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Welcome to the photo gallery and news section for
another Sabbath morning at Smyrna Chapel in West Virginia. We hope your
Sabbath hours were a precious experience to you. Once again, it was a
blessing to meet for worship at the Smyrna Sabbath Chapel in West Virginia
on Sabbath, February 24, 2007.
Sabbath School
Sabbath School opened with prayer and then a song
service led by Brother Leon Holt. Pastor Stump shared a brief devotional
from Ellen White on The Value of Pain:
Often the gospel laborer carries on his work amid storms
of persecution, bitter opposition, and unjust reproach. At such times let
him remember that the experience to be gained in the furnace of trial and
affliction is worth all the pain it costs. Thus God brings His children
near to Him, that He may show them their weakness and His strength. He
teaches them to lean on Him. Thus He prepares them to meet emergencies, to
fill positions of trust, and to accomplish the great purpose for which
their powers were given them.
In all ages God’s appointed witnesses have exposed
themselves to reproach and persecution for the truth’s sake. Joseph was
maligned and persecuted because he preserved his virtue and integrity.
David, the chosen messenger of God, was hunted like a beast of prey by his
enemies. Daniel was cast into a den of lions because he was true to his
allegiance to heaven. Job was deprived of his worldly possessions, and so
afflicted in body that he was abhorred by his relatives and friends; yet
he maintained his integrity.
Jeremiah could not be deterred from speaking the words
that God had given him to speak; and his testimony so enraged the king and
princes that he was cast into a loathsome pit. Stephen was stoned because
he preached Christ and Him crucified. Paul was imprisoned, beaten with
rods, stoned, and finally put to death because he was a faithful messenger
for God to the Gentiles. And John was banished to the Isle of Patmos “for
the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
These examples of human steadfastness bear witness to the
faithfulness of God's promises--of His abiding presence and sustaining
grace. They testify to the power of faith to withstand the powers of the
world. . . The believers in Christ, hated and persecuted by the world, are
educated and disciplined in the school of Christ. On earth they walk in
narrow paths; they are purified in the furnace of affliction (Reflecting
Christ, p. 357).
A scripture song was shared for special music, followed
by a season of prayer. The adult lesson study was then led by Brother Holt
and was a continuation of the study on mortality and immortality.
Worship
Service
The Sabbath Worship Hour service began with a little
challenge because the phone lines were down in our little West Virginian
hollow and this precluded a Skype broadcast in the usual manner. However,
with a little juggling and with a little flexibility, the services were
broadcasted using a cell phone located in the back of the chapel in order to
maintain a signal! Melissa sang “Jesus Loves Me” from the back of the
chapel, Brother Holt sang “The Holy City” from the back of the chapel,
Pastor Stump presented his message The Lunar Sabbath Is Not the Bible
Sabbath from the back of the chapel, and our conversations with our
internet listeners occurred at the back of the chapel! In spite of the
challenge, all proceeded fairly well, with the exception that the broadcast
quality was not as clear and strong as we would have liked. For this we are
sorry, and we hope that in spite of the difficulties a blessing was received
by each listener of this very important message.
Pastor Stump clearly stated at the beginning of his
message that he believes lunar Sabbaths are a trap of Satan to use the good
zeal of the saints to disobey God. Reasons why he cannot accept lunar
Sabbaths include:
1) Manna fell for forty years on a weekly cycle. No
provision was made at the beginning of the new month to collect three or
even four extra portions as would be needed under a lunar Sabbath system.
2) The lunar system requires one to miscount the days
as can be seen in the feast of Pentecost.
3) The feast days work prohibitions rule out lunar
Sabbaths. On the seventh-day Sabbath no work was to be done, but on the
feast days no “servile work” was to be done. “No servile work” is a
different prohibition and has an additional Hebrew word than does the
description of the prohibition given for the seventh-day Sabbath. Also, The
Feast of Tabernacles lasted eight days with the first and eighth days being
declared Sabbaths and these days were always on the fifteenth and
twenty-second days of the month (Exodus 23:34-36). If the fifteenth and
twenty-second days were also lunar Sabbaths, then the prohibition for work
should be equal to the seventh-day Sabbath, but it is not.
