The Amazing Unbreakable Sabbath
by Jack Hoehn
The 11th ORIGINS lesson focuses on the 7th day Sabbath and quotes Hebrews 4:3, 4. The previous chapter of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95 saying that the Jews had not Sabbathed yet, they had not yet entered into God’s creation Rest. They were still trying to work out their own salvation, when God had already done all the work necessary.
We live in the 7th Creation Day, No More Creating.
Hebrews 4:3 is an important creation text, for it says God has finished creating. This may be why in this present 7th era of creation, we see no new species arising, and in fact we are losing previously created species and lessening biodiversity. Things are not evolving before our eyes, and we have to do computer simulations to try to show how evolution might have worked. Watching over more than 50,000 generations of bacteria reproduce for the last 25 years has shown minor adaptations to artificial changes in their feed broths, but nothing is really evolving.[1] Sadly no little legs have sprouted, no new flagella have formed, no new organelles have appeared to let the bacteria crawl out of their Petri dishes and stake claim to the lab bench in the name of Darwin.
Let God Choose How He Will Create
Understanding that creation days were long ages of time is not the same as agreeing that self-directed evolution is how God created. It is up to God and not up to us to decide if he should have or did use something like the kind of evolution Darwin theorized. Or if the progressive creation by many divine interventions through long periods of time suggested by Intelligent Design theory is a better explanation of how and when he created life.
It is not up to Moses, it is not up to Paul, it is not up to Ellen White to decide that question. Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit are the One God who decided when and how God would create life on earth.
God has left evidence of how and when things were created, in the creation. He has not revealed how and when he created things in the Bible. The Bible tells us who and what, but not when and how.
Moses was told God made everything in heaven and earth, and placed humanity here in a privileged position as the steward of this creation. Moses expressed this in the grand and concise Genesis account. That account is given in language that ancient Egyptians and Babylonians would understand. And so can we if we read it aright.
Ellen White was shown that it did not happen by unguided evolution, and that atheistic explanations of creation were wrong. She expressed this in language that Christians in the 19th century could be comfortable with. Reading her words in the context of modern DNA genetics, careful Christian geology, and careful Christian biology, makes some of her statements appear dated and unreliable. But if we understand her world, and the underlying truth being given to her generation, we can understand and agree with those truths today.
We can’t decide this by vote.
It therefore seems arrogant for any to assume that this matter can be “decided” by a vote! The General Conference in session will have no authority above Moses, none above Sister White, and none above the scientific data. The General Conference can affirm that God is the Creator of all, but they have no power to decide how or when he created, or to dictate to church members how they must think about these questions. Voting will not make the earth one day younger or one day older than it is. Luke 12:25 bids us not try to add a cubit to our height or a day to our lifetime by anxious thought. Surely we should not try to take away or add by anxious politicized votes minutes or seconds or eras to the true chronology of the creation of life on earth.
The Sabbath is Alive and Well for all Creationists
Early on in these blogs I defended the Sabbath from the accusation that accepting an Old Earth Creationism was harmful to the Sabbath. That blog had over 200 comments of both appreciation and criticism, showing the topic is pivotal in Adventism. Please reread that blog if you wish to refresh the reasons why the Sabbath is alive and healthy for all Creationists, no matter what chronology of creation you accept. https://atoday.org/article/1204/blogs/hoehn-jack/2012/sabbath-and-old-age
Dreams and Visions
I awoke from a dream last week where I was struggling to do something I often do as a physician, but in my dream I didn’t have the tools to do it correctly, my scissors were dull, the suture material was thick and knotted, and what should have been simple and straightforward was frustrating and prolonged. As I awoke I determined to get a set of quality tools available to me at all times, so I would not ever have to struggle as I had been, and then I remembered it was a dream, a vision. The essentials of the dream were: Your patients need quick and easy procedures, your tools need to be effective and efficient, and your job is to have them available.
This was not a heaven-sent dream or revelation, but it was true in its message, although the details were fabulous, and compounded by my concerns to be the best possible doctor and appreciated by my patients.
When Ellen White had an inspired dream how much was the essential message from God, and how much of the vision was determined by Ellen’s age, culture, and preexisting concerns?
