The Elijah Prophecy - #11 - Remember the Sabbath

Dear Friends:

       One of the most powerful warnings in the Bible is 1 Peter 5:8: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Let us dissect this verse carefully and thereby gain a better understanding of whom and what we are dealing with. Do you understand that "your adversary" is "the devil" - Satan himself? The word adversary means an enemy or an opponent, and in this case one who is like "a roaring lion" (or a hungry wild animal) eager to win the game of eternal life or eternal death.
      Satan, is you zealous opponent, according to 1 Peter 5:8. He is diligently searching for you, his prey. He is carefully watching each one of us, like a hungry lion seeks to seize upon and destroy his prey. The apostle, therefore, trumpets the message "Be sober, be vigilant" because your opponent is a supernatural, fallen angel, and your eternal life is at stake!
      What does the word sober mean to you? I believe it means not to be drunk or intoxicated as by the effects of alcoholic beverages. But the deeper meaning is that we should not partake of any substance that will interfere with the clarity of our mind! Peter, therefore, urges us not only to be "sober", but also to be "vigilant", or to watch carefully -to be very alert! Alcohol is not the only substance that can benumb the perceptions of the mind. Saturated animal fat can effect the circulation of the blood, and reduce the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain. A sour stomach from eating wrong combinations of food and excess sugar, can cause fermentation and an alcohol-like toxicity that fouls the blood and benumbs the mind.
      Let us now turn to another warning given in the Bible by Jesus Christ. In Luke 21:34-36, the Lord admonishes us, "And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man."
      It appears to me that Peter and Jesus had the same purpose in mind as you compare the two scripture references above. Jesus begins with the words "And take heed to yourselves", or "listen up!", and then immediately emphasizes there is a serious problem with man's appetite. The words, "Let not your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness" and "that day come upon you unaware" clearly reveal that the perverted appetite of man can prevent us from making the proper preparation for the coming of the Son of God!

    You probably know the word drunkenness means an over-abundance of drink, or a state of intoxication, but did you know the word surfeiting means an over-abundance of food.. Jesus is trying to warn us not to be "overcharged", or overloaded with excess amounts of food and drink. Does the word gluttony come to mind? Jesus then warns us that overeating and drinking, or gluttony, is a "snare" or trap that your opponent, the devil, has laid for every one of us. No wonder fast-food restaurants are everywhere, and two-thirds of Americans are overweight! The diet served to the billions of Americans consists of fiberless, high fat feasts of ground dead flesh containing cow brains and spinal cords from diseased animals and placed between two nutritionally-deficient white flour buns with head lettuce, ketchup, mustard, and dead cucumbers!
      Jesus and the Apostle Peter, in these two passages of scripture are warning us that this is no ordinary contest - it is a war and an endless battle with the forces of good and evil! "If Christians will keep the body in subjection, and bring all their appetites and passions under the control of enlightened conscience, feeling it a duty that they owe to God and life, they will have the blessing of physical and mental vigor. They will have moral power to engage in the warfare against Satan; and in the name of Him who conquered appetite in their behalf, they may be more than conquerors on their own account. This warfare is open to all who will engage in it." Counsels on Diet and Foods, p.65.
     Friends, the battle being waged between Christ and Satan is for your mind and whom you will ultimately serve. Christians need to understand that "A close sympathy exists between the physical and the moral nature. The standard of virtue is elevated or degraded by the physical habits. Excessive eating of the best of food will produce a morbid condition of the moral feeling. And if the food is not the most healthful, the effects will be still more injurious. Wrong habits of eating and drinking lead to errors in thought and action. Indulgence of appetite strengthens the animal propensities, giving them the ascendancy over the mental powers." Ibid., 62. Are you bowing down to the Golden Arches of Babylon or before the throne of God?

As John the Baptist and Elijah ate a very simple diet as they prepared for the special work they were called to do for the Lord, we should also, as we prepare to do the closing work on this earth before the second coming of Christ, eat a nutritious diet of whole plant food as close to the Creator's design as possible and prepared in a simple way.

"Be sure that as a rational Christian sentinel you guard the door of your stomach, allowing nothing to pass your lips that will be an enemy to your health and life. God holds you responsible to obey the light He has given you on health reform. There are large blood vessels in the limbs for the purpose of distributing the life-giving current to all parts of the body. The fire you kindle in your stomach is making your brain like a heated furnace. Eat much more sparingly, and eat simple food which does not require heavy seasoning. Your animal passions should be starved, not pampered and fed. The congestion of blood in the brain is strengthening the animal instincts and weakening spiritual powers." CDF, p. 102.

