Pretend you are a preacher in the Christian church. Pretend the year is 40 A.D. (The church is not even ten years old at that time and there is NO New Testament at all, not one scrap of the Greek scriptures has been written). You want to convince your fellow believers that they should abandon Sabbath observance and begin meeting on Sunday and should make that a “holy” day. What scripture, or scriptures, would you cite to convince them Sunday is the day they should set aside as a day of rest and worship. (Remember you only have the Old Testament scriptures to draw from). You’re having a problem, aren’t you? OK, let me help you out a little. Let’s pretend you are a fellow who has total recall of everything you have ever heard spoken. Let’s pretend you were present each and every time Jesus Christ spoke orally to anyone at any time in any place. Now, with that fantastic help, what would you cite that Jesus Christ said in order to prove to these first Christians that they should abandon the seventh day holy eternal Sabbath and begin resting and worshiping on Sunday? You’re still having a problem, aren’t you. Friend, it’s the same problem you will have when you come face to face with Jesus Christ at the judgment of believers and He asks you why you spurned his holy eternal Sabbath day for Sunday observance. If I were you I would get my story together now for you do not know what a day may bring forth and your life could very well end before sunset!!!!
As I continue, “Let’s Play Pretend,” this preacher with total recall will take you through his experiences with the early church, his interactions with various apostles and show you how the early church, the First Century Church did NOT abandon God’s eternal seventh day sabbath, nor did the apostles begin honoring Sunday as God’s “new” sabbath. I will show you how this is a tradition of deceived men, admittedly a very old tradition but NOT a tradition of God’s anointed Holy Spirit filled and led apostles. You will get a bit more insight into the cleverness of Satan’s operation, how he has the ability to snag and deceive not only the wisest man who ever lived – Solomon, not only one of Christ’s twelve apostles – Judas, but the overwhelming majority of professing Christians. He, Satan, is good at what he does, very, very good. And he fully intends to take YOU down, too, and may have already succeeded to a large degree. Do not underestimate the lion or the serpent (both symbols of Satan in the scripture) or you will be bitten, filled with poison and finally devoured.
Remember, you are the First Century preacher with total recall of everything Jesus ever said during His earthly ministry. You want to convince your fellow Christians that they should abandon the observance of God’s holy eternal seventh day sabbath for Sunday observance. You recollect the first time you ever heard Him speak. It was when you and a multitude of others went up into a mountain and heard Him give a lengthy discourse that would later be called “the Sermon on the Mount.” You recall that He plainly said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven, but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (See Matthew 5:17-19).
You further recall that Jesus went on to cite word-for-word a couple of these commandments to which he referred, saying, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, ‘Thou shalt not kill…'” (verse 21, Matthew 5). And, again, ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery…'” (verse 27, Matthew 5). It then dawns on you that he was referring to the Ten Commandments, that these were the changeless commandments of God that were to be obeyed and that others were to be taught to keep these commandments, that not one jot, not one tittle, not one iota we would say today, could be changed in these commandments. You further realize, therefore, that Christ’s fulfilling of the law could not mean He abolished or did away with the Ten Commandments, but that He merely showed they could and must be kept! Suddenly it dawns on you that the fourth commandment is the commandment that clearly states, “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy,” and that this is the only commandment of the ten that is emphasized with the beginning word “remember.” Did God, therefore, foresee that this is the one commandment satan would strive diligently and yet quite cleverly to get men to forget?!!!
Your mind then leaps forward in time to one of the last things you heard Jesus Christ say: “And Jesus came and spake unto them (His disciples), saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations (and ALL nations would eventually include America, too, as well as any other nation on earth), baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them TO OBSERVE ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER I HAVE COMMANDED YOU (from the very beginning of His earthly ministry forward), and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'” (See Matthew 28:18-20).
You are a bit uneasy now as you recall that early on in His teaching He dogmatically stated that not one jot or tittle, not one tiny bit, could be altered, changed or forgotten about the Ten Commandments. Surely the sabbath command could not be changed to speak of an entirely different day of the week, moved from the seventh day to the first day of the week!! That commandment says clearly, “But the SEVENTH DAY is the sabbath of the Lord thy God….for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested THE SEVENTH DAY. Wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day (the SEVENTH DAY) and hallowed it (made it holy)” (See Exodus 20:8-11).
Blessed with total recall I suddenly recall another instance where Jesus Christ spoke of the sabbath day and how He informed some finger-pointing Pharisees that His disciples had done nothing wrong in procuring food on the sabbath day and how He ended His remarks to them that day, saying, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day” (See Matthew 12:1-8). I think, “Wait just a minute. If Jesus is Lord of the sabbath day, that would mean the sabbath is the Lord’s Day!”
Get out your concordance and look up the term “Lord’s Day.” You will not find one single instance in the New Testament wherein Sunday, or the first day of the week, is called the Lord’s Day. That is an invention of men and flatly contradicts what Jesus told the Pharisees, that He was Lord of the sabbath day, not Sunday.
There is something else I recall. I recall Jesus Christ giving a long discourse (later to be called “the Olivet Discourse,” or “the Olivet Prophecy” as it was delivered “as He sat upon the mount of Olives” (See Matthew 24:3). And I remember how, in speaking of a time of trouble far into the future, He said “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, NEITHER ON THE SABBATH DAY!” (See Matthew 24:20). It then dawns upon me that Jesus Christ saw the sabbath as a sacred day long after He had been crucified, resurrected and ascended back to heaven!!
I am beginning to feel more and more uneasy about trying to convince my fellow Christians to abandon sabbath observance and begin meeting for worship on Sunday as I recall Jesus also saying, “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad” (See Matthew 12:30). Friend, we don’t gather with the Lord when we preach or teach doctrines that are contrary to what He said and taught. We scatter or divide the body of Christ. We establish TWO bodies of believers – a sabbath day observing body, walking in the truth, and a Sunday keeping body, walking in error!
“Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Sunday observing preachers, preachers who scorn sabbath keeping and trample all over God’s eternal holy day, will someday give account to the Lord of the sabbath as to why they chose that course. I am not going to be in that crowd, and any man I call my “pastor” is not going to be in that crowd either.
Remember, I am the First Century preacher with total recall, having been present every time Jesus Christ spoke. Suddenly I recall something else. I recall that Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man!” (See Mark 2:27). This troubles me as I had begun to use the argument that the sabbath was a Jewish holy day, part of the Old Covenant and that Christians need not honor Jewish customs and laws. I think about how the sabbath was established at the time of creation centuries before the first Jew was born, centuries before the time of Moses and the giving of the Old Covenant! This fact gnaws at my conscience for having used such a phony argument to persuade my fellow believers to abandon sabbath keeping and begin giving honor to Sunday.
Christ’s words from His “sermon on the mount” come back to mind: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven, but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (See Matthew 5:19). I think on God’s infinite mercy, and how one who spurns His sabbath and leads others to turn away from sabbath keeping might yet be saved and given eternal life but will be considered one of the least in God’s kingdom. Hence would be forfeiting great eternal rewards by following such a course.
I then recall how Jesus Christ legislated or taught how God’s holy sabbath was to be kept, stating, “wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days” (See Matthew 12:12). Racking my brain I can remember NOTHING Jesus ever said that would diminish the sacredness and importance of keeping God’s sabbath, how He kept it Himself and said, “Follow me!”
I recall how angry He was with the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites and saying to them, “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition…..Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition…..This people draws near unto me with their mouth, and honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, but in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (See Matthew 15:1-9).
When one spurns God’s holy sabbath after much careful scriptural instruction in its validity and importance, choosing rather to call Sunday their “holy” day and follow instructors who do the same, well they have taken their first giant step into embracing far-reaching error. And the scary thing about spiritual deception is that once a person elects to pass through that doorway they rarely find the exit to come back out. They but go deeper and deeper into spiritual error and misunderstanding of the scriptures. They are quite comfortable, though, in the way that they have chosen as they look about them and find that they are indeed in the majority and have many millions who agree wholeheartedly with them in the doctrines and teachings they have embraced. And those who are in agreement aren’t criminals and killers, loose-living immoral types but usually rather clean living honest folk. Their instructors and spiritual guides are generally lauded by the world and viewed by even the irreligious as God’s spokesmen.
But, remember this, we must ALL give account someday to the Lord Jesus Christ for our beliefs and practices. Someday an angel might escort us before our Lord while whispering in our ear, “He wants to talk to you about Sunday.” And we might find He isn’t smiling.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley