Which day is the Sabbath?
Question: Why do Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday when Saturday is the seventh day of the week?
Answer: In Scripture the Sabbath was mostly connected with the Jewish observance of the Sabbath as beginning at sundown on Friday and ending at sundown on Saturday. It was meant from creation to be a day of rest, following the example of God himself.
At the beginning of the New Testament period, the true meaning of the Sabbath was lost in the midst of the many restrictions placed on the people by Pharisaical law. Jesus expressed anger towards those Jews who were more concerned with keeping the day than helping someone in need.
Because the early church was comprised mostly of born again Jews, the observance of the Sabbath remained important, but Paul regarded such strict observance as a yoke of bondage from which Christians had been set free (Gal. 5:1). Over the next two centuries the early church fathers agreed that the Sabbath observance in the strict sense of the law was not binding on Christians.
The “Christian Sabbath” view is the one we follow today. This view, which holds that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, emphasizes the divine institution of the Sabbath at the close of creation. God’s blessing and sanctification of the seventh day is taken to mean that He intended one day in seven to be observed by all people in all ages as a sacred day of rest and worship.
The other view today is the seventh-day Sabbath view, held by the Seventh-Day Adventists, who hold that Christians are obligated to keep the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath.
From my understanding, all the early church fathers and apostles celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week, marking a distinction in how we reverence Jesus Christ as God’s anointed one to bring salvation to all who in faith confess their sins and forsake their old life. Jesus taught us to observe the sabbath but to do so by doing good works. He taught that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath.
Sabbath is the seventh day of the week.No day else is.Sunday is the first day of the week.It says in the bible(not your bible) that the seventh day is meant for rest and not the first(Sunday).wrong answer.
Have you ever noticed that whenever this subject comes up, the answer is that “the church fathers” in the early formation of the New Testament church changed the Sabbath Day to Sunday? This reasoning has to be used, because there is not one word in the Bible to support this change. What about Christ’s words? Matthew 5:17 says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”
For some reason there are many people in the Christian Church who have a hard time distinguishing between the moral law (Decalogue - Ten Commandments) and the ceremonial law (Law of Moses - handwriting of ordinances). Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law. Colossians 2:14 says, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”
The moral law still stands. If you ask any Christian if it is okay to willfully violate any of the other nine commandments, the answer will be, “No! Certainly not!” Paul agrees in Romans 3:31, which says, “Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.”
When the fourth commandment is brought up, there is a lot of fluff about how it was changed but no substance. There is no substance, because the Bible does not recognize or sanction the change. In Matthew 15:3 Jesus asks, “…Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”
It is the tradition of man that made the Sabbath change. It is also a tradition of man that will be the mark of the antichrist, a law of man in violation of one of God’s commandments. Examples may be found in Daniel 3 and 6.
Finally, Revelation 12:17 reads, “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” So, we see that God’s end-time remnant people will be keeping all of God’s commandments. Research this question with an open and honest heart. The answer is self-evident. God will not let you be misled.
May the Lord bless you.