Sunday Notes & Quotes : Who changed the Sabbath?

The following quotes are given in rapid succession without the addition of any lead ins. While this makes the readability somewhat dry, we believe that the testimonies have more impact on their own. The context of every quote given is very clear, needing no interpretation. Whether a current Sunday-keeper or Sabbath-keeper, some of these admissions may just, to use the vernacular, "blow you away". Let the truth be revealed!

The Catholic Cardinal Gibbons, in Faith of Our Fathers, pg. 111, said, "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 (The Roman Catholic Church) never sanctify.

The Catholic Mirror (a publication by Cardinal Gibbons) Sept. 2, 1893- "...the Redeemer, during His mortal life, never kept any other day than Saturday."

The Catholic Mirror Sept. 9, 1893- "Nor can we imagine any one foolhardy enough to question the identity of Saturday with the Sabbath or seventh day, seeing that the people of Israel have been keeping the Saturday from the giving of the Law, A.M., 2514 to A.D. 1893 (to the present day)..."

The Catholic Mirror Sept.9, 1893- "We deem it necessary to be perfectly clear on this point....The Bible- the Old Testament- confirmed by the living tradition of weekly practice for 3383 years by the chosen people of God, teaches, then, with absolute certainty, that God had, Himself, named the day "to be kept holy to Him"- that the day was Saturday, and that any violation of that command was punishable with death."

Peter Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine Third Edition"1). Question: Which is the Sabbath day? "Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. 2). "Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?"Answer. "We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church in the Council of Laodicea, transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."

Martin J. Scott- Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927) "Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to Sunday .... Now the Church ... instituted, by God's authority, Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church, by the same divine authority, taught the doctrine of Purgatory long before the Bible was made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for Sunday."

John Laux- A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies (1 936) "Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days."

Peter R. Kraemer- Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago, Illinois. "Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:"1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man."2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws. "It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible."

Anglican- Isaac Williams- Plain Sermons on the Catechism "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day .... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."

Protestant- Canon Eyton,- The Ten Commandments "There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday .... into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters .... The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday."

Episcopal - 'The Bible commandment says on the seventh day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday." Philip Carrington, Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949.

Baptist - Harold Lindsell, former editor of Christianity , said, 'There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day." Christianity Today, November 5, 1976.

Baptist Dr. Edward T. Hiscox,-a paper read before a New York ministers' conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893. "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 to the first day of the week .... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament absolutely not. ......."To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated........ "Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history . . . . But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!"

William Owen Carver- The Lord's Day in Our Day "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance."

Dr. R. W. Dale(Congregationalist)- The Ten 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 obligation to observe Sunday .... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."

Congregationalist Timothy Dwight- Theology: Explained and Defended (1823)- " . . . the Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive Church called the Sabbath."

First Day Observance, pp. 17, 19."The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."

"The Sunday Problem"- United Lutheran Church (1923), "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both."

Lutheran- Dr. Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church (1843)"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 this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday."

John Theodore Mueller (a Lutheran) - Sabbath or Sunday- "But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect."

"Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day." Methodist- Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942

Methodist, Clovis G. Chappell- Ten Rules For Living- 'The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first."

John Wesley- The Works of the Rev. John Wesley "But, the moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the prophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken .... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other." (Wesley was a Methodist)

"The Sabbath instituted in the beginning and confirmed again and again by Moses and the Prophets, has never been abrogated. A part of the moral law, not a part or tittle of its sanctity has been taken away."- New York Herald 1874, on the Methodist Episcopal Bishops Pastoral 1874.

Another Methodist, Dwight L. Moody- Weighed and Wanting, The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God Wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"

"It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labour. They obeted the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week." - Professor James C. Moffat, DD., Professor of Church History at Princeton.; from The Church in Scotland, pp140.

Dr. Hefele, Concilliengesch 3, 512, sec. 362 about the Council of Liftinae, Belgium AD 745 (attended by Boniface)- "The third allocution of this council warns against the observance of the Sabbath, referring to the decree of the council of Laodicea"

Dr. Hefele, Concilliengesch 4, 346-352, sec 478 quoting Pope Nicholas I answer to a question from Bogaris the prince of Bulgaria- "One is to cease from work on Sunday, but not also on the Sabbath" /On the subject of the same letter- "The head of the Greek Church , offended at the interference of the papacy, declared the Pope ex-communicated"- Truth Triumphant pp 232

"They worked on Sunday, but kept Saturday in a sabbatical manner...These things Margaret abolished" - A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, speaking of Queen Margaret's (a Catholic) decree.

"During the first crusade, Pope Urban II decreed at the council of Clermont (AD 1095) that the Sabbath be set aside in hounour of the Virgin Mary."- History of the Sabbath p 672

"There is much evidence that the Sabbath prevailed in Wales universally until AD 1115, when the first Roman bishop was seated at St. David's. The old Welsh Sabbath-keeping churches did not even then altogether bow the knee to Rome, but fled to their hiding places." - Lewis, Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol 1, p 29

Josephus , first century Historian, says : "There is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come!" M'Clathie, Notes and Queries on China and Japan. (edited by Dennys),Vol.4, Nos. 7,8, p.100.

