The Mystery of the Great Sabbath Switch

I was talking the other day with our neighbor Jim about accidents we had either seen
or experienced. He told me about an accident that he just couldnt figure out. There was a
lady he came upon who had wedged her car between the two cables of a guardrail. It
wasnt front in, but sideways in between the two wires. And he said it was all he could do
to keep from laughing as he thought to himself: How did she manage to get into such a
position? Well, Im sure her embarrassing position wasnt very funny to her.
Because of the lack of Scriptural evidence for a change in days of worship, explaining
how Christians ended up worshipping on Sunday can also be a bit embarrassing. Ask ten
pastors why most Christians keep Sunday rather than the Sabbath and youll get eleven
different answers!
Perhaps youve heard about the visitor who asked for directions in New England. A
local agrees to help him and tries to explain which roads and turns he needs to take to get
to his destination. Embarrassed that he cant explain how to get where the man where he
wants to go, the exasperated local says, Well, you just cant get there from here. When
it comes to the Christian day of worship, it is obvious that we did get here from there. But
the question is: how did we do it? That is exactly what we will be exploring today in our
subject: The Mystery of the Great Sabbath Switch.
From the creation of the world, God set in time an opportunity for each of His
children, not just those with Jewish blood, to spend regular, periodic, and intensive time
with Him, remembering who He is and what we mean to Him. That opportunity for
regular, periodic and intensive time is called the seventh-day Sabbath and it was initiated
during the first week of creation. The record of the book of Acts tells us that Christian
believers in the first century continued to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. In the second
century, that began to change.
For the past several weeks we have been looking at the various perspectives of those
who try to explain why, although the first believers in Christ kept the Sabbath, Christians
today should no longer concern themselves with the seventh-day Sabbath. We talked
about, first of all, that some folks say you dont need to keep the Sabbath because you
dont need to keep the law at all. Were under grace. And we came to see that doing away
with the whole law in order to avoid keeping the Sabbath deprives us of not having a
standard of right and wrong and has had a rather negative effect on society. That isnt
what Paul intended when he proclaimed us to be no longer under the law.
We also looked at the idea that some put forth that, well, yes, we do need a sabbath,
but that could be any day. Each of us can just choose for ourselves what day we want to
keep. The majority of Christians choose to keep Sunday, but we could choose any day. It
doesnt have to be any specific day. But then we saw that Scripture plainly states that the
day for worship given to man is predicated upon Gods having rested on the seventh day
of the creation week. Obviously, God doesnt leave it to us to pick out our own day.
Today were looking at a third perspective and that is the idea that, yes, we do need a
sabbath, and yes, God did bless and sanctify the seventh-day Sabbath for the Jewish
nation in the Old Testament, but that the Church in some way or another exercised
authority to transfer the holiness of the seventh day to the first. It is the idea of a transfer


of the sanctity of the day. Is it really possible that the Sabbaths sanctity has been
transferred to Sunday?
In Matthew 18, we find an interesting passage that talks about the promise that God
has given to His people as a whole of coming together in agreement to Him in prayer and
loosing and binding things in heaven and earth. Look at Matthew 18:18, 19:

Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say
unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing
that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in
heaven.

Notice that it uses the word ye, which is you (plural) or you all, if you please.
The promise is directed to all believers, not just a single leader. There is another related
passage, Matthew 16, that is probably better known. It is certainly more frequently cited.
The largest Christian denomination on earth claims this passage as the foundation for
their leaders authority to loose and bind in matters of doctrine and conscience. Notice
Matthew 16:18:

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Youve heard that beforethat the keys of the kingdom were given to Peter and were
passed on, in succession, from one supreme church leader to the next? Based on this
passage, the Church claims that Peter or his successor has the right to loose and bind
Christians in matters of conscience.
1
Is that what Peter himself would say? As we go to
Acts 5:29, we read:

Then Peter and the [other] apostles answered and said, We ought to
obey God rather than men.

You see, the promise that Jesus gave in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18 that when two
believers come to God in agreement asking something of Him, it is not a carte blanche. It
isnt a blank check that includes changing specific commands of God. (If it did, you
might imagine two people coming to God and asking Him to wave the requirement of not
committing adultery.) Jesus said, in Matthew 15:9:

But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the
commandments of men.

1
The pope can modify divine law, since his power is not of man, but of God, and he acts in the place of
God upon earth, with the fullest power of binding and loosing his sheep. Petrus de Ancharano quoted in
Lucius Ferraris, Prompta Bibliotheca, vol. 6, 1772, p. 29, art. 2, Papa.



