The God Culture: Rest: The Case for Sabbath Book Review
Timothy Jay Schwab of The God Culture has published a new book all about the Sabbath. On the cover he claims there are over 1,000 scripture references which furnish "Bible proof no theologian can dispute." Sadly, he does not provide a scripture index so one can quickly see which verses he has used and which he has ignored. The premise of Rest: The Case for Sabbath is that we must keep the 7th day sabbath and the rest of the Law of Moses. This premise is built upon a rotten foundation of faulty hermeneutics which leads to heretical theology and many wrong conclusions. In this review I want to examine that unsound foundation and show exactly where the cracks and rot are located.
As of this writing the book is only available for purchase at Amazon but soon it will be available for free at restcase.org. A review of the Foreward can be found here.
Timothy begins the book with an exposition of Hebrews 4 calling it a Sabbath sermon. It is apparent that he does not understand that the Jesus mentioned in Hebrews 4 is Joshua and not Jesus Christ. This is important because the author of Hebrews is comparing the two and the rest each one gives. Only Joshua, who led the children of Israel from the wilderness into the Promised Land to find rest from their wanderings, did not give them a true rest. There is "a rest that remaineth." Tim tells us that the “rest that remaineth” is observance of the seventh day Sabbath.
However, after his accession into heaven, Hebrews explains if you are not keeping the Biblical Sabbath, you are an example of unbelief. Ouch! That struck us like a ton of bricks. He proclaims those not entering the Sabbath rest are of no faith.
p. 15
Now, why would the "rest that remaineth" be the seventh day Sabbath when the Israelites were already keeping the Sabbath in the time of Joshua? How can the thing that remains be the same thing which is already occurring? That does not make any sense. Therefore it has to be a rest that is entirely different from the seventh day Sabbath. If Tim is right then we are continually entering into His rest once a week on Saturday. There is no eternal abiding rest from all our works to found in Jesus Christ. Later Tim will write that when Jesus called all who are weary to Him for rest that means resting once a week on the seventh day Sabbath.
“On the Sabbath, Messiah says come and rest in Me. He is specifically speaking of the Sabbath rest as He is Lord of the Sabbath and Hebrews 4 just told us so.”
p. 25
Hebrews 4:3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
This is completely in line with Jesus' call to the weary and heavy laden in Matthew 11. He calls the people to Him to find rest for their souls. That is, rest from the works they exercise that their souls might be right with God and have eternal life.
Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
However, in Tim's interpretation of these verses Jesus is not calling people to Him but to keeping the weekly Sabbath. How much sense does it make for Jesus to be telling a Jewish crowd on the Sabbath that they need to keep the Sabbath? It doesn't make any sense nor does Timothy's interpretation fit with the words of Jesus which declare, "Come unto ME."
Let's talk about interpretation for a moment. In the introduction Tim says:
Certainly, we will interpret and you must prove all things for yourself but these are pretty straightforward references and they are not just abundant, the Sabbath is a theme of the New Testament even after Messiah ascended to Heaven and even in Revelation for those remnant believers according to the words of Jesus(Yahusha).
p.13
If the verses he cites are pretty straightforward then what need is there for him to interpret them? Because he is going to give them his own spin, one that is at odds with what the Church has taught for 2,000 years. In fact when he discusses Paul Tim will insert his own gloss into the text to make it say what he wants it to say.
In Romans 7-8, Paul provides a thorough examination in contrast between the Law of Sin and Death which he characterizes as an opposite Law essentially in place since Adam sinned when it entered. It is not Yahuah'a Law that he interprets as the Law of Moses equal to the Law of of Life in Yahusha the Messiah. Those are the same but what they are not is the Law of Sin and Death. When he rebukes the Law of Sin and Death he is clear it is the Law of the Flesh not Yahuah's Law of the Spirit. For clarity's sake we have included in brackets our interpretation of which Law in which Paul refers because otherwise this can be confusing.
p. 145-146
This makes the text extremely cluttered.
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| Rest: The Case for Sabbath p. 146 |
Romans 7:7-10 KJV
What shall we say then? Is the law sin [Sin & Death]? God forbid. [No, Law is Life the counter Law is Sin and Death] Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: [Law of Life] for I had not known lust [Sin & Death], except the law [Law of Life] had said, Thou shalt not covet [Law of Moses = Law of Life]. But sin [Sin & Death], taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law [Law of Life] sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once [Law of Life]: but when the commandment came, sin revived [Sin & Death], and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life [Law of Life], I found to be unto death [Sin & Death].
After giving his own convoluted interpretation of Paul, he calls it a ping pong match, Tim writes:
Paul is misrepresented in saying the Law of Moses is somehow the Law of Sin and Death. However, that is not what he explains. There are two laws at work and they are opposites. He rebukes and in a later letter says we have been redeemed from the curse of the Law of Sin and Death. We have but we keep the Law of Life that is the opposite. If you are not, you are not reading Paul. Realize that if Paul just said he is at war with the Law of Moses, he would be saying he is killing, stealing, etc. That is an insane interpretation yet essentially waht many church doctrines hold.
If your denomination is claiming the Law of Life or Moses is the one that is Sin and Death they have no foundation in Scripture.
p. 148-149
I hate to break it to Tim but that is exactly what Paul does in 2 Corinthians 3. He calls the Law of Moses the ministry of condemnation and death.
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
Paul also compares the Law of Moses to Hagar and calls it bondage.
Galatians 4:22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
Note that Paul does not denigrate the law. He calls it glorious just as in Romans 7:12 he calls it holy, just, and good. But he also says it is the ministry of death and that it has been done away with. And that redemption from the curse of the law of which Tim writes in the above paragraph? It's a redemption from the curse of the Law of Moses.
Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.
13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
The curse of the law of Moses is the punishment we must undergo for not keeping the law perfectly. And Tim acknowledges that we do not keep the law perfectly!
Many will ask, "How do I know I am saved then?" The Bible tells us we know that He abides with us if we keep His Commandments. Yes, we sinned we repent and ask forgiveness. No one has ever kept the Law perfectly except Messiah.
p. 400
This advice undermines Timothy's entire case for keeping the law. Repentance? Even Esau repented. Repentance won't save a man, not without Jesus Christ being its focus and center. What saves a man is Jesus Christ. Never forget that what saved the thief on the cross was his confession and faith in Jesus Christ and not anything else. Through faith we are united to Jesus and His righteousness becomes ours. Whether it's a created and imputed righteousness as the Protestants teach or theosis as the Orthodox teach, it is the righteousness of Christ and our participation in and union with Him that saves us.
In having everyone keep the law Timothy Jay Schwab, and every other Adventist, Hebrew Roots. or Judaizing Messianic group, would leave us all in bondage and under a curse, the very curse from which Jesus Christ came to redeem us. He especially would have the entire nation of the Philippines under a curse because his mission is to restore the law in full in this nation. Does Tim not know that in Deuteronomy 28 God lists only 11 blessings for keeping the law and 50 curses for breaking it?
As I noted above while Paul does call the law the ministry of condemnation and death he also calls it glorious and holy, just, and good. That is not a contradiction. The law is good not because it gives life but because in the preaching of the law a sense of sin is awakened in us causing us to realize that we stand condemned before God. The law then fulfills its task as being a schoolmaster to lead us to Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:24-25) who is Life and who lives within us and gives us true rest, the rest that Joshua could not give to the children of Israel. Paul writes that we are the temple of God and that God make his abode with us.
1 Corinthian's 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1 Corinthians 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
Here are two verses which not only contradict Tim's blasphemous denial of the Holy Spirit's divinity but also wreck his false teaching about the Holy of Holies. Tim teaches that the Holy of Holies on earth where God physically dwells is the Garden of Eden which is buried beneath the Sulu Sea just off the coast of the Philippines near Tubbatha Reef.
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| Solomon's Gold Series - Part 12D: Garden of Eden FOUND!. Ophir, Philippines |
"And he knew that the Garden of Eden is the Holy of Holies and the dwelling of Yahuah" and where's that? In Shem's tents. So, what!? Now we find that in the Philippines. Watch Solomon's Gold series and no it is not above ground but enclosed as the Hebrew word gan means enclosed garden not just garden.
