The early Church kept the Sabbath day holy according to the teachings of the Bible Ac ; In this process, there was something inevitable—that was a conflict with the Roman religion. The Roman imperial family abhorred the Jews who believed in Judaism. The Romans believed in many different gods, and from their polytheistic view of religion, it was hard to understand the Jews who believed in the one and only God—Jehovah, and the Jews were reluctant to follow the Roman orders using their religion as an excuse.
To the Romans, Christianity seemed to be a sect of Judaism because it was also a monotheistic religion; Christians believed in Jesus as the Savior, and kept the seventh day as the Sabbath just as the Jews did. So, the people of the Church in Rome were unable to avoid persecution from the Romans, and they made efforts to inform them of the difference between Christianity and Judaism. In this process, they came to accept Sunday, which the Romans observed, as the day of worship.
Sunday was the day set aside for the worship of Mithra, the sun god. Mithraism, an offshoot of the Persian religion Zoroastrianism, was introduced to Rome around the 1st century B. Around the time when Christianity spread in Rome, Mithra the sun god had already been raised to the status of the patron deity of the emperors and the empire, and Mithraism had been recognized as the most predominant and influential religion in Rome.
One of the Ten Commandments states: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.
In it you shall do no work" Exodus Exodus [8] Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. There is no biblical authority for changing the day of rest and worship from the seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday. God commanded that the seventh day be observed as the Sabbath. A glance at almost any dictionary or encyclopedia will show you that Saturday is the seventh day of the week, while Sunday is the first day of the week.
The seventh day according to God's calendar is—and always has been—the Sabbath day. Although man has modified calendars through the centuries, the seven-day weekly cycle has remained intact throughout history.
The days of the week have always remained in their proper order, with Sunday as the first day of the week and Saturday as the seventh. How did Sunday become the primary day of rest and worship? Although the concept of rest has largely disappeared, most churches continue to hold their worship services on Sunday. You can search throughout the Bible, but you will find no authority to alter the day of worship.
James Cardinal Gibbons, Catholic educator and archbishop of Baltimore in the late s and early s, was blunt about the change:. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify. The point Jesus made is that the Sabbath was not instituted to enslave people, but to benefit them. The spirit of Sabbath observance is continued in the New Testament observance of rest and worship on the first day of the week.
And upon the first day of the week , when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.
Now about the collection for God's people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of every week , each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. It must be remembered that, according to Colossians , the Sabbath was "a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
The Sabbath was a shadow of the redemption that would be provided in Christ. It symbolized the rest from our works and an entrance into the rest of God provided by His finished work.
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