Keeping of Days

Keeping Of Days

This is a series of messages given by the author in meetings held in January and February 2006.

We want to acknowledge those senior spiritual elders whose ministry opened our eyes to this end-time kingdom message: Tom Campbell, Cecil duCille, Clayt Sonmore and George Warnock.

Special thanks to Dan Waddick for designing the cover page and to Gordon Gerber for the labor in formatting, editing and printing.

First printing 2006

This book is being distributed to the body of Christ on a freewill offering basis. Your love offerings to help offset printing and distribution costs would be greatly appreciated. Send any offerings to the address below.

For more copies or additional literature please call or write:

Mark Jantzi, 190 Fox St, Esperance, NY 12066

Tel: (518) 875-6476 E-mail: mrjantzigmail.com

Copyright 2006 by Mark R. Jantzi. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews.

Permission will be given to copy and quote from this book as long as it is not to produce for commercial profit, but given away on a freewill offering basis and the monies used exclusively for expenses of publishing, printing and distribution. The purpose of copying and reproducing must be for the furtherance of the gospel of the kingdom, be consistent with this message and taken in context of the message.

Table of Contents

P art I – Sabbaths 7

Chapter 1 - The History of Sabbaths 10

A. The Creation Foundation 10

B. The Law of Moses 12

Penalty for Violation 16

C. The Later View from the Prophets 18

Chapter 2 – Jesus Christ’s Dealing with the Sabbath 23

A. Christ’s Doctrine on the Commandments of Law 23

B. Christ’s Actions on the Sabbath 26

Breakfast in the Grain Field 28

The Tabernacle of David 28

God’s Purpose for the Sabbath 29

Healing the Withered Hand 31

Release from Demonic Bondage 32

The Word is Spread 34

Healing in Peter’s Family 36

Jesus the Jubilee 37

Deliverance for all the City 39

Loosed from a Spirit of Infirmity 40

Edema Healed 44

The Impotent Man at the Pool 47

The Man Born Blind 52

The Murder of Jesus 53

Chapter 3 – The New Testament Church 55

A. The Apostles Practice 55

First Sabbath in Antioch of Pisidia 55

The Visit to Philippi 58

Meetings in Thessalonica 60

Noble Bereans 60

A Long Stay in Corinth 61

B. The Practice of Keeping the First Day of the Week 63

Farewell Meeting in Troas 63

Meetings at Corinth 64

C. Paul’s Doctrine on Keeping of Days 65

Chapter 4 – Fullness of Rest 69

A.Three Levels Seen in the Tabernacle 70

From Natural to Spiritual 72

Hindrance at the Veil? 73

Time to Leave the Outer Court 75

A Time to Flee the Holy Place 77

Holy Place Jubilee 78

B.Christ Our Rest 80

His Yoke or Man’s Works 82

C.The Seventh Millennium 86

D.Tabernacles – The Seventh Month 90

Feasts of the Lord in the Tabernacle 91

E.Trumpets 92

FSeventy Weeks to Fullness 97

G.The Millennial Sabbath 99

H.The Principle of Fullness 101

Tares and Wheat 101

The Fall of Babylon 105

Come out of Her 107

Part II – Holidays 111

Chapter 5 – The History of Babylon 111

Nimrod’s Empire and Fall 112

Mother of Harlots 117

Chapter 6 – Christmas 120

A. Jesus was Not Born in December 120

Some Notable Birthday Parties 124

B. Christmas is a Pagan Festival 124

How Paganism Invaded the Church 127

Some Resisted 128

Christmas Sanctioned by the Pope 130

Chapter 7 – Easter 133

Easter is not a Christian Celebration 133

What Really is Easter 134

Easter Symbolism 138

Forty Days of Lent 142

Church History 144

Keeping His Death and Resurrection 147

Chapter 8 – Halloween 149

Recognition by Rome 150

The Spirits of Druidism 151

What Does God Say 153

Doctrines of Demons 154

Keeping of Days

By Mark Jantzi

Part I: Sabbaths

Hebrews 4

1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest theseventh dayfrom all his works.

5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest.

6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:

7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

8 For if Jesus(Joshua) had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.

9 There remaineth therefore a rest (keeping of a Sabbath) to the people of God.

10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

11 Let us labour therefore toenterinto that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief (disobedience):

Now I do not intend to start this teaching by an exposition of the fourth chapter of Hebrews, although I will eventually get into it. But I have emphasized here this portion of the chapter that makes reference to the “rest,” and as you can see, nearly every verse in this passage of Scripture makes some direct reference to “rest” or of the “entering into rest.” But we can also see in the Bible that this rest is used almost synonymously with the Sabbath. So if we are going to look at the keeping of the Sabbath, we need to understand the principle behind the Sabbath, not just the literal keeping of a day.

What quickened my interest in this subject was a phone conversation I recently had with some folks and what they have come to believe about the keeping of the Sabbath, asto which day of the week is the proper day for the body of Christ to meet. And of course, when we are talking about the Sabbath we are commonly talking about the day of the week that we call “Saturday,” or “Sunday”. “Saturday” is a name that I don’t particularly like, as it was named as such by the pagan Romans (and also by the pagan Saxons) in honor of their god of Saturn; and “Sunday” isn’t a much better name as it is namedafter the sun god. I only mention this so that we all know what day we are talking about. In our conversation, I was asked to defend our actions of when we gather, so I needed to go back into the Word of God for an answer.

