The Coming Distinction

The introduction above summarises what this article is about: the Shabbath is the battleground between YHWH and the church. Shabbath is about who has the final say, and who claims the highest authority. Shabbath is about choosing who to regard as the acting Boss on the Globe:

• the church, which is telling people to keeping the Sunday, the first day of the week, or
• YHWH Elohiym, who has instructed that the Shabbath must be kept on the last, the seventh day of the week.

Although many christians don’t (won’t) see a problem, nevertheless it is either or. There is no middle ground. No shades of grey. No compromises.

• Believers who keep the Sunday, convinced that they are honouring the ‘Day of the LORD’ are, in reality, in bondage to the false doctrines of the church. They are explicitly obstructing the ordinances which YHWH has determined to be essential for the well-being of our planet!
• Believers who keep the Shabbath on the seventh day are in fact every week expressing their submission to the authority of the highest Elohiym. They make a clear statement against the man-made doctrines of people in black robes and it is to them that the blessings are applicable which the bible promises again and again to those who keep the commandments.

To keep or not to keep the Shabbath on the 7th day of the week, that is the make or break decision! For it determines whether one is in submission to the church or in submission to YHWH.

Yesha’yahu - Isaiah 58

Let’s begin this argument with reading a passage from the bible in two translations. The New International Version Study Bible from Zondervan Corporation and the New English Translation contained in Bibleworks Software. Both these bibles have an extensive apparatus¹, which is theologian-speak for study notes and translator’s notes.

Visitor: open your bible to Isaiah 58, verse 13 and 14.

New International Version

>”If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, If you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honourable, and if you honour it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

— NIV Study Bible.

NIV Study Notes

- my holy day. A day set apart to God. - going your own way. Perhaps to engage in business. - ride on the heights. Thus controlling the land. - feast in the inheritance. Enjoying plentiful food in the promised land.

— NIV Study Bible. 1992. Zondervan Corporation.

The NIV Study Bible includes these four notes to the passage and all of them lack truth and honesty. For now I will address the first, which is the most deceitful of them.

The deceit consists of the use of the indefinite article in ‘A day set apart to God’ and the removal of the possessive pronoun my from occurring in the ‘explanation.’ Anyone who reads that study note, might conclude that it doesn’t matter which day people set apart to God, as long as it is a day. Which is, of course, precisely the intention of the theologians. These snakes aim to reassure people who feel anxious about not keeping the Shabbath on the seventh day of the week, that it’s all okay, as long as you set a day apart to God. So if you go to church on Sunday, the first day of the week, that’s okay; you’re a good christian and God will bless you.

Lies!

The requirement is to devote to Elohiym the day which Elohiym himself has determined and everyone who reads the bible knows in their heart, that Elohiym has set the seventh day apart. The words ‘on my holy day’ refer to the day which Elohiym has decided upon (that is, after all, the reason for the possessive pronoun ‘my’) and which all through the Scriptures is hayom hashevi’i (the day the seventh - mark the definite article). Never in the history of mankind did Elohiym condone a bunch of scribes to change his decrees.

It is not ‘a day set apart to God’ for there is only one day which is acceptable to Elohim and that day is the seventh day.

You now may understand how the wording ‘set apart to God’ can hardly be exceeded in falsehood. And it is all the more venomous because of the pious impression is conveys. For the command has nothing to do whatsoever with believers setting a day apart to God: Elohiym has already set apart that day! It is not up to us, mere humans, to set apart the Shabbath to Elohiym.

YHWH Elohiym has set apart a certain day. That day is the seventh day. The only thing we can do, is obey or disobey. The notion that we, humans, are at liberty to ‘set apart to God’ a day of our own choosing is a telling example of the unfathomable arrogance of theologians and their poisonous use of pious phrasing to deceive their followers.

NET bible

You must³¹ observe the Sabbath³² rather than doing anything you please on my holy day.³³ You must look forward to the Sabbath³⁴ and treat the LORD’s holy day with respect.³⁵ You must treat it with respect by refraining from your normal activities, and by refraining from your selfish pursuits and from making business deals.³⁶ Isa 58:14 Then you will find joy in your relationship to the LORD,³⁷ and I will give you great prosperity,³⁸ and cause crops to grow on the land I gave to your ancestor Jacob.”³⁹ Know for certain that the LORD has spoken.⁴⁰

— NET Bible

NET bible translator’s notes

³¹ tn Lit., “if you.” In the Hebrew text vv. Isa 58:13-14 are one long conditional sentence. The protasis (“if” clauses appear in v. Isa 58:13), with the apodosis (“then” clause) appearing in v. Isa 58:14.

— NET bible. Bibleworks

Whereas the NIV and the KJV have retained the ‘if-clause’, the NET bible has done away with it. The translation ‘You must observe the Shabbath’ is framed as a command, but the verses we are dealing with here, are meant as a promise for obedient and honest believers: If you respect the Shabbath, then you will receive…

Good deeds

We can understand, of course, why the NET bible has removed this if-then construct: evangelical theologians have learned in seminary that people cannot ‘earn’ something from God. The protestant (evangelical) church is brainwashed by the deplorable dogma that all people are totally depraved and can do no good whatsoever except when the holy ghost working in them is motivating them to do those good deeds. So for instance an atheist doctor who decides to give ten years of his life to help orphans in the slums of Brazil is, according to adherents of evangelical theology, not doing any good work because his efforts are not the result of the holy ghost planting the desire to help others in him, but are the fruit of his own selfish desire to help the poor.

Yes, really. Holier-than-thou christians of the evangelical kind have decided that such a doctor cannot possibly be acting out the will of the holy spirit and therefore his ten years voluntary service is worthless in God’s eye. Evangelical christians are really, really convinced, that if they give $100 once a year to buy medical supplies for orphans in Brazil, their gift is good in God’s eyes, but the atheist medical doctor’s efforts are not.

It is important that people thoroughly understand this condemning attitude of evangelical theology, for it is impossible to otherwise grasp what causes the religious leaders to behave so arrogantly and dismisively. Christians who adhere to evangelical theology have been brainwashed into believing that their own particular brand of christianity is the only source on earth of good deeds. In christian theology, it is the motivation by the holy spirit for doing a deed which determines that it is good in the eyes of God, and not the deed itself.

I trust that this will help you understand why the NET bible has done away with the if-then clause: the NET bible is a thoroughly evangelical project, and the verses in Isaiah in which Elohiym promises blessings to people who observe his Shabbath, flies in the face of evangelical doctrine.

This is the essence of the verses: If you keep the Shabbath and make it your delight, says the Almighty who made Heaven and Earth, then I promise to bless you with the inheritance of Ya’akov.

And this is the essence of evangelical theology:

Grace

Grace is understood by christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to man – “generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved”

— The New Dictionary of Theology²

Grace can be defined as the love and mercy given to us by God because God wants us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it.

— United Methodist Church³

See how these two are polar opposites? The notion that people can ‘earn’ a reward or ‘deserve’ something, the idea that Elohiym would offer something to people on the grounds that they obey him, that notion is diametrically opposed to the protestant doctrine that there is nothing, not even God’s promises, which people can ‘earn’ through their obedience.

Sola Gratia

The root of this problem lies in the theological doctrine that salvation is unmerited by by grace alone. The Sola Gratia doctrine.

The church demands, and evangelical theology concurs, that people who believe in Jesus Christ are all saved and are all the same in the eyes of God and are all going to receive blessings based on grace, not on obedience. And even though YHWH Elohiym has other ideas, the theologians have determined that they are in the right and that the Almighty Elohiym of Heaven and Earth will eventually agree with their doctrines.