For Yahuah physically dwells in his Holy of Holies on earth. Oh, who would want to know where the Garden of Eden is? Well, because that's where his Holy of Holies is, duh!
That is so ridiculous and wrong. WE are the Holy of Holies on earth because it is IN US, that is believers, that God dwells. God's dwelling place on earth is NOT beneath the floor of the Sulu Sea but IN US and in His Church which is both the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God on earth. The Bible doctrine of salvation which is union with Christ and participation in his divinity so that we become like Him is much more wonderful than the law keeping, Judaizing dreck Tim has to offer and which he even says one can lose.
Yes, Scripture has always defied the modern doctrine of "once saved always saved." One can certainly lose their salvation.
p. 20
Compare that vomit with the "exceeding great and precious promises" given to us in Scripture.
2 Peter 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Jesus Christ fulfills the entire law for us. What does that mean? According to Tim it means He kept it as an example for us to follow after.
“He just said the Law remains and I will not abolish it but fulfill it or keep it as an example for you.
p. 113-114.
Let us take a look at this English word fulfill. What does it mean? Here is what Merriam-Webster 's Dictionary defines...p.29
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| https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g4137/kjv/tr/0-1/ |
πληρόω plēróō, play-ro'-o; from G4134; to make replete, i.e. (literally) to cram (a net), level up (a hollow), or (figuratively) to furnish (or imbue, diffuse, influence), satisfy, execute (an office), finish (a period or task), verify (or coincide with a prediction), etc.:—accomplish, after, (be) complete, end, expire, fill (up), fulfil, (be, make) full (come), fully preach, perfect, supply.
Christ completed the law. He finished the law and brought to an end by executing it fully. All the shadows of the law were perfected and brought to reality in and by Him. He is the Passover lamb sacrificed for us, He is God tabernacling in human flesh, He is the firstfruits from the dead, His blood is sprinkled on the mercy seat in Heaven making atonement for us, He sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost just as He gave Moses the law on that same day, and on it goes as all the sacrifices and all the feasts and all the holy days are brought to their completion and fulfillment in Him. The book of Hebrews is very explicit that Christ completed the law by becoming incarnate and shedding his own blood for us.
Hebrews goes on further to say that Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek and not of Levi. That is to say Christ is not a Levitical priest who ministers after the law of Moses. This is important because it means that the law has been changed.
Hebrews 7:12 For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.
“He does not say that He changes His laws.”
p. 19
Let's sum up. Timothy teaches that we must keep the seventh day Sabbath and the rest of the law of Moses because Jesus Christ did not come to do away with the law. The law of Moses is in fact the law of the Spirit and Life. Of course, the Law is a whole and it all stands or falls together which means if the Law of Moses is valid today that includes sacrifices because they are perpetual statues. See Num 19:1-10 for instance. You can’t have one part of the law done away with and the other part remaining. The Bible never says such a thing. The Bible does tell us that the law is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ and that Christ is the end of the law to everyone that believes. It never says Christ is the end of only a part of the law. But this is what Timothy Jay Schwab teaches when he says we must keep the whole law including circumcision but sacrifices are excluded. It would appear the prohibition on shaving is also excluded as Timothy Jay Schwab has a smooth face.
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| Yes, I know he has stubble in this photo but that does not change the point which is keeping the law means you don't shave and Tim shaves |
Leviticus 19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
This is the flimsy foundation on which the rest of the book is built. It is rotten to the core. Tim does not understand the nature of Christ's mission to fulfill the law. He does not understand the rest spoken of in Hebrews 4. He does not understand the priesthood of Christ and what it means that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. By adding his own gloss he twists Paul to say things he does not. He claims that keeping the law does not save us but, contrary to his protestations, that is exactly where his faithless, graceless system leads. The man is on record saying, “we aren't to just have faith in Yahusha. That’s not enough. That’s not it. No, no, no, no. We are to keep His commandments" and "The Law is what redeems us."
