Does a Christian need to observe sabath laws.....

The word “sabbath” comes from a Hebrew word meaning “to rest; to cease.” It first appears in the Bible in commands given to the nation of ancient Israel. (Exodus 16:23) For example, the fourth of the Ten Commandments says: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it sacred. You are to labor and do all your work for six days, but the seventh day is a sabbath to Jehovah your God. You must not do any work.” (Exodus 20:8-10) 

The Sabbath day ran from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. During that time, the Israelites could not leave their locality, light a fire, gather wood, or carry a load. (Exodus 16:29; 35:3; Numbers 15:32-36; Jeremiah 17:21) Violating the Sabbath was a capital offense.—Exodus 31:15.

Some other days in the Jewish calendar, as well as the 7th and 50th years, were also called sabbaths. In Sabbath years, the land was to lie uncultivated and Israelites could not be pressed to repay debts.—Leviticus 16:29-31; 23:6, 7, 32; 25:4, 11-14; Deuteronomy 15:1-3.

Jesus’ sacrifice made the Sabbath law obsolete

Why doesn’t the Sabbath law apply to Christians?

The Sabbath law applied only to the people subject to the rest of the Law given through Moses. (Deuteronomy 5:2, 3; Ezekiel 20:10-12) God never required other people to observe a sabbath rest. In addition, even the Jews were “released from the Law” of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. (Romans 7:6, 7; 10:4; Galatians 3:24, 25; Ephesians 2:15) Rather than adhere to the Law of Moses, Christians follow the superior law of love.—Romans 13:9, 10; Hebrews 8:13.

Misconceptions about the Sabbath

Misconception: God instituted the Sabbath when he rested on the seventh day.

The Bible says: “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Genesis 2:3, King James Version) This verse contains, not a law to man, but a statement of what God did on the seventh creative day. The Bible does not mention anyone observing a sabbath rest before the days of Moses.

Misconception: The Israelites were under the Sabbath law before they received the Law of Moses.

 Moses told the Israelites: “Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb,” the area around Mount Sinai. This covenant included the Sabbath law. (Deuteronomy 5:2, 12) The Israelites’ experience with the Sabbath shows that it was new for them. If the Israelites had been under some Sabbath law earlier, while they were in Egypt, how would the Sabbath have reminded them of their deliverance from Egypt as God said it would? (Deuteronomy 5:15) Why did they have to be told not to pick up manna on the seventh day? (Exodus 16:25-30) And why did they not know how to handle the case of the first recorded Sabbath breaker?—Numbers 15:32-36.

Do you not need to ask for forgiveness from God after sinning as a Christian

“what happens if I sin, and then I die before I have an opportunity to confess that sin to God as a Christian?”
 
“what happens if I commit a sin, but then forget about it and never remember to confess it to God?”

Both of these questions rest on a faulty assumption. Salvation is not a matter of believers trying to confess and repent from every sin they commit before they die. Salvation is not based on whether a Christian has confessed and repented of every sin. Yes, we should confess our sins to God as soon as we are aware that we have sinned. However, we do not always need to be asking God for forgiveness.
 
When we place our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, all of our sins are forgiven. That includes past, present, and future, big or small. Believers do not have to keep asking for forgiveness or repenting in order to have their sins forgiven.

Jesus died to pay the penalty for all of our sins, and when they are forgiven, they are all forgiven (Colossians 1:14; Acts 10:43). What we are to do is confess our sins: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). What this verse tells us to do is “confess” our sins to God. The word “confess” means “to agree with.”

When we confess our sins to God, we are agreeing with God that we were wrong, that we have sinned. God forgives us, through confession, on an ongoing basis because of the fact that He is “faithful and just.” How is God “faithful and just”? He is faithful by forgiving sins, which He has promised to do for all those who receive Christ as Savior. He is just by applying Christ’s payment for our sins, recognizing that the sins have indeed been atoned for. At the same time, 1 John 1:9 does indicate that somehow forgiveness is dependent on our confessing our sins to God. How does this work if all of our sins are forgiven the moment we receive Christ as Savior? It seems that what the apostle John is describing here is the fact that we have forgiveness since we have a faithful God to forgive us all our sins. All of our sins are forgiven the moment we receive Christ as Savior. This forgiveness guarantees our salvation and promise of an eternal home in heaven. When we stand before God after death, God will not deny us entrance into heaven because of our sins. That is positional forgiveness.

