Status Updates From Sanctification of the Sabba...

“How, then, shall it ever be supposed that the Ten Commandments belonged only to Israel, and are not of everlasting and universal obligation? Or on what ground can it be affirmed that the fourth commandment is to be separated from the rest, so that one is blotted out of their number and that they are now reduced to nine?”

“If, even in a state of innocence, the Sabbath was a blessing to man, how much more is it necessary for him in a state of sin, degradation, and toil?”

Haldane gives another very compelling argument for Sabbatarianism from Isaiah. In Isaiah’s prophecies of the Messianic age, there is an expectation of Sabbath keeping (56:2-7). Jesus even quotes one of these passages, “my house will be a house of prayer for all nations,” announcing the Messianic age at the cleansing of the temple. Just a few verses before in Isaiah the Gentile keeping the Sabbath is prophesied.

Haldane gives a compelling argument for Sabbatarianism that I have not heard before. In Mt 24, Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple, i.e., a time where ceremonial Jewish rites are explicitly abolished and yet he tells his disciples to hope that they do not have to flee on the Sabbath, showing that the Sabbath is not abrogated with the abrogation of those ceremonial rites (Mt 24:20).

Understanding Romans 14 to abrogate Sabbath keeping under the New Covenant “…is a most pernicious error, an error exhibiting great ignorance of spiritual things and one highly calculated to retard the progress of the Christian divine life.”