The SDAs

I rather like a slogan I saw up today on the signboard of my local Seventh-day Adventist church: There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going to.

I must say that I respect the way the SDAs keep the Sabbath. That most Christians regard the Day of the Sun as sacred is paganism, with no warrant in the Bible. But, as I have pointed out on my scripture blog, so much of modern Christianity is pagan with no warrant in the Bible -- the celebration of Christmas and Easter included, of course. The only day that Christ instructed his followers to commemorate was the Passover (1 Corinthians 11:25).

I imagine that all my readers are aware of Christmas as a development of the pagan winter solstice festival but some may be less familiar with the history of Easter. The name comes ultimately from the Babylonian goddess Astarte, who was a fertility goddess -- and to this day the symbols universally associated with Easter are pagan fertility symbols -- eggs and rabbits.

And the day of the sun (the first day of the week) was the day sacred to almost all pagans of course. It was presumably because it was so pagan that those pesky Hebrews decided to celebrate the last day of the week instead. For pagans, however, the last day of the week remained the day of Saturn. I wonder how many of my readers know why we have seven days in the week? The answer is on my scripture blog and it's not what you most probably think.

Update:

There is a site here which lists how the days are named in different languages. It is interesting to see that where we name Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday after Norse gods, the Italians, Spanish and French still use names that are derivatives of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus.

One or two readers seemed to think that I was proselytizing for the Seventh Day Adventist church in what I wrote. So I guess I should mention that I have never been inside an SDA church nor have I ever read an SDA book. Does that cover it?


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