THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

Preface
The Early Christian Sabbath
The character and example of Jesus Christ should pervade and illumine
everything in Christian life and practice. What He was, His church should be. What He
did, His church should do. What He disapproved, His church should disapprove. He is
the church's pattern, and to follow Him is the church's duty.
But Christ did not cut loose from His past. He made all things new (2 Corinthians
5: 17) by that creative and regenerating power He had within Himself, by which He
removed the dross and restored the good. But He declared Himself the maintainer of all
the permanent good of the past: a fulfiller, not a destroyer. Matthew 5:17, 18. He upheld
the teachings of the Old Testament in the Sermon on the Mount. He beautified them, and
intensified them, by getting to the heart of their meanings. He showed Himself to be the
accomplishment of the hopes and longings of the inspired Old Testament writers. Luke
24:2,7,44.
But Christ condemned tradition. In this He did well, for tradition is in its very
nature untrustworthy. Too often, as Jesus pointed out (Matthew 15:9, 13), it sets itself at
variance with that which is eternally true, and negates what is of permanent value.
Tradition has done this with the Sabbath of which Jesus is Lord, and which. He
uniformly observed. It is the purpose of this book to show how tradition has sought to
accomplish its unauthorized work upon the Sabbath of Jesus and the apostles.
FRANK H. YOST.
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