The Sabbath or Sunday; Which Day is the Right Day for Christians?

Let me just preface this article by stating that every day is a good day to worship God. As a matter of fact, we should be making God a part of our everyday lives. When we are born again and receive the Holy Spirit to indwell within us, we become a Temple of God, and responsible for keeping that Temple holy and spiritually sound. 

That’s accomplished by seeking and honoring Him daily. Matthew 6:33 reads, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” In putting God first each and every day and allowing Him to guide us, God promises that He will bless all things we go through, whether that be the good or the bad.

But the question I want to answer here is whether the Sabbath (the seventh day of the week or Saturday) is the day we should be gathering together in worship, or is it – what’s been – the tradition Christian Sunday worship? And does it matter?

There are many who will refute this information within this article. They will come up with all kinds of reasons why the Sabbath, or the Holy Days listed in Leviticus 23, are no longer required by God for Christians to observe. And let’s face it, how can Christianity have been so wrong for the last 2,000 years? How can all these churches and ministers of the Gospel have been deceived all these years?

Well, before you click away and discount this doctrinal issue, which is only viewed by a very small minority of Christians, consider what I have to say here, and do your own research because it may very well be important. There will be links throughout this article to other studies on this sight to help you dig through the muck of mis and disinformation. 

I say disinformation, not to condemn any church pastor or minister, insinuating that they are intentionally misleading you, but to say there is a spiritual force out there that is intentionally doing its best to deceive even the elect, and I believe it has been successful. So, when I say disinformation, it is not the ministry who is calculating this deception, they are deceived themselves, but the spiritual forces of Satan who is always working against the Church of God.

Now, with all that said, please read through the information here in this article and throughout this website with an open mind and putting aside any biases and traditions that may stand in your way. Anything that may inhibit a clear contemplation of the information, in order to make an educated decision on whether you agree or disagree. 

I say educated decision because I am going to steer you toward a lot of Apostolic Christian history that proves that much of the early Church, including the apostles, continued to observe God’s true Sabbath and Holy Days. 

So, let’s get started…

In the late first century and into the second century AD, there was a segment of Christianity who began observing Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. This was done for two reasons. First, Sunday was chosen because Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday, so based on that, the western Roman Church chose to end the seventh day Sabbath observance and move it to the first day of the week because that was the day our Lord was resurrected. It was named, “The Lord’s Day!”

There are some who even claim that the apostle John himself pointed to Sunday as a new Christian Sabbath, when he stated in Revelation 1:10, “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day…” How they determine that John was pointing to Sunday or the first day of the week, rather than the traditional seventh day Sabbath is really a stretch for me. As you will see, history is on the side of the true seventh day Sabbath as being the day John was referring to.

There is no indication whatsoever in scripture that Sunday was an important day. On the contrary, all indications from the Book of Acts, are that the apostles were in the synagogueon the Sabbath. We are even told that it was Paul’s custom to be in the synagogue on the Sabbath (Acts 17:2). So, what would give those the indication that John was referring to the first day of the week or Sunday?

We are told in Acts 16:13 that it was a general custom of all the apostles to observe the Sabbath. It reads, “And on the Sabbath day we [the apostles] went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.” If it wasn’t customary for the apostles, why would they go out there?

I know the argument is that the apostles would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath or to wherever prayer was customarily made because that’s where all the people would be and they went there to preach the Good News of the Gospel. And yes, that would make sense if we were told elsewhere in scripture that the new Christian Sabbath was now on Sunday. But there is no indication of that. 

Since the Sabbath was, and still is the fourth Commandment, if that day was meant to change, don’t you think something as important as a change to God’s Commandments would have been mentioned in scripture?

Take for instance the apostle Paul. We are clearly told that being in the synagogue on the Sabbath was his custom. Again, if that day was to change, don’t you think either Jesus, when He met Paul on the road to Damascus, or the Holy Spirit would have told him that the Sabbath was no longer necessary? 

We also have two examples of Gentiles being in the synagogue on the Sabbath. In Acts 13:42, we read, “So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.” Who were the Gentiles begging? It certainly wouldn’t have been the Pharisees because they certainly weren’t preaching the Good News of the Gospel. 

So, it would have to have been the apostles who still would find themselves in the synagogue on the Sabbath, but with a different message that intrigued the Gentiles. Remember the Jews were now blinded to this truth until the fullness of the Gentiles is complete because of their failure to accept their Messiah.

We also have in reference to the apostle Paul in Acts 18:4, “And he [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks.” Why would Gentiles and Greeks be in the Temple on the Sabbath, they weren’t Jews? Although, there was a population of Hellenistic Greek Jews living in Jerusalem at that time, but not all Greeks were Hellenistic Jews. And of course, Gentiles clearly were not Jewish. 

Any Gentile or non-Jewish Greek Sabbath keepers that would have been in the Temple on the Sabbath would most likely have been there because of their belief in, or intrigue with Jesus, and wanting to hear more from the apostles, not because they were Jews. This is evident with the statement that the Gentiles begged to hear the Good News of the Gospel.

Altogether, we have eight references to the importance of the Sabbath, or that the apostles were in the synagogue on the Sabbath, just in the Book of Acts. This brings me back to John’s quote in Revelation 1:10 that I mentioned above; that is when John said, “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day.”

Rather than assume John was referring to some new Sabbath Day that was now called the Lord’s Day, it makes much more sense after going through the Book of Acts that the day John was referring to as the Lord’s Day was the traditional Sabbath which we’ve just established was the custom of the apostles to keep. 

And what I’ve spoken of so far here are biblical examples of the continued importance of the Sabbath. There are many examples of early Church fathers who had contact with the apostles or with those who lived to see the Christ and were followers of the apostles from the very first Pentecost in Acts chapter two.

The second reason for the conversion to the Sunday Sabbath was for the western Roman Church to disassociate themselves from the Jews. This was very clear in some of the writings of the early church fathers; particularly those who were influenced by the western Roman Church. They even went as far as changing their fast days, which was the custom of both the Jews and the early Christians in the first century. Both the Jews and Christians would fast on the same two days of the week, but the Roman Church changed their Christian fast days to disassociate themselves from the Jews.

However, according to Polycarp, whom the apostle John ordained to be the Bishop at the Church of Smyrna, following his imprisonment on the island of Patmos, he was adamant about following the biblical customs of the apostles. He himself was well known for observing the Passover, rather than Easter (Quartodeciman Controversy.), which was observed by the western Roman Church.

Because Polycarp was mentored by the apostle John, he was highly regarded by the eastern churches of Asia Minor. It was the eastern churches who lived by Apostolic Christianity, and kept the Sabbath and Holy Days, as was the custom of the apostles. We know this through writings of some early Church fathers.

The western churches ruled by Rome and Bishop Anicetus of the Church at Rome during that time, did away with the Sabbath in favor of Sunday, which they considered was a Jewish observance and not necessary for Christian observe. There was no biblical precedent for this conversion to Sunday, other than the fact that the western Church despised the Jews and wanted to disassociate themselves from anything that was deemed Jewish. Any other reason for this change is merely man’s own reasoning and not biblical precedent, including the Holy Days of God.

The fact that these days were called Jewish Holy Days was a misnomer then, and is a misnomer even today because the Sabbath and the Holy Days were for all the twelve tribes of the Hebrew Israelites, not just for the tribe of Judah, who was just one of the twelve tribes. Many who preach and teach on this today call the Holy Days of God, Jewish days, when they clearly are not just for the Jews. 

As a matter of fact, they are not even Hebrew Holy Days, let alone Jewish Holy Days (the Hebrew people are referring to all twelve tribes). God calls them His Holy Days, or Feasts of the Lord. The original Hebrew defines the Hebrew word “Moed,” as meaning “divine appointments,” which is found in Leviticus 23:4. These days which God lays out in Leviticus 23 are divine appointments where He calls His people to meet with Him. Who is man to just take it upon himself to decide these days are no longer important to God?

I would rather err on the side of caution and continue to observe these days, even if I were to consider that they may no longer be important, especially since we have no biblical precedent not to observe them other than the traditions of man. 

The information I share here in this article is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the importance of Christians in setting aside man-made traditions and getting back to the basics of the true worship of God! 

Additional Reading:

->  What the Sabbath and Holy Days Tell Us about the Plan of God