloween I, Halloween III

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Here are some sources relevant to today's article.

Material on ABD:

Samhain Was Not On October 31
Samhain Lord of the Dead
The Plain Truth About Samhain
The Real History Of The Druids
Peddlers of Paganism

Material off ABD:

"Samhain and Halloween". God Cannot Be Contained blog.
https://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2024/10/samhain-and-halloween.html
Note: This is Lonnie's post which got me started reading about Halloween in the first place.

Sanas Carmaic (Cormac's Glossary): https://archive.org/details/cu31924071173474/page/n101/mode/2up. See p.102 of that link, under Gamuin. Note: items in parenthesis are not original.

Annála Uladh (Annals of Ulster): https://archive.org/stream/annalauladhannal01royauoft/annalauladhannal01royauoft_djvu.txt. See p.158 of that link. Note: English translations use "Samhain" or "Allhallowtide", but that is not in the oldest manuscripts.

Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer):
https://www.paddybrown.co.uk/pdfs/The_Wooing_of_Emer.pdf. See pp.7 & 13 of that link; "Samain".

Félire Óengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus):
https://archive.org/details/martyrologyofoen29oenguoft/page/232/mode/2up. See p.232 of that link.

Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders of Ireland):
https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/77/mode/1up?q=Sam.

Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera):
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Meyer-Echtra-Nerai.pdf. See pp. 4, 10, & 14 of that link. Note: This translation transliterates samuin as Halloween.

Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282

Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain", (Oxford University Press, 2001). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

Ronald Hutton, "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain", (Yale University Press, 2009). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

"Scribes and Kings: Religion, Politics and the Medieval Manuscripts of Ireland". On Mythical Ireland. https://mythicalireland.com/blogs/news/scribes-and-kings-religion-politics-and-the-medieval-manuscripts-of-ireland.
Note: This is a fine example of a reasoned attempt to identify the balance between old and new in the medieval Irish legends.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Revealed Faith, Resisted

(Galatians 3:23) But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

Here’s the 64 dollar question for you to answer — Did Jesus come and reveal (unveil) this faith?

And if He came to reveal this faith, then what would the merchants of evil; the children of the devil, wish to do in this regard?

Keep this faith UN revealed. Obscured. Nullified. Rejected, by placing a “veil’ before the eyes of men so that they do not see; do not comprehend this faith that was to be revealed.

Why? Simple. So that people remain under the law, still shut up in regards to this faith to be revealed. Under lock and key, imprisoned by the law; a gilded cage, without bars, made to look inviting and comfortable, right up to the day one are led off to the gallows.

The law kills. It is the Spirit that imparts life. You cannot mix life and death. You cannot embrace the “tree of Life” (Christ Jesus) and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit is death and that is the fruit of the law. It imparts a knowledge of good and sin. It provides a modicum of wisdom.

The Hebrews, who were given the law, and heard the book of the law read to them, never made the connection between the law and that tree. They never made the connection between the tree of Life and God and the One who was to come. They knew the law, and liked what they saw; the sense of security it emanated. They took that rope, and gladly hung it around their collective necks; the faithless Hebrews with the deceitful and desperately wicked hearts of unbelief.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Faith, Law, and Deception

There are commonalities among the deceived; commonly held traits that cause people to reject Scriptural truths and accept lies and deceptions, all the while totally convinced what is believed is true, for from a strictly humanistic perspective, they are what is naturally assumed to be true.

But we are dealing with things outside the realm of the physical world we live in. What you grew up in; the environment, and the experiences based in the physical world, have an impact on the thought processes you develop over time.

In order to “get ahead” in this world, you have to do what it takes to get ahead, educationally, as well as other factors that can even include where you live. A competitive nature develops that can reflect itself in a number of ways, some of them following dishonest endeavors, criminal in nature. In many businesses, there develops a “department” of “pencil pushers” who seek to maximize profits while minimizing costs, so that the end product, whether it be fast food or widgets, people may well refuse to buy what they are selling.

In religion, specifically false religions, they are selling a lie; a “cheapened” product, where the difference however is that this trend can be reversed where salvation is sold as an expensive product that is going to cost you, plenty, and the real thing is compared to their more expensive product as merely cheap knockoffs.

And so, the truth of the matter when it comes to religion and Salvation is that the wolves, in order to achieve their goals, inflate the price of the product, while “exposing” the true product as the cheap copy; “cheap grace” if you will.

What Scripture reveals is that the cost of Salvation is beyond the ability of any man who ever lived to pay it. The deceiver’s work-around is to actually cheapen it, some, but still present it as achievable, albeit expensive comparatively, where human nature agrees with the assessment. You have to give up; surrender something in order to acquire something.

Salvation does not follow the physical patterns everyone becomes accustomed to dealing with. Salvation is a gift, not given to criminals. It is given to the family members of the family of God, sold by the deceivers as the kingdom of God in the sense of those in the kingdom being subjects of the kingdom, and not family members, constrained by law even as the Hebrews were when they were established as a nation; a kingdom.

The analogy given regarding salvation being a gift is that which is bequeathed to the children in the testament of the father, inherited from the father.

Take a concordance and look up and read all the passages of Scripture that use the words “inherit” and “inheritance.”

Understand that you acquire an inheritance upon the death of the one who bequeaths those things of his or her possession to you upon their death, where Jesus died in order to pass on to you an inheritance of eternal life if you be one who belongs to His family through a new birth of the Spirit and where your sins that made you a ‘criminal’ in the sight of God freed from your sins also by His death.

The price of your salvation is paid for by the One who in turn gives it to you. You cannot pay it, in full or partially, like some “matching funds” transaction.

The argument is put forward that people need to keep the old covenant law; the ‘works’ of the law, whether as a condition of salvation (compliance or ‘payment) which is in keeping with the conditioning we all received growing up in a physical environment described above in the opening statements. It is part of our conditioning received in the environment we all were born into.

The function of the law; its purpose, comes down to two things of note:

1. It produces wrath and makes all guilty before God. It lets it be known that no man can measure up to the standard of God and the perfection of God. All have sinned and have been found wanting when it comes to the glory of God.
2. It provides the way out of man’s dilemma through Christ Jesus paying the debt of sin prescribed by the law, that law being a blood covenant law where the sinner; the transgressor was to be put to death; their blood spilled out, which for a man produces a final and irreversible death where recovery is impossible, once the blood is drained out, seeing as the life is in the blood.

In this manner, the sin-debt is paid. You sin, you die. With Christ standing in for you, you do not personally pay the debt of irreversible death whereas Christ could do so, where He, being God, could not suffer irreversible death, being primarily a Spirit Being to begin with. He could survive what you could not, and where His death in the flesh made you legally dead to sin and dead to the law that prescribed that death, now freed from both, as Scripture declares.

Deceivers, who seek personal gain; wolves in sheep’s clothing (altered exterior appearance) have no leverage to use against those so freed from sin and the law. Their power and control revolves around there being a law that can still condemn, thereby instilling fear within people who are influenced by them, who manipulate the conditioning we all normally receive in this physical world and build on this. Faith in God who gifts us eternal live with Him through what He has done for us is supplanted by deceivers who insist it is you that must comply with requirements you must perform in order to acquire or qualify for eternal life, and they are there to guide you in the process… for a price.

Such people are led to believe, as a result, Jesus did not pay the price; the full price, and this is indicative of faithlessness in what He did and accomplished.

The price you pay the wolves so that they can feed their own bellies is both monetary and spiritual. You abandon faith in God even as Eve believed the serpent, thereby compromising faith in God and what God had declared; that partaking of that tree would result in death; a death penalty, no matter how attractive the fruit appeared; how beneficial appearing it was sold to them by the serpent.

