Behind the Trump Call for a National Sabbath

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Chris Katulka

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/20/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. And it’s also our bimonthly focus on Israel, the Middle East and biblical prophecy. Now, my returning guest today on this important focus is Chris Katulka. He’s the vice president of North American Ministries of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. Been with me multiple times and glad to have him back with me today. Now, as we do, every time we focus on this theme, there are always so many places that we could go since biblical prophecy, which tells us that God’s plan of redemption announced in Genesis 3:15 and then was initiated in covenant form with Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob, promising a relationship with their descendants later called Jews, a nation called Israel and that all of God’s plan would emanate and revolve around the city of Jerusalem, which scripture refers to as God’s city, his city.

The entirety of the Old Testament, Yeshua’s first coming. Christ’s second coming just ahead ahead of us now, that was all foretold in the Old Testament. But then Jesus, when he came, introduced and explained what was a mystery in the Old Testament was not specified. He explained it. That’s the church, which then he said he would build. And from that time of the Gentiles in which we’re in now and this portion of God’s plan of redemption, that would come to a close. And I think what’s coming to a close biblically as we would read it. And then that God would resume his focus on the Jews and Israel, would call them back to the land, would call home the church, his bride at the rapture and then the seven year time of Jacob’s trouble would commence. That he would judge the Gentile nations as well in this time and would prepare and preserve a remnant of Jewish people who would return to God and recognize Yeshua as the long awaited Messiah and would utter these words.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That’s the trigger for the second coming. Now these days are the days in which we are living so there’s no shortage of things to discuss. That was my point for saying all that. And just to say that what we look at in our day as a part of a much larger narrative and story, his story, it’s his story. That’s what we’re talking about. So today we’re going to address some matters of changing attitudes toward Israel here in the United States. We’re going to examine a bit of the recent proclamation by President Trump declaring the observance of a “national Sabbath”. I don’t know if you knew that that happened, that was last week. What it was, why it was and certain things to consider regarding God’s call for the observance of a Sabbath by the Jewish people.

We’re going to talk about Sabbath and things related to that in the bulk of the program. So all this and more right here today on Stand on the Gap, so invite you to stay with us. The guide to our conversation will be is with our theme here, our title is this Behind the Trump Call for a National Sabbath. All right, that’s going to be the bulk of the discussion today. But with that Chris Katulka from Friends of Israel, thanks for being back with me. Always a pleasure.

Chris Katulka:

Sam, thanks for having me again. Really appreciate it.

Sam Rohrer:

Chris, looking today at what we’re talking about, this national Sabbath and the Sabbath generally and all of that, we’re going to talk about that and there’s going to be an element I’ll just put out there for you listening. There’s a tie in, believe it or not, to what’s called Noah Hide Laws or seven of them. You may have heard of it, you may not, but we’re going to tie it in. Again, it all revolves around and comes right off of the focus on Israel and Jewish people to one degree or another. You’ll see how it comes together. But here’s the point. Let’s get started on this, Chris. Without a doubt, things are changing here in our country with attitudes toward Israel. Certainly President Trump and his strong alignment with Israel has spiked a lot of response, some good, some actually perhaps contributing to a hostile view towards Israel.

But one of an indication was an article just written by Pulitzer Prize winner journalist with the New York Times, Nicholas Christoph, which took a different tack. Can you share the substance of what he wrote and how that may be describing what’s the change we’re seeing in America?

Chris Katulka:

Yeah. Sam, I almost hate to even talk about it with, I don’t know if kids are around with our listeners because that’s how gross what Nicholas Christophe wrote about Israel is that essentially, and I want to preface it with this so that you can kind of see what the New York Times did. The New York Times released a piece by Nicholas Christophe that blamed the Israeli prisons of systematic sexual abuse toward prisoners, Palestinian prisoners. And all of that was done just the day prior before actual evidence was coming out about the systematic sexual abuse committed by Hamas toward those Israelis that were at the Nova Festival and those who were even killed in the various Kibbutz that were surrounding Gaza and they actually had evidence for it, video evidence for it in the grotesque sexual abuse that was committed by Hamas, but before that could release and was released by The Daily Mail and by CNN and other outlets as well.

