Your approach to the Jewish Sabbath versus the Christian Lord's Day (Sunday) is polemical and hortatory suffers from a lack of objectivity and critical evaluation. By any objective standard you fail to establish the proposition that Christians have nothing more than tradition introduced by Constantine as a basis for keeping Sunday as their Sabbath day of rest and worship.

You seem familiar with Samuel Walter Gamble's anti-sabbatarian arguments that shows fertile imagination coupled with an ignorance of history, the Jewish calendar, and Greek usage. His arguments have been discredited and rejected by responsible scholarship, and it is surprising to see them raise in a serious forum.

You involve yourself in an equally specious argument. Such as are proffered by Seventh-day Adventists and Messianic (Judaising) Christians, arguing that early Christian, Gentile, and Jew, alike, worshipped on the Jewish Saturday Sabbath until that day was deliberately and wickedly changed to Sunday in Constantine's time because of the pagan sun worship of the Romans.

That absurdity is commonly reproduced by Saturday sabbatarians who as one man report that the use of Sunday by Christians as a day of worship has been customary only "since the fifth or fourth century."

It is disingenuous to equate "the Lord's Day" with the Jewish Sabbath wherever it occurs in early Christian documents. Such convenient rewriting of history and historical usage is totally inexcusable at a time when scholarship has made available contemporary documents from the earliest Christian period, as a few representative citations will indicate:

"The Master commanded us [to celebrate] service at fixed times and hours."

"On the Lord's Day of the Lord [we] come together, break bread and hold Eucharist."

"We. . . celebrate with gladness the eighth day in which Jesus also rose from the dead."

"No longer living for the Sabbath, but for the Lord's Day, on which also our life sprang up through him and his death. . . . It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism."

"Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly. . . and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For he was crucified on the day before that of Saturn; and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to his apostles and disciples, He taught them these things."
(See I Clement XL:1-2; Didache XIV:1, 3; Barnabas XV:4-9; Ignatius to the Magnesians: VIII-X; Justin Martyr's First Apology, LSVII.)

Documentary sources from the first Christian century and from men who know the Apostles themselves make crystal clear the actual beliefs and practices of early Gentile Christians concerning Sunday, the Lord's Day, and their practice of sacramental worship upon that day in commemoration of the Lord's resurrection. There is no need for special interpretation to understand what John meant when he wrote to such people about being in the spirit on "the Lord's Day" (Revelation 1:10); nor to understand Paul's charge to his Gentile converts who were being troubled by the heretical Judaisers of their time:

[Christ blotted] out the handwriting of ordinances that were against us. . . and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. . . Let no man therefore judge you in mean, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.
(Colossians 2:14, 16; cf. 2 Corinthians 3:6-11.)

With respect to the early Christian practice of Sunday observance, it is easily, sidely, and clearly shown that the practice was widely followed in the first and second centuries (notwithstanding the Constantine theory)

Earliy Christian leaders clearly understood the distinction between the seventh day Sabbath of the Jews and the first day Sabbath of the Christians, and also understood the Judaising Sabbatarians' arguments that Christians should be keeping the Jewish Sabbath, which they rejected as a heretical false teaching not in keeping with the New Covenant.

Those who present his position are guilty either of incredible naïveté or else of deliberate misrepresentation. Built on this tottering foundation, their argument takes strength to itself by the process of repetition, until they arrive at the unsubstantiated conclusion that "Sunday observance in the Christian Church lies in tradition alone. "

Sabbath observance is an eternal principle, and the day itself is so ordained and arranged that it bears record of Christ by pointing particular attention to great works he has performed. From the day of Adam to the Exodus from Egypt, the Sabbath commemorated the fact that Christ rested from his creative labors on the 7th day. (Ex. 20:8-11.)

From the Exodus to the day of his resurrection, the Sabbath commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage. (Deut. 5:12-15.) As Samuel Walter Gamble has pointed out in his Sunday, the True Sabbath of God this necessarily means that the Sabbath was kept on a different day each year.

From the days of the early apostles to the present, the Sabbath has been the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, in commemoration of the fact that Christ came forth from the grave on Sunday. (Acts 20:7.) Christians keep the first day of the week as their Sabbath

Sabbath observance was a sign between ancient Israel and their God whereby the chosen people might be known (See: Neh. 13:15-22; Isa. 56:1-8; Jer. 17:19-27; Ezek. 46:1:7); death was the decreed penalty for violation of it. (Ex. 31:12-17.) And the matter of Sabbath observance remains to this day as one of the great tests which divides the righteous from the worldly and wicked.

Judaising Christian observers of Saturday as the Sabbath—tell us that some pope is responsible for the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, and almost in the same breath they declare that Constantine the Great is the author of it. Roman Catholics, of course, accept, for the head of their church, the responsibility, but the change was made long before there was an ecclesiastical "head" in Rome.

It might, further, be observed that the Sabbath law does not, primarily, set apart either Saturday or Sunday as the Sabbath, but A SEVENTH PART OF THE WEEK. "Six days shalt thou labor, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." It is immaterial where you begin counting, as long as the rule of working six days and resting on the seventh is observed. The rule is the same as that which governs tithe-paying. One dollar out of ten belongs to the Lord. Which one? Any of them. Which day of the seven belongs to the Lord? Any of them, but as the Sabbath is for the entire community, one day must be agreed upon for the good of all.

Which day of the week was observed before the exodus of Israel from Egypt, is not known, but, whichever it was, at the time of the exodus some change must have occurred, for a new reckoning began with that event (Ex. 12:2). The month of the exodus became the first month of the Jewish ecclesiastical year and the Sabbaths were, accordingly, rearranged. The beginning of the year was counted from the new moon of the Passover, which festival was celebrated between and including the 14th and 21st of the month. The 10th, 14th, and 16th were work days, and could never be Sabbaths (Sec. Ex. 12:3, 5, 6, 24).

From the fact that the Hebrew festivals seem to have been observed on fixed dates, as our Christmas, and were not movable holidays, like Easter, it has been thought that the weekly Sabbaths also were celebrated on fixed dates. If that is correct, the Hebrew Sabbath must have fallen on every day in the week in rotation, as does our New Year's day.

Aside from this argument, it would be impossible to observe as Sabbath any one and the same day all over the Earth, simultaneously. What would be the beginning of the Seventh-day Sabbath—Friday evening at sundown—at a given point in Asia Minor, would be Friday noon in Greenland, Friday morning in Alaska, midnight between Thursday and Friday in Australia, and Thursday evening at a given longitude east of the point of beginning. So, while the Sabbath day cannot be observed all over the Earth on the same day, a seventh part of the week can be dedicated to the service of the Lord everywhere.

Before. The Mosaic dispensation, the Sabbath was observed in memory of the creation; Israel celebrated it in memory of the exodus, and the followers of our Savior hold the day sacred to the memory of His Resurrection.

M:)RGANITE

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Thess news are just one more evidence that the catholic church has something pretty ed up inside, and of course mexico is ed up by the religion, even the government is catholic, the way catholic church ats on the politics, isn't directly done by them, is through some one else like the government, that, they act, you don't know they like to lie, and they like to cover their by blaming others, that's how the catholic church has always been. I talk because I was in a catholic school for 12 years, my parents are catholic, and I grew up in latin america, were the corruption is huge, and it's said proudly that 98% of us are catholic. I just want to say that, the catholic church have ed up the world, in so many ways, and yet people stupidly think on believeing in that, I think almost no body in it's senses, can measure the evil, that is hidden behind those love words and things they say, they are ed up.

magprob's
No the Catholic Church in not evil.
But a few in it have been.
There are over 1 billion Catholics and in that a few thousand have done evil things.
That is a very small percentage of the Catholics.
All groups of people have those who do evil things.
BUT...
Catholic haters and opponents like to single that Church out to spread bad news.
Should I consider you a Catholic hater or opponent?
Peace and kindness,
Fred

Old thread, closed