Dr. David Paulson was an Adventist Physician who had a building on the Los Angeles campus of the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University) named after him. As a child I attended church services in Paulson Hall, before the White Memorial Church I was later baptized in was built.
Dr. Paulson had some of the same questions I have had, but unlike me he could go to someone who knew the answers, so in 1906 he wrote a letter to Ellen White who replied as follows:
“In your letter, you speak of your early training to have implicit faith in the Testimonies, and say, ‘I was led to conclude and most firmly believe that every word you ever spoke in public or private, that every letter you wrote under any and all circumstances, was as inspired as the Ten Commandments.’
“My brother, you have studied my writings diligently, and you have never found that I have made any such claims, neither will you find that the pioneers in our cause have made such claims.
“In my preface to ‘Great Controversy,’ … you have no doubt read my statement regarding the Ten Commandments and the Bible, which should have helped you to a correct understanding of the matter under consideration.”[2]
What does Ellen White’s Introduction to The Great Controversy say?
“The Bible…was written by human hands; and in the varied style of its different books it presents the characteristics of the several writers…He has given dreams and visions, symbols and figures; and those to whom the truth was thus revealed have themselves embodied the thought in human language.”[3]
“Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the scenes of the long-continued conflict between good and evil have been opened to the writer of these pages. From time to time I have been permitted to behold…the great controversy between Christ…and Satan…”[4]
“It is not so much the object of this book to present new truths…as to bring out facts and principles…” [5]
Yet Adventists Love “new truths”
It appears to me that Adventists have long enjoyed the “secret knowledge” that we have from Sister White’s dreams and visions. We treasure and value the “new light” or “amazing facts” that she shares from her dreams. I think it makes us feel special and privileged to have insider information on Biblical and Heavenly worlds not otherwise accessible to us. I don’t know anyone besides a Seventh-day Adventist who believes all the following extra-Biblical, human-hands-herself-embodied-in human-language-Ellen White dreams and descriptions are established-from-God facts:
- Adam was taller than Eve, and about 14 feet tall.
- If you pick flowers in Heaven they never fade.
- Our Heavenly homes have gold shelves inside the doors upon which we place our gold crowns when coming inside the houses.
- The earth as created had no jagged peaks or valleys, everything was smooth and rounded.
- There were no swamps or deserts in the created earth.
- The trees were more majestic than any which now exist and grew upon the heights.
- Fruit in heaven looks like gold mixed with silver.
- The entire earth was more beautiful than Buchart or Kew Gardens, Kensington, Versailles or Schonbrunn Palaces.
- There is no ground to believe that man developed by slow degrees of development from the lower forms of animal or vegetable life.
- The naked original humans were covered with a robe of light and glory that went away after they sinned and God gave them leather garments from sacrificed animals.
When we awake from our dreams we can dismiss them as fantasy or indigestion. Or we can look for the facts and principles underlying the dream. What about Sister White’s dreams—are the details of her dreams more reliable because they were visions? Most of us agree that when John the Revelator saw visions in the night we can accept them as symbolic and not factual. Can we not also accept the details of Ellen White’s visions as symbolic and not necessarily factual?
My suspicion is that Ellen White in vision saw Eden, not the whole created earth. She was still almost a child when first shown a dream of Heaven[6], and her idea that the flowers she picked would never die, are a child’s ideas of Heaven. Her childish view of the crowns and the gold shelves are true childish interpretations of whatever she saw, but not universal Heaven-sent truths, and may be symbolic of the wealth, abundance, and lack of disease in the world to come.
Likewise her opposition to the ideas of unguided, naturalistic evolution which replaced a Creator with undirected self-creation is obviously the truth behind her statements on evolution. I don’t think they can be safely used to rule out a longer chronology of creation, nor the possibility that God created by progressive interventions. They can’t be used to deny that things were also created capable of adaptation and change as part of their Intelligent Design. Some natural selection and common ancestry are not incompatible with the character of God revealed to Ellen White.
How did God create the 2 Adams?
When God sent the 2nd Adam, Jesus was created by a very naturalistic process with divine intervention involving a womb, placenta, vernix caseosus, 9 months gestation, breast feeding, circumcision, weaning, growing and learning, till our Savior was ready to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.
