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4 Hope of Israel Ministries BIBLE Correspondence Course Lesson 8

SIX days? Review quickly Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, COMMENT: How could Laban have
19, 23, 31. known of the WEEKLY CYCLE UNLESS that
2. And what did YEHOVAH GOD do on knowledge had been preserved by YEHOVAH’s
the SEVENTH day -- the SABBATH Day? Sabbath-keeping servants during the nearly two
Genesis 2:2. Does the Bible plainly say He thousand years that elapsed since creation?
RESTED? Same verse. “Sabbath” means REST This is further evidence that righteous
in the Hebrew and Greek languages. men of old preserved the true weekly cycle by
3. Did YEHOVAH also “sanctify” -- that keeping the SEVENTH-DAY Sabbath of the
is, SET APART and make HOLY -- this first lunar week holy!
seventh day by RESTING on it? Genesis 2:3. 6. Did even the HEATHEN know which
Notice the words, “sanctified it: BECAUSE that day is YEHOVAH God’s Sabbath?
in it He had RESTED.” COMMENT: Yes, they did! In the
COMMENT: This special SEVENTH library of King Ashurbanipal of Assyria (6th
day which YEHOVAH created by RESTING, Century B.C.), archaeologists found MANY
and set apart and made Holy, and put His clay tablets relating to the epic of creation,
blessing upon (verse 3), is THE ONE AND according to the limited knowledge of the
ONLY DAY out of each seven-day lunar week Babylonians. One of these tablets reads: “The
YEHOVAH COMMANDS MANKIND TO SEVENTH day was appointed a HOLY DAY
KEEP HOLY! [the Sabbath] and to cease from all business
4. Did righteous Abraham OBVIOUS- [God] commanded" (Pocket Bible Handbook
LY keep YEHOVAH’s Sabbath? Genesis 26:5. by Henry H. Halley, archaeological note under
Does this prove Abraham was not confused Genesis 2:1-3).
about when the true Sabbath occurs? And When did this “holy day” of the
doesn’t Luke 13:28 show that Abraham will Babylonians occur? Notice what Dr. Hutton
inherit the Kingdom of YEHOVAH God? Webster has to say: “In the year 1869 the late
COMMENT: YEHOVAH God could George Smith, well known as a pioneer student
not have positively stated that Abraham kept all of Assyriology, discovered among the
of His commandments if he had been keeping cuneiform tablets in the British Museum ‘a
the WRONG time! If Abraham kept the wrong curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in
day for YEHOVAH’s Holy Sabbath, he would which every month is divided into four weeks,
have broken this one point of YEHOVAH’s law and the SEVENTH DAYS, or “SABBATHS,”
and thereby been guilty of breaking the WHOLE are marked out as days on which no work should
law! (James. 2:10.) be undertaken’....[These days] are particularly
It was utterly impossible for Abraham to applied to the SEVENTH, FOURTEENTH,
be mixed-up about the true weekly cycle, ninetennth, TWENTY-FIRST, and TWENTY-
because Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20) was in EIGHTH days....With regard to the reasons
Jerusalem to INSTRUCT him! Yes, we can be which dictated the choice of the seventh,
ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that Abraham kept fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth
the RIGHT day -- the SEVENTH day of the days....It has been held...that [they] were
lunar week! selected as CORRESPONDING TO THE
5. Later, was Laban, the Syrian and MOON’S SUCCESSIVE CHANGES; hence
father-in-law to Jacob (Israel), FAMILIAR with the SEVENTH DAY marks the close of the
the WEEKLY CYCLE? Genesis 29:26-27. EARLIEST FORM of the seventh-day week, a
Notice the word “week.” (Laban lived just a few week BOUND UP WITH THE LUNAR
hundred years before Moses -- about 1750 B.C.) PHASES” (Rest Days: The Christian Sunday,
the Jewish Sabbath, and Their Historical and

YEHOVAH God’s TRUE Sabbath Day -- Part 2