Vol. 13, The Symbolic Code, Nos. 5, 6
Vol. 13 Nos. 5, 6
MARCH - APRIL, 1958
THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH 3
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
5, 6 2
THE
OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH
"The Sabbath is a golden clasp that
unites God and His people. But the
Sabbath command has been broken. God's
holy day has been desecrated. The
Sabbath has been torn from its place by the man of sin, and a common
working-day has been exalted in its stead.
A breach has been made in the law, and this breach is to be
repaired. The true Sabbath is to be
exalted to its rightful position as God's rest-day. In the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah is
outlined the work which God's people are to do.
They are to magnify the law, and make it honorable, to build up the old
waste places, and to raise up the foundations of many
generations. To those who do this work God
says: 'Thou shalt be called, The
repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath,
from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the
holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt
honour Him, not doing thine
own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor
speaking thine own words: then shalt
thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high
places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.' Verses 12-14.
"The Sabbath question is to be the
issue in the great final conflict in which all the world
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5, 6 3
will act a part.
Men have honored Satan's principles above the principles that rule in
the heavens. They have accepted the
spurious Sabbath, which Satan has exalted as the sign of his authority. But God has set His seal upon His royal
requirement. Each Sabbath institution
bears the name of its author, an ineffaceable mark that shows the authority of
each. It is our work to lead the people
to understand this. We are to show them
that it is of vital consequence whether they bear the mark of God's kingdom or
the mark of the kingdom of rebellion, for they acknowledge themselves subjects
of the kingdom whose mark they bear. God
has called us to uplift the standard of His down-trodden Sabbath. How important, then, that our example in
Sabbath-keeping should be right." -- Testimonies, Vol. 6, pp. 351-353.
From time to time questions have come into
this Office regarding various important aspects of the Sabbath. Before his death, Brother Houteff
prepared material in question-and-answer form for a tract dealing with the
subject of the Sabbath. Since it was
never published, and since it is important that we have a thorough
understanding of the Sabbath Truth, the Code takes pleasure in introducing a
series of question-and-answer articles taken from the tract material. The question to be discussed in this issue
is:
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
5, 6 4
THE SABBATH
WHAT IS IT? WHEN IS IT?
FOR WHOM IS IT?
A Truth-seeker writes: "I am sending
you literature on the seemingly Scriptural doctrine that the Bible Sabbath
falls on Friday not on Saturday nor on Sunday. It looks to me unanswerable. Please give me a
STRICTLY
BIBLICAL REPLY."
Searching examination by Heaven's
all-revealing microscope (the Spirit and Word) discovers the Friday-sabbath literature to erect the entire structure of its
doctrine on Exodus 16, verses 1 and 2, which its author terms "The Keys to
God's Week." And so if under
Heaven's own microscope his position proves to be solidly and securely footed
in fact, then the doctrine is to be reverently accepted. But if such examination of the position
proves it untenable, then of course it should be dismissed. Since the position is based on Exodus
16:1-12, we quote those verses:
"And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of
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5, 6 5
of the children of Israel
murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: and the children of Israel
said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of
Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full;
for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly
with hunger.
"Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold,
I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a
certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My
law, or no. And it shall come to pass,
that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall
be twice as much as they gather daily.
And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of
"And Moses spake
unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the children of
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Come near before the Lord:
for He hath heard your murmurings. And
it came to pass, as Aaron spake unto the whole
congregation of the children of
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings
of the children of
On these verses the Friday-sabbath author's featured thoughts are presented in the
following fourteen quoted paragraphs.
"We are
also given the divine connection, or the true
relationship of God's days and God's months in the 16th chapter of Exodus. God proved to the children of
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5, 6 7
Tuesday, the 5th day is called Wednesday the 6th day
or 'Preparation Day.' is called Thursday; and the 7th day on which no manna
fell is now called Friday. This same
relationship was maintained from Creation for we see there that the first time
the moon ever registered time, which would be the first day of the month, was
on the 5th day of the week. Gen. 1:14-18.
"Now
carefully read in review about the departure of the children of
"We
can understand the wisdom of God in giving the children of
"According to Num. 33:2-3 the children of
"It was
in the wanderings of the children of
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God purposes to prove 'whether they will walk in my
law or no.'
"There
is an outstanding date given in Exodus.
"Exo. 16:1: And they took
their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of
the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month
after their departing out of the land of Egypt."