You see, we cannoteven as a churchplace human commandments above what
God has commanded. Gods Word has greater authority than the authority of His
Church.
So now we take up the question, How did we get here from there? How did a
church that originally kept the Sabbath come to keep Sunday in its place? What is the
evidence concerning the change? Are there any documents written within the first
Christian century that would give us any indication of what the practice of the Church
was immediately following the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus? And if there are
such documents, do they give any evidence that the early Church had started to observe
Sunday as we find within the second century?
Yes, there are. The very documents that tell us about the death, burial, and
resurrection of the Lord Jesus were not written immediately after those events, but some
years later. Those documents are the four gospelsMatthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If
you ask most Christians why they worship on Sunday, they will tell you that it was
because Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week. I too believe that Jesus
was crucified and rose from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures say. As the song
says: Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. The great truth of the resurrection is what
gives us hope in the face of difficulty. That the crucifixion was not the end of Jesus, that
Jesus did not have a final resting place in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, that Jesus
overcame death and sin and the grave is what keeps us going. Yet, because of our desire
to get to the resurrection, we often zip past the events of His crucifixion and overlook the
details the gospel writers have given with regard to the intervening day on which Jesus
rested in the grave. Do these writers give any testimony about an early switch of worship
days from the Sabbath to Sunday as people like Binney postulate? Binney writes:

Jesus, after his resurrection, changed the Sabbath from the seventh to
the first day of the week . . . When Jesus gave instructions for this
change we are not told, but very likely during the time when he spake to
his apostles of the things pertaining to his kingdom. Acts i, 3. This is
probably one of the many unrecorded things which Jesus did. John xx,
30; xxi, 25. Amos Binney, Theological Compend, 1902, p. 171.

Unrecordedhe is certainly right about that. Such an act is absolutely
unrecorded. If we start assuming that Jesus said things that arent recorded, where will
we stop? We need to look at the actual records that were left to us by those who were
witnesses of the crucifixion and the evidence that they provide of the effect it had on the
fledgling church.
We begin our perusal of the gospels with Luke. By certain descriptions in the book it
would seem that Luke wrote his gospel written shortly before the destruction of
Jerusalem. (Thiessen believes it was as early as 58 AD, while others authorities believe it
to have been in 68 AD.)
Turn with me to Luke 23. I like Luke. I like the extra insights he includes in recounting
the story of Jesus. You know, it would be well for us to take the time to read the whole of
the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. To walk with Jesus down the stones of


the Via Dolorosa, up the way to Golgotha, to watch in admiration as the love of God is
poured out for us on the cross. That would be worth the reading. But for now we are only
going to look at the part of the story that takes us from late Friday to Sunday morning
from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
We begin in verse 46.

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

These were the last audible words of Jesus before He died. What do they express?
They tell us how much He trusted the Father. They tell us that, even though He went
through this dark, horrible experience, He died, resting in His Fathers love. What is the
rest of the story?

47 Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God,
saying, Certainly this was a righteous man. 48 And all the people that
came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote
their breasts, and returned. 49 And all his acquaintance, and the women
that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things. 50
And, behold, [there was] a man named Joseph, a counsellor; [and he
was] a good man, and a just: 51 (The same had not consented to the
counsel and deed of them;) [he was] of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews:
who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. 52 This [man] went unto
Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. 53 And he took it down, and
wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone,
wherein never man before was laid.

And now Luke includes some details that might seem strange if the Sunday
resurrection were intended to inaugurate a new day of worship. Besides this, Luke is the
only New Testament writer who is not a Jew. Luke, a gentile writer, includes in this
document written to Theophilus (the original recipient of Lukes gospel), who is also a
gentile, certain interesting details.

54 And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

Does he explain to his Greek-speaking friend what the preparation is? He
apparently doesnt need to. He assumes that his reader already knows. Friday was known
as the preparation. What is a preparation if it doesnt prepare for something? If a bride
prepares for a wedding, but never gets married, its pretty disappointing. The
preparation leads up to something. As a matter of fact, this word, the preparation, in
Greek is paraskeu, is used in the Didache, a document originating in Syria that, with its
later additions, takes us down to the third century. They still called Friday, the
preparation, which gives indirect evidence that they still kept the Sabbath. And so Luke
says: And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.



55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed
after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. 56 And they
returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day
according to ...

Jewish custom? No, it didnt say that, did it? No, he says, ... and rested the sabbath
day according to the commandment. Here is Luke, writing many years after the events
and saying that they rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. And, again,
he doesnt explain what he meant by the commandment. So apparently he assumes
that his friend understands about the commandments and knows that people are
supposed to rest, according to the fourth commandment. Gods fourth commandment is
Gods invitation to Sabbath rest. Then, and only then, does Luke go on, in Luke 24, verse
1 to say:

Now upon the first [day] of the week, very early in the morning, they
came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared,
and certain [others] with them. 2 And they found the stone rolled away
from the sepulchre.

Thats a beautiful part of the story, isnt it? The tomb was empty. Jesus wasnt there.
Lets flip back and see what Matthew says about the same story. Lets see if he gives
us any hints about a change. By the way, did you notice anything in Luke that said: And
thats why we keep Sunday today? There wasnt. But we did find him explaining the
rationale for keeping the Sabbath. This early document, written within the span of the first
fifty years of the Churchs history, tells us nothing about keeping the first day of the week
holy. All right. Well lets turn to Matthew. Matthew is quite lengthy in is description of
the last hours of Christ. We go to the same story, beginning in verse 57, which describes
the request of Joseph of Arimathaea, who asks Pilate for the body of Jesus. He takes it
and wraps it in the clean linen cloth. Verse 60, he lays it in the tomb...

and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. 61
And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against
the sepulchre.

What Matthew says next is unique, for Matthews gospel was known to have been
addressed to Jews so that they might believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Matthew
describes the activities of these punctilious Sabbath keepers, the Pharisees, on the day
following the entombment of Jesus to keep His body from being removed from the
sepulcre to prevent any one from believing further in Jesus. Look at verse 62:

Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation,...

What day would that be? The Sabbath, right?

... the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,



Now is that where they were supposed to be on the Sabbath? Where should they have
been? In a synogogue or in the temple, right? But they are so concerned about keeping
Jesus down and His followers from being able to claim that He had risen from the dead
that they run to make sure that His body cant be removed from the tomb. So they go to
Pilate saying, verse 63:

Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After
three days I will rise again. 64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be
made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal
him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last
error shall be worse than the first. 65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a
watch: go your way, make [it] as sure as ye can. 66 So they went, and
made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

Notice who put the seal on the stone. It wasnt the Romans. It was the Jewish leaders
who wanted to keep Jesus sealed in the tomb. These verses show the frenetic activity of
the leaders of the Jews while Jesus Himself is resting. Those who reject Jesus have no
rest, as Revelation 14:11 says. They were scampering around trying to make sure He
stays in the tomb and Jesus is just biding His time, resting until the appropriate time, until
the Sabbath is over, until it is time to awaken from the sleep of death to take back up his
work for mankind.
Do you think that it was just by chance that Jesus rested on this Sabbath day? Was it
purely coincidence? Was there anything about Jesus ministry that was left to chance?
Just as He had rested on the seventh day at the completion of the work of creation, so did
Jesus rest on the seventh day at the completion of the work of redemption. John records
Jesus final words as It is finished. When Jesus rest was over, He came forth. What
does the commandment say? Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the
seventh day is the Sabbath. When the first day came, it was time to get back to work.
Now look at verse one of chapter 28.

In the end of the sabbath ...

OK, so the Sabbath is over.

... as it began to dawn toward the first [day] of the week, came Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. 2 And, behold, there
was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from
heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon
it.

Dont you just love that description! Heres the angel who opens the tomb, calming
sitting on the stone. The leaders hoped to seal the tomb, but the earthquake comes and
shakes the ground. It shakes the tomb open. Jesus is called forth and the angel is not just
standing there, but sitting on the stone that had closed Jesus in as if to say, There there!


You cant keep Jesus in here! A little seal on the stone is not going to keep Him in there!
Jesus came forth.
Again, we find nothing in here explaining that the believers made anything of the day
upon which these events occurred. It was the event itself that was most crucial to them.
The gospel writers consistently emphasize that He would rise the third day not on the
first day of the week.
Now lets skip on over to John. John throws in some of his own recollections not
included in the other gospels. We are in chapter 19 of John, verse 30.

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished:
and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. 31 The Jews therefore,
because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon
the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,)
besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and [that] they might be
taken away. 32 Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first,
and of the other which was crucified with him. 33 But when they came to
Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: 34 But
one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came
there out blood and water. 35 And he that saw [it] bare record, and his
record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.

