Satan's Shadow in Abrahamic Religions: Clerics' defiance of God's Creation Sabbath Day mandate in celebrating Charles Darwin's Evolution Day in their places of worship

By Michael Ebifegha

Why, in the contemporary world, are many followers of Abrahamic religions embracing the secular theory that the world evolved over millions of years? Why, in the public, are they ignoring God's six-day creation account, even though God mandated its acceptance as a moral obligation in a public speech? Michael Ebifegha addresses these questio

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Media Reviews
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958091487

Michael Ebifegha

Michael Ebifegha is a certified science, math, and religion instructor. He earned a certificate in religious studies from the Toronto Catholic School Board and a Bachelor of Education in science and mathematics and doctorate in physics from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Farewell to Darwinian Evolution: Exposition of God's Creation Patent and Seal, The Darwinian Delusion: The Scientific Myth of Evolutionism, Creation or Evolution? Origin of Species in Light of Science's Limitations and Historical Records, 4th Origin: Refuting the Myth of Evolutionism and Exposing the Folly of Clergy Letters, and Origin: Satan's Shadow in Religion.

Book preview

cover.jpg

Book Name: Satan’s Shadow in Abrahamic Religions: Clerics’ Defiance of God’s Creation Sabbath Day Mandate in Celebrating Charles Darwin’s Evolution Day in Their Places of Worship

Author Name: Michael Ebifegha.

Book Ordering Information the Media Reviews 99 Wall Street #2870 New York, NY, 10005 USA

Satan’s Shadow in Abrahamic Religions: Clerics’ Defiance of God’s Creation Sabbath Day Mandate in Celebrating Charles Darwin’s Evolution Day in Their Places of Worship offers seven key accounts of creation, origin, the Lord’s Day, and the Lord’s Sabbath Day, which is also known as God’s Creation Sabbath Day (GCSD).

First, Satan is behind the ongoing creation–evolution debate in science and the debate between the Lord’s Day and the Lord’s Sabbath Day in religion.

Second, the Lord’s Sabbath Day account found in Deuteronomy, like the one found in Exodus, focuses on God’s creation, origin, and rest. Thus, the presumption that the Lord’s Sabbath Day commandment was meant only for Jewish people, based on the Deuteronomy record, can no longer be justified.

Third, the GCSD commandment commemorates the origin and creation of the world. Because these are unique and important historical events, the GCSD mandate cannot be superseded by human or church traditions or preferences.

Fourth, the GCSD has a holy place in the natural world. Because it is the only commandment that gives humanity the opportunity to imitate or demonstrate God’s mission, it is called the Golden Rule.

Fifth, the GCSD commandment is indispensable because it also serves as a covenant and a sign of holiness.

Sixth, salvation is not based on maintaining the Lord’s Day or the Lord’s Sabbath Day, but because the GCSD is one of God’s Ten Commandments, those being saved look to his GCSD as a part of the tangible evidence that they belong to God and have been saved.

Seventh, the GCSD mandate is an ethical precept that must be followed because, unlike Satan, God wants people to receive the literal truth and not the arguments about the beginning of the world because the subject is beyond the scope of what humans can know.

Satan’s Shadow in Abrahamic Religions

Clerics’ defiance of God’s Creation Sabbath Day

mandate in celebrating Charles Darwin’s Evolution Day in their places of worship

Michael Ebifegha

Copyright © 2022 Michael Ebifegha.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-958091-49-4 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-958091-50-0 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-958091-48-7 (E-book Edition)

Scripture quotations marked JPSTT are taken from the Jewish Study Bible, Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Reprinted from TAHAKH: THE HOLY SCRIPTURES: THE NEW JPS TRANSLATION TO THE TRADITIONAL HEBREW TEXT, ©1985 by The Jewish Publication Society, with the permission of the publisher.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www. zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 By The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Brief excerpts from pp. 88-89, 90-91, 93, from THERE IS A GOD by ANTONY FLEW and ROY ABRAHAM VARGHESE. COPYYRIGHT © 2007 BY ANTONY FLEW. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers

Book Ordering Information

The Media Reviews

99 Wall Street #2870

New York, NY, 10005 USA

www.themediareviews.com

[e-mail]

[phone]

Printed in the United States of America

Previous books by Michael Ebifegha:

Farewell to Darwinian Evolution:

Exposition of God’s Creation Patent & Seal

The Darwinian Delusion:

The Scientific Myth of Evolutionism

Creation or Evolution?