"Two
and one-half or three million people had been on this journey for thirty days
and all the provisions they brought had evidently been consumed and their
condition became so desperate on this particular 15th day of the second month Zif, (refer to calendar), that the whole congregation of
the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron. They would rather have died at the hand of
the Lord in
"But on
that same 15th day God made a promise through Moses, saying:
"Exo.
"Now
the first morning after the 15th would
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be the morning of the 16th: the first day
that manna fell in the wilderness. It is declared to us clearly that this is
the first day of the week, for Exodus
"So let
us count: Manna fell first on the 16th day of the second month (Zif) or the first day of the Bible week; 17th -- 2nd day of
week, 18th -- 3rd day of week, l9th -- 4th day of week; 20th -- 5th day of
week; 21st -- 6th day of week, and twice as much Manna fell. On the 22nd there
was none that fell, for this was the 7th day of the week or the Holy Sabbath of
Creation. Exo. 16:23-30. This teaches us as it taught them the
true seven day cycle or Bible week. So
we can truly connect together God's Bible Week:
Day of week: .... 1
2 3 4
5 6 7
Month of Zif: ... 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
"God's
Seventh Day Sabbath Is Called Friday On Roman Gregorian Calendar.
"Referring once more to the calendar, we use the 'key week' and
find that we can trace forward or backward.
Tracing backward, we find that the 1st day of the 1st month of the 1st
year of a 3 year cycle comes on the 5th day of God's week.
"This
new moon showing the first day of
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5, 6 10
the first year of the cycle always comes
in on the day which the Roman calendar calls Wednesday. Actually God's day begins on the previous
evening (i.e. Tuesday evening, Roman time) according to scripture. Gen. 1:23.
"Since
Wednesday is the day of the new moon, and the new moon comes on the 5th day of
God's week then we can safely say that the 6th day falls on Thursday and the
7th day Sabbath of God's Week is called Friday, Roman time.
"A
Bible day is from sunset to sunset. Thursday sunset to Friday sunset is actually
God's Sabbath." -- God's Calendar, pp. 3, 7.
These comments by the Friday-sabbath author on Exodus 16:1-12 reveal that his position
has as its basis the assumption that there is unbroken chronological continuity
between the event of Exodus 16:1 and the events of Exodus 16:2-16. The reasoning is such as to make it appear
that in the evening of the fifteenth day, the day the Israelites arrived in the
wilderness of Sin, the quail came up, and that in the morning of the next day,
the sixteenth, the manna fell. Upon this
key premise the Friday-sabbath doctrine is built, and
thereupon, it must stand or fall. Let us
therefore, prayerfully scrutinize it through the all-searching lens of the
Spirit of Truth in the word itself.
Close analysis of the Scriptural record
(Exodus 16)
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under consideration reveals
that the only day of the month Inspiration names is the fifteenth, the day of
the Exodus' arrival in the wilderness of Sin (Ex. 16:1). The scripture does not name the day or the
month upon which
These facts became absolutely evident when
it is noted that not all the time elements of Exodus 16:2 to 12 are
chronological or immediately connected with those of Exodus 16:1, the verse
which deals with the day of
Too, these verses make it equally evident
that none of the events they recount took place on the days immediately
following the Exodus' arrival in the wilderness of Sin. Any careful comparison of the records will bear
out that the events in point cover a considerable period of time, and that
there is a gap in time between Exodus 16:1 and Exodus 16:2; also that,
chronologically, even the events of Exodus 17 come between the events of Exodus
16, verses 1 and 2.
The fact is, that aside from stating the day
of the month the Exodus arrived in the wilderness
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to be the fifteenth, the
record does not name any other day at all in connection with either the falling
of the manna or the coming of the quail, but simply points out that the one
came in the evening (of an unrecorded day), and the other in the morning (of an
unrecorded day). Furthermore, and again
contrary to the theory, the manna came first and the quail came days later, as
we shall now see.
Since the book of Numbers, chapter 11,
records the manna and the quail events in greater detail than does Exodus 16,
we shall briefly examine the account as given there:
"We remember the fish which we did eat
in
Being displeased with their murmurings over
the manna, the Lord commanded Moses:
"...say thou unto the people, Sanctify
yourselves against tomorrow, and ye shall eat flesh:...
Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor
twenty days; but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it
be loathsome unto you...." Num.
11:18-20.
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5, 6 13
These and the preceding verses of the
chapter definitely disclose that the quail came after the Israelites murmured
against the manna; and that after they lost taste for it they became the more
querulous because of their unbelief in the Lord's ability to provide flesh food
for such a great multitude. To their
surprise, though "...there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought
quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey
on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side round about the
camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all
that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that
gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for
themselves round about the camp. And while
the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord
was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great
plague." Num. 11:31-33.
These verses of Scripture bring forth the
firm fact that the quail did not come ahead of the manna (Num. 11:1-9, 13,
18-23, 31-33) and that they were there not for just one evening, but rather for
at least two days (Num. 11:32). This is
proof in the absolute that the day of
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5, 6 14
supposes it to be.
It is surprising, too, that he has failed to
note that it was not in God's purpose to feed His people with flesh at all
during the forty years; no one could imagine that He was capricious to give
them meat to eat right at the start, then abruptly to take it away from them
and to put them on manna instead.
Moreover had such been the case, then such,
rather than the contrary, would have been the record.
Also, it is understandable that just as soon
as they saw that there was no way of making a living in the wilderness, they
faithlessly envisaged themselves reduced to want, poverty, starvation, and
death, and straightway began to recriminate Moses over their fear-anticipated
lot, and to cry out bitterly for sustenance, for food of any kind, rather than
for a special kind. Being pitiful of
their fears and mindful of their needs, the Lord sent them "bread [manna]
from heaven." Ex. 16:4. Soon,
though, they tired of the manna, and began to murmur anew in lust for flesh
food that was not for their good. Thus
it was that, though contrary to His wise purpose for them, the Lord sent them
quail (Ex. 16:8). Still, though, the
manna as usual fell the next morning. So
they then had both bread and flesh to feast on -- yea, flesh to the fatal full
(Ex. 16:12, 13; Num. 11:31-33).
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"Yea," solemnly affirms the
Psalmist, "they spake against God; they said,
Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
Behold, He smote the rock, that the waters
gushed out and the streams overflowed; can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?"
Ps. 78:19, 20.
The logic of the events in the sequence thus
established by the Psalmist, gives corroborative evidence: (1) that the
"bread" (the manna) came down quite some time after the fifteenth
day; (2) that it came after their second advance into the wilderness of Sin --
as far as to Rephidim (Ex. 17:1), the place where
Moses struck the rock which then gave water; and (3) that the quail came into
the camp still after that. To restate
it, first came water from the rock, then came down the manna, and after it came
the quail. The Psalmist's inspired
statement -- "Behold, He smote the rock...; can He give bread also? can He Provide flesh
for His people?" -- declares that the Lord had already caused the rock to
give water even before they faithlessly cried out their doubt of His ability to
give them bread and that next they cried out doubt of His ability to give them
flesh!
Failing to see and to reckon with these
truly key facts, the Friday-sabbath author mistakenly
assumes that the quail came first, then the manna, then the water. Evidently he overlooks the fact that Exodus
16, itself, shows that the
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events recorded there cover a period of time (all the days
of their wanderings in the wilderness of Sin) rather than simply a few days
following their arrival in the wilderness of Sin. The events of the chapter include even the
spying out of the land, also the giving of the "Testimony" of the
Lord (the law) from Sinai, as well as the building of the tabernacle and the
furnishing of it (Ex. 16:33-35; 40:2-6).
All these events are recorded in the same chapter, although as we have
already seen, the first event chronologically to follow the event of the
fifteenth day -- the day of their arrival in the wilderness of Sin (Ex. 16:1)
-- was Moses' smiting the rock at Rephidim (Ex. 17).
The Friday-sabbath
author's next step in the process of constructing his theory, is the fallacious
contention that the "evening" (Ex. 12:6) of the day in which the
preparations for the Passover were to begin was not the afternoon of the
fourteenth day, but that it was at sundown on the thirteenth day, and that
therefore the eating of the Passover, "the feast," took place then --
at the beginning of the fourteenth day.
This he does in spite of the fact that Inspiration definitely commands:
"Speak ye unto all the congregation of
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the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole
assembly of the congregation of
Carefully mark, the command specifically
exacts that the sacrificial lamb be separated from the flock on the tenth day
of the first month, kept alive but up to the fourteenth, not up to the
thirteenth, then killed in the evening of the same day, that is, the lamb was
to be killed toward the end of the fourteenth not at the beginning of it. The margin places the time of killing the
lamb "between the two evenings."
Biblically and traditionally the one "evening" is the time
after the noon sun begins to decline -- the afternoon, after 1 P.M.; the other
"evening" embraces the period of dusk, from the time the sun sets to
bedtime. These two limits fixed the
hours for all the preparations.
Thus Israel made all these preparations
during the fourteenth day then ate the sacrifice during the night of the
fifteenth day (Ex. 12:18; Lev. 23:6),
the very night of the season in which,
as the Bible plainly states, they not
only ate the Passover but also left Egypt (Num. 33:3; Lev. 23:6). To make this important fact graphically clear, we subjoin the
following diagram.
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PICTURE
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
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Just how, therefore, in view of these
clear-cut Biblical records, one can possibly conclude as the Friday-sabbath author does, that the Passover feast was celebrated
at the end of the thirteenth day (which according to Biblical reckoning* would
be the night of the fourteenth day), although the Scriptures specifically state
that it is celebrated during the night of the fifteenth day is indeed beyond
all fathoming. Not only the Bible's
decisive explicitness concerning the time for this important celebration, but
history and tradition as well, make virtually impossible anyone's missing the
facts. Yet in spite of this and contrary
to it all the Friday-sabbath author is led into
rationalizing a one-day cutback of events -- back to the thirteenth day -- in
order to tailor the time to fit the theory.
Since he must have read the Bible through, then it is difficult to
escape the conclusion that the error seems not so much a matter of
misinterpreting, as a matter of deliberately side-stepping. Then too, the figures on his charts
definitely indicate that he has, in an attempt to make the theory fit with
other events, embodied in his study the erroneous interpretation that Christ's
statement,"...three Days and three nights in the heart of the earth,"
means three days and three nights in the tomb.
Upon this presumptuous premise, together with his misapplication of the
time of Christ's crucifixion
*The dark
part ahead of the light part of the day.
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and resurrection, and with
his "quail-manna" theory, he builds up the Friday-sabbath
doctrine, obviously not reckoning with the inevitability that one day Truth
must storm its sandy foundations and topple it to the ground.
It will now be observed that in order to
prop up the Friday-sabbath theory, the author of it
was forced also to try to match the day and hour of Jesus' death with the day
and hour in which the Passover lamb was killed.
Thus he was forced into shifting back the time of the Passover feast from the fifteenth
to the fourteenth day of the month, although contrary to the Scriptures! By such maneuvering and rationalizing, the
author has the Passover lamb killed and Christ crucified on the same day, the
thirteenth, Wednesday. So he goes on to
explain that Jesus could not have been alive to celebrate the Passover. He then rationalizes Matt. 28:1 into placing
the resurrection on the seventeenth, Saturday evening. But even after all this manipulating, he is
not able to match the time of the events, for although he contends that the
Passover lamb was killed at sunset, yet he has to admit that Jesus was
crucified between sunrise and noon-day -- at "the third hour." Mark
15:25.
He does this shifting of events even in the
face of the Scriptural facts that Jesus spent the Passover day, the fourteenth,
with His disciples (Mark 14:12-25); that He celebrated
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
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with them the Passover feast
on the fifteenth, Wednesday night (Mark 14:18); that He was arrested that same
night immediately after the Passover celebration, then tried by Annas and by Pilate, and crucified and buried at about
sundown (Mark 15:42-46) on the sixteenth, Friday; finally, that He arose on the
eighteenth, Sunday, the first day of the week (Mark 16:9). Indeed, the Friday-sabbath
author seems utterly to ignore all these Biblical records of the events. And in this he shares in common with all the other three-days-and-three-nights
Scripture-perverters.
In a desperate endeavor to substantiate
their three-days-and-three-nights theory all these perverters
of the Scriptures try to tell us that the "preparation day" and the
Sabbath" of Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, and John 19:31 were not
Friday and Saturday but some other days of the week. Significantly, though, is the observation
that they often refer to unknown and so-called original manuscripts in Hebrew
and Greek -- to anything and everything that they can make to serve their
purpose among those who have no way of checking them. Sooner or later, though, the truth leaks out
that these many-translation-quoters never quote from
the Greek Bible "the preparation day" and "the
Sabbath." And why
not? -- for the very good reason that in every
instance It reads [greek word] (Friday), and [greek word] (Saturday), where the English
reads "preparation
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day, and "Sabbath"!
Take next the "wave sheaf" which
is typical of the resurrection of Christ.
Having to be offered during the Passover week and on no other day but
"on the morrow after the Sabbath" (Lev. 23:11) -- on the first day of
the week -- it, too, points out that the day in which the Lord was to rise from
the dead, was to be on the first day of the week, the day after the seventh day
Sabbath. Sabbath-dodgers, though, are
trying to make us believe that "the morrow after the Sabbath," is not
the day after the seventh-day Sabbath, when clearly the antecedent (in Lev.
23:3) is the Sabbath of the Decalogue.
Besides, though occasionally a rest day in the Scriptures is called
"a sabbath," never is any day other than
the seventh day Sabbath called "the Sabbath."
Further, the Sanctuary law demanding
"seven sabbaths" from the day of the sheaf
offering to the Pentecost (Lev. 23:15), absolutely eliminates the possibility
of any day other than the seventh-day Sabbath to precede the day of the sheaf
offering and thus the resurrection, and the Pentecost. That is in order to get seven Sabbaths within
49 days and have the 50th day come on the day after the Sabbath (Lev. 23:16),
on the first day of the week, one has to start counting from the first day of
the week, Sunday. No other day will
do. Try it and see. Consider, too, the tradition of celebrating
Easter (the
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5, 6 23
resurrection) on Sunday.
In spite, though, of all the light on the
subject, there is scant hope that these perverters
will stop arguing themselves out of the Sabbath blessing!
Tragedy indeed that they will not open their
eyes to see that the Bible makes unmistakably clear that they misinterpret the
heart of the earth, that Jesus by it did not mean the grave, that He was not
three days and three nights in the grave, also that His trials crucifixion, and
burial consumed more than one day. They
seem bewitchedly oblivious that the Book records the
hour of each event, as follows: (a) at about the sixth hour (either noon or
midnight according to ancient time-keeping -- sunset at the twelfth hour),
Jesus was in Pilate's Judgment Hall (John 19:14); (b) at the third hour He was
nailed to the cross (Mark 15:25); (c) at the succeeding "sixth hour,"
the hour while He hung upon the cross darkness covered the earth (Mark 15:33);
(d) at the "ninth hour" He died (Mark 15:37); and (e) at about the
twelfth hour, just before sunset, He was buried (Mark 15:42-46). Now consider the Inspired record (1) that
from the first sixth hour to the second sixth hour there are twelve hours; (2)
that from the second sixth hour to the twelfth hour (sunset) there are an
additional six hours; (3) that there is only one sixth hour (noon) during the
light part of the day and one sixth hour (midnight)
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during the dark part of the
day, (4) that it was at the sixth hour during the light part of the day that
darkness covered the earth while Jesus was hanging on the cross (Matt. 27:45),
(5) and that since the sixth hour in which He was led into Pilate's Judgment
Hall was before the crucifixion, then it inescapably follows that the sixth
hour before the crucifixion was either Thursday noon or midnight the sixth hour
in the night between Thursday sunset and Friday sunrise. Why could they have brought Him to Pilate by
night? For the same reason that they had
Him arrested and brought to Annas and Caiaphas by night -- that is, because they feared the
people, for many believed in Him, and they wanted therefore to keep quiet their
dark work, so as not to create commotion or opposition.
The fact that Jesus' captors first led Him
to Annas (John 18:13-24), where they awaited the
coming of day for His legal trial before the Sanhedrin (which preceded His
trail before Pilate), is inescapable proof that the time which elapsed from the
Sanhedrin trial to the burial, was from early morning, Thursday the fifteenth,
to about sunset the next day Friday the sixteenth, a total of thirty-six hours. And since the hours from His burial about
sunset Friday, to His resurrection about sunrise Sunday, make a total of
another thirty-six hours, then the grand total of hours in which He was in the
custody of the Sanhedrin is 72 -- exactly three
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
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days and three nights.
This is the Bible's own hour-by-hour record
of the time of these events, and in perfect accord with it is the traditional
and historical celebration of the same events.
Since the chronicled hours, from Jesus' arrest and trial to His
resurrection, bear indisputable record of a total 72 hours, and since those who
buried Him returned home and kept the Sabbath according to the commandment
(Luke 23:56), and also since we are told that He arose on the first day of the
week, Sunday (John 20:1-8; Luke 24:1-7; Mark 16:1-6), there is therefore no slightest Bible justification for anyone's
concluding wrongly concerning the day and the hour of each event and the total
hours consumed. Finally, since only the
Bible tells the exact and whole truth, then any voice to the contrary is that
of the Deceived, the Devil, plotting to discredit the Bible and to trap someone
somewhere.
As the time thus consumed in this sequence
of events (from the time Christ appeared before Annas
to the time He arose from the dead) is absolutely Biblical, aggregating as
predicted exactly three full days and three full nights, then there is no
Scripturally and logically admissible conclusion other than that Christ
definitely did not intend His utterance, "three days and three nights in
the heart of the earth," to mean merely from the time He was to be put
Symbolic Code, Vol. 13, Nos.
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into the grave to the time He was to arise from it. Rather, He meant from the time the Sanhedrin
was to take Him into custody, to the time the stone was to roll away from the
tomb in order for Him to arise therefrom (Luke
24:7). Moreover, since the Sanhedrin was
the headquarters, the heart of the church, thus the heart of the earth in its
time, and since Christ was in its custody three days and three nights (for the
Sanhedrin set a watch over His body even while It rested in the tomb), then the
Sanhedrin, the church, is what He termed "the heart of the
earth." And who can honestly deny
the correctness of the figure, considering that, as the Scriptures teach, the
earth still stands only because the church, the heart of the earth (the
transmitter of spiritual life), is still
functioning in an effort to impart eternal life to it?
The church (with Christ in it), not the
grave, is in every spiritual sense the heart and the life of the earth. Indeed, no understanding mind could ever
regard the grave to be "the heart of the earth", much less, then,
could the Lord so regard it. The
enlightened mind well knows, too, that the grave is not the generator of life,
but the container of death, and therefore can never be called the heart of the
earth, no, no more than can a man's carcass be called his soul.
Since Jonah's ordeal is a type of Christ's
ordeal, we shall now look unto it. The whale,
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being a living creature that safely transported Jonah's
life through the deep, must be figurative of something living, not of a grave,
an inanimate thing, that itself is figurative of eternal hell! What, then, could the whale possibly be
figurative but of the old ship
The whale's failing to do away with Jonah,
but rather taking him safely to shore so that Nineveh perish not, typifies the
Satan-dominated Sanhedrin's failing to do away with Jesus, though fulfilling
the prophecies "that one man should die for the people, and that the whole
nation perish not!" John
11:50. And just as Providence permitted
the ship's crew to plunge Jonah into the sea for the sake of the ship's safety
and for their own lives' sake, as well as for the sake of Nineveh, so
Providence permitted the mob to take Christ and to nail Him to the cross for
the sake of His church and her captive members, as well as for the sake of the
lost world.
Here also is seen the fact that as the ship and
its crew would never have survived the storm, nor Nineveh the judgment that was
about to befall her, save by Jonah's ordeal in and survival of the briny deep,
in like manner the church and the world would never have escaped Satan's hold
upon them, save by Christ's voluntary sufferings and by His triumphant
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resurrection.
Since in the belly of a hunger-stricken
whale God safely carried Jonah through the depths of a stormy sea, and since in
the hands of a blood-thirsty church He safely bore Christ through the depths of
sin itself, thus even so today will He safely bear through the depths of
hypocrisy, ism-corrupt Christianity, and pleasure-loving society, every one who
does as did both Jonah and Christ. God
will do as much for all today, even though they be in
the grip of a money-mad, prophet-hating, and self-satisfied (lukewarm)
ministry. Yes, He will safely transport all such to
the shores of
And so it is that Jonah's voluntarily
allowing himself to be plunged into the fiercest of sea tempests for the sake
of the ship and its crew, and thus for
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to be plunged into the
fiercest of sin tempests, there to be mocked, nailed to a cross and put into a tomb, for the sake of the Church
and the captive members, and thus for
the world, is the antitype.
Christ's descending to earth to save its
inhabitants at a time when Satan had taken complete control not only of the
world but of the Church too, and thus expected therein to forever make rid of
the only Saviour as soon as He should appear; also
Christ's breaking through Satan's defense lines, re-establishing His Church
communication lines the world over for His people to come in, is His glorious
victory.
These are the lessons which the Lord wanted
to convey to the Jews through the Jonah-whale allegory, and these are the
lessons which He especially wants to convey to us. The theory, though, of three days and three
nights in the grave brings no lesson of any kind, to any one.
