“Why do Christians worship on Sunday instead of Saturday?”
Most Christians today attend worship services on Sunday. Few ever stop to ask why. Is Sunday really the biblical “Lord’s Day”? Did Jesus [here forward referred to as Yeshua] or the apostles change the Sabbath? Or did something else happen—something rooted not in Scripture, but in politics, tradition, and Papal authority? In this article, we’ll uncover the truth about the shift from Saturday to Sunday worship, what the Bible actually says about the Sabbath, and why even Protestants— who claim Sola Scriptura— have accepted a Roman Church tradition, without protest.
“Thou protestest not enough, Methinks!”
Shakespeare may cringe, but perhaps Queen Gertrude should ask that question of many people today. The protestant community loves to boast “Sola Scriptura”, claiming adherence only to Biblical truth. But, most in the world do not adhere to scriptural truth concerning The Sabbath.
What does the Bible say about the Sabbath?
The Sabbath was not a late-and-coming idea in Scripture nor in Biblical religion. It was part and parcel to “The Beginning”, and the punctuation of Creation itself. God began creating when He said “Let there be light”. And when He finished the six days of creating, He then rested. The word for ‘rested’ is “Shavat”, the same word as “Sabbath”.
But, what a lot of people do not realize is that it is the Sabbath, the Seventh Day, that was actually blessed by God Himself. The Creator, after having finished the work of creating the universe, rested and refreshed Himself. And He blessed that timeframe, for all eternity:
“And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work, which God, in creating, had made.” ~ Genesis 2:3 So, God’s last ‘act’ during creation was blessing the Sabbath.
More importantly, God did not leave off the Sabbath after the flood, but wrote it into stone, two times, with His own finger, when He gave the Torah to Moses.
“Remember The Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days will you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Shabbat unto יהוה your God, in it you will not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; for in six days יהוה made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore יהוה blessed The Sabbath Day, and hallowed it.” ~Exodus 20:7-10
“Observe The Sabbath Day, to keep it holy, as יהוה your God commanded you. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Shabbat unto יהוה your God. In it you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; that your man-servant and your maid-servant may rest as well as you. And you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and יהוה your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore יהוה your God commanded you to keep The Sabbath Day.” ~ Deuteronomy 5:11-14
So, God blessed this seventh day at Creation. Then, He made certain that His People would know exactly when it was by giving them The Bread from Heaven [a spiritual manifestation of Yeshua], and then He wrote the importance of the day into stone when He gave them His instructions for righteous living, two times, and then encoded it into the Bible of Moses’ day, three times, in Exodus 20, Leviticus 23, and Deuteronomy 5.
God explains to Israel why to keep it: because He rested on the seventh day; because He set it apart as holy; to give everyone rest; to remember the Creation done in six days, and to remember freedom from the bondage of Egypt. And, because He blessed it, which we have seen in scripture twice. It is “Day Seven” and “Day of Rest”. This is the biblical timing of the Sabbath, and the biblical purpose of it.
God called the Sabbath a ‘sweet delight’, “oneg”, very like a dessert, in the prophet Isaiah’s book:
“If you turn away your foot because of Shabbat, from pursuing your business on My consecrated day; and call Shabbat a delight, and the Holy Day of יהוה honorable.” ~ Isaiah 58
Just two chapters before, He encouraged the gentiles not to separate from the Jewish people in the observance of the Sabbath:
“Happy is the man that does this, and the son of man [human being] that holds fast by it: that keeps Shabbat, by not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the alien [gentile] that has joined himself to יהוה speak, saying, ‘ יהוה will surely separate me from His people’”. 58:2-3
God tells gentiles here not to fear being separated off to a different day of worship! But to be happy in keeping His Sabbath with His people!
But some people argue that we do not know what day that was on our calendar. But, the Jewish people knew exactly what day it was, even though in Egypt they had forgotten it. When He brought them out of Egypt, He showed them what day it was, by giving them bread that would eventually be revealed as a picture of Yeshua. That bread fell like clockwork.
When He gave them the Manna, He said:
“Behold, I will cause bread to rain down from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My Torah or not. And it shall come to pass on the sixth day that they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. … And it came to pass that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one; and all the rulers of the assembly came and told Moshe. And he said unto them, “This is that which יהוה has spoken, ‘Tomorrow [day 7, after the 6th day] is a solemn rest, a consecrated Shabbat unto יהוה .” ~Exodus 16:4-5, 22-23
In fact, the word “Shabbat” in Hebrew actually means “seven”, as the number seven means “completion”, and it is rooted in the verb ‘to rest completely’. And if Yeshua is our example, which most would agree, on one level at least, that He is, then He is seen as having kept the Sabbath with the Jewish people in the Synagogues, regularly, everywhere He went.
“And He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and He entered the Synagogue on The Sabbath Day, as was His custom, and stood up to read.”