Before that, it’s almost as if the New York Times pushed this Nicholas Christoph piece in order to kind of cover over what was coming out about Hamas. And so Nicholas Christophe did an entire piece on what he considered systematic sexual abuse within the prison system to the point of even saying that they used trained dogs to do this as if they have dogs have some ability to just commit these types of acts on command. And it actually raised so much concern within Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu is weighing whether or not to sue the New York Times because of the lack of evidence. In fact, one by one, all of the quote unquote sources that Nicholas Christophe used were pro- Hamas sources. Some of them were even convicted of their own particular crimes in light of what he was writing about. None of them were, I don’t even want to use the word pro- Israel.

They just weren’t neutral. They were all angled toward criticizing Israel. And so this Nicholas Christophe piece shows that even within media here in the United States, they’re willing to use journalists in order to promote a Hamas agenda to criticize Israel. And if you didn’t have anybody arguing against it, you might just believe what Nicholas Christophe wrote because like you said, he’s a Pulitzer Prize journalist. But I have a funny feeling, Sam, and I don’t know what your thoughts are about this. And Nicholas Christophe is one of those bygone journalists whose name people know, but he doesn’t really have much recognition.

He’s kind of a, what can I say? The younger generation don’t know him that much. I know him from the past. He’s on television shows every so often, but I don’t think he carries the same weight he used to. And quite honestly, some of me thinks he’s looking around and seeing how the Tuckers and Candace Owens and the Megan Kellys and many of the Democratic, even elite are using this anti-Israel platform to gain some type of recognition. And sure enough, it worked very well for him because whether you agree with him or not, which he has no factual basis for it, he got plenty of attention from the piece that he wrote.

Sam Rohrer:

He does. And we could go further and ladies and gentlemen, there are other things that we just want to have time to share that are of a similar nature, but the point being we have to be so very, very careful that in these days when it’s hard to find anything that you can trust all the time, deception prevailing, it certainly happens and this is an example of that. We just put it out there just to say. And so when he’s come back, now we’re going to go into this national Sabbath. Well, if you’re just joining us, thanks for being with us today. This is our Wednesday, our bi-monthly emphasis. We do every other Wednesday the emphasis on Israel, the Middle East and a biblical prophecy. And the reason we do that is because they’re all connected. Those three together, Israel, the Middle East, biblical prophecy comprises a very large percentage of what’s in scripture, the prophecy part does and Israel’s right in the heart of God’s plan of redemption.

So we decided years ago when we started this program that we would start first by emphasizing the things that were of important to God and the word of God. That’s why we emphasized that. And as a result, we wanted to go, but we went this direction and we’ve done it since the program begun. So just so you know, there’s reasoning behind everything that is done here. Now that being the case, my guest today is Chris Katulka. Generally once a month, he joins me here as the Vice President of North American Ministries of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry and he hosts his own The Friends of Israel Today radio program. Just mentioned as well, they have a website, Israelmyglory.org, Israelmyglory.org. And if you go there at that site, you can sign up to receive a free subscription to their Israel My Glory magazine, which is always very, very good.

So I’d encourage you to do that. All right. Now moving on, our theme today is behind the Trump call for a national Sabbath. All right. We’re going to go that direct, talk about Sabbath related things and the balance of the program. But here’s some basic information. You may or may not have heard about this, but it was last week. But according to publicly available research, you can find it very easily if you go look for it here. On May the 4th, earlier this month, May the 4th, 2026, President Trump issued an historic Jewish American Heritage Month proclamation. So it was in connection to that Jewish American Heritage Month, but it was a proclamation and which he called for a nationwide quote national Sabbath, which became widely referred to as Shabbat 250. Now the proclamation marked the first time in US history that a sitting American president ever formally called the nation and specifically Jewish Americans, which is a part of that proclamation, to observe the traditional Sabbath or Shabbat.

This was designed from a, I’m going to say marketing perspective, which is my background, a marketing perspective to coordinate if you were noticing with the administration’s support of what they were calling rededicate 250 on May 15th and 16th. So you had the Shabbat 250, you had to rededicate 250. Yet interestingly, the date of May 15th and 16th was chosen for this, what ended up being a double observation, a back to back tie in observation, not because May 15th or 16th had any significance to America’s upcoming 250th anniversary, but because it aligned with the traditional Jewish calendar where specific portions of the Torah are read and which directly precedes the holiday of Shavuot commemorating the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. All right. Now, Chris, I gave just a little bit of that background. You can add to it or edit anything that I said there, but that seemed to be pretty straight up information.

