Time is very important to God. The Bible talks about time a lot. Here’s an example: The book of Daniel predicted there would someday be a power on earth so influential that it would actually attempt to change time! There are many important prophecies in the book of Daniel. Let’s look at the one in Daniel 7 where it tells us about four great, world-ruling empires. These kingdoms are not of God. They are of the world. They are of Satan. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says that Satan is the “god of this world.” His throne is here.

And, in these four worldly kingdoms, Daniel 7 tells about one ruling system that attempts to do something incredible. Let’s read verse 25:

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out [i.e., afflict] the saints of the most High, and think to change the times and laws….”

What does it mean when it says this ruling system shall “think to change the times”? Here are three examples:

• God begins His year in the spring, but this ruling system prophesied in Daniel 7:25 starts its new year in the dead of winter.

• God begins His months at the new moon, but this ruling system begins its months at any time regardless of any lunar observation.

• God begins His day around sunset, but this ruling system begins its day in the middle of the night.

God has His way of calculating time, but (as a result of this system that was prophesied in Daniel) the world has created a counterfeit system of calculating time. And so much of this counterfeiting revolves around which day should be observed as holy by believers of the great God of the Bible.

It’s important that a Christian know whether or not God expects Christians to observe a day of rest. And if He does, which day is it? Is it Friday as most Muslims believe? Is it Sunday as most Christians believe? Is it Saturday, which most believe should be observed only by Jews? Or could God’s day of rest be any day of the week that you chose?

Please ask yourself, “Do I go to the Scriptures just to ‘prove’ what I already believe? Or do I search the Scriptures for the truth that God has given.” We should hunger and thirst for righteousness. We should never just go thru the motions of Bible study to justify some position. Hopefully, you have a genuine love for the truth. Hopefully, you’re willing to change what you believe if you find that you are in error.

Now, everyone in Christianity agrees that the seventh-day Sabbath was created by God. And most agree that God’s days begin and end around sunset—not at midnight.

Let’s read Genesis 2:2–3:

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

 

Notice that God blessed the seventh-day Sabbath. And he sanctified it. So we see that the weekly Sabbath was created by God in the first week of Creation—long before Moses ever went up to Mt. Sinai to communicate with God. The Sabbath existed before the Ten Commandments were given to the Israelite people.

Now let’s read Genesis 1:5: “The evening and the morning were the first day.” In other words, the beginning of God’s days started at the dark part of the day, that is, around sunset.

Later in the Torah, we find God instructing the Hebrews on when the day begins. Leviticus 23:32 says, “From evening to evening, you shall celebrate your Sabbath.”

We get the word “evening” from the word “even” which means to divide something evenly into two equal halves. Evening is when the sun is even on the horizon during the start of the dark part of the day.  When you can see just half of the sun as it sets, it’s evenly divided at that point. And when the sun is evenly divided, this is the end of one day and the beginning of another. This is not just a biblical definition of the word “evening.” This is the same definition that can be found in secular dictionaries.

So we can clearly see that God created, blessed, and sanctified the seventh-day Sabbath. And we can clearly see that God’s days begin around sunset—at evening.

Also, it’s interesting to note that God only named one day of the week—the Sabbath. He gave no names to the other six days of the week. The Bible only refers to those days as the first day, second day, third day, etc. The names of the days we have now are man’s names. And man chose to name these days after pagan gods. For example, Thursday is named after the god, Thor. Monday is named after the moon. Wednesday is named after the god, Voden. The seventh day of the week is so special to God that He named it Himself.

It is so fascinating how the word “Sabbath” has carried through to the current languages of the world today. English is not typical in how it labels the seventh day of the week. In English, we call it Saturday. We have named it after the god, Saturn. Many other languages don’t come up with some artificial name like Saturn’s Day for the seventh day of the week. Instead, they actually use the word “Sabbath” to label the seventh day of the week.

For example, if you talk to a Spanish speaking person about meeting him later in the week, you would say, “I’ll meet you on Sabado at 7:00 a.m. They call the seventh day of the week Sabado.

