ROOTS OF TRUTH

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. Revelation 14:12. God's people are to be distinguished as a people who serve Him fully, wholeheartedly, taking no honor to themselves, and remembering that by a most solemn covenant they have bound themselves to serve the Lord, and Him only.... The children of Israel were to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations “for a perpetual covenant.” Exodus 31:16.

Thursday, 22 December 2016

Birth of sun god

IT WAS THE BIRTHDAY OF THE SUN GOD
“One of the dominant religious ideas of the second and third
centuries was the belief in the divinity of the Sun . . “This divinity is of especial interest for our inquiry, for his annual festival fell on the twenty-fifth of December and its relation to Christmas [p. 151] has been a matter of protracted discussion. Obviously the season of the winter solstice, when the strength of the sun begins to increase, is appropriate for the celebration of the festival of a sun-god. The day in a sense marks the birth of a new sun. But the reason for its being chosen as the day for the commemoration of Christ’s nativity is not so evident.
“ . . The identity of date is more than a coincidence. To be sure the Church did not merely appropriate the festival of the popular sun-god. It was through a parallelism between Christ and the sun that the twenty-fifth of December came to be the date of the nativity . . [p.153] Even Epiphanius, the fourth century metropolitan of Cyprus, though giving the sixth of January as the date of birth, connects the event with the solstice. Moreover, the diversion of the significance of a popular pagan holiday was wholly in accord with the policy of the Church. Of the actual celebration of a festival of the nativity, it should be added, there is no satisfactory evidence earlier than the fourth century. Its first observance in Rome on December the twenty-fifth took place in 353 or 354 (Usener) or in 336 (Duchesne). In Constantinople it seems to have been introduced in 377 or 378.”—Gordon J. Laing, Survivals of Roman Religion (New York: Longmans, 1931), 150-153.

Chrismas truth.

So I'm asking you to lay aside cultural prejudices and preferences, and approach this question with an open mind. Granted, that can be hard to do but it isn’t impossible. We are so snowed under a century of tradition and nostalgia that it's almost impossible for some people to look at the issue objectively at all. I'm asking you to put aside your preconceived notions, at least temporarily, to look honestly at the institution called Christmas.
To begin, there is no indication in the New Testament that the early Christians observed Christmas at all. You cannot find the exact day of Christ’s birth anywhere recorded in Scripture, let alone the celebration of it. In fact, it can be demonstrated in church history that, for probably the first 300 years after the birth of Christ, Christians knew nothing of a Christmas celebration.
Frederick Neilsen, a Danish bishop, says, "During the first three centuries we find no trace of any feast for the birth of Christ."-- Ecclesiastical History, page 224.
Lector P. Walsdenstrom says: "The custom to celebrate the birth of Christ in the last part of December began first in the fourth century."-- Notes to Luke 2:8.

THE PAGAN WORSHIPERS OF MITHRA CELEBRATED THE BIRTHDAY OF THE SUN ON DECEMBER 25

THE PAGAN WORSHIPERS OF MITHRA CELEBRATED THE BIRTHDAY OF THE SUN ON DECEMBER 25
“Each day in the week, the planet to which the day was sacred was invoked in a fixed spot in the crypt; and Sunday, over which the Sun presided, was especially holy . .
“The rites which they [the Mithraists] practised offered numerous analogies . . They also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun [god] on the 25th of December.”—Franz Cumont, the Mysteries of Mithra, Trans. by T.J. McCormack, 167, 191.

Thursday, 15 December 2016

Nature.

If we look at the marvelous relationships that exist in nature between animals and plants, it is hard to envision how such harmony could have come about by strategies and counterstrategies of coevolution. Numerous plants can only be pollinated by specifically adapted insects that in turn are nurtured by the plants themselves. Evolutionists explain these relationships by suggesting that the two coevolved. However, what if the fortuitous mutations were out of synchronization? Then the species would not survive. Moreover, considering the millions of such relationships that exist in the world, the likelihood of them having come about by chance is extremely remote.
This article uses pieces of nature, such as the genome, the cell, and even the eye, as evidence that God is the Creator of all things. http://ow.ly/VZUi306SpHR

Evidence For Design
www.amazingdiscoveries.org
courtesy of the Amazing discoveries