But would you share a bit of the Jewish observance of the Torah reading to which this is a verb, at which all this was based in this time in the Jewish calendar? In other words, from a Jewish perspective, why is this observance practiced each year and what is its purpose?

Chris Katulka:

Oh yeah, it’s multi-layered. Anything you get involved with when it comes to Jewish culture and traditions, Sam, it’s multi-layered. Shavuot literally is just the feast of weeks, which is a harvest festival when you go back to Leviticus chapter 23, but then it also has become associated with what you had mentioned, the giving of the law from Mount Sinai, which is very important and they worship God in a great way. So it’s layered with the harvest, God’s provision, but then it’s also layered with God’s provision of his law, his Torah, his instruction. And what’s so fascinating is the time period that they chose to run the Shabbat 250 is actually in connection with a specific Torah reading passage. For your listeners, it’s important to know that when Jewish people go to synagogue, they go through a liturgical process where they’re reading through the Torah, that’s the first five books of Moses all throughout the year and they’ll start it all over again at Rosh Hashanah.

That’s when it starts over again at the new year and they begin reading from Genesis and they go to Deuteronomy. Well, this particular transition happens from one portion of reading to another portion of reading and it’s called Bamidbar, which is a very kind of messianic passage. So Shabbat 250, it could have been on July 4th because actually July 4th is a Sabbath day. It would have been fantastic and perfect to do Shabbat 250 on July 4th. But actually they chose this because it’s actually very messianic. Jewish people believe it’s very fascinating. Jewish people believe that the Messiah will come when there’s a national component of Jewish people all around the world to keep Sabbath together, which is very fascinating. The late rabbi Manakam Shinirson, who was kind of the pope of the Jewish people, he lived in Brooklyn, presidents would go visit him. He honestly carried the weight of the Jewish people as a leader.

He says that Shavuot marks a time of God’s giving of the Torah and that ultimately there’s no better way to prepare for the Torah than on Shavuot this particular holiday and again, binding the Jewish people together because they actually believe there’s one Talmudic passage, which is very a Jewish book, a Jewish religious book, the Talmud, that believes if Jewish people can just keep the Sabbath for all of us together for two weeks, the Messiah will come. And then there’s another Torah Talmudic passage that says, “If we just keep the Sabbath for one week, the Messiah will come.” So it’s a very messianically deep time for the Jewish people. Now, if you talk to some Jewish people about Sabbath 250, they’ll go, “This is amazing. It’s fantastic.” Mostly in the conservative ultra orthodox realm, they appreciate what Donald Trump is doing there. And then at the other side of the spectrum are probably more left leaning secular Jews that say, “This feels a little bit like Christian nationalism.

I don’t know how much I appreciate it, but hey, thankful that people are thinking about Sabbath.” But a lot of it I think actually roots back, Sam, and I don’t know what your thoughts are about this, but probably to Charlie Kirk’s book that was published after his death that said Sabbath does play an important role in his life and should play in an important role in other people’s lives, depending on … It doesn’t have to be on Sabbath, but it’s a day of shutting everything down, shutting off your phones, turning off your TVs and just focusing on your faith in the Lord and your family at the same time. So a lot of it I’m sure comes out of that as well, but that’s kind of what’s going on in a Jewish mind when we’re thinking about Sabbath 250.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. I think that’s interesting. That’s great information, Chris. And even in that Charter Cook reference, I did note in research that there, not that that drove it, but there was a piece of it, but you referred to the Talmudic approach, Tahmad in that aspect of it because I’d like you to explain that a little bit because our listeners may not understand where that piece comes because a believer listening to the program right now would say, “Well, that’s kind of strange because keeping the Sabbath for a week or keeping the Sabbath for the year, bring back the Messiah. We know the Messiah’s already come.” So how does all this fit within … Explain some of that.