"Health reform is an intelligent selection of the most healthful article of food prepared in the most healthful, simplest form.
"Our bodies are built up from the food we eat. There is a constant breaking down of the tissues of the body; every movement of every organ involves waste, and this waste is repaired from our food. Each organ of the body requires its share of nutrition. The brain must be supplied with its portion; the bones, muscles, and nerves demand theirs. It is a wonderful process that transforms the food into blood and uses this blood to build up the varied parts of the body; but this process is going on continually, supplying with life and strength each nerve, muscle, and tissue.

"God has furnished man with abundant means for the gratification of an unperverted appetite. He has spread before him the products of the earth - a bountiful variety of food that is palatable to the taste and nutritious to the system. Of these our benevolent heavenly Father says we may freely eat. Fruits, grains, and vegetables, prepared in a simple way...They impart nourishment to the body and give a power of endurance and a vigor of intellect that are not produced by a stimulating diet.

"Let the table be made inviting and attractive, as it is supplied with the good things which God has so bountifully bestowed. Let mealtime be a cheerful, happy time. As we enjoy the gifts of God, let us respond by grateful praise to the Giver.

"God has given us the fruits and grains of the earth for food, that we might have unfevered blood, calm nerves, and clear minds." My Life Today, p. 132.

TO BE CONTINUED

I want to share with you a few chapters of my life's story. I will begin in the year 1975, when I was 23 years old. I had just graduated from UC Davis and got a job as a counselor at Peterson Juvenile Hall. My goal in life was to attend law school, but plans changed and I ended up working at PJH for five years watching criminals under the age of 18.

Three years later, in 1978, I went into partnership with my brother-in-law, and purchased a health food store, Artesian Health Foods II, in Tracy California. Then, in 1981, I bought out his share, retired from juvenile hall due to injuries, and started worked full-time in the health and nutrition business. Owning the health food store was certainly part of God's plan for me as it helped me prepare for the medical missionary work.
In 1982, I heard that another health store, Lodi Health Foods, was for sale. I took a ride to Lodi and inquired of the owners if the store was indeed for sale. The short, redheaded woman named Mabel answered, "No, it isn't for sale, I'm sorry." I spent a few more minutes talking with Mabel then gave her my name in case she ever decided to sell and went on my way.

     Nearly two years passed when Mabel and her husband Tony walked into my Tracy store and said, "We are selling the Lodi store and God has told us you are the one who is to buy it." "God told you this," I questioned. I had been raised Roman Catholic, attended Catholic schools for twelve years, and turned atheist while attending college, so I found their statement very amusing, but I still wanted to buy their health food store.
     When I met with Tony and Mabel Litvin, and read the business contract, I was very curious about the sentence that said, "The store must remain closed on Saturdays." I thought, "Why would they want me to close on Saturdays?" After all, Saturdays are a good day for business. I looked at the books again to reconfirm the store was making a good profit in spite of it being closed on Saturdays. My attorney, after reviewing the contract, said, "I wonder if that could be held up in court?"
     I later found out that the sellers were Seventh-day Adventists and their Sabbath was Saturday not Sunday, which most other Christians recognize as the Lord's Day. Remember, friends, I was a former-Catholic, turned atheist, and didn't even believe in a God let alone a Holy Sabbath Day. Amazing how God works.

     Two years later, the Lord revealed many new things to me about life and religion. My first wife and I had lost our first child who the doctors said was a "vegetable," or a trisomy 18, a genetic defect that affects one in a million babies. How sad it was to watch little Nichole die in only ten days. This was one major turning point in my life. I made a commitment to seek out the Lord and read the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation. Even though I did not understand much of what I read, I read every word. After all, I thought, a commitment is a commitment, especially when you make that commitment to God.
     Soon after, I attended my first meeting held in a Protestant church. As I listened to evangelist Dan Collins' message on the sinner's need of the cross, I felt the pull of the Holy Spirit calling me to surrender my life to the Lord. I had been longing for a new life, and sick and tired of the guilt and pain caused from my continual sins. I wanted to surrender my life to God, and thought I had that evening, but it wasn't long before I was right back to my old ways of drinking, smoking marijuana, and partying. I was what the Bible calls a "stony-ground hearer," because even though I had an initial excitement in hearing the Gospel, I had no depth of soil for the word to take root. Not surprisingly, the winds or trials of life blew me back to my vomit. I went through a divorce and within a year married again. It was at the birth of our first child, Giana Rose, that I started to study, not just read the Bible, for the first time in my life. I had a sincere hunger for the love of Jesus and a strong appetite to know His word.
     As I beheld Jesus lifted up on Calvary's cross, dying the death that was mine, I fell in love with the Savior. Now I wanted to go to church, but had a question about which day to worship on. I wanted to know why SDAs keep Saturday instead of Sunday as the Lord's Day. In a way, I wanted to prove them wrong. My first surprise came when I went to the calendar, and, to my amazement, I found the seventh day of the week to be Saturday and not Sunday. I must have been very ignorant back then, because I always thought the seventh day of the week was Sunday. I then questioned, "The calendar must have been changed?" Again, I struck out. My search proved the weekly cycle had never been changed. The seventh day has always been Saturday not Sunday.
     My next effort was to find one of the Catholic priests I knew when I was young, and ask him the question about Saturday being the Lord's Day. I found a Catholic priest from my Catholic grammar school, and anxiously asked him the question. He answered, "The Sabbath is Saturday. The Pope changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday." Was I shocked to hear it right from the horse's mouth. I was raised Roman Catholic, and always believed Sunday to be the Lord's Day. After all, while attending Annunciation School, I was forced to attend mass on Sunday or stay after school for detention. Therefore, Sunday must be holy.
     At the time I purchased Lodi Health Food Store, I also learned, for the first time, that God's command for us to worship the 7th-day Sabbath is actually the Fourth Commandment in the Bible: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day [is] the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates: For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Exodus 20:8-11.

I remember rushing and grabbing my copy of A Catechism of Christian Doctrine - A Textbook of Catholic Teaching and anxiously turning to the page where the fourth commandment was located and reading only the words: "Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day." It had been changed. It was much shorter and there was no mention of the seventh day. In addition to this, the fourth commandment in the catechism was now the third, and the second commandment, forbidding image worship, was totally gone! They even divided the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting your neighbor's wife and goods, into two commandments, numbers nine and ten, so there would still be ten. Unbelievable!
The seventh day, I learned, is the true Sabbath. It is in the heart of the Ten Commandments. And to think that the Pope, a mere mortal, claims power to change the Fourth Commandment and the 7th-day Sabbath to Sunday? I had, like so many billions of people, believed Sunday to be the Lord's Day. At first, even for me, it was strange to think of Saturday as the day God blessed and sanctified. But as I continued to study the Bible, I could not find one scripture to support Sunday worship or Sunday sacredness. I did find one verse that says the apostles broke bread and had a special meeting on Sunday (actually it was Saturday evening after sundown), since Paul was leaving the next day. (See Acts 20:7). But, Acts 2:46 says: "And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house." So, the apostles met every day and broke bread according to this verse.

