THE 4th COMMANDMENT

                                                      CHAPTER FOUR

                                    THE 4^th COMMANDMENT

It is important for us to address our selves to the implications of the 4^th Commandment. This Commandment is the heart of The Everlasting Covenant. As is the case with all the other nine Commandments, the 4^th Commandment has to be obeyed from the perspective of and under the guidance of the added sabbatical statutes and judgments. We find that God provided Sabbatical statutes and judgments which are recorded in Exodus 23:10-17.

These statutes demand that in our keeping of the 4^th Commandment, we must observe the three annual festivals of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. The three have a total of seven feasts under them. The devil has twisted the scriptures in his campaign against The Everlasting Covenant to portray the picture that the festivals are no longer valid and that they were abolished on the cross by Jesus. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is in the 4^th Commandment that we find the gospel which is symbolized by the three annual festivals. For instance, it is during the Passover festival that we commemorate and remind ourselves of the selfless sacrifice of Christ as our ultimate Passover sacrifice. This is the time we consider Him as our substitute, model and righteousness. It is wrong to look at the feast celebrations as legalistic in any way considering that we are always called upon to meet and remind ourselves of the merits of Jesus as our Passover lamb.

 The celebrations should carry themes and messages of Christ Our Righteousness. Every feast is a revelation of at least one phase of Jesus’ work to save us. It is during the Passover that we learn of the process of justification as an integral part in the work of salvation. It is during the feast of unleavened bread that we learn of the work of sanctification that Jesus carries in our lives as our sinless bread of life from heaven. The same case applies to all the other feasts where we see the work of final glorification symbolized by the feast of Pentecost.

While the feasts appear to be legalistic from their outside appearance, they carry themes of salvation and the gospel which we cannot get in any other way. We therefore see that the 4^th Commandment is very wide and comprehensive. The entire gospel finds its roots in the 4^th Commandment. The entire Sanctuary system is also entrenched in the 4^th Commandment.

One of the most inspired writers of the gospel has this to say concerning the 4^th Commandment in P&P pg 678, “In the time of the end every divine institution is to be ‘restored’. The breach made in the law at the time the Sabbath was changed by man is to be repaired”. When theses words were spoken, they were directed at saints who were already passionate Sabbath keepers and therefore the issue could not have been on observing Saturday Sabbaths but had to do with some other dimension to do with the 4^th Commandment.

The quoted words imply that when the devil changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, he also did another damage to the same la but which was yet to be discovered by the time these words were being written.

As we have already indicated, the three annual festivals are part and parcel of the 4^th Commandment. Leviticus 23 and Exodus 23 actually refer to the seventh-day Sabbath as much of a feast just like any other. Saturday Sabbaths are supposed to be viewed as feast days. However, Satan ensured that we do not celebrate the appointed times according to the Bible thereby doing a lot of damage to The Everlasting Covenant in general.  (James 2:10)