There is nothing forbidding God from creating the 1st Adam from the dust of the earth, from using naturalistic processes to create his first Adam. This might include the progressive step-wise creation (which Genesis of course supports) of plants, fish, land animals, primates, humanoids, and the use of some natural womb with divine intervention, and finally a man and a woman who unlike all the created steps before, bore God’s image about 40,000 years ago. What parts were divine interventions and what parts were naturalistic we may not know, but if the first and second Adams were both divinely created the process may have been similar.
This makes Moses’ Genesis 2 vision of the creation of man and woman full of the symbolism of creation, rather than an exposition of the mechanism of creation. This permits the 7 Great Days to be seven ages or eras of creation, 7 progressive steps of creation. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it could be, if the evidence in nature suggests it was.
Sabbath, the most enduring thing God created.
The last and most impressive step of the progressive 7 Creation Days is the creation of worship.
The Sabbath comes again this week as every week. It is the most durable of God’s creations. Darkness made better by light, still comes back every night. The firmament of Day 2 has been smogged and can become toxic. Plants of Day 3 turn into poison ivy and oak, or tobacco. Roses grow thorns and then die. The stars burn out and sometimes crash into one another. Meteorites explode over earth. Day 5 fish become killer sharks and stinging jelly fish. Day 6 rodents carry bubonic plague, lions become killer lions, our beloved dogs become rabid and many pets die of cancers. Most of the things God has created have been subject to decay.
But one thing God made is remarkably enduring and resistant to destruction, as perfect as the day it was created, the Sabbath.
Have you noticed that you can break the Sabbath one week, but it returns perfectly healthy and holy the very next week? Worship is the most resilient of God’s creations. Try it this Sabbath—no matter how badly you broke Sabbath last week or for many weeks, months, or years, Sabbath can be as lovely and refreshing, as awesome and humbling, as healing and restoring this next week as the first one celebrated at the gates of Eden. Remember it with me, this Sabbath, won’t you, as we continue to explore the key doctrine of Creation, not as we would have done it, or as we want God to have done it, but as God has decided in fact to do it. God reveals Creation to us from week to week and from Sabbath to Sabbath. It may be a bigger, longer, greater Creation story than we have thought about before, but that’s why we have so many Sabbaths to learn it better.
Once again, Jack, a home run. Thank you so much for this refreshing, inspirational, faith building commentary.
I look forward to your blogs almost as much as I look forward to my quarterly issue of The Claremont Review.
At the risk of repeating myself, I have been impressed over the past few weeks and months with the dual symbolism of the Sabbath. It seems to me, looking at the Exodus and Deuteronomic rationales, that the Sabbath serves as a divine reminder that God not only created and gave us the natural order for our benefit, but that He also frees us from that natural order – the natural order worshipped by the Egyptians and other pagan cultures – in a non-naturalistic weekly cycle crowned by sacred time.
But God doesn't simply free us to the chaos of the pre-creation order. He frees us to know and experience our spiritual selves in holy time through submission and transcendence. Is there perhaps ironic symbolism in the fact that the celestial bodies governing the natural order were placed as number four in the order of creation, and the Sabbath, which reminds us that our origin and destiny are not determined by that natural order, was placed as number four in the Commandments?
Jack,
You described having a dream where you weren't able to do things in the best way and determining to do better. Have you ever considered that perhaps God was trying to communicate with you and let you know that you needed to do something a bit differently? I'm not making any suggestion about what specific message God was conveying. I'm just sharing from personel experience that God does speak to us through dreams if we allow Him and the messages can be very specific. Whether we understand them right away is not the issue because sometimes He's just sending us a "love note" to remind us about how much He cares for us. Sometime's He's telling us what He wants us to be doing for Him. At other times He may be warning us about something or giving us a peek at what is going to happen.
Let me give you a few personal examples.
In one of the most dramatic dreams I remember my wife and I were in a big city with our pre-adolescent children and looking up at the tall buildings. Then we heard people screaming and yelling for us to run for our lives. We turned around to see a grey wall of smoke filled with flying debris racing toward us at a speed faster than we could run. The dream ended. It was so disturbing that I awoke both a bit frightened by what I had seen and puzzled by the possible meaning. Some hours later I watched that exact same scene on TV. The date: 9/11/2001. The meaning? I'm still puzzled. The best answer I can offer is that it was one of God's "love notes" to remind me that He was still in control and loved me in spite of what happened in the world.
