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Amazing Facts

Change of the Sabbath

Joe Crews

A Change of the Sabbath, Part 1

The greatest hoax of history has finally been exposed, but few have learned of the fact.

Millions still accept a gigantic fraud as though it were genuine.

In a moment, you'll hear the amazing facts about the delusion of the ages.

Hello this is Joe Cruz and the amazing facts broadcast, Facts Which Affect You.

Today I want to answer the question which so many listeners have been concerned about since our first broadcast on the Sabbath question.

How did the change take place, substituting Sunday for Saturday as the day of worship?

This is possibly 1 of the most disturbing religious questions among thinking Christians today.

Unfortunately, the issue is not examined publicly very often for reasons that we will consider today.

But multitudes have wondered when, how, and why the change came about.

We have established in previous broadcasts that the Bible itself speaks with absolute consistency on this subject.

In both Old and New Testament there is not a shadow of variation in the doctrine of the Sabbath.

The seventh day, Saturday, is the only day ever designated by the term Sabbath in the entire Bible.

Not only was Jesus a perfect example in observing the weekly 7th day Sabbath, but all His disciples followed the same pattern after Jesus had gone back to heaven.

Yet no intimation of any change of the day is made.

The apostle Paul, who wrote pages of counsel about lesser issues of Jewish and Gentile conflicts, had not 1 word to say about any controversy over the day of worship.

Circumcision, foods offered to idols, and other Jewish customs were readily challenged by early Gentile Christians in the Church, but the weightier matters of weekly worship never was an issue.

For the simple reason that no change was made from the historic seventh day of the Old Testament times, and from creation itself of course.

Had there been a switch from the Sabbath to the first day of the week, you can be sure the controversy would have been more explosive than any other to those Jewish Christians.

Now if the change did not take place in the scriptures or through the influence of the apostles, when and how did it happen?

In order to understand this, we must understand what happened in that early church soon after the apostles passed off the stage of action.

Paul had prophesied that apostasy would take place soon after his departure.

He said there would be a falling away from the truth, and 1 does not have to read very far in early Christian history to see just how that prophecy was fulfilled.

Gnosticism began to rise up under the influence of philosophers who sought to reconcile Christianity with paganism.

At the same time, a strong anti-Jewish sentiment became more widespread.

Very speculative interpretations began to appear regarding some of the great doctrines of Christ and the apostles.

By the time Constantine was established as the Emperor of Rome in the early fourth century, there was a decided division in the Church as a result of all these factors.

I think most of you know that Constantine was the first so-called Christian emperor of the Roman Empire.

The story of his conversion has become very well known by students of ancient history.

He was marching forth to fight the battle of Melvian Bridge when he had some kind of vision and saw a flaming cross in the sky.

Underneath the cross were the Latin words meaning, In this sign conquer.

Now Constantine took this as an omen that he should be a Christian and his army as well.

He declared that all his pagan soldiers were now Christians and became very zealous in building up the power and prestige of the Church.

Through his influence, great blocks of pagans were taken into the Christian ranks.

But friends, they were still pagan at heart and they brought in much of the paraphernalia of son worship to which they continued to really be devoted.

We mentioned in a previous broadcast about the adoption of Christmas and Easter into the Church.

At the same time, many other customs were Christianized and appropriated into the practice of the Church as well.

You see, at that time the cult of Mithraism, or sun worship, was the official religion of the Roman Empire.

It stood as the greatest competitor to the new Christian religion.

It had its own organization, temples, priesthood, robes, everything.

It also had an official worship day on which special homage was given to the Son, and that day was called the Venerable Day of the Son.

It was the first day of the week, and from it we get our name Sunday.

Now when Constantine pressed his pagan hordes into the Church, they were observing the Day of the Sun for their adoration of the sun god.

In order to make it more convenient for them to make the change to the new religion, Constantine accepted their day of worship Sunday instead of the Christian Sabbath which had been observed by Jesus and His disciples.

Now remember that the way had been prepared for this already by the increasing anti-Jewish feelings against those who were accused of putting Jesus to death.

And those feelings would naturally condition many Christians to swing away from something that was held religiously by the Jews.

It is therefore easier to understand how the change was imposed on Christianity through a strong civil law issued by Constantine as the emperor of Rome.

And the very wording of that law, by the way, can be found in any reliable encyclopedia.

Those early Christians, feeling that the Jews should not be followed any more than necessary, were ready to swing away from the Sabbath which was kept very strictly by the Jews.

Now some of you may be greatly surprised by the explanation I have just made, and I am not going to ask you to believe it blindly.

I have before me a multitude of authorities to verify what I have just said.

Now here are historians, both Catholic and Protestant, speaking in harmony about what actually took place during that fourth century.

After Constantine made the initial pronouncement and legal decree about the change, the Catholic Church reinforced that act in 1 church council after another.

For this reason, many, many official statements from Catholic sources are made, claiming that the Church made the change from Saturday to Sunday.

But before I read those statements, I would like to refer to 1 from the Encyclopedia Britannica under the article Sunday.

Notice this statement, It was Constantine who first made a law for the proper observance of Sunday, and who appointed that it should be regularly celebrated throughout the Roman Empire." Now you can check these statements in your own encyclopedias or go down to the library and look in to the other historical sources and you will find that all these statements are there.

Gilbert Murray with a number of doctor's degrees after his name, professor of Greek at Oxford University who certainly had no axe to grind concerning Christian thought on the Sabbath question.

He says, now since Mithras was the sun, the unconquered, and the sun was the royal star, the religion looked for a king whom it could serve as a representative of Mithras upon earth.

The Roman emperor seemed to be clearly indicated as a true King.

In sharp contrast to Christianity, Mithraism recognized Caesar as the bearer of divine grace.

It had so much acceptance that it was able to impose on the Christian world its own Sunday in place of the Sabbath, its son's birthday, the 25th of December, as the birthday of Jesus.

Murray's book, A History of Christianity in the Light of Modern Knowledge.

All right, looking a bit further into historical statements, Dr.

William Frederick says this, and I am quoting from his book now, he says, "...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 but 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 an offense and stumbling block to them.

The Church could naturally reach them better by keeping their day." So there it is, friends, a clear explanation by Dr.

Frederick as to how this change happened.

Another statement very parallel to this 1 is found in the North British Review.

But now let's move on to a statement from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4, page 153, quote, The church, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week to the first, made the third commandment refer to Sunday as the day to keep holy as the Lord's day." Now here is a quotation from the Catholic Press newspaper in Sydney, Australia, Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles.

From the beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first.

Another statement now taken from the Catholic Mirror newspaper, The Catholic Church for over 1, 000 years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission changed the day from Saturday to Sunday." End of quotation.

All right, to point up the claims we are talking about, now I want to read from 2 catechisms.

First, from the Convert's Catechism of Catholic doctrine by Peter Gehrman, and here is what he wrote, Question, Which is the Sabbath day?

Question, Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?

Answer, We observe Sunday instead of Saturday, because the Catholic Church at the Council of Laodicea transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday." And then secondly, here is a statement from Stephen Kenan's catechism entitled Doctrinal Catechism and here is what he wrote.

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 done that in which all modern religionists agree with her.

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." End of quotation.

Now, that is a very interesting statement, friends.

And then here is something from Cardinal Gibbons' book, The Question Box.

On page 179 he says, "...if the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, then the Seventh-day Adventist is right in observing this Saturday with the Jew.

Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Catholic Church?

Now that is a statement by Cardinal Gibbons in his book, The Question Box.

Now, 1 more statement taken from the book, The Faith of Millions.

But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn't it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not from the Church observe Sunday instead of Saturday?

Yes, of course it's inconsistent, but this change was made about 15 centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed.

They have continued the custom even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon any explicit text from the Bible.

That observance remains as a reminder of the mother church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away like a boy running away from home but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair." Now that is a very interesting statement, friends, taken from the book Faith of Millions which you can get in any Catholic bookstore, I assume.

And this is very interesting where they say, We changed the Sabbath, and the Protestants who left the Catholic Church took along the observance of Sunday, which was a reminder to them of the church from which they broke away." Very interesting statement indeed, but a very true statement.

A Change of the Sabbath, Part 2

Annual birthdays are happy memorials whose dates can never be altered.

Yet 1 of the most important birthdays in history has been changed according to some authorities.

I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz and the Amazing Facts broadcast, facts which affect you.

You know, friends, once upon a time the lines were drawn very clearly in Protestant theology concerning sources of authority.

The Bible and the Bible only, that was the rallying cry of Reformation-based movements.

Today we look about us to find the spiritual descendants of those true Protestants of the long ago and we hardly recognize what we see.

Modernism and higher criticism has taken a terrible toll upon those who once accepted the divine credentials of the Bible.

For this reason, it is no longer a great source of theological concern that some modern religious practices have no basis at all in the Scriptures.

And I refer to theological leaders when I say that, friends, not to the average layman.

Multitudes of Protestant laymen are hungry for the old-time Bible ring of scriptural sermons.

They still want to know that every doctrine has its roots in a plain, thus saith the Lord.

It is from among these Bible-loving Christians that the question is so often raised, why do we keep Sunday instead of the Bible Sabbath?

You see, they study their Bibles enough to know that there is no mention of any first-day observance at all in the Scriptures.

Now, friends, there should be a million more concerned Christians studying to find a Bible answer for their beliefs and practices.

This should be the only question in regard to doctrine.

Often ministers will comfort the conscientious questioner with the assurance that some change was made in the Sabbath somewhere back there in antiquity, but they never produced the text, friends, because that is the strange missing text of the Bible.

No change was made in the days of Jesus or the apostles.

You will find no Bible record of such an occurrence.

Now I want you to notice what a well-known Baptist author said about this peculiar omission in the Bible.

Edward Hiscox is the author of the Baptist Manual and some other books also, and in a speech before a group of ministers he said this, And I am quoting now, "...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 of the first day of the week.

Where Can the record of such a transaction be found?

Not in the New Testament, absolutely not.

