Quote Originally Posted by Churchwork View Post

According to Acts 15.22, at the council in Jerusalem the apostles and elders were all present. If the Sabbath day was important, surely it would have been taken up and decided on by the council.



Um, it did talk about the Sabbath, but I'll get to that in a moment.

If not commiting murder was important, surely it too would have been taken up and decided by the council. With all due respect, your position, though commendable that you are thinking through this, falls in on itself like leaky balloon. For if the Acts 15 judgement was a maximum list of behaviors for Gentiles to do, it is seriously lacking in the most basic of morals. Instead the decision is better understood in context, and for sake of space, I'll cut the chase: it was a decision to limit the obvious pagan behavior of Gentiles so that they COULD go to a synagogue. For Acts 15:21 gives the very reason for the giving of the judgement:

Acts 15:21
For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.

Obviously the Jerusalem Council expected the Gentiles to be in the synagogues on the Sabbath. Where else where they to go? The 1st Baptist Church on Main Street?

The prohibitions given to them, then, if you even know 1st Century Judaism at all, was required for any Gentile to even be allowed in a synagogue. The rest of the Torah, the Council expected the Gentiles to eventually learn (including later Paul as he says to the Romans "I am speaking to men (Romans) who know the Torah" in Romans 7).



But this was not addressed. For the law and the prophets prophesied until John. Christ is now the sum of the law.


Christ always WAS the sum of the law. If he's the Word of God, forever, both before the foundation of the world onwards, then there is no "now" to this, as if to say he was somehow "not" before. God does not change. Nor does his Word.

Hence in the New Testament there is no command that we need to keep the Sabbath day.
There is no command in the apostolic writings that one should keep from beastiality either. So what is your point? Paul said ALL scripture is useful for doctrine, teaching, correction, and training in right living. This includes the Torah, and the Torah says to keep the Sabbath, and to not have sex with animals.

In Colossians we are told that the Sabbath day has passed away. Paul also maintained—in Romans 14—that to keep or esteem a day or not is something optional.
In Col, Paul says no such thing. In Romans 14, the context is food, and thus the "days" in context can only be concerning weekly fast days, not over Sabbath with is an entirely out-of-topic category to bring into the very middle of a discussion over food and eating. And since weekly fast days are not commanded anywhere in the Torah, then they are completely optional.