FROM THE BIBLE ADVOCATE PRESS - REPRINTED BY PERMlSSlON

CHAPTER VI

Which Day Is The Christian Sabbath?

FOURTH COMMANDMENT: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY. Therefore the Lord BLESSED THE SABBATH DAY AND MADE IT HOLY” (Exodus 20:8-11).

Is the Sabbath a Mosaic law or a law from creation? “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he RESTED from all his work. And God BLESSED THE SEVENTH DAY AND MADE IT HOLY, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Genesis 2:2-3).

FOURTH COMMANDMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: “Then he (Jesus) said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for man (Greek - mankind), not man for the Sabbath.’ SO (as a result of the Sabbath being for mankind) THE SON OF MAN (]ESUS THE CHRIST) IS LORD EVEN OF THE SABBATH” (Mark 2:27-28). Christ said, “If you love me KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.”

The Apostle John said, “Everyone who sins BREAKS THE LAW; in fact, sin IS LAWLESSNESS” (I JOHN 3:4).

Search the Scriptures

Can you find:
1. One Biblical text that says the Sabbath (seventh day) was ever changed from the seventh to the first day of the week?
2. One text where the first day of the week (Sunday) is ever called a holy day?
3. One text where we are told to keep the first day of the week?
4. One text that says that Jesus ever kept the first day (Sunday)?
5. One text where the first day is ever given any sacred name?
6. One text that tells us to keep the first day in honor of the Resurrection of Christ?
7. One text that affirms that any of the apostles ever kept the first day as the Sabbath?
8. One text from any apostolic writings that authorizes Sunday observance as the Sabbath of God?
9. One text where it says it was for the Church to observe, or to meet on, the first day of the week?
10. One text where we are told not to work on the first day of the week?
11. One text where any blessings are promised for observing Sunday?
12. One text where any punishment is threatened for working on Sunday?
13. One text that says the seventh day is not
now God’s Sabbath day?
14. One text where the apostles ever taught their converts to keep the first day of the week as a Sabbath?
15. One text that says the seventh day Sabbath is ABOLISHED?
16. One text where the first day is ever called the Lord’s Day?
17. One text where the first day was ever appointed to be kept as the Lord’s Day?
18. One text that says that the Father or the Son (Jesus) rested on the first day of the week?
19. One text that says that the first day of the week was ever sanctified and hallowed as a day of rest?
20. One text that says that Jesus, Paul, or any other of the apostles taught anyone to observe the first day of the week as the Sabbath?
21. One text that calls the seventh day the ‘Jewish Sabbath” or one text that calls Sunday the “Christian Sabbath?”
22. One text authorizing anyone to set aside God’s Sabbath and observe any other day?

What will you do about it? Will you follow the admonition of the apostle Peter? - “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ . . .”(2 Peter 3:18).
If you want to change from (repent) breaking the Sabbath and start KEEPING it, then you will have grown in KNOWLEDGE and therefore come under greater GRACE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What Other Ministers Say!

Episcopal: “The Bible commandment says on the seventh day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday.” - Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, October 26,1949 [Carrington, 1892-], Anglican archbishop of Quebec, spoke the above in a message on this subject delivered to a packed assembly of clergymen. It was widely reported at the time in the news media.)

Anglican: “And where are we told in the Scriptures 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 (commanded) it.” (Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 334, 336)

Baptist: “There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will, however, be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask 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. . . .
“I wish to say that this Sabbath question, in this aspect of it, is the gravest and most perplexing question connected with Christian institutions which at present claims attention from Christian people; and the only reason that it is not a more disturbing element in Christian thought and in religious discussion is because the Christian world has settled down content on the conviction that somehow a transference has taken place at the beginning of Christian history.
“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false gloss (of Jewish traditions), never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject.
“Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism.” Dr. E.T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual. From a photostatic copy of a notarized statement by Dr. Hiscox.
Dwight L. Moody: “I honestly believe that this commandment (The Sabbath commandment) is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated (abolished), but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was - in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.
“The (Seventh-day) Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8-11) begins with the word ‘remember’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote this 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 (adultery, murder, lying, theft, etc.) are still binding?”
Dwight L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, 1898, pp. 46-47 (D.L. Moody [1837-1899] was the most famous evangelist of his time, and founder of the Moody Bible Institute).