The parallel here is the law. The typology of that tree was the law. When it comes to salvation, that was to be derived from the other tree; the Tree of Life, which was not available after choosing the other tree whose fruit was death.

The Devil is framed as the father of lies AND deceit. He used God’s tree as the means of subverting Eve, followed by Adam.

God gave them a life of relative ease, with abundant food resources. There was but one negative commandment; do not eat of that tree. Condemnation would result. You can perceive it either as a violation of the commandment of God, like the law, or look deeper and see that the real violation was in not believing what God had declared would be the consequences.

Now look again at the law; the consequences of the law as spelled out, plainly. The law produces wrath and makes all guilty before God. The only way to no longer be guilty before God is to pay the DEBT of the law; not try to keep the law that already establishes it’s sole fruit as wrath; condemnation and a death sentence. The solution is to actually believe God and what His inspired, written ‘testament’ states about the law and faith; that our salvation is tied to faith and not the law. There is no such thing as faith in God AND faith in the law. A faith in the law that the law will not condemn you; produce wrath with you by embracing the law is a fantasy put forward by deceivers that have something to gain by your disobedience to the faith. They gain, financially, and personally through power and control over your life, and the devil gains by having you abandon faith in God, even as did he.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Who / What Are You Listening To?

Jesus the Christ in the flesh was God Incarnate. He came on the scene 2000 years ago, and the people He went to; the Jews of the time, were as careless about listening to Him as their forefathers where who came out of Egypt. God communicated to them through Moses. When He came among His own and spoke to them directly, they too took little heed to what He said.

(Matthew 17:5) While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

(John 10:27) My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

(Hebrews 1:1-2) God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, °Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

Odd, don’t you think, that given this information, Sabbatarians would resort to substituting what Jesus said and taught with what God spoke to the Hebrews upon coming out of Egypt; the Decalogue spoken from Mt. Sinai, overlooking why God spoke to them at Mt. Sinai.

(Exodus 19:9) And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD.

God thundered out the Decalogue from the mount, knowing full well they would not believe Him as they had already proven. This was for the express purpose of them believing Moses.

Sabbatarians are very careless with what God spoke directly to the people. Alterations are made with the actual quotes from Scripture, as well as alterations of the meanings of what He spoke.

(Matthew 5:17-19) Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. °For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. °Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Everything Jesus said here is altered on a wholesale basis.

Jesus references the law and prophets and what is located in both with the potential to be destroyed or fulfilled, but Sabbatarians will cite this passage sans the prophets so as to imply He was talking about the legalities of the law, seeing as there are no laws codified in the prophets. Then, they substitute the Hebrew idiom about heaven and earth with a modern definition of cosmology so as to also alter the meaning given there so as to negate what the context reveals about prophesies in both the law and prophets He came to fulfill, following up with claiming “these” commandments which grammatically requires cited commandments, with “the” commandments of the old covenant law where the transgression of any of those resulted in a condemnation and death sentence, and not a situation or condition of entering into the kingdom of Heaven in a lesser capacity.

“These” commandments follow; commandments of His, where He contrasts them to old covenant commandments, even to the point of negating one located in the law.

Sabbatarians claim He is saying here that the law remains inviolate right down to the jots and tittles, then ignore His alteration of some of those commandments way beyond the scope of jots and tittles, with the crowning touch that, upon His death, He even went so far as to destroy over 98% of the law, claiming all those commandments were ‘ceremonial’ and done away with.

It is a masterful stroke of contradiction carried out in just a few verses, and Sabbatarians themselves are blind to the manipulation.

But wait! There’s more! … Much much more.

Jesus declared Himself Lord also of the Sabbath, where Sabbatarians cite this, usually with the exclusion of the word “also” so that people don’t conclude He is Lord “also” of the other days of the week; part of His creation, specifically the first day of the week, aka “Sunday” in the Roman Catholic calendar, used by many nations for the sake of standardization.

While acknowledging Jesus as the Lord of the Sabbath, they overlook and ignore what all He had to say in relation to the Sabbath, specifically that good works are lawful on the Sabbath, as contrasted to evil works. For once again, what He had to say flies in the face of Sabbatarian dogma.

In cults, like Adventism and the Worldwide splinters, fear and phobia induction is crucial to control. This is where the OC law comes into play. It is the means by which such religious cults control and manipulate their members. It is about the “management” of sin in order to manage the members. By defining sin as the transgression of the law, thanks to the poorly translated passage found at 1 John 3:4, and then citing only half of it while re-defining the law to mean just the Decalogue, the membership can be managed through fear by managing the law. If sin is the transgression of the law, then the avoidance of sin is through keeping the law; their interpretation of it, where they set themselves up as the administers of the law, however defined, where the law is presented as “do-able” and where the law serves the administrators of it. There is profit in being a prophet.

But take careful notice, even though the translation of 1John 3:4 is sloppy, for it begins declaring sin “ALSO” transgresses the law, where the passage in Greek defines sin, not through the transgression of the law, but through the words “hamartia” and “anomia” both of which need to be understood in their Greek context.

There is sin, and sin transgresses the law, where we would define sin, based on the terms presented in the Greek as evils and iniquities, often lumped together under the English word “lawless(ness) which reflects the Greek “anomia” from a transliteral perspective.

Regardless of how you want to define sin, the law was what gave “strength” to sin so that the law, in concert with the sin, condemns the sinner to death, and where Scripture declares that all have sinned, therefore all are under that death penalty.

It is here where Christ Jesus stepped in, and solved the problem of condemnation by taking upon Himself that condemnation so deservedly earned by all mankind. And it is also here that deceivers in religion must overcome; mitigate the sacrifice of Christ by convincing people they are still subject to the consequences of sin, should they sin again.

Faith in Christ Jesus regarding His sacrifice is compromised, should you “continue in sin” sin again, which all do also. It is defined as though you paid the penalty for your previous “crimes” and now, you’ve committed another crime, resulting in another round of condemnation, denying the fact that Christ paid the debt, once, for all, for all time.

A believer is removed from the law, through death, so that the law can NEVER charge them again. They exist now, and forever, in a state of Grace, like ‘diplomatic immunity’ from prosecution which concept is met, not with biblical evidence, but with rationalizations; human reasoning designed to actually overthrow the facts of Scripture:

“Why, if we (you) were free of the law, then you could sin with impunity without fear of any divine reprisal!”

You could, and you might, if it were not for another matter associated with that sacrifice, that being the issuance of the Holy Spirit to those who actually believe God and Christ for what Christ did; removing their sins; forgiving their sins, and preserving them in a state no longer subject to the condemnation of the law, especially those points of law specific to the law; “works” of the law, where the transgression was not against either God or fellow man, but the law itself.

One of the common mantras of Sabbatarianism is that the law (that remains) is how one expresses love; for God and fellow man. The works of the law, specific to the law itself, effect neither God or fellow man; rather, they affect the law itself, so that following the Sabbatarian logic, keeping those works of the law would be a reflection of one’s love of the law; not God or fellow man.

The unspoken real issue here is hidden in all this distraction over the law by those intent on administering it, illegally, I might add, for once Christ’s sacrifice was “finished” it was finished. Done. Completed, so that the law could never affect anyone’s condemnation again.

“Blasphemy!” Screams the Sabbatarian, usually followed by more rationalizations sans biblical evidence. For in the eyes of Sabbatarians, it is by and through the law God will be judging all mankind. Their theology demands it; their theology and control are dependent upon it.

This is perhaps then the greatest distraction or deception in all of Scripture, for its claim means that God does judge mankind as does mankind itself, with what God stated was UNRIGHTEOUS judgment, according to appearance, where the appearance of sin can be manipulated by man.

What did God say, Himself, was the means whereby He judges mankind?

(1 Samuel 16:7) But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

God judges according to the heart.

When you broach this subject with Sabbatarians, it’s like holding a cross up to a vampire, figuratively speaking. They don’t want to discuss the heart. They want to keep the focus and attention on the Decalogue, specifically the Sabbath.

Christ came and took away the sin(s) of the world. The law, despite the best efforts of Sabbatarianism, Catholicism, and a few more .isms cannot judge anyone. Only one judgment remains, to be conducted by God, who judges righteous judgment, and not according to appearance. He will judge all according to the heart of a man, and this revelation does not bode well with those who have used the law to cloak their evil hearts.

The heart is associated with the Spirit; the “heart, soul, mind” of a person. That non-corporeal aspect of a person, addressed in the Great commandment of the law that Sabbatarians have relegated to the artificial division of law referred to them as “ceremonial” and not applicable in their theology, and no wonder, for it destroys their legal construct of “moral” law.

(Matthew 22:36-40) Master, which is the great commandment in the law? °Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. °This is the first and great commandment. °And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. °On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

One’s whole focus is on God and a total dedication to Him; not a split devotion between Him and the law that could only expose the evil heart one will be judged by, and the law that could only condemn sins committed by those with an evil heart… of unbelief. It is not the function of that law to regulate the lives of the righteous, whose righteousness is derived through faith. What guides and leads the believer, with the new heart, is the Holy Spirit.

(John 16:13) As long as those with the evil hearts of unbelief are kept occupied with the law, convinced the law will lead and guide them, they won’t be looking elsewhere. But truth is found in the Spirit; not the law.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

(John 14:6) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

(John 1:17) For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Abraham And The Exclusion Of Merit

It might be supposed that Paul had now made his point, proved the universal need of righteousness, the impossibility of man providing that righteousness for himself, and the revelation through the gospel of what alone can meet the need, a righteousness bestowed by God. He might now proceed to the triumphant exposition of “all the good things that are ours in Christ” as we find it in ch. 8, the chapter which, with the possible addition of ch. 12, represents the crowning purpose of his writing. But again his sensitiveness to the point of view of others leads to a digression. What about Abraham? Abraham was indeed, on the surface at least, a strong case for the Jew to appeal to. He was the Founder of the People, the Friend of God; and his life had been marked on more than one occasion by conspicuous obedience to the will of God. “When he was called, ... he went out not knowing whither he went”; “when he was tried, he offered up Isaac” (Heb. 11:8, 17). And the fact that the writer to the Hebrews traces his obedience on both occasions to “faith” (though he uses the word in a different sense from that peculiar to Paul) is evidence that these works of obedience were regarded as proofs of his faith. On this it would not be difficult to found an argument that in this classical instance justification had followed on a combination of faith and works or on works alone, as, indeed, we find it in the First Book of Maccabees: “Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reckoned it to him for righteousness?” (Cf. Jas. 2:21, 22.) Paul faces the possibility of such an argument, and admits. If Abraham was, as perhaps you say, justified on the ground of merit, then, of course, he had a ground of claim (contradicting 3:27). But it cannot be really so from the point of view of God; for Scripture itself connects his justification with his faith, and says nothing about his works. Indeed, the text tacitly excludes any question of merit. For if justification was granted in answer to faith, it was granted out of grace and not as something which had been earned. The text in Genesis could in fact apply only to a case where all idea of earning righteousness by merit had been abandoned (v. 5). The verses quoted from Psa. 32 are relevant in so far as their silence as to any condition on the side of man suggests that the divine forgiveness was unconoditioned, in other words, of grace."

C. Anderson Scott, The Abington Bible Commentary, p. 1144-1145, on Romans 4:1-8

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Halloween I - Origins

Think you know where Halloween came from? Maybe you do. Or maybe you've just heard the same story repeated often enough that it sounds like history. Here are some quick facts and observations to separate the historical record from the Halloween mythology.

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I don't feel the need to post about Halloween every year. The day is simply a bridge too far for some people. Some love to hate Halloween, even if much of what they believe about it is based on misinformation and outright lies. I am personally not very fond of modern Halloween as it is lately. So why write about it? Because I love history and I want to know the truth about it. How can we say we love the truth if we won't look at the truth? And God is truth. So, I persist.

I just so happened to have some extra material on Halloween that I've been wanting to post somewhere. I thought an article hitting the highlights sounded like a better idea than digging into a single detail. So, today I offer you a rapid-fire bunch of interesting facts and observations. Any one paragraph should give you something good to consider. 

At first, I had this all as one post. When I read through it, I thought it would be unlikely that anyone would read through it all, and if they did, they would never remember what was at the start of the article by the time they got to the end. So, I've decided to turn this into a series. It's easier to digest that way. I will put links at the end for more information.

Please take this quote from The Sun as our introduction:

"Trick or treating may seem like a modern event, but it can actually be traced back to Celtic Britain and Ireland in the 9th century. The night of October 31 was known as Samhain, a Pagan festival which was later combined with Christian celebrations and renamed All Saints’ Day by the Catholic church. At Samhain, our Pagan ancestors believed the souls of our dead came into our world – and were appeased by offerings of food and drink."
-Josie Griffiths and Jennifer Roback, “When Did Trick or Treating First Start, What Is the Meaning Behind the Phrase and How Does It Vary Around the World?” The Sun, October 31, 2021.

I bet most of the readers here are familiar with that kind of material.
There is so much to fix here. How can it be wrong if it's in the mainstream media?? (He said, knowingly.) As we've seen in my "Samhain Lord of the Dead" article and elsewhere, even the Encyclopedia Britannica can be wrong.

First, we have to know who we're dealing with.

THE CELTS

What is a Celt?
Celts are a people group, same as Romans or Anglo-Saxons or Danes. They lived in the British Isles, France, and across Europe into Turkey. The Galatians were Celts (yes, those Galatians). I am part Celt. But as the Roman Empire had many nations, there were many and diverse tribes who were considered to be Celts. In the British Isles alone there were at least 25 named tribal groups (Iceni, Brigantes, Silures, Trinovantes, Dumnonii, etc), and probably more when smaller groups and northern peoples are included. It was not one unified group.

Ronald Hutton has this to say:

"Since the beginning of the [21st] century, specialists in the Iron Age, especially in Britain, have generally stopped writing popular books on the ancient Celts, because many of them have lost faith in the concept of a unitary ethnic, linguistic, and cultural province inhabited by such people, and the term ‘Celtic’ itself had become controversial for ancient Europe..."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024 (see p.3 of that link).

So, there was no unified Celtic culture at all. This is important to know for the times when people say such and such was so popular among the Celts that the Pope felt he had to coopt it.

The word Celt is not synonymous with pagan or Druid any more than Italian is synonymous with Catholic. Saying a tradition is Celtic says nothing at all about whether or not it was pagan or Druidic or even religious at all.

What is a Druid?
Druids, real Druids, were (past tense) priests in pre-Christian Celtic paganism. We know almost nothing about what they genuinely looked like or what rituals they actually performed. Only two sources are believed to have been actual eye witnesses to Druids: Julius Caesar and Cicero. And we must take their accounts with a grain of salt.

Druids first appear in historical records in the second century BC, and they disappear from the record roughly around the 400s AD. In the first century, Rome tried to stamp out Druidism in Britain, claiming the Druids engaged in human sacrifice. (This is one example of why we need to take the Roman accounts with a grain of salt. We cannot be sure if this was accurate or just propaganda.) Druidism survived in Ireland and Scotland in part because Rome never fully conquered those areas. Christianity first arrived in the British Isles by 200 AD. Over the following centuries, Christianity spread throughout the British Isles. By the 6th century, Christianity was flourishing in the British Isles. No trace of the Druids remained. Medieval Christian writers reimagined them as wizards (think Merlin).

Aren't there Druids today? No. Not real Druids anyway. Starting in the 1500s, some people in the British Isles began to romanticize the Druids. A great deal of material was written about them which was, shall we say, less than accurate. A good amount of it was extrapolation, imagination, or outright fabrication. They created costumes, songs, holidays, traditions, etc etc. Later writers built upon and added to the claims of earlier writers, until all they had to do to appear legitimate was to quote one another. It turns out that Druids can be whatever you want them to be. Modern Druidism is a revival movement, not a demonstrably unbroken continuation of the ancient priesthood. Modern Druids draw on many sources, including this questionable material, along with later developments of their own. The same goes for Wicca and for Satanism. The founders of these groups relied heavily on that same material.

Modern scholars, such as Ronald Hutton for one example, are moving away from claims made from 1500s through the mid-1900s.

Now that you know what Celts and Druids are, let's move on to Halloween.

HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

What is Halloween anyway? Halloween is short for "All Hallows Eve" which is the evening before All Saints' Day. All Saints' Day was originally called All Hallows in English. All Saints' Day is on November 1st and honors all Christian dead in Heaven. All Saints' Day is the real holiday here, not Halloween. It was common for major feast days to have a vigil on the evening before; a vigil is intended to prepare the heart and mind to honor God on a feast day. All Hallows Eve is to All Hallows what Christmas Eve is to Christmas. The day after All Saints' Day is All Souls' Day. All Souls' Day honors all Christian dead who have not yet entered Heaven (remember, Catholics believe in Purgatory). Together, Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day make up Hallowtide or All Hallowtide. A "tide" is a festive period of time as opposed to a single day.

Here is a super-condensed timeline of how Halloween developed (according to the best evidence we have today):

• Christians had been honoring martyrs ever since there were martyrs. It eventually became difficult to honor them all individually. There were multiple days to honor particularly popular martyrs, and multiple days to honor many martyrs grouped together.
• In 609 AD, Pope Boniface IV created a memorial for the dioceses of Rome of all Rome's martyrs on May 13. One source claims Rome had a second day a week after Pentecost. Other areas had their own days.
• In 735 AD (approximately), Pope Gregory III created a memorial for the diocese of Rome of all departed saints in Heaven on November 1, apparently as part of his dispute with the Byzantine Emperor.
• In 835 AD, Pope Gregory IV expanded the all saints memorial to the whole church.
• Late 800s AD, estimated date of the first recorded mention of samhain. (We will get more into this in the next post.)

You may have heard something like, "The Pope moved a feast to November 1 to coopt Samhain." Is that true? No.
Scholars debate whether Samhain was a festival at all in this time period, let alone a popular one. Pope Gregory III did not move the May 13 date to November 1. All Saints' Day was not intended to replace the May 13th memorial to all martyrs. The May 13th observance took centuries to end. Some sources say it was Pope Gregory IV who transferred the observance to November 1 to better facilitate the many pilgrims to Rome, but other sources say it was Pope Gregory VII who put a final end to the May 13 observance.

This claim about the Catholic Church co-opting Samhain was popularized by James Frazer, who built on ideas from writers such as John Rhys and Edward Tylor. His work helped make the claim widely accepted, and later writers continued spreading it. There is no primary source evidence for this claim. Not only is there no valid evidence in support, but there is legitimate evidence against it. Recent scholars have since moved away from the claims of these authors. This is what Ronald Hutton has to say about it:

"This leaves Frazer’s hypothesis concerning the origins of the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls. There was never any objective evidence for it: not a single medieval record of churchmen either attempting to suppress a pagan feast of the dead in northern Europe by instituting All Saints’ Day or attempting to replace one by instituting All Souls’ Day. Nevertheless, when Frazer proposed it, the intellectual climate was favourable, because towards the end of the nineteenth century a conviction had grown up among British scholars, based on a wide range of disparate pieces of evidence, that medieval Christianity had been merely an elite veneer covering a society in which most ordinary people remained at least partly pagan. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, that conviction disappeared."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", p.76.

You may have heard that Halloween was the Celtic new year, or a feast of the dead. That is also baseless. Hutton says this:

"On examination, the evidence for the New Year is all indirect, speculative, and inconclusive, even when items of it are included that escaped the notice of the original proposer of the concept. Evidence for the feast of the dead is pretty near non-existent. Neither idea has been conclusively disproved, and probably never will be: it is notoriously difficult to prove a negative in many areas of cultural history. Nevertheless, on the available evidence, it may be suggested that neither should find a place henceforth in publications on the Western European pre-Roman Iron Age, whether termed ‘Celtic’ or not, unless recognized as flimsy historical hypotheses, anchored in doubtful Victorian and Edwardian scholarship. Certainly, they should no longer be restated as proven fact."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024 (see p.15 of that link).

To reiterate, these claims have practically no evidence to support them and they should not be passed off as facts.

You should understand something about Halloween - it wasn't originally a holiday in its own right. The records show the phrase "All Hallows Eve" being used as far back as the 1300s (which means it's older than that), but it was used in reference to All Hallows' Day because it was the vigil of that day, and only on the evening before that day. It wasn't until the mid-1500s that Halloween starts looking like its own holiday in its own right. It wasn't until the 1800s that it became a distinct social celebration in Scotland and Ireland; the area where our attention will focus in the next post. People tend to treat Halloween anachronistically, as if how things are today are how things always were for the past 2,000 years. That simply is not so.

Halloween was brought to the United States by immigrants. It changed over time, as most things do. Due to the influence of such things as Protestantism and the Industrial Revolution, to name but two, customs that were once spread over the entire Fall season began to coalesce into single holidays, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Really, it wasn't until the 1930s that Halloween began looking like we know it today (much the same as it was with Christmas, as we saw in the post "Christmas Eras Tour - Part IV"). We will see more of that in the third and final post in this series.

CONCLUSION

So, now you have a better understanding of the origins of Halloween. You can see for yourself that the things you have heard about Halloween are unfortunately incorrect.

Next time, we will dive deeper into Samhain. It is unfortunate that we must always investigate Samhain when we investigate Halloween, but such is the power of a lie told often enough.

Other posts in this series:
Halloween II, Halloween III

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I promised some sources at the end of the article.

Material on ABD:

Samhain Was Not On October 31
Samhain Lord of the Dead
The Plain Truth About Samhain
The Real History Of The Druids
Review - Is the Occult Influencing Your Family
Peddlers of Paganism

Material off ABD:

"Samhain and Halloween". God Cannot Be Contained blog.
https://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2024/10/samhain-and-halloween.html
Note: This is Lonnie's post which got me started reading about Halloween in the first place.

Direct links to the oldest Irish literature:

Sanas Carmaic (Cormac's Glossary): https://archive.org/details/cu31924071173474/page/n101/mode/2up. See p.102 of that link, under Gamuin. Note: items in parenthesis are not original.

Annála Uladh (Annals of Ulster): https://archive.org/stream/annalauladhannal01royauoft/annalauladhannal01royauoft_djvu.txt. See p.158 of that link. Note: English translations use "Samhain" or "Allhallowtide", but that is not in the oldest manuscripts.

Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer):
https://www.paddybrown.co.uk/pdfs/The_Wooing_of_Emer.pdf. See pp.7 & 13 of that link; "Samain".

Félire Óengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus):
https://archive.org/details/martyrologyofoen29oenguoft/page/232/mode/2up. See p.232 of that link.

Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders of Ireland):
https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/77/mode/1up?q=Sam.

Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera):
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Meyer-Echtra-Nerai.pdf. See pp. 4, 10, & 14 of that link. Note: This translation transliterates samuin as Halloween.

Catholic Encyclopedia. “Irish Literature”. NewAdvent.org. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08116a.htm

Some helpful books:

Bede, "De Temporum Ratione" (The Reckoning of Time):
https://old.katab.asia/special/De_temporum_ratione.pdf. See pp.53-54 of that link for "Winterfylleth".

Lisa Morton, "Trick or Treat: A history of Halloween". Internet Archive .
https://archive.org/details/trickortreathist0000mort/ Note: I found this after doing this post. It has a ton of info on customs, but does at times draw on some bad sources. Overall, an interesting read.

Nathan J. Harris, "Debunking Samhain: Undoing the Misinformation of Wicca", PDF file, Academia.edu, accessed 11-4-2025, https://www.academia.edu/144624704/Debunking_Samhain_Undoing_the_Misinformation_of_Wicca.

Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282

Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain", (Oxford University Press, 2001). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

Ronald Hutton, "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain", (Yale University Press, 2009). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

Some helpful online articles:

"Halloween’s True Origins: A Christian Vigil, Not a Pagan Remnant" on Theology In Five.
https://johndaniels.substack.com/p/halloweens-true-origins-a-christian

"Internet Medieval Sourcebook". Fordham University. Tons of old works here from Celtic regions.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook1g.asp. Note: be aware of the shaky reliability of older material.

"Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2020/11/masking-and-mumming-for-the-holidays-thanksgiving-style/

"Scribes and Kings: Religion, Politics and the Medieval Manuscripts of Ireland". On Mythical Ireland. https://mythicalireland.com/blogs/news/scribes-and-kings-religion-politics-and-the-medieval-manuscripts-of-ireland. Note: This is a fine example of a reasoned attempt to identify the balance between old and new in the medieval Irish legends.

"The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween" on USC Dornsife.
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/ancient-irish-get-too-much-credit-for-halloween/

"Trick or Treat" on Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles 3rd Edition
https://dchp.arts.ubc.ca/entries/trick%20or%20treat

"The Jack-o-Lantern Story: Uncut and Uncensored" on lesleybannatyne.com.
https://lesleybannatyne.com/JOL.html

"The Truth About Halloween". Eternal COG.
https://www.eternalcog.org/media/The-Truth-about-Halloween.pdf. Note: This is a fantastic example both of what to do and not to do in a study. Good: cite lots of sources. Bad: Treat any and all sources as authoritative. People, please mind your sources! Quality over quantity.

"Unmasking a Thanksgiving Tradition Through Photos and Newspapers" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2015/11/unmasking-a-thanksgiving-tradition-through-photos-and-newspapers/

"Why the True Origins of Halloween Aren’t Actually Pagan" on BK's Substack.
https://bkapologist.substack.com/p/why-the-true-origins-of-halloween

Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "fantasticals".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+fantasticals

Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "ragamuffins".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+ragamuffin

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Where Shadows Wait

Velvet sky unfolds
silver threads stitch dark with light
stars hum ancient songs

Moon drifts like a thought
soft upon the breath of clouds
guiding tides to dream

Owls trade whispered news
crickets weave their patient hymn
night blooms without end

A cool wind wanders
through the hush of sleeping fields
carrying the stars

Shadows lean and sway
as if listening for dawn
yet linger in peace

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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The Rest Found In/With Christ Jesus

(Matthew 11:28-30) Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. °Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. °For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

To say Sabbatarians such as Adventists here twist the scriptures in this regard is an understatement. They mangle it. They chew it up and spit it out.

This is a rest the law does not provide. The Sabbath was a temporary respite from labor, carried out the previous six days – physical labor followed by a physical rest from physical work. The Sabbath commandment was a total ban on ANY work on the Sabbath; even the preparation of a meal, where they were to prepare their meals for the Sabbath the day before; the day of preparation, with one interesting statement made in this regard:

(John 19:42) There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

Whose preparation day? The Jews’ preparation day. Not the preparation day; the Jews’ preparation day before the Sabbath where Sabbatarians try to play cute, and claim the Sabbath was for all mankind, misapplying what Jesus said in Mark 2:27, redefining what “man” meant to the Jews at that time in their culture, where only Jews were “man.”

The Sabbatarian “definition” would mean that it was quite alright for Gentiles to be keeping the Sabbath “according to the commandment” without having to prepare for it…maybe all the Gentiles keeping the Sabbath didn’t eat on the Sabbath, fasting on that day referred to as a feast day in Leviticus 23...

Jesus makes reference to HIS rest for the soul as being in the context of a yoke and burden, with the caveat it is a light yoke and burden, which begs the logical question regarding another yoke and burden that was not so light.

(Galatians 5:1) Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Here, the liberty found in Christ, being a light yoke and burden, is contrasted to another yoke and burden that was just discussed in the previous verses and account which was about the law, given at Mt. Sinai, starting in verse 21 where Paul asks a question of those who were opting to embrace the law:

(Galatians 4:21) Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

They were unwittingly placing themselves, needlessly, under the yoke and bondage of the law.

Even Peter touches on this theme in Acts 15, during the debate and council at Jerusalem over whether the Gentiles should be required to become Jews first and Christians second by having them undergo circumcision, bringing them under the law according to the law.

(Acts 15:7-11) And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. °And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; °And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. °Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? °But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.

This is one of those passages of Scripture, anathema to Sabbatarians, who insist the law be kept in order to demonstrate one’s devotion and obedience to God, which does no such thing. Theirs is a devotion and obedience to the law; not God. God is not the law, and the law is not God. But the law can be treated as “another god besides God” in that it was graven images of stones given to the faithless Hebrews who had already shown they would not listen to or follow God, where they ended up being given the law; even the Decalogue, not so that they would believe God, but believe Moses, “for ever.” (Ex. 19:9)

Christ Jesus; God Incarnate, offered a rest for the soul; a permanent rest from the evil works of the flesh, ultimately leading to death. This is the “sabbatismos” spoken of in Hebrews 4:9 that Sabbatarians insist is the weekly “shadow” (Col. 2:16-17) Sabbath (“sabbaton”) that was temporary, and for the physical body after six days of physical work. They are blind to the context, having a veil before their eyes. It is a rest that is a cessation of a particular work, even as God ceased from a particular work on the seventh day of Creation Week. It is “God’s Rest” entered into through faith; something the faithless Hebrews (Jews) could not do (Heb. 4:6) but they did enter into the shadow weekly Sabbath.

Those led by the flesh choose the things of the flesh; physical rites and rituals found in the old covenant law; not the new covenant law of faith and the Spirit where those shadows found their fulfillment in the spiritual realities, such as God’s Rest entered into through faith. (Heb. 3:18-19;4:1)

The Hebrews refused the rest found in/with Jesus, for they were quite comfortable with the shadow Sabbath they were given at Sinai, where all is judged according to the flesh by the flesh.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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The Unspoken, Unrecognized Sin

There is a sin that resides at the core of all sin. It is the genesis of all relevant sin that affects the mind, heart, and soul of mankind, and it is downplayed to the point that it is even denied as a sin by those who seek for an easy to define sin that focuses on the end point; the result that follows a progression from this elementary sin.

It is the sin of faithlessness, also known as the sin of unbelief.

The definition of sin used by Adventism obscures this sin to the point it is even denied as being a sin, where sin is defined as the transgression of the Decalogue of the old covenant law, based on half of a passage of Scripture massaged further that ignores both the English and the Greek of that entire verse.

The sin of unbelief is born of an evil heart, used to describe the Hebrews who were given the law and their progeny that followed after them by the author of Hebrews who describes a “rest” a “sabbatismos” that the Hebrews, who had the Sabbath (Gr. Sabbaton) could not enter into due to their faithlessness and unbelief; their evil hearts of unbelief.

(Hebrews 3:17-19) But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? °And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? °So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

The author of Hebrews refers to Psalms 95 in this regard.

(Psalms 95:10-11) Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: °Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

(Hebrews 4:3) For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

The works carried out prior to this rest God entered into were finished from the foundation of the world, which is what the narrative in the opening verses of Genesis describe “In the beginning” that being Creation Week. God entered into a rest from that finished work of Creation and He is quite literally still in that “rest” from that finished work; a cessation of a work that was complete. Whole. Finished. Done.

Understand the implications. God SWORE in His wrath the faithless; the unbelieving cannot and will not enter into His rest with Him that He finished at the foundation of the world. They are barred from entry, but the faithful and believing do join Him in His rest from that work of Creation.

Where is God? In His Heaven; His kingdom.

Who enters into His kingdom, Heaven? Those who keep the law, like as did the Pharisees Jesus described as evil children of the devil, doing the will of their father the devil? Or some other category of people? The author describes them as “believing” – the faithful, and Scripture tells us plainly enough it is the believing and faithful who enter into this rest with God, where we read in the Scriptures that the law is NOT OF FAITH.

The faithless are relegated to the wrath of God, seeing as they are faithless; unbelieving. So I ask you, what did the faithless, unbelieving Hebrews receive that produced this wrath God spoke of?

(Hebrews 4:3) Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

Understand the logic flow. The law works wrath; produces wrath. If there were no law, then there is no transgression. And if there is no transgression, there is no wrath resulting from the law and transgression.

The faithlessness and unbelief is in relation to God Himself; not the law. The faithless, unbelieving Hebrews heartily embraced the law, where they had the shadow-Sabbath they entered into weekly when it came about; a temporary rest from the physical works carried out the previous six days of physical labor; typology of God’s eternal rest from a finished work He entered into on that seventh day of Creation Week; a rest Jesus refers to as a rest for the SOUL and not a physical rest following physical labor; a sabbath described in Colossians 2 as a shadow with no substance, whereas it is Jesus wherein we find ‘substance’ that the weekly Sabbath did not possess, a substance that now offers the believing and faithful a rest for the SOUL; a “cessation” of one’s former works, of the flesh; works of the unbelieving and faithless that eventually lead to death, and not eternity of rest with God and His rest.

I write this knowing full well the faithless and unbelieving do not believe this, for they equivocate God with the law, so that to believe in the law is to believe in God; an assumption that holds no truth. For even God stated to Moses that they were to be given that law, thundered out at Mount Sinai, so that the Hebrews would believe Moses forever; not God. The Hebrews were ready to embrace anything other than God, including a gilded cow they also equivocated with God, calling it the god who brought them up out of Egypt.

Faith; belief, also involves trust – trusting God, explicitly. Completely.

(Psalms 146:3) Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

You are a ‘son of man’ and you are not even to trust yourself.

Recall the narrative where a wealthy man asks Jesus what “good” thing he, personally, could do in order to acquire eternal life. Jesus replies in regards first to his reference to “good” which goes right over the heads of faithless people, where Jesus states that only God is good. And if only God is good, then, according to how God judges, only God can do good. He, being a man born with the “deceitful and desperately wicked heart” could not do good. The best he could do, given his condition as a ‘man’ was to keep the commandments and thus never sin; an impossible task that those with the evil hearts of unbelief cannot accomplish, but are convinced they can, and do; their deceitful heart that cannot be trusted, telling them they can. You might believe you can keep the law if you ignore your evil heart; deny its existence, and reject Jesus’ teaching regarding the fruits or works wrought by those devoid of God’s Spirit; the “new heart” that enables one to produce good works.

Evil people, with the evil hearts of unbelief, cannot produce good works. It is interesting then that God gave them the Sabbath; a day where they were commanded not to do ‘any’ work on that day; a day stated to be a “holy convocation” in Leviticus chapter 23, where all of Israel; all the Hebrews were seen as being in the presence of God on that day, where extra sacrifices for sin were required at the temple, on a day no one was working, ergo no one was actively sinning by working works that were only evil in the sight of God who judges according to the heart.

Let this sink in. They were not working on the Sabbath, which would ‘logically’ equate to resting from their evil works brought about by an evil heart of unbelief, but there were additional sacrifices for sin on the Sabbath anyway. Their sin of unbelief and faithlessness did not go away on the Sabbath.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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The Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm

There there is the spiritual realm and there is the physical realm. Those in this physical realm have no true concept of the spiritual realm, having only physical realm reference points to work from. As a result, the spiritual realm is conceptualized following a physical pattern.

Good and evil become relativistic instead of absolutes. The result of this is that what is spiritual and absolute is rejected by those with strictly physical, carnal perception. For such people, their lives in relation to others becomes a physical construct that is modified over time through experience. But when it comes to the spiritual plane, there are no such experiences, so that what is concluded based on scant and incomplete evidence becomes solidified in the mind, and it is invariably falsehoods based on physical experiences.

Despite plain statements in Scripture regarding spiritual things, even the very nature of God, such information is filtered through a carnal mind; manipulated, parsed, re-assembled into what is acceptable to a carnal mind. It is a process that essentially takes God and modifies Him into something fashioned in the image of carnal man, not unlike the God’s of ancient cultures, such as the Greek gods whose variants popped up all over the ancient world, borrowed and renamed. In this regard then, it is surprising that when Paul visited Athens, he noticed an object dedicated and inscribed to the “unknown god” where Paul started there.

From here, you might well notice the change in position based on what information Paul afforded them regarding this unknown god, for they were beginning to see that the gods of their culture suffered the same maladies of mankind when it came to pulls of the flesh, where their gods demonstrated human characteristics and not those attributes one might assume the gods would present. They were no better than men now, in their eyes. And if no different in behavior than men, then the obvious conclusion would be that they do not exist; that they were creations of men made in the image of man. They could hardly be seen realistically as superior beings to men having the same foibles of men.

A similar pattern follows when it comes to carnal men trying to understand the nature and attributes of  the True God, tainted by man’s same natural proclivity of transference and projection.

God gave the Hebrews a covenant law, with much fanfare. Many people today conclude that, seeing as this law originated with God, it must reflect the Nature of God, it must possess the attributes of God, and it is how God judges mankind and is what God expects of mankind.

That is the relativistic approach, where good and evil are not perceived as absolutes, and where God is absolutely good and man is absolutely evil, born with an evil heart described by God as “deceitful and desperately wicked.” The result is that God condemns evil and evil men. The law, being a blood covenant law, took evil works and even evil thoughts, and prescribed a suitable punishment for evil and evil people: a death sentence. A banishment from His presence. An eternal existence where there is nothing truly good.

Those who embrace the law cannot perceive that the law was given to the evil Hebrew nation as a carrot on a stick, where they could never receive the “consideration” for compliance with the law. The law was essentially a rope, given to them whereby they would proverbially hang themselves with it.

Evil man sees the law as the means whereby he can ‘prove’ himself before God; that he can do good, despite his wicked heart, also referred to as a heart of stone and an evil heart of unbelief.