There are, of course, other verses, many, that show us Yeshua assembling in the Synagogues on the Sabbath. [Mark 1:21, 3:1-2, Luke 13:10, Matt 12:9, John 6:59]. So, if we are going to be His followers, should we not emulate Him?
People do not realize that Yeshua was operating under a Jewish Calendar that lined up with the Julian calendar in the exact same way that our calendar lines up today. The Julian calendar had been created in 45 B.C. by the influence of both Judaic and Mithraic calendars, and it locked the observed Jewish seventh day to the Julian Saturday, the seventh day of Rome. Before that, Rome had a nine-day week. But Julius Caesar moved to a seven-day week based on a solar calendar. And he lined the days up then according to the seven-day week we now know. So, the current Gregorian calendar, followed by the whole world today, kept the same days of the week as the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar only tweaked the calculation of leap year.
Since 45 B.C. then, the Jewish seventh day has lined up with the western seventh day: Saturday. That is how it was in Yeshua’s day when He went into the Synagogues on the Sabbath Day. That was the Roman Saturday, just like it is now. It is not a question of history, it is a historical fact supported by many historical witnesses.
Early Messianic/Congregational Worship: Sabbath or Sunday?
Most people of faith are at least vaguely aware that Paul founded the first “Gentile” congregations. He was the minister to the Gentile community, personally called into that ministry while face-to-face with Messiah.
If one reads Acts 13 and 14, one sees that his ministry to the Gentiles started in the Jewish Synagogues with gentiles who had already converted to an early form of Judaism. They were called “God-fearers”, like the converts that were in Jerusalem on the day of “Pentecost”, or the Jewish celebration of Shavu’ot.
When people began to assemble as Messianic “gentiles”, or gentiles who began to put their trust in Yeshua, they assembled in the Synagogues with all Jews, Jews who only believed in God, and Jews who not only trusted in God the Creator, but also in His Son Yeshua as well; they did so on the Jewish Sabbath. James trusted in that enough to compel the Messianic Jews to leave the Gentiles alone, saying, “But let us send word to them [Gentiles in Galatia] that they abstain from defilement by sacrifices to idols, and from fornication, and from creatures strangled, and from blood. For Moses [Moshe, referring to the Torah], since early generations, has those who declare him in the Synagogues in every city who read him on every Sabbath Day.” ~ Acts 15:20-21
This was true of much of the rest of Paul’s preaching ministry, as seen in Acts 17:
“They [Paul and Silas] came to Thessalonica, where there was a Synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as was his custom, [Just like Yeshua] went in to join them, and for three Sabbath days he spoke to them from the scriptures…And some of them believed and joined Paul and Silas; and many of them were Greeks [gentiles] who feared God [God-fearers, converted pagans]…” ~ Acts 17:1-4
So Paul did preach to the gentiles, but he did so in the confines of the Sabbath! The Jewish Sabbath, which lined up with Saturday back then, just like it does now.
There is no place in the scriptures where anyone, Jew or Gentile, stopped assembling with the brethren before God on the Jewish Sabbath day. Not one place.
There are, of course, verses people use to try to excuse it, to say that it did indeed shift, saying that the 1st century congregations did assemble on “Sun-day”. But, those verses do not at all say that. And there is not one historical record that shows a Sunday observance in the 1st century, Jewish or Gentile. Not. One.
The first verse people use to excuse the change from the Sabbath to Sunday worship in the early congregations is usually Acts 20:7:
“And at the beginning of the week, when we assembled to break bread, Paul declared to them, and because he was going to leave the next day, he prolonged his speech until midnight. Now there was a great glow of light from the lamps [Lapidot, special Havdalah lamps] in the upper chamber where we were gathered together.” ~ Acts 20:7
The problem for most people is that when they read a more ‘standard’ translation of the Greek, like the King James, they do not see what is written above, even though the Greek reads exactly the same as the above: at the beginning of the week. In most decent Bibles, the verse reads this way, “on the first day of the week”, where ‘day’ is at least italicized. But, it takes a curious student of the Bible to find out why it is italicized. The explanation can be found at the beginning or end of most decent Bibles, for the one who searches diligently, and it will explain it in this wise: italicized words inserted for clarity, not in the original text.
The cultural and Biblical context explains that this is Saturday night, since the Jewish, Biblical week begins on Saturday Night, then, as is done now, with a ceremony called Havdalah. Havdalah is a Saturday night ceremony for “Making Distinction.” At a Havdalah ceremony, a lapidot is lit, a multi-wicked candle, to mark the end of the Sabbath. This is the beginning of the week, and not ‘Sun-day’, especially since the Roman ‘Sun Day’ did not start until midnight, and that is actually when Paul stopped teaching! This passage was written by Jews to a largely Jewish and heavily Jewish-influenced audience. They understood this to mean Saturday night.
The same is true of the second verse people use to excuse away assembling on Sunday instead of God’s appointed time. This one comes from 1st Corinthians 16:2.
“On the first of every week, let each of you put aside and keep in his house whatever he can afford, so that there may be no collections when I come.”
This is another cultural feature of Havdalah. The first duty of the Jewish congregations was to tend to the needs of the community at the very beginning of the week, right after the Sabbath ends on Saturday at dark. This verse has become a fixture in the modern abuse of the ‘tithe’ commandment, which is only an “OT” principle and practice. This is not a tithe; this is an act of benevolence, with no fixed value of percentage. But, more importantly, this affirms the Jewish context and culture, that thinking of the poor in the congregation was the first task during the mundane week, which begins between 7-9 O Clock p.m. depending on the time of year. Again, most translations insert day into the verse in order to justify taking up a tithe on Sunday. They ignore the fact that this was not Sunday.
The last verse most people use to excuse not worshipping on the Sabbath but moving it to Sunday is the most egregious violation of plain reading of the text:
“I was in The Spirit on Yom יהוה …” Rev 1:10
Where most translations read in this wise: “I was in the Spirit on the Day of the Lord”.
Nothing in the text tells us what that day is. But, because of 1700+ years of cultural bias, most people today automatically assume that this is Sunday. There is not one shred of evidence from the scripture that this day was Sunday. But, there is ample evidence that it was Yom Kippur.
John was a Jew. In a Jewish mind, Yom Kippur is Judgment Day. This is likely why John was ‘in the Spirit.’ He was very contemplative about the meaning of the day.
The Biblical evidence that this day is Yom Kippur is almost overwhelming.
Isaiah speaks about it three times, in 2:12, and in 13:6 and 9, saying that it “will be upon everyone that is proud and lofty,” “shall come as a destruction from the Almighty,” and it is “cruel both with wrath and fierce anger.” In each verse, the description follows “The Day of the LORD”, or “Yom יהוה .” And our Jewish people have long understood that this day is Yom Kippur.
Jeremiah calls “The Day of the LORD” a day of vengeance, which is also seen in Isaiah 63, which matches the description of Yeshua’s final return to earth in Revelation 19.
Ezekiel says this day is a ‘Day of Battle’ [13:5], which is what is going on in Revelation 19 right before Yeshua descends onto the Mount of Olives. He further describes it as a cloudy day, the “time of the heathen”, which is when the False Messiah will be judged. [30:3].
Joel describes it as well, saying that The Day of the LORD is a destruction from the Almighty, matching Isaiah word for word almost. He says there will be a great shofar, and that it is a ‘great and terrible’ day, and that millions will gather in the “valley of decision” [2:1,11, 3:14]. The “Great Shofar” is a direct reference to Yom Kippur, as it is still ceremonially blown in Synagogues today on “That Day,” “The Day of יהוה ”.
All of these things are descriptive of the Day of Judgment, and Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, and Malachi all describe this day, Yom Kippur, in the very same way. This is why John, a Jew, and the last living apostle, was in the Spirit on “That Day” [another name for the same day]. John certainly understood what Paul said about the feast days, that they are a shadow of things to come. He knew full well that Yeshua died on Passover, was buried on Matzot, rose from the dead on the first Omer of the First fruits, and sent His Spirit on Shavu’ot. He certainly understood that Yom Kippur would also be very meaningful. There is no indication whatsoever that he, nor any other apostle, changed his day of worship from Shabbat to Sunday; and he certainly never called Sunday “The Day of the LORD”. It simply is not His Day.
So, the primary verses used by the vast majority in Christendom to justify moving the Sabbath actually have nothing at all to do with the Sabbath. Any attempt to use these verses is either ignorance, or deceit. It is mostly the latter, but it takes its strength from the former.
Another point “theologians” make, which is just an argument and not a citation of anyone in the Bible actually moving the day, is that Yeshua rose from the dead on Sunday, so that is why we moved the Sabbath; today, people think that the apostles did this. They did not. It is not recorded in history anywhere that they did. In fact, history records that not one apostle, including Paul, ever switched the day of worship to Sunday, but we have many, many accounts from history that they continued to keep the Sabbath. As Jews, they would never have changed that day. No Jew would have accepted Peter’s preaching [the Apostle to the Jews] if he told them the Sabbath had been moved.
But, the seemingly vague references to the first ‘day’ of the week, coupled with ambiguity in interpretation about when Yeshua arose, has caused many just to accept that they are simply celebrating His resurrection as “The Lord’s Day.”
People who argue this use four passages to spin their yarn:
John 20:1, 19 :: Luke 24:1, 13, 30-35 :: Romans 14:5-6 :: Colossians 2:16-17.
The John and Luke passages are very similar, and the Romans and Colossians passages are somewhat similar.
John and Luke both write about the timing of Yeshua rising from the dead.
John writes in verse one, “At the beginning of the week, very early while it was still dark, Miryam of Magdala came to the tomb…” and, when it was evening, later that day, toward Monday, Yeshua appeared in the room and ate bread.
Luke writes: “And at the beginning of the week, before dawn, while it was still dark, they came to the tomb…” And since Yeshua ‘broke bread’ with the two guys that were walking on the road on that day, which was Sunday, that this is why we now celebrate “The Lord’s Day”, to commemorate that.
What people fail to read out of the text is that Yeshua had already arisen, and it was still very dark! He did not arise at sunrise. Further, they fail to see that His eating of bread was simply proof that He is a living human being, and not the marking of a ‘new holiday’, since Yeshua and the Jewish apostles understand God’s commandment, “Do not add to nor take away from this book of the Torah.”
Romans and Colossians do address the observance of days, but, as with the other verses, there is a lot of eisegesis [putting into the text what is not there] in people’s interpretation of the verses.
“One person discriminates between days, and another considers all days alike. Let every man be sure in his own mind. He who is mindful concerning a day’s duty is considerate of his master; and everyone who is not mindful concerning a day’s duty is inconsiderate of his master.”
Many people think that these verses give the believer license for a laissez faire attitude about when to serve God by assembling with His people. “Each to his own”. “As long as you honor God once a week”. That is not at all what this passage was addressing. This is, in fact, referring to new, gentile believers who had not as yet let go of their own special, pagan feast/fast days. Romans 14 is rife with information about pagan worship and dietary practices, and the new converts were not letting go of some of them. In fact, some could not let go because their ‘boss’ would not let them [considerate of his master]. Paul was simply telling people not to judge them. Roman people in the 1st century had many regular ‘days off’ in order to appease the gods. And, many of them were vegetarian/vegan in their worship of those gods. The believing people in Rome were still taking those days off, even though God commanded that they work for six days. Some who came to Messiah found it difficult to let go of some of those practices, still keeping those days, and still eating only vegetables, and people within the congregations were judging them. Some were being forced to by the masters, including being vegan/vegetarian, in pagan forms. This language of allowing the brother to answer to His Master is very similar to the conclusion drawn and the solution drawn up by the apostles in Acts 15: Let God teach them on the Sabbath Day. It also implies that God is their judge. The focus of Paul’s message in this passage is not to judge, not, ‘hey, let’s let everybody worship when they want, regardless of God’s appointed day of assembly.’ That conclusion from this reading is ludicrous.
This is the same in the Colossians passage:
“Let no one therefore create a disturbance among you about eating and drinking, or about the distinctions of feast days, the beginning of the months, and of Sabbaths. These are shadows of things to come; but The Body [HaGuf], it is Messiah.”
Paul’s attitude toward people who ‘create a disturbance’ is that none of us should be the ‘judge’ of his neighbor, offering ‘condemnation’ when they disagree with us. But, nothing in this verse denotes a move to Sunday as the Sabbath, but simply that we not judge one another concerning our observance of days. It is not a change of days, but that we are not to argue over it or be disturbed by people trying to change them. When Paul wrote this, every Jew and every Gentile still worshipped in the Synagogue on the Sabbath! There was no such thing as a Sunday ‘church’. His passage goes on to talk about people who worship angels, and further to say that we are dead in Messiah and separate from the “principles of the world” [v. 20], and as we have said before, the Sabbath is not a worldly principle, but a divine command from Heaven itself [Exodus 20]. Paul summarizes all the worldly principles he is eschewing here as ‘doctrines of men’ [v. 22]. The Sabbath is not a doctrine of man, but moving it to Sunday and calling it ‘The Lord’s Day’ certainly is a doctrine of man, and we can trace it to the men who created the doctrine and had to teach it to make it catch and hold, and it is not anyone named in the Scriptures!
The Historical Shift: How and When Did Sunday Replace the Sabbath?
It was not until the second century that anyone is recorded to have observed a ‘Sunday Sabbath’. The first person to record that people met to worship/assemble as believers on a Sunday was in 150 A.D.
A lot had happened since the time of Messiah, when Yeshua ascended into Heaven and left the Apostles to spread His Good News around the world, after a very particular plan of approach: Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth.
And that is exactly how we see the gospel go out. It started in Jerusalem on Shavu’ot in Acts 2, being preached only to Jews from Israel and from around the world, and gentiles who had already converted to Judaism, “God fearers”. Then, it went into parts of Judea, again, only to Jews. Then it went into Samaria, in Acts 8, fulfilling the third instruction of Yeshua, and shortly after that began the shift of teaching to Gentiles, as Peter was told to take the Good News to a Gentile there, a Roman centurion named Cornelius in Caesarea, which is still in Samaria, though heavily Roman in culture. Yeshua had just called Sha’ul, who is also called Paul, in Acts 9, but in Acts 10 opens the door to the Gentiles through Peter, mainly to get the Messianic Jewish leaders on board.
After this, the gospel went deeper into Samaria, and then up into Syria, Cyprus, and Galatia, and then all of Paul’s journeys spread the gospel all over the east side of the Roman Empire. He went to Greece, and eventually to Rome itself. There is some speculation that he may have gone as far west as Spain, and deeper into Asia Minor. Nonetheless, we have to trust that his message was the same everywhere he went, and in none of his writings does he teach anything we call distinctly “christian” culture today, but instead, taught the only existing Scriptures, the “Old Testament,” and the only culture he knew: Jewish customs.
