12/03/06 - “Waking Up A Sleeping Christian World – Part 4” - 49L - FM
Victory Ministries International presents:
Awesome Truths and Amazing Facts  
Treasures of awesome truths from God’s Word 
and facts that affect you!

Hello!  This is Richard Vaughn

This Week: The conclusion of “Waking Up A Sleeping Christian World - Part 4”
(Before we begin let us invite God’s presence)
Father, as we finish this most serious subject, I pray that your Holy Spirit is working on the hearts and lives of those who are hearing these messages. Help me today to make it crystal clear to your people the true condition of your church today as we ask for Your special guidance to help us to understand this important truth; so that we may increase our knowledge, understanding, and live in the center of your revealed will as we ask this in Jesus Name, Amen.”
Right now, I continue to keep my pledge, to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to show God’s people where they are transgressing God’s law.

	For the last three weeks, we have been addressing the most serious issue in the Christian world today. It’s as if all the Christians are standing on the very edge of a forest, and they cannot see a single tree. 
	Let’s review the issue. Today, maybe 99% of the Christians on planet earth choose Sunday as a day of worship, using the reasoning that Jesus rose on Sunday, the first day of the week.
	A secondary reason would be the majority keep that day and all the learned men of all the Sunday-keeping denominations do not contest it. Based on those two reasons it seems indisputable, so long as we do not use the Bible as the ultimate authority in this matter.
	But supposing you are a Christian that doesn’t necessarily want to be a crowd pleaser, rather you want to live your life in the center of God’s will and you would rather make your decisions based on an “It Is Written.”
	When Jesus came from the wilderness after 40 days of fasting, He faced down the devil on three temptations with an “It Is Written.” Since Jesus is our example in all things, don’t you think we should also?
	Let’s see what the Bible says and for that, let’s go back to the beginning. Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God (what?) blessed the seventh day, and (He what?) sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”  
	He, Jesus the Creator, blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. According to 1 Chronicles 17:27, “… for thou blessest, O LORD, and it shall be blessed for ever.” 
	And when He, Jesus the Creator, sanctified the seventh day, He had set it apart for holy use, for all eternity, as we read in Isaiah 66:22,23, “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.  And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.”
	Jesus who made the Sabbath could be the only one to change the Sabbath from the seventh day to another day. But Jesus, being the God, said in Malachi 3:6 “For I am the LORD, I change not.” But if He were to have changed the Sabbath, that change would have to have occurred prior to His death in order to be part of the New Covenant. But He never changed it to the first day of the week. The New Testament is silent. 
	The first day of the week is mentioned only 8 times in the New Testament and there is nothing in each of those scriptures to indicate a change. The seventh day Sabbath however, is mentioned almost 60 times, and that with holy regard.
	Think about it. The two institutions God gave man in Eden on creation week are still in effect today; marriage and the seventh day Sabbath. Some say that Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, but Exodus 20:10 says this, “But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God.” It was made 2500 years before there was the first Jew. And since Jesus the Creator made it, it is therefore the only Christian Sabbath. Matthew 12:8 says, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.” It is the only Lord’s Day. 
	That is clear, but why is the majority holding Sunday, the first day? You have to understand that Satan is too powerful for the unconverted Christian to oppose. He hates God, he hates God’s law and in particular he hates God’s Sabbath. 
	Even though the apostolic church kept the Sabbath, and the persecuted church of the first few centuries kept the seventh day Sabbath, it was in the 4th century after Christ that Change was brought about through compromise. The church then was more interested in church growth. So in order to make Christianity attractive to Paganism, the majority religion of those days, she deleted the commandment forbidding idol worship and changed God’s Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day, the day the Pagans worshipped the god of the sun. With an emperor turned Christian, the Pagans who once persecuted Christians, now swelled the ranks of the church of compromise. 
	So it is today that on the basis of compromise, churches and mega churches are drawing in many of the unconverted, and a new order of worship has evolved; emotional religion with no emphasis on obedience. Strange doctrines have developed that have no basis in scripture. 
	Brothers and sisters in Jesus, God is not pleased with the church today; but Satan is. God’s Sabbath is trampled on and Sunday the child of the Papacy, who is Antichrist and acting through the power Satan has given it, is revered.
	And so in this generation, God will soon withdraw both His mercy and grace and He will become the God of wrath, just as in the days of Noah. 
 	Let me read you the fourth commandment found in Exodus 20:8-11 “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: (not the Sabbath of the Jews) 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.”
 
	Why did God start the fourth commandment with the word Remember? He could have said, Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath day.
He used the word Remember because He knew that the people who call themselves by His name would forget His eternal memorial to creation. It was Jesus on Mount Sinai who said Remember the Sabbath day.  
Let me ask you this, and be serious; do you love Jesus? In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
Let me ask you this, and be equally serious; do you know Jesus? 1 John 2:3,4 says, “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, (listen carefully) He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”  

If you think this matter is not important, then on the basis of God’s word I can confidently say that your faith is in vain. Jesus said in Matthew 15:9, “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Sunday is a tradition, a commandment of the Papacy.  
Joshua 24:15 states clearly, “…choose you this day whom ye will serve.”
Jesus or the Papacy? God’s Sabbath or tradition? Eternal security or eternal loss and separation from God? What thing or person would be worth risking so much? This is no matter to put off for a better time. You alone can make that choice. 

Everyone who spends eternity with Jesus will be a seventh day Sabbath keeper. If you’re going to be a Sabbath keeper in eternity, don’t you think that keeping it now before the end of probation happens on this planet would be a wise decision? Satan would hate such a decision, but you would please the one who died to save you.

	If you want some more information or even Bible studies, contact me by writing to: Pastor Vaughn that’s V-A-U-G-H-N, at PO Box 727, South Hill, VA 23970. Once again that’s Pastor Vaughn that’s V-A-U-G-H-N, at PO Box 727, South Hill, VA 23970.  

	Well the clock says we’re out of time for this week. We will start a brand new subject next week. And remember, you are always welcome to worship with us each seventh day Lord’s Day at the Victory Seventh Day Adventist Church located at 117 W. Danville Street in the center of South Hill, VA. And until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, come Lord Jesus.