I sseriously doubt if the average preacher even knows those words are in the Bible. I really do. That’s how astounding is Satan’s blinding power. And do you know who the “they” are in that sentence? The elders of Judah! Here is the complete verse where those words are found: “And He (God) brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they worshiped the sun toward the east.” (See Ezekiel 8:16. See also Jeremiah 8:1-9).
Worship of the ancient Latin god Sol was prevalent throughout the Roman Empire at the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry. The apostles would have been well aware of this pagan religion and would have avoided doing anything that might lend itself to an apparent acceptance of this erroneous belief system. Sun worship, of course, had been practiced by the Egyptians even before the time of Moses.
Anything that even gave a hint of worshiping the sun would have been anathema to the Jewish people when the Lord Jesus conducted His ministry in Judea and Galilee. They had finally learned their lesson in that matter if in nothing else. And the early church would have had an impossible task trying to convince the Jewish people that God without any warning whatsoever had abolished the fourth commandment, that commandment that said REMEMBER the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and replaced it with the day of the sun – Sunday. That didn’t happen. Satan can deceive everyone from the Mormons to the Roman Catholics and every denomination in between that God abolished the Sabbath day and made Sunday a holy day instead and, still, I assure you that did NOT happen, and I assure you I have meticulously studied the few New Testament texts men use to prove God authorized replacing His eternal Sabbath with Sunday observance and found no such support in any of those texts.
Shortly after the founding of God’s church in Jerusalem, “the angel of the Lord spoke unto Philip, saying, ‘Arise, and go toward the south unto the way which goes down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.’ And he arose and went, and, behold, a man of Ethiopia (a black man), a eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, ‘Go near, and join yourself to this chariot.’ And Philip ran there to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and said, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I except some man should guide me?’ And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, ‘He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before His shearer, so opened not His mouth, in His humiliation His judgment was taken away, and who shall declare His generation? for His life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, ‘I pray you, of whom speaks the prophet this, of himself, or of some other man?’ Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.” (See Acts 8:26-35). The scripture text they were looking at was Isaiah 53, verses 7 an 8).
But do you know what is most interesting? If that eunuch kept reading, and I have no doubt he did, just three chapters later in Isaiah he would have come to these words: “Blessed is the man that does this, and the son of man (Jew or Gentile) that lays hold on it, THAT KEEPS THE SABBATH FROM POLLUTING IT, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the son of the stranger (the Gentile, for example this Ethiopian eunuch) that has joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, ‘the Lord has utterly separated me from His people, NEITHER LET THE EUNUCH say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree (unproductive),’ For thus says the Lord UNTO THE EUNUCHS THAT KEEP MY SABBATHS, AND CHOOSE THE THINGS THAT PLEASE ME, and take hold of my (Sabbath) covenant, even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” (See Isaiah 56:2-5). Can you imagine the awe that would have swept over that eunuch as he read those words?
This Ethiopian eunuch was the first eunuch in all history invited to come into fellowship with the Lord. Therefore, let me ask you a fair question. Seeing this eunuch had just been baptized and joined to God’s church (see Acts 8:35-39), and seeing how he was being led by the Spirit of God to read and ponder the words of Isaiah the prophet, do you think he would have then continued to keep God’s eternal Sabbath holy or do you think he would have abandoned the Sabbath and begun honoring Sunday as a “holy” day? Let me tell you what I think. Any Sunday keeper who might have approached him and tried to dissuade him from keeping the fourth commandment would have been looked upon by this eunuch as the devil’s own agent. That’s what I think. Remember, this account is found in the 8th chapter of Acts. Not one scrap, not one word of the New Testament had been written. Even if there had been a Sunday observer at that point in time – which there wasn’t – that Sunday keeper wouldn’t have had a single text to show this eunuch to convince him to abandon Sabbath observance and honor the day of the sun. This eunuch would have had Isaiah’s writings as well as the rest of the Hebrew scriptures to guide him and exhort him to honor God’s holy eternal Sabbath.
Folks, I warn you again, Satan is good at his game. Not only can he deceive Solomon and the apostle Judas, he can and HAS deceived ten thousand times ten thousand preachers and theologians. Now the question to ask is has he deceived YOU???
Christ’s Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley