Preface
Adventist Christians have deep convictions regarding the unchangeable nature of the Law of God. They hold that God's Sabbath contained in the fourth commandment is eternal. They hold that Sunday is not a sacred day but crept gradually into the church in conformity to a custom of the world. An easy conclusion might be that Seventh-day Adventists are the only people in the world who hold to these beliefs. Such is not the case at all. On the contrary, the official position of both religious and secular authorities is in support of this position. The only difference is that Seventh-day Adventists practice what others teach. A careful reading of the following testimony drawn from a variety of dependable sources will show that the Adventist position is truth. May God bless you as you prayerfully make your decision to obey God.
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, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week. 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.”
“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.”
“Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!”
“We believe that the law of God is the eternal unchangeable rule of His moral government.”
Baptist Church Manual. Art. 12
Catholic
“In the course of the 4th Century two new developments spread over the face of Christendom. In order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, there was transferred to it the outward ornaments to which they had become accustomed in their own. The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, the use of incense, lamps, and candles, votive offerings on recovery from illness, holy water, holy days, blessings on the fields, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, the use of images: all these are of pagan origin and are sanctified by their adoption into the church.”
Henry Cardinal Newman. The Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 373
“From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, and that Sunday, as the Lord's day, she has handed down as a tradition and the entire Protestant world has accepted it as tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it. Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.”
D. B. Ray, The Papal Controversy. 1892, p. 179
“I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says: 'No. By my divine power I abolished the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.' And lo! the entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church.”
T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884
“The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.”
The Catholic Mirror. Sept. 23, 1893
“You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures endorse the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we (Catholics) never sanctify.”
James Cardinal Gibbons. The Faith Of Our Fathers, p. 111
“Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holydays?”
“Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church.”
“Question: How prove you that?”
“Answer: Because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the Church's power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin; and by not keeping the rest (of the feasts) by her commanded they again deny, in fact, the same power.”
Henry Tuberville, D. D., An Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine (R.C.), p. 58
Christian
“There is no direct scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day.”
Dr. D. H. Lucas, Christian Oracle. Jan. 23, 1890
“The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding 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
“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, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the Lord's day came in the room of it.”
Alexander Campbell. Washington Reporter. Oct. 8, 1821
Congregationalist
“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.”
Buck's Theological Dictionary, p. 403
“There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath.”
Orin Fowler, A.M. Mode and Subject of Baptism
“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. Jan. 19, 1882
“The Gentiles were an idolatrous people who worshipped the sun, and Sunday was their most sacred day. Now in order to reach the people in this new field, it seems natural as well as necessary to make Sunday the rest day of the Church. At this time it was necessary for the church to either adopt the Gentiles' day or else have the Gentiles change their day. To change the Gentiles day would have been a stumbling block and an offense to them. The church could naturally reach them better by keeping their day.”
Rev. William Frederick, Three Prophetic Days. or Sunday and the Christian Sabbath, pp. 169, 170
Episcopal
“Sunday (Dies Soils, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.' No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed is its observance even enjoined.”
Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 edition, vol. 4, art. “Sunday”
“Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles.”
Sir William Domville, Examination of the Six Texts, pp. 6, 7 (supplement)
“There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters. The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday.”
Canon Eyton, The Ten Commandments, pp. 52, 63, 65
“The retention of the old Pagan name 'Dies Solis' or 'Sunday' for the weekly Christian festival, is, in great measure, owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment, with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as the 'venerable day of the sun.'... It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religions of the empire under one common institution.”
Dean Stanley, Lectures on the Eastern Church, Lecture 6, p. 291
Lutheran
“I wonder exceedingly how it came to be imputed to me that I should reject the law of Ten Commandments. Whosoever abrogates the law must of necessity abrogate sin also.”
Martin Luther, Spiritual Antichrist, pp. 71, 72
“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, chap. 1, sec. 10
“But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel. In other words, they insist that Sunday is the divinely appointed New Testament Sabbath, and so they endeavor to enforce the Sabbatical observance of Sunday by so-called blue laws. These churches err in their teaching for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect.”
John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15, 16
“They (the Catholics) allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments.”
Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, Par. 9
“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance.”
Augustus Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, p. 186
Methodist
“This 'handwriting of ordinances' our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to His cross. (Colossians 2:14) But the moral law contained in 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, pp. 221, 222
“No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.”
Methodist Church Discipline (1904), p. 23
“The Sabbath was made for MAN: not for the Hebrews, but for all men.”
E. O. Haven, Pillars of Truth, p. 88
“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.”
“The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets. He (Christ) 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; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.”
John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Vol. 1, Sermon XXV
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, p. 27
“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.“
Ibid., p. 47
“Saturday is my day of rest because I generally preach on Sunday, and I look forward to it as a boy does to a holiday. God knows what we need.”
Ibid., p. 48
“We have abundant evidence both in the New Testament and in the early history of the church prove that gradually Sunday came to be observed instead of the Jewish Sabbath, apart from any specific commandment.”
Norman C. Deck, Moody Bible Institute Monthly, Nov. 1936, p. 138
Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
“In this, a new dispensation, and verily the last-the dispensation of the fulness of times-the law of the Sabbath has been reaffirmed unto the church..We believe that a weekly day of rest is no less truly a necessity for the physical well-being of man than for his spiritual growth; but primarily and essentially, we regard the Sabbath as divinely established, and its observance a commandment of Him who was and is and ever shall be. Lord of the Sabbath.”
James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith, 25th Edition, Art. 13, Chap. 24, pp. 449, 451,452
“The Sabbath was to be a perpetual covenant between the Lord and the children of Israel. 'Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant' (verse 16). In verse 17 they are commanded to observe it as a sign that they remember that the Lord made heaven and earth, and rested on the seventh day.”
“In these quotations from Exodus 31, and in the Decalogue the most positive and weighty reasons are given by the Lord to the fathers of the house of Israel, for keeping the sabbath day. The obligation is evidently as binding upon the Latter-day Saints as it was upon their fathers, and they in like manner will reap the reward of obedience.”
Franklin L. Richards and James A. Little, A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, p. 226
Presbyterian
“The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetually of the institution...Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has repealed, the Sabbath will stand...The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath.”
T. C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp. 474, 475
“We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform. ”
John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels, Vol. 1, p. 277
Dictionaries
“As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but these 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, p. 537
“The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's day meaning Sunday) for the Jewish Sabbath (or the first for the seventh, 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.”Christian antiquity.“
Sir William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 182, article “Sabbath”
Encyclopedias
“Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week because it was the day on which they worshipped 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 world around him endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be put 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 the injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth.”
Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, p. 561
“Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321.”
Chambers Encyclopedia, article “Sunday”
“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
Historical
“During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort of theokrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it would seem the Christians adapted Sunday as their chief day of worship instead of the Jewish Sabbath.”
H. G. Wells, The Outline of History (New and Revised), p. 543
“Bear in mind that the substitution (of the first for the seventh day) was not a coerced happening; it could not be a sudden, but only a very slow development, probably never anticipated, never even designed or put into shape by those chiefly interested, but creeping almost unconsciously into being.”
William B. Dana, A Day Of Rest and Worship, p. 174
“From simple beginnings the church developed a distinct priesthood and an elaborate service. In this way, Christianity and the higher forms of paganism tended to come nearer and nearer to each other as time went on. In one sense, it is true, they met like armies in mortal conflict, but the same time they tended to merge into one another like streams which had been following converging courses.”
J. H. Robinson, Introduction to the History of Western Europe, p. 30
Agnostic
“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), pp. 114, 116
“You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,' who shall dare to say, 'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer. 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, pp. 3, 4
“Our only safety is the Scriptures themselves. Protestants claim to rely wholly on this authority leaving tradition to Catholics; and yet, on this subject, as well as some others, they follow Rome, because the Bible gives them no help. Now the question arises, just when did the practice of Sunday keeping commence (arise)? No one can tell exactly. Why? If the change had been made by divine authority, we could put our finger on the exact point, and show where it was done. You will hear men say with all confidence that, while the seventh day was kept to the crucifixion, the practice of the church since then has been unanimous in keeping the first day. I do not see how a man can be honest and say this, unless he is very ignorant, as the most trustworthy historians...testify to the contrary.
When it (Sunday) was introduced, it did not come in as a sabbath. Look at the word itself, 'Sunday'.“ Webster defines it as 'so-called, because this day was anciently dedicated to the sun; and the North British Review styles it 'the wild solar holiday of all pagan times. 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 fulfill the law.“
H. J. Flowers, B.A., B.D., The Permanent Value of the Ten Commandments, p. 131