The original article can be found here – By Prince Norman Nyazika

Samoan International Dateline (IDL) shift reveals gapping holes in the Saturday Sabbath belief…

Today Did Not Exist for Some Adventists!

Spectrum Magazine | 30 December 2011 » By Alexander Carpenter.

Many folks have contacted Spectrum regarding the “Samoa dilemma.” In short, due to an international date line shift to align the island business with New Zealand and Australia, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Samoa has chosen to stick with a strict interpretation of “seven days” and not leap forward with the rest of their community. As a result, Sabbath will fall on Sunday because Sunday is now the seventh day!

Sunday worship will continue uninterrupted for the majority even though Sunday will have moved from the first day of the week to the seventh and last day. For those like Seventh Day Adventists, who observe the Biblical Sabbath however, the change will present challenges because of the longstanding association of Saturday with the seventh day.

As its name suggests, one of the distinguishing marks of the Seventh Day Adventist faith is its observance of the Biblical Sabbath, which according to scriptures, is on the seventh day of the week: “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: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made” [Genesis 2: 2,3]

At present, the seventh day of the week falls on Saturday like everywhere else.

When Samoa repositions the International Date Line on the 29th December as planned, it will also reallocate the days of the week so that the seventh day of the week in Samoa will now fall on Sunday instead of Saturday as usual.

This means that Adventists in Samoa and the three atolls of Tokelau will no longer be as distinct from other Christians, and they will be worshipping on Sunday which seems to be the crux of the controversy filling the inboxes of the faithful. Some folks seem to be very concerned about the authenticity of these new Seventh-day Sunday-keeping Adventists. I’m not so sure much of the church can even handle this level of abstraction. We can’t even have an informed conversation about the basic science of origins or gender. Now physics? Will our church’s flagship now publish some op-eds questioning the relativity of time and the social construction of the temporal? It looks like www.EducateTime.edu is available.

Happy New Year? Controversy commence!

The SDA Church issues statement 

Thursday, 29 December 2011 | 15:43hrs

‘Officials of the Seventh Day Adventist church have explained their position in relation to the time zone change during a press conference.

The Seventh Day Adventist Church in Samoa yesterday issued a statement to clarify its position on the time zone change, which is happening tonight. The statement is published in full, unedited:

“Scriptural Sabbath and the International Dateline change” 

When Samoa wakes up on the morning of Saturday 31st December, it will find itself sharing the same day of the week, Saturday 31 December with the countries such as NZ and Australia the majority of other Pacific island countries.

Samoa time will have moved forward by a whole 24 hours having skipped Friday 30th December entirely.

The change is the result of government’s plans to change the positioning of the International Date Line in relation to Samoa.

In doing so, Samoa will be in the eastern hemisphere in terms of reckoning of time, together with it’s near neighbours and trading partners. For most purposes, the change will have no practical effect on people’s everyday lives.

But by sharing the same time zones with these countries, the conduct of business and other relations with Samoa’s closest partners and neighbours, not to mention travel will be more convenient and less disruptive, reasons given for the change.

For the Christian community, however, the change will have implications for the two recognized weekly days of worship, Sunday on the first day of the week, and the Biblical Sabbath on the seventh.

Sunday worship will continue uninterrupted for the majority even though Sunday will have moved from the first day of the week to the seventh and last day. For those like Seventh Day Adventists, who observe the Biblical Sabbath however, the change will present challenges because of the longstanding association of Saturday with the seventh day.

As its name suggests, one of the distinguishing marks of the Seventh Day Adventist faith is its observance of the Biblical Sabbath, which according to scriptures, is on the seventh day of the week:

“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. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made” [Genesis 2: 2,3]

At present, the seventh day of the week falls on Saturday like everywhere else. When Samoa repositions the International Date Line on the 29th December as planned, it will also reallocate the days of the week so that the seventh day of the week in Samoa will now fall on Sunday instead of Saturday as usual.

The numbering of the weekly cycle from day one to day seven remains as before but the names of the days will change. Accordingly, and in line with Biblical command on the subject, the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Samoa will continue to observe the biblical Sabbath on the seventh day of the weekly cycle, irrespective of the change of name to Sunday.