4) The children of Israel were commanded to work on
what would be considered a lunar Sabbath, as seen in Numbers 10:11, 12, 33;
Exodus 12:29-31; and Numbers 33:3.
5) The weekly cycle is from Eden.
6) In almost all the ancient languages and many modern
languages the word for the seventh day of the week is Sabbath.
7) The Jews are not confused as to when the Sabbath is.
8) The moon’s cycle is not twenty-eight days but
twenty-nine and one half days, making it more difficult to keep track of
when the lunar Sabbath actually begins. This is not so with the seventh-day
Sabbath. Also, when the new moon is in a cloudy sky, you cannot see the new
moon conjunction.
9) And importantly: The lunar Sabbath would require one
to believe that the papacy really did not change the Sabbath. Listen to this
very well: The acceptance of the lunar Sabbath will require one to believe
that the seventh-day Sabbath is NOT YEHOVAH’s day any more than Sunday is!
Ellen White tells us:
In the holiest I saw an ark; on the top and sides of it
was purest gold…I saw the ten commandments written on them with the finger
of God. On one table were four, and on the other six. The four on the
first table shone brighter than the other six. But the fourth, the Sabbath
commandment, shone above them all; for the Sabbath was set apart to be
kept in honor of God's holy name. The holy Sabbath looked glorious--a halo
of glory was all around it. I saw that the Sabbath commandment was not
nailed to the cross. If it was, the other nine commandments were; and we
are at liberty to break them all, as well as to break the fourth. I saw
that God had not changed the Sabbath, for He never changes. But the pope
had changed it from the seventh to the first day of the week; for he was
to change times and laws (Early Writings, p. 32, 33).
The pope made this change, and it was not made from a
lunar Sabbath but from the seventh-day Sabbath!
Messages of every order and kind have been urged upon
Seventh-day Adventists, to take the place of the truth which, point by
point, has been sought out by prayerful study, and testified to by the
miracle-working power of the Lord. But the waymarks which have made us
what we are, are to be preserved, and they will be preserved, as God has
signified through His Word and the testimony of His Spirit. He calls upon
us to hold firmly, with the grip of faith, to the fundamental principles
that are based upon unquestionable authority (Selected Messages,
bk. 1, p. 208).
We are not to receive the words of those who come with a
message that contradicts the special points of our faith. They gather
together a mass of Scripture, and pile it as proof around their asserted
theories. This has been done over and over again during the past fifty
years. And while the Scriptures are God's word, and are to be respected,
the application of them, if such application moves one pillar from the
foundation that God has sustained these fifty years, is a great mistake (Selected
Messages, bk. 1, p. 161).
Watch for a future issue of Old Paths which will
address this topic more fully.
Next week no broadcast will be sent from the Smyrna
Chapel either on Wednesday night or on Sabbath morning, as we will be in
Florida for camp meeting, but we will do our best to broadcast the Smyrna
presentations at camp meeting using a cell phone. The scheduled times and
dates of these presentations are listed in the calendar of
the speaking schedule
May God richly bless you in the coming week is our
prayer.
How
to Listen to our Services
The service can be listened to over the phone by dialing in the United
States 1-605-475-8599 and entering the conference ID of 5126052 when
prompted. The reference number for the audio version of his sermon is
69924. If you are using Skype you may enter +990008271111 on
your Skype call window to access the recording section and, when prompted,
enter room number 5126052 and then the referece number 71283 when prompted.
If you are a listener to the
broadcasts and you would like to have us post a picture of you and/or those
who listen with you, email us a picture at
onycha@smyrna.org and we will post
your picture here for others to see!
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