Chris Katulka:

I actually don’t think they’re that far off because if you go back to the prophets, the prophets that were calling not just individual Israelites to repent and turn to the Lord, the prophets were calling the nation to repent and turn to the Lord. All of the prophets … So it required individual repentance, but it was done from a national perspective. Same thing, if you actually go to Acts chapter three, the Apostle Peter is giving the gospel to the men of Israel. That’s what it says. So the audience is the nation of Israel and he lays out the gospel to them and basically says, God is waiting for you to repent and turn, not just you individually, but you as a nation to repent and turn. Now I see it more as a remnant. That’s what we call remnant theology, but still even a remnant is a group of people from the nation.

So again, that concept that is found in this book called the Talmud, and for your listeners, the Talmud, it’s a little complicated if you’re just getting it in a bite size piece here, but the Talmud are rabbinical interpretations of the law and trying to explain how the law gets lived out on a day-to-day basis. And it actually is a commentary on another religious book called the Mishnah.That’s why it can get a little confusing, but the Talmud is a very important book to Jewish people and how we should understand the law and the world that we live in today. And so this passage talking about the idea of the law being given is also very much connected to the idea of the Messiah coming again. And if you actually think about it, Jesus returned in Acts chapter two or Acts chapter one, when Jesus ascends into heaven, it will only be two chapters later when Jesus sends the spirit of God down and he sends the spirit down if you remember on a day called Pentecost.

Well, Pentecost is just the Greek name for Shavuot. So technically you could almost look at it that when the spirit comes down, it’s actually doing exactly what was happening when the law came down from the mountain, God’s revelation came down to his people. Now in the beginning of Acts, the spirit is coming down into those Jewish believers. That’s all the people that were there that believed in Acts chapter two, Acts chapter three. They are Jewish believers. And now what’s happening? The spirit is coming down. So again, to allow them to do what? To fulfill the law that God had given to them, the Torah. That was the whole point of the New Covenant. And so again, a beautiful picture here of what we’re seeing with the Sabbath and Shavuot.

Sam Rohrer:

Chris, that is excellent. I know that’s been very helpful to those who are listening today. And ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to keep building on this. Next segment, we’re going to move from, again, keep all that has been said and we’re going to move into something that’s called the Noah Hyde laws. There’s seven of them. There is a connection, a dotted line connection to all of this is taking place, but we’re going to talk about that in the next segment. Okay, Chris, let’s move from what you laid out in the last segment and move into this area because when a person does any kind of research on references to the Sabbath, which I did for this program and you know and have known about stuff for a long time, Sabbath observance, to me it’s interesting to note that there’s been a long connection in, I’m going to say multiple surprising quarters regarding a universally encouraged national Sabbath.

So when I saw the National Sabbath proclamation that we just talked about that the president did signed in the official proclamation on May 4th, when I saw that, I began to think, huh, because what it means and what it’s to accomplish is not totally agreed upon. You laid out what the thought is, that there’s actually a messianic kind of a concept to the national Sabbath and you laid that out. But while we don’t have the time to get into the full consideration of all aspects of it, one linkage that I wanted to talk with you about is on that is referred to as the Noah Hyde laws of which there are seven of them and someone were to Google that as an example or explore what it is, they will find that some Jews and secular Gentiles refer to it and it’s been shown up for a long time in this phrase, quote, “The universal relationship between God and humanity.” So there’s an aspect of these Nohide laws that crosses kind of like all boundaries.

Clear linkages I found exist with this effort to pursue a moral code acceptable to all that is neither linked to the 10 commandments considered to be Jewish or the beatitudes expanded upon by Christ in the New Testament considered to be Christian, which it is, but rather to link it to Noah to which Islam, Christianity and Judaism can all agree. I have found a connection in this to those entities and actually there are been references made by multiple previous presidents to this approach. So the linkage seems to be the common ground for a unified global religion and it’s connected and I have found a very clear, and if somebody were to Google this, they will find it there, a connection between Noahide law going back to Noah and even provisions within the Abrahamic accords and element of the Gaza Board of Peace, which is the pursuing of a unified religion and then I think it’s point 19 of the board of peace principles.