Church of England: “Take which you will, either the ‘fathers’ of the moderns, and we shall find no Lord’s Day instituted by any apostolic mandate, no sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week.”- Dr. Peter Heylyn of the Church of England, quoted in History of the Sabbath, Part 2, chapter 1, page 410.

American Congregationalists: “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, in the Christian Union, June 26, 189O.

Disciples of Christ: “If it (the Ten Commandments) yet exist, let us observe it...And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. ‘But’ say some, it was changed from the seventh to the first day.’ where? when? and by whom? - No, it was never changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to, be gone through again: for the reason assigned (in Genesis 2:1-3) must be changed before, the observance or respect to the reason, can be changed. It is all old wives’ fables to talk of the ‘change of the sabbath’ from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex-officio. - I think his name is ‘Doctor Antichrist.’ Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol. 1, no. 7.

Methodist: “It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that he came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” - Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, 1902 edition, pp. 180-181, 171 (Binney (1802-18781, Methodist minister and presiding elder, whose Compendium was published for forty years in many languages, also wrote a Methodist New Testament Commentary.)

Lutheran: “They (the Catholics) allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord’s day, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue (the ten commandments); and they have no example more in their mouths than the change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church’s power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with a precept of the Decalogue.”- The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art. 7, in Philip Schaff, the Creeds of Christendom, fourth edition, vol. 3, p. 64 (this important statement was made by the Lutherans and written by Melanchthon, only thirteen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door and began the Reformation.)

Congregationalist: “The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scripture, and was not by the primitive (early Christian) church called the Sabbath.” - Timothy Dwight, Theology, sermon 107, 1818 ed., vol. IV, p. 49 (Dwight [1752-1817] was president of Yale University from 1795-1817.)

