FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
FROM EGYPTIAN SUN-WORSHIP TO TODAY’S SUNDAY-WORSHIP
The Exodus Movement in the Old Testament for ancient Israel is the type of the Advent Movement for the Church in the New Testament. We often only associate the Exodus as God’s intervention to deliver from bondage and emancipate the Israelites from slave labor by their atheistic Egyptian masters headed by Pharaoh. While this is true there is a far deeper issue being addressed in these two major movements: the Sabbath!
Now this: Taylor Bunch, p. 15. Egypt in the Bible, particularly in prophecy, symbolizes atheism. “While the Egyptians worshipped many gods, their chief god was the sun. In fact all other gods were but various manifestations of the sun-god and his [alleged] creative power in nature. In ‘defining themselves with the idols of Egypt’ they worshipped ‘the hosts of heaven.’ Exo. 20:6-8; Acts 7: 39-42. When the children of Israel forgot the Creator and began to worship the creature, they also CEASED to celebrate the SIGN of the true God and the MEMORIAL of His creative power—the SABBATH. As the true Sabbath gradually lost significance to them they gradually adopted the COUNTERFEIT, the SIGN of idolatry and the memorial of sun-worship.
“The Egyptians dedicated the first day of the week to their first or chief god, Amon Ra, the sun. Since the king of Egypt was the chief pontiff of their religion and the high-priest of sun-worship, he took the dynastic title of PHARAOH which is the Hebrew rendering of Ph Ra—the sun. The Sun’s day finally became known as Sunday. ‘The wild solar holiday of all pagan times.’ – ‘The North British Review, Vol. 18, p. 409.
‘It is not to be denied but we borrowed the name of this day from the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and we allow that the old Egyptians worshipped the sun, and as a standing memorial of their veneration, dedicated this day to him. And we find by the influence of their example, OTHER NATIONS, and among them the JEWS themselves, doing him homage.’- Morer, ‘Dialogue on the Lord’s Day,’ pp. 22,23.
“By the end of the fourth generation the Israelites were in such dense darkness and idolatry that they were but little better than the Egyptians themselves. They were at least SEMI-PAGANS with but little left of the faith and practice of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Exodus Movement was therefore a REFORMATION to lead Israel back to the knowledge of the true God; back to ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3). – Taylor Bunch, ‘Exodus and Advent Movements in Type and Antitype, pp. 15,16, Teach Services, Inc., Bruston, NY.
More on this specific sub-topic tomorrow, God willing, NMF.