Several times in less dramatic dreams I've been working with a particular tool. As I prepared for the day's activities I remembered the dream and decided to put the tool on the truck even though it was not needed in our expected activities. Hours later I needed it for a situation we had not anticipated. God used the situation to glorify Him and draw hearts to Him (including mine).
Last year when I decided to commit to a Maranatha project that was commuting distance from my home, I asked God if there were any particular tools He wanted me to take. In a dream I saw a large-output portable electric generator. I discussed the plans with one of the local coordinators and he felt like it was a good idea. So I put an e-mail out to the church asking to borrow a generator for the project and listed a capacity that I thought would be sufficient. I had an offer in under an hour. On the first work day I saw we had power from the local utility grid. Still, I told our superintendent about the generator and asked where to offload it so it could be used. He told me to keep it on the truck. I thought about offloading it when I got home but decided it was too heavy to move without help that was nowhere around. Well, three days later there was an accident where the heavy-duty fork lift snagged the electric wires coming from the utility pole, pulled the meter off the wall and cut our power. It was a Sunday. There was no way we could get service restored until some time on Monday. I dashed for the truck and 15 minutes later that generator was powering the site until lunchtime the next day.
William, Chris (CB25) also has recently written of his paranormal experiences where spiritual unseen things happen beyond our naturalistic understanding. I have had at least one vision or spiritual dream as a teenager. The normal flow of dreams stopped, and I was seeing the second coming of Jesus, but the emotion that overwhelmed all others was one of relief! Because I was flying upwards, and the assurance that "we've made it" was so sweet and comforting it emotionally grounded me in faith. I live my life, waiting for that experience to be made reality.
I too have had other "Sister Mary's Knitting Needle" type of expeiences where angelic interventions have reassured me that God and his servents were interested in the details of my life. A radio I was needing when working in Africa as a missionary. Parts for a car I did not own till 3 years after the strong impression to buy them. The color of a vehicle I was getting to please my personal preference, but that I had no choice over, etc. etc.
The most impressive to me and still full of mystery was a Friday evening at Mwami Adventist Mission Hospital in rural Zambia, with a useless party line, no cell phones, no working radio, when I was suddenly commanded to PRAY. Not a voice, a urgent and authoritative command in my brain, strong enough that I knelt immediately not knowing what to pray for or why. So I prayed for my wife Deanne and our little son Jonathan who were driving 85 miles away to Lilongwe, Malawi to pick up Ruby Taylor, our director of nursing coming home from furlough that night. Only 3 hours later did I get a faint call on our weak 20 party phone line asking me to come and get Deanne and Jonathan who in the darkness of the African night had run into a cow sleeping on the tarmac running through a village on the way back from Malawi. Sister Ruby was hospitalized with bruises, but Deanne and Jonathan were unharmed. Why I was commanded to pray, and by whom, and what purpose my prayer had on the mercyful hand of God in this kind of accidnt are all mysteries. But the exprience itself is a reality no one can ever take away from me.
On the other hand fossils and stone tools and different types of trees, plants, and different versions of creatures at different layers in the history of life on earth are not mysterious or spiritual. But they too are very real.
So as I love the spiritual experiences I have had that said invisible powers love you and care about your happiness and well being. So I love the material, scientific experiences I have had that say God made this world in a longer and much more complicated way than you learned in kindergarten on the felt board. I hold onto both realities with both hands.
Jack,
Amen! One of my challenges has been the great hunger for those experiences when I have been without them for a few days or weeks. Recently I had surgery on my left wrist and a pain-filled recover. Going these past weeks without my familiar level of activity and ministering to others left me frustrated and short-tempered to the point that my wife observed, "You need some new Angel Team projects!" She was so right. Just last night I was on the phone with the widow of a close friend and co-worker from years past and one of the things we talked about was scheduling my team to come over and do some of the yard work her late husband used to do. We haven't scheduled it yet, but just talking about it has raised my spirits. We may be there on Easter Sunday. Somehow the idea of helping a recent widow to "resurrect" her yard sounds very appropriate for that day.
Question: Did Jesus Christ die on the cross for the sin of Sabbath disobedience or Sabbath 'breaking' too? After all, it is a part of his obedience to God as per Law which he perfectly fulfilled on our behalf.
The Sabbath may be unbreakable in terms of us being unable to get rid of it (although some have tried and are still trying). But we can (and do) trample or disregard its requirements and sentiments in many ways and this is in essence 'breaking' the Sabbath. This I think is a sin. Thank God that in Christ we can enjoy the wonderful experience of keeping the Sabbath day holy. After all, it's the least we could do for all he has done for us.
"It's the least we could do for all he has done for us."!???
Really? Is that what Sabbath means to you, 1844? How sad! I find this kind of retro Sabbath rhetoric shallow, painful, and regressive. I think you know what Jack means. He is trying to elevate our thoughts and feelings to a more noble plane. Yet you want to make sure that we don't forget that Sabbath, at its most important, glorious level, needs to be securely grounded in a "wonderful" experience of not trampling and not disregarding its "requirements." Your robust "defense" of the Sabbath hectors us with a religious duty, and ironically compels you to shatter it with the hammer of tedious, cliched thinking.
RE: Really? Is that what Sabbath means to you, 1844?
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Ok Sir, I’ll give you credit that you can really read between the lines in order to debunk any views that do not satisfy and justify your take on things (much like everyone else I suppose). No need for AK47’s here though – hello, it’s only me. Cool down boss. Lighten up. I made no objections to Dr Hoehn’s sentiments about the Sabbath but only commented on the importance of Christ being the central focus of the day and that his death included the sin of our Sabbath breaking. I did not say that this is the sum total of what the Sabbath means to me or use it to hector compliance on others. This type of response indicates an allergy or aversion to obedience and the Cross. The Sabbath as an optional entity is preferred, so that we can do as we please with it, thereby trying to dispose of it in terms of obeying God. Our own gratification becomes more important than pleasing God. One view represents a self-designed customised Sabbath; whilst the other in from obedience God. A possible Cain and Abel approach to Sabbath?
Walking around in nature and communing with God will almost always get you that warm fuzzy feeling on a Sabbath day (we all do); but one can also feel the same on any other day. What makes the difference? Obedience brings a sanctifying presence into our observance of Sabbath. It is a reasonable response to his love. You seem to dislike any mention of the Cross, sin or obedience for some reason – but to me it matters more than the Sabbath’s fuzzy delight you seem to be keener on. It is in that context that I believe Christ should be central to the Sabbath doctrine because He created it and we worship him (and not nature or some warm fuzzy feelings).
What difference is there between the two? They both come from the same spirit of disobedience to God. Such dissections of the irrelevant makes ruin of faith.
As I read this tears came to my eyes as others (Jack and William ) write of dreams and or directions given them by a loving God. These have happened to me but it's been several years with what seems no more powerful dreams or visions.
I find many have these dreams and or visions but do not speak of them. I was asked to share in one of the dreams. Thats where trouble started. One pastor put me on trial for over two hours and then wanted to remove me from church leadership. He has succeeded to a certian degree against the wishes of the congregation.
My question is why does the church or certian ones in the church try to silence the great power of a loving God?
Because they have a form of godliness but lack any of the power. Those of us who touch the power are a threat to them because the power so quickly reveals the true nature of their claimed faith in God. That goes for the pastor, too.
Please, keep praying that God will keep speaking to you in dreams and that He will give you understanding. Knowing that the Creator who made things come into existence simply by speaking is willing to speak to you in personal and intimate ways is utterly amazing and a powerful experience to build your faith.
I have found that my personal spiritual experiences of communications of a God or Angelic nature are mostly for my own personal encouragement. I have not found them doctrinal or for the purpose of educating others. They have encouraged me, but have not given me license to use them for the edification of others. I have told them to close friends in the church, but only as anecdotes, not as evidence of authority or gravitas to my ideas. If you get messages bidding you to share them with others, then I think you must expect the same kind of intensive investigation Ellen White has been given!
Can Mr Tanner perhaps share the dream that the pastor takes issue with? If he doesn't its all good.
It would be ok to share but there are many and not enough room for nearly forty pages here. I see one other person has put his address on so I will try it. stanner at ruraltel dot net . Those have been sent to many over the years as this has been some ten years ago.