 The concept of forgiveness is based on the fact that when we sin, we offend God and grieve His Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). While God has ultimately forgiven us of the sins we commit, they still result in a blocking or hindrance in our relationship with God. A young boy who sins against his father is not cast out of the family. A godly father will forgive his children unconditionally. At the same time, a good relationship between father and son cannot be achieved until the relationship is restored. This can only occur when a child accepts his mistakes to his father and apologizes. That is why we should not commit sins to God—not to maintain our salvation, but to bring ourselves back into close fellowship with the God who loves us and has already forgiven us.

Fofc.org Sourced.... the importance of soul winning over doctrinal versatality

Soul Winning and Sound Doctrine Earlier I posted an excerpt from The Soul Winner, written in the late 1800s, in which Charles Spurgeon warned against the danger of prizing doctrinal precision without striving to win souls.

 Yet Spurgeon also emphasized that if we are to win souls, then we must hold sound doctrine and preach the true gospel.

 Here's a snippet: "If they will be faithful reporters of Christ's message, He will make them 'fishers of men.'

But you know the boastful method, nowadays, is this: 'I am not going to preach this old, old gospel, this musty Puritan doctrine.

I will sit down in my study, and burn the midnight oil, and invent a new theory; then I will come out with my brand-new thought, and blaze away with it.'

 Many are not following Christ, but following themselves, and of them the Lord may well say, 'Thou shalt see whose word shall stand, Mine or theirs.' ... Certain things not taught in the Bible our enlightened age has discovered.

Evolution may be clean contrary to the teaching of Genesis, but that does not matter. We are not going to be believers of Scripture, but original thinkers. This is the vain-glorious ambition of the period. Mark you, in proportion as the modern theology is preached, the vice of this generation increases.

 To a great degree, I attribute the looseness of the age to the laxity of the doctrine preached by its teachers. From the pulpit they have taught that sin is a trifle. From the pulpit these traitors to God and to His Christ have taught the people that there is no hell to be feared... They have given the people the name of the gospel, but the gospel itself has evaporated in their hands."

Christ the solid foundation

Those who wrote the original (90 essays, printed in 12 volumes) articles about the unchanging foundation stones of Christian belief cited the Word of God and contrasted the contrary teachings of liberals in a way that made it clear to me. I was committed to what the Bible teaches because I was truly regenerate. Others were opposing or denying teaching of the Bible. Both cannot be right. God speaks truth, or God is a liar. God says Scripture is His infallible message to mankind. Some were calling God a liar. Jesus said He was from God, come into this world to save the lost. Liberals were saying Jesus was a mere man, born like any other man, and limited the same as all other men. He was just a better teacher and unfortunately died early.

Jesus taught He would lay down His life to redeem mankind. Liberals taught a variety of supposed ways to get to heaven. God says there is only the one way. Jesus proclaimed that all men must be born again to be right with God. Liberals promoted good works, clean living, being kind to the poor, etc., things Jesus had indicated should be characteristic of one born again, but of no value to get to heaven. Jesus declared He would come again to take His Own unto Himself. Liberals were teaching that the rapture and millennial reign of Jesus were extremist interpretations.

The typical American view of all this was quite different. People would judge, “He believes 99 per cent the same as historic Christians; for a mere one point of difference you would call him an apostate, a denier of the faith?” Of a person’s teaching, we can judge; of his relation to the Lord, only God can judge. But one who denies the existence of God, the genuineness of His Word, the eternality of His Son – that is, the fundamental teachings of Christianity — is not to be considered a Christian.

Men would point to the character and ministry of a teacher and not be bothered that he denied or opposed the teaching of Scripture. Many were deceived through those days. Similar deception is still possible in our day.