So there’s a connection that runs through this concept politically, religiously and beyond. So there are many linkages and all that that we could go, but seems to be to me anyways, an approach of man to come up with something that can unify rather than God’s definition of what is truly unified and that is to faith in Jesus Christ. Now that’d be the case. Can you give a little bit of a history of the Noahide laws? Who within Judaism, for instance, embraces this approach and when did it kind of come forth in the process of Judaism that some would put aside God’s 10 commandments, which we just talked about, deliverance at Torah and come up with an embracing of Noahide laws

Chris Katulka:

Yeah, this is a really great question and we probably need to make this like a five hour program or something so that we can nail all of the points here. But the one thing that I think is important for your listeners to know is that the 10 commandments were given to Moses and Israel and so it’s what identified the Israelites to God through the law that he would give them. And as you know, the laws of the 10 commandments, they introduced how Israelite should worship God and they also introduced how an Israelite should relate to an Israelite, a human interaction that takes place as well. And so this is the law that would bind them together. There was a worship component and then an interrelational component of how an Israelite would relate. And in fact, the Jewish people will tell you from the 10 commandments, they’re basically 10 bullet points because there’s actually 613 laws in the Torah and they’re almost like the 10 commandments or the 10 bullet points of those 613 laws that are there.

So that’s a unique relationship that Israel has to God. The thing that’s interesting about the Noah Hide laws is, how does a righteous Gentile who’s not associated with the law that is in covenant with God as a Jewish person, how does a righteous Gentile find his way into heaven essentially or the afterlife? Well, that’s when they develop the concept of the Noah Hide laws because they go … These are laws that existed prior to the point where there were even Jewish people. And so that’s kind of the idea. Today, I could take your listeners and I hope they join us on one of our encounter trips where we take Christians through the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Philadelphia, South Jersey, one of the biggest Jewish populations in the world actually and we introduce them to the various Jewish spectrums of life and one of them is the ultra orthodox up in Brooklyn.

And whenever they go visit the very big synagogue that they have there, the Jewish people always hand their Christian friends, the people that I bring, the seven Noah hide laws. That’s what they hand them. “Hey, this is how you are a righteous Gentile.” And so the idea is not to exclude them from the 10 Commandments, but to say, look, there are certain laws that we have in the 10 Commandments that you’re not required to keep, one of them being Sabbath. There are important laws that do appear in the Noah Hyde laws that do match up with the 10 Commandments, but other ones that are separated. And so I think that’s really the development of what the Noah Hyde laws were, was the idea that God didn’t just come for Israel, God chose Israel for the nations, but then what matrix do you look through, this is the way the Jewish people think, what matrix do you look through to see if a Gentile is considered righteous?

Well, you can’t do it through the law, you do it through the Noah Hide laws. I don’t know if that helps clarify the way that they think about that.

Sam Rohrer:

No, I think it does. So you made the point we’re going to take some more time in another program and actually go more into depth on this because we can’t cover it all right now. But it is most interesting because lots of applications, but I don’t know if you have the seven laws in front of you or I have them here. Do you want me

Chris Katulka:

To just read them? I have them. You can read them, but I’m staring right at them. Yeah. All

Sam Rohrer:

Right. Ladies and gentlemen, here are the seven, prohibition of idolatry, prohibition of blasphemy, prohibition of murder, prohibition of theft, prohibition of sexual immorality, prohibition of not eating flesh from a living animal and establishment of courts of justice. Now, let me come back to you just briefly on this, Chris, and that is all right, those are broad principles. Obviously you’ve got an issue of who defines the terms because Islam has a prohibition on blasphemy and idolatry and murder and theft so do Christianity, so do Jews, but they may not necessarily agree on all of them. I find it interesting that political groups and religious groups are seeking to kind of come around these things as a basis of which they can all agree, but not necessarily who makes the definitions. I find it also interesting that when Jesus came and spoke to his disciples in Matthew five: six and seven, he made it clear that he was not coming to do away with the law but to fulfill it.

And so therein now we have some of this. So he brought the attention to himself the Noahide laws, who gets the attention, who’s the determiner under the Noahide laws, what they actually mean? Well,

Chris Katulka:

And that’s the big one is that number one, the first law, which is do not worship idols is one of the first laws of the 10 commandments. So for a Jewish person thinking about this, they’re thinking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which you actually think about it, it really does. It seems like these are broad laws, but really what you’re saying, what the Jewish people are saying is you can worship no other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but you don’t have to keep Sabbath, you don’t have to be circumcised, you don’t have to do all these other laws. This is really big and you can’t blaspheme his name or take the Lord’s name in vain. Again, that appears in the 10 commandments. So right away, you see the definition is actually into the hands for the Noah Hide laws or in the hands of what the Jewish people determine because they begin actually with essentially the first two commandments of 10 commandments.

