If you keep the Sabbath because, as you think, it was kept before the law of Moses, why do you not practice circumcision, seeing it is plainly commanded in those ages? (Genesis 17:1-14; Galatians 5:1-6.)
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We keep the Sabbath because it is one of the precepts of the eternal, unchangeable moral Law of God, which Paul declares to be "holy, and just, and good" (Romans 7:12); but we do not practice circumcision, because it was one of the national rites of the Jews and part of the ceremonial law which was nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14). "Is any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the Commandments of God." 1Corinthians 7:18, 19.
When did patriarch, prophet, apostle, or anybody else, command any Gentile to keep the law of Moses? No dodging here. Proof! Proof! Proof!
Before exposing the glaring fallacy in this question we will present the tract-writer with a counter question which will be an infinitely harder "nut" to crack than the much-punctuated one he has propounded. Here it is "When did anybody of authority command anybody either to keep Sunday, or to keep no day, or to refrain from observing the seventh day? No dodging here. Proof! Proof! Proof?
This question is based on the fallacious assumption that if a Command of God was observed by the Jews it does not apply to other races. The Ten Commandments which this tract-writer persists in calling "the law of Moses" were and are the words of God; for the Bible says, just before quoting the Ten Commandments, "God spoke all these words." (Exodus 20:1-17) The law of God applies to all the world. (Romans 3:19) "Now we know that what things so ever the law said, it said to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." No man is guilty "before God" unless the law applies to his case.
Furthermore, all men are to be judged by the law which forbids murder and adultery. (James 2:10-12) This is then the Ten Commandment law. But men are not judged by a law which they are under no obligation to obey. Therefore all men are under obligation to obey the Ten Commandment law, for James declares they will be judged by it.
- Hard Nuts Cracked, The Law of Circumcision, H.M.S. Richards |
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