Saturday: Israelite Apostasy

The worship of Saturn/Moloch by Israel was a hideous, evil practice which led the Israelites into participating in the same degrading rites performed by the Canaanites – for which crimes Yahuwah drove them from the land! As various ancient civilizations descended into the worst forms of idolatry and paganism, moving from occasional sacrificing of the first-born to more whole-sale slaughter, so too, did the Israelites when they began worshipping Saturn/Moloch.

In Jeremiah 32, the heavenly Father states that the reason the Israelites would go into Babylonian captivity (verse 28) was because:

Moloch, receiving a child victim, while a din is made on drums and tambourines.

They built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into My mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. ¹

The "abomination" of the children of Ammon was the worship of Moloch/Saturn, the rites of which included child sacrifice. Babies and children, heavily veiled, were placed on the downward sloping, outstretched arms of the idol, their little bodies rolled down and dropped into a roaring fire beneath. This was called "passing through the fire." Parents were told that their children, thus "purified," were assured of a place in paradise. This most evil of all practices was performed even by the people of Isarel!

[Ahaz] walked in the way of the kings of Isarel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. ²

Ahaz . . . did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father: For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. ³

Ahaz' son, good king Hezekiah, led out in a reformation where all of the groves were cut down and the altars and places of worship were destroyed. He restored the worship of the temple and reinstituted the Passover.⁴This reformation did not continue with Hezekiah's own son, however.

[Manasseh] did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down, and he reared up altars for Baalim, and made groves, and worshipped all the host of heaven [the sun, moon, and stars], and served them. . . . And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used withcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger . . . So Mannasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel. ⁵

The particulars of Israel's apostasies, as recorded in scripture, reveal that the worship of Saturn featured predominantly in their religious rebellions. While modern Saturday Sabbatarians do not worship by burning their children, the fact remains that the day on which one worships, honors the god of that day. Saturn is the god of Saturday. Yahuwah, the Creator, is the Eloah of the seventh-day Sabbath, calculated by His luni-solar calendar. Worship on any other day, calculated by any other calendar, gives honor to a god other than the Creator.

This fact was clearly discerned by Stephen, for in his recital of Israel's history of rebellion before the Sanhedrin just before he was stoned, he quoted Amos' warning to Isarel. In Acts 7, Stephen referred to their marvelous deliverance from Egyptian bondage and leadership under Moses, stating:

This is he [Moses], that was in the ekklesia in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sinai . . . To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then Yahuwah turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to Me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.⁶

Remphan is merely the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word, Chiun. Because of their apostasy in worshipping Saturn, Yahuwah stated that He would allow them to be carried away "beyond Babylon." Babylon originated with Nimrod and is the very foundation of all idolatrous religions coming down through time ever since. The result of rebelliously trying to worship the Creator by a counterfeit system of worship, calculated by a counterfeit method of calendation, is to be given over to that counterfeit system and have the knowledge of the true Sabbath completely lost! In Hosea 2, Yahuwah likens His people to an unfaithful wife who goes whoring after other lovers (gods). As a result, the punishment given in verse 11 is: "I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths ⁷ and all her solemn feasts."⁸

In Amos 5:27, the reference to Israel's apostasy into Saturn worship ends with: "saith Yahuwah, whose name is Eloah of hosts." The word "hosts" ⁹ refers to the sun, moon and stars, the celestial bodies which Israel wanted to worship, rather than worshipping the Creator of the celestial bodies.

The fact that Israel at times worshipped either on Saturn's day or later by a continuous weekly cycle is no evidence that the modern Saturn's day (Saturday) is the Sabbath of Creation. Rather, the accumulation of scriptural and historical evidence supports the interpretation of this act of Israel as being one of gross apostasy and moral rebellion. It is not coincidence that the seventh-day of the modern planetary week, the day on which the majority of sabbatarians worship, is none other than Saturn's day. In fact, one Jewish scholar boasts that a continuous weekly cycle, divorced from the lunar cycle, is the Jews' greatest contribution to modern civilization:

A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history paying no attention whatsoever to the moon and its phases is a distinctively Jewish invention. ¹⁰Moreover, the dissociation of the seven-day week from nature has been one of the most significant contributions of Judaism to civilization. . . . it facilitated the establishment of what Lewis Mumford identified as "mechanical periodicity,"¹¹ thus essentially increasing the distance between human beings and nature. Quasi weeks ¹² and weeks ¹³ actually represent two fundamentally distinct modes of temporal organization of human life, the former involving partial adaptation to nature, and the latter stressing total emancipation from it. The invention of the continuous week was therefore one of the most significant breakthroughs in human beings' attempts to break away from being prisoners of nature and create a social world of their own. ,^{14, 15}

Too long have Jews and Saturday Sabbatarians looked pityingly or contemptuously upon Roman Catholics and Sunday-keeping Protestants. Saturday Sabbatarians who have leveled charges of hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency against those who worship on the first day of the week, are now learning the truth of the Biblical principle: "Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you."¹⁶

The truth is that worship on the seventh-day of a pagan calendar does not direct one's worship to the Creator. When one worships on Saturday, he is showing allegiance to the god of that day, the cruelest, most blood-thirsty of all the gods, Saturn. Yahuwah is "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin."¹⁷In kindness, "the times of this ignorance Yahuwah winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent."¹⁸ The call of repentance going forth today is to return to true Biblical worship on the genuine Sabbath, calculated by Heaven's ordained system of time-keeping: the luni-solar calendar established at Creation.