Origin of Species in Light of Science’s Limitations

and Historical Records

4th Origin: Refuting the Myth of Evolutionism

and Exposing the Folly of Clergy Letters

To

The Sovereign Lord of

The Sabbath

You alone are the Lord.

You made the heavens, the highest heavens, and all their host, the earth and everything upon it, the seas and everything in them.

You keep them all alive, and the host of heaven prostrate themselves before You.

(Neh. 9:6; JPSTT)

You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke to them (the descendants of Abraham) from heaven;

You gave them right rules and true teachings, good laws and commandments.

You made known to them Your holy Sabbath, and

You ordained for them laws, commandments and Teaching, through Moses Your servant.

(Neh. 9:14; JPSTT)

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Divine Interventions to Identify the Judeo-Christian God’s Creation Sabbath Day (GCSD) and Launch the GCSD Law as a Rebuttal to False Worldviews

Chapter 2: Resolving What Scholars Perceive as Two Different Interpretations of GCSD Law (EXOD. 20:8–11 and DEUT. 5:12–15)

Chapter 3: Nature and Relevance of the GCSD Law

Chapter 4: Abrahamic Religions Endorse Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Chapter 5: Abrahamic Religions Divided Over Advocating the GCSD Law

Chapter 6: Satan’s Intervention to Abolish the GCSD: Sunday-Saturday Controversy

Chapter 7: Rebuttals to Protestants’ Anti-GCSD Arguments

Chapter 8: Distancing the GCSD from the Exclusively Jewish Sabbaths

Chapter 9: GCSD as an Everlasting Divine Possession and Gift to Mankind

Chapter 10: GCSD Mandate: The Ultimate Proof That Jesus Is the Messiah

Chapter 11: The Holy Apostles Endorsed the GCSD Mandate

Chapter 12: Commemorating the Lord’s Sabbath in the Modern World

Conclusion

Appendix

Acknowledgments

References/Notes

Index

Why This Book Matters

The Abrahamic God whom so many have fervently believed in must speak to us—religion needs a God who reaches out to its creatures, not a creator permanently aloof from our predicaments. There is no point in looking behind the vast silences of an indifferent universe just to find an equally silent God.¹

—Taner Edis

No one can counsel God on what to do because God perceives the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) and therefore foresaw Edis’s concern and made provisions for it from the foundation of the world. Satan, who spearheaded the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, is also the agent behind why God’s provision has been ignored by both the religious and secular communities in the contemporary world. This book explains why and how Satan accomplishes this endless task.

The Creation Sabbath Day is the evidence of God’s will to have fellowship with his creatures on a special day of his own choosing. A universal holy day to rest and commune with the creator makes sense. God himself rested after six days of creation to justify the necessity of such a divinity-humanity interaction.

—Michael Ebifegha

If this world evolved, the question is what was it before? If, on one hand, this world was created by accident or chance, then the question is who or what caused the accident or who created that unique chance? If, on the other hand, the world was created according to a plan, then it will be grossly irresponsible for the creator/s not to come forward and claim credit publicly in a conventional manner. The onus is not on human beings to search for the creator/s.

It was to fulfill his responsibility of establishing a special day for a creator-creatures interaction that God chose to create the habitable world in six days and added a seventh day of universal rest as a holy day. Thus, our universal seven-day week, according to God’s plan, consists of six secular days to work and one holy day to rest as a memorial of divine creation. The Abrahamic God, for conventional and historical purposes, presented his will verbally. This occurred in a prearranged meeting attended by a crowd of eyewitnesses. God, in line with conventional patent requirements, engraved the information pertaining to our origin on a pair of stone tablets. Moses received the stone tablets and recorded the information in the book of Exodus for every generation to know about the truth of how the world came into existence. The proclamation of the Decalogue, witnessed by thousands in 1445 BCE in the Arabian Desert, is a historic event, not a myth.

