The Sabbath Was Never Moved: Rome's Change Is Not Final

Scripture is quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible with modernized spelling (words and word order unchanged), with the names Yahweh and Yashua restored throughout.

Ask most churchgoers which day is the Sabbath and they'll say Sunday. Ask a Catholic catechism and you'll get a different answer: "Saturday is the Sabbath day." This article digs into what the Sabbath is, why it's still worth keeping, and how most of the church ended up worshipping on the first day instead of the seventh.

Yashua didn't come to tear down the Law

Start where Yashua started. Before he said a word about the Sabbath, he settled the bigger question:

"Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I am not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say unto you, Till heaven, and earth perish, one jot or one tittle of the Law shall not scape, till all things be fulfilled." (Matthew 5:17–18)

The Torah was never done away with. The New Testament is the Law and the Prophets coming true, not being cancelled. Heaven and earth are still here. Paul said the same thing: "Do we then make the Law of none effect through faith? Yahweh forbid: yea, we establish the Law" (Romans 3:31). Everything below rests on that.

The Sabbath started at Creation, not at Sinai

The Sabbath isn't a "Jewish" invention. It's older than Abraham, older than Israel, older than sin:

"For in the seventh day Yahweh ended his work which he had made, and the seventh day he rested from all his work, which he had made. So Yahweh blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work, which Yahweh had created and made." (Genesis 2:2–3)

Yahweh didn't bless "one day in seven." He blessed the seventh day. Notice too how Scripture counts a day: "So the evening and the morning were the first day" (Genesis 1:5). A Bible day runs from sunset to sunset, so the Sabbath runs from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.

The fourth commandment

At Sinai Yahweh wrote it in stone with his own finger, in the middle of the Ten:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work, But the seventh day is the Sabbath of Yahweh: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid, nor thy beast, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." (Exodus 20:8–11)

It's the only commandment that begins with "Remember," as if Yahweh knew it would be the one people forgot. And look at who it covers: servants, animals, and "the stranger." It was never a rule for one ethnic group only.

When Moses repeated it forty years later, he added a second reason:

"For, remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that Yahweh brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and a stretched out arm: therefore Yahweh commanded thee to observe the Sabbath day." (Deuteronomy 5:15)

So the Sabbath remembers two things: Yahweh made us, and Yahweh set us free. A slave can't take a day off. A free man can. In Deuteronomy the rest is "that thy man servant and thy maid may rest as well as thou" (Deuteronomy 5:14). It's a day when the boss and the hired hand are equal.

A sign forever

Yahweh called the Sabbath his mark on his people:

"Notwithstanding keep ye my Sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you in your generations, that ye may know that I Yahweh do sanctify you." (Exodus 31:13)

"It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days Yahweh made the heaven and the earth, and in the seventh day he ceased, and rested." (Exodus 31:17)

Ezekiel repeats it: "I gave them also my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Yahweh, that sanctify them" (Ezekiel 20:12). "For ever" and "an everlasting covenant" (Exodus 31:16) are strong words. And the door was always open to outsiders. Isaiah says the strangers who join themselves to Yahweh, "every one that keepeth the Sabbath, and polluteth it not and embraceth my covenant," will be brought to his holy mountain, because "mine House shall be called an house of prayer for all people" (Isaiah 56:6–7).

A delight, not a burden

The Sabbath was never meant to be a list of rules that grinds you down. Isaiah calls it a delight:

"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy will on mine holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, to consecrate it, as glorious to Yahweh, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own will, nor speaking a vain word, Then shalt thou delight in Yahweh, and I will cause thee to mount upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jaakob thy father" (Isaiah 58:13–14)

That's why it should be celebrated, not just endured. One day a week you put down the phone, the job and the bills, and spend the time with Yahweh, family and church. In a country that never stops working, buying and scrolling, that's countercultural.

And it doesn't end with this age. Speaking of the new heavens and the new earth, Isaiah says: "from Sabbath to Sabbath shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Yahweh" (Isaiah 66:23). The Sabbath is still standing at the end of the Book.

Yashua kept it, and claimed it

Yashua fought with the Pharisees over how to keep the Sabbath, never over whether to keep it. He healed on it and taught that "it is lawful to do well on a Sabbath day" (Matthew 12:12). Then he said:

"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27)

In the next verse he says the Son of man is master "even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28). If Yashua has a day, Scripture says which one it is. And keeping it was his habit:

"And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and (as his custom was) went into the Synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read." (Luke 4:16)

He even told his disciples to pray about a disaster that was still forty years off: "pray that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day" (Matthew 24:20). He expected his followers to still be keeping it long after the cross.

The women and the apostles kept it after the cross

The women who followed Yashua had just watched him die. If anyone would have known the Sabbath had been abolished, it was them. Instead:

"And they returned and prepared odors, and ointments, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." (Luke 23:56)

Luke wrote that years later and still called it "the commandment." Matthew is careful about the order of the days too: "in the end of the Sabbath, when the first day of the week began to dawn" (Matthew 28:1). The Sabbath is the seventh day, and Sunday is the day after it.

In Acts the apostles keep meeting on the Sabbath, and not only with Jews. At Antioch "the Gentiles besought, that they would preach these words to them the next Sabbath day" (Acts 13:42), and "the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together, to hear the word of Yahweh" (Acts 13:44). Paul never said "come back Sunday." In Thessalonica, "Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days disputed with them by the Scriptures" (Acts 17:2). In Corinth, "he disputed in the Synagogue every Sabbath day, and exhorted the Jews, and the Grecians" (Acts 18:4).

Hebrews says plainly: "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of Yahweh" (Hebrews 4:9). The Greek word there for "rest" is sabbatismos, literally "a keeping of the Sabbath" (Strong's G4520).

Then how did Sunday happen?

Not from the Bible. It came step by step through history, and the steps are on record.

Early Sunday meetings. To be fair, some Christians met on Sunday early. Justin Martyr, writing in Rome around 150 AD, said "Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly," and linked it to the resurrection (First Apology, ch. 67). But a Sunday gathering in Rome is not a command from Yashua, and many churches were still honoring the Sabbath centuries later.

Constantine's Sunday law, 321 AD. On March 7, 321, Emperor Constantine decreed: "On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed" (Codex Justinianus 3.12, as translated in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, §75). Schaff, a Sunday-keeping historian, admits the law used the day's "old astrological and heathen title, Dies Solis," and that there was "no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ." It was the first Sunday law, and it came from an emperor, not from Scripture. This is where church and state first got tangled over the day of rest, and that's a political fact worth remembering.

The Council of Laodicea, mid-300s. A church council at Laodicea in Phrygia (dated by scholars somewhere between 343 and 381, often around 363–364) went further. Canon 29 says: "Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day," and anyone who did was to be cursed (Synod of Laodicea, Canon 29). You don't have to ban something nobody is doing. The canon shows believers were still resting on the seventh day in the late 300s.

Rome and Alexandria led the way. The church historian Socrates Scholasticus, writing in the 400s, reported that "almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this" (Ecclesiastical History 5.22). Rome was the exception, not the rule, and Rome's custom is what spread.

Rome says it made the change

You don't need to take a Sabbath-keeper's word for any of this. Catholic sources say it themselves.

• The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (Peter Geiermann, C.SS.R.) asks "Which is the Sabbath day?" and answers "Saturday is the Sabbath day." Then: "We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday." It says the Church made the change "by the plenitude of that divine power" it claims for itself (full text, archive.org). The council's date in that edition is off, but the claim is clear.
• Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, wrote in The Faith of Our Fathers: "you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify" (ch. 8).
• The official Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2175) says: "Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath" (vatican.va).

Rome's argument is honest: the Bible says Saturday, and the Church chose Sunday on its own authority. Protestants who say "the Bible alone" while keeping Rome's day are in an awkward spot. Daniel foresaw a power that "shall speak words against the most High... and think that he may change times and laws" (Daniel 7:25). Yashua warned about teaching "for doctrines, men's precepts" (Matthew 15:9), and said, "ye reject the commandment of Yahweh, that ye may observe your own tradition" (Mark 7:9).

"But the calendar changed." It didn't change the week. When Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar, Thursday, October 4, 1582 was followed by Friday, October 15. Ten dates were dropped but the days of the week ran on unbroken (Encyclopedia Virginia). Our Saturday is the same seventh day the Jewish people have kept all along.

The Sunday verses, read fairly

There are four passages usually offered for Sunday. Here they are, honestly.

Acts 20:7. "And the first day of the week, the disciples being come together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued the preaching unto midnight" (Acts 20:7). This was a night meeting with "many lights in an upper chamber" (Acts 20:8). Counting days the Bible way, evening first, the first day of the week began Saturday at sundown. That makes this most likely a Saturday-night farewell before Paul left in the morning. Breaking bread doesn't make a day holy either. The first believers were "breaking bread at home" daily (Acts 2:46). One farewell meeting doesn't cancel a commandment.

1 Corinthians 16:2. "Every first day of the week, let every one of you put aside by himself, and lay up as Yahweh hath prospered him, that then there be no gatherings when I come" (1 Corinthians 16:2). This is famine relief for Jerusalem, set aside "by himself," at home, so there'd be no scramble when Paul arrived. It's bookkeeping at the start of the work week. It doesn't mention a service, and it says nothing about rest or worship.

Revelation 1:10. "And I was ravished in spirit on Yashua's day" (Revelation 1:10). John doesn't name the day. The only day Scripture ever calls Yashua's own is the Sabbath, of which he is master (Mark 2:28), and that Yahweh calls "mine holy day" (Isaiah 58:13). Reading Sunday into this verse means borrowing a later meaning of the phrase and putting it back into John's mouth.

Colossians 2:16–17. "Let no man therefore condemn you in meat and drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, Which are but a shadow of things to come" (Colossians 2:16–17). This is the strongest Sunday argument, so read it closely. Paul tells the Colossians not to let anyone condemn them over these days. He doesn't tell them to stop keeping them. The people doing the judging were pushing "Touch not, Taste not, Handle not" rules that "are after the commandments and doctrines of men" (Colossians 2:21–22), not the Torah. And Paul says these days are a shadow of things to come, not of things already over. A shadow tells you the real thing is still on its way. That fits Matthew 5:18. Nothing passes until all is fulfilled.

How to start

You don't need anyone's permission to keep the seventh day. Start small. This Friday at sundown, turn off the work and gather your family. Read Genesis 2 and Exodus 20 aloud. Pray. On Saturday rest, worship, take a walk, eat a good meal together, and do good for someone, because Yashua said "it is lawful to do well on a Sabbath day." You'll find out for yourself that Isaiah was right and it's a delight.

Emperors made laws and councils voted, but Yahweh blessed the seventh day, and their decisions don't overrule him. Rome's change is not final.

Sources

• Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, §75 (Constantine's law of March 7, 321, Codex Justinianus 3.12): ccel.org
• Synod of Laodicea (4th century), Canon 29, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14: newadvent.org
• Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 5.22: newadvent.org
• Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch. 67: newadvent.org
• Peter Geiermann, C.SS.R., The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, "The Third Commandment": archive.org
• James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, ch. 8: sensusfidelium.com
• Catechism of the Catholic Church §2175: vatican.va
• Encyclopedia Virginia, "The Gregorian Calendar": encyclopediavirginia.org
• Strong's Greek G4520, sabbatismos: blueletterbible.org