The literal Hebrew word “Sabbath” means “to rest or cease from labor,” but it is often used synonymously in reference to “the seventh day of the week.” Now that is the word “Sabbath” on the natural level, and the natural level is the first dimension. Brethren, we are well aware, are we not, that the Word of God can always be seen in at least three dimensions (at least, three is about as far as the human mind can comprehend). From this passage in Hebrews, we can see that for the word Sabbath there is also a spiritual or second level dimension, which refers to a “coming into a place of rest.” I hope that as we come to understand the spiritual Sabbath, we will come to understand that Christ is the Sabbath rest, and therefore coming into Him is entering into a Sabbath rest (as in the Hebrews passage above). And before we finish with this, I hope that we can also see the Sabbath in its fullness, which is the coming of this whole earth into a seventh millennium of rest from the hold of Satan and into the fullness of the kingdom of God, which will be the third dimension. And so the Sabbath is on all three dimensions.

So let us begin in the Old Testament, and let us begin the study with the natural Sabbath, which is with the seventh day of a week that is seven days long. Let us go to Genesis, the book of beginnings, where so many of God’s principles are first laid out for our understanding.

Chapter 1 The History of Sabbath

A. The Creation Foundation

Genesis 1

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Genesis 2

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 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.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

This, of course, is the account of creation. The above scripture passage does not include all of creation, only the last of the sixth day, and the seventh day. Man was the last thing that God created on the sixth day (after fish, fowls, and beasts), and that day then ended with the setting of the sun. So Adam may have been in darkness most of the first twelve hours of his life. I am pointing this out because it says that these are natural days, beginning at sunset, going through a sunrise and continuing again until the next sunset.[1] This work of God’s creation was accomplished in six twenty-four hour days, not six eons or sixty million years, or any such thing that the Darwinian evolutionists would have you to believe. And on the seventh natural day, God rested.[2] That is, He did no more work. The creation was finished and it was done to perfection.

We could actually say that He had created a world and put it in a state of rest. And as long as man did not rebel against Him, the world would have remained in that state. But as we know, man fell into sin, and the earth and its creatures (including man) lost its place of peace, harmony, and rest. Man was driven from this garden and was given a sentence of work. Not only that but now the earth itself, the natural realm of the ground, wascursed[3]and now it was going to fight against man’s efforts by producing briars, thorns and weeds. So it seems that work and rest are opposites. Man was no longer in a state of rest.

Now in the garden before the fall, we know that man was given a job to do of keeping and dressing the garden,[4] but apparently this was not considered work and apparently was not done with the sweat of his brow. God was not going to have man to be idle; he had a task but it was not toil. So God gave man a seventh day of rest as a continual reminder of his need to come back into a place of rest. However no more is said about Sabbath again until it comes time for the giving of the Law.

B. The Law of Moses

Exodus 16

22 And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.

23 And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is therest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.

24 And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein.

25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field.

26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

28 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

29 See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

It does not appear that they had been keeping the Sabbath in Egypt. Not only had they been living and laboring with a cursed ground, but they had been under the whip of the Egyptian task masters. Now Pharaoh is a type of Satan and Egypt is a type of the world, and when Moses first approached Pharaoh to obtain release for the people of Israel so that they could go a three days journey to worship, he refused to let them go and said that Moses was trying “to make them rest from their burdens.”[5] And so Pharaoh made their burdens heavier for a little while. Satan has no mercy and he will never voluntarily allow any man to be free of his burdens of sin.

However, in the Exodus the people come to the place of being free of Egypt, at least insofar as their external circumstances are concerned. And now God wants to again restore to them the principle of rest. This was first introduced to them in the gathering of their manna. God had instructed the people through Moses that they were to freely gather the manna day by day in the morning, and just as much as was needed by the people per each day—excepting for the sixth and seventh days. They were specifically commanded not to gather any manna at all on the seventh day, but instead they were to gather twice as much on the sixth day and it would keep them through the seventh day.[6] Some of them didn’t believe what they were told by Moses and they went out on the seventh day anyway to gather, but they found none.

Genesis 16

27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

28 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

Incidentally, whereas the penalty for doing work on the Sabbath day was death by stoning,[7] they were not stoned for their disobedience in trying to find manna on the Seventh day, it just wasn’t available. I find another interesting principle here, of God giving a double portion on the sixth day.

Exodus 20

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: 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:

11 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.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

So now by the 20th chapter of Exodus, God has formalized the principle of rest (Sabbath) by making it a law. These are what are commonly known as the Ten Commandments and are believed to be what Moses received and that which was written on the tables of stone,[8] but perhaps without the extra comments. The first three and to some extent the fourthof these commandments relate to man’s relationship to God. The last six speak of man’s dealings with his fellow man. It is interesting to read in the New Testament of Jesus’ meeting with a rich young ruler.[9] The man wanted to know how to inherit eternal life and he was told by Jesus to keep the commandments. When he asked which commandments, Jesus only mentioned the last six of these from Exodus 20. He did not ask the man to make sacrifices, or to keep feasts and Sabbaths, or to eat no unclean things, or to not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk, or any of these types of Mosaic laws—only those that relate to our dealings with other men. If I were to ask most Sabbath keeping Christians if they are keeping these other Mosaic commandments, they would undoubtedly say we are only expected to keep the ten. But Jesus only asked this man about the six.