Identity Theft (14 page)

“Well?” I asked, “Which was it—Sunday or Monday?”

“Let me ask you something first,” said Toma.

Oy, these people are always answering questions with questions
, I thought.

“If you were going to refer to a week from now, would you say, ‘in seven days’ or ‘in a week’?” asked Toma.

“‘In a week,’ of course,” I answered.

“Right, so if someone chooses to say ‘eight days,’ they probably don’t mean a week, because if they did, they would simply say ‘a week,’ not ‘eight days.’

“But honestly,
who cares?
” Thomas shouted, throwing up his hands. “It doesn’t matter. Of course we were there! We were there on Sunday and Monday and even on Tuesday—we were
living
in the Upper Room. We were not Judeans, but Galileans. Our homes were several days away—and we didn’t have cars, trains, or buses back then. We were holed up in the Upper Room, wondering what in the world to do.

“In both accounts, if you noticed, the doors are locked. That was pretty uncommon in those days, if you were at home—and we had eleven men there. Why would eleven men hide behind locked doors? I’ll tell you.
We were scared!
Even though the other brothers had had that one encounter with Yeshua a week, or ‘eight days’ earlier,” he winked, “we had not seen Him since. And remember—they
did
kill Him. So yeah, we were still scared, pretty nervous, and shaken up.”

“Furthermore,” Toma continued, “the Kehilah had not yet come into being. The last thing on our minds was devising some new order or routine for meeting. We were so broken; we had no idea that we would even stay together as a group, much less meet every week. Kefa was still so ashamed that he had denied that he ever knew the Messiah. However, after Shavuot everything changed.

“We did begin to meet. Would you like to know on what day? Read these two passages.”

I read.

Every day
they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved
(Acts 2:46-47).

“This next one is right after we were beaten because we refused to stop preaching in Yeshua’s name!”

The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of
[Yeshua].
And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and preach this message: “
[Yeshua]
is the Messiah”
(Acts 5:41-42 NLT).

“Every day, David,
every day!
In the Temple and from house to house. It was an amazing time, looking back. We had miracles and signs and wonders and best of all, the presence of God. Yeshua was so close to us. It was simply the best time…” As Toma was reminiscing, he faded from the screen.

“David, remember the passage I shared with you in the beginning; it should be number three on your list.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it here.” I read it aloud. “‘The days are coming’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah’” (Jer. 31:31).

“With whom is He making the New Covenant?” asked the teacher.

“With Israel and Judah.”

“You understand that at that time, when Jeremiah gave the prophecy, the people of Israel were divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. So in essence, He is making this New Covenant with all of Israel, right?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“Now tap twice on the passage,” Ariel requested. When I did, the entire thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah opened up. “Read verse thirty-three please.”

“For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people”
(Jeremiah 31:33 CJB).

“Now, what is the difference between the two Covenants?”

“He says that this time, He will write the Torah on our hearts; He will put it inside us.”

“Exactly! So the Father promises a New Covenant with Israel, then just over five hundred years later He pours out the Holy Spirit on Jerusalem, after Yeshua’s death and resurrection, of course. He promises in this Covenant to write the Torah, His Law, on the hearts of His people.

“Does it make any sense at all that one of the first things He commands His fiery new Jewish devotees to do is to delete the fourth commandment—one that has just been written on their hearts, ‘Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy’ (Exod. 20:8), and replace it with something that centuries later, Gentile believers would use in order to excommunicate not only Jews from their communities, but also Gentiles who sought to honor the Jewish Sabbath?”

“It would be highly unlikely,” I agreed.

“Another passage people use to say God has changed the Sabbath is Acts 20.”
D’ling.

On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight
(Acts 20:7).

“First of all, it does not say that it was their custom to meet on the first day of the week, just that they were meeting. Toma already told us that in Jerusalem they were meeting every day. And it is quite possible they had gathered in order to hear Paul, who was their honored guest, speak.

“But even if this were their normal time to meet, let’s think it through. They came together on the first day of the week to break bread. The idea is that believers chose Sunday because of the resurrection. So, assuming that they had their worship service in the morning as He rose ‘early on the first day,’ that would mean Paul spoke from breakfast until midnight! It is highly unlikely that Paul either spoke that long or that they listened that long!”

“Why don’t you let me tell you how it was?” another personality emerged from the larger tablet. “My name is Eutychus and I was there. If you keep reading the passage you’ll find out that I died—yeah, I really did. I fell right out of a window. Fortunately, Paul was there with the faith to raise me from the dead. The meeting had gone on for hours and I found myself nodding off a few times and then I must have fallen backward, out the window to the ground. Probably wasn’t the wisest place to sit. The next thing I know, I am waking up on the ground and Rabbi Saul has his arms around me, praying for me and telling me, ‘Don’t be alarmed.’ Try not to be alarmed when you have just fallen three floors to the ground with enough force to kill you.”

“Eutychus, I think you were going to share something with us about the Sabbath,” Ariel reminded him.

“I was and I will. David, when does the Jewish Sabbath start?”

“Friday evening.”

“So when does it end?”

“Saturday at sunset.”

“So when does a new week start?”

I was about to say Sunday, when I realized his point. “Ah, Saturday night.”

“You’re catching on. So doesn’t it make sense that when Luke wrote in Greek, the ‘first day,’ he really meant, the end of the Sabbath? Jewish believers still went to synagogue on Saturday morning to hear the Scriptures read. Remember, people didn’t have Bibles back then, and a good number of us didn’t read. The New Testament had not been written! So we were dependent on the Jewish believers to tell us what was written in the Hebrew Scriptures. Then in the evening, as the new week began, we would all break bread together, worship and hear the Word taught.”

“That makes much more sense,” I agreed. “In Judaism, the day always begins at sunset. We always celebrate the beginning of Jewish holidays in the evening.

“I remember back to the month I spent in Israel during college and how weird it was for me that the week began on Saturday night. When you would see people on Saturday morning, you would greet them with the words
Shabbat Shalom
. However, if you did that on Saturday night, people would think you were strange. The Sabbath is over—the day is over. On Saturday night when you saw people, you would greet them with the words,
Shavuah Tov
, ‘Have a good week.’ On Saturday evening in Israel, there was a sense that you had left one season and entered into another. Stores that closed for the Sabbath reopened in the evening. Kids got ready for school, which started on Sunday. A new week was beginning.”

“Well, I guess I’m no longer needed. Adios, fellows!” And Eutychus was gone.

“And David,” added Ariel, “all the Jewish believers living in Israel in the first century, before the destruction of the Temple, would’ve been going to work on Sunday morning because, just like in Israel today, the Jewish professional work week began Sunday morning. That would have been a difficult time to meet for a worship service.
¹

“Dr. David Stern—one of the foremost Messianic Jewish scholars and an authority on the Jewish roots of the faith—in his
Jewish New Testament
, translates Acts 20:7 like this: ‘On
Motza’ei-Shabbat
, when we were gathered to break bread, Sha’ul addressed them. Since he was going to leave the next day, he kept talking until midnight’ (Acts 20:7 CJB).

“Motza’ei shabbat
refers to Saturday night.
Motza’ei
is the Hebrew verb ‘to take out,’ meaning that we are ‘coming out’ of Shabbat.

“You would do well to buy a copy of his translation,”
²
Ariel suggested.

“Why don’t you just download it to my tablet and save me some money?” I joked.

“Funny, David,” Ariel continued. “Now there is something I want you to be very clear about. The Father has no objection whatsoever to people gathering to worship on Sunday. They can worship on any day they want. No one is saying everyone must assemble for worship on the Jewish Sabbath—that’s legalism and will produce death. No, the point I am making is that God has never changed the Jewish Sabbath.”

“Why didn’t God just say, ‘Hey, I want everyone to meet on this day?’” I asked.

“
Because there is no set day for worship!
” Ariel half shouted. “The New Covenant is
purposely
silent on this issue because the Gospel would be proclaimed in many nations and received by many different cultures. Believe it or not, many cultures don’t use a seven-day week. Much of the Roman world lived by an eight-day week. However, in 321
CE
, Emperor Constantine abolished the eight-day week in favor of the seven-day week. And in some areas of Africa, they still use a six-day calendar. So while the message of the Gospel—that Yeshua, the sacrificial Lamb, died and rose again so the world through Him can receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life—is unchangeable, the day and manner of worship of believers is not
written in stone
…no pun intended. Besides, the Sabbath was not given to the Church, but to Israel.

“The problem is not ‘Sunday worship’ per se,” Ariel continued. “A concerted demonic effort to detach the Church from her Jewish roots has played a significant role in all this confusion. The Council’s edict to change the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to what some refer to as the Lord’s Day, exposed the deep anti-Jewish feelings in the Church which could be seen as early as the second century. This carried the unavoidable consequence of alienating Jewish adherents from joining the Church. It has bred a deep distrust of the Church in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people ever since, covering the truth that the New Testament is as much a part of Judaism as the Torah. Sunday worship and the outright rejection of the Jewish Sabbath confirmed, in the Jewish mind, Christianity’s status as another religion altogether.”

“Where does the phrase ‘the Lord’s Day’ come from anyway, if it isn’t in the New Testament?”

“Oh but it is, my friend. And I should know; I am the one who wrote it!” The face of an elderly gentleman with a long gray beard took center stage on the screen of the large tablet.

Notes

1
.   Many scholars do believe that the first followers of Yeshua actually met on Sunday night after work. This is a valid view, and even if it is accurate, it in no way invalidates the Sabbath—in fact, it strengthens it. Why didn’t they meet on Saturday morning when they were already enjoying a day off from work? Because they were committed to being in the synagogue or Temple courts worshiping and listening to the public reading of the Word alongside observant Jews. Nevertheless, Saturday night still seems more plausible than Sunday night, as it was already a day off—synagogue in the morning, rest in the afternoon, and then the coming together for worship as believers in the evening.

2
.   Dr. Stern’s translation of the Bible can be read free at:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/cjb/
.