We have three witnesses at his own hand that he did so, and this is why some precious little of what Christianity does within its walls of worship does resemble Judaism:
“You, then, should imitate me, even as I also imitate Messiah. Now I praise you, my brethren, that you remember me in all things, and keep the customs as I delivered them to you.” ~ 1 Cor 11:1-2
We have already established that Yeshua and the Apostles all kept the Sabbath, and that Paul did as well. Now, we are seeing that he taught Gentiles the same! The word ‘customs’ is παραδόσεις / paradosis, and that word was used by 1st century Jews and gentiles to mean “Jewish Customs”. We see that same word in two other verses, translated here consistently in the English from the Greek:
“Henceforth, my brethren, stand firmly established and be strong in the customs, which you have been taught, either in The Word, or in our letters.” ~ 2 Thess 2:15
“Now we command you, my brethren, in the Name of Our Master Yeshua The Messiah, to shun every brother who leads an evil life and not in accord with the customs which he received from us.” ~ 2 Thess 3:6
These passages show us that Paul was consistent, and that he taught Gentiles only the things he knew from The Word of God, and from his Jewish culture. Sabbath on Sunday has never been a part of Jewish culture.
So, why did Justin Martyr, the first person to record having switched to Sunday, switch his day?
Quite simply, Justin Martyr was an anti-Semite.
Before Justin Martyr, Christianity was already suffering division between Jews and Gentiles, which is not sanctioned at all by Scripture, but very plainly repudiated in Scripture. [Eph 2:14-16, Gal 3:28, Col 3:10-11, Rom 10:12, 1 Cor 12:13, Acts 15:8-9, John 10:16]. Paul had conflict with gentile congregation leaders, and “excommunicated” many of them from his life and fellowship. [2 Tim 4:10, 2:17-18, 4:14, Gal 3:1, 4:11].
History shows us that Anti-Semitism was on the rise during this time between new Christians and their leaders and the Messianic community. Dr. James Parkes details this conflict in his seminal work, “The Conflict Between the Church and the Synagogue”, showing that gentiles who were coming into the faith began to distance themselves from Jews because they misunderstood Jewish beliefs. This is supported by Peter’s warning that people misunderstand Paul’s writings:
“… our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his letters he speaks concerning these matters [end times, behaviors], in which there are certain things so hard to be understood that those who are ignorant and unstable twist their meaning, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, my beloved, seeing that you know these things beforehand, beware, lest you follow the error of those without Torah, and fall from your own steadfastness.” 2 Peter 3:15-17
So, this conflict going on already in the mid-1st century was exacerbated when the Jews revolted in 132 A.D at the Bar Kokhba rebellion, and not only did the unbelieving Jewish community expel Messianic Jews from their synagogues, but Christian believers began to become visceral in their conversations with Jewish believers, and some of them, like Justin Martyr, made the problem worse. And this was part of the reason that they moved the Sabbath, as Justin Martyr records in his own writings.
He did so, as stated, in 150 A.D., when in his First Apology he described Sunday as the day they met to break bread and to read scripture, because “Christ rose on that day”. This is already 120 years removed from the beginning of the Gospel’s going out in Jerusalem in 30 A.D.
Justin Martyr is the first one to blame the death of Messiah Yeshua only on the Jewish people, not understanding that Yeshua died for every human being, regardless of DNA, and that our sin hung Him there, and Yeshua’s great love for Jews and Gentiles; it was not the Jewish people alone who killed him. Yeshua said it Himself, He could have called 10,000 messengers to deliver Him, but for His love for us, He bore our sins on the tree.
Martyr called Jews ‘cursed and blind’. Paul wrote only that God had partly blinded our Jewish people, but Martyr goes on and says that all Jews are cursed. He accused the Jews of changing the scriptures, preached that the dietary laws were obsolete, and that gentiles replaced Jews. None of this matches the scriptures, and is in fact the very spirit of Anti-Messiah, putting the gospel in the hands of a ‘better class of people’, and it boasts of ‘christianity’ over the Jews, just as Paul warned the Roman believers not to do. [Rom 11] [Statements derived from Justin Martyr’s “Dialogue with Trypho The Jew”, chapters 11, 16, 18, 29, 71-73, 78, 133]. Most of his sentiment is found in the congregations around the world today, because Catholicism followed him, and protestants follow Catholicism.
Martyr was followed by other anti-semites like Ignatius and Tertullian who were ‘christian’ leaders that were very Anti-Semitic in their thought, and thus in their interpretation of the Scriptures.
On the heels of all of these, we have Constantine emerge. He was not a believer. He was the leader of the Roman Empire in the east side of the Empire, where the anti-Jewish sentiment among believers was most strong.
He wanted to unify the empire, and he set out to war to do it. He is famed for his “Battle at the Milvian Bridge” when he was supposed to have seen a sign, which was a Roman pagan tradition of war used to inspire the troops. In his case, his ‘sign’ that he saw in a night vision was supposed to be a “Chi-Rho”, two letters, which people deduced meant “Christ”. There is no historical proof of this, but it is what most people hang their hat on concerning his authenticity.
Years later, in 325, he called a council at Nicaea. There were @3,000 congregational elders in the Roman Empire at the time. A large number of them were Jewish. Constantine only invited 1,800 congregational leaders. One thousand of them were from the eastern side of the Empire where anti-Semitism was common, and 800 were from the western side of the Empire. Only about 250 congregational leaders actually showed up, and the reason many did not is because no Jewish bishops were invited. The founding of Catholic Christianity is rife with Anti-Semitism, as Constantine was an anti-Semite, according to his own words.
At this council, the Sabbath was ‘officially’ moved. To this point, yes there were a large number of Gentile-only congregations who were observing “Sun-day” as their day of worship, but there was also a large number of other congregations that did not move their day. At this point not one congregation, Jew or Gentile, observed any other “Christian” holy day. But they all observed Passover.
The Catholic church likes to claim a direct link to Peter as the first “Pope”. But Peter was appointed by Yeshua as the apostle to the Jews. Yes, he later moved to Rome, but the congregation founded in Rome was founded by Jews returning to Rome from Shavu’ot in Acts 2, and not by Peter, and not by Paul. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, and when he wrote his letter to Roman believers, he had not as yet been to Rome, and states as much in the letter. He addressed parts of his letter to the Jews, and parts of it to Gentiles, with some sections directed at both groups. The point is, Peter was nowhere to be found in Rome when this book was written. Chapter sixteen pretty much proves it, as it addresses 25 separate congregational members and leaders by name, and Peter is not listed. This letter was written in the late 50s A.D., which means that the Congregation of Messiah, Jew and Gentile, is 20 years old, and Peter is not in Rome yet. So, Peter did not found the ‘catholic’ church. Constantine did. In 325 A.D.
And, as stated, he was an Anti-Semite, who did not want anything to do with the Jewish people. He made three major shifts in the doctrine of the realm of faith, with only 250 “yes men” to ‘certify’ and make those doctrines not only official to the church, but to the state as well. He made the ‘catholic church’ a state religion. He married the church and the state, and created an adulterous relationship with “The World”.
In moving the Sabbath, he said:
“On the Day of Sol Invictus let the magistrates and people residing in the cities rest, and let all workshops be closed…”
This was official law, as his effort to unify his empire was well under way in 321 A.D. when he made this decree. This decree could be seen as the official beginning of syncretism, mixing Messianic Judaism with Mithraic and other forms of paganism prevalent in the Roman Empire. His movement of Passover to “Easter” betrays this as well, and it also betrays his anti-Semitism:
“It was declared [At the Council of Nicaea] to be particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of festivals [Passover], to follow the custom of the Jews [remember what Paul taught?], who have sullied their hands with the most fearful of crimes [Martyr’s blame game], and whose minds were blinded. In rejecting their custom, we may transmit to our descendants the legitimate mode of celebrating Easter… we desire to have nothing in common with this odious people [the Jews].”
So, it was at the council of Nicaea that Passover was moved to Easter, utterly stripping all the congregations of their Jewish influence. The Sabbath had already been decreed by civil law as having been moved to the Day of Sol Invictus [Sun Day, where Sol Invictus is the Roman god Constantine continued to worship for the rest of his life]. Passover was an ecclesiastical move of the Jewish Passover of Yeshua, to Easter, where they changed the calculation of the observed date of it, and the nature of it. This is when syncretism became even more ‘official’, in spite of warnings from all the writers of the New Testament, including Yeshua Himself, who dictated seven letters to seven Gentile congregations [who had not veered as far off the path as they had two hundred years later].
Finally, it was the council at Laodicea that began to put the nail in the coffin on Sabbath observance in western Christendom.
It was the council of Laodicea in 364 A.D. that officially moved the Sabbath with ecclesiastic authority [versus only civil authority]. History shows that many congregations still kept the “Jewish” Sabbath [Biblical], and some of them defied Constantine and still kept the “Jewish” Passover [Biblical] and not “Easter”. This council shows us that the doctrines of western Christendom were still moving further away from truth [and they still are], whereas Yeshua said that the foundation of His Congregation is unmovable. [Matt 16:18] Yeshua, the Jew, said that.
Laodicea’s ‘council’ said this concerning the Sabbath almost 45 years after Constantine moved it by law:
“Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s Day’; and if they can, resting then as Christians.”
If no gentile congregation was keeping the Sabbath of the Jews in this fourth century, then why was a “church” law necessary to stop it? This is papal decree forcing Christian people to break God’s Sabbath, who were not yet keeping “the Lord’s Day” as their day of worship, but still resting and assembling on the Seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible. Shortly after this, the Roman emperors began killing believers who were keeping Biblical feasts, and made an official decree, echoing Justin Martyr, that the Jews killed Yeshua. It was stated in every Catholic mass until the 1970s. Theodosius I made it illegal upon pain of death for any believer to worship God on The Sabbath Day or any other Jewish, biblical feast day. He echoed Constantine’s rhetoric about Jewish people, and made it law that Christians must be distinguishable from Jews.
Catholic Admissions: “We Changed It”
All of this is history, and not speculation or inference. And today’s Catholic Church proudly claims that it is upon their authority that the Sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sunday.
“In the New Law the observance of the Lord’s day took the place of the observance of the Sabbath, not by virtue of the precept [of the Ten Commandments], but by the institution of the Church and the custom of Christian people.”
(Summa Theologiae, I–II, Q. 103, a. 3, ad 4)
“The Church of God has thought it well to transfer the celebration and observance of the Sabbath to Sunday….”
(Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, The Third Commandment)
The Catholic Catechism holds the doctrines of their church. It is made up of four parts: The Creed, The Sacraments, The Moral Life, and Prayer. The latest version of it is from 1992. In the catechism, the popes claim authority to have moved the Sabbath. They make no qualms about the fact that the Sabbath of God is the Seventh Day [Julian/Gregorian Saturday], but instead claim outrightly that they knew that, and chose to move it themselves.
CCC 2175:
“Sunday is expressly distinguished from the Sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the Sabbath.”
CCC 2176:
“The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship… This ‘Sunday’ observance was inspired by the apostolic tradition and has been practiced ever since the apostolic age.”*
*We have shown that it was not practiced in the age of the Apostles
CCC 2168–2195 (on the Fourth Commandment: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day”)
“The Church applies the third (sic) commandment to Sunday worship rather than Saturday, viewing it through the lens of Christ’s resurrection and new covenant.”
CCC 2174 notes:
“Jesus rose from the dead ‘on the first day of the week.’ Because it is the ‘first day,’ the day of Christ’s Resurrection recalls the first creation… For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day.”
No, Yeshua did not rise from the dead on Sunday, but on Saturday night, while it was still very dark.
1In the evening of the Shabbat, when the first of the week began, there came Miryam of Magdala and the other Miryam, to see the tomb. ~ Matt 28
1And when Shabbat had ended, Miryam of Magdala and Miryam the mother of Ya’akov and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. ~ Mark 16
1And at the beginning of the week, before dawn, while it was still dark, they came to the tomb and brought the spices which they had prepared. ~ Luke 24
1At the beginning of the week, very early while it was still dark, Miryam of Magdala came to the tomb; and she saw that the stone was removed from the tomb. ~John 20
[It’s important to note that by the time of their approach to the tomb, Yeshua had already arisen, most evident in John’s gospel]
Even so, not one apostle decided to move Sabbath observance as a day of assembly and rest to the first day of the week. Neither did any of them stop observing it.
These quotes all show that it was a conscious decision from men, hundreds of years after Yeshua established His Congregation.
Today’s Catholics admit it outright and claim ‘ecumenical authority’ to have moved it.
“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… The Catholic Church, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.”
(The Faith of Our Fathers, 1876)
The Protestant Dilemma: Why Not Protest?
Many protestants today do not realize they are “Protestant”, and most of them do not understand what it is supposed to mean. The Protestant Reformation was a collection of groups of people who decided to ‘protest’ against the Catholic church and the Pope. Martin Luther and John Calvin are the most notable. And they did protest against indulgences, and came up with their own modes of salvation beyond that of what Peter and Paul preached in the book of Acts. But, they did not protest against the pagan influences over the Holy Days, even though their motto was “Sola Scritpura”, or “Scripture Alone”. As the Catholic church itself attests, one cannot arrive at a Sunday ‘Sabbath’ based on Sola Scriptura. One must consult mere men.
There were protestants, however, who did protest the pagan influence over Holy Days. But, Luther and Calvin practiced some of the same atrocities as the Catholic church, in that they killed people who did not agree with them on certain doctrines. Martin Luther gave his approval to the Catholic ruler in Munster, Germany who killed thousands of “Anabaptists” there, some of whom were Sabbath keepers. John Calvin killed many people that opposed him, including Michael Servitus, the closest one could get to a “Messianic Jew” in the 1500s, who simply wanted to discuss the nature of Messiah with him. But, these protestants agreed whole-heartedly with the popes on the keeping of ‘traditions of men’ over the guidance of scripture on when to observe the Sabbath, even though they read nothing in scripture to guide them there.
“The Sabbath is commanded to the Jews and not to the Gentiles, nor to us Christians.”
Martin Luther’s “Works”, Vol. 47, p. 62
Luther viewed the Sabbath command as ceremonial law and not binding on Christians. He affirmed Sunday worship as a good custom, not a divine requirement.
“For we observe Sunday, not as a commandment, but for the sake of order and concord.”
Large [Lutheran] Catechism, Explanation of the Third Commandment
So for Luther, Sunday was chosen out of practical and historical reasons, and not because it was divinely instituted as a new Sabbath.
Calvin agreed with Luther, that the Sabbath command was part of “the ceremonial law” and therefore not binding on Christians in a literal sense. He was a victim of the allegorizing of the Torah from a book of import to a book of reference. People today cite him or his idea of setting aside any regular time for worship.
“The observance of the Lord’s day is not founded on any commandment of God, but on the authority of the Church.”
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Ch. 8, Sec. 33
“It is necessary to set apart a certain day for the congregation to come together… It is not of so much importance what day it is, as that one should be appointed.”
Institutes, Book 2, Ch. 8, Sec. 34
If it is not so important what day it is, then why Sunday? Calvin’s view was that Sunday was not holy in itself, but the Church chose it for gathering in unity and remembrance of Christ’s resurrection. It is thus confessed to be a creation of man, and not divine instruction. It is a ‘worldly principle.’
The Lutheran “Augsberg Confession” shows that even then, Protestant leaders understood that the Catholic church erred in teaching that Sunday replaced the Sabbath, yet they perpetuate the doctrine.
“They [the Roman Church] err in teaching that the observation of the Lord’s Day instead of the Sabbath was instituted by the authority of the Church…”
Article 28
Reformers thus admitted that Sunday observance was a matter of church tradition, and not a new, divine law. So, it makes Christendom hypocritical to criticize the Jewish Faith [Messianic or otherwise] for their customs, especially when that criticism is based on Yeshua’s comments in Mark 7. Because, clearly, the Protestant leaders simply remained under the authority of the Popes in order to perpetuate the customs of men, in favor over the instructions of the Creator and the example of His Son.
The following, then applies both to pre-first and first-century Jewish people who created their own traditions that are perpetuated today, and to the whole of Christendom for creating their own traditions, and perpetuating them even in reform.
“He [Yeshua] said to them, “The Prophet Isaiah well prophesied about you, O hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. And they worship me in vain when they teach as doctrines the commandments of men.’ For you have ignored the commandment of God, and you observe the tradition of men …” He said to them, “You certainly do injustice to the commandment of God so as to sustain your own tradition.” ~Mark 7:6-9
How is this issue any different, really?
The Case for Reexamining the Sabbath
Sunday worship is indeed deeply ingrained in the minds of most Christians. There is absolutely not one verse in Scripture, OT or NT, much less a necessary two or three verses, that says that anyone, Jew or Gentile, moved the Sabbath to “Sun Day”. But, there is ample evidence in scripture alone that the 1st Century Congregation observed the Sabbath Day:
Acts
13:14-15, 42-44
15:20
16:13
17:2
18:4
Colossians 2:16, where the Sabbath is a shadow of the return of Messiah.
Hebrews 4:9 :: “Therefore, for the people of God, doing The Sabbath remains.”
The above is translated from the Aramaic. But the Greek reads in exactly the same way: sabbatismos is a rare word meaning “Sabbath observance”.
ἄρα ἀπολείπεται σαββατισμὸς τῷ λαῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ
ara apoleipetai sabbatismos tō laō tou Theou
“There remains, then, a seventh-day observance for the people of God.”
Many people say that doing the Sabbath, however, is ‘legalism’. If that were the case, then doing anything that God says to do, to assemble on ANY day, is legalism, especially since all the founders of Western Christendom admit that God did not say to move the Sabbath. By that logic, then God did not say to have any form of regular observance. But all the world’s churches really want the pews filled on Sunday.
Legalism, by biblical definition, is trying to become ‘righteous’ by means of one’s observance of rules for the sake of salvation. We have never said that one is saved by Sabbath observance, circumcision, or any biblically based religious practice. Some did teach that in Galatia, but we have strongly opposed the notion.
Keeping the Sabbath is about being obedient to the Creator, not for salvation, but out of love for Him. This is one of the core teachings of Yeshua, who said it in multiple places. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The hypocrisy of Christendom is that they say Jesus is God, but deny that the Sabbath commandment is His, and ignore the example that He set in observing it regularly.
Keeping the Sabbath is in no way legalism, unless one makes it a litmus test for salvation. If it is legalism, then so is keeping the Sunday observance of “The Lord’s Day”, even though it isn’t in scripture. If one ‘must’ do it doctrinally, [which many denominations teach], then Sunday observance is also legalism.
John said it,
“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not difficult.”
John was an observant Jew his whole life, he was in the Spirit on Yom Kippur, and a Sabbath keeper. To him, God’s commandments were those contained in the Torah.
If “Sola Scriptura” really is the standard, should we not return to what the Scripture actually says? “Methinks thou dost not protest enough…”
If this has challenged your assumptions, you’re not alone. Let’s continue the conversation. Leave a comment below—or explore the historical sources for yourself. Start with James Parkes’ “The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue”, mine the bibliography, and compare it with the Scriptures. The truth has always been there, waiting to be honored.