Episcopalian: “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, apostolic church of Christ.” - Episcopalian Bishop Symour, Why We Keep Sunday.
“The Catholic Church...by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.” - The Catholic Mirror, September 23 1893 (The Mirror, a Baltimore-based Catholic weekly, was the official organ for Cardinal Gibbons).
“If we consulted the Bible only, we should still have to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is Satur day.” - John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, 1936 edition, vol. 1, p. 51 (J.J. Laux [1878-19391 was a Catholic priest, teacher, and author of many Catholic histories as well as biographies of their saints).
“Some of the truths that have been handed down to us by tradition and are not recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, are the following: That there are just seven sacraments; that there is a purgatory; that, in the new law (the Catholic law), Sunday should be kept holy instead of the Sabbath; that infants should be baptized, and that there are precisely seventy-two books in the Bible (66 which are inspired, plus six apocryphal books accepted by Rome).” Francis J. Butler, Holy Family Catechism, No. 3, p. 63 (Butler[1859-?] was a Catholic priest of Boston and an author of a series of catechisms).
“Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days?
“Answer. - By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of (by observing it); and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church.”- Priest Henry Tuberville, An Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine, p. 58 (In 1833, Tuberviller received a papal approbation - a special Vatican approval - on this book).
“Protestants . . .accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic church made the change . . . But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope.” Our Sunday Visitor, Feb. 5, 1950 (One of the largest U.S. Roman Catholic magazines).
“The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ Himself, hidden under veil of flesh.”- The Catholic National, July, 1895.
“It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest (from the Bible Sabbath) to Sunday . . . Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the (Catholic) church.” - Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, 1868, p. 213 (L.G. Segur, 1820-1881, as a French Catholic prelate and apologist, and later a diplomatic and judicial official at Rome).
“Question: By what authority did the Church substitute Sunday for Saturday?
“Answer: The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday by the plenitude of that divine power which Jesus Christ bestowed upon her.” - Peter F. Geiermann, The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, 1923 edition, p. 59 (Priest Geiermann [1870-1929] was a well-known Catholic writer.).
“If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.” Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal in a letter dated February 10,192O.
“All of us believe many things in regard to religion that we do not find in the Bible. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles changed (the day) from Saturday to Sunday We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the Church outside the Bible.” - To Tell You the Truth, The Catholic Virginian, #22, October 3,1947, p.9. “We Catholics, then, have precisely that same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed; namely, the authority of the (Catholic) Church. Whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God’s word, and the (Catholic) Church to be its divinely appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it (the Catholic Church) denouncing the time as a fallible and treacherousit all guide, which often ‘makes the commandments of God of none effect’ (quoting Matthew 15:6).” - The Brotherhood of St. Paul, The Clifton Tracts, Vol. 4, tract 4, p. 15 (Roman Catholic).
“For ages all Christian nations looked to the Catholic Church, and as we have seen, the various states enforced by law her ordinances as to worship and cessation of labor on Sunday. Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the Church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday as the Sabbath. The State in passing laws for the due Sanctification of Sunday, is unwittingly acknowledging the authority of the Catholic Church and carrying out more or less faithfully its prescriptions. The Sunday as a day of the week set apart for the obligatory public worship of Almighty God is purely a creation of the Catholic Church.” - John Gilmary Shea, in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1883, p. 139 (Shea, 1824-1892, was an important Catholic historian of his time).
“The Catholic church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her Divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday . . .But the Protestant says: ‘How can I receive the teachings of an apostate Church?’ How, we ask, have you managed to receive her teaching all your life, in direct opposition to your recognized teacher, the Bible, on the Sabbath question?...The Protestant world at its birth (which as Catholics suppose did not occur till the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century) found the Christian Sabbath (Sunday) too strongly entrenched to run counter to its existence; it was therefore placed under the necessity of acquiescing in the arrangement, thus implying the Church’s right to change the day, for over 300 years (from then till now). The Christian Sabbath (the Catholic Sabbath) is therefore to this day the acknowledged offspring of the Catholic Church, as Spouse of the Holy Ghost, without a word of remonstrance from the
Protestant world.” The Christian Sabbath, 2nd ed., published by The Catholic Mirror of Baltimore, 1893, pp. 29-31 (This was the weekly journal of James Cardinal Gibbons, the most important American Catholic of his time).
“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, the Seventh-Day Adventist is right in observing the Saturday with the Jew . . . Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Catholic Church?” – Bertrand Conway, The Question Box, 1903 ed., pp. 254-255; 1915 ed., p. 179 (Conway, 1872-19591 was a Paulist father in the Catholic church).
“The Adventists are the only body of Christians with the Bible as their teacher, who can find no warrant in its pages for the change of day from the seventh to the first . . .Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.” Catholic Mirror, September 2 and December 23, 1893.
“Prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says, ‘No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.’ And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic church.” - Priest Thomas Enright, CSSR, President of Redemptorist College, Kansas City, MO, in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, February 18, 1884, and printed in the Hartford Kansas Weekly Call, February 22, 1884, and the American Sentinel, a New York Roman Catholic Journal, in June 1883, page 173.
“Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act . . .and the ACT IS A MARK of her ecclesiastical power.” - from the office of Cardinal Gibbons, through Chancellor H.F. Thomas, November 11,1895.

The Sabbath Day of worship is the most difficult concept for Protestants and Catholics to comprehend because of their lifelong tradition of keeping Sunday. However, if you are seeking God’s will in your life and desiring to GROW in GRACE and KNOWLEDGE of Jesus Christ, we admonish you, as the Apostle Peter did on the day of Pentecost when the New Testament Church was founded, to “Repent (change from breaking God’s commandments to keeping them) and be baptized, every one of you, IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, SO THAT YOUR SINS MAY BE FORGIVEN. And you will receive the gift of the Holy spirit.” (Acts 2:38) Sin is TRANSGRESSING God’s laws, of which the Sabbath is one. Christ wants you to repent and come under His divine GRACE and receive the forgiveness of sins.