Who Changed the Sabbath? by W. H. Branson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 20, 1911

Who Changed the Sabbath?

By W. H. Branson

W. H. BRANSON

It was not the apostles who changed the Sabbath, else there would be something in their writings concerning it. Paul says, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” Acts 20:27. Yet he said nothing about a new Sabbath. It is true he held one meeting on the dark part of the first day of the week (Acts 20:7-14); but this was Saturday night (since the night constitutes the first part of the day—Gen. 1:5), and the record shows that he walked across the country Sunday morning to Assos, a distance of nineteen miles. Luke and the rest of the company were sailing about forty-five miles around the cape while Paul was preaching.

This was the only religious meeting held on the first day of the week by the disciples, so far as we have any record. They gathered on the day of the resurrection, but only “for fear of the Jews.” They could not have been celebrating his resurrection; for when Jesus appeared to them, he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they did not believe that he was risen. Mark 16:9-14. How could they commemorate an event they did not believe had taken place? No; the disciples did not change the day.

It was Paul’s manner to preach on the Sabbath to all classes. Acts 17:2. In the following texts we have a record of eighty-four Sabbath meetings held by him after the resurrection, with both the Jews and the Gentiles: Acts 13:14, 42, 44; 16:13; 18:1-4, 11.

If the disciples had changed the Sabbath to Sunday, that would be no excuse for our keeping it, since they were never commissioned to make laws for Christians to follow. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, . . . whatsoever I have commanded you,” says Christ. Matt. 28:20. And again there is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. James 4:12. But they were not able to save; therefore not one of them could be the lawgiver. In Isa. 33:22 I read, “The Lord is our lawgiver.” Therefore, unless the Lawgiver has given a law for Sunday observance, there is no divine law for it.

The first recorded instance of Sunday observance which has any claim to be considered genuine is mentioned by Justin Martyr, A. D. 140, when the Christians met and read the writings of the apostles. He does not even intimate, however, that this day has any divine authority, either from Christ or from his apostles. It was about this time that the great apostasy set in, which is foretold in Acts 20:29, 30; 2 Tim. 4:3, 4; and 2 Thess. 2:3, 4.

The pagans nominally accepted Christianity, though at heart they remained unchanged. The mystery of iniquity was working, and they began to remodel the religion of the apostles. Robinson, the Baptist historian, says: “Toward the latter end of the second century, most of the churches assumed a new form; the first simplicity disappeared; and insensibly, as the old disciples retired to their graves, their children, along with new converts, both Jews and Gentiles, came forward, and new-molded the cause.”—“Ecclesiastical Researches,” chapter 6, page 51.

Since the converted pagans had heretofore held Sunday as a feast-day in honor of the sun-god, they now brought it into the church. Morer, a leading church historian, says that “the Christians thought fit to keep the same day, and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles.”—“Dialogues on the Lord’s Day,” pages 22, 23.

Even after the observance of Sunday did begin, the Sabbath was still kept as before. Listen to the historian Coleman: “The last day of the week was strictly kept in connection with that of the first day for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish sabbath was continued in the Christian church.”—“Ancient Christianity Exemplified,” chapter 26, section 2. In the same chapter he also says: “During the early ages of the church, it [Sunday] was never entitled ‘the Sabbath,’ this word being confined to the seventh day of the week.”

Neander, the greatest of church historians, says: “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect,—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday a sin.”

In no document, human or divine, can any command be found to rest on Sunday, previous to the edict of Constantine in 321 A. D., when he said: “Let all the judges and the townspeople, and the occupation of all trades, rest on the venerable day of the sun.” The following is quoted from “Chambers’s Encyclopedia,” Vol. VII: “Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the observance of that day [Sunday] is known to have been ordained, is this edict of Constantine, A. D. 321.” Constantine was at this time a pagan emperor; but two years later he was converted to Catholicism.

It was not, however, until 364, long after Constantine’s conversion to Catholicism, that the Sunday was fully established. William Prynne, in his “Dissertations on the Lord’s Sabbath,” page 34, says: “The seventh-day Sabbath was . . . solemnized by Christ, the apostles, and primitive Christians, till the Laodicean council did in a manner quite abolish the observance of it. . . . The council of Laodicea (A. D. 364) first settled the observance of the Lord’s day, and prohibited . . . the keeping of the Jewish sabbath under an anathema.” This council was dominated by Roman influence. Therefore the Catholic Church is responsible for the change. Do they acknowledge it? One who is the highest Catholic authority in America says: “Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act; it could not have been otherwise, as none in those days would have dreamed of doing anything in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical and religious without her. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.”—Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, Md.

In a Catholic work called the “Abridgment of Christian Doctrine,” page 58, is the following: “Question: How prove you that the church has power to command feasts and holy days? Answer:

By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday.”

We have this further testimony: “Question: Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept? Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.”—“Doctrinal Catechism,” pages 174, 352.

In conclusion let me say, as Elijah said to the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:21): “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him;” but if Constantine and the authorities of the Catholic Church be God, then follow them. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.”

Spartansburg, S. C.