And again, the Apostle Paul even picks up on this in Romans chapter two when he says, there are Gentiles in Romans 2:14, it says, “There are Gentiles who do not have the law, but due by nature, the things that the law required, they are law for themselves, even though they don’t have the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, they’re conscious also bearing witness.” I think he’s actually saying there kind of the concept of the Noah Hyde laws in some way that there are Gentiles, pagans who actually know murder is wrong and stealing is wrong and that there has to be a set of courts and justices that are set up. It’s like built into their conscience. Why? Because they are made in the image of God in some capacity. But really to me, I see the direction you’re going here, Sam, and I agree with it, that this cannot be a platform for a global religion because honestly, Jesus is the one who, when it says he came to fulfill the law, I think it means not only that if he’s live out every jot and tittle of the laws it says, but also that he is the determiner of the law.

He is the judge of the law. And that’s why I think Acts chapter 15 is so important when it comes to these Noah Hyde laws because remember the Apostle Paul comes back to Jerusalem and he’s talking to James and the apostle and what is he talking about? All these Gentiles are coming to faith. Do they need to be circumcised and keep Sabbath? No. What do they do? In fact, aspects of the Noah Hide Law are right there in the laws that the Gentiles were supposed to keep. So again, this is a long conversation, but very important for your listeners to know. All

Sam Rohrer:

Right, that’s excellent, Chris. And ladies and gentlemen, we will continue this at another program and go more, but I wanted to plant some seeds here and to say that there are things behind what we see happen politically that have motivations that actually go way beyond the moment. Now that being the case, when we come back, we’re going to conclude with the biblical picture of Shabbat. Well, as we go into our final segment now, again, my guest is Chris Katulka. He’s Vice President of North American Ministries of the Friends of Israel. And I gave a website earlier, I’ll give it again, Israelmyglory.org. A lot of information there about their ministry, but also to say that they have a magazine that they published for a long time called Israel My Glory. And if you go to that website, Israelmyglory.org, you can just sign up for it for free and they would send that to you.

All right, Chris, we’ve talked overall about the National Sabbath, that proclamation that the president made first American president to do that, the tie in obviously with the reading from the Torah, we’ve gone through all of that. We went a little bit deep into the Noah Hyde laws and the application of that in the midst of all that we’re talking about. But I want to back out now a little bit and conclude the program by looking at the broader, larger view of the Sabbath. So I’d like just give a little bit of a history beginning literally in Genesis when God rested on the seventh day after creation from which the concept of Sabbath came. So go there and then this question, the purpose for God including it in the 10 Commandments, what it was to do as a sign, a requirement for the Jews to keep it why it’s so important, go there and then I want to go and look ahead to how it may be fulfilled yet in the years ahead.

Yeah.

Chris Katulka:

Sam, I believe in a literal creation from the Genesis account in Genesis one, but within that literal creation is also a roadmap that God gives for Sabbath, that he worked for six days and rested on the seventh, exactly what you were talking about. So I believe in a literal six day creation and on the seventh day, God rests, but he’s also setting out kind of a trajectory for what would eventually be a realization for his people in the law when the law is established. Sabbath becomes a marker of the Jewish people. God gave the Jewish people certain things that would separate them from the world. Sabbath is one of them. Circumcision is another, certain holidays that they would keep. These would all be the food that they would eat, the kosher food that they would eat and abstain from eating unkosher, unfit food. These are all markers that actually set them apart.

And it’s very fascinating whenever you read historical writings from the times of Jesus by Romans or by Greeks, when they try to give you a picture of what the Jewish person was like. Most people in the ancient day, Sam, they did not take a day off. They worked seven days a week. There are historians that wrote thousands of years ago that called Jews the lazy Jews because they didn’t work on Friday night into Saturday. And so again, if you enjoy your weekend, you can thank the Jewish people for it because God gave them the picture of what it means to stop and rest. But that rest was very important and really did have a faithful component or I don’t want to unlike using the word religious, but a religious component to it because God demanded that his people would stop and think about him for a day.