      On the other hand, I found many verses supporting the 7th day Sabbath as God's appointed day of rest and the true Lord's Day. The Bible showed me that Jesus kept the 7th-day Sabbath and so did His disciples after His death: "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read." "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures." Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2.
     The more I researched, the more evidence I found on the 7th-day Sabbath. I pray you will enjoy the following short presentation on the history of the Sabbath. "The Sabbath was introduced at the close of the creation week as a memorial of God's wondrous works. On that day God rested; then He blessed the Sabbath and set it apart for holy purpose. Genesis 2:2, 3. The law of which it is a part was in effect from Adam to Moses, though its details are not separately listed in the early Bible record. Romans 5:13, 14. After Israel left Egypt, God again spoke the complete law on Mount Sinai. Exodus 19:20. In the centuries that followed, the Sabbath was kept before Israel through the ministry of the prophets and priests. It was because of their violation of the Sabbath that Israel and then Judah went into captivity. Jeremiah 17:27. After the Babylonian Captivity, Sabbath reform was prominent among the needed changes as the people were established again in their homeland. Nehemiah 9:14; 10:31; 13:15-22.
     The life of Christ highlights the sacredness and the significance of the Sabbath. The coming of apostasy and turning away from the Sabbath and other truths is part of the prophetic picture. Daniel 7:25; Revelation 13. Special emphasis is placed on the commandments of God and the restoration of the Sabbath in the remnant church. Revelation 14:12. It is to be a test to God's people in the days immediately preceding the second advent of Christ. Revelation 13:17. It will be kept by God's people in the new earth. Isaiah 66:23." A Prophet Among You, pp. 260, 261.
     Through the writings of Ellen White there runs a continuous thread of emphasis on the significance of the Sabbath and the proper manner of its observance. Here are a series of quotations gathered from several of her works, paralleling the high points of the Bible story above.
     "The great Jehovah had laid the foundations of the earth; He had dressed the whole world in the garb of beauty and had filled it with things useful to man; He had created all the wonders of the land and of the sea. In six days the great work of creation had been accomplished. And God 'rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.' God looked with satisfaction upon the work of His hands. All was perfect, worthy of its divine Author, and He rested, not as one weary, but as well pleased with the fruits of His wisdom and goodness and the manifestations of His glory.
     "After resting upon the seventh day, God sanctified it, or set it apart, as a day of rest for man. Following the example of the Creator, man was to rest upon this sacred day, that as he should look upon the heavens and the earth, he might reflect upon God's great work of creation; and that as he should behold the evidences of God's wisdom and goodness, his heart might be filled with love and reverence for his Maker.
     "In Eden, God set up the memorial of His work of creation, in placing His blessing upon the seventh day. Patriarchs and Prophets, pages 47, 48.
     "The Sabbath institution, which originated in Eden, is as old as the world itself. It was observed by all the patriarchs, from creation down." Ibid., p.336
   "In consequence of continual transgression, the moral law was repeated in awful grandeur from Sinai." Signs of the Times, April 15, 1875.
     "The Sabbath was embodied in the law given from Sinai; but it was not then first made known as a day of rest. The people of Israel had knowledge of it before they came to Sinai. The Desire of Ages, p. 283.
     "On one occasion, by command of the Lord, the prophet took his position at one of the principal entrances to the city and there urged the importance of keeping holy the Sabbath day. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were in danger of losing sight of the sanctity of the Sabbath, and they were solemnly warned against following their secular pursuits on that day." Prophets and Kings, page 411.
     "Nehemiah fearlessly rebuked them for their neglect of duty. 'What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath day?' he sternly demanded. 'Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath.' He then gave command that 'when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath,' they should be shut, and not opened again till the Sabbath was past." Ibid., p. 671.
     "The rabbis virtually represented God as giving laws which it was impossible for men to obey. They led the people to look upon God as a tyrant, and to think that the observance of the Sabbath, as He required it, made men hard-hearted and cruel. It was the work of Christ to clear away these misconceptions. Although the rabbis followed Him with merciless hostility, He did not even appear to conform to their requirements, but went straight forward, keeping the Sabbath according to the law of God." The Desire of Ages, page 284.
     "The papacy has attempted to change the law of God. The second commandment, forbidding image worship, has been dropped from the law, and the fourth commandment has been so changed as to authorize the observance of the first instead of the seventh day as the Sabbath." The Great Controversy, p. 446.
     "Since the Reformation, there have been some in every generation to maintain its observance. Though often in the midst of reproach and persecution, a constant testimony has been borne to the perpetuity of the law of God and the sacred obligation of the creation Sabbath.
     "These truths, as presented in Revelation 14 in connection with 'the everlasting gospel,' will distinguish the church of Christ at the time of His appearing." Ibid., p. 453.
     "The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted." Ibid., 605.
     "God teaches that we should assemble in His house to cultivate the attributes of perfect love. This will fit the dwellers of earth for the mansions that Christ has gone to prepare for all who love Him. There they will assemble in the sanctuary from Sabbath to Sabbath, from one new moon to another, to unite in loftiest strains of song, in praise and thanksgiving to Him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever." 6 Testimonies, p. 368.

     Isn't the Sabbath a beautiful part of God's perfect plan? I love the Sabbath, and it is truly a delight. One day each week, on the 7th day, we rest our minds and our bodies so they can regenerate and renew.
     While I was writing this week's Elijah Prophecy, I shared this article with a Sunday-keeping Christian friend of mine. I assured him that God only holds us accountable for what we know, and that salvation comes through the grace of Jesus Christ alone. But I also told him obedience to God's Commandments is an identifying sign of God's true church as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us.
     He was astonished to learn about the Sabbath and how the Pope changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. Mike also suffers with excruciating pain in his back from an auto accident. He told me that he has taken approximately 16,000 pain pills and anti-inflammmatory drugs since his accident six years ago, and more statin drugs for his high cholesterol of 400. His triglycerides are 700 from all the sugar and lack of exercise, and he is 75 pounds overweight. No wonder he suffers from depression. Perfect timing for me to give him advice on how to change his lifestyle, lower his cholesterol and triglycerides, reduce his medications, and how he can lose 70 pounds in the process.

When Mike left, he had seven free books in his hands and some natural remedies to save his liver, and, maybe, his life. I praise the Lord for the work He has given us to do in helping the sick and in saving souls for the kingdom. Thank you Lord for the health message and the truth of the Gospel.