OUR HIGH CALLING

OUR HIGH CALLING, PAGE 345
A Distinct and Peculiar People, December 5
Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. Revelation 14:12.
God's people are to be distinguished as a people who serve Him fully, wholeheartedly, taking no honor to themselves, and remembering that by a most solemn covenant they have bound themselves to serve the Lord, and Him only....
The children of Israel were to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations “for a perpetual covenant.” Exodus 31:16. The Sabbath has lost none of its meaning. It is still the sign between God and His people, and it will be so forever. Now and ever we are to stand as a distinct and peculiar people, free from all worldly policy, unembarrassed by confederation with those who have not wisdom to discern the claims of God, so plainly set forth in His law.
We are to show that we are seeking to work in harmony with heaven in preparing the way of the Lord. We are to bear witness to all nations, kindreds, and tongues, that we are a people who love and fear God, a people who keep holy the seventh-day Sabbath, and we are to show plainly that we have full faith that the Lord is soon to come in the clouds of heaven....
“And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” Revelation 22:3, 4.
Who are these?—God's denominated people—those who on this earth have witnessed to their loyalty. Who are they?—Those who have kept the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus; those who have owned the Crucified One as their Saviour.
“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Verse 5. “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Verse 14.
visit also AD

Saturday, 5 November 2016

which day of the week

Which Day of the Week?

Print Friendly

Despite doctrinal differences on various other topics, most Christians agree that a day of rest is an integral part of the Christian life. But on which day are we to rest?

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Genesis 2:2, 3). The very word “sabbath” means rest, and to rest implies that you have labored. It’s logical, then, for God to have designated the last day of the week a day of rest. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:10).

Language reflects the customs of the culture that speaks it. Nearly every culture, from Babylon through modern times, rested on the seventh day. As languages developed, the name for the seventh day of the week remained “rest day.” In the mid 19th century, Dr. William Meade Jones created this “Chart of the Week,” listing the name for the seventh day in 160 languages, including some of the most ancient (shown below). Babylonian, in use hundreds of years before Abraham or the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, calls the seventh day of the week sa-ba-tu, meaning “rest day.”

Even today more than 100 languages worldwide, many of them unrelated to ancient Hebrew, use the word “Sabbath” for Saturday—and none of them designate any other day as a day of rest. Though the world’s language groups have evolved so as to be unintelligible from each other, the word for the seventh day of the week has remained fairly recognizable.

The Sabbath predates Judaism

For the thousands of years since Judaism began, an entire nation of Jews has kept track of the weekly cycle and observed the seventh day Sabbath, sometimes even without a calendar. Nevertheless, many rationalize that it’s impossible to verify which day of the week is actually the biblical Sabbath because Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar. The Julian calendar, instituted by Julius Caesar around 46 B.C., calculated the length of the year as 365 ¼ days. In reality, the year is 11 minutes less than 365 ¼ days. So by the 1580s, the calendar and the solar cycle were ten days off. In 1582, Gregory changed the calendar so that Friday, October 5, became Friday, October 15, creating the Gregorian calendar we use today. But it did not confuse the days of the week; Friday still follows Thursday, Saturday still follows Friday, and so on and so forth.

Exodus 16 recounts a series of weekly Sabbath miracles over a period of forty years. God reiterated the Sabbath at Sinai (Exodus 20:8-11), and the Jews were still observing the seventh day when Jesus was born. Jesus kept the Sabbath (Luke 4:16; 23:54, 56;24:1) until his death, which Luke indicates occurred on the day before the Sabbath: "Going to Pilate, [Joseph of Arimathea] asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin” (Luke 23:52-54). Luke goes on to describe the actions of the women who followed Jesus. “The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it.

“Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb” (Luke 23:55, 56; 24:1). The women discovered that Jesus had risen on Sunday morning; Christians acknowledge this fact by celebrating Easter. The day on which the women rested between the preparation day (Friday) when Jesus died, and the first day of the week (Easter Sunday) when Jesus rose again, had to be Saturday. Scripture clearly portrays God designating the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, and throughout the centuries of history recounted in the Bible, His followers celebrated it as such. Unless it was changed, the seventh day is still the Sabbath. So why do so many people today honor Sunday, the first day of the week, instead of the seventh day? (Why do so many people worship on Sunday?)

Chart of the Week (Showing the position of the true Sabbath)

Compiled by Dr. William Meade Jones, 1887

LANGUAGE (Where Spoken, Read, or Otherwise Used)123456Name of the SEVENTH DAYShemitic Hebrew Bible world-wideDay OneDay SecondDay ThirdDay FourthDay FifthDay the SixthYom hash-shab-bath Day the SabbathHebrew (Ancient and Modern)One into the SabbathSecond into the SabbathThird into the SabbathFourth into the SabbathFifth into the SabbathEve of Holy SabbathShab-bathSabbathTargum of Onkelos (Hebrew Literature)Day OneDay SecondDay ThirdDay FourthDay FifthDay the SixthYom hash-shab-bath Day the SabbathTargum Dialect of the Jews in KurdistanDay One of the SevenDay 2nd of the SevenDay 3rd of the SevenDay 4th of the SevenDay 5th of the SevenDay of Eve (of Sabbath)yoy-met sha-bat kodesh Holy Sabbath DayAncient Syriac *Each day proceeds on, and belongs to the SabbathOne into SabbathTwo into SabbathThree into SabbathFour into SabbathFive into SabbathEve (of Sabbath)Shab-ba-tho SabbathChaldee Syriac Kurdistan and Urdmia, PersiaOne into SabbathTwo into SabbathThree into SabbathFour into SabbathFive into SabbathEve (of Sabbath)Shap-ta SabbathSamaritan (Old Hebrew Letters) Nablus, PalestineDay OneDay SecondDay ThirdDay FourthDay FifthDay SixthShab-bath SabbathBabylonian Euphrates Tigris Valleys Mesopotamia (Written lang. 3800 B.C.)FirstSecondThirdFourthFifthSixthSa-ba-tu SabbathAssyrian Euphrates and Tigris Valleys, MesopotamiaFirstSecondThirdFourthFifthSixthsa-ba-tu SabbathArabic (Very old names)Business DayLight MoonWar ChiefTurning Day or MidweekFamiliar or Society DayEve (of Sabbath)Shi-yar Chief or Rejoicing DayArabic (Ancient and Modern) Westn. Asia, E,W & N. AfricaThe OneThe TwoThe ThreeThe FourThe FifthAssembly (day, Muham)as-sabt The SabbathMaltese, MaltaOne (day)Two (and day)The 3 (3rd d.)The 4 (4th d.)Fifth (day)AssemblyIs-sibt. The SabbathGe-ez or Ethiopic Abyssinia (Ge-ez signifies "original")One (day)SecondThirdFourthFifthEve (of Sabbath)san-bat SabbathTigre Abyssinia (Closely related to Ge-ez)One (First day)SecondThirdFourthFifthEve (of Sabbath)san-bat SabbathAmharic, Abyssinia (Nearly related to Ge-ez)OneSecondThirdFourthFifthEve (of Sabbath)san-bat SabbathFalasha (Language of the Jews of Abyssinia)OneSecondThirdFourthFifthSixthyini sanbat The SabbathCoptic Egypt (A dead lang. for 200 years)The First DayThe 2nd DayThe 3rd DayThe 4th DayThe 5th DayThe 6th Daypi sabbaton The SabbathOrma or Galla South of Abyssinia (This language has two sets of names, the first being the oldest)Lady, Virgin Mary Day. Great or Festival SabbathSecond day. First Trade Day3rd Day to the Sabbath. Second Trade Day4th day to the Sabbath. Fourth (day)Fifth (day)Assembly (day)Last day of the half-week inclusive of 4th day Little or Humble or Solemn Sabbath (A day of no ceremonial display and no work)Tamashek or Towarek (From ancient Lybian or Numidian). Atlas Mountains, Africa.First daySecond dayThird dayFourth dayFifth dayAssembly Daya-hal es-sabt. The Sabbath DayKabyle or Berber. (Ancient Numidian) North AfricaDay the One (First)Day the Two (2nd)Day the Three (3rd)Day the Four (4th)Day the FifthThe Assembly Dayghas or wars assebt The Sabbath DayHausa (Central Africa)The One (1st)The Two (2nd)The Three (3rd)The Four (4th)The FifthThe Assemblyassebatu The SabbathUrdu or Hindustani (Muhammadan and Hindu, India) (Two names for the days)One to Sabbath. Sunday2nd to Sabbath. Moon-day3rd to Sabbath. Mars4th to Sabbath. Mercury5th to Sabbath. (Eve of Juma)Assembly (day)sanichar - Saturn shamba - SabbathPashto or Afghan AfghanistanOne to the SabbathTwo to SabbathThree to SabbathFour to SabbathFive to SabbathAssembly (day)khali - Unemployed-day, Shamba - Sabbath
The table above includes some of the oldest languages known to man. One of these, the Babylonian language, was in use hundreds of years before the Hebrew race was founded by Abraham. That language designated the seventh day of the week as "sa-ba-tu," meaning rest day -- another indisputable proof that the Bible "Sabbath" was not, and is not, exclusively Jewish.

Very few realize that the word "Sabbath" and the concept of resting from work on the seventh day of the week (Saturday) is common to most of the ancient and modern languages of the world. This is evidence totally independent of the Scriptures that confirms the biblical teaching that God's seventh-day Sabbath predates Judaism. The concept of a Saturday holy day of rest was understood, accepted, and practiced by virtually every culture from Babylon through modern times.