Here are examples of other languages:

• Italian: Sabato

• Arabic: Sabet

• Armenian: Shabat

• Polish, Slovak and Czeck: Sobota

• Croatian: Subota

• Russian: Subbota

Now, let’s investigate whether or not God’s Sabbath was done away with or changed. We begin our investigation by looking at the life of Jesus. Let’s look at Mark 1:38–39:

“And he said unto them, Let us go into the next town, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth. And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils.”

We find this verified by Luke 4:16 that Jesus preached in synagogues. Well, if Jesus preached in synagogues, what day do you think He preached in those synagogues? Why, on the seventh-day Sabbath, of course. If He preached in a synagogue on a day other than the seventh-day Sabbath, it would probably be empty. Now, someone is going to say, “Of course He preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath because that’s when the Jews were in those synagogues. He had to go there on the Sabbath day or He’d miss being there with the people.”

Let’s read on…

In Mark 2:23, we find an incident where Jesus’ disciples were walking thru a field of grain and they began to pluck grain and eat it right off the plant. This action caused them to be condemned by the religious leaders who said the disciples were doing something wrong. And notice what Jesus says in response in verses 27 and 28:

“And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”

 

Did Jesus say, “I have the power to do away with the Sabbath”? Did Jesus say, “The Sabbath will soon be done away with after my crucifixion and resurrection”? No. He acknowledged that the Sabbath existed! And He pointed out that He was the Lord of that day!

And this claim that Jesus made shouldn’t surprise us. The first chapter of the Gospel of John shows how Jesus has existed from eternity. He didn’t just come into being in Bethlehem in His earthly birth. Like His Father, Jesus has always existed. He was alive during Creation and was and is Lord of the Sabbath day that was blessed and sanctified during Creation week.

Christians are confused by this Mark 23 verse, thinking that Jesus was doing away or cancelling some Old Testament commandment that His disciples were breaking. There is no biblical command that the disciples were breaking by plucking grain just like there was no biblical command that the lame man was breaking by carrying his mat after Jesus healed him. The Pharisees were talking about extra-biblical commands instituted by the Pharisees themselves. Jesus never broke or taught the breaking of any biblical commandments, but He did teach against the pharisaical commandments that men added to God’s Word.

It must always be remembered that Jesus never did away with the Sabbath or the Ten Commandments. The disagreements that Jesus had with the religious leaders of His time were never about His desire to do away with the teachings of the Torah. Rather, Jesus’ disagreement with the Pharisees was over what they added to the Torah. He took great exception to the traditions of the elders. That’s why He said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The religious leaders had made the Sabbath a burden, when God intended it to be a delight.

Why is there so much confusion about this in the churches? Is it because we read the Scriptures from an English-speaking, Western, Gentile perspective? Why do preachers say that Jesus abolished the law when Jesus own words said, “Think not that I came to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Heaven and earth shall pass-away but not one jot or tittle of the law shall ever pass away.”

The word “fulfill” in Greek is pleroo (4137). It means to “fully preach.” How did we get so confused that many think the word “fulfill” is the same as destroy? First John 3:8 tells us that for this reason was the Son of God manifested to us—here it is; wait for it—“that he might destroy the works of the devil.” How did we ever confuse this and think that He came to destroy the Law?

Now, what does Jesus say about the Sabbath in the future? Well, His own words show that His followers would be keeping the Sabbath in AD 70 at the time of the destruction of the Temple.

In Matthew 24:20, He says, “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day.”

This verse, like many prophecies in the Bible, was given with a partial fulfillment which was the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. But Matthew 24 is really a prophecy about the final fulfillment during the appearance of the anti-Christ during the Great Tribulation. We know that Matthew 24 is talking about the end-time tribulation (not just the events of AD 70) because right in the same chapter He says…

• “For then will be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to that day nor ever shall be” (verse 21). The destruction of Jerusalem is not the Great Tribulation which Jesus said will be the worst time on planet earth…ever.

• “Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven” (verse 30). This never happened in AD 70 because, when Jesus comes, it says in Revelation 6:16 that they will cry out to the rocks and mountains: “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand?”

If Jesus’ followers were to conclude that His resurrection ended Sabbath observance, He would have made no reference to the Sabbath observance by His followers over thirty years after His resurrection and during the destruction of Jerusalem and in the Great Tribulation many centuries after His resurrection, just before His Second Coming. Jesus never taught His followers to abandon the Sabbath. And neither did His apostles talk about abandoning the Sabbath in their teachings and observances following their receiving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

Jesus’ followers continued to observe the Sabbath long after His death. Notice:

Acts 17:2: “And Paul, as was his custom, went in unto them, and for three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures.”

Acts 18:4: “And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.”

Acts 13:14–15: “But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down. And after the reading of the law and the prophets the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.”

Acts 13:44: “And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.”

There is no evidence whatsoever that the earliest Christians were worshiping on Sunday. Sunday worship came to Christianity later as Gentile influences infiltrated the Body of Christ and corrupted the teachings of Moses and the apostles.

Some say that the New Testament shows the early church keeping the first day of the week. This is not true. In the pagan Roman Empire, the most honored day was the venerable day of the sun. This was the day businesses were closed and people didn’t work. Of course this would be a great day to collect money for the less fortunate since it wasn’t permitted to take money to the synagogues on the Sabbath day. The New Testament mentions the first day of the week only eight times, and none of them mean anything at all about attending worship services on Sunday. (See Part 4 of this booklet for more information.)

Right now, you’re probably asking this question: “Well, if Jesus and His disciples didn’t do away with the Sabbath or change it to another day of the week, then why are all these churches worshipping on Sunday? Surely, two billion Christians can’t be wrong. Right?”

To find our answer to this question, we have to look at history a few hundred years after the death of Jesus. During the years between 200 and about 400, AD, there was a definite bias against anything Jewish in the Roman Empire. The Roman government banned things like circumcision, sacrificing, observing the Passover on the 14th of Nisan, and the seventh-day Sabbath. Again, just as we saw in many parts of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, anti-Semitism prevailed in the Roman Empire.

It became expedient for Christians in Rome to differentiate themselves from Jews by keeping Sunday instead of the seventh day. At that time, Christians and Jews had many similarities. For example, they both revered the Hebrew Scriptures. But many Christians decided (for their own safety and convenience) they needed to put distance between themselves and the Jews. In the process, they accepted many pagan practices of the many religions of Rome. Many decided to begin worshipping God on the day named after the sun.

By the time Emperor Constantine officially recognized Christianity as an acceptable religion in the fourth century, he put the power of the empire behind Sunday observance. From then on, Sunday became established as the “Christian Sabbath.” By the time of the Protestant Reformation, Sunday was so established that even the great Reformers couldn’t dislodge it from their liturgy even though they claimed authority from the Bible and the Bible alone. Today, Sunday observance is based solely on tradition and not on Scripture.

As modern science continues to learn more about the human body, the more they recognize that people actually need a day of rest. Of course, they don’t recommend which day we should rest, but they’re coming to agreement more and more that people need a day of rest. This is one more piece of science that backs up the Bible.

Mankind was created by God, and God has provided us with a manual in the same way Ford provides a manual for each car it produces. The manual for man is the Bible. Will you follow the manual that was put together by your Creator? Will you obey His commands? Once you start obeying God’s laws, it won’t take you long to figure out that His laws are not a bunch of selfish do’s and don’ts created by a mean god for the purpose of holding us back from what we want to do. God’s laws were made to help us find the only true happiness that exists. We only find happiness thru the blood of Jesus and obedience to His Father.

The Sabbath is so important that God included a Sabbath command in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Today, Christians are eager to promote the Ten Commandments by preaching against murder, adultery, bearing false witness, etc. But they stop short of promoting the Fourth Commandment as written in Exodus 20. God believed Sabbath observance was so important that He included it in the Ten Commandments that Christianity embraces. Why would He include it in the Commandments and then yank it out after Jesus’ resurrection? As we saw from the Scriptures we just read, God did not yank the Fourth Commandment out of the Decalogue. It’s still there for us today. And, like the other nine commandments, it’s there for our own good—for the good of all mankind.

Jesus expects us to keep all Ten Commandments if we are to receive eternal life.

Matthew 19:17: “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”

Revelation 22:14: “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

James 2:10–12: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.  So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.”

Well, you’re probably asking right now, “If the Bible didn’t change the seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday, how did this change get made?”

Excellent question. Let’s go to the churches out there that keep Sunday and let’s let them answer that question for us. I’m going to read you some quotes from the literature of various churches. You’ll notice that the dates of some of these quotes are quite old. That’s because churches back then were more open to admitting how this Sabbath change got made. These days, it seems they really don’t like to talk about how this change was made.

These quotes are from a website called SundayLaw.net. We have also included quotes from a publication done by the Voice of Prophecy. It was called, “Authoritative Quotations on the Sabbath and Sunday.” Let’s read a few and see what all these churches have said about the subject of Sabbath vs. Sunday.

BAPTIST

“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday…. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week…. Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament, absolutely not. There is no Scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week. 

“We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government” (Baptist Church Manual, Art. 12).

CATHOLIC

“From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, and that Sunday, as the Lord’s day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it a tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church” (D. B. Ray, The Papal Controversy, 1892, page 179).

“You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we [Catholics] never sanctify” (James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, page 111).

“There is but one church on the face of the earth which has the power, or claims power, to make laws binding on the conscience, binding before God, binding under penalty of hell-fire. For instance, the institution of Sunday. What right has any other church to keep this day? You answer by virtue of the third commandment [the Papacy changed the fourth commandment and called it the third], which says, ‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.’ But Sunday is not the Sabbath. Any schoolboy knows that Sunday is the first day of the week. I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to anyone who will prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep, and no one has called for the money. It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week” (T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture delivered in 1893).

“Question: What Bible authority is there for changing the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week? Who gave the pope the authority to change a command of God?

“Answer: If the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, then the Seventh-day Adventist is right in observing the Saturday with the Jew. But Catholics learn what to believe and do from the divine, infallible authority established by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church…. Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Church?”—Question Box by Conway, 1903 Edition, pages 254, 255.

“Question: Which is the Sabbath day?

“Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day.

“Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?

“Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday” (Peter Geiermann, The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, Second Edition, 1910, page 50).

“It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest to the Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] church” (Mgr. Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, page 213).

“Nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is, the seventh day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the church [Roman] outside the Bible” (Catholic Virginian, Oct. 3, 1947).

CHURCHES OF CHRIST (also Disciples of Christ)

“There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord’s day” (Dr. D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890).

CHURCH OF ENGLAND, or Episcopalian

“Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None” (Manual of Christian Doctrine, page 127).

“The Lord’s day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath…. The Lord’s day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept that day which was in that commandment…. The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord’s day even in times of persecution when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none” (Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, Part 1, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6, Sec.51, 59).

“Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel” (T.M. Morer, Dialogues on the Lord’s Day, pages 22, 23).

“Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day…. The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it” (Isaac Williams, B.D., Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pages 334–336).

“We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church” (Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday).

CONGREGATIONALIST

“The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament” (Dr. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, Jan. 19, 1882).

LUTHERAN

“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance” (Augustus Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, Vol. I, page 186). 

METHODIST

“The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday. This took place in the year 321.

“Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, is not a matter of positive command. It is a gift of the church” (Clovis G. Chappell, Ten Rules For Living, page 61).

MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE

“The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?” (D. L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, page 47).

PRESBYTERIAN

“The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution…. Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand…. The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath” (T. C. Blake, DD, Theology Condensed, pages 414, 475).