In tribulation; be of good cheer

Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation ...” (John 16:33). Most of us, though, have positive expectations for the future. But what if life is not as we had hoped it would be? How do we manage the unexpected, and the not-so-desirable turn of events?

To the paralytic man lying helpless on a bed, Jesus proclaimed, “Be of good cheer” (Matthew 9:2). To the frightened Apostles battling the tempestuous sea, Jesus appeared on the water, declaring, “Be of good cheer” (Matthew 14:27). To Nephi the son of Nephi, who was subject to an arbitrary law threatening his life and the lives of other righteous Nephites if the signs prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite didn’t occur, the Lord said, “Lift up your head and be of good cheer” (3 Nephi 1:13).

 As Joseph Smith met with ten elders about to be sent out, two by two, to missions fraught with trouble and danger, the Lord announced, “Be of good cheer” (D&C 61:36). In each instance the people had every reason to be anxious, fearful, and hopeless, yet the Lord directed them toward a reason to rejoice.
How does the Lord’s admonition of cheer sound when it is applied to you and me in our world today? When economic uncertainties, terrorist threats, and corruption provide top stories for the evening news, where does the good news of the gospel intervene? When we experience personal loss in so many ways and on so many days, what is left to be cheerful about?
THE KEY TO CHEERFULNESS
We find the key to understanding this seeming contradiction in the context of the Last Supper. Speaking to the Apostles in His final moments before Gethsemane, Jesus said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). “How was it possible for the Twelve to be of good cheer?” Elder Neal A. Maxwell asked.
The unimaginable agony of Gethsemane was about to descend upon Jesus; Judas’ betrayal was imminent. Then would come Jesus’ arrest and arraignment; the scattering of the Twelve like sheep; the awful scourging of the Savior; the unjust trial; the mob’s shrill cry for Barabbas instead of Jesus; and then the awful crucifixion on Calvary. What was there to be cheerful about? Just what Jesus said: He had overcome the world! The atonement was about to be a reality. The resurrection of all mankind was assured. Death was to be done away with—Satan had failed to stop the atonement. [But a Few Days (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1983), 4]

I wish to focus my remarks today on the role of Christ’s enabling power in our ability to feel cheer amid mortal gloom and doom. Misfortune and hardship lose their tragedy when viewed through the lens of the Atonement. The process could be explained this way: The more we know the Savior, the longer becomes our view. The more we see His truths, the more we feel His joy. But it is one thing to know that’s the right answer in a Sunday School class and quite another to experience firsthand a cheerful outlook when current circumstances are far from what we hoped. If we would develop faith to apply the Atonement in this manner and not merely talk about it, awareness of imaginary finite boundaries, inadvertently placed on the Savior’s infinite sacrifice, can be meaningful. Consider two false assumptions that, if pursued, will block our appreciation and access to the Lord’s divine assistance.
First is the false assumption that, if we are good enough, we can avoid having bad things happen to us and those we love. If we can just keep all of the commandments and pay an honest tithing and have daily prayer and scripture study, we can appease God, earn His good pleasure, and thereby assure ourselves of His protection from heartache, accident, or tragedy. When such thinking drives us, we “want victory without battle,” Elder Maxwell observed, “and expect campaign ribbons merely for watching” (Men and Women of Christ [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991], 2). So trials will surely come, including when we are trying to do everything right. Elder Richard G. Scott warned, “Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously.” He explains that a “reason for adversity is to accomplish the Lord’s own purposes in our life that we may receive the refinement that comes from testing” (“Trust in the Lord,” Ensign, November 1995, 16).
If we hold the belief that God will shield us from tribulation because of our obedience and then adversity strikes, we may be tempted to accuse God of not hearing our prayers or, worse, that He doesn’t honor His promises. Obedience to God is not insurance against pain and sadness. Some unpleasant things just come with this telestial turf. Challenges have always been included in God’s great plan to test our faith, to stimulate in us growth, humility, and compassion. Heartache and struggle were divinely designed to stretch us to where we have nowhere else to turn but to God.
The ground was cursed for Adam’s sake, and Eve was promised that her sorrow (or hardships) would be multiplied (see Genesis 3:16–17). The Apostle Paul acknowledged, “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, . . . to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure” (2 Corinthians 12:7). The Lord required Sariah to send her sons back into harm’s way before she found her own conviction of God’s will for her family (see 1 Nephi 5:1–8). Christ’s mission was never intended to prevent hearts from breaking but to heal broken hearts; He came to wipe away our tears, not to ensure that we would never weep (see Revelation 7:17). He clearly promised, “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33).

We cannot know the future, but we certainly know this — we will have unforeseen difficulties that take us by surprise. This happens to everyone. While some appear to live a fairly trouble-free life, we cannot know what may be happening in their lives.

Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany and died in 1827 in Vienna, Austria. He was one of the most gifted composers in history. He composed nine symphonies, six overtures, thirty-two piano sonatas, nineteen sonatas for strings, seven concertos, one opera, and numerous other works.

It was 1802. He was 32 years old, and miserable. Why? He was losing his hearing. He had tried all the remedies, but it seemed inevitable, and he eventually became totally deaf. He wrote to his brothers, “What a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. . . Such incidents drove me almost to despair. A little more of that and I would have ended my life.”

Had Beethoven’s difficulties overcome his passion, the world may have never known the extent of his musical genius.

But what about ordinary people? We may not consider ourselves so gifted, with some unique genius to give the world. When we face challenges, we may have no special passion from which to draw strength. How can we overcome despair?

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). What Christians do have is the knowledge of the gospel. Therein is the Christian’s gift to the world (cf. Romans 1:16). In this he has a purpose and strength for living. He has knowledge of the double-cure, greater than a cure for diseases and more consequential than all the medical research of the day.

We do have a strength for living that counter-balances all our unforeseen challenges and disappointments, if we have obeyed the gospel and we are living with sincerity and diligence, with heaven as our primary objective.

Blaspheming the holy spirit,is it an unpardonable sin?

 This particular type of blasphemy cannot be duplicated today. The Pharisees were in a unique moment in history: they had the Law and the Prophets, they had the Holy Spirit stirring their hearts, they had the Son of God Himself standing right in front of them, and they saw with their own eyes the miracles He did. 
There was not any time when in the history of the world (and never since) had so much divine light been granted to men; if anyone should have recognized Jesus for who He was, it was the Pharisees. Yet they chose defiance. They purposely attributed the work of the Spirit to the devil, even though they knew the truth and had the proof. Jesus declared their willful blindness to be unpardonable. Their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was their final rejection of God’s grace. They had set their course, and God was going to let them sail into perdition unhindered.

Jesus told the crowd that the Pharisees’ blasphemy against the Holy Spirit “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matthew 12:32). This is another way of saying that their sin would never be forgiven, ever. Not now, not in eternity. As Mark 3:29 puts it, “They are guilty of an eternal sin.”

The immediate result of the Pharisees’ public rejection of Christ (and God’s rejection of them) is seen in the next chapter. Jesus, for the first time, “told them many things in parables” (Matthew 13:3; cf. Mark 4:2). The disciples were puzzled at Jesus’ change of teaching method, and Jesus explained His use of parables: “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. . . . Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matthew 13:11, 13). Jesus began to veil the truth with parables and metaphors as a direct result of the Jewish leaders’ official denunciation of Him.

Again, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit cannot be repeated today, although some people try. Jesus Christ is not on earth—He is seated at the right hand of God. No one can personally witness Jesus performing a miracle and then attribute that power to Satan instead of the Spirit.

The unpardonable sin today is the state of continued unbelief. The Spirit currently convicts the unsaved world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). To resist that conviction and willfully remain unrepentant is to “blaspheme” the Spirit. There is no pardon, either in this age or in the age to come, for a person who rejects the Spirit’s promptings to trust in Jesus Christ and then dies in unbelief. The love of God is evident: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And the choice is clear: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (John 3:36).