Did the day of worship really change after the cross or did that shift happen later in history?In this video, Pastor Mark Finley examines Scripture, early Christian practice, Roman history, and Catholic admissions to answer a question that refuses to go away:When did the Sabbath change and by whose authority?

Did the day of worship really change after the cross or did that shift happen later in history?In this video, Pastor Mark Finley examines Scripture, early Christian practice, Roman history, and Catholic admissions to answer a question that refuses to go away:When did the Sabbath change and by whose authority?

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HopeLives365

Mark Finley

History Records the Moment The Sabbath Changed

There is a question that refuses to go away.

What day did the earliest Christians actually keep holy?

Few questions stir more passion and more confusion than the Sabbath.

Now the Old Testament is particularly clear.

The seventh day of the week is the Bible Sabbath, given at creation, kept through the whole Old Testament.

What did Jesus teach regarding the Sabbath?

And what does early Christian history actually teach us?

And when you look at the first, second, and third centuries, is there evidence there that early believers kept the Bible Sabbath?

We're gonna look at those original sources and we're also gonna look at some original Catholic sources on the Catholic Church's acknowledgement that they changed the Sabbath and the challenge that the Catholic Church gives to Protestantism.

This may surprise you, but all of this was predicted in the Bible, in the prophecies of Daniel, particularly Daniel, the seventh chapter.

Now we're not going to rely on human opinion, we're not going to rely on tradition.

We will let the original sources speak for themselves.

You'll see evidence, plain, direct, undeniable, that the Sabbath was observed by Christians for centuries after Christ.

And then we'll ask the unavoidable question, If the Sabbath was changed, when did it happen?

First, the New Testament evidence by Jesus himself.

In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus speaks of end time events.

He talks about wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, floods, strife.

He talks about lawlessness in our society, the gospel going to the end of the world.

And in Matthew chapter 24, Jesus blends to events the destruction of Jerusalem that's coming as a type of the destruction of the end of the world.

The disciples, sitting on the Mount of Olives, looking across the Kidron Valley at that beautiful temple with its massive blocks and stones that build the temple, ask Jesus, when shall these things be and what shall be the site of your coming and the end of the world?

In other words, when will Jerusalem be destroyed?

And Jesus, using the destruction of Jerusalem as this example of the end of the world, eventually says to his disciples, talking about their flight from Jerusalem as the Roman army's approach, pray that your flight, that is your flight from Jerusalem as the Roman armies approach, be not in the winter or on the Sabbath day.

Now Jesus was talking to his disciples just before his crucifixion in 31 AD, But the question becomes, why would he tell his disciples to pray that their flight from Jerusalem be not in the winter on the Sabbath, if indeed the disciples would not be keeping the Sabbath, because the destruction of Jerusalem didn't come until 70 AD.

Jesus made that statement precisely because if the Roman armies came and indeed the disciples were in the temple, they would easily be destroyed.

If the Roman armies came and they could find all the believers worshiping in 1 place, it would easily be possible for them to attack them and kill every 1 of them.

So Jesus was clear that the disciples would be keeping the Sabbath even 40 years after the cross.

What about the evidence in the New Testament?

Well, we see, for example, in the book of Acts, a number of instances where the disciples kept the Bible Sabbath.

Here in Acts chapter 13, the apostle Paul is preaching in the synagogue.

And somebody says, well, he did this for evangelistic purposes.

You know, he just went into the synagogue to preach to the Jews.

But we'll see something quite fascinating here.

But when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.

Now notice, the Jews are in the synagogue.

The Gentiles leave the synagogue, and they say, preach to us the next Sabbath.

Does he say, you come back on Sunday and I'll preach to you?

Verse 43, now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who speaking to them persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

So they continued in God's grace, which led them to obey God's law and keep the Bible Sabbath.

So grace and law and Sabbath are not distinct or separate.

That's why Jesus said, if you love me, John 14, verse 15, keep my commandments.

But notice verse 44, the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God.

So the whole city comes to hear the Word on the Sabbath.

So it's obvious from Acts 13, verse 44, that the New Testament Christian believers are not worshiping on the first day of the week, they're worshiping on the Bible Sabbath.

When you come to Acts chapter 17, verse 1 and 2, you see that just like Jesus had a custom, you remember back in Luke chapter 4, verse 16, it says about Jesus as his custom was, he went into the synagogue to worship on the Sabbath.

When Acts 17, we find the apostle Paul had a custom, verse 1 and 2.

Now when they had passed through Amphibolus and Apollonina, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

And Paul, as his custom was, went into them for 3 Sabbaths and reasoned with them concerning the Scriptures.

So this was not merely an evangelistic strategy that Paul had.

In Romans 3, verse 31, we read, Do we then make void the law through faith?

So from the Old Testament, from the days of Genesis, 2, 300 years before the Jewish race, down through the 10 Commandment law, down through the faithfulness of God's people in the Old Testament, through the New Testament period, the believers, the faithful men and women of God, kept the Bible Sabbath.

Do we have extra biblical evidence, evidence outside the Bible, that in those early centuries, say the first century, the second, the third, believers were keeping the Bible Sabbath.

Josephus, the early Jewish historian, puts it this way.

He writes that there was no city, I'm quoting, where the seventh day Sabbath had not spread.

So here you have Josephus writing, there's no city in the first century where the seventh day Sabbath has not spread.

Then you have Philo, a Jewish philosopher, contemporary with some of the apostles in the first century.

He calls the Sabbath, and again I quote, a festival belonging not to 1 nation, but to the entire world.

And then you have an amazing description of what indeed is going on here, and that description reveals that God indeed has a Sabbath down through the centuries.

Let's look at the second to fourth century, for example.

He records almost all churches throughout the world, celebrate the Sabbath in its mysteries every week, yet the Christians of Rome and Alexandria do not.

Why do the Christians at Rome and Alexandria not observe the Sabbath?

Because in Rome you have the Roman Empire falling apart, and you have the attempt to disassociate from Judaism, and so church and state unite, as we'll show you a little later in the video, and as they do, Constantine passes the Sunday Law in 321 AD to close the workshops on the venerable day of the sun.

Now that wasn't a worship decree, it was a social decree, but by the time you come to the Council of Laodicea in 364, you come to a point where church and state unite, Sunday worship is introduced now into the Empire.

That's why here Socrates Scholasticus says, almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath every week, but the Christians of Rome, because they have begun to compromise, and Alexandria, where you have a very high influence there of Christianity and sun worship.

Sunday observance was the exception, not the rule.

Now, additional historical sources affirm that Gentile Christians observed the Sabbath, that the Sabbath united believers with the life and teachings of Jesus, that Christians followed not only Christ's example, but Christ's command.

For over 400 years, the historical record is consistent.

So that leads to a very serious question.

He says, if you love me keep my commandments.

The disciples couldn't do it because they didn't have the authority.

In fact, it was Peter in Acts 5, verse 29, it says we ought to obey God rather than men.

And God certainly wouldn't do it because in the book of Malachi, God himself says, I am the Lord and I do what?

Well, in Daniel 7 verse 25, the Bible talks about the change of God's law.

It talks about a power arising out of Rome that would claim the authority to change God's law.

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History Records the Moment The Sabbath Changed

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