In discussions with those who have been misled by christianity’s false teachings about the Sabbaths, the arguments they set forth are typically comprised of distortions and perversions of scripture, and with blatant misrepresentations of what is plainly shown in the texts.
One of those false arguments has to do with the Jerusalem Council, which is recounted in Acts 15.
According to the common false assertion, it is stated that, because the Jewish believers took a stand against certain Jews who taught that the law of Moses was still to be obeyed by the Gentile converts, and that physical circumcision was still mandated, then the Sabbaths are no more.
In response to the false teachings of those physical Jews, the apostles (who were also physical Jews) determined that, to best help the new Gentile believers begin a path toward better understanding the faith, they would merely encourage them to abstain from things associated with idolatry and fornication, which meant that they were not to concern themselves with the many ordinances found in the law of Moses.
The first thing to note here is that, in the statement the apostle James made (Acts 15:13-21), he begins by pointing out that it had been prophesied that Messiah’s bride would include the physical Gentiles who believed, and in verse 21, James stated, “For Moses [the Torah] from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”
Now, why would James still refer to “every Sabbath,” if there had been such a vital change to Yah’s holy days? Why wouldn’t James have said something there about “the day the Jews called the Sabbath,” to differentiate between the old and the new?
And, why wouldn’t the exhortation from the apostles have spelled out such a drastic change, if such a thing had actually happened? In fact, using christianity’s false argument, one would necessarily have to see even the Ten Commandments as suspect, since the letter from the apostles didn’t tell the recently converted Gentiles to obey them.
Would that mean that what is stated in the Ten Commandments all ended too—that the Father is no longer concerned with murder, lying, stealing, or coveting? Does the Jerusalem Council mean that murder is no longer wrong, because the apostles didn’t tell the Gentiles not to murder, or that parents were no longer to be honored?
No, it’s a corrupt scheme—a distortion of logic and truth.
What christianity does is to conflate the law of Moses and the Father’s Sabbaths, even though they are two wholly separate things. What the apostles told the new Gentile converts had to do with the intricate details (perfection) of the law of Moses—both the animal sacrifice laws and the clean vs. unclean laws. There was not a single statement made about no longer seeing murder as wrong, or lying, stealing, and coveting as sins of the flesh.
The fact that murder, lying, stealing, and coveting are eternally decreed to be sins against the Father is why they are all included in the physical covenant—a foreshadow of the Holy Spirit’s seal on Messiah’s bride. As the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit never change, the elements of the physical covenant, which were written by the Holy Spirit as a physical foreshadow of Himself, never change either. They detail how the Father desires His people to live.
In fact, to hear christianity’s arguments against the Father’s Sabbaths (and FOR the pagan days established when christianity was invented—SUNday assembling, christ-mass, easter/ishtar, etc.), one would necessarily have to view the apostle Paul as a false teacher, a hypocrite, and a liar, for Paul observed the Sabbaths himself (Acts 16:13, Acts 18:20-21, Acts 20:6, Acts 20:16, Acts 27:9, 1 Corinthians 16:8), and he taught them to the Gentile converts (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15).
There is vast cognitive dissonance in so many christians, because they can be shown in the scriptures that the New Testament believers continued honoring the Father’s Sabbaths, and they can also be shown that there are no scriptures that even begin to address any changes or deletions pertaining to the Sabbaths, but, because christianity, the counterfeit of the true faith, teaches such clearly false doctrines, they either cannot see the truth, or they refuse to acknowledge it.
The Jerusalem Council told the new Gentile converts to flee idolatry and fornication (as idol worship often included sexual debauchery). This is because that was the belief system and perspective from which the Gentiles had come.
And, because the Gentiles had generally come out of idol worship and paganism, the apostles warned them against flirting with any forms of their past false religions. They didn’t go into a vast theological dissertation at that time, as Paul had been called to go TO them, and teach them the doctrines of salvation and other truths central to the faith.
To read into what Acts 15 tells us the apostles initially sent to the Gentile converts as the Sabbaths having been ended is a purposeful deception, for the apostles did no such thing.
The law of Moses had dictated HOW the physical Jews (the people who had the physical covenant—the ten commandments) had to do many things, like eating, drinking, dressing, having sex, among other matters, but the law having been nailed to the tree didn’t eliminate eating, or drinking, or clothing, or spousal intimacy.
No, it simply ended all the mandates governing HOW those things were to be done. Likewise, the law commanded many intricate rituals in the observance of the Sabbaths, and what was done away with were those dictates regarding HOW the Sabbaths were to be honored, which freed Yah’s people to honor the Father’s ordained days according to their consciences, not according to mandates in the written law.
Again, this false argument about the Jerusalem Council essentially invalidates all the New Testament scriptures showing the Sabbaths being honored by the believers. There is nothing about the apostles telling new Gentile converts to flee the practices of idol worship that even implies a change to, or ending of, the Sabbaths.
No, that would not be done until christianity was invented, and then codified in the 4th century. If the New Testament believers had already changed their weekly day of assembling from the Sabbath to “the venerable day of the sun,” then Constantine (sun-worshiping pagan) would not have decreed the change in 321 AD. There would have been no need for any change to be mandated.
So, if christianity lies about this matter (which it does), then what else does it peddle that is not true? Sadly, that would be quite a bit. Christianity is a counterfeit of the true faith, built on lies and distortions, rejecting the foundations of the faith that Paul taught to the Gentiles, and exhorted them to keep (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15).
For more information: Saturday or Sunday? Does It Even Matter?