"Eternal Rendezvous"
"Remember The Sabbath Day !"
MAN'S GREAT TEST OF OBEDIENCE
Let us follow a dialogue that took place in the pioneer days of Seventh-day Adventism in Northern Europe. One of the interlocutors was a Norwegian-American minister, Elder O.J. Olsen (who died just a few years ago), instrumental in a revival of an old-fashioned, Sabbath-keeping form of Christianity in the Vestmann Islands, as well as in other parts of Iceland. The other speaker we introduce was the captain of an Icelandic steamer on which Mr. Olsen was traveling. This captain had just informed the minister that he did not see what difference there could be, to a modern Christian, between keeping the seventh-day Sabbath of the "Jewish" tradition and keeping any other day of the week. This observation caused the minister to make a little excursion, with a view to clarifying the issue. He asked the captain a simple question.
"Do you have any fire emergency system on board this ship?"
"Certainly."
"Then you probably also have regular exercises to test the equipment and to train the crew for such an emergency?"
"Of course."
"Now, suppose that one week you, as a captain, announce the following: `On Tuesday night at 8 o'clock all members of our fire brigade are requested to attend a meeting, on the lower deck, for an important drill.' Well, Tuesday night arrives. The ship clock strikes eight. You are there. But, sad to say, not one single crew member turns up. A slip of paper has been left on your desk by one of the men, stating that this happens to be his bridge game night. For fire emergency drills he definitely prefers Fridays. Another man is reported to have expressed some days ago, in the company of some companions, that he has always adhered to the principle that drill meetings should take place on the first evening of the week. A third has hinted that Wednesday nights would be a good time.
"Now, Captain, what is your feeling about this? Don't you think they may all be right, each one in his own way, considering the matter from his individual point of view? In fact, is not a Wednesday just as good for that meeting as a Tuesday?"
"No, Pastor Olsen, not if I have announced Tuesday. For then I mean Tuesday, not Wednesday or Friday."
"Well, but frankly speaking, was not your choice of Tuesday somewhat capricious perhaps, after all? You could equally well have chosen another day, couldn't you?"
"Maybe, but one day had to be chosen, and someone had to choose it. Now I do happen to be the captain of this ship. I have been appointed as its responsible leader. So the crew member who simply chooses Friday after I have decided Tuesday, must have assumed a dreadful responsibility of his own. And I should think his choice of Friday is bound to be capricious in a far more serious sense than my choice of Tuesday. To me this is simply an audacious overthrow of my whole authority. It is stubborn rebellion against an established order. It is mutiny. . ."
The captain was manifestly working himself up into a mood of righteous indignation that was becoming louder and louder in its spontaneous expression. You might almost imagine that that "mutiny" had already taken place in factual reality on board this very ship, so peacefully sailing on its way between Iceland and Norway one beautiful summer day sometime in the twenties.
Then he suddenly became silent. They were both silent for some seconds. The captain finally looked up with a smile. It was the smile of one who has had the experience of some weird recognition. He was just coming back to the reality of this present moment, this present world.
"Aha, I see the matter we were just arguing about in a strangely different light now. So this is what you were driving at, Pastor Olsen? Of course, you are right. The Sabbath is simply a question of obedience. It is a matter of submitting unreservedly, unquestioningly to God. It is a matter of humbly accepting His right to command. It is a matter of believing implicitly that He is a Person who says something, and means what He says.
"He is the literal Captain of my literal life, He is a literal Person, ordering things in a literal way, in this literal world of mine. He must also be a loving Person. Theoretical rules do not love anybody. But he loves me, right here in my everyday bustle and busy-ness. he personally cares about what I do, and He pleadingly invites me to come to a literal appointment, an urgent appointment, with Him, the Lord of the universe. But I simply ignore that appointment. I turn up on another day, a day of my own choosing. I am either an obstinate crank or a man who has failed to believe -- to believe that my Lord and Maker is literally there."
Our attitude toward the Sabbath, I am afraid, gives a measure of the narrowness of our vision regarding what Christ has done for us. Just imagine: the Creator Himself, the Majesty of Heaven, has found it sufficiently urgent and worthwhile, nay absolutely indispensable, to make an emergency descent to one particular creature of His, on a tiny planet called Earth, to save him from misery and death. In fact, already before there was any problem emerging on Earth, he had come down. His urgent desire was to have a relationship of sanctification with us; that is the most intimate union known between the Creator and the created ones, the only safe protection from the fall into sin. So He communicates to man the exact time of the holy rendezvous He wants to have with him. Now, would it be reasonable to think that this whole complex of contingent planning, and fulfillment of plans, would tend to make the Sabbath commandment less binding than the other nine to the creaturely person for whom it was expressly devised?
Could you imagine a bride saying about her bridegroom: "He told me to meet him at such and such a time, in such and such a place, and I promised to come. But now I do not know what to think about all this. If only I could know for sure whether that appointment is really morally binding upon me! What troubles me about it is the fact that it has been made so terribly specific. True, that boy has done everything in his power to make me happy. And I know how happy he will be to see me at the appointed time. But, honestly, why should he indicate that specific time and that specific place? I just cannot bear such specificity. Why cannot things be kept in a more general setting? Of course I do want to be married. But why must it necessarily be at a definite time and in a definite place? Such fixedness is not quite fair to the scope of freedom which a young girl should have. There is something so peremptory and narrow minded about it. I just am not going to be tied by these shackles. It intrudes upon personal freedom. Do not misunderstand me. I am not against appointments as such. It is the "time element" and the "place element" I cannot take. I am obviously not made for such hairsplitting accuracy, such standing upon trifles. What I am longing for is something more ideal, more spiritual, something enshrouded in the mysteries of a freely floating dream. To tell the truth, I am afraid I shall have to find another bridegroom. This one is evidently not my type. He is too practical and intrusively personal. He is too much bound up in this-worldly specificities!"
I should confess at once, I have never heard a girl in love express herself in such terms. Nor do I expect to experience anything as perverse as that in the future. But what now about our "Christian" world and its relationship to a personal God, the God who created man and placed a day of holy communion immediately in front of Him: The Sabbath was man's first new day; let us not forget that.
…It is incredible that any one could succumb to patterns of reasoning as hollow and as piteously unpromising as that.
Here I feel the urge to close my ears for a while to the weird voice of the "bride", and listen exclusively to the voice of the Bridegroom, the great Lover, the Man of matchless charms.
This does not mean that I intend to "leave in the lurch" every sober knowledge I possess about the Sabbath as a morally binding commandment.
No, I shall all the time keep in my ears that authoritatively ringing voice, rolling like thunder from the sanctuary of God's throne. That sanctuary and that divine throne are realities I do not, either, dare to reduce, disrespectfully, to mere abstractions. That center of God's judgment throne is a shaking reality whose concrete reverberations cannot be escaped by any human being.
Deepest down, however, the Sabbath is a touch-stone, testing the very foundation of man's loyalty to God; that is, his love for God. Still this is not the utmost end of its capacity. The Sabbath is designed to be more than a test for man, namely a test for God Himself. For in one way, God is the main One, in this drama of the ages, who is being tested. He permits an entire world to put to the test His justice, His faithfulness and His love. And the Sabbath is again the supreme testing ground. From the beginning, the Sabbath was the capital body of evidence testifying to God's attitude of extreme benevolence toward His creatures. So it is not a fit of sentimental nonsense when I choose, as my next headline, the following-
GOD'S LOVE LETTER TO MAN
Well, what do we mean when we say that God decided to meet man on the Sabbath day? Are we justified in qualifying the Sabbath commandment as a unique "rendezvous"? The term "a sanctuary in time" is certainly a most exacting one. Is there any realistic indication that the fourth commandment may be the only one in the decalogue where such an extraordinary encounter between God and man could be perfectly proper, perfectly practicable?
In this connection, let us consider what M.L. Andreasen states in his book: The Sabbath, Which Day and Why (1942).
"Breaking the fourth commandment is not like breaking some of the other commandments."
Andreasen's idea corroborates what we have arrived at in a previous chapter. The Sabbath is essentially different, somehow, Breaking it, is not, for that reason, a less serious matter or a less remarkable sign. Rather the opposite: a man may commit manslaughter in a fit of anger; he may, as a result of sheer rashness, take God's name in vain; or he may succumb to the temptation, suddenly presenting itself, to yield to some overwhelming sensual passion. But a failure to keep the Sabbath, according to Andreasen, rarely comes into that category. Sabbath-breaking does not have the excuse of sudden passion or of inordinate desire. It is not like most other great sins or destructive habits:
"It is rather a symptom of spiritual decline, of departure from God, of estrangement from the promise, of a sickly Christian experience." (Ibid. pp. 26-27).
The long and the short of it is: Sabbath-breaking is apostasy. In other words, it is a deep-rooted, long-term thing, a disorder of the chronic type, not the acute, transitory type. I sometimes try to express the seriousness of it by simply calling the Sabbath a "heart affair". It is all a matter of the most tender vows of faithfulness ever known to any marriage covenant.
But, you may eagerly object, what about the individual who today knows nothing--or next to nothing--about any such thing as a Sabbath
in this world? Can he, with any degree of fairness, be branded as an "apostate"?
No, you are right there, in one sense. On the other hand, even in this case the statement about deep-seated apostasy is perfectly valid. In the history of this world there is the indisputable fact of a collective apostasy. As a race we are guilty, heartbreaking guilty, of having" let God down". And Sabbath-unfaithfulness is one of the conspicuous symptoms of our wicked dereliction.
I have contended that the Sabbath embodies, as it were, God's determination to cast His lot with man, wholly and fully. Now, is there any specific evidence that, in the Sabbath commandment, God joins man in a unique way? That is exactly what Andreasen suggests in the following passage.
"The Sabbath command is the only commandment in the observance of which God could join man. It would be highly improper to speak of God as keeping the first commandment: `Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.' So it is with the second and the third. Again it would be highly irreverent to speak of God as keeping the last six commandments. A moment's reflection will make this clear. Stealing, lying, adultery, all these have no place with reference to God. But there is one commandment in the observance of which God could join man: the Sabbath commandment. Man can keep it; God can keep it. Thus the Sabbath is the meeting place of God and man." (Ibid. p. 32).
So the uniqueness of the fourth commandment is a mystery indisputably asserting itself. And it is a uniqueness asserting itself precisely in what I have called God's "coming down". If He had not come all the way down, man's predicament would have had no solution. In the New Testament that total condescension on God's part is further revealed in his "coming in the flesh". The incarnation doctrine is the essence of New Testament theology. A denial of that doctrine is equated with "non-Christianity". This is the "spirit of the `anti-Christ'". …you know exactly how distant that spiritualism (or spiritualizing away of all concrete reality) is from the Spirit of realism, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the truth.
"Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of anti-Christ, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world." I John 4:2,3.
Spiritualizing away the concrete reality of God's coming all the way down, this is the sham spirituality the great adversary has chosen to reduce God's plan of salvation to naught. Prophetic revelation also describes it as the mystery of iniquity, or the mystery of lawlessness.
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. And with all deceivableness and unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be save." 2 Thess. 2:7-10.
It is the denial of the bodily "coming down" of a personal God, that encourages man in his natural inclination toward lawlessness. At the same time this is a denial of God's love for man in the radical sense of His "coming down" as the extremely Humble One. It is interesting to see that this divine humility is qualified as the "mystery of godliness": God was "manifest in the flesh" (I Tim 3:16). This is, of course, in all respects the diametrical opposite of the spirit of the "man of sin", "the son of perdition:, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God" (2 Thess. 2:3,4). Titanism and super-man pride is the essence of the "mystery of iniquity" (lawlessness), the "lying wonders" of vain spiritualism, cited above.
…The Sabbath commandment, taken in its entirely (and that is, of course, the way all real things should be taken), constitutes a striking "coming together" of two things one seldom thinks of as fitting together, namely the common and the holy. These are both embraced by the very text of the commandment. For notice that it does not only say: Keep the Sabbath holy. No, it continues by pointing out what should fill the first six days: "Six days shalt thou work." So it commands man to do and refrain from doing. Neither part is looked upon as unworthy of being mentioned in the holy text of the fourth commandment. Again the Christian Agape reveals itself as fundamentally different from the pagan Eros. God's philosophy considers as fully respectable the common thing that the philosophy of spiritualism tends to shrink back from as something despicable (bodies, concrete matter, practical everyday affairs).
Pagan thought here reveals one of its logical fallacies. And when I say "logical fallacy", you should not think that it is a negligible thing in the world of the spirit. The evil one prepares his most fateful deceptions by tricks of fallacious logic. Example: by totally abolishing in man's world the realm of the "common" or the "profane", the idea of the "holy" is simply made impossible. Its whole frame of reference, as it were, is suddenly torn to pieces. For here the "common", of course, is the very setting in which the "holy" finds itself engrained. ...We have pointed this out as a logical self-evidence already: to "hallow" is to "set apart as holy". But how can you set something apart if there is not another thing from which it is set apart? How can you distinguish holy time, if you have no common time from which you distinguish it? Pan-sabbatism is the shrewd idea of making all days holy. In its historic appearance and its diabolical effects, we shall show it to be parallel to the machination of pan-theism, the desperate absurdity of making "all things God". Every bit of matter in the universe is proclaimed divine. End result: nothing is God. Nothing matters anymore! This is Satan's supreme device of hocus pocus designed to do away with the Holy One, the holy ones.
Again the tremendous reality of creation, woven inextricably into the very text of the Sabbath commandment, is the basic notion making the whole difference. Paganism has no idea that God created. The Bible only knows the astonishing God who went down. Went down to what? To the most lowly things. He is the incomparable God of the lowly ones. And this plan of lowliness is the extreme working out of His love. The eternally Wise One, who has molded true philosophy in every detail, has actually given an infinite prestige to "downness" in this sense. There is nothing improper or anti-ideal in an intelligent creature's inherent unsightliness, even his total helplessness, without God. He should only know the fact that he is unsightly and helpless. That is an integral part of his realism. The gospel calls that realism the "love of the truth". It is the realization that dependence on God is the creature's normal position. It is a great position. God-dependence is the basic creaturely virtue. It is deciie for the Creator's own attitude toward the creature, the attitude of benevolence and grace: "God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble" (I Peter 5:5). The opportunity to see someone else above oneself, to seek "another's wealth" (I Cor. 10:24), the better honor of the other one, this is looked upon as a joy, the thing one loves to do. No wonder that Biblical realism is called the love of the truth. The emotions, as well as the intellect, is here fully involved.
Conclusion: The Sabbath commandment puts the things in their right places. It gives wisdom to distinguish between the great and the greater, between the common and the holy. Such wisdom is without bias, without pride and vanity. It is realistic.
As God intervened in man's life and destiny by introducing His first Sabbath, there was no trace of anything arbitrary in this…That is, the sense of "despotic" or frigidly "automatic", or fatefully "irrevocable". It was not in this inhuman sense God suddenly "took a fancy" to man, and made him His particularly selected one. No, it was with an undertone of trembling tenderness--and a remarkable delicacy of respect for the created person's own autonomy and moral freedom. This is, in fact, the most delicate appeal imaginable, on the part of a Creator, to His beloved creature, not to leave out of the account of his life the Sabbath day. I have dared to try and make a paraphrase of what I personally feel God is here saying to Man:
Dear Man:
Let me confide a secret to you, a tender urge from the depth of my fatherly heart. Your life is an essential part of my happiness. You will never realize to the full how dearly I love you. That was the reason why, from the beginning, I longed to appoint a most special rendezvous with you. Every seventh day my soul was filled with joyful expectancy at the thought of meeting with you in quite a special way. This was in order to show you, my special friend, that I, the great Yahweh, am also the loving Emmanuel, the Father who cannot bear being separated from His child. That is also why I am the God who interferes, interferes quite specifically and personally in the deepest life of my human creature.
So do understand this, my dear child: anything less than that special rendezvous would leave me an unhappy Father. For, behold, I am not at all that vague and misty shadow of a God portrayed by the wily pseudo-spiritualities of this world, more merciless and cruel than any Moloch worship. The meanest calumny ever launched against me by the arch-deceiver is this "advanced" idea that I am just an impersonal "power" in nature.
I assure you, dear child, of mine, I am not at all the type of `Creator' evolved pagans will qualify as a mere `principle of evolution', the barren abstraction to which proud and self-sufficient scientist and philosophers have reduced me. I am not that divine Super-Automaton, a God in the abstract, just aimlessly turning his heavy wheel of routine laws--laws exactly like their `divine author'; that is, `as blind as a mole and as unfeeling as a mill stone', entirely deaf to the individual cries of individual men with their individual heartaches.
On the contrary, no sooner was there an inarticulate cry from your lips, or the most secret sorrow in your heart, than my compassion went out to you from the aching depths of my own heart. Why was it that so few came to hear that undertone of tenderness in my voice, as it echoes forth between the ravines of the wilderness of antiquity, declaring that I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; that is, the God who never tires of seeking to find and save the individuals, the rare ones that still care to be found and saved. My compassionate cry through my disciple John is a call for you, quite individually, to come to my Sabbath rest: `Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me!"