Sep 26, 2018
By Jane Mackintosh
Conference President
“Okay, God, You are the One who got me into this, so what do You want to do next year?”
This was the question I asked after I had officially been elected as President Elect and I now had to face the fact that this was real. If you had ever asked me if I would be willing to take on the presidency of our Conference, you would have gotten a snicker and a comment like, “Are you kidding me? I appreciate all those who are willing to do this, but no, thanks!” I guess God has the last laugh.
What I was reminded of that night as I asked the question was something God had so clearly spoken to me 25 years ago, and then sent me on a journey of probably five more years as I sorted through what I thought He meant by what He said—and as He unfolded pieces of the “puzzle” of these seven words that He said, “The Church is returning to the Sabbath.” That was it, but it was so clear as to what He said that it may actually have been audible. I don’t remember how I heard it, just that I heard it, and I knew more surely than if you had been in the room and said it, that this was God’s voice. Usually, when God speaks to me, I will say, “I believe He is saying this, or I sense that this is what He is saying,” but this was different. I knew these were His seven words and it startled me so much, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Yeah right, God! How is that going to happen?” That was a holy response to the King of Kings, wasn’t it? Fortunately, I did recognize immediately that I was way out of line, repented, and then respectfully rephrased my response—and a five year-journey of piece-by-piece God unfolding what I think He means by what He said. Now, please understand that what I actually heard in those seven words was unquestionably God’s Voice. The direction I “sensed” Him taking me on what He meant could be wrong. So, I challenge you to see what direction He takes you with the interpretation of what those seven words mean.
What I first noticed was a phenomenon, to me, of the Church’s shifting attitude toward Israel. I was raised in the era of many in the Church calling the Jewish people “Christ killers,” so seeing the Church returning to blessing Israel was new to me twenty-five years ago. My father was quite a student of the Old Testament, so cursing Israel was not allowed in our home, but I certainly heard it elsewhere. The more I observed of this switch in the Church’s attitude toward Israel, the more I questioned God as to whether this was significant in my interpretation that the return to the Sabbath was speaking of the Church as a whole, not Seventh Day Baptists. I continued to observe, while asking God lots of questions about this, and finally one morning,
I awakened with the Scripture running through my brain, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you…” I sat up in bed and exclaimed, “Oh God, did the early Church curse Israel?” I would encourage you to look up Samuele Bacchiochi, the author to whom I went to find the answer to that question. What you will find is shocking.
When I was a young child, raised in a Southern Baptist family, with our family pedigree full of Southern Baptist pastors, missionaries, deacons etc., I was taught all the Scripture of the Sabbath regularly, only told that the Sabbath was Sunday. Because my dad was a student of the Old Testament, he shocked me with the truth that the Sabbath was actually the seventh day, not the first. And because every good Southern Baptist was taught to brag that everything we do is according to Scripture, I was flabbergasted that we were doing this and no one was correcting anyone. I was all of six or seven years old, and I knew that something was way off and told everyone so. My parents and others tried to explain patiently to me that we worship on Sunday because Jesus rose on the first day of the week—but even my young, childish self knew that didn’t fly Scripturally as an excuse to ignore the Sabbath. I remember feeling very betrayed, but in my small town piece of the world in Southern California, I had no idea that anyone was keeping the Sabbath, so I was a lone voice. Imagine my surprise when I got to college and the first week, met my now brother-in-law in Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship, and heard there were Sabbath-keeping Baptists! I struggled my whole life trying to understand how this truth of Scripture was not blatantly obvious to everyone—so the question of “what happened?” was always close in my thoughts. When the Scripture about blessing and cursing, and my research findings of the early church fathers’ cursing of Israel, became blatantly evident, all those years of wondering what had happened began to fall into place. My question then became—would the Church returning to blessing Israel reverse the curse and blindness about the Sabbath be undone in the rest of the Church? I strongly suspect this is what God meant by those seven words. So my new questions then became, “Is this the reason Seventh Day Baptists have been preserved all these years? Are we in a place to serve the Church in this? Are we ready?” Thus, my theme, “People Get Ready!”
I have a couple of ideas as to what we need to do to get ready, and I will share them in next month’s Sabbath Recorder. What are your ideas? What is God saying to you about People Get Ready?
