Objection 41: The Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday at the time of Christ's resurrection. One of the strong proofs of this is the fact that Christ, after His resurrection, always met with His disciples on Sunday. A further proof is the fact that the Holy Spirit was poured upon the disciples on Sunday.
We are asked to believe that Christ somehow changed the day, but on so important a matter as a weekly holy day we cannot be content simply to presume. We need a clear and explicit command from Christ and, of course, there is no such clear and explicit command anywhere to be found in the Scriptures.
By contrast, we do not have to presume as to the holiness of the seventh day of the week. We have a clear command (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:8-11), often repeated in the sacred writings (Isa. 58:13-14; Deut. 5:15; Luke 4:16; Ex. 31:13-17), so that no one should be in doubt, and those who are inclined to forgetfulness might always be reminded. That is the picture up to the time of Christ.
There is no command from Christ to keep Sunday; in fact, we look in vain for a command for Sunday keeping from anyone, anywhere in the New Testament. What warrant have we for believing that suddenly after the time of Christ men would no longer need to be given a clear command as regards the keeping of a holy day, or to be reminded of that command from time to time?
What warrant is there for thinking that the followers of God in the Christian Era should conclude, from a combination of circumstances, that two crucial events have taken place: (1) The explicit command of God to keep the Seventh Day have been revoked; and (2) Christians are ordered to keep the first day of the week in its stead?
Only one text in the New Testament speaks of the abolition of Sabbath days (Col. 2:16), but we have found that this text is not speaking of the weekly Sabbath, as eminent Sunday keeping Bible commentators admit. (See Objection 29.) And, as just stated, no text in the New Testament contains a command to keep Sunday. Yet despite all this, we are asked to believe that the seventh day Sabbath was abolished at the cross and that Sunday took its place as the weekly holy day!
We shall find, in examining this objection and the ones immediately following, that the case for Sunday sacredness in the New Testament is built on surmises, deductions from shaky premises, and wishful thinking. Let the facts speak for themselves.
We are asked to believe (1) that after the resurrection Christ always met with His disciples on Sunday, and (2) that that provides unanswerable proof that Christ changed the weekly holy day from the seventh to the first day of the week.
Only six texts in the New Testament mention the first day of the week in connection with Christ's life: Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1,19. (John 20:26 is often thought to refer to Sunday, and will be discussed a little later on.) These four Gospel writers penned their narratives anywhere from twenty or thirty years up to nearly seventy years after the ascension of Christ. These and other New Testament writers all speak of the seventh day as “the Sabbath,” with no suggestion that this weekly holy day had been abolished or was in process of being abolished.
When the New Testament writers mention the first day of the week they do not suggest that it had acquired, or was in process of acquiring, any sanctity. This is very strange if, as Sunday advocates so confidently declare, Sunday began to be regarded as the Christian holy day immediately after the Resurrection.
From a study of the six texts before us the following facts come to light:
1. Each time Sunday is called simply “the first day of the week.” No title of holiness or other indication of sanctity or holiness is employed or hinted at.
2. There is no statement by Christ in connection with His meetings with the disciples, either in these texts or in their surrounding context, that even suggests that special significance should henceforth be attached to the first day of the week.
3. The reason why the disciples were all in one place on the resurrection day was not because they were holding a religious service to institute Sunday worship but because they were in “fear of the Jews.” (John 20:19.)
4. Three of the four Gospel writers plainly state that the Sabbath had ended when the first day of the week began.
5. The true significance of the mention of the first day of the week is evidently merely the desire of the Gospel writers to give an accurate history of the events surrounding the crucifixion, and to show that Christ's declaration that He would be raised on the third day was fulfilled.
In addition to His meetings with the disciples and certain women on the resurrection day, as mentioned in the six “first day” texts, what other visits, which state the time of His visit, are recorded? There are two:
1. The day of the ascension (when Christ was taken up into heaven), which occurred forty days after the resurrection (See Acts 1:3-9). By counting off cycles of seven, we can determine that since the Resurrection was on Sunday, Ascension Day, 40 days later, must have been a Thursday. Those churches that honor Ascension Day do so on a Thursday, the 40th day after Easter Sunday.
2. A meeting held a week after the resurrection day. The time is thus given: “And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace be unto you.’” John 20:26. “After eight days” is a Hebrew idiom for one week [see, e.g., the NIV translation]. Thus, this took place a week later.
Hence, Christ met with His disciples the first two Sundays after the Resurrection. The first Sunday meeting proves nothing except that Christ would not want to delay the encouragement of His disciples provided by the fact of His resurrection from the dead.
That being the obvious case, all of the evidence for Christ’s changing the day of worship must be found in this second appearance. Perhaps Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, in their Bible commentary, present the case for Sunday as favorably as possible:
“They [the disciples] probably met every day during the preceding week, but their Lord designedly reserved His second appearance amongst them till the recurrence of His resurrection day, that He might thus inaugurate the delightful sanctities Of THE LORD'S DAY.” - Comment on John 20:26.
Here is an admission that the disciples were not singling out Sunday for a meeting. In fact, the record gives no suggestion of any “meeting.” When this twenty-sixth verse is compared with the nineteenth verse, we conclude that the disciples were cowering behind closed, locked doors; they feared to be out on the streets. But the text gives no hint that Jesus specially “reserved His second appearance amongst them” until Sunday, and that He did so to “inaugurate the Lord's day.” What phrase or words in the text even suggests such an idea?
The text does indicate the reason why Jesus appeared at this particular time:
“And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them.”
John specifically mentions Thomas' absence from the upper room on the resurrection Sunday, and his refusal to believe what the other disciples told him about Jesus having risen from the dead. (John 20:24-26) This might well have been the first day after Christ’s resurrection that Thomas was with the other disciples. But this day he was with them in the upper room, so it would seem that Christ’s visit was timed specifically to be present with Thomas. Beyond Christ’s desire to show Himself to “Doubting Thomas,” nothing can reasonably be deduced from the record, certainly not the idea that Christ was thereby transferring the solemnity of Sabbath to Sunday.
Of course, it is true that He did meet with the disciples at other times, but no day of the week was specified in these other instances. Perhaps the Sabbath objector will wish to affirm—though without any textual proof whatsoever—that such meetings were on Sunday. So let us examine the account of the third time Christ met His disciples after His resurrection. (See John 21:1-14)
The disciples were fishing! Evidently they considered fishing proper on that day, and there is no suggestion that Christ rebuked them for it. Instead, He instructed them how to catch fish! If this was Sunday, and the solemnity of the Sabbath Day had been transferred to Sunday at the Resurrection, wouldn’t Jesus have scolded them for working on Sunday? Sunday advocates tend not to talk about this occasion.
What of the proof for Sunday sacredness that is supposed to reside in the fact that the Holy Spirit was poured upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost? We will pass by the fact that some Sunday keeping theologians are not even certain that Pentecost fell on Sunday that year. We think it probable that Pentecost did fall on Sunday that year, but we would never discover that fact from the Biblical record. No mention is even made as to which day of the week is involved. The record informs us only that “when the day of Pentecost was fully come” the outpouring of the Divine Spirit took place. (Acts 2:1.)
Surely, if any Bible writer saw any connection between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Sunday, he would have at least disclosed the fact that the event took place on a Sunday, even if he made no other comment!
But the objector may reply: Everyone reading the book of Acts knew that Pentecost was on Sunday that year, and could thus draw his own conclusions as to the relationship between the divine outpouring and the first day of the week. If this reply means anything, it means that so far from Acts 2:1 being an inspired reference to Sunday sacredness, or even a mention of the day of the week involved, the reader must rely on his own knowledge of the facts and draw therefrom his own deductions. That is surely a long way from a “Thus says the Lord” for Sunday.
But would every reader of the book of Acts know that Pentecost came on Sunday that year? Of course not. Luke wrote Acts about AD. 63, or some thirty years after the Pentecostal event. The annual Jewish festivals, of which Pentecost was one, came on different days of the week each year, even as, for example, does Veterans’ Day [formerly Armistice Day]. But does everyone today, five generations after November 11, 1918, know what day of the week the armistice ending the First World War went into effect? Of course not!
Even so with the day of Pentecost in the year our Lord ascended. The reader of Acts, which was written a generation after Christ, and subsequent readers of it up to the present day, would no more be aware of the day of the week involved in that great Pentecost than we would be aware of the day of the week on which the 1918 Armistice went into effect, unless we researched the issue.
The very words of Luke reveal that he desires the reader to note the fact, not that the Holy Spirit was poured out on a certain day of the week, but that it was poured out “when the day of Pentecost was fully come.” Do we not find an evident explanation for the timing of the incident in the fact that certain events in connection with Christ's first advent were the fulfillment of certain typical services of the Jews. "Christ our Passover" (1 Cor. 5:7) fulfilled the typical Passover service and was sacrificed on the very day that the Passover lamb was slain, the fourteenth day of the first month (Ex. 12:1-6).
The offering of the first fruits on the sixteenth day of the first month met its fulfillment in Christ's resurrection on that day, the first fruits of them that sleep. (Lev. 23:5-11; 1 Cor. 15:20-23) Then “when the day of Pentecost was fully come,” a further typical service evidently met its fulfillment. (Lev. 23:15-2l) If we are to deduce anything from the timing of the Holy Spirit's outpouring, it is this: Luke is seeking to show that Christ is the great anti-type of the Jewish services.