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 a 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." Well, that is a very interesting statement, friends, and it summarizes what a lot of other Protestant leaders have also thought and said about this subject of the Sabbath.

In fact, we could go on here giving other statements.

Here is what Sir William Domvale of the Church of England had to say about this matter.

"...Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian Church as a Sabbath.

History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical Edict of Constantine in 321 A.D.

The Presbyterians have this to say in the Christian at Work, quote, So some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon apostolic command, whereas the apostles gave no command on the matter at all.

The truth is, as soon as we appeal to the literous scripture, that is, the literal writing of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the argument.

Then we have a statement here from the Methodist Church, and this is taken from the Methodist Theological Compendium by Dr.

Benny, and we read this, It is true there is no positive command for infant baptism, nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week.

Dale, a Congregationalist spokesman, who says this in his book entitled The 10 Commandments, It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command.

We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.

There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday.

And then the Lutheran position is revealed in the Augsburg Confession of Faith, which I will read right now.

This is their statement, "...the observance of the Lord's day, that is Sunday, is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church." And here's another Episcopalian spokesman, in fact this is Neander writing in his History of the Christian Religion in Church.

He said, the festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in that respect, far from them and from the early apostolic Church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.

And then let me give a statement from a book entitled 10 Rules for Living.

Chappell, and he says this, quite a statement.

Listen carefully to this now as I quote, "...we ought to remember that the Sabbath is God's gift to man, that it was given not for the benefit of God, but for the benefit of ourselves.

It fits into human needs, and in this it is like every other of these rules.

Not 1 of them is for God's benefit, all are for ours.

We realize, of course, that our Sabbath is not the same as that observed by the Jews.

Theirs was the seventh day of the week, while ours is the first.

The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command.

1 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.

Our Christian Sabbath therefore, Sunday, is not a matter of positive command." End of statement.

Now this is a statement, that 1 I just read, and I remember it is from Dr.

Clovis Chapel, a very well-known Methodist minister, from his little book, 10 Rules for Living.

Well, we could keep on reading from many, many other Protestant sources these acknowledgments that the Sabbath day hasn't been changed, not in the Bible at least.

There is not a text in the Scriptures to indicate that any change took place or that any change ever could take place.

Now just in finishing our quotations here, let's refer to 2 other statements, this time from Catholic sources.

1 is taken from the American Sentinel, and it is a statement by Father Enright, who was then President of the Redemptorist College in America, and he said this, "...it was the Holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the first day of the week, and it not only compelled all to keep Sunday, but urged all persons to labor on the seventh day under pain of anathema.

Protestants profess great reverence for the Bible, and yet by their solemn act of keeping Sunday they acknowledge the power of the Catholic Church.

The Bible says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, but the Catholic Church says, No, keep 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.

Now friends, that is the end of the statement made by Father Enright, a priest, and then serving as President of the Redemptorist College in America.

That is not a statement by any other than a leader of the Catholic Church.

Well, these are only a few of many statements by Protestant and Catholic spokesmen on the subject of the Sabbath.

Listen, there is no clearer, simpler subject in the Bible than this 1, because no other day has ever been called the Sabbath except the seventh day.

I realize that these thoughts may be new and upsetting to some of you who listen today, but, friends, I present these things in love today.

We are dealing with a commandment which is found in the very heart of God's great moral law.

We are talking about a rule which was written by the very finger of God on imperishable tables of stone.

The seventh-day Sabbath is a memorial of creation, the birthday of the world, and the sign of our sanctification.

Notice this verse in Ezekiel 20, verse 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 sanctified them." You see, friends, the work of conversion and sanctification in a human heart requires the same creative power that brought the world into existence.

So the Sabbath represents that power of a new creature in Christ, just as it memorializes the world brought forth in the beginning.

And just as Jesus rested from the work of creation on the seventh-day Sabbath in Genesis 2, 1-3, so He rested from His work of redemption or recreation in the tomb over the Sabbath and the New Testament following His death.

Well, 1 of the most blessed promises of the Bible, I believe, is found in Isaiah 58, 13, and 14.

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.

Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Now notice that God speaks here as though we are trampling on His holy Sabbath.

He says that we should take our feet off that day and keep it holy.

Then the principles of true Sabbath keeping are laid down, not doing thine own way, nor finding thine own pleasure, or speaking thine own words.

What a spiritual exercise we have here, friends.

This matter is not just physical, it is a matter of worship in the heart as well as rest in the body.

Now some people have said, Well, if we just rest in our bed on the Sabbath and don't go out to do the physical work, we will be keeping it holy.

Oh, But this is not so, friends, as the Bible says that even our thoughts are involved here.

The only way we can keep the Sabbath truly is by being in an attitude of worship towards God and having thoughts that have been made spiritual as well as a body that is resting physically.

And those who honor Him in Sabbath-keeping, God will bless with the richest measure, causing them to ride on the high places of the earth, as we just read.

That is a wonderful promise, friends, but the best of all, I believe, is the 1 found in Isaiah 66, 22, and 23.

It tells us how all the redeemed will keep the Sabbath with Jesus and the earth made new.

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