Despite inclement Kingston weather conditions, 75 visitors attended the first lecture in a Summer Campaign Series by the Jamaica CGI. Jamaicans typically don’t venture out during rainy weather when they have a choice, including many churchgoers, which made this a very good turnout indeed.

Traveling from as far away as the parishes of St. Ann and Clarendon in central Jamaica, however, these visitors joined the 222 regular CGI worshippers in the Sagicor Auditorium on Saturday, July 17, 2010 for a focused, balanced and dynamic lecture on whether the Sabbath should be kept, by Pastor Ian Boyne.

This opening lecture for the series followed a strategically organized debate, earlier that week, on Mr. Boyne’s popular television show Religious Hardtalk, between he and noted Jamaican theologian Clinton Chisholm on the issue of whether the Sabbath is binding on Christians today.

The evangelism campaign series is planned to capitalize on the regular Sabbath meetings also as a means of training members in evangelism techniques, and reinforcing them in the fundamental doctrines of the faith. In addition to an uncharacteristic invitation by Mr. Boyne on his TV programme (he generally doesn’t use his journalistic privileges for personal interests), members will invite friends and family members throughout this series of presentations. Campaign flyers were also distributed as another means of inviting interested persons to the weekend lecture.

In his lecture, Mr. Boyne focused on addressing the main arguments against Sabbath keeping rather than merely giving texts that would seem to support Sabbath keeping. He concisely summarized these arguments, showing that many of them were variations on the basic view that since the Old Covenant was no longer in force, law keeping was therefore not a requirement for salvation. He then made short work of showing how this argument would also apply equally to the other requirements for holy living that every bible believer still observes. The standard answer to this of course, is that the requirements for Christian living were restated in the New Testament, which he responded to.

In addition he challenged non-Sabbath keepers to justify their rejection of a commandment on the basis of Old Covenant abolition, when it was given and made a requirement even before the ratification of the Old Covenant. Rather than demanding that Sabbath keepers justify their continued obedience to the Sabbath law, objectors should instead provide justification for abandoning a command that was mandated outside the context of the Old Covenant, he stated.

A lively question and answer period followed the presentation in which one man commended the presenter for delivering one of the best Sabbath defenses he had ever heard. GS.