Susan has been in the hospital with extremely high blood pressure and other complications. She was in critical condition, but just today (okay so it�s Yesterday) her health turned around. She was doing better and might even be released tomorrow (this morning) but most likely she would be released on Monday.

Heh.

Yay God!

Okay, so that didn�t really end the talk, but it is the end of the description of my prayer and stuff, for those of you who don�t believe in prayer or the power thereof. It�s all good.

I figure that there are probably quite a few of you out there who think that it�s coincidence. The fact that I prayed about it and then we got the phone call... that was just coincidence. And, after all, how could I possibly have effected Susan�s health when it was only ten minutes after my prayer that Diane got the call...

*smiles warmly*

Doubt all you want to. There have been far too many miracles in my life for me to doubt. Far too many to doubt.

I know that she was healed through the power of the Holy Spirit. In MY world, the power of the Holy Spirit is a real and viable thing. it might not be in your world. It�s all good.

So, on to my Saturday vs. Sunday thing...

It�s more than just a Saturday vs. Sunday thing for me. Though that will be part of this discussion, the larger part is in regard to people who seem to save their religion for one hour out of one day of the week. That�s not my style. It never has been.

Of course the church I attended was a two hour service, but that�s completely beside the point. *grins*

Regardless: There are so many people out there who don�t know that Saturday is truly the day that God set aside as the Sabbath. For those who do read the Old Testament still, (Yes, another hot-point for me) we hear that there is one specific commandment which most Christians completely ignore. This bothers me greatly. It is why I have never felt comfortable attending a Sunday service.

That commandment? Number Four.

Exodus 20:8-11 �Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither shall you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.� (Cap of His pronoun is my addition)

Leviticus 23:3 �There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord.�

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 �Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey, or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.�

That seems to say to me, that the Sabbath is a pretty big deal to God. So, for me, church on Sunday? It just doesn�t work for me. Sunday is the first day of the week. Number one. Granted, when you only have seven days in a week, Sunday is very close to the seventh day, but it isn�t number seven. It�s number one.

If anyone can read this, I�m pretty sure they know the difference between one and seven. *chuckles*

I�m thinking of a number between one and seven... pick it. uh... 12 WRONG *chuckles*

Anyway, because of that, because God seems to be really quite specific as far as His commandments are concerned, perhaps Sunday isn�t the day to claim as the Sabbath, hmm? I have never been able to settle into a Sunday church for this reason. I grew up in a Saturday church. WCG was extremely strict and extremely fundamentalist, but the fundamentals were very, very necessary in my opinion. At the time WCG was founded, I believe that the only other Saturday keeping churches/religious groups were Jewish and Seventh Day Adventists.

Now, I don�t know very much about other religious groups. I really don�t. I was raised in this church which condemned and ridiculed other groups. (Yes, extremely NON-Godly) I was trained to think that other religious groups and people were wrong. I was taught to believe that anyone who wasn�t a member of WCG was sinning and beneath me. Heh.

When I got to be old enough to actually think on my own (as I stated previously, that was at about 10 or so when I started watching the people around me. Didn�t comprehend immediately, but I started watching... I started doubting the strictures then) I paid far more attention to what was going on around me. I stopped believing because I was told to and started wanting to know the �Why�.

I started paying attention to what was going on with the people who were supposedly �better� than those outside the church. I started seeing people who were behaving in a far more �Christian� manner than people who�d been in the Church for decades.

So, I listened more to what I read in the Bible, rather than to what a minister said to me. I really, really, really don�t want to turn this into a �WCG sucked� kind of entry. I don�t believe that WCG sucked. I believe that most of what they taught me was right on and good. Some of the things I learned were wrong.

However, (and this fits in with my personal responsibility schtick) if the congregation doesn�t pay attention to what GOD says before what a man says, the people will go astray. It is each congregant�s responsibility to study the Bible and do it the way God said. Ministers are human too. Ministers make mistakes. Founders of churches make mistakes. God doesn�t.

===As yet another tangent.. there have been people who get really freaked out when I talk. *chuckles* I have spoken with my mother about some of my philosophies and she gets really... weirded out sometimes. One of those instances... We were talking about interpretations of the Biblical verses. I said that it was entirely possible that because there have been so many translations of the Bible that some previous translator may have gotten a word wrong.

She didn�t want to hear that. (This was quite a few years ago, she has since gotten my point) But still, I think that it�s entirely possible that people can be misinterpreting the Bible, not because of a fault of theirs, but because the words may not have been translated accurately. So, what does this say to many people? It says that they shouldn�t trust the Bible. What does it say to me? That if I think a certain passage/phrase/word might be wrong, it is MY RESPONSIBILITY to look up the word in a concordance, find the Hebrew/Greek/language of origin and figure out what that specific word/phrase/passage means in every language.

It is my responsibility, if I have a question about His Word, to ask Him what He really meant and how it applies to my life. Therefore, though it is possible that someone in history mis-translated/mis-quoted the Bible in some small way, it is my responsibility to go in-depth and study. If I were to just read the words and take a black and white interpretation, I would be just as faulty as the minister who told me he wouldn�t baptize me because I wasn�t ready.