| A: |
Saturday, the seventh
day of the week, not Sunday, has always been the Sabbath of the Lord. In
Genesis, when God created the Universe, He chose the Seventh Day as His
day of rest and set it apart from all other days.
The
seventh day of Creation was, in fact, the first Sabbath.
"So
God blessed the seventh day and Hallowed it, because on it God rested from
all His work he had done in creation." [Gen 2:3]
Notice
that God said He hallowed that day - meaning He consecrated it - He made
it sacred.
Sabbath:
[in Hebrew: Sab-bat-an] - is defined in Strong's Concordance as a day of
weekly repose [rest].
In
Exodus, we find that the Sabbath is so important to God that He numbers
it - fourth, among His Ten Commandments. He instructs us to "remember
it" [Ex. 20:8] - meaning, memorialize it and reiterates that He had
consecrated it as His holy day of rest at the time of the Creation. [Ex.20-11]
In
the first chapter of John's Gospel we learn that "The Word", who was made
flesh and dwelt among us, was the creator of the entire universe.
So
it was Jesus who created the physical realm and then consecrated the seventh
day as His day of rest - which makes clear, why He is called the "Lord
of the Sabbath" [Luke 6:5] - since He in fact instituted it.
In
light of all this and knowing also according to His own words that He had
not come to change what was written but to fulfill it [Mt5:17] -
and that He is the same yesterday, today and forever [Heb 13:8]
- I can't imagine why anyone thinks He changed His holy day of rest to
Sunday!
You
state that Sunday was substituted for Saturday because that was the day
of our Lord's resurrection.
This
is how the traditional churches rationalize having made this change. However,
they are incorrect.
Jesus
did not rise on Sunday.
According
to mainstream doctrine, Jesus was crucified before sundown on Friday evening
and rose up before sunrise Sunday morning - making the total time he was
in the grave a mere 36 hours. This is in conflict with Jesus' own time
frame for his resurrection:
"For
as Jonah was three day's and three nights in the belly of the whale, so
will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the tomb." [Mt 12:40]
According
to Jesus, the only sign he would give to those of that generation as proof
that he was the messiah, would be his resurrection after 72 hours.
So either traditional doctrines are erroneous, or our Savior got it all
wrong.
Don't
be mislead by the feeble argument that Jesus' words meant any part of three
days or within three days - Christ himself said - three days and three
nights! There is much more scriptural proof of this fact that reveals the
actual time frame of his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. This
is a lengthy study all of it's own, so for the sake of completing the Sabbath
question this will suffice for now.
The
point just had to be made that the resurrection did not take place on Sunday,
to explain the flaw in the logic that led to it's being changed.
You
also state that Sunday has been practiced as the Sabbath ever since the
church began.
This
is just not true.
In
365 A.D., the council of Laodicea decreed that Christians could no longer
practice the "Jewish" Sabbath. This decree (punishable by death), had more
to do with Roman disdain for Judaism than the Roman church's understanding
of God's Word. Up until this time all Christian Congregations except the
Churches at Rome and Alexandria Egypt, still kept the Seventh Day Sabbath.
On
this same historical note, it should be stated that in the middle of the
second century, the Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, a disciple of John the
Apostle, debated with Anecetus, the Bishop of Rome, over several points
of doctrine. The observance of Passover, instead of what has come to be
called Easter, and the keeping of the Sunday, instead of the Saturday Sabbath,
being chief among them. Forty years later, Polycrates, a disciple of Polycarp,
debated these very same points with then Bishop Victor of Rome. In each
case, neither yielding at all to the powerful Roman Bishops, but rather,
insisting that they had been instructed authoritatively on these issues
by John who was taught by Jesus himself. |