The naming of the days of the week of the pagan Gods is a relatively recent human invention after all. The Biblical records of creation refers only to the following, “and the evening and the morning were the first day….

“And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

This formula of recording the days of the week repeat itself until the seventh day when the Lord then rested from all his labour. (Genesis: 1: 8-31, 2:1-3).

In arriving at this potentially challenging decision for the average church followers, the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Samoa has taken every opportunity to consult its membership at home as well as the churches global family.

The decision is grounded on scriptures and guided by established church policies on the subject itself. Similar changes to the International Date Line have already taken place in Samoa’s near neighbours, Kiribati and Tonga. Consistency has been the hallmark of the church’s position in dealing with these government-inspired changes in the recording of time. The Biblical command of observing the seventh day of Tonga today, the Biblical Sabbath is observed on the Sunday following the Tongan government’s decision to change the position of the International Date Line.

In Samoa itself, this will be the second time government have introduced changes in time in relation to the International Date Line. When the Wesleyan and LMS Missionaries first arrived in Samoa in 1828 and 1830 respectively, they adopted for their work in the South Pacific the British system of determining time. It meant that the seventh day of the week in Samoa fell on the same day as Australia, NZ and Other British territories, except it was called Sunday in Samoa and Saturday in these other countries.

In 1884 the International Date Line together with the prime meridian and the 180 Meridian were established as the universally accepted way of recording calendar days by the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC. In 1892 Samoa adopted this universal system for itself, and as a result, the counting of the days of the week fell in the line with rest of the world with the seventh day of the week falling on the Saturday. But that is about to change with Samoa again adopting the eastern hemisphere system of recording the days of the week. When that happens, Monday will be the first day of the week, with the seventh day falling on the Sunday.

For the Seventh Day Adventist, faithful in Samoa, Sunday will coincide with the biblical Sabbath and therefore, the day of worship as commanded by scripture.”

[COMMENT]

The question for a Samoan Seventh-day Adventist is – HOW then does one witness to a other Christians about the Mark of the Beast (Sunday Worship), since they will all now be worshipping on the very same day: SUNDAY?

This glaring inconsistency, which has brought about this particular dilemma for Samoan Seventh-day Adventists, has its roots which can be traced back to the corruption of the Biblical reckoning of time which historically took place as part of the prophesied “falling away,” under the auspices of the Papal Church. Incidentally, this dilemma has revealed the gapping hole in the Saturday Sabbath belief…

THE SOLUTION: Return to Scriptural Calendar!

On Thursday, December 29, 2011, Samoa and Tokelau stepped west into the future, across the International Date Line.  Skipping Friday, December 30th, the next day was declared to be Saturday, December 31st, 2011.  There was simply no Friday in Samoa or Tokelau. The move was purely for economic convenience.  Samoa has close trading ties with Australia, New Zealand, and China.  Being one day “behind” their closest neighbors cut two days (Monday and Friday) off of each work week.

While most Samoans welcome the change, the skipped date presents serious challenges to Christians who conscientiously believe that the week has cycled without interruption since Creation and they need to worship on specific days.  If it is important to worship on a precise day, deleting one day from the calendar has weighty consequences.The fact is, the International Date Line is a relatively recent man-made invention.   It zig-zags its way across the Pacific and has changed several times over the years. The International Date Line is the imaginary line on the Earth that separates two consecutive calendar days.  That is the date in the Eastern hemisphere, to the left of the line, is always one day ahead of the date in the Western hemisphere. It has been recognized as a matter of convenience and has no force in international law.