John includes these additional details because he saw it happen. He knew it was true.
In verse 38, we find Joseph of Arimathea taking the body. Then verse 39 tells us
something that the other gospel writers who were not at the cross did not include:

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by
night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound
[weight]. 40 Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen
clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. 41 Now in
the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a
new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. 42 There laid they Jesus
therefore because of the Jews preparation [day]; for the sepulchre was
nigh at hand.

John explains the manner of Jewish burial, which would show his intended audience
to be non-Jews and emphasizes that Joseph and Nicodemus had to get Jesus quickly into
the tomb because of the Jews scruples about the preparation day. Yet, like Luke, he
doesnt feel compelled to explain what the preparation was.
Then comes verse one of chapter 20.

The first [day] of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was
yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the
sepulchre.

Then Mary runs and tells Peter. Then John and Peter run to the tomb and see for


themselves that Jesus body is no longer there! Jesus can hardly wait to begin dispelling
His disciples grief. On this first day of the new week, He appears again and again to His
followers to let them know He has conquered sin, death, and the grave. Notice verse 11.
There we see Mary weeping outside the empty tomb. Adding to the disgrace of her
Masters crucifixion, now His body has been moved from the tomb in which it had been
laid. As she stands there all in tears, she hears a voice that she does not recognize, that is,
until she hears her own name, Mary, and she recognizes that it is her Master.
Rabboni, she cries, which is to say, My teacher, my master.
Look at verse 19:

Then the same day at evening, being the first [day] of the week, when
the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the
Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace
[be] unto you.

Jesus delivered the very message that these fearful and perplexed disciples needed to
hear: Peace be unto you. But there were two disciples who werent present that day. Do
you know which ones they were? Thomas, thats right ... and Judas. Judas, unfortunately,
never got to see the fulfillment of Jesus promise. In utter despair and anguish of soul, he
had taken his own life. Thomas also was passing through his own hours of distress. He
wasnt meeting with the disciples. He did as many people often do when they are
discouraged; he pulled back from the others. We often think, this is something Ive got to
deal with on my own. So we stay away from other believers and we try to handle it all by
ourselves. For a week, it says, he struggled with his doubts. Even though the other
disciples said that Christ was risen, Thomas had a struggle going on inside with the
doubts that plagued him. And John tells us, verse 26:

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with
them ...

A week later, Thomas was with the others when they had all come together. What day
of the week would that be? That would be another Sunday, wouldnt it? Eight days, in the
eastern world, is one week. You see, they counted the day you were on and then added
seven more days. Notice that John doesnt emphasize that this was the first day of the
week, he just says, after eight days. He is giving us an accurate account of the events,
but he attaches no special significance to the day on which it took place. So Thomas is
with them now. Continuing with verse 26:

[then] came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and
said, Peace [be] unto you.

Now, during the previous week, as the other disciples had tried to convince him that
Jesus was alive, Thomas had said, I wont believe unless I can put my finger in the nail
prints and put my hand in the wound in His side. He had given expression to his doubts
when Jesus hadnt been physically in their midst. But notice what happens next:



27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my
hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust [it] into my side: and be not
faithless, but believing. 28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My
Lord and my God.

He didnt say, Well, nows my chance, let me stick my finger... No. No. All of his
doubts just fell away when he saw the Lord, when he heard the encouragement in the
sound of His voice. That war that was being fought inside of Thomas between faith and
doubt was immediately surrendered and settled right there and then. And he believed and
said, My Lord and my God.

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.

Jesus said this for you and for me. We are not eyewitnesses of the resurrection and
yet there is a blessing for each of us, if we take the testimony and believe.
These are the earliest documents that give witness to the early Sunday morning
resurrection, but none of these authors attach any special significance to the day. If there
were a transference of sanctity to Sunday, as the claim is made, then why didnt these
writers just say so?
We go through the book of Acts and we find the believers meeting together for
prayer, study and worship in the synagogues on the Sabbath day. We find James, at the
council in Acts 15, giving his pronouncement about the Gentiles not requiring
circumcision, upon the assumption that the Gentiles have heard these matters in the
various synagogues on the Sabbath day. The elders in Jerusalem take for granted the
observance of the Sabbath.
Then too, anticipating the coming destruction of the temple, Jesus told His disciples in
Matthew 24, to look for the sign that would indicate the time to evacuate the city and
Judea. When you see the city surrounded by armies, know that the end is near. Verse 15.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by
Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him
understand:) 16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the
mountains:

In preparation for this event, Christ had told them, in verse 20:

But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath
day:

Now it makes good sense why they wouldnt desire to flee in the winter. It would
make it a hardship to flee with just the clothes on your back and what little you could
carry if it were wintertime. But why pray that they not have to flee on the Sabbath? Well,
some say, thats because the Jews would have closed up the city and the disciples


couldnt have escaped. But history reveals that, when the Romans came in 66 AD, the
Jews went out to chase them, as the Romans retreated to settle internal matters back in
Rome, and they left the gates open. They werent concerned about the gates, they were
concerned about chasing the Romans. As the Romans turned and retreated to Rome, the
Jews thought they had a mighty victory. Meanwhile, the disciples had obeyed the
command of Jesus and had left the city. And they fled to a little place on the other side of
the Jordan called Pella. Now the story gets even more interesting here. Do you know what
the early believers in Jerusalem were called? They werent called Christians. That was a
term coined in Antioch of Syria. What was the name given them? They were called
Nazarenes, because Jesus was of Nazareth.
Notice the words of the Church historian, James Smith.

The first Christian church established at Jerusalem by apostolic authority
became in its doctrine and practices a model for the greater part of those
founded in the first century. . . . These Judaizing Christians were first
known by the general appellation of Nazarenes. ... All Christians agreed
in celebrating the seventh day of the week in conformity to the Jewish
converts. James Smith, History of the Christian Church, pp. 50, 52, 69.

If we begin to study in history, we see that as disciples went their various ways to
spread the gospel, they took Gods commandments with them. And that is why the book
of Revelation talks about the descendents of the woman who keep the commandments of
God and the saints who keep the commandments and have the faith of Jesus. They
obeyed Gods commands, including the seventh-day Sabbath.
The churches that were established in Egypt, India, Abyssinia, and Syria kept the
Sabbath even centuries on and the Nazarenes continued to keep Gods blessed Sabbath.
In fact, down to the fourth century, we have the historian Epiphanius telling us that the
descendents of this same group still kept the Sabbath. Which is why we know that the
disciples remembered their Lords words: Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter,
neither on the sabbath day. While they remembered His words, there was no way that
they could have forgotten their Masters Sabbath.
Notice what Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, writes:

... The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the
Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found
themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the
various religions of polytheism enlisted under the banner of Christ: . . .
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, chap.
15, p. 387.

As these multitudes came into the Church, they exercised a powerful influence on the
direction of the Church. Let me read to you from Jesse Hurlbut.

For fifty years after St. Pauls life a curtain hangs over the church,
through which we vainly strive to look; and when at last the curtain rises,


about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church-fathers, we find a
church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter
and St. Paul. Jesse L. Hurlbut, The Story of the Christian Church, p. 41.

Over this period of fifty years, the Church underwent dramatic change and Hurlbut
says we can find the evidence of this change in one of the earliest church fathers. So lets
take a peak at the earliest of theseJustin Martyr. What does he say about the Sabbath,
Sunday, and the reason for observing Sunday?

And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country
gather together in one place and memoirs of the apostles or the writings
of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. . . . Sunday is the day
on which we all hold our common assembly because it is the first day on
which God, having wrought a change in the darkness in matter, made the
world: and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the
dead.

Justin says we keep the day of the Sun because it was the day for the creation of light
and it was the day that the true Sun rose for our souls. Somehow he misses the fact that
God Himself established the seventh day as the memorial of creation and not the first.
(And he is blind to the fact that the Sun was not created on the first day, but on the fourth
and is only connected with the first day by pagan sun worship!) How could Justin make
such a mistaken association? It is because of his education and introduction to
Christianity. Early Christian writers referred to him as St. Justin Martyr and Philosopher
(cf. Anastasius) or St. J ustin Philosopher and Martyr (cf. John of Damascus)
(foreword, The Fathers of the Church: Writings of Saint Justin Martyr, p. 17, emphasis
supplied). Before learning of Christ, Justin had been an avid student of philosophy. After
his conversion, he continued to wear his philosophers gown as a token that he had
attained the only true philosophy. In chapter 23 of Dialogue with Trypho, Justin
describes the certain old man, who appealed to Justin to accept Christianity as the
fulfillment of true philosophy. This one who had introduced him to Christianity dissuaded
him from keeping the Sabbath with the words: Remain as you were born. In the very
next chapter of Dialogue with Trypho, Justin asserts the superiority of Sunday over the
Sabbath because the eighth day is more spiritual than the seventh.

Now, sirs, I said, it is possible for us to show how the eighth day
possessed a certain mysterious import, which the seventh day did not
possess, and which was promulgated by God through these rites [i.e.,
circumcision on the eighth day]. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch.
24 (c. 150 A.D), emphasis supplied.

In his mistaken zeal for Sunday, he also asserts that the Sabbath was given to the Jews
on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts and on account of
your unrighteousness, and that of your fathers (Justin, Dialogue, 18 and 21). But that
wasnt why God gave the Sabbath, was it? If Justin had only understand the Scriptures


aright, he would have found such passages as Ezekiel 20:12:

Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and
them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.

Its not a sign of affliction, is it? Its a sign of sanctification. Interestingly enough, Justin
quotes Isaiah 58:1-12, in Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 15, but he omits verses 13-14,
which show the spiritual value of the Sabbath:

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on
my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD,
honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding
thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14 Then shalt thou
delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high
places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father:
for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Isaiah 58:13, 14.

That doesnt sound like affliction either, does it? Isaiah 56 is a passage that shows that
the Sabbath is also for the strangerthe non-Jewwho comes into relationship with
the Lord.

Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold
on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand
from doing any evil. 6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves
to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his
servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh
hold of my covenant; 7 Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and
make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their
sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be
called an house of prayer for all people. Isaiah 56:2, 6, 7.

Can you see the subtle shift that was taking place in the thinking of the western
Church? Moving away from dependence on the Word of the Lord, it was imbibing the
thinking of the philosophy of the pagan world around it.

Greek philosophy exercised the greatest influence . . . on the Christian
mode of thought . . . Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. I, p. 128.

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind,
dying, came to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the
Church; the Greek language, having reigned for centuries over
philosophy, became the vehicle of Christian literature and ritual; the
Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass.
... Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 595.



This was the very thing against which the Apostle Paul had warned. He was
concerned about the influence on believers of the philosophy . . . [and] rudiments of this
world (Colossians 2:8). He warned about those who would attack and plunder the
Church (Acts 20:29, 30) and about a great falling away from the truth, linked with the
revealing of the son of perdition (a term used, in John 17:2, to describe Judas, the
betraying insider), under the influence of the mystery of iniquitythat secretive
power that would set itself against the law of God. Pope John Paul II briefly alluded to the
working of this mystery in describing the attack of Constantinople:

Some memories are especially painful, and some events of the distant
past have left deep wounds in the minds and hearts of people to this day.
I am thinking of the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople,
which was for so long the bastion of Christianity in the East. It is tragic
that the assailants, who had set out to secure free access for Christians
to the Holy Land, turned against their own brothers in the faith. The fact
that they were Latin Christians [Roman Catholics] fills Catholics with
deep regret. How can we fail to see here the mysterium iniquitatis at
work [2 Thess. 2:7] in the human heart? To God alone belongs judgment
and, therefore, we entrust the heavy burden of the past to his endless
mercy, imploring him to heal the wounds that still cause suffering to the
spirit of the Greek people. Pope John Paul II, May 4th, 2001, address to
his Beatitude Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens and Primate of
Greece.

How did we get here from there? As Paul stated, there was a mysterious power at
work within the Churchbeginning in Pauls own timeundermining the law of God,
abandoning the seventh-day Sabbath as only the first in a series of downward steps away
from simple faith in the Word of God. These radical changes in the Church would lead
Church historian, James Wharey, to describe the radically affected Church as baptised
paganism.
The mystery of how the great Sabbath switch occurred is solved. We see that the shift
from Sabbath to Sunday worship was not an indisputable apostolic institution, but was
rather a controversial innovation by that great vessel of spiritual truth, the Christian
Church, which allowed itself to be willingly hijacked by the intellectual influences of
the day, which commandeered it from its intended course of simple faith in the Word of
God and took it on a collision course with the twin towers of human tradition and
spiritual compromise. This hijacking led to the spiritual crashing and burning of the
Church during the era of the Dark Ages.
Martin Luther, who was called of God, to call for reformation in the Church that it
might stand on the Bible and not tradition, was right when he said:

He who has been wrong for one hundred years was not right for one
hour. If the years should make wrong right, the devil would well deserve
to be the most just one on earth, for he is now over five thousand years
old. Walch, vol. 28, p. 358.



Christians are not safe in following a tradition passed on without a biblical mandate
no matter how old it is. Our duty as Christians is to ask of Gods Word, What doth the
Lord require of thee? (Micah 6:8) and then to follow the counsel revealed as the very
voice of God to your soul.