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"Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it
shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut
off from among his people" (Exod. 31: 14).
"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that
gathered sticks upon the sabbath day . . . . . and the Lord said, The man shall be surely
put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp"
(Numb. 15: 32-35).
How do you react to these passages of God's Word? Should the reader make the
slightest movement in the direction of the idea, that since the law was given by Moses,
grace and truth has been brought in by Jesus Christ, he will be unwittingly advocating the
supremacy of Dispensational Truth as a deciding factor and that it is indeed the key of
knowledge. If we believe that consequent upon the resurrection of Christ, the first day of
the week takes the place of the seventh, then we shall be sheltering under the much
vilified protection of Dispensational truth, even though there is no evidence that the
Lord's Day of Rev. 1: 10 refers to any day of the week, but much evidence to show that
it refers to the great prophetic "Day of the Lord".
If we deny the validity of dispensational truth, we must admit two things:
(1)
We are guilty of such disobedience that we should have been stoned to death long ago.
(2)
We have no scriptural and logical answer to the questions Why has this penalty not
been enforced? or Has God failed as a Law-Giver?
Before leaving this subject, let us return to the verses quoted from Exodus and
Numbers, and see for ourselves that the "key" is there waiting for us all the time and easy
to be seen had prejudice not blinded our eyes. The words printed in italics constitute the
dispensational items which completely and righteously exonerate all believers to-day
from either the obedience to, or the penalty for breaking, this law.
"Speak thou also unto the Children of Israel, saying Verily My sabbaths ye shall keep:
for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations: that ye may know that
I am the LORD that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is
holy unto you . . . . . It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever"
(Exod. 31: 13, 14, 17).
The wards of this key of knowledge are visible to all: the Children of Israel, the sign
between Me and you, the sanctifying of you, the consequence "therefore", the pointed
words "unto you". No Gentile, called during this day of grace, called during the period
of Israel's dispersion, called during the parenthetical dispensation of the Mystery, called
after Acts 28: 28, called while Israel are lo-ammi "not My people", can have the
remotest connexion with these words quoted from Exod. 31: or from Numb. 15:
Before, therefore, any doctrine of the Scripture can be considered obligatory upon us, or
addressed to us, we should seek an answer to the following questions:
(1)
Is the commandment addressed to Israel?
(2)
Is the commandment found in Paul's epistles?
(3)
If so, is it found in epistles written before Acts 28:, while the Jew was still "first"?
(4)
Or is it found only in those epistles written by the Apostle as the "Prisoner of Jesus
Christ for you Gentiles" after the present dispensation came into force (Eph. 3: 1)?