Without the International Date Line travelers going westward would discover that when they returned home, one day more than they thought had passed, even though they had kept careful tally of the days. This first happened to Magellan’s crew after the first circumnavigation of the globe. Likewise, a person traveling eastward would find that one fewer days had elapsed than he had recorded, as happened to Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in Eighty Days” by Jules Verne.  (“The International Date Line,” United States Naval Observatory)

The Gregorian calendar, which remains the internationally accepted civil calendar around the world to this date, is a solar calendar with a continuous weekly cycle.  On a solar calendar, the days and the years are measured by the sun, but the months and the weeks are purely arbitrary and have no link to anything in nature.  This is what necessitated the International Date Line.  It established a man-made beginning to the day to unite the whole world on one Gregorian date. So the International Date Line has proven to be a real problem for the inhabitants of Samoa.  It was the difficulty of being on a day different from its surrounding neighbors that led Samoa to change the location of the International Date Line.

The International Date Line is an attempt by man to solve a man-made problem: differing weekly cycles that inevitably occur on a round earth when one uses a continuous weekly cycle that is not anchored to the heavenly bodies and the rotation of the earth. However, when one chooses to follow the Luni-Solar calendar, Yahuwah is the Arbiter of time, where the moon governs the monthly and weekly cycles for your specific location.  He removes ALL need of the International Date Line and thus removes ALL dependence on the Gregorian Calendar and other man-made technology.  All you need is the moon to know when the months and weeks begin.

This method of time-keeping, established by Yahuwah at Creation, was the Luni-Solar calendar.  Unlike the solar Gregorian calendar, which uses only the sun for marking time in days and years, the Luni-Solar calendar uses both the sun and the moon for time calculation.

Like the solar Gregorian calendar, the Luni-Solar Biblical calendar uses the sun to measure days and years.  Unlike the solar calendar, however, the Luni-Solar calendar uses the moon for regulating the months.  This, in turn, keeps track of the seven-day weeks, because the weekly cycle restarts with each New Moon.

Here is seen the beauty and symmetry of the heavenly system of time-keeping.  At Creation, Yahuwah specified that the lights (plural) in the heavens were to be used for marking the passage of time and all religious observances.

“And . . . [Yahuwah] said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”  (Genesis 1:14, KJV)

The word “seasons” comes from the word mo’ed.  This is a word widely used to refer to all religious gatherings.  In fact, all of the feasts listed in Leviticus 23 (the first of which is the seventh-day Sabbath) are also called mo’ed.

When the Creator set aside the Sabbath day, and blessed and sanctified it as holy time, He also created a system by which people could keep track of the passage of time so that when the Sabbath came, they could know and worship Him.  It took both the sun and the moon to create this perfect system of time-keeping.

As the anchor to the months and the weeks, the moon regulates time accurately, no matter where you are on Earth.  Thus, were a tribe of Shemites to move east and a tribe of Japhethites to move west and reunite a few years later, they would be united on the same weekly schedule because the basis for their weekly count is anchored in the heavens.  It is not grounded on any man-made institution.

Scripture explicitly states that the moon was created to mark the passage of time:

“He appointed [created] the moon for seasons [mo’ed]: the sun knoweth his going down.”  (Psalm 104:19)

Because the modern weekly cycle has no ties to anything in nature, problems arise that do not exist in the Luni-Solar calendar of Creation: specifically, the need for an arbitrary International Date Line.  A continuous weekly cycle, anchored to nothing in nature, is a man-made institution.  The International Date Line is simply a man-made solution to what is nothing more than a man-made problem.

On the counterfeit pagan/papal calendar, months are arbitrary and dates have an artificial starting point at the International Date Line – which is itself arbitrary and moveable.  Only on the Biblical calendar are months and dates anchored to the lights in the heavens which were given for the express purpose of regulating time.

Yahuwah’s calendar, using the combined action of the sun and the moon for marking the passage of days, weeks, months, and years, will stand forever.  It forms an integral part of the very structure of the heavens.  It can be witnessed and used by everyone on earth, and accurately regulates time and holy days.

“It shall be established forever like the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky.”  (Psalm 89:37)

Those who would not receive the mark of the beast and his image when the decree goes forth, must have decision now to say, “Nay, we will not regard the institution of the beast!”  {EW 67.2}

Upon whose calendar will you choose to worship? The Pope or Yahuwah?

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LATEST REPORT» Samoan SDA Church Dispute Heads To Court:http://sabbathissues.org/2013/03/sda-church-dispute-heads-court/

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