In classifying these claims as moral law in the Decalogue (in concert with the natural laws that do not change with time), God’s testimony about the origin of life is literal, unambiguous, timeless, and cannot be subject to any form of debate regarding its authenticity. Therefore, the Abrahamic God does not have to appear again before any other generation to renew the statement already made in word and print.

This book contends the issue is not about the creator speaking to us because the Abrahamic God has already spoken. The problem is many are not listening due to preconceived ideas and Satan’s constant distractions and deceit through pseudo theology and pseudoscience.

It is with pleasure that I welcome your engagement on this topic that concerns us all in our journey as tenants of the physical world ruined by Satan, who aims to steer people away from truth and love.

---

¹ Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science (New York: Prometheus Books, 2002), 118.

Preface

Today we celebrate Evolution Sunday with the theme this year of A Different Way of Knowing. This is the 9th year that Christian but also Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish faith leaders call attention to the nature of science and religion, and especially to an endorsement and indeed a celebration of evolution.¹

—Jill Joseph,

Evolution Weekend, February 9, 2014

God’s revelation of his six days of the creation of the world, seventh day (Sabbath) of rest, and his command for this day to be set aside as a memorial of the origin of the world are why the Lord’s Sabbath Commandment is the cornerstone of the Decalogue (God’s Ten Commandments). Without the Lord’s Sabbath commandment, which highlights God as the creator and everything in the universe as his creation, the remaining nine commandments (Exod. 20:1–7, 12–17) are basically moral instructions to Israelites following their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. It is this divine Sabbath commandment that universalizes the Decalogue. God is not subject to any commandment but discreetly participated in the Sabbath Commandment to validate its cosmological implications—such as why the universal week is fixed at seven days despite several attempts by various governments to change this to five, six, or ten days.

In the Garden of Eden, Satan, the adversary of holiness, lured humanity to transgress God’s instructions (Gen. 3:1–19) and is behind the indifference to God’s authority on the issue of origin of life and species. Satan’s goal is to abolish the Lord’s Sabbath Commandment so that the truth about the origin of the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them will go down the drain, leaving people’s minds free to accept false theories or worldviews.

With clerics endorsing and celebrating Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as the truth and disregarding God’s creation account in the Decalogue, the phrase separation of church and state is no longer appropriate and must be revised to separation of worldviews and state.

—Michael Ebifegha

image1.jpg

Telling the truth is a moral virtue. The Abrahamic God reveals truths that are outside the purview of science, such as the truth about the origin of the universe and life, through moral commandments in religion. A commandment leaves no room for speculations, assumptions, theories, or debates. On the subject of origins, which is prone to many theories, a moral commandment that is binding on everyone is the only recourse for spreading the truth because God knows that scientists cannot understand how the world could be made fully functional to accommodate life forms within six days, just as human beings know that fish in aquariums cannot understand how aquariums that are equipped with light, food, and other accessories can be set up in six days or less.

Why is Satan so concerned about the Lord’s Sabbath Commandment in the Decalogue? It is because eliminating the memorial of divine creation from peoples’ minds would open the door to accommodate competing theories such as evolution. Nowadays, because of Satan’s influence, many are spurning the Lord’s Sabbath commandment. Many are perceiving God’s six days of creation stipulated in the Decalogue and described in Genesis, as a myth, but embracing Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as foundational scientific truth.

A search on the Internet under the topics of ‘Sabbath day’ and ‘Sunday/Saturday worship/observance’ reveals the breadth and depth of the issues addressed in this book. The Bible discloses the different types of sabbaths and their functions. The present treatise is concerned only with the unique Sabbath linked to initial creation—the only one that God engraved on stone tablets as a moral commandment law on origins (Exod. 20:8–11), the one that functions as a sign of holiness or devotion to God (Exod. 31:12–18), and a unique covenant or contract with God (Isa. 56; Ezek. 20:12, 20). In the Holy Scriptures, this Sabbath is designated as the ‘Sabbath of the Lord’ to distinguish it from the Jewish sabbaths that foreshadowed Christ. Jewish sabbath, therefore, refers to every other sabbath the Jews observe except the seventh-day Sabbath that is specified in the Decalogue. The Sabbath of the Lord belongs to God and is linked to creation.

