Objection 42: From earliest apostolic days Christians kept Sunday in honor of Christ's resurrection. This is clearly revealed in two scriptures, Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2.
We have already learned (Objection 41) that there is no Scriptural foundation for the statement that “from earliest apostolic days Christians kept Sunday,” because there is no proof that Christ instituted Sunday worship on the resurrection day, or during any time that He appeared to His disciples in the forty days before His ascension. Nor is there anything in the Scriptures to show that during that forty-day period the apostles gave any kind of veneration to Sunday.
Therefore, if there is Biblical proof that the apostles kept Sunday, it must be found some decades later in the two texts cited in this objection, and in one further text to be considered in the next objection.
Strange, is it not, that a practice so revolutionary as the keeping of a new weekly holy day, by Jewish Christians as well as Gentile, and thus the abandonment of the seventh day Sabbath, should not have been the subject of extended and repeated discussion in the writings of the apostles? When they said that circumcision was no longer necessary, a hurricane was let loose, and the wind of that controversy blows through the pages of the New Testament (See, e.g., Rom. 2:25-29; 1 Cor. 7:18-19; Gal. 2:3-5; 5:1-9; 6:12-15; Col. 2:11-12).
But we are asked to believe that they told the Christian converts that the Sabbath need no longer be kept, and yet no tempest ensued—at least nothing important enough to be mentioned in the New Testament. Yet the Jews were fanatically zealous about the Sabbath!
In the light of these facts we have a right to be suspicious of the Sunday claim that is based on the two texts cited. And remember, they are the only two in the Bible that mention the first day of the week subsequent to the resurrection day. The first one reads thus:
“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”
This passage is part of a narrative, covering two chapters, describing various incidents on Paul's homeward trip to Jerusalem at the close of his third missionary journey. When we read the whole story of the journey we find that Paul preached in various places along the way as he traveled to Jerusalem. Were all these sermons preached on Sunday?
When the exact time of the Troas meeting is noted, this passage in Acts 20 becomes even less convincing as a proof for Sunday. The service was held at night, for “there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together.” The record declares also that Paul “continued his speech until midnight,” the reason being that he had to “depart on the morrow.” His sermon continued past midnight, “even till break of day,” and “so he departed.”
It is a well-known fact that the Bible reckons days from sunset to sunset, not from midnight to midnight, as we do today. (See Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; Lev. 23:32) Therefore the dark part of that “first day of the week” was what we would describe as Saturday night.
Conybeare and Howson, in their authoritative work, Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul, write as follows concerning the time of the meeting:
“It was the evening which succeeded the Jewish Sabbath. On the Sunday morning the vessel was about to sail.” - Page 520 (One Volume Edition).
[Among the more recent translations, unavailable to Nichol, the Complete Jewish Bible notes that the meeting was on Motza’ei-Shabbat, meaning the time in the evening immediately following the Sabbath. The Good News Translation renders it, “On Saturday evening we gathered together for the fellowship meal.” The Jubilee Bible renders it, “And the first of the sabbaths, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart the next day, and continued his word until midnight.”]
Thus, we see that Paul held a Saturday night meeting, and started off on his long journey Sunday morning. If this record proves anything, it proves (1) that this first-day meeting was held not because of a religious custom but because of Paul’s travel schedule, and (2) that Paul was not keeping Sunday sacred, since it was a travel day for him.
We do not see Sunday keepers today attaching any sacredness to Saturday night, yet they wish to rely upon this record of a Saturday night meeting as a proof of Sunday sacredness. It was only because Paul preached a very long sermon that this meeting even stretched over into what Sunday keepers regard as their holy day.
Augustus Neander (1789 – 1850), the Sunday-keeping German theologian and church historian, remarks thus concerning Acts 20:7 as a supposed proof of Sunday sacredness:
“The passage is not entirely convincing, because the impending departure of the apostle may have united the little Church in a brotherly parting-meal, on occasion of which the apostle delivered his last address, although there was no particular celebration of a Sunday in the case.” —The History of the Christian Religion and Church, translated by Henry John Rose (1831), Vol. 1, Page 337.
If this “passage is not entirely convincing” to a Sunday keeping church historian, it should hardly be expected to prove convincing to a Sabbath keeper who rests his belief on the overwhelmingly convincing command of God: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” For a Sunday advocate to declare that he looks to Acts 20:7 for proof of Sunday sacredness is only to reveal how weak is the case for Sunday in the Scriptures.
The second of the two first day texts before us reads thus:
“Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do you. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” 1 Cor. 16:1-2.
This is interpreted as Paul instructing that a religious service be held at on the first day of the week, at which an offering is taken up. We are expected to conclude that if a service was held on Sunday, Sunday is sacred as the new Sabbath, and the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments has been abolished.
This is a great deal to attempt to find in one text, and it cannot be found in this text. Instead of describing a church offering where the communicants pass their offerings over to a deacon, the record says that each one was to “lay by him in store.” The most recent and most widely accepted version of the Scriptures translates the text thus: “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and save, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come.” R.S.V.
In other words, when the first day of the week had come, each one was to decide from the last week's earnings how much he wanted to set aside for the special collection that Paul was going to take to the poor at Jerusalem. And lay it by in a special place apart from the other money of the house. This was an act of bookkeeping rather than an act of worship.
That this is the correct understanding of this passage is admitted by scholarly Sunday keeping theologians, whose desire to translate the Scriptures accurately exceeds their desire to find proofs for Sunday. Take, for example, the typical comment that is found in The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, a commentary on the Scriptures published by Cambridge University Press, and edited by Church of England clergymen. Speaking of this text, the commentator declares that, as to the practice of Christians to meet on the first day of the week, “we cannot infer it from this passage.”:
“lay by him” —i.e., at home, not in the assembly, as is generally supposed. . . . [Paul] speaks of a custom in his time of placing a small box by the bedside into which an offering was to be put whenever prayer was made."—The First Epistle to the Corinthians, edited by J. J. Lias, p. 164.
Certainly it requires much more than that the disciples were gathered in fear at home on the first day of the week, or that Paul once preached on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, or that he asked the Corinthians to set aside some money in their homes the first of each week—much more than all this—to give any Bible-believer a reason for supposing that one of the eternal Ten Commandments, which declares that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” has been changed or done away with.