070. Why was the Jewish sabbath, or the seventh day of the week which God commanded in the F...

Why was the Jewish sabbath, or the seventh day of the week which God commanded in the Fourth Commandment to be observed as the Sabbath Day, changed to the first day of the week, or what we call the Lord’s Day, and now observed as the Christian Sabbath? In answer, let me say first of all that there is no commandment in the Ten Commandments which says they were to keep the seventh day of the week. The words “of the week” are added by man to the commandment as given by God. What God really commanded through Moses was: “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God.” It does not say “the seventh day of the week”; it says the seventh day after six days of labor. Whether it should be the seventh day of the week or the first day of the week depends upon whether one is a Jew or a Christian. Whether we keep the seventh day of the week or the first day of the week we are keeping the Fourth Commandment to the very letter. If one is a Jew belonging to the old creation let him keep the seventh day of the week, but if he is a Christian and on resurrection ground let him keep the first day of the week, resurrection day. The Jewish sabbath was not changed to the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day and the Jewish sabbath, while both are a literal keeping of the Fourth Commandment, are not the same day, and do not stand for the same thought. One belongs to the old creation, the other to the new. It is sometimes said by Seventh Day Adventists that there is no authority for the change, and that the Roman Catholic Church or the pope made the change. This statement is absolutely untrue. History proves that Christians kept the first day of the week long before there was any Roman Catholic Church. We have indications of their keeping it in New Testament times. It was on the first day of the week that the early disciples came together to break bread (Acts 20:7). It was on the first day of the week that believers laid by in store (1 Corinthians 16:2), and in the writings of the early fathers, long before the Roman Catholic Church had developed and of course long before there was any pope, we find it stated again and again that the first day of the week was the one that Christians observed.

Paul explicitly teaches that a Christian should not allow himself to be judged in regard to the Jewish sabbath, that the Jewish sabbath belongs along with other Jewish observances in regard to meat and drink, holy days, new moons, etc., which were the shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ (Colossians 2:16-17).