It is now clearly seen, too, that to
construe Christ's statement, "three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth," to mean His going into the grave, is calculated not only to do
away with the Holy Sabbath but also to exclude the significance of His trials
and sufferings, to cover up the lesson which the Inspired figure, "the
heart of the earth," teaches.
Thus the frail and flimsy pebble structure
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of the Friday-sabbath builder
batter itself to pieces against the immovable foregoing concrete facts. Even with employing his own distorting way of
figuring, he fails to get a Friday for the Sabbath. Where he really gets Friday instead of
Saturday for the Sabbath, is in the following two paragraphs that are
absolutely of his own fabrication.
"This
new moon showing the first day of the first year of the cycle always comes in
on the day which the Roman calendar calls Wednesday. Actually God's day begins on the previous
evening (i.e. Tuesday evening Roman time) according to scripture. Gen. 1:23.
"Since
Wednesday is the day of the new moon, and the new moon comes on the 5th day of
God's week, then we can safely say that the 6th day falls on Thursday and the
7th day Sabbath of God's Week is called
Friday, Roman Time." God's
Calendar, p. 7.
Though these statements may sound
impressive, their substance is the stuff of tinsel. The new moon of the first day of the first
year in the three-year cycle does not always come on Wednesday as he says it
does. The World Almanac reveals that
over a period of 25 years, only three times did a new moon fall on Wednesday in
the month of March (the season of the three-year cycle) -- (1) 1928, March 21;
(2) 1948, March 10; and (3) 1951, March 7.
The moon does not follow in any month of any
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year the pattern he fancies it follows.
With the subject in question now alight like
"the burning bush," it is our devout hope that both the author of the
Friday-sabbath doctrine and the victims of it will
readily see that a Friday-sabbath is just one more
case of ism-sprout now at the eleventh hour, just one more Enemy endeavor to
draw minds away from the Lord's saving message, and to confuse, confound, and
disgust both believers and prospective students of the Bible. It is therefore our earnest prayer that the
author of the Friday sabbath, along with his victims,
will now rejoice that the Spirit of God has again reproved error and caused
Truth to shine forth brighter than ever; not simply exposing just another false
theory, but actually doing away with another Enemy attempt again to "take
away the Daily," and again to put in its place an "abomination that maketh desolate" (Dan. 11:31); this time not by endeavoring to set up anew the day of
Romanism, but actually to foster the day of Mohammedanism!
May you, Brethren, who have been trapped by
the Friday-sabbath ism, now rejoice from the depths
of your souls that "the Spirit of Truth" has made possible your
escape from the Enemy's stronghold. May you not for even one fleeting moment
delay your flight from it, lest you frustrate the grace of God.
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You now see, I am sure, that the so-called
"Key to God's Week," instead of being the key by which to unlock
proof that Friday is the Sabbath is actually the key by which to lock up the
error and set its captives free.
Since through the Rod (Mic.
6:9; 7:14), Inspiration has at this very
time amassed unparalleled prophetic proof of the onrushing approach of
"the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (Mal. 4:5), what, then,
could be more inevitable and more certain than that Satan would unleash upon
Christendom his most vicious pack of Bible perversions? It is therefore not surprising to hear the
loud barking of "greedy dogs,...shepherds that cannot understand" (Isa. 56:11), endeavoring to draw away attention from the most
weighty concern ever to confront mankind -- the all-consequential truth that
"the great day of
the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth
greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there
bitterly." Zeph. 1:14.
Because the momentous message in connection
with the day of the Lord (Mal. 4:5, 6), is to lift aloft "the law of
Moses" which God "commanded unto him in Horeb"
(verse 4 -- the law of the Decalogue, Ex. 20:3-17), and thus proclaim the
Sabbath (the heart of the law) "more fully," Satan in his Preacher's
garb is spawning a new batch of false Sabbath theories with which to confound
the Truth
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5, 6 33
if possible. But
the Spirit of God works, too revealing Truth to expose falsehood, so as to
safeguard the faithful who want to know the truth at any price, and who want to
obey It regardless of consequences.
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In the next issue of the Code, there will appear
two questions and their answers. One
question will pertain to Sabbath observance at the International Date Line; the
other will pertain to the question of whether the Sabbath is governed by the
lunar month or by a independent weekly cycle.
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