4260 — GENTILES KEEPING THE SABBATH
By James White
Where in the Bible does the Lord command a Gentile to keep the Sabbath? Where in the Bible does the Lord command a Gentile to keep the law of Moses? And, let it be asked further, where in the Bible does the Lord address any command or any promise to the Gentiles, as such? Where in the Bible have the Gentiles, as Gentiles, any promise of salvation? Where have they, as Gentiles, promise of anything? Christ Himself said that “salvation is of the Jews.” John 4:22. Christ Himself, according to the flesh, was a Jew; and the promise is, “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” There is no qualification of this statement. If you are Christ’s, you are Abraham’s seed; and Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation. Therefore when we accept Christ we become Israelites. The Jews, when they rejected Christ, became Gentiles; for “He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; . . . but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly.” Rom. 2:28, 29. Paul affirms himself an apostle to the Gentiles, in these words: “I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles.” Rom. 11:13. And on the question of the law, the covenants, and the promises, he says: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” Rom. 9:1-5. A person is seeking to escape by a very slim excuse when he tries, by affirming that he is a Gentile, to evade plain moral duty clearly taught in the word of God. The word “Gentile,” in both the Old Testament and the New, is translated from words that refer to the nations of earth. These words are not only translated “Gentile,” but they are also translated by the terms “nation” and “heathen,” showing that the Scriptures, in the use of these words, are referring to the heathen nations of the world; and God’s promises are not for the purpose of saving heathen nations in their heathenism, but they are for the purpose of saving them from their heathenism. Hence the hope of the Gentiles is in turning to the light of the Scriptures of truth. The Bible does not need to say that the law of Moses is to be kept by the Gentiles, for the reason that the whole tenor of the Scripture is to show that the Gentiles, or the heathen—terms that were synonymous—were to be sought for and brought into the fold of salvation; but it nowhere says that the law was exclusively for the Jews. Who will deny that all except the fourth precept of the Decalogue are binding on all the human race? It is because of their unwillingness to obey the fourth commandment that men attempt to prove that the law of God is not binding on Christians. But of this very precept, as if to guard it from such misapplication, Christ says, “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27)—not for the Jews only, but for man as a race. To the Jews was given light which was given to no other nation, simply because they were in a condition to receive it, while the other nations were not. But the truth was not given them to keep to themselves. They were to be priests to the nations around them, “a kingdom of priests.” Ex. 19:6. They were set among the nations to be “a light to the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes” (Isa. 42:6, 7); to declare the glory of the Lord among the Gentiles (Isa. 66:19). Those who try to elude the obligations placed upon them in the Bible, under the claim that these are binding on the Jews only, will find, in the Judgment, that they have rejected the salvation which also is promised to the Jews only. They are like the “unlearned and unstable” spoken of in 2 Peter 3:16, who “wrest . . . the Scriptures, unto their own destruction.” “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”