So Where Did It Begin?
So if the authority for Sunday observance cannot be found in Scripture, where is it? History tells. If we go back far enough, we can see where Sunday advocates clashed head to head with Sabbath keepers. At the Nicean Council of A.D. 325, for example, Emperor Constantine said, “Let us then have nothing in common with the Jews.” He continued, “Forasmuch, then, as it is no longer possible to bear with your pernicious errors, we give warning by this present statute that none of you henceforth presume to assemble yourselves together. We have directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies: and forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. … Take the far better course of entering the Catholic Church .… From this day forward none of your unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private place. Let this edict be made public.”
The Roman Catholic Church is responsible for changing the Sabbath to Sunday and enforcing Sunday observance. To assemble together on any other day for a religious observance was considered unlawful. This was confirmed at the Council of Laodicea almost 40 years later in A.D. 363. At that conference, it was decreed, “Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, resting rather on Sunday. But, if any be found to be Judaizing, let them be declared anathema [cursed and excommunicated] from Christ.”
Today, even Sunday-observing theologians will sometimes admit the Sabbath was changed by man. Notice the question posed to the Catholic Church in the book Catholic Doctrinal Catechism: “Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept? Answer: Had she not such power, she should not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her—she could not havesubstituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.”
Here is a quote from the Theological Dictionary, by Charles Buck, a Methodist minister: “Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week … and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.”
Finally, here is what Isaac Williams wrote in Plain Sermons on the Catechism: “And 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 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 [or commanded] it.”
Followers of Christ
Scholars will reason around it, but the Bible is clear. There simply is no command endorsing any kind of Sunday observance. What God does command is this: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8).
The Israelites were commanded to keep the Sabbath. The prophets—described as part of the foundation of God’s Church today (Ephesians 2:19-21)—all kept the Sabbath. Jesus Christ came in the flesh and observed the Sabbath (Luke 4:16). All of the apostles, including Paul, observed the seventh-day Sabbath (Acts 17:2). They followed Christ’s example. And in 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul said, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”
Don’t let any man decide what’s right and wrong with respect to the Sabbath. Just follow Christ’s example.
No comments:
Post a Comment