In light of the above designations, instead of the phrase Sabbath of the Lord, I prefer to use the term God’s Creation Sabbath Day (GCSD) to indicate both its theological distinction and cosmological implications. I use the capital case Sabbath when the reference is to the seventh day. In some cases, I use God’s Sabbath to imply the seventh day Sabbath rooted to initial creation.

Satan’s Shadow in Abrahamic Religions primarily focuses on the Judeo-Christian religions for three reasons. First, the creation account in Genesis is the nucleus of the creationism–evolutionism controversy. Second, to be credible, a creator must communicate the claims they make directly—not through an agent, such as a prophet or priest—and orally, and only the Judeo-Christian religions document the historical account of God’s direct claim of creating the world before eyewitnesses (Exod. 19:1–20; 20:1, 8–11). Third, to be authentic, a creator also must expressively communicate in print. Here again, only the Judeo-Christian religions testify—on two occasions (Exod. 24:12; 31:18; 32:15–16; 34:1, 4, 28)—that God engraved the claim of creating the universe on tablets of stone. However, just as the seven-day week is provided for everyone and is the same for all religions so is GCSD available for everyone and is the same for all religions.

God’s universe is characterized by time, space, and matter. Of these parameters, only time is absolutely immaterial, incorruptible, and un-collapsible. Hence, once made holy, it remains holy through all generations. It is God’s will for humanity to be holy. The Scriptures stipulate, Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pet. 1:15–16, NIV). This proviso supersedes nine of the Ten Commandments because they are exclusively for human beings to obey. It is only in the Sabbath commandment that both divinity and humanity are involved. God’s deliberate rest on the seventh day signaled the end of his six days of creation. God’s seventh day block of holy time functions as a seal separating the beginning of the first day of creation from the end of the sixth day of creation. God did not rest, however, from sustaining the world. The GCSD commandment is God’s provision for humanity to imitate or emulate his/her holiness in a practical way.

God spoke to the descendants of the tribal patriarch Abraham while issuing the GCSD mandate, so despite their differences, one would expect that all Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) would gracefully honor the GCSD mandate out of respect for the God of Abraham and historical preservation. In writing the GCSD commandment on stone tablets, God fulfilled the GCSD’s requirement as a patent on inventing the world and its contents in six days. Moses, as an eyewitness who recounted these events in words and print, is widely acknowledged by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as an important and reliable prophet of God. Because the GCSD commandment is linked to the creation of the world, one would think that it would be the same for all religions. However, these religions are divided on the GCSD issue. Many Jews perceive GCSD as one of their exclusive sabbaths. Muslims do not honor the GCSD commandment because many contend that God cannot be weary and, therefore, does not need to rest. Some Muslims contend that Friday is their sabbath. Many Christians incorrectly perceive the GCSD commandment as obsolete because they claim that it is not restated in the New Testament, even though God enjoins its observance as a timeless moral obligation. Some Christian denominations believe that Sunday is the Christian sabbath due to Christ’s death on the cross and post-resurrection appearances on two Sundays. Satan is thrilled by the irreconcilable division among the Abrahamic religions on the GCSD mandate.

Satan’s goal is to mislead people. With Adam and Eve, the bait was for humanity to gain godlike knowledge. In the Abrahamic religions, Satan’s bait is adherence to human tradition instead of submission to God’s commandments. Whereas obedience to God’s commandments in the Decalogue is credited to loving God (Exod. 20:6), Satan, to justify disobedience to the GCSD mandate, links obedience to unnecessary legalism. Almighty God, aware of Satan’s goal, made acceptance of his creatorship and ownership of the world a moral requirement in the Decalogue. To counter disbelief or excuses, God personally delivered his creation narrative in speech and print. To affirm consistent adherence to this doctrine, he imposed the GCSD mandate as a weekly memorial.

Honoring the GCSD mandate is therefore the practical immunity God provides against false worldviews concerning the origin of the universe. The failure of contemporary Abrahamic religions to perceive GCSD in this light has led to their overwhelming endorsement of evolutionism, a worldview that advocates millions of years of evolution as opposed to six days of creation. In not acknowledging God’s six days of creation as literal truth, humanity falls into the sin of claiming to be more knowledgeable than God. Satan’s shadow is evident as certain religious communities began celebrating an Evolution Sunday (sometimes referred to as Evolution Weekend) in 2006 to recognize Charles Darwin’s birthday and practically promote his theory of evolution.

Although clerics from the various faiths are divided on the relevance of the GCSD commandment, many have accepted the theory of evolution as foundational truth in the pro-evolution Clergy Letter Project²-⁴ established in 2004 by the atheist Michael Zimmerman. They maintain that only the evolutionary worldview should be taught in public schools and have denounced the presence of the creation worldview in science classes. In contrast to the theory of evolution, the God of Abraham asserts that he made the Earth through his power, founded the world through his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens through his understanding (Jer. 10:11–12). Thus, in promoting unintelligent design as the foundational truth in the public sector, all three faiths have unanimously undermined and compromised God’s wisdom and authority regarding the origin of the world and its contents.

Through the Clergy Letter Project, Satan directly or indirectly propagates the following deceptive and diabolic messages: (1) God is neither omniscient nor omnipresent; (2) God is not the author of science, so it is illegal to refer to God in science classes; and (3) the GCSD commandment is not meant for the public. Clerics who are signatories of the Clergy Letter Project are, therefore, not only dishonoring the GCSD commandment but, contrary to God’s will, are also blocking opportunities for others to honor it.

In an era when evolutionism is universally and fraudulently presented as scientific truth, the need to review the GCSD commandment in its totality is not only necessary but also long overdue. Satan’s Shadow in Abrahamic Religions responds to this challenge. The objective is to deliver an unbiased presentation of the relevance of GCSD to people who have previously ignored it and to broaden the knowledge of people who currently honor it.

Introduction

Before Darwin, a great many Christians, Jews and Muslims took literally the biblical account of God’s creation of man and woman quite separately from his creation of animals. Scholars had of course long been aware that the Bible offers two contradictory accounts of this creation, and that to take it literally is to misconstrue its proper purpose; but what was familiar to scholars had not percolated through to the ordinary coalminer or bishop. Darwin’s theory of evolution showed that we are the products of a long evolutionary process. This by itself caused those who would listen to rethink what the real claims of their religion are, getting rid of the many spurious claims that had become attached to it over the centuries, and returning to its core message about God’s relationship to us and ours to Him.¹

—Dr. Ralph Walker,

Evolution Weekend, February 9, 2014

Darwin’s theory of evolution is a belief that has not and cannot be proven. God’s relationship to us is based on covenants, signs, and laws. The GCSD mandate in the Decalogue is accordingly an everlasting covenant, a sign of holiness, and a moral law on origins. The mandate makes no reference to evolution (a secondary mechanism) as the means of establishing the world; it highlights humanity’s responsibility to remember and rest on the seventh day of the week in acknowledgment of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence in creating/inventing the world in six days. Keeping the GCSD commandment on origins, as exemplified by Christ, is evidence of honoring God’s will, whereas willfully despising or neglecting the GCSD commandment is evidence of fulfilling Satan’s desire which is to defy God’s commandments.

The GCSD commandment is the evidence of God’s desire for fellowship with his creations on a regular basis.

My affiliation with the Judeo-Christian God is not based on blind faith. It is based on Divine historic interventions that were witnessed and documented by others and corroborated by my personal experiences interacting with God as I explored this world governed by laws, endowed with mathematical parameters, and furnished with scientific resources.

—Michael Ebifegha

image1.jpg

Satan’s primary objective is to oppose God’s declarations and mislead humanity. For example, obedience and worship are two key virtues of religion. To God, obedience supersedes worship because love for divinity is determined by obedience, not worship. By contrast, Satan prefers ceremonial worship of God over obedience to God’s commandment. This is because obedience to God means not only loving God but also contravening Satan’s wish, and Satan is vexed by such an outcome. Thus, when God demands obedience, Satan counters it with disobedience and substitutes worship to achieve his goal. Today, all three Abrahamic religions fail to honor God’s Sabbath day explicitly as a creation mandate but are united in their desire to worship God and their resolve not to present God as the creator in science classes to protect and promote Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is Satan’s will that Darwin’s theory of evolution prevails over the GCSD mandate.

King Saul in the scriptures, lost his crown because God was displeased with Saul’s preference for worship over obedience to his command (1 Sam. 15:22–23). Satan cannot