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Created: 3/17/2005
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THE CHURCHES COMMENT
AMERICAN CONGREGATIONALIST
“The current notion that Christ and the apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.” Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26,1890.
ANGLICAN
“And where are we told in the Scriptures 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 holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the Church, has explained it.” Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons of the Catechism, pages 334, 336.
BAPTIST
“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament, absolutely not. There is no Scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” - From a paper by Dr. Edward T. Hilcox, Author of The Baptist Manual
“We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government.”-“Baptist Church Manual,” Art.12.
“There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance.” – WILLIAM OWEN CARVER, “The Lord’s Day in Our Day,” page 49.
“There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day.” Harold Lindsell (editor), Christianity Today, Nov. 5, 1976
BRETHREN
“With the views of the law and the Sabbath we once held…and which we are still held by perhaps the great majority of the most earnest Christians, we confess that we could not answer Adventists. What is more, neither before or since have I heard or read what would conclusively answer an Adventist in his Scriptural contention that the Seventh day is the Sabbath(Ex.20:10). It is not ‘one day in seven’ as some put it, but ‘the seventh day according the commandment.’” Words of Truth and Grace, p.281.
CATHOLIC
“But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we (Catholics) never sanctify.” - James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, p. 111.
“Sunday is our mark of authority…The church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.” – Catholic Record September 1, 1923.
“It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.” Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, NJ ‘News’ on March 18,1903. See This Rock.
“Protestants…accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change…But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that…in observing Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the Church, the pope.” Our Sunday Visitor, February 5th, 1950. See This Rock.
“Of course these two old statements are exactly correct. The Catholic Church designated Sunday as the day of corporate worship and gets full credit – or blame – for the change.” This Rock. The Magazine of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization, p.8, June 1997
“Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the church ever did happened in the first century. The holy day the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday…not from any directions noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church’s sense of its own power…people who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become Seventh-Day Adventists and keep Saturday holy.” – Saint Catherine Catholic Church Sentinel May 21,1995.
CHRISTIAN
“The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceeding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change.” First Day Observance, pp. 17, 19
CHURCH OF CHRIST
“I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day." - Alexander Campbell, Washington Reporter, October 8,1821
“But we do not find any direct command from God, or instruction from the risen Christ, or admonition from the early apostles, that the first day is to be substituted for the seventh day Sabbath.” “Let us be clear on this point. Though to the Christian ‘that day, the first day of the week’ is the most memorable of all days…there is no command or warrant in the New Testament for observing it as a holy day.” “The Roman Church selected the first day of the week in honour of the resurrection of Christ…” Bible Standard, May,1916, Auckland, New Zealand.
“…If the fourth commandment is binding upon us Gentiles by all means keep it. But let those who demand a strict observance of the Sabbath remember that the seventh day is the ONLY Sabbath day commanded, and God never repealed that command. If you would keep the Sabbath, keep it; but Sunday is not the Sabbath. The argument of the ‘Seventh-day Adventists’ is on one point unassailable. It is the Seventh day not the first day that the command refers to.” G. Alridge, Editor, The Bible Standard, April, 1916.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND
“Many people think that Sunday. But neither in the New Testament nor in the early church is there anything to suggest that we have any right to transfer the observance of the seventh day of the week to the first. The Sabbath was and is Saturday, and if it were binding on us then we should observe it on that day, and on no other day.” Rev. Lionel Beere, All-Saints Church, Ponsonby, N.Z. in Church and People, Sept. 1,1947.
“Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy…! That is Saturday.” P. Carrington, Archbishop of Quebec, Oct. 27,1949.
“But unless my reckoning is wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o’clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath to Sunday.’- D. MORSEBOYCOTT, Daily Herald, London, Feb. 26,1931.
CONGREGATIONALIST
“The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the Seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.” - Dr. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, January 19,1882
“It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath…The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday…There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest any penalty by violating the supposedly sanctity of Sunday.” Dr. Dale, the Ten Commandments, pp. 106, 107.
EPISCOPALIAN
“Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? none.” Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 127
“We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of Christ.” Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.
LUTHERAN
“The observance of the Lord's day(Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church.” - Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in Catholic Sabbath Manual, part 2, Chapter 1, Section 10
“For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and most special revelation of the Holy God, the ten words written upon the tables of the Law from Sinai.” – “Crown Theological Library,” page 176.
“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance.” – AUGUSTUS NEANDER, “History of the Christian Religion and Church,” Vol.1, page 186.
LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH
“For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scripture which testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such a transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question: Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has the right to do it?” George Sverdrup, ‘A New Day’
METHODIST
“Take the matter of Sunday . . . there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day.” - Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2,1942
“The Sabbath was made for Man; not for the Hebrews, but for all men.” – E.O. HAVEN, “Pillars of Truth,” page 88.
“This ‘handwriting of ordinances’ our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to the cross. (Colossians 2:14.) But the moral law containing the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away…The moral law stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law…Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages.”- JOHN WESLEY, “Sermons on Several Occasions,” 2-Vol. Edition, Vol. 1, pages 221, 221.
“The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday. This took place in the year 321.
“It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for the keeping of the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” Amos Binney, ‘Theological Compendium’, p. 180-181.
MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE
“The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?”- D.L.MOODY, “Weighed and Wanting,” page 47.
“I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.’ It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was-in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.” – Id., page 46.
PRESBYTERIAN
“The Christian Sabbath(Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath.” - Dwight's Theology, vol. 4, p. 401
“God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposing its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race.” American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175.
“The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue-the Ten Commandments. This alone for ever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution…Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand…The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath.” –T.C.BLAKE, D.D., “Theology Condensed,” pages 474,475.
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL
“The day is now changed from the seventh day to the first day…but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church.” ‘Explanation of Catechism’
SOUTHERN BAPTIST
“The sacred name of the Seventh day is the Sabbath, This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10 quoted]…on this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages…Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week~~that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh.” Joseph Hudson Taylor, ‘The Sabbatic Question’, p.14-17,41.
“The first four commandments set fourth man’s obligations directly toward God…But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other six…The fourth commandment sets forth God’s claim on man’s time and thought…The six days of labour and the rest on the Sabbath are to be maintained as a witness to God’s toil and rest in the creation…No one of the ten words is of merely racial significance…The Sabbath was established originally (long before Moses) in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God’s rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam.” – Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, Aug. 15, 1937.
DICTIONARY
“The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's Day(meaning Sunday) for the Jewish Sabbath(or the seventh day) . . . and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the Fourth Commandment, has no basis whatever either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity.” - Sir William Smith & Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. 2,p. 182, Article "Sabbath"
“As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but there are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth commandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.’…The abolition of it would be unreasonable.”-CHARLES BUCK, “A Theological Dictionary,” 1830 Edition, page 537.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." - M'Clintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. 9, p.196
“Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshiped the sun,…the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and …He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation…The Creator blessed the seventh day’-declared it to be a day above all days, a day-on which His favour should assuredly rest…So long, then, as man exists, and the worly around him endures,’ does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside so long as its foundations last…It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth.” Eadie’s Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.
INFIDEL
“I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day?…The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore the first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering…That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week is shown in Acts 18:4-‘And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath’(Saturday).”- HENRY M. TABER, “Faith or Fact” (preface by Robert G. Ingersoll), pages 114,116.
MISCELLANEOUS
“You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered.”-“The Library of Christian Doctrine,” pages 3,4.
“The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath…It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfil the law.”-H.J. FLOWERS, B.A., B.D., “The Permanent Value of the Ten Commandments,” page 13.
“The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. English speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath.”- F.M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept. 1,1949.
NOTE: Though some individual pastors may argue the point, we have not found one single Sunday-keeping organization yet, which did not in its literature plainly admit that there is no Scripture to support Sunday observance.