Incidentally, this may also help you grasp why so many christian organisations and concepts have the word ‘grace’ in them. Grace Theological Seminary. Grace Baptist Church. Graceville. Gracetown. Grace Community Church. Grace College. Amazing Grace. Grace Will Lead Me Home.

Grace derives from the Latin word gratia and sola gratia is one of the five founding sola-doctrines of all protestant christianity.

Sola gratia is a Latin phrase that means “grace alone.” Sola gratia means that salvation from sin and death is provided by God’s unmerited favor alone, and we can do nothing to earn it. Scripture is clear that no person seeks God of his or her own initiative: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God”

— Compelling Truth. *Sola Gratia* [https://www.compellingtruth.org/sola-gratia.html]

Inextricably bound up with the sola gratia doctrine is the protestant teaching that ‘the law’ has been done away with. “Christ has fulfilled the law.” “We are not under the law anymore.” Every christian knows these phrases. The law no longer applies to christians, therefore they can not break it, thank you Jesus!

But then christians cannot receive rewards for keeping the law either. Therefore, when YHWH said: If you keep the Shabbath and make it your delight, then I promise in return to bless you with the inheritance of Ya’akov, well, that poses a problem. The inheritance of Jacob is what christianity has appropriated for itself, as I will outline below when analysing Matthew Henry’s commentary, and christians do not need to obey any command, including the keeping of the Shabbath, in order to earn a blessing. All God’s blessings are free gifts, undeserved!

So this is why the NET bible has removed the if-then construct. By removing the conditionality, the reward becomes unconditional.

Chew your own

I cannot comment on all the verses in the translations of the bible in this way. For one, I would be repeating myself all the time for they are all variations on the same theme, but more importantly, I do not aim to chew your food for you. You have to learn to discern for yourself.

My aim here is to explain to you how and why bible translators ‘translate’ the bible in the way they do: they are following the dogmatic agendas of the christian denominations they belong to! Translators have a purpose, and that purpose is to ‘translate’ the bible in such a way, that it conforms to dogma and the traditions of the church.

Nothing has changed in this respect since the days when Y’hoshua walked the earth. Scribes then, bible scholars later, theologians now; different titles, same meaning. Not only is their purpose still the same (honouring the tradition of men), their method, too, has not changed: they still employ the age old tactic of subtly twisting the meaning of words, sowing doubt, altering the text in such a way that it seems as if they remain true to the original words, while in reality they are deceiving their audience.

Theologians bury their lethal poison deep inside piously sounding rhetoric, as you will see a bit further on in the section about Matthew Henry.

Commentator: Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry was one of the most influential bible commentators from the early 18th Century, and he still yields considerable influence. His commentary is more or less compulsory reading for students of theology in Anglo Saxon universities and seminaries, and widely available in the public domain for many bible-websites have included it in their list of freely available literature.

If you can bring yourself to read through his commentary on these verses in Yesha’yahu, you’ll notice how subtly he manages to steer Shabbath to the christian ‘The Lord’s Day.’ He doesn’t come out and say ‘christians must observe Shabbath on Sunday’, but he nevertheless conveys that message in a cunning manner. Note, also, how he applies the biblical promises to ‘the believers’ whereas the bible itself addresses those promises to people who obey the commandments.

Great stress was always laid upon the due observance of the sabbath day, and it was particularly⁴ required from the Jews when they were captives in Babylon because by keeping that day, in honour of the Creator, they distinguished themselves from the worshippers of the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth. […]

Now observe here,

I. How the sabbath is to be sanctified (v. 13); and, there remaining still a sabbatism for the people of God, this law of the sabbath is still binding to us on our Lord’s day.

II. What the reward is of the sabbath—sanctification, v. 14. If we thus remember the sabbath day to keep it holy,

Lost meaning

There is a very powerful promise in these verses, and the promise is specifically aimed at a particular group of people, but because the translations have obscured the intent of many of the original texts, and centuries of theologians have warped the intent of Scripture, regular christians all over the world have lost the wisdom which would have enabled them to recognise, that this powerful promise is not applicable to them!

Theologians have appropriated these verses for christianity and teach that they apply to the christian believer, and in the commentary of Matthew Henry, in which he ‘explains’ the meaning of the inheritance of Jacob mentioned in verse 14, we have a clear example of their modus operandi.

Matthew Henry and his followers cannot deny that the bible contains the instruction to keep the Shabbath. So he concurs that christian believers, ‘the people of God,’ are still bound to keep it, but subtly adds that it now pertains to the Lord’s day, which is Sunday. Then he gives a lengthy explanation of the rewards awaiting him and all christians who sanctify⁵ the Shabbath on Sunday: we shall have the honour and we shall have the comfort and we shall have the profit, indeed, everything which YHWH had promised to Jacob.

Corrected Version

Let me give you a corrected version of the above verses, and you may begin to understand why this promise is not specifically aimed at christians, nor at jews for that matter, but, plain and simple, at people who keep the shabbath.

If you keep your feet from breaking the Shabbath and from doing as you please on the day which I have set apart;

If you call the Shabbath a delight and the day which YHWH has set apart honourable;

and if you honour it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking about your interests,

then you will find your joy in YHWH, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to enjoy the inheritance of your father Ya’akov.

The mouth of YHWH has spoken.

— Corrected version

YHWH has set apart the 7th day of the week. He has never revoked that institution, he has never allowed nor instructed anyone to change it. YHWH himself has set apart the 7th day, and his instruction still stands today. Anyone who declares or argues that Elohiym has changed this instruction, or that Y’hoshua has come upon the scene with ‘new instructions’ to henceforth set apart the 1st day of the week and call it ‘the Lord’s Day’ stands accused of adding to the word of the most high.

Remember the study note in the NIV, which said:

“A day set apart to God.”

Now compare that to:

“the day which YHWH has set apart.”

And note:

• It is not a day as in any day, it is specifically the seventh day!
• It is not up to us to determine which day we set apart to God, for the day has long ago already been set apart by the most high himself!

The church has changed the set-apart day to the first day of the week, but YHWH himself has set apart the seventh day of the week. YHWH has never authorised the church to change his ordinances. How, then, will the promises of YHWH pertain to those who disregard the Shabbath? And why would YHWH bless those, who refuse to acknowledge the requirements for the blessings?

• “If you call the Shabbath a delight and the day which YHWH has set apart honourable”, then you will receive the blessings.
• But if you call the Sunday a delight and the day which the Church has set apart honourable, then you will not find your joy in YHWH, and you will not be riding on the heights of the land and you will not enjoy the inheritance of your father Ya’akov.

Meaning restored

Do I need to further explain the above passage? I guess not. Explanations cannot improve on the clarity of a text with clear unambiguous meaning. And who needs exegesis anyway? Who needs to be told by scribes what these words mean? So, whoever you are, simply read what the passage says, as the words are straightforward, the grammar is not complicated, and the message is easily understood by all who are willing to let the very words enter their brain, which YHWH Elohiym himself spoke with his own mouth.

The mouth of YHWH has spoken to keep the Shabath on the day the seventh. The lying pen of theologians and bible translators have twisted the words of YHWH and they declare that the believers now live under a new contract to keep the Shabbath on the day the first.

May the highest Elohiym bless you when you read in his book. And may you understand that in order to be eligible to receive the blessing which only YHWH can bestow on you, you will need to listen to him and not to a bunch of lying scribes whose every promise is empty because none of them have the power to give you anything, and moreover they are all dead, or soon to be thus.

The mouth of YHWH tells you: obey my Shabbath on the day the seventh and I will give you the inheritance of Jacob.

The pen of a scribe tells you: don’t listen to YHWH but listen to us instead and obey the Shabbath on the day the first, the Lord Christ’s day, the Sun day, and you will be fed the inheritance of Jacob anyway.

Choose!

❧