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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Daniel 7, The Sabbath, and Health

Those of you who have been studying the book of Daniel with me this week, we got up to chapter 5.

Chapter 6 is a focus on the law of God, which is debated because of the, of actually a day of worship.

And Daniel was a Sabbatarian, and as we know, also a vegetarian.

But you don't have to be a vegetarian to be a Sabbatarian.

But he happened to be, and his friends, like we learned.

And he had to stand up for things that were the best for his health, not only physically, but also spiritually.

In Daniel chapter 6, he had to stand up against a bunch of days that were not really the right kind of days to worship on.

And of course he came out of that lion's den experience.

And then Daniel chapter 7, there's like all of these unclean animals again, like he encountered in chapter 1, but they're all pictured as going throughout time and history.

And then there's a very sinister little horn that comes up that tries to change God's times and laws or law that relates to time.

So Daniel 7 is actually about the Sabbath.

I'm not going to get into that prophecy too much today, except as a introduction for what I want to talk about today.

Now, if any of you were on social media or any kind of media this last week, many of you were not, but if you were, you noticed that there was a big focus on the Sabbath.

All kinds of news networks were talking about the Sabbath, And this was largely because of an individual named Charlie Kirk, who his last book he wrote was not about politics, which he talked about a lot, but about the Sabbath.

And this book came out and was covered quite a bit here in America.

There were other things about the Sabbath this week as well.

There were various court cases in America.

There were other things around the world.

But it seemed like a really hyper focus on the Sabbath.

So I thought, you know, I better talk about it today.

And This book that came out actually sold out on Amazon and was number 1 in that particular category of religious commentaries, probably because Donald Trump wrote an endorsement, might have something to do with it.

And so he wrote an endorsement, endorsing the book, and this book then just, everybody bought it, or at least all the copies they had.

And so I thought maybe today we'd look a little bit at the Sabbath.

In that book that was written, it said, it's a manifesto against the constant busyness of modern life.

Abandoning the Sabbath has contributed to emotional exhaustion, anxiety, depression, relational breakdown, and spiritual confusion.

There was nothing on the screen after I put all those slides together.

I'm not upset at all, I feel very good about that.

In fact, I'm feeling so good that I, I'm feeling better than I think I should.

My support staff is here for emotional support at least.

Okay, so I think maybe it's coming up now.

So all of the various news networks, and then Donald Trump's endorsement there.

And this idea about busyness, abandoning the Sabbath has contributed to anxiety, depression, all these different things, and especially in the demographic of youth.

This is the most suicidal, depressed, lost, confused generation in history.

And of course, this individual had a front row seat to that, visiting hundreds, if, I don't know if 1000, but many, many college campuses.

So when he was looking at all that, he also himself was getting anxious and depressed, and he talked to someone who said, have you ever considered keeping a Sabbath?

And the book tells the story of his own personal testimony concerning the Sabbath, helped him get over the anxiety and the burnout, potential depression he was experiencing.

So then I went and I looked at the Amazon website and I wanted to read some of the reviews.

And the first review I read says, what an amazing book, I would encourage you to get the book, but you do not have to wait to learn about the Sabbath.

Please visit your local Seventh-day Adventist church this Saturday.

And I was like, well, I think I might do that, since I'm already scheduled to go, but I thought, wow, what a great endorsement.

And then it went on and 1 of the other things, it says, did you know that the Seventh-day Adventists are the happiest people around?

I said, well, you haven't been to my church.

So let me play you what I listen to here.

Theologists, they did this study a few years ago where they were studying the happiest people on earth.

And 1 of the groups of people they found were happiest is a little Christian sect called the Seventh Day Adventists.

You can tell from their name, they are like really religious about keeping the Sabbath.

Now not only were they some of the happiest people on earth, they on average, bookmark this in your head, this is going to be real important in about 30 seconds.

They on average live 11 years 11 years 11 years longer Than the average American now, can I show you something?

All right, this is so it's so cool I like numbers.

I'm gonna show it to you on my calculator.

So, you know, I'm not cheating the numbers Okay now let me show you this.

So what we just said so the average lifespan in America remember they live 11 years longer than average American.

Okay the average lifespan in America is 77 years.

Okay 77 years now But what we want to know for the purpose of this is how many days does the average person live?

So all we got to do obviously is multiply 77 times 365.

The average person is going to live 28, 105 days.

Okay, now what we want to know though is, okay, if a person kept the Sabbath in an average lifetime, How many Sabbaths would they observe?

So obviously, a Sabbath, the command is once every 7 days to take a day of rest, holy unto the Lord.

So what we need to do to figure out how many Sabbaths would the person observe, obviously we just got to divide the number of days by 7 to get number of Sabbaths they'd observe.

So if you do that the average person in an average lifespan would observe 4015 Sabbath days over a 77 year lifetime.

Now okay cool fine that's a great little fact, Josh.

Now, I'm just curious, I'm just curious, if you said it in terms of years instead of days, how many years worth of just Sabbaths Would a person enjoy during their lifetime?

Well obviously 365 days in a year, so we just need to divide that number by 365 and we'll know exactly how many years worth of Sabbaths they observed and guess what it is exactly 11 Now some of you are like that's insane And then the rest of you are going, I know this is really cool but I don't know why!

That the average person observes 11 years worth of Sabbaths in their lifetime.

And that's the exact number to the day the time that God added to the lifespans of the people that kept the Sabbaths.

In other words, check this out, God is essentially going, every time you gave me a day I added 1 to you.

Maybe that's why the Adventists are the happiest people around because of that kind of stuff.

So, and there's all kinds of science that backs up what he said.

You know, they take all the science and they do a meta-analysis, which just means they put it all together and really try and impress you.

And a meta-analysis makes these bars or these connections even thicker.

The more studies involved, the thicker the correlation on this slide.

So the effects of Sabbath keeping on physical health, notice that huge, robust arrow that goes from keeping the Sabbath and physical health.

And we could drill down and look at a lot of those different things.

Diet, exercise, religious support, religious coping.

Yeah, that's some, but those are pretty weak little arrows.

But the strongest connection comes from keeping the Sabbath itself, ends up keeping you.

A strong connection, well, positive religious coping, that's a little stronger there, religious support, pretty strong, but again, a very robust muscular connection between Sabbath-keeping itself and mental health as well.

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Daniel 7, The Sabbath, and Health

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