https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-god-culture-law-is-what-redeems-us.html
Everything after chapter 7 is built on the rotten theological foundation laid out above which makes it not even worth reviewing here though I shall do so in another article. Tim starts off with a wrong premise which leads him to wrong conclusions. His arguments are, for the most part, straw men (who says Paul hates the law or that Jesus Christ broke the Sabbath or that the Apostles did not keep the Sabbath?) or they exhibit a total misunderstanding of history. From the way he cites the Early Church Fathers it is very clear he is not familiar with what they teach and has not read their writings. As he admits just before he cites them:
Much of the remainder of this history was compiled by the Seventh-Day Adventists largely. They have done well in their record keeping.
p. 221
Not only does Tim rely on the SDA to do his research but he also cribs several citations concerning the Fathers from an article on the website Detecting Design, run by an SDA minister named Sean Pitman, which he fails to attribute properly by not including the URL in the footnotes.
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| p. 426 |
This is not the work of a real researcher. A real researcher would not rely on a group that has an obvious bias and parrot their talking points but instead he would actually read the Fathers and attempt to understand why celebrating the Sabbath fell out of practice. He would learn Church history from the sources and would not quote-mine secondary sources to prove a point. But Tim is not a real researcher and so he is content with not going deeper. Instead of striving for understanding he is satisfied with calling the Church, again and again, the Synagogue of Satan which means to take him and his book seriously one has to believe Jesus lied when He said He would build his Church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. There is only one entity in the history of the world that can trace its roots back to the Apostles and it's not the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Hebrew Roots movement, or The God Culture.
Timothy Jay Schwab is not even honest enough to admit that the Early Church celebrated BOTH the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. He probably does not even know this is the case because he is reliant on the research of Seventh Day Adventists among others. Here is a citation from a student of John the Apostle which, to no one's big surprise, is not to be found in Tim's book. From the longer version of the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians:
But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them. And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's Day as a festival, the resurrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week].
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/ignatius-magnesians-longer.html
The SDA call this letter a fraud but fraud or not it is a witness to an early tradition just as the Didache, which apparently Tim is unaware is included in the Ethiopian Canon which he lauds when he attempts to find support for the canonicity of Jubilees, is also such a witness. What a difference between Ignatius' instructions to keep the Sabbath in a spiritual manner and Timothy's instructions to keep the sabbath after a sensual and carnal manner. As much as Tim would like to identify with the Sabbath keeping Early Church before it allegedly departed from the faith he still falls short!
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| Recipe for Rest, Instructions for Keeping the Sabbath, p. 248-249 |
The rest of Rest: The Case for Sabbath deals with how to keep the Sabbath and the exact time of the Sabbath. Tim teaches that the Bible has a strictly solar, 364 day calendar which is impossible.
The Bible calendar is 30-day months plus and added intercalary day at the end of each quarter for 364 days.
p. 300
That is actually a description of the Enoch Calendar, not the Bible calendar. There are 365 1/4 days in a year. It just goes to show that The Book of Jubilees, The Book of Enoch, and the Qumran Community are not reliable witnesses to Biblical truth. Rest: The Case for Sabbath touches on many subjects and there is a lot of revelation here about the author’s methods and beliefs. I will expound on them in a future article but for now I will end this review with two such instances.
“Today, a regular person can go to resources like Blue Letter Bible and become a sort of Hebrew expert legitimately.”
p. 33
One can only surmise that this is how Timothy became familiar with Hebrew. It would certainly explain why in his other materials he shows a complete lack of mastery of the subject, telling us that there are Hebrew place-names in the Philippines because some Taglog and Hebrew words sound familiar. An “internet expert” is no expert.
“Many assume Adam was evil and there is no evidence he ever sinned after he was tricked in the Garden. He made the conscious decision to willfully sin no doubt. However, Adam only ate the fruit after he saw the love of his life do so. He knew she would fall and no longer be with him if so. His eating the fruit is the greatest love story.”
p. 79
The heresy and blasphemy here should be rather obvious so I won’t comment on it. Suffice to say the fall of Adam was a tragedy for all mankind and not “the greatest love story.” Timothy Jay Schwab has no idea of the sinfulness of sin or the depth of the fall to write any of that nonsense about Adam never sinning after he left the Garden.
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