In order to better explain this, consider how man uses tools, even a rock. It can be used for a useful purpose we would call “good” like building a wall, or it could be used for evil, such as an offensive weapon. A sword can also be used both defensively and offensively to ward off an attacker bent on doing evil with the tool.

The law is no different. It too can be wielded as a weapon in order to lie to one another and destroy another, which is exactly what the Pharisees did with the law, using it as the means to deceive themselves and others, and to conquer and destroy Jesus. In this regard, consider what Paul wrote about the law:

(1 Timothy 1:8-10) But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; °Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, °For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

The Pharisees used the law unlawfully. They applied it against those it was not intended for; the righteous, called of God, who, through conversion and a new heart that is not deceitful; is not desperately wicked; is not a stony heart, and is not an evil heart of unbelief.

Yet, that is what we see happening to the early, fledgling church of God; where the Sanhedrin wasted no time or effort in bringing persecutions against the church in an attempt to destroy it, using the law as their weapon of choice.

None of this has changed in 2000 years. The law that properly applied lawfully only to evil people ends up in the hands of evil people who unlawfully use it against the righteous ones, whose righteousness was derived through faith, even as Abraham’s righteousness was imputed to Him by God due to his faith in God.

Evil people have an inherent hatred of good. True good. And they cannot conceive of anyone being good who is not keeping the law any more than did those Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They embrace the law that ultimately condemns them. The law does not condemn those they persecute with it.

Doing good and being good are tied to the law by evil people who reject a pure, unfeigned faith that comes from what is now a pure heart:

(1 Timothy 1:5-7) Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: °From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; °Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.

The law of faith and the Spirit is rejected in favor of the old covenant law of sin and death, where evil people refuse to believe they are evil, having a deceitful heart, and now go after those who are now dead to the law; not under the law; freed from the law, and having been redeemed from the law by Christ so that the law can no longer condemn them. They are freed from condemnation (Rom. 8:1) meted out by the law that was designed for evil men with evil hearts that they cannot recognize as such.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Stay Home for the Sabbath?

The Bible contains no requirement to go to church on Saturday, but does it require Sabbath-keepers to stay home? And where does a Sabbath day's journey fit in to this? Let's see if we can find an answer.

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While I was studying for the article "What Do You Mean... ‘Holy Convocation’?", an interesting point came up which I wanted to go over in more depth but I didn't have the space in that article. So, I thought we could go over it here. It has to do with what ancient Israel did on the weekly Sabbath, or more specifically, where they would be.

To start, let's review the underlying issue so we know why we're going over today's topic in the first place.

Sabbatarianism tends toward legalism and fixating on commands. Sabbatarians believe the weekly Sabbath is a command for Christians and going to church is how the Sabbath is commanded to be "kept". Church on Saturday is central to their identity. Meanwhile, going to church on Sunday, specifically, is condemned in the strongest terms as a man-made tradition in defiance of the laws of the Almighty.
The catch is, there is no command to 'go to church' on Sabbath anywhere in the Bible. Search all you wish, you will not find one. That's a big part of what the post "What Do You Mean... ‘Holy Convocation’?" was all about. The Sabbath is not about when you go to church, but Sabbatarianism is.

At this point, the conversation usually shifts to traditions, but I will spare you that. Instead, I recommend the posts "Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII" and "Established and Imposed".

This is the background issue that brings us to today's post. Today we ask, perhaps God did not give a command to go to church/synagogue on Sabbath, but did God command Israel to be anywhere in particular? Some will turn to Exodus 16.

PLACE

(EXO. 16:28-30) 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws? 29 See! For the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

The Israelites, to whom the law was given, were commanded by Moses to stay in their homes for the Sabbath.

There is no doubt that this command exists. But it's more than that. I want to share this interesting tidbit from Barnes' Commentary:

"The expression in Hebrew is unique and seems almost to enjoin a position of complete repose: “in his place” is literally under himself, as the Oriental sits with his legs drawn up under him."

So, they were to stay not just at home but where they were. As we should expect, it was understood in different ways. Just look at this interesting tidbit from Adam Clarke's Commentary:

"Some of the Jews have carried the rigorous observance of the letter of this law to such a length, that in whatever posture they find themselves on the Sabbath morning when they awake, they continue in the same during the day; or should they be up and happen to fall, they refuse even to rise till the Sabbath be ended! Mr. Stapleton tells a story of one Rabbi Solomon, who fell into a slough on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, and refused to be pulled out."

Have you ever followed the law that closely? In my 30 years as a Sabbatarian, I never did. So much for my righteousness in the law exceeding that of the Pharisees!

For all those who ask, "can we follow Jesus and ignore the Torah," will you ignore this part of Torah?

But don't make up your mind yet. There is more to this story. The question becomes: was Israel really forevermore required to stay home for the Sabbath?

MANNA

What do we say here at As Bereans Did? Context, context, context. And what is the context of Exodus 16:29? Manna.

The Israelites were being tested with the manna and they were failing. They were told not to keep it overnight. They did anyway. God sent worms and rot. They were told not to gather it on Sabbath. They did anyway. Moses commanded them to stay home. The command to stay at home appears to be a way to get the people to follow the rules of manna collection. Can't quite collect it if you're home.

Now, we find ourselves with two options:

Option 1:
Exodus 16:29 could be understood as only pertaining to the Israelites in the Desert Wandering at that time when both manna and the law were being introduced and Israel had to learn how to navigate the new conditions; a temporary command. There is no 'this shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations' attached.

Option 2:
Exodus 16:29 could be understood as a permanent command. There may not be a 'this shall be a perpetual statute' but there also is no clear indication that it ended or was intended to end. Keep in mind, even though this might look like it was about manna collection, the manna collection was itself set up in such a way as to teach Sabbath observance. We've come full circle.

Can I justify one over the other? Well ... it's complicated.

There is no small amount of scholarly work to go on here. Just for example, see Biblehub's list of commentaries on this verse. Many commentators understand the command as being specific to the gathering of manna. Many do not. Commentators aside, what did Israel understand it to mean? Many, perhaps most, Israelites understood it as a permanent command. So, we have evidence for both options.

But! At the same time, the Israelites who did believe it was perpetual do not appear to believe the perpetual command was to stay home ...or in a ditch. I mean, there couldn't be people offering to pull that guy from the ditch if they all were all at home, or in agreement with the guy in the ditch.

Let's get more detail to see if we can make some sense of this dilemma.

DWELLINGS

(LEV. 23:3) 3 ‘Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings [moshevoteykhem].

This verse has implications for Exodus 16:29. I am going to pull a short selection from that Holy Convocation article:

We have another Hebrew word now: moshevoteykhem (מוֹשְׁבֹתֵיכֶם) which means dwelling places, habitations, places where people live - be that homes or home towns. The result of this is the opposite of being commanded to travel to Jerusalem. For the non-pilgrimage holy days there were no large gatherings. They were all smaller.

So, we have two places where miqra qodesh [holy convocation] can happen: at the Temple in Jerusalem, and wherever you dwell. Neither of those are 'at church'. Some portions of miqra qodesh were national and some familial. Some large assemblies and some small assemblies. Some at designated places and some wherever you happen to be.

So 'dwellings' can mean 'homes', sure enough, but must it mean homes? I don't think so. Why not? Because let's look at another place where "in all your dwellings" appears.

(NUM. 35:29) And these things shall be a statute of judgment to you throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

This part of Numbers 35 talks about murderers, and witnesses necessary for the death penalty, and posting bail, and refuge cities, etc. How in the world are those supposed to be 'in your house'? This is only one example. Other examples are quite similar. Insisting that dwellings must mean homes plays havoc with this and other laws.

I just do not see how we can get moshevoteykhem to always mean 'at home'. It can mean 'at home' sometimes, but not always. And if it's not always, then it's contextual. I do not see anything in the context of Leviticus 23:3 that makes me believe it should be understood as exclusively at home. Even the extremist who refused to be pulled from a ditch did not believe this meant to be at home, as certainly there was no ditch inside his house. It would be better understood as, "It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all the places where Israelites settle." In other words, in their towns. And if you weren't in your town at the time, then by implication this means something closer to 'wherever you happen to be.'

If this is how Leviticus 23:3 is understood, then this has implications for Exodus 16:29.

This detail isn't the only clue we have.

FAMILIAL

Let's look at the law for the Sabbath and note something:

(EXO. 20:10b) In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.

(DEU. 5: 14) but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

These clearly speak in household terms. These words aren't, "You and your constituents and your townsfolk and your country sides, etc." These words aren't, "You and your congregation and your choir and your service organizer and your prayer leader and your sound crew, etc." These are familial words.

I am trying to make two points here:

First, there is a clear focus on family. Who was responsible for ensuring regular duties had stopped? The head of household. Who did the teaching on Sabbath? The parents. This isn't about going to church. This isn't about sitting for an hour trying not to fall asleep while someone else presents part 38 in a 52-part sermon series. Not a single word spent on Ministers and their fiefdoms and their importance in prophecy and how they are the only ones qualified to teach. Not one jot or one tittle wasted on "pay, pray, stay."

Second, on the pilgrimage holy days, Israel was required to assemble as a nation. But apart from those three, nothing in the laws regarding the sacred assemblies (that includes the weekly Sabbath) ever says what size the assembly had to be, or where it had to be. It could be a town, or a home, or a large gathering, or even as little as a single family, or perhaps it was two families gathered together in a home for a Sabbath visit. Leave your house, stay home, it's all good ...just don't go far.

Finally, let's wrap this up with a few smaller clues.

CLUES

There is a tiny clue hidden in II Kings that demonstrates ancient Israelites did not understand that they were required to stay home. Apparently, it was normal to go see a prophet on Sabbaths and New Moons.

(II KIN. 4:23) So he said, “Why are you going to him [Elisha] today? It is neither the New Moon nor the Sabbath.”

Ancient Israelites might not have been going to synagogue on Sabbath, because synagogues didn't exist at that time, but it seems going to see a prophet was within the realm of possibility. Going to see a prophet by definition means not staying at home. So, maybe not stay at home, but stay close to home.
Also, for all those who say the Sabbath is mandatory but New Moons aren't important, you might want to rethink that.

Interestingly, most of the commentaries I've read mention Exodus 16:29 as the source for where the idea of a Sabbath day's journey comes from.

(ACT. 1:12) 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey.

If the Israelites, including the Apostles, understood that they were to stay at home on Sabbath, then the concept of a Sabbath day's journey should not exist. A Sabbath day's journey should be across the room. Once again, Israel saw it as a permanent command, but not to stay still or even to stay home, but to stay in their dwellings. It is a restriction on travel, but not a restriction on leaving home.

And now maybe this verse also makes more sense:

(ACT. 16:13) And on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.

How can one go to see a prophet or on a Sabbath-day's journey, or gather at a river, when they were supposed to be at synagogue? How can one be at synagogue when they were supposed to stay home? They can't.

The answer is, none of these things were required. Going to synagogue was never a requirement in the first place. Even in the time of synagogue, it wasn't mandatory to go there. But more importantly for today's article, staying home for the Sabbath appears more and more like it was not mandatory.

One last clue to point out here. There were three annual pilgrimage festivals where all the males in Israel were commanded to appear at the Temple in Jerusalem: Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. We know Unleavened Bread and Tabernacles were seven days long (Tabernacles was eight if you count the last day). There was guaranteed to be a weekly Sabbath in there somewhere. Tell me, how can one be at the Temple in Jerusalem for the annual holy days and at home for the weekly Sabbath at the same time? Not possible. But this can be done: stay close to where you are dwelling at that time.

One might wonder what the official word from Armstrongism was on this. Well, there wasn't really one. Here, read this typical comment:

"Some people ask about the mention of 'a sabbath day’s journey' in Act; 1: 12. There is no special command anywhere in the Bible limiting travel on the Sabbath. This 'sabbath day’s journey' was a custom of the Jews and is not a biblical command."
-Rod Meredith, "Rejoice In God's Sabbath!", Good News Magazine, Dec. 1957, p.5

Hopefully, you can now see why this was not correct. There is a law limiting travel: Exodus 16:29, which says, "Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day." The Sabbath day's journey is not merely a custom of the Jews, it is their way of interpreting how Exodus 16:29 applied to them in light of all the other relevant evidence. Disagree with the conclusion Israel came to if you must, but at least address it. Armstrongism did not address it; it ignored it. The same way it ignores how the Fourth Commandment was written specifically for Israel. This is entirely par for the course with Armstrongism.

Meredith goes on to say how a walk on Sabbath is good but you shouldn't walk so far as to tire yourself. The Sabbath law of rest was not about staying well rested, it was about ceasing from normal activity and treating the time as holy and set apart, belonging to God, not for ordinary use. He didn't even understand the primary feature of the day. These are Sabbatarians we're talking about. What irony! A group whose entire identity is this one thing, yet they clearly misunderstand the very core of the thing.

CONCLUSION

Did God command Israel to be anywhere in particular on the Sabbath? Yes. He said to stay in place. The question is not whether Exodus 16:29 says to stay in place; it does. The question is: what does that mean, exactly, and to whom does it apply? It applies to Israel, to whom the law was given, and none besides. The evidence as I see it points away from it literally meaning 'stay in your house' (or staying in a ditch all day). There appears to be more leeway to it than that. To Israel, "place" seems to have meant something closer to 'surrounding area'. So, no, a Sabbath-keeper does not appear to be required to stay home for Sabbath.

This post isn't really about a Sabbath day's journey. That is a secondary item, but one I thought was helpful to the main point. During my time in Armstrongism, we were never told how the Sabbath day's journey came about. We read about it in Acts and dismissed it as yet another odd tradition of the Pharisees. Turns out it is built on grappling with Exodus 16:29 and other evidence, like we did today. We don't know exactly how it started or by whom, but I imagine it started because there is no clear answer in Scripture, and some Rabbi probably got fed up with being asked about it and just came up with an answer. I can't fault that.

The upside of today's article is:
Sabbatarians narrowly escape repeating the error of the Pharisees. There is no law to go to church on Sabbath, and it doesn't look like there was a law to stay home either. So, going to church does not vacate any law in favor of tradition.

The downsides include:
1) Most Sabbatarians simply ignore this command entirely. They either aren't aware of it or they simply ignore it as if it isn't there. They neither stay still, nor at home, nor a Sabbath day's journey, nor anything else besides.
2) We still have the issue of not having a command to go to church. Sabbatarianism turns an opinion about a man-made tradition into a command, all while condemning man-made traditions.
3) Sabbatarian churches are going to have to decide for themselves how to interpret Exodus 16:29. Does that make it ... a tradition?
4) This has implications for the annual holy days as well. I have the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles particularly in mind, since people often begin their long journeys home on that day.

To help you move forward, I suggest these articles:

What Do You Mean... ‘Holy Convocation’?
Established and Imposed
Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII
The Sabbath Rest of Genesis 2
The Road to Sabbatarianism - Part I
Editing The Commandments
Acts 15 - What Was Debated - Part I
Confusing the Covenants
If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments
For Paul, Jesus Is The Answer

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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