"It was the practice generally of the Easterne Churches; and some churches of the west..For in the church of Millaine [Milan];.. it seemes the Saturday was held in farre esteeme ..Not that the Easterne churches, or any of the rest which observed that day, were inclined to Iudaisme [Judaism]; but that they came together on the Sabbath day, to worship Iesus [Jesus] Christ the Lord of the Sabbath." , Dr. Heylyn's- History of the Sabbath Part 2, pp. 73,74, London: 1636

"The primitive Christians did keep the Sabbath of the Jews;..therefore the Christians for a long time together, did keep their conventions on the Sabbath, in which some portion of the Law were read: and this continued till the time of the Laodicean council." The Whole Works of Jeremey Taylor, Vol. IX, p416 (R. Heber's Edition, Vol.XII, p.416)

"The gentile Christians observed also the Sabbath." Gieseler's Church History, Vol.1, ch.2, par.30, p.93.

"The first matter concerned a keeping holy of Saturday. It had come to the earth of the archbishop that people in different places of the kingdom had ventured the keeping holy of Saturday. It is strictly forbidden- it is stated- in the Church-Law, for any one to keep or adopt holy-days. outside of those which the pope,archbishop, or bishops appoint." - speaking of the Church Council held at Bergen, Norway in the year 1435, The History of the Norwegian Church under Catholicism, R. Keyser, Vol II, p 488. Oslo: 1858.

"It will surely be far safer to observe the seventh day, according to express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture to adopt the first."- Jihn Milton, Sab. Lit. pp 46-54.

"Thus we see Dan. 7 , 25, fulfilled, the little horn changing 'times and laws'. Therefore it appears to me that all who keep the first day for the Sabbath are Pope's Sunday-keepers and God's Sabbath-breakers."- American Elder T.M. Preble, Feb 13 1845.

All scholars and religions agree that the Sabbath of the Old and New Testaments was the seventh-day of the week and not the first day. Here are some more quotes, many directly from Roman Catholic sources, which show what God's word says and how the impudent post-apostolic RC church changed the law of God in their own eyes.

"Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church." Ancient Christianity Exemplified, Lyman Coleman, Ch.26, sec. 2, p.527.

"Our Saturday. The custom to call the Lord's day Sabbath did not commence until a thousand years later." Adamnan's Life of Columba p.230, Dublin, 1857

"According to the Assyrian-Babilonian conception, the particular stress lay necessarily on the number seven...The whole week pointed prominently towards the seventh day, the feast day, the rest day, in this day it collected, in this day it also consumated. 'Sabbath' is dervied from both 'rest' and 'seven'. With the Egyptians it was the reverse...for them on the contrary the sun-god was the beginning and origin of all things. The day of the sun, Sunday, became necessarily for them the feast day...The holiday was transferred from the last to the first day of the week." Daglige Liv i Norden, Vol.XIII, pp.54,55.

"The seven planetary names of the days were at the close of the second century A.D., prevailing everywhere in the Roman Empire...This astrology originated in Egypt, where Alexandria now so loudly proclaimed it to all... 'The day of the sun' was the Lord's day, the chiefest and first of the week. The evil and fatal Saturn's day was the last of the week on which none could celebrate a feast.. Daglige Liv i Norden, Vol.XIII, pp.91,92

"This Sunday law constituted no real favoratism to Christianity..... It is evident from all his statuatory provisions that the Emperor during the time 313-323 with full consciousness has sought the realisation of his religeous aim: the amalgamation of heathenism and Christianity." -Dr. A.Chr. Bang - Kirken og Romerstaten (The Church and the Roman State) p.256. Christiania, 1879

T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884. "I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says: 'No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.' And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church."

"The seventh-day Sabbath was...solmenised by Christ, and primitive Christians, till the Laodicean Council did in a manner quite abolish the observations of it." - Dissertation on the Lord's Day pp. 33, 34, 44

"Because the Third Commandment (which is really the fourth commandment but Catholicism does away with the second commandment so they do not have to acknowledge their idolatry which to them makes the Sabbath the third~kh) depends upon the remembrance of God's saving works and because Christians saw the definitive time inaugurated by Christ as a new beginning, they made the first day after the Sabbath a festive day, for that was the day on which the Lord rose from the dead."- Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis v.18, May 31, 1998

Augsburg Confession of Faith art. 28; written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church "They [Roman Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments!"

"The distinction of Sunday from the Jewish Sabbath grew ever stronger in the mind of the Church, even though there have been times in history when, because the obligation of Sunday rest was so emphasized, the Lord's Day tended to become more like the Sabbath. Moreover, there have always been groups within Christianity which observe both the Sabbath and Sunday as "two brother days"."-(v.23)Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis, May 31, 1998

"The ancient Christians were very careful in the observation of Saturday, or the seventh-day...It is plain that the Oriental churches, and the greatest part of the world, observed the Sabbath as a festival...Anthanasius likewise tells us that they held religious assemblies on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, Epiphanius says the same." - Antiquities of the Christian Church, Vol II, Book XX

"'And on the seventh day God rested from the work he had done. ... He blessed the seventh day and hallowed it'. The 'shabbat', the biblical sabbath is tied to this mystery of God's rest. If we Christians celebrate the Lord's day on Sunