What Do You Mean... ‘Holy Convocation’?

Does the phrase 'holy convocation' mean we are all commanded to go to church on Saturday? Does it even have anything to do with church? This article explores the meaning of this phrase and what its implications are for the weekly Sabbath.

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As I mentioned in my recent post, "Be Your Own Harshest Critic", Bill posted a comment on social media that said, "Going to synagogue on Sabbath is not a command from God but a man-made tradition." Bill is absolutely right. We've got articles on this.
In response, a random person protested, and what could loosely be called a discussion ensued. He ended up basing his entire case on the phrase "holy convocation". His claim was that holy convocation means "going to church," and therefore the laws of holy convocation are laws of church attendance.

Well, let's look into that. He can't be the only one making these kinds of claims.

HOLY TERMS

Word studies are dry and academic. I know. My apologies in advance. I'll make this short and as simple as I can. We need a few things in the ol' toolbox before we can proceed.

The Hebrew phrase usually translated “holy convocation,” “sacred assembly,” or “sacred occasion” is miqra qodesh (מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ). This is a singular noun. The plural is miqra'ei qodesh (מִקְרָאֵי־קֹדֶשׁ). I am just going to refer to them both as miqra qodesh because it makes things easier.
Miqra (מִקְרָא) is a noun meaning calling, proclamation, summons, or convocation.
Qodesh (קֹדֶשׁ) is a noun meaning holiness / something holy / set-apartness.

The singular and plural Hebrew phrases appear a total of 19 times in the Old Testament, and they refer to the weekly Sabbath and the annual holy days.
Interestingly, miqra qodesh only refers to the weekly Sabbath once (LEV. 23:3). Most of today's article is going to focus on the annual festivals because that's where most of the details are. If you are going to use miqra qodesh to support going to church on the weekly Sabbath, then you are going to have a very difficult time.

"Holy", strictly speaking, is not really a synonym of "righteous". The word holy indicates something was ceremonially set apart for use only in the worship of God and never for mundane, everyday purposes. For example, pots and priestly vestments were called holy, but they were not righteous. Those weren't morally upstanding pots. Also, just because something is holy does not mean it is permanently holy. Holy things could be defiled and lose their holiness. Holy things could also perish in their use, like sacrifices.

Final note:
Do not get confused that you can just interchange 'festivals' with miqra qodesh. For example, take the Feast of Tabernacles. The first day was a miqra qodesh, and the final day was also a miqra qodesh. The days in between were not. The same applies to the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The first day of Unleavened Bread was a miqra qodesh and so was the final day, but the days between were not, Passover itself was not, and the Day of Firstfruits was not. The festival period and the specific days designated as a miqra qodesh are not always the same thing.

Word study over. See? Easy peasy! Now, with that knowledge, let's move forward.

HOLY SUMMONS

I am not going to spend much time here since surely this is something we all know already, but miqra qodesh designates a religious gathering, distinct from more general assemblies that might include political or legal matters. The Septuagint often renders it with terms conveying a summoned or invited assembly (e.g., klētē hagia).

The traditional way to understand miqra qodesh is a holy convocation or sacred gathering together of people. We might ask, how many people? The Bible doesn't always specify, but sometimes it is all the males and sometimes it reads as the gatherings were on the household scale. We will get more into this in a bit.

One might get the impression that the assembly is proclaimed to be holy. Many scholars believe that is not how it should be understood, since the people need atonement. But if not the assembly, then what?

HOLY TIME

Jacob Milgrom (preeminent Jewish biblical scholar who specialized in Leviticus and purity laws) and Baruch Schwartz (biblical scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-author of a study titled “Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23") have argued that miqra qodesh is not really talking about the people at all, but the time. They would lean more toward the "sacred occasion" definition rather than "sacred assembly."

The time itself was declared holy, and Israel was to use the holy time for appropriate purposes. The number one feature of all is that no normal, regularly assigned work was to be done during miqra qodesh. Remember, the word holy indicates something was ceremonially set apart for use only in the worship of God and never for mundane, everyday purposes.
I will refer you to Bill's posts where he explores how the time could be used for good as opposed to evil, for example "Good and Evil Works on the Sabbath". (Hint: pay attention to what God considers good vs. evil.)

God blessing time is not unusual. Notice how we agree that it is the time that is holy when we say "holy days" (even though that phrase isn't really in the Bible) or, "God blessed and sanctified the seventh day." When you read through the list of verses where miqra qodesh appears, you will see the days themselves are referred to. For example:

(LEV. 23:4) These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations [miqra qodesh] which you shall proclaim at their appointed times.

Why is the time holy? If you read carefully, you will see that God expected the Priests of Israel to proclaim the time to be holy (LEV. 23:2, 4, 21, 37). That leads many scholars to believe the time was not holy until it was proclaimed holy, just as people and objects were not holy until they were consecrated by the Priests. Then, it was up to the people to make appropriate use of the holy time.

Baruch Schwartz says this:

"Nor are [miqra'ei qodesh] to be explained as “sacred proclamations,” since the proclamations would not be sacred at all; it is the [mo'ed], the times themselves, that become sacred, and they achieve this status as a result of being proclaimed. Rather, [miqra'ei qodesh] must mean something that has become a sanctum by virtue of proclamation, i.e., a thing pronounced, and thereby rendered, sacred."
-Baruch Schwartz, “Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23", p.17

So, according to Schwartz and others, the time was consecrated through a priestly proclamation made by offering the prescribed sacrifices. It is common among Sabbatarians to think of the time as simply being holy in and of itself, but that is not really what the Bible says. Proclaiming the time to be holy is an integral part of the law; a part you cannot simply skip by using romanticizing phrases like "God's holy days."

I should briefly note, these scholars also make an exception for the weekly Sabbath. They do not see the weekly Sabbath as needing to be proclaimed holy, only the annual days, since the weekly Sabbath was built to reflect the seventh day of creation which God Himself sanctified. 

The problem that I am trying to highlight is: modern Sabbatarians are ignoring integral details in the law and importing their own ideas and traditions backward into ancient Israel. They go to church and they see modern Jews going to synagogue and they conclude that must be what ancient Israel did and therefore that must be what the law was about, and therefore they end up where they began - going to church is how one "keeps" a Sabbath. This person on social media was doing just this; trying to turn 'holy convocation' into 'go to church' when it is really about time and making appropriate use of it.

Going to church is not one of the commanded ways to use this time. We will see this more clearly when we look at those assemblies.

HOLY PLACE

Understand that neither assembly (the who/what) nor the time (the when) are about the place (the where). Church in this context is a place.

It is only natural that an assembly had to assemble somewhere, but the location is an additional detail in the law. The Bible does give this information, but it isn't always obvious. And holy time only sometimes pairs with holy place. Since this is true, how can it be all about going to church? It cannot.
I will explain.

Three of the annual holy days did have a specific location. Three times a year (not just one), every Israelite male was required to travel to the place where the Lord placed His name, where a priest would offer certain offerings for them (DEU. 16:16-17): at Passover/Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. (For more, see "Three Times in the Year".)
Yet, read through the commands for miqra qodesh and you will see this place is not explained anywhere near these verses.

Moses set no location at all. He didn't need to; they were all together in the wilderness. So, he said Israel would seek the place (DEU. 12:5). Joshua set the place at Shiloh (JOS. 18:1). This was only temporary, because notice God did not say He placed His name there. It was in Solomon's time that the place was set at Jerusalem (II CHR. 6:6). Why Jerusalem? Because of the Temple, not churches. The Temple is the place where the Lord placed His name. None of the commanded rituals happened 'at church' (or the Holiday Inn).

The Temple was absolutely not just a big church, and going to Temple was not similar to what we think of as church.

When you go to church, you are [hopefully] in God's immediate presence. You go there to be with other people, hear a sermon, sing, and pray.
When one went to Temple, they prepared ahead of time to be in an acceptable condition to occupy that sacred space to begin with. They visited close to the presence of God Himself, but unless they were the High Priest and it was the Day of Atonement they were never in the immediate presence of God. They prayed, certainly. But if they wanted a sermon, they had to go find a street preacher. And they absolutely did not arrive before the God of the Universe empty handed. Meaning, they brought a sacrifice. (This wasn't about money.)

It gets more complicated than just this. Oddly enough, it appears Israel's worship was both centralized as one singular nation at the Temple and decentralized to individual families and gatherings, all at the same time.

For example, take the Feast of Tabernacles again. Some portions of miqra qodesh were required to be performed at the Temple and some were required to be done at their temporary shelters. They weren't merely allowed to feast and celebrate in their shelters, they were commanded to do so.
Or take Unleavened Bread for example. Eating this bread was not optional; it was commanded. They did not just eat unleavened bread while they were at the Temple. Where do you eat? You eat wherever you happen to be when you eat.

That is just the three pilgrimage holy days. What about the other times?

The rest of the year, the common Israelite was not required to go to Jerusalem. There was no specific location for the remaining miqra qodesh at all. And I really want to emphasize this: that includes the regular weekly Sabbath.

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

We have another Hebrew word now: moshevoteykhem (מוֹשְׁבֹתֵיכֶם) which means dwelling places, habitations, places where people live - be that homes or home towns. For the non-pilgrimage holy days there were no large gatherings. They were all smaller.

So, we have two places where miqra qodesh 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.

Let us ask... where is the Temple now? (I COR. 3:17; REV. 21:22)

This also brings up a final point. With the coming of the New Covenant, the Old Covenant law has changed. I believe all of the Old Covenant laws are obsolete because I believe the law was a singular whole. Sabbatarians do not. But where we can agree is that the "ceremonial law" is obsolete. The laws of miqra qodesh fall into "ceremonial law". Therefore, these laws of miqra qodesh are obsolete. So now we must ask, why are we building New Covenant doctrines from obsolete laws? Why are we fighting to keep some of it and discard some of it, but build what we keep on what we've discarded? How are we even having this discussion in the first place?

CONCLUSION

We've looked at the term miqra qodesh. We've looked at what it is, when it is, where it is. Then we contrasted that with how it is used by Sabbatarians (one in particular). We have seen how "go to church" is not an accepted definition of miqra qodesh to begin with. And we have seen how Sabbatarian practices are being built on certain Old Covenant laws which it seemed like everyone agreed are obsolete. The laws of miqra qodesh are inherently ceremonial.

The Bible does not command anyone to go to church on Saturday or any other day. The laws of sacred assemblies are not commands to go to church at all. What did Scripture do? It made certain time into a ceremonially holy time. For whom? For Israel, to whom that law was given. For where? Sometimes that was at the Temple, sometimes it was wherever you happened to be. But never synagogue, which was a much later development. (That is not to say attending synagogue is wrong, just not commanded.) For when? For the Old Covenant period. These are not laws for the New Covenant church. 

Some modern Gentile Christians say they are keeping the law, but when we look critically we see they are not. They are adding to and taking away from the law, which is contrary to the law. Without a priesthood and without a Temple, keeping the laws of miqra qodesh is impossible (and I for one believe this is by design). Without a priest and a Temple, how will the time be properly proclaimed holy with sacrifices? If it isn't consecrated, then how is it holy time? These are not laws where we can take 'Israel' out and plug 'us' in, and take the original calendar out and plug the modern Jewish calendar in, and take 'sacrifice' out and plug 'money' in, and take 'Jerusalem' out and plug 'feast site' in, and take 'Temple' out and plug 'church' in. And in all of it, picking and choosing from ceremonial laws which I thought everyone agreed were abrogated. God is not going to praise us as obedient to the law when we are treating the law like a buffet. As I've said a million times, if you're not keeping all the law, then you're not keeping the law at all.

The person I mentioned in my "Be Your Own Harshest Critic" post went through traditions, Commandments, proof-texting, and finally landed on holy convocation - all to avoid Bill's accurate observation that, "Going to synagogue on Sabbath is not a command from God but a man-made tradition." What does "holy convocation" mean? Certainly not "going to church."

For more, I suggest:

Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII
Is Ceremonial Law Removed?
Why Not Keep Biblical Days?
Temple of God / Law of God
Physical vs Spiritual
Shadows, Nails and the Fall Holy Days
Three Times In The Year - Part I
The Sabbath Rest of Hebrews 4
Acts 15:21 - More Law Later?
Lawlessness and I John 3
Editing the Commandments
Established and Imposed

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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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Temple of God / Law of God

(John 2:19-21) Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. °Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? °But he spake of the temple of his body.

Jesus was at the temple. What else would they conclude based on the setting? It would never occur to them that He was referring to something other than the temple that was right there.

(Jeremiah 31:33) But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

This, stated by God right after He declared the new covenant would not be like the old. But the only covenant they knew of was the one they were in with God. They would never make the leap of comprehending the nature of the new any more than those Jews present when Jesus spoke what He did cited above were able to grasp He was not talking about the temple standing in their midst there in Jerusalem. There was one ‘temple of God’ and that was it, standing on the temple mount in Jerusalem.

The New Covenant law is God Himself, for it is the Holy Spirit that God places within a believer that leads and guides them; a covenant law of life.

(John 5:39) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

Jeremiah 31:33 is just that. It’s about God in you. Residing in you. Leading you. Guiding you. It is a testament of God dwelling within a person; a believing, faithful person. A person who truly loves God.

(John 14:23) Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Now consider the outcome:

(1 Corinthians 3:16) Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Jesus pointed out that the Pharisees, who administered the law and kept the law, hated Him and the Father. (John 15:24) They always resisted the Holy Spirit. (Acts 7:51) They loved another, and it wasn’t God. That OC law was the “master” they obeyed; the object of which they were obedient and dedicated. Those among them who believed Christ and followed Him were labeled by these same Pharisees as being cursed, not knowing the law; the law the Pharisees relied upon. (John 7:49)

(Matthew 6:24) No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Those who embrace the OC law insist that obeying the law is to obey God; the two are equivocated as one and the same. God is that law, and that law is God. Keeping the law where the result is to ignore God does not compute in the legalist mindset. And yet, God stated to Moses that by giving that law to the Hebrews, they would believe Moses “for ever” and not God. (Ex. 19:9)

And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? — Exodus 16:28

This was before they were given the covenant law. That does not stop legalistic minded people from concluding that God was referring to that covenant law. Up to this point, it was all about what God declared, verbally to them through Moses. They were collectively refusing to believe and act upon what God had been telling them up to that point.

God is not embodied in the OC law, and the OC law is not embodied in God. The law is, in reality, ‘another god’ besides God; along side-of; graven images of stone, and it is interesting, to say the least, that this is exactly what God spoke to those same Hebrews who were refusing to listen to Him which they heard and also ignored.

In case you were not paying close attention, consider what Adventists, who are legalistic, have done in regards to the Decalogue, imbuing it with the characteristics; the traits of God: Eternal, unchanging, a “transcript of God’s Character.” It cannot get any more blatant than that.

The ‘law of God’ prior to the giving of the old covenant law at Mt. Sinai was none other than God Himself and what He was commanding and declaring, verbally. With this understanding, take a good, hard look at the following, often cited by Adventists.

(Romans 8:7) Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

In this passage, God IS equivocated with “God’s law”. And like the “temple” those with a legalistic mind-set conclude, erroneously, this speaks of the OC law, despite the context.

The carnal mind is enmity against God, even as was the minds of those Hebrews who left Egypt. The same Hebrews who refused God and what all He commanded, aka “My law” that was extant prior to the giving of the old covenant law that was a blood covenant law where any violation, no matter how small or trivial, resulted in their condemnation. They were disobedient to God, and obligingly embraced the law, putting that noose around their own necks that would condemn them to death, seeing as they were adept at confessing God with their lips, yet their “deceitful and desperately wicked hearts” were far from Him. They were no more likely to keep that law than they were when it came to keeping what God had verbally communicated to them.

The letter of the law that kills, spells everything out in writing in specific ways. ‘Do this’ and ‘don’t do that.’ It is the language used by parents addressing their children and animal trainers addressing animals. Sit. Don’t touch. Lie down. Come.

The concept of an internalized law is outside the realm of comprehension of those who are still carnal natured and led by their flesh, having no reference points spiritually, that come from the Holy Spirit. All they know and can understand is related to them by a law that deals with the carnal nature, motivated by their flesh. They understand murder and why it is wrong from a carnal perspective. Same with other points of OC law that deal with the pulls of the flesh.

In this, carnal people continue the same game through equivocation. The Sabbath; the sign of that covenant God made with the faithless Hebrews, demanded none of them do any work on the Sabbath. They equivocated this as no different than committing a murder. Yet over the course of time, they realized that leaving an animal penned up during the Sabbath was to subject the animal to undue stress and discomfort; suffering on the Sabbath. Which then was the greater wrong? Working a little by turning them out to pasture, or leaving them suffering in their stalls?

They felt the need to be compassionate with their animals (that had value) but when it came to Jesus having compassion on those suffering from debilitating conditions by healing them on the Sabbath, those same ‘compassionate’ people denied compassion for their fellow man. A man with a neighbor suffering over the course of decades was of no value to him. Let the neighbor suffer one more day before being healed.

Take now what Christ said about good works on the Sabbath, being legal; lawful, in the context of the ruler of a synagogue who chastised Jesus for healing a man there on the Sabbath.

“Do your good works the other six days, and not on the Sabbath.”

Can you perceive the evil heart in the background? Or is the Sabbath more important to you than God and doing good works wrought in and through the Holy Spirit, always; every day?

The ‘Temple of God’ which is what a Christian now is, does not close 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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Be Your Own Harshest Critic

It is easy to believe that the things we want to be true are true. These are but assumptions. Unless you are genuinely after the truth, you take a huge risk. Here is some advice for telling the difference: treat the things you want to be true as if they are things you don't.

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The same things that ruin a marriage ruin a Bible study: cheating, lies, jumping to conclusions, secrets, assumptions, carelessness, complacency, shortcuts, taking things for granted.
The problem is, these tools can be found in many people's bible study toolbox, especially when they want a particular outcome.

I was an Armstrongist ...until I couldn't be anymore. Why? Because I gave myself permission to ask questions and then I threw away those tools. I decided I wanted the truth - God's truth. God is truth. If I had to use devices such as those, then perhaps my "truths" weren't so true after all. If finding what really is true means sacrificing things I very much wanted to believe - things I'd built my entire life on - then that is just how it had to be.

I am going to warn you, though - following this advice to pursue truth will not make you popular.

I've been insulted over the years, let me tell ya, but usually it's because I dare to ask questions people haven't considered, and they don't like this. But I don't just do this to Armstrongism; I do it to everything. Especially my own beliefs! The whole point of this article, the whole idea I want to convey to you, is not to pick apart other people's claims but your own.

Isn't that what we all should do? I say yes. Yes it is.
Please allow me to give you an example from a recent experience of mine.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING

I met a man online who was adamant that he had figured out the book of Revelation. Yeah, one of those guys. So many people have prophecy all figured out, and no two are the same. Trying to get prophecy all figured out is pretty much what started Adventism in the first place. Trying to figure out prophecy is what started me into Armstrongism.

So, I asked this guy some simple questions (as I do), and he called me some names (as they do), then he pointed me to his "study". I figured why not read it? If he genuinely has it all figured out, then I want to know. Guess what his study was - jumping to conclusions, assumptions, carelessness, complacency, shortcuts, taking things for granted, etc.

It read like he had a goal in mind and was just filling in spots. Wild leaps of logic in places. The majority of the claims consisted of making blanket statements paired with proof-texts that didn't legitimately support his claims at all. Nothing in his study was proved. It was all confirmation bias through and through. When I came by and asked simple questions about it, he felt personally threatened. Hence the name calling. But isn't that response a dead giveaway that he isn't after the truth? Is the truth ever so fragile that it cannot withstand being verified? No. The truth can take care of itself. But he was not after the truth. He was after a predetermined conclusion that he had already declared to be the truth before he even started.

I selected one part, a negative part about Catholics (apparently Catholic-bashing is mandatory in Sabbatarian prophecy studies), and I said this was just an assumption, not proof. He protested. In his mind, the Pope is the Beast, so all he needs to do is post a verse about the Beast and that's "proof".
I disagree. I reject the predetermined conclusion in the first place. To me, it's not a valid conclusion until after it's proven out.

Experience told me he would take me on a goose chase and layer on his other assumptions, but no! Instead, he responded, "I never mentioned Catholics."

???   *sigh*
So, I pointed out the page and quoted his mention of Catholics. Guy didn't know what his own study said! Was it even his??

That's when I asked if he would mind a little constructive criticism. I told him, "Look. If you haven't tried to prove yourself wrong, then you haven't proved anything at all."

PROVE ALL THINGS, TEST THE SPIRITS

That advice is some of the best I can ever offer you.
And, no, today's article is not about prophecy. It's good advice for everything.

Stress test your own claims. I mean really think them through. Pay attention to what you are saying, and where it comes from, and what your motivation is. Investigate the start and pursue all logical conclusions to it. Pick at each little detail. If you don't do that, then you aren't proving anything.

Predetermined conclusions, misquotes, logical fallacies, confirmation bias, false history, assumptions, group think - none of these are proof. There is a world of difference between "I need it to be such and such" and "it definitely is such and such".

I GOT NOTHIN'

I will give you a second example.

I was on social media the other day. Bill posted a comment that said, "Going to synagogue on Sabbath is not a command from God but a man-made tradition." Bill is right. This led to a typical discussion.

A man responded, "Those who keep it, follow His custom." To which I responded, "So, manmade traditions are fine after all." (Going to synagogue on Sabbath is a manmade tradition, but manmade traditions are absolutely verboten in Sabbatarianism. The implications of this are broad.)
The man responded to me, "The commandments are from God and not man-made." Except there is no commandment from God to go to synagogue on Sabbath; that was Bill's point to begin with. And now, his "follow custom" statement has become "follow command". He reversed himself mid-stride.
This went on for a while. He went to "you don't need a command" (a second reversal), then to "God commanded the 4th Commandment" (third reversal), and when I posted the actual 4th Commandment, he responded, "you can't rely on one verse." Then he brought up the phrase "holy convocation," which I explained doesn't mean 'go to church'. After that, he posted one verse (I thought he wasn't going to do that). Next, he said that I am being biased. Rriiiiiighht. Then he went back to 'holy convocation' again, which I reminded him we had already covered. In the end, he would do nothing but put down laugh emojis. A grown man.

Do you see what he was doing? Saying anything in the moment, anything at all, that he felt would get what he wanted. He didn't expect anyone to pay attention and remind him of what he'd said earlier. All of that work just to dodge the inevitable: Bill's observation is true.

This person shouldn't have needed Bill or me to tell him anything. There was no need for him to be surprised or to reverse himself so often. He could have been absolutely prepared had he but followed my simple advice that I give you today. He could have put his own assumptions to the test.
But he won't. He loves his assumptions too much. He has accepted so deeply that going to church is how one 'keeps' the Sabbath day - without biblical proof - that he cannot grasp how it could be any other way. He could not prove it was this way, but he needs it to be this way. Now he feels Bill is a threat for making a true statement.

(GAL. 4:16) Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?

Be your own harshest critic or someone else will be. Worse yet, the truth will be.

Look, people will criticize you anyway. They criticize me all the time. Sometimes I even deserve it! But that's really beside the point. Be your own harshest critic so that nobody else has to.

HARD TO UNDERSTAND

I will give you a final example. Here is a favored proof-text, used in times of genuine desperation:

(2 PET. 3:15b-16) as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, 16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

In case you are unfamiliar with how this proof-text is used, I will explain.
Both Sabbatarians and Mainstream Christians accuse one another of not understanding the scriptures. (Can we ever get to the point where we understand it all?) So, after a person takes a good thrashing and needs to reassure their bruised ego, they get together with a group of like-minded people and pull out this proof-text. "The other side just doesn't understand scripture. Peter said this would happen."

First and foremost, Peter is saying Paul was right. Some Hebrew Roots groups want Paul "ripped from your Bible" (that's a quote) because he doesn't say what they want to hear. Peter calls Paul a 'beloved brother' and insinuates his writing is Scripture. Is ripping him out of your Bible truly the wise thing to do?

Second, read verses 14 & 15: 

(II PET. 3:14b-15) be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; 15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation

This is what Peter is on about. Peter says Paul wrote about these same things. He didn't expound on every topic you lost a debate about on social media. Peter didn't really side with any group. He didn't mention prophecy. He didn't talk about the Sabbath day. He talked about these things and then said some people twist Paul's meaning. And that is exactly what this proof-text is frequently used for. Oh the irony! To employ Peter's warning in the exact way he warned against.

Do you understand what I am trying to say?
The person abusing Paul and Scripture, and Peter for that matter, might be you! How do you know if you have the truth or a beloved lie? You put yourself to the test! You try to disprove your own sacred cows and you accept the results.

(2 PET. 3:17-18) 17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand [that Paul is being misused], beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Heed Peter's advice to grow in Sabbath and knowledge of prophecy.
No. He doesn't tell us that.
Heed Peter's advice to double-down on something you cannot prove.
No. He doesn't tell us that, either.
Heed Peter's advice to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.

You want the truth? Pursue the Truth. His name is Jesus.

(JON. 18:37) 37 Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

JESUS DEALT WITH IT TOO

Belief and truth are not synonymous. Jesus dealt with this from everyone around Him, Pharisee and Apostle alike. No one had a clue what was really going on ...at least in part because they were too busy thinking they already knew exactly what was going on.

The Apostles weren't catching on to the plan, even though they accepted Jesus as Messiah, and were with Him all the time, and even though they learned the Scriptures since they were kids, because what Jesus did and how He did them wasn't in line with their expectations.
Judas Iscariot betrayed the Messiah he followed because the Messiah wasn't behaving as Judas desperately wanted Him to behave.
The Pharisees murdered the giver of their beloved law because the Lawgiver wasn't behaving as they thought He absolutely must behave.
You could say the same for Simon the Zealot, the Rich Young Ruler, Nicodemus, Saul, the believing Pharisees at the Council of Jerusalem, and all the rest. No one knew what was going on, but they all thought they did. Every single one needed to rethink their core assumptions. Some of these would rather kill someone than reassess themselves.

To be fair, Jesus did need to open our eyes to it. Yet, I cannot help but wonder if He had to do that because of something outside of man's control, or if He had to do that because of stubbornness and hardness of heart. Good thing many of them eventually did eventually reassess.

I will pay the Pharisees a backhanded compliment: at least they tried to verify.
Now, that said, what they did was the equivalent of an Armstrongist saying, "I looked all through church material but there wasn't anything there to support your claim that Armstrongism is wrong."
It's a 'backhanded compliment' because it's really a criticism, you see. Of course the Pharisees didn't find anything in their own material that disproves their own material. Of course Armstrong never wrote to expose his own church. By necessity, to challenge means to think outside that box.

Here a vital key to it: Mind your sources!!

WATCHMEN

I remember something from my Armstrongist days that was actually solid advice. We were told that we had to be watchmen. We were told a good watchman doesn't stare in one direction all night. What if something comes from the other direction? If the watchman stares at the corner of the tower through the night, has he really been watching?
Think about that.

That's what confirmation bias does to Bible study. We can become so convinced that we know where the "enemy" is coming from that we never bother to look anywhere else. We examine arguments, but only the arguments we have already decided are wrong. We do not truly search for evidence, but we look in the approved places for confirmation of the approved conclusions. We think verses mean what they don't mean because we refuse to challenge those conclusions. We test everyone else's beliefs, but never turn the gaze around and ask whether our own position is the thing that needs testing.

That could be us, left with absolutely nothing but laughy emojis, if we do not challenge ourselves. In a world of Caiphases, be a Nicodemus.

DIFFICULT BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE

Do you see what a human mind can do to justify itself and get what it wants if it tries hard enough? Stress testing your own beliefs is harder than I make it sound.

The catch here is ... everyone thinks they have the truth. No one truly believes a thing that they know to be a lie, but plenty of people believe a lie they "know" to be the truth.
Like that Mr. Laughy Emoji up there who thought he had the truth ...until he was challenged and learned he had based his life on thin air. Those laugh emojis were his way of refusing to accept reality.

How on earth do you follow my advice when you think you're already right? On ancillary things, it's simpler. But how do you do this to a core belief? How do you do this when you think you already have done this (using approved church material)? How do you criticize your proofs on the Sabbath day when the Sabbath day is at the very core of your entire church and personal identity? How do you do this when you've been told your eternal life depends on never challenging your church? How do you do this when you are afraid any answer besides the one you already have will get you the second death? How do you do this when your answer might mean your enemy was right all along and those laughy emojis are really laughing at you?

Ya just do. 

Throw those faulty tools away from your toolbox, put your own beliefs to the same level of scrutiny as you do other people's beliefs, then accept the outcome. The truth will take care of itself.

CONCLUSION

To quote a successful author, "This is the frailty of religious identity. All reason and logic magically evaporate when one's religion is scrutinized even in the most tame of manners."
But scrutinize we must.

Sometimes this has real consequences.

Am I holding myself up as some great example for you to follow? No. I lived most of my life doing the very things I'm now criticizing. There's a difference between wisdom and experience. I am experienced. I'm that kid. The one who sticks something in the electrical outlet because I just have to know. I make mistakes. I miss details. I learn the hard way. But I've learned something through experience. I've learned to bust my backside to make sure I have at least tried...

     to be my own harshest critic.

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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 Sabbatarian Inner Conflict

Sabbatarianism may seem like it has the answers and "just makes sense," but when we zoom out we see there is more conflict than coherence.

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I feel the need to rant today, because sometimes doing this gets to you.

I was once an Armstrongist. I know how the system works. I lived it for 30 years. I studied it. I preached it. I haven't stopped studying it.
To us, the Armstrongist view was truth. Period. We didn't need to prove it because we were right by default. It started out that way. It had to be. We had our very own Apostle, the first to preach the Gospel in 1,900 years, and he said anything else was pagan and might cost us our place in the Kingdom. That alone is enough to make the quality of evidence take a back seat because so long as it agrees with the system then it's truth. The number one concern is getting a certain result. We Armstrongists were so focused on trying to make the evidence fit the narrative one bit at a time that we didn't realize the issues we were causing. We would say anything we thought we had to in one place to support one thing, without a thought in the world of what we had just caused in another place with another thing.

Today, I would like to zoom out and go over some examples of these unintended consequences and the conflict that is caused by not thoroughly investigating our own doctrines. I want to approach this as if the starting point was never proved to begin with, and so the evidence should matter. This is a post about evidence.

LAW FOR ALL

Let's start with the claim that the law was given to the world. That is something we force into the biblical narrative, not something we receive out of it. The law as written, I mean. We went over that recently in "Editing the Commandments" and again in "Denying Babel, Erasing Israel". The law and the prophets were written quite specifically for the covenant people Israel (DEU. 5:3; JER. 31:31; HEB. 8:7-8; ROM.9:3-5). Gentiles were strangers to the Old Covenant and its terms (EPH. 2:11-12).

The law was for Israel, Israel was for the Messiah, and the Messiah is for the world.

This claim of 'the law is for everyone' is an Adventist claim from the mid-1800s. It started in response to pushback stating 'the Sabbath is Jewish'. But 'the Sabbath is for everyone' and 'the entire law is for everyone' are two different magnitudes of claims.
Sabbatarianism started with the realization that the Sabbath day is Saturday, not Sunday. OK, fine. That's actually correct. Sunday is the Lord's Day not the Sabbath day, regardless of what some modern Christians might think. But early Sabbatarians were challenged on why we need to keep a Jewish day. That forced their hand, and they turned to the Ten Commandments for justification. "The Ten are moral." But why just those laws? And so it became any "moral law". But by what authority do we keep only some of the law and not others? And so it became all laws. "The law is eternal and perfect and binding on everyone; always have been and always will be." All of this was in place by the end of the 1800s. That is still the claim to this day, but that goes too far, and it gets pared back down again to moral laws plus tithes and meats laws, and maybe a few more depending on which group you're with.
A little law always leads to more.

Everything we claimed turns out to be after the fact scrambles to justify ourselves. We had to innovate to prove we had been right this whole time.

That the law was for Israel was an essential idea underlying the debate of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. The debate within the Council affirms, and James some years later reaffirms in Acts 21, that the law was not for the Gentiles, and this affects everything Sabbatarianism holds dear.
Therefore, the Armstrongist explanation requires that the Pharisees were not arguing what they said they were arguing, and the Apostles did not decide what they said they decided.

But now we've created the need for workarounds, like the idea that we can get some of the law by avoiding circumcision, and the end result is a law buffet where no two Sabbatarian groups can seem agree what should be on their plate. Other Sabbatarian groups, like the Hebrew Roots, take this even farther and they claim the Gentiles were attending synagogue with Jews ...where they would learn straight from non-believing Pharisees every single thing they just got done claiming the Apostles were against barely 5 verses earlier. And now we have to rewrite history as well because this is not what we see in the history books.

No one seems to notice that we argued for the whole law, only to turn right around and throw that out the window because we only want some of the law.
No one seems to notice that we argued that 'the law is perfect' only to turn right around and change the law so we could keep it.
No one seems to notice that we argued strongly against man-made traditions, only to make a man-made tradition the very centerpiece of our identity (I refer to going to church on Saturday).
We literally argued two completely incompatible things at the same time. These three are not by any means the only examples I can give. We will see more as we go.

Do you see the conflict?

MORALITY

The Sabbath day is the trunk of this tree. But if you think about it, the Sabbath is just a means to an end. It is a means to please (some people think it's not please but manipulate) God. If you want to dig to the root of this tree, the nagging, biting, unresolved issue here is ultimately one of the nature of righteousness. At the end of the day, Sabbatarians are just normal people who want to please God, and they feel the law can tell them how to do that.

Sabbatarianism starts from the conclusion that righteousness and sin are revealed to us through law. Without law, morality stops making sense in a Sabbatarian system. Without law, why did the angels fall? Without law, what did the world do so wrong as to be flooded and disinherited? Without law, what did Abel and Noah and Abraham obey? Without law, what is hedonism and why shouldn't we do whatever comes to mind? Without law, why shouldn't you commit adultery?

But not just "law" -- the Old Covenant law.
Sabbatarianism believes the Old Covenant law is the only law, and that law is the primary means all mankind was given to know good and evil. (Pun intended.) Everything else is considered to flow from this. So, we believed the Old Covenant law was there from creation but was forgotten and then merely reiterated to Israel, and they will be with us forever.

Only, that is not what the Bible says.

So, everything is made to fit this ...even if we have to rewrite history, use Strong's concordance to edit the meanings of words, completely ignore context, make baseless assertions, claim two incompatible things at the same time, or quote demonstrably problematic translations of the Bible to achieve this goal (I refer to the KJV rendering of I John 3:4). The facts must be made to fit the narrative; anything else is pagan.

Anything that uses the techniques I just listed will inevitably end up causing more problems than it solves. For example, Romans 5:13-14 makes absolutely no sense:

(ROM. 5:13-14) 13 For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

Sabbatarianism has no clean answer for how sin can exist apart from law, and how there can be a time in the world before law, especially a time lasting from Adam to Moses. This cannot be accepted because it is a fundamental incompatibility. So it is denied. Perhaps by saying God created the Sabbath on day 7 (read "The Sabbath Rest of Genesis 2"), or Abraham kept the law (read "Genesis 26:5 - Did Abraham Keep the Law?").

But if not from law, then where else might righteousness originate? Answer: Directly from God's nature! The righteousness God desires does not come from the law, it comes from Himself. Directly. We go over this in "The Road to Sabbatarianism - part III".

If good and evil come directly from God's nature and our relationship to God or lack thereof, then there is no problem here. God is righteousness (and love, and truth, and wisdom, etc). God does not need a law to be righteous. Sin is anything not in alignment with God's nature. No law necessary.

The law had a different function altogether. Not to create "sin" or "righteousness" - because both exist apart from law (for more see "The Road to Sabbatarianism - part III") - but to make sin inescapably obvious and to add concrete penalties for sin -- and thereby to guide Israel away from the Gentiles' idolatry until Messiah came. Law is merely one way to express this. Hence the ceremonial laws which taught Israel about God's holiness. But if those ceremonial laws are no longer necessary, this must mean we can learn about God's holiness another way, or that we can learn it from laws that do not apply to us.

But now we have the Christ event.
Sin is anything that is not in line with God's nature and you know you are out of line? (Let that humble you.) There's good news. With Jesus, there is no condemnation. When we become one with Jesus by faith, His success is credited to us. Since He is the perfect law-keeper who fulfilled all the whole law, we have fulfilled the law in Him. The righteousness God desires is His own righteousness, in us, undeserved, which is credited to us by faith alone, due to our oneness with Him. Faith, expressed in acts of love. Righteousness is a covenant word. Righteousness is not about law-keeping, but about relationship. An active relationship with God, expressed in following the Holy Spirit into acts of love for God's images. And if you read what Bill has been writing lately about a good heart versus a bad one, you will see a lot more than what I can fit here.

That simply isn't how it works in Sabbatarianism, though. It needs a Sabbath day and it relies on the law to justify the day. We were taught good and evil do require laws, and those things I've said above are lies. We were told Jesus only came so we could be forgiven. We used terms like "greasy grace." We were told Jesus would never change "His Father's laws" (except the ones we changed). We were told God wants us to struggle and to 'qualify'. We were told that to be loving to those in the world is to actively fight against God - even to the point where voting is banned. We were told the New Covenant is basically a continuation of the Old.

Do you see the conflict?

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE RESULTS

Sabbatarianism relies on a series of proofs, some stronger and some hastily constructed. While defending the system, once we felt we had achieved our goal we would rarely think deeply beyond it. "It makes sense," we would say. There we would stop. We would rarely think about the things we just did to achieve our desired conclusions. Were they valid or reasonable or thorough? Doesn't matter. We would rarely continue on and think things all the way through to the logical conclusions of what we've just claimed. And we would ignore what kind of mess we've made elsewhere. One might say, emotional satisfaction trumped intellectual honesty.

This post might sound like a bunch of criticisms (it is a rant after all) but that is not really my intent. This post is about evidence and standards and methodology. It's about staying through to the logical conclusion and considering the consequences. If I claim X, then what are all of the things X leads to? What about Y?
I will give you an example of unintended consequences.

Does, "Every time I see the word 'commandment' in the New Testament, it means the Ten Commandments," really make sense? Sabbatarians use this thinking to support the Sabbath, citing verses like John 14:15:

(JON. 14:15) If you love Me, keep My commandments.

So, Jesus is advocating the Ten Commandments and we should all observe the Sabbath day. Right?
Then explain Hebrews 7:18, or Romans 7:10, or Ephesians 2:15.
If "commandments" means "Ten Commandments" then the Ten are annulled. That's what it says! Saying "commandment" means "Ten Commandments" might get us what we want in a soundbite proof-text of John 14:15, but that exact same standard in other verses blows our own goal out of the water. We cannot say it only means the Ten Commandments when it gets us what we want, but turn right around and deny this very same thing when it does not get us what we want. If you are going to set a standard than follow the standard.
But when I point this out, what is the usual response? "God's law is eternal!" "God's law is not a burden!" Not, "Huh. I didn't realize I had built my case on a double-standard. Perhaps I should think about this."

Do you see the conflict?

Sabbatarianism makes little edits as it goes along, all the while claiming it is not editing anything. The New Covenant must become a simple continuation of the Old ... only with more people and less laws. The claim is the New Covenant did nothing to change God's eternal and perfect law ...except discard 97% of it, rewrite what's left so it is not only for Israel anymore, completely change the priesthood, all new promises, and make it much harder. Other than those fundamental changes, nothing changed in any way. (Yes, that was sarcasm there.)

Therefore, it is necessary for Sabbatarianism to believe two opposing and utterly incompatible things at the same time:

1) That the law is eternal and universal and perfect and cannot be changed,
and
2) That the New Covenant ejected most of the law and fundamentally changed the rest.

This struggle - we must keep the eternal and perfect law, but to keep the law we must change the law - directly affects even the very Ten Commandments themselves; the most central and sacrosanct and perfect and eternal and unchanging and universal laws of them all. They are the very foundation of the Old Covenant. The Ten were written for Israel alone. So, those details are conveniently edited out of the perfect and unchanging law. That is what precisely what we reviewed in "Editing the Commandments".

No one seems to notice that there is no way to escape the law being changed. If it started out at creation applying to all people, then it was changed later when it was rewritten to be for Israel. That's a change! If the ceremonial and national laws were added for Israel, that's a change! If they were later removed for Christians, that's a change! If it was once "letter of the law," then it was changed to now be "spirit of the law". That's a change!
We believed "the law changed not because God changes not" -and- that the law keeps getting changed.
The very 'straw that broke the camel's back' that finally caused me to leave Armstrongism is when a friend of mine said to me, "Mr. Armstrong changed the law out of necessity." My friend did not think through what he was saying in the moment.

Do you see the conflict?

And what about Gentile inclusion? Some Sabbatarians, most notably Adventists, claim God is not calling the world at this time; He is only calling certain people. Armstrongists, a branch of Adventism, say God is only calling people who are secretly Israelites. I refer to British-Israelism/Anglo-Israelism. So, does the law apply to everyone, or must you be secretly an Israelite for it to apply? And if you're an Israelite, then how can it be that circumcision doesn't apply to you? If you really are an Israelite, as you claim, then avoiding circumcision does not exempt you from the law, it gets you exiled from Israel. That's the law! You are beholden to the whole law no matter what you do. No law buffet for you.

Now, at the exact same time, according to Armstrong, the law is being purposefully hidden from most people by God because they don't love the law. But we also claimed people need the Holy Spirit or it is literally impossible for them to comprehend that they need the law. They cannot understand that they need to keep the law in the first place unless God reveals it to them, but He is hiding it from them because they do not understand that they need to keep the law. And so He calls secret Israelites to keep it, and the rest await a terrible punishment for not doing what they literally could not do.

Do you see the conflict?

Circling back again to where we began, the belief that sin and righteousness come from laws rather than the nature of a perfectly righteous God and our faithful relationship with Him, is at the heart of all of this, and it introduces a whole series of dilemmas to contend with. Sabbatarianism is locked into a dance between law and grace, New and Old, covenant and terms, changing and unchanging, perfect and flawed, binding and deprecated, spirit and letter, goal and end, moral and ceremonial, Jew and Gentile, literal and figurative, scripture and literature, history and conspiracy, Greek and English, lie and true, etc etc etc. On and on and on.

The inner conflict isn't just here and there every once in a while; it's the whole thing.
And all this time all we needed to accept is that Christ is sufficient.

CONCLUSION

There is a peculiar thing that happens when a doctrine starts in the wrong place: it ends in the wrong place, and everything afterward has to be adjusted to protect it.

• A word doesn't fit? Use a concordance to redefine it.
• A verse doesn't quite fit? Call it a "difficult scripture" and explain it differently.
• A chapter doesn't quite fit? Isolate a verse.
• An entire book doesn't quite fit? Pull out a few individual proof-texts.
• The Jerusalem Council doesn't fit? Change what the Council was actually deciding.
• The New Covenant doesn't fit? Make it a mere continuation of the Old Covenant, where the parts you need will continue on while the rest falls away.
• A language doesn't fit? Treat it like it was originally written in English.
• History doesn't fit? Say it was corrupted and change it to how it should have been.
• Other systems don't fit? Write them all off as pagans.

Eventually, we can make almost anything fit. But there is a problem with that approach:
At some point, the sheer number of adjustments becomes evidence that the problem isn't with the words, the verses, the chapters, the books, the councils, or the history.

Sabbatarianism is swimming in a pool of inner conflict. How many contradictions and conflicts and fallacies and bandaged cracks must we endure before we say, "STOP! This is evidence that something is fundamentally very wrong. I need to go back and rethink my most basic starting point. I need to see what happens if I change the equation."
I suggest you start with: What if righteousness and sin do not require a written law?

I know how it feels to face this daunting task. I went through it myself. It is more than just daunting; it's terrifying. And to be fair, all systems have caused certain problems while trying to answer other problems. This is the human condition. This is not a perfect world that we live in. I am not saying Sabbatarianism is very wrong but Mainstream Christianity is very right ...or that I have it so right.

All I am claiming about myself is: I was once an Armstrongist Sabbatarian ...until I couldn't be anymore. Because I asked what if.

As Bereans Did has several articles intended to help people see that there are other things to consider here, other ways to look at verses, other critical facts that have been left out of the Sabbatarian equation.

Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII
The Road to Sabbatarianism - Part I
If You Love Me Keep My Commandments
What Does The New Testament Teach About Law and Grace?
Sunday, or Herbert Armstrong?
The Sabbath Rest of Hebrews 4
What Did Jesus Say In Relation To The Sabbath?
The Covenant and The Testimony

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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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Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part II

What were the Pharisees really trying to require of the Gentiles in Acts 15? Sabbatarians argue it wasn't what Luke plainly wrote. In this article we'll examine the last of the three most common explanations and see if it can withstand scrutiny.

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We've been deep-diving into Acts 15, stress testing some claims about what was really going on in the Jerusalem Council. In the first post, we investigated the Sabbatarian interpretation of verse 21 to see if the plan was really to send Gentile converts to synagogue to learn more law later on. We saw that the best approach is to let the context speak for itself rather than read a bunch of predetermined conclusions into it. In the previous post, we looked at what the debate was about in the first place.

Most people seem to believe the debate was between the Apostles who were 0% in favor of the law vs the Pharisees who were 110% in favor of the law. That is not the case. The Apostles were in favor of letting the Jewish converts retain their Hebrew traditions, yet binding none of that on the Gentile converts. If you want an example of a Jewish convert keeping their Old Covenant traditions, I offer you --- the very Pharisee converts at the heart of this debate.
Sabbatarians, however, assert the Apostles were roughly 3% in favor of the law vs the Pharisees who wanted something else entirely. But what? The three main explanations are:

A) Circumcision only, or
B) Pharisaical traditions, or
C) All the law - particularly the ones which Sabbatarians don't believe are necessary and which they call "the Law of Moses".

In the last post, "Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part I", we went over the first two of these. We saw how they don't hold up. Today, we investigate the third.

Let's get crack-a-lackin.

LAW OF MOSES?

The Council was not only about the "law of Moses".

Some people realize this could not only have been about circumcision or the customs, but they still have an ideological commitment to protect the Ten Commandments, therefore they redefine what the phrase "the law of Moses" means. Some redefine it as the ceremonial and national portions of the Old Covenant law. They claim there is a difference between the "law of God" (ie. the Ten Commandments plus a handful of other things like tithing, meats, and holy days) and the "law of Moses" (pretty much everything else). This has become a very popular claim.

I disagree there is such a difference in the first place. We have articles on that (see "Law of Moses - Law of God" and "Law of God - Law of Moses").

Now, I realize those two posts that I just mentioned can be very confusing. They made sense when I wrote them, but they are admittedly challenging to follow. I will distill down the best parts for you here. Let's start with Nehemiah 8.

(NEH. 8:1,8) 1 Now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law [torah] of Moses, which the LORD had commanded Israel. ... 8 So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law [torah] of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.

Same book, same law, two descriptions. In one verse it's "law of Moses". In another verse it's "law of God". In both it's "Torah". It's all the same thing.

Joshua 8:30-35 calls the whole Torah the "book of the law" and "book of the law of Moses". Remember, in Joshua's time they only had the first five books. All of it was "the law of Moses". And what will we find more than once in this 'law of Moses'? The Ten Commandments.

It's the same in the New Testament.

(Luke 24:44) Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”

That's the whole Old Testament. Jesus recognized the three divisions in the scriptures: the law, the prophets, and the psalms. But He refers to the whole law as "the law of Moses".

I Kings 2 presents this even more clearly:

(I KIN. 2: 3) And keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses.

Oh my.
I shouldn't have to say another word about this ...but I will.

My conclusion, that there is no difference between "law of God" and "law of Moses", is precisely what was written in the Worldwide Church of God's "Systematic Theology" document, 1978 version, page 3 paragraph 2. They wrote:

"It is also important to note that the term 'law of Moses' is itself used interchangeably with the term 'law of God.'"

Except, the Systematic Theology was a bit controversial and contradicted other things that were written by the same church both before and afterward. (Armstrongism always has liked to have its cake and eat it too.) Still, I find it interesting that the Worldwide Church of God in its heyday, for brief and shining moment, officially recognized what I am telling you now.

Referring back to Josephus - read his works and you will see he consistently treats the laws, the Torah, the books of Moses, and Moses' legislation, as one body of material. So, now we have biblical and extra-biblical reasons to believe it's all the same thing.

You see, when the Bible says "of Moses" or "of [insert name here]", it doesn't necessarily mean those things belong to that person or were invented by that person. It means those things were either primarily about that person or they were given through that person. For example, "Jesus of Nazareth" doesn't mean Jesus belongs to Nazareth. Likewise, "the book of Isaiah" was not really about Isaiah so much as it was about the prophecies that God gave through Isaiah. They were God's prophecies, but called Isaiah's because he was the conduit. "The Gospel of Mark" doesn't mean there is a gospel about Mark or a gospel that belongs to Mark, separate from “gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (MARK. 1: 1). That's all "the law of Moses" means. Those laws didn't belong to him; they were given through him.

(JON. 1: 17a) For the law was given through Moses...

There is no "law of Moses" with a separate and distinct "law of God". They were all the law of God. They were all the law of Moses. The whole third claim is artificial and based on a predetermined commitment; a commitment to take the singular body of law and break it up into chunks, keeping a few and discarding the rest.

I realize this is a critical point for Sabbatarians, so they will disagree with me. They must. So, let's look at some of the top arguments in favor of there being a "law of God" and a separate "law of Moses". 

Perhaps the foremost argument is:
The Ten Commandments were written by God's own finger and were placed inside the Ark of the Covenant, while the book of laws that Moses wrote was placed beside the Ark.

The point of this is to make the Ten separate and superior. This has some serious problems.

The first problem is: It was the second set of tablets that were put into the Ark, but it's not clear who wrote the second set of tablets.

God wrote the first set of the Ten Commandments with His own finger, but then Moses broke those tablets. As for the second set:

(EXO. 34:1) And the Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.
(EXO. 34:27) Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

Who wrote the second set? Scholars have debated for a very long time whether it was God or Moses. It isn't clear. If you want to believe it was God, that's fine. But...

The second problem is: the Ten Commandments were written in the book Moses wrote, too.

It's in both places. How can the Ten Commandments be superior to the Ten Commandments? If we ignore Nehemiah 8 and forge ahead claiming "the law of Moses" was that book, then it was all "the law of Moses". In fact, I'm willing to bet you've never read the Ten Commandments straight from the tablets. You got "God's law" from descendants of that book that was placed beside the Ark, same as the rest of us.

The third problem is: no Sabbatarian church that I've ever heard of believes only the Ten Commandments are required.

A little law always leads to more. What about tithes? What about meats laws? What about holy days? None of those are in the Ten, or the "moral law" for that matter (another artificial term). So, if those aren't "Law of God" then why must anyone bother with them? And what about the four laws the Apostles said were necessary for Gentiles to observe in Acts 15? They were not in the "Law of God". And what about circumcision, which got this ball rolling in the first place? All of these are solidly in what Sabbatarians call "the law of Moses".

So, were the tablets placed in the Ark with the Aaron's staff and a pot of mana because:
A) Those three things were creating a special category of law,
or
B) Because they were special physical items that represented God's relationship with Israel?

I am going with B.

I do not find this argument convincing at all. And it's arguably the best one.

There is another claim which is very similar to the first.

Herman Hoeh, "the most accurately informed historian in the world", had a slight variation. In his article "Which Old Testament Laws Are In Force Today?", he claimed:
The Ten are special because they are the only laws God spoke directly to Israel, while Moses merely delivered the statutes and judgments.

While those base facts may be true, the conclusion he is attempting to reach does not hold. The way they were delivered does not make them a separate class of law. God spoke many of the laws to Moses, who them wrote down in his book. The issue is not whether God spoke these words directly vs. indirectly through Moses. The issue is that they came from God. I am not convinced by the claim, "All mankind must keep these laws because these are the ones God spoke to Israel."

In Israel's view:

"All 613 of those mitzvot are equally sacred, equally binding and equally the word of G-d. All of these mitzvot are treated as equally important."
-Judaism 101, “Aseret ha-Dibrot: The Ten Commandments”.

I am not saying the Ten aren't special. They are! But even the Jews don't believe their delivery or where they were placed makes them a separate and particularly binding class of law.

There are more arguments than these, of course, but I am not going to get into them here. They get more and more ridiculous as you go along. I will simply suggest reading "Common Legalist Arguments - Part VI".

This whole section boils down to this: modern Sabbatarians say "law of Moses" refers to a particular subset of the law, but if we cannot prove that's what the people at the Jerusalem Council thought then it all falls apart. And we have no good reason to believe that's what the Apostles and Pharisees thought.

The initial trouble was not only about some portion of the law called "the Law of Moses".

CONCLUSION

The three main explanations given by Sabbatarians of what the Pharisees were trying to bind on the Gentiles are either:
A) Circumcision only. It cannot be this because Luke says, "and the law." Circumcision was not about merely being circumcised.
B) Pharisaical traditions. It cannot be this because Luke says, "the law of Moses." The oral law was not called the law of Moses.
C) The "law of Moses". It cannot be this because there is no separate "law of Moses" distinct from "law of God". They are the same thing.

We have reviewed each and shown how each of these has insurmountable weaknesses. Each one collapses under its own weight.
These three aren't reasonable explanations so much as they are rescue attempts.

I was an Armstrongist. I know the motivation - there must be a Sabbath day, and that means there must be the Ten Commandments, and that means the Apostles must be for some of the law, and that means the Pharisees must be arguing something other than what Acts 15 actually says. These three explanations are the result.
And that means the "Early Church Fathers" were all liars, and this is all Constantine's fault, and mainstream Christians are all deceived, and so on and so forth. I get it.

The Sabbatarian understanding of Acts 15 comes out of prior commitments to the Sabbath day. In short, eisegesis.
But, in case you haven't noticed, this blog has been systematically going through each individual point in the universe of Sabbatarian proof texts, and we've been pointing out the issues in each and showing other ways to understand them. What we've been driving at is - what if there is no prior commitment to the Sabbath day? What if the Apostles really did decide against requiring the law for Gentile converts? What if the New Covenant really is different from the Old, as the prophecies of Jeremiah predicted? What if these three explanations we saw today fall apart because the prior commitment itself is not valid in the first place? If these three points really are the explanation, then why are they completely incompatible with one another? It sounds like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. None of them do!

So what were the Pharisees really debating in Acts 15? I believe they were debating how to join the Covenant.

The fourth explanation is that Pharisees meant exactly what Luke wrote: The Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law.
That's what the text says.
And the decision of the Apostles was exactly what Luke wrote, and several years later reiterated when he quoted James: "But concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing."

But the Gentiles were not joining Israel. The Gentiles already received the Holy Spirit. They were accepted into the New Covenant without joining Israel first. Instead, both Jew and Gentile were joining the body of Christ, and all the Gentile converts had to do to keep the peace with the Jewish converts were those points of the law required of all Gentiles in Israel from Leviticus 17 & 18.

Or, to put this entire thing another way:

Christ is sufficient.

Other articles in this series:

Acts 15:21 - More Law Later?
Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part I

To help you move forward, I suggest these articles:

The Legalist Dance
Common Legalist Arguments - Part VI
Confusing The Covenants
The Plain Truth About Peter's Hypocrisy
Shadows, Nails and the Fall Holy Days
Law of Moses - Law of God - Part I
Law of God - Law of Moses - Part II
Two Trees - Two Covenants
If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments
Lawlessness and I John 3
Sin Is The Transgression of The Law?

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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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Evil Uses the Sabbath

There is a category of evil people that refuse to believe they are evil. They believe they are good in that they do not do some of the more egregious things “evil” people do, like commit murder. They will admittedly do some minor things that are wrong, chalking it up to human nature, but having embraced religion, they confess those discretions, and carry on.

They will embrace variations of Old Covenant law in order to validate their perception of themselves. This is where the Sabbath comes into play. Part of this equation is wanting to prove they are good. Part of this proof is found through comparing themselves with those perceived by them to be evil. They are "evil' people because they do not do those things that "good" people do, like keeping the law “of God”.

(Isaiah 1:13-20) Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

(Isaiah 1:13) [JPS] Bring no more vain oblations; It is an offering of abomination unto Me; New moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly.

These "good" things had morphed into useless and vain rituals without substance which became iniquitous in the sight of God. There were much more important things to attend to.

They were going through the motions of keeping those things commanded in the law. Their hands they raised to God in worship in their religious assemblies were full of blood. Their worship was in vain; even iniquitous – an ‘aggravated’ sinful act. These were outward expressions of piety that were fraudulent; deceptive; misleading.

Such actions and behaviors, like keeping the Sabbath, came down to being theater; an outward show and appearance. What was to be the worship of God was nothing other than self-aggrandizement; an act of glory to one’s self, and not an act of glory to God. It was a display designed to gather attention to the self, not unlike this example:

(Matthew 6:5) And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

A truly Godly person has God as the focus and reason for all they do, done out of love and gratitude to God who pulled them out of the mire of the world and their own sins, now dedicated to God and producing fruits unto God to the glory of God.

But when a sinful man who is in denial practices a religion of outward show, such as keeping the Sabbath, he does it for the glory of himself. “I keep the law and Sabbath, unlike these sinners who do not keep the law and Sabbath.” When you break it down, keeping the Sabbath, the focus is on the self in relation to a day they refrain from doing any work, including any fruits born to the glory of God. The focus is on the day and the self.

(Isaiah 58:13) If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

They were not doing these things mentioned by God on the Sabbath. They were not honoring God. They were focused on the day, even as are modern Sabbatarians, as well as themselves, honoring themselves for keeping the Sabbath, while denigrating those who do not, believing they are the ones dishonoring God by not keeping the day; observing the day itself for the day’s sake.

Consider though the works and fruits of a Christian whose fruits are to the glory and honor of God EVERY DAY, following a lifestyle of dedication to God EVERY DAY; every waking hour.

The Sabbatarian defines himself with the Sabbath. The true Christian defines himself as a forgiven sinner who loves the God who saved him from sin and the consequences of sin who now dedicates himself totally to God and praising His glory for His mercy and compassion shown him.

But the Sabbatarian views himself as having overcome sin through his own efforts, and only needs God to come on the scene for those rare occasions he “sins” and requires forgiveness, then it’s back to business as usual…

Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? — Amos 8:5

God foretold He would do away with the Sabbath, it having become unproductive. The day had become more important to the people than what the day was to represent.

(Luke 13:14-17) And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.

What Jesus did was what God does, being God – acts of compassion; acts of love, to the glory of the Father.

(Hosea 2:11) Sabbatarians idolize the Sabbath and idolize the law “engraven in stones” not unlike how the children of Israel ended up idolizing the serpent set up on a pole by Moses called Nehushtan they were to look upon should any of them be bitten by vipers, burning incense to it where incense represented prayers. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time, who administered the law, focused on those works of the law that could be manipulated to present them to the people as righteous and where Jesus chastised them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law. The weightier matters of the law did not serve them. They were not interested in administering true justice, mercy, and faith. They were there to uphold the works of the law, especially the Sabbath, with a ruthless zeal if necessary, ‘defending the faith.’ Their dedication was to the law and Sabbath that served them and their agenda; not God; not the “Lord of the Sabbath” who declared good works lawful; not a sin; works done to the glory of God by those who follow God and whose works are always to the glory of God; good trees, producing only good fruits (works) wrought in God that could only be carried out because of God, due to His presence through the Holy Spirit in them.

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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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Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part I

What were the Pharisees really trying to require of the Gentiles in Acts 15? Sabbatarians argue it wasn't what Luke plainly wrote. In this article we'll examine the first two of the three most common explanations and see whether they can withstand scrutiny.

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In my last post, "Acts 15:21 - More Law Later?", we saw how the Sabbatarian explanation for Acts 15:21 is not the only way to understand the verse. I proposed the initial trouble in Acts 15 - the thing which disheartened the church, the thing which Paul and Barnabas sharply opposed, which Peter called a yoke, and which the Council ruled against - was exactly what was written: circumcision and the law.
The Pharisees felt that in order to join the Covenant, the Gentiles must join Israel, and to join Israel meant they must first be circumcised, and the result is that they must keep the law. Circumcision and law was the burden, and joining the nation of Israel was the root error that needed to be corrected.
We also saw how the "more law later" claim can be tested. We turn to Acts 21 where James contrasts the converts from Judaism, who were zealous for the law, with the converts from the Gentiles, who were taught no such thing. If even years later James was still saying the Gentiles would be taught no such thing, then there is no "more law later" for the Gentiles. The Sabbatarian reading of Acts 15:21 is flawed.

Sabbatarians disagree, of course. They assert the Apostles were fully in support of a small fraction of the law, while the Pharisees were not insisting on that but something else. The three main explanations for what the Pharisees were trying to bind on the Gentiles are either:
A) Circumcision only, or
B) Pharisaical traditions, or
C) All the law - particularly the ones which Sabbatarians don't personally think are necessary and which they call "the Law of Moses".

I disagreed with all three and said I will go over this more in another post. This is that post. (Which I have since changed into a two-parter because it was too long for one post.)

Keep in mind who we're talking about here: converts from the Pharisees. What were Pharisees like? Fastidious about the law. Tithing on every seed. Memorizing every word. Analyzing every nuance. Did they add traditions? Yes. But those traditions come from their attempt to more accurately understand and rigorously apply the law. (I agree with ABD author Bill's take on their approach to the law.)

A simple reading of the Council's decision clearly plays havoc with Sabbatarianism. Sabbatarianism needs the Old Covenant law. More specifically, it needs the Sabbath day. And to justify the Sabbath day, early Sabbatarians chose to emphasize the Ten Commandments. Yes, a commitment to the Sabbath came before an emphasis on the Ten Commandments. Sabbatarianism is now locked in to the Ten Commandments. Later Sabbatarians added additional laws, arguing amongst themselves over them. Sabbatarians reframe the debate to bring the Gentiles under certain laws while avoiding the appearance of siding with those Pharisees, claiming the debate was only about one of those three things listed above. But was it?
Let's take a look at each of those three things and see if they make sense.

CIRCUMCISION ONLY?

Let's start with circumcision because it's easiest. (That doesn't mean it's simple.) The Council was not only about circumcision alone.

Back in Armstrongism, many were taught the Council was only debating circumcision (for example, read "Reader Testimonials - Centurion", or I could pull up any number of official Armstrongist materials to demonstrate this, for example the Youth Bible Lessons series). Armstrongism at one time or the other taught all three of these incompatible explanations. But the claim is demonstrably false. If it were only about circumcision, then why was the argument said to be over circumcision and the law? Twice! (v.5 & v.24.)
I shouldn't have to say another word about this ...but I will.

Think about the position of Sabbatarianism - that only about 1/6 of the law is required. Now think of the attitude of the Pharisees. Do you think they would only care about circumcision, especially when 5/6 of the law supposedly just became unnecessary? I can't see how that is possible.

Think about the conclusion of the Council which they wrote in the letter to be sent out to all the church. If the initial trouble was about circumcision only, then what on earth does teaching the Gentiles to keep a short list of laws have to do with a debate over circumcision alone? "We had a debate which was only about circumcision, and decided against it. And because circumcision isn't needed, Gentiles should keep these four points of law that have nothing whatsoever to do with circumcision." That seems a rather odd way to solve the problem of circumcision.

It also fundamentally misses the concept of circumcision. Circumcision was never just about a snip. It was about joining a covenant people. It was the sign; the seal.
But which covenant? The Abrahamic! Not the Mosaic.
Circumcision was the required gateway to the Abrahamic Covenant (GEN. 17:10-14) and therefore the covenant people of Israel. It was joining Israel that placed one under Israel's Old Covenant obligations. Paul warns strongly that you could not snip in this context without getting the whole law (GAL. 5:3), along with its condemnations. (This doesn't mean every individual had to personally perform every law, for example some were only for the priesthood, but every person was beholden to the complete system, which included a priesthood.)
What I'm driving at is - the debate in Acts 15 could not be only about circumcision because by its very nature circumcision was not only about circumcision.

Everyone there understood the ramifications of circumcision. That is why the Pharisees insisted on circumcision in the first place - until then, that was how one joined the covenant people. "You want God? Then you join Israel." They misunderstood that the Gentiles were now covenant people without joining Israel first, and that both Jew and Gentile together were joining something new: the body of Christ (EPH. 2:11-18), and that through Christ we join the Abrahamic Covenant. It was being one with Christ that qualifies you to be a child of Abraham and inheritor of the promises.

The Pharisees did not want Gentiles to be circumcised simply to be circumcised, and the Apostles did not oppose it simply so males did not have to be injured for a few days. It was a much bigger conversation than that. It was about what we join and how. It was about the sweeping differences between the Old and New Covenants. The decision of the Council was not just about bypassing circumcision, but avoiding the entire older process.

And I realize some Sabbatarians will argue the Apostles wanted Gentiles to avoid circumcision specifically so they did not have to keep the whole law, and therefore they would be free to only keep certain parts of the law. But a) that's really claim #3, and b) that's not how this works.

A running theme in Sabbatarianism is attempting to find a way back into the Old Covenant, but only so far as to get specific items from it. Bypassing circumcision doesn't mean you now get to enter the Covenant but only so far as you'd like.
In the Old way, the progression was (in a nutshell): circumcision → join Israel → Old Covenant law. So, yes, the Pharisees were arguing for the whole law. But that was how it goes. The law are the terms of the Old Covenant. The law is a singular whole; it's an all or nothing proposition. If you take out circumcision then you are not a party to the Covenant, and so the rest falls apart.
What bypassing circumcision does not do is give us a back door straight to the Sabbath day, dividing the singular body of law into chunks, and excusing us from other parts we would rather not keep. Where is it ever written that bypassing circumcision makes one free to treat the Old Covenant like a buffet? That would mean the whole world could have been doing this the entire time! We've just undermined everything from Moses to Jesus!

You realize this is all still arguing over Old Covenant ideas, right? They are obsolete! We have so many articles on this.

The initial trouble was not only about circumcision.

PHARISAICAL TRADITIONS ONLY?

Let's move on to the Pharisaical traditions. The Council was not only about Pharisaical traditions.

Some people realize this could not have been only about circumcision, but they still have an ideological commitment to protect the Ten Commandments, so they must redefine what "and the law" means. Some redefine it as Pharisaical traditions.
But it cannot be that, either.

(ACT. 15:5) But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.”

The Pharisaical traditions were not called "the law of Moses". Moses didn't write the oral law. The traditions were distinct from the Torah because they came after the Torah and were meant to describe the Torah. I shouldn't have to say another word about this ...but I will.

It is true that the Pharisees added many traditions and that these traditions had the weight of law, at least among the Pharisees and those who follow them. But the Pharisaical customs are not called "the law" in the New testament and were never said to be "the law of Moses". The New Testament particularly distinguishes the law from the customs. Historically, there was the written law ("Torah") and there was the oral law ("the customs", the "Oral Torah", and eventually "the Mishnah"). 

Josephus is helpful here because he was from that time and place:

"What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have passed on to the people a great many observances handed down by their fathers, which are not written down in the law of Moses. For this reason the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to consider to be obligatory only those observances which are in the written word, but need not observe those which are derived from the tradition of our forefathers."
-Josephus, "Antiquities of the Jews" book XIII, chapter 10, paragraph 6, verse 296-297.

Josephus rejects the idea that the oral law was the law of Moses.

Did we not spend a great deal of time on Acts 15:21 in my last post? Does that not say Moses was read? The oral law, the Mishnah, wasn't written until around 200 AD. It couldn't have been read. And do Sabbatarians not use that verse to claim it refers to Gentiles learning the Torah law? You can't have it both ways. Either the discussion was about the law or it wasn't.

And let's not forget, synagogues are a tradition of the Pharisees (for more, see "Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII"). Nowhere in the Bible is there a law that commands going to synagogue (or church) on Sabbath.  Synagogues developed in the Second Temple period. It was the Pharisees who ran most synagogues. How can you reject the traditions of the Pharisees and base your entire plan on a tradition of the Pharisees?

So, when Acts 15 says "and keep the law" (v.24) and "keep the law of Moses" (v.5), there is no good reason to conclude this is referring only to the Pharisaical customs. I am sure that if Team Pharisees had their way the Gentile converts would also have been required to keep the traditions, but I see no possible way that this can be only about the traditions.

The initial trouble was not only about the Pharisaical customs.

CONCLUSION

We've gone over the first two of the three main explanations given by Sabbatarians of what the Pharisees were demanding, and we have seen how they fail.

A) Circumcision only. It cannot be this because Luke says, "and the law." By its very nature, circumcision was not only about circumcision.
B) Pharisaical traditions. It cannot be this because Luke says, "the law of Moses." The oral law was distinct from the law of Moses.

Next time, we will go over the final explanation: "the law of Moses".

Other articles in this series:

Acts 15:21 - More Law Later?
Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part II

To help you move forward, I suggest these articles:

The Legalist Dance
Common Legalist Arguments - Part VI
Confusing The Covenants
The Plain Truth About Peter's Hypocrisy
Shadows, Nails and the Fall Holy Days
Law of Moses - Law of God - Part I
Law of God - Law of Moses - Part II
Two Trees - Two Covenants
If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments
Lawlessness and I John 3
Sin Is The Transgression of The Law?

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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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