In fact, think of it like this. There’s the differences between holy and common and clean and unclean in the book of Leviticus. The first six days are common days. Do your common things, do the things of work and all of that, trade business. But on the seventh day is a holy day marked separate and pulled apart from the rest. So that’s kind of the picture of the purpose of the 10 commandments. And as you can see, I believe even Jesus, as much as the Pharisees criticized him for what he did on the Sabbath, he still honored Sabbath, kept Sabbath and believed in the purpose of Sabbath. I think that’s very important for your listeners to know as well.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. That’s very good. And again, it’s identification with God. God established it from the beginning. It became enshrined in the 10 commandments to the Jews, but the universal principles really for all. So we’ll just leave it there. But let’s continue through here because there are Jewish feasts. I spent a lot of time in earlier programs. You referred to an earlier Jewish feast in the program, but then then we get into the fall feast and know that Christ’s first comings are related to the events of the first of the spring feast. His second coming is related to elements of the fall feasts. But how does the Sabbath as a matter of practice in symbolism to God’s ultimate fulfilled plan of redemption, how does that fit in to God’s plan, fall feast and what we will yet see?

Chris Katulka:

Yeah, it’s very fascinating. There’s this thing called the year of Jubilee in Leviticus chapter 25, but right before it’s every 50 years is the year of Jubilee when everything resets in Israel. But the year before that, year number 49 is actually a Sabbath rest of the land. Every seven years the Israelites were supposed to rest the land. And so the Jubilee is fascinating because it’s actually, you have a Sabbath rest of the land and then you have a Jubilee, which means you can’t harvest anything. You can’t grow anything. You have to trust in God completely. You have to not only rest yourself, but rest the land as well. Rest is very important to God. A lot of Jewish scholars, a lot of the prophets look forward to the Jubilee year, not only just as a rest of the land, but that one day there’s a day coming when there would be an ultimate rest that takes place.

And even Jesus highlights himself as that’s this person when he gets up and speaks in the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke chapter four and it says, “The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor who has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim freedom to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This became such a big messianic concept of Sabbath that Sabbath isn’t just simply the fact that you are sitting down and just waiting for the next day to come. It’s that there’s a release that takes place. There’s a freedom that comes, a liberty that comes to worship God and this is all bound up and I believe what would ultimately become the millennial kingdom, a time of God’s rest as his presence is on earth.

It doesn’t mean we just sit around and we do nothing. It means that we’re serving the Lord. His presence is with us, but that there’s a rest that comes because his presence is with us and Jesus is the only one who can bring that rest. And so I think the writer of Hebrews is thinking about that rest when he’s thinking about Sabbath, that ultimately God will restore things to the way they were intended to be when he first created Adam and Eve. And so again, this concept of Sabbath carries forward even to a prophetic perspective of Jesus, the only one who can ultimately bring the rest that the Jewish people were anticipating for so many years because honestly the Jewish people have lived in Surus. It’s a Yiddish word there, Surus, trouble for millennia, exile, sin, being kicked out, the diaspora, persecution. And all of that is building up and Jesus says, “I’m the only one who can provide you the ultimate prophetic rest that’s to come.” And that’s the kingdom of God, the millennial kingdom.

Sam Rohrer:

Chris, isn’t that a wonderful picture and the way you described that is great. And ladies and gentlemen, for us as Gentiles, because of what happened at the first coming of Christ and the Lord said, “I’m going to build my church.” Salvation became available to the Gentiles so it’s not only the Jews, the Gentiles now, that’s us, all of us who are listening, Jew and Gentile. If we want to find real rest, how do we hear that? We find it in the person of Jesus Christ. And Christ, as you explained, that millennial kingdom where all the nations of the world will experience that time of perfect rule, civil rule, governance rule, where Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Yeshua, will reign physically from the city of Jerusalem and we will for the first time experience what that really means, that rest. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you have that rest.

That’s the picture of the Sabbath all the way through, but it’s only really ever fulfilled when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, Yeshua, the promised Messiah. And I hope in fact that you have done that. Chris Katulka from Friends of Israel, thank you so much for being with me. Always a wonderful program. Lots of information. I appreciate it so much. Their website again, Israelmyglory.com. If you go there, you get their free magazine. Join us tomorrow. Lord willing, I’ll be back here with you here on Staying on the Gap today.