Is Sabbath Keeping Essential to Be a Real Christian? Former SDA Pastor Answers This

Dale and Carolyn Ratzlaff founded Life Assurance Ministries in 1999. Dale is author of Sabbath in Christ, The Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists, The Truth About the Seventh-day Adventist Truth, and Adventist to Christian. Dale was an Adventist pastor for 13 years, seven of which he spent teaching Bible at Monterey Bay Academy , La Selva Beach, California. During his doctoral studies at Andrews University in the 1980’s, Dale became convinced that the 1844 investigative judgment could not be supported by Scripture. Since he could no longer teach this doctrine, he and his wife Carolyn left the Adventist denomination. Dale and Carolyn host a Former Adventist Fellowship Bible study near Phoenix, Arizona.

There is no command to keep the Sabbath in the N.T. All the meetings in the book of Acts are in a Jewish setting. There is no instruction on how to keep the Sabbath in letters written to young Gentile churches. Sabbath breaking is never listed in any lists of NT sins. When the Sabbath in mentioned in the epistles, it is either in a negative or unimportant context. The O.T. prophets confront the gentile nations for worshiping idols, blaspheming the name of God, ruthless killing, injustice and immorality, but never for breaking the Sabbath. The Jews considered the Sabbath to be a ritual law. The Jews insisted that a Gentile staying with a Jew was to keep the Sabbath. However, if the Gentile kept the Sabbath on his own he was to be put to death. Jesus, according to John 5 broke the Sabbath and from his defense of his other Sabbath incidents it seems clear that He understood the Sabbath to be a ritual law. The entrance sign to the Old Covenant was circumcision.