The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Observing the Sabbath

1) I do agree that deliberately choosing not to attend worship; corporate worship, is a violation of the Fourth Commandment. This does NOT mean one must go to just ANY church, for many churches are guilty of offering profane worship. But where there is a biblical church that preaches the true doctrines of Scripture, enjoins hearers to be sanctified in Christ by putting into practice those truths and disciplines those who are living in unrepentant sin, one must attend. Whether or not the refusal to do so is the "grossest" sin one could commit against the Fourth Commandment I'll let you decide. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> I personally can think of a few things which I think are far worse.

2) I think one should do what one can to attend worship, e.g., [1] morning and evening service if available. There are situations where this is not possible, of course. But on the whole, I think it is not unreasonable nor impossible for most to do. There are situations where a church is in "transition", i.e., moving from a solid conservative stance to a compromising stance where they have one or more "alternative" services to accommodate those who desire a more contemporary worship style. So, there may be one "conservative/traditional" service and another or more "contemporary [aka: profane]" service. In those situations it would not be mandatory nor even recommended that one attend the contemporary service.

3) Re: reading the Sunday newspaper. Well, I would tend to agree that reading the Sunday newspaper does not fulfill what God desires of His people to do on the Sabbath. With the plethora of reading material available which most of us will hardly even begin to exhaust, which exalts Christ and is beneficial to our growing in grace, it seems to me that one would consider the Sabbath a blessed opportunity to take advantage of the time allowed to read them. Sunday's newspaper can be read on any other day, right? The Sabbath is also provides a golden opportunity to visit the elderly and infirm, those imprisoned, providing food, clothing, etc., to the homeless and/or needy, etc. In other words the Sabbath, in addition to providing a time to cease from our daily labours and concerns to worship God with the corporate gathering of the saints, it also provides an opportunity to do those works of mercy which we might not otherwise have time to do. In short, there are more than enough God-honoring things to occupy our time on the Sabbath. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/idea.gif" alt="" />