In the study of the many languages of mankind, you will find two important facts:

In the majority of the principal languages the last, or seventh, day of the week is designated as "Sabbath."There is not even one language that designates another day as the "day of rest."

From these facts we may conclude that not only those people who called the last day of the week "Sabbath," but all other peoples and races, as far as they recognized any day of the week as "Sabbath," rested on the seventh day. In fact, it was recorded by the great historian Sozomen that in his time the whole known world, with the exception of Rome and Alexandria, observed the seventh day of the week.

"The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the first day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria" (Socrates, "Ecclesiastical History," Book 7, chap.19).

Another interesting fact is that the words in the original languages that are used to designate the seventh day of the week as the "Sabbath" have continued to be very similar while the other words have been so changed over time that they are unintelligible to people of other language groups. This is another proof that the Sabbath and the words used to designate the seventh day of the week as the "Sabbath day" originated at Creation in complete harmony with the biblical record found in Genesis 2:1–3.

Language List

LanguageWord for Saturday/7thDayMeaningGreekSabbatonSabbathLatin (Italy)SabbatumSabbathSpanish (Spain)SábadoSabbathPortuguese (Portugal)SabbadoSabbathItalian (Italy)SabbatoSabbathFrench (France)SamediSabbath dayHigh German (Germany)SamstagSabbathPrussian (Prussia)SabaticoSabbathRussian (Russia)SubbotaSabbathPolishSobotaSabbathHebrewShabbathSabbathAfaghanShambaSabbathHindustaniShambaSabbathPersianShambinSabbathArabicAssabtThe SabbathTurkishYomessabtDay SabbathMalayAri-SabtuDay SabbathAbyssinianSanbatSabbathLusatian (Saxony)SobotaSabbathBohemianSobotaSabbathBulgarian (Bulgaria)SubbotaSabbathNew Slovenian (Illyria, in Austria)SobotaSabbathIllyrian (Dalmatia, Servia)SubotaSabbathWallachian (Roumania or Wallachia)SambataSabbathRoman (Sapin, Catalonia)DissapteDay SabbathEcclesiastical Roman (Italy)SabbatumSabbathD'oc. French (ancient and modern)DissataDay SabbathNorman French (10th -11th Centuries)SabbediSabbath DayWolof (Senegambia, West Africa)Alere-AsserLast Day SabbathCongo (West Equatorial Africa)Sabbado or KiansbulaSabbathOrma (South of Abyssiania)Zam-ba-daSabbathKazani - TARTAR (East Russia)SubbotaSabbathOsmanlian (Turkey)Yome-es-sabtday of the SabbathArabic (Very old names)Shi-yarChief or rejoicing dayAncient SyriacShab-ba-thoSabbathChaldee Syriac (Kurdistan,Urumia,Persia)ShaptuSabbathBabylonian Syriac (A Very Old Language)Sa-Ba-tuSabbathMaltese (Malta)Is-sibtthe SabbathEthiopic (Abyssinia)San-batSabbathCoptic (Egypt)Pi sabbatonthe SabbathTamashek (Atlas mountains, Africa)A-hal es-sabtthe SabbathKabyle (North Africa, Ancient Numidan)Ghas assebtthe Sabbath dayHausa (Central Africa)Assebatuthe SabbathPasto (Afghanistan)ShambaSabbath (pleasantest day of the week)Pahlivi (ancient Persian)ShambidSabbathPersian (Persia)ShambahSabbathArmenian (Armenia)ShapatSabbathKurdish (Kurdistan)ShambaSabbathNdebele (Zimbabwe)SabathaSabbathShona (Zimbabwe)SabataSabbathMiscellaneous Middle Ages LanguagesGeorgian (Caucasus)ShabatiSabbathSuanian (Caucasus)SammtynSabbathIngoush (Caucasus)ShattSabbathMalayan (Malaya, Sumatra)Hari sabtuday SabbathJavanese (Java)Saptoe or saptuSabbathDayak (Borneo)SabtuSabbathMakassar (s. Celebes & Salayer islands)SattuSabbathMalagassy (Madagascar)AlsabotsyThe SabbathSwahili (east equatorial Africa)SabatoThe SabbathMandingo (west Africa, s. of Senegal)SibitiSabbathTeda (central Africa)EssebduThe SabbathBornu (central Africa)AssebduThe SabbathLogone (central Africa)Se-sibdeThe SabbathBagrimma (central Africa)SibbediSabbathMaba (central Africa)SabSabbathPermian (Russian)SubotaSabbathVotiak (Russian)SubbotaSabbath

- Emily Thomsen

Related Articles

What About the Lord's Day?How do we know from the Bible which day of the week is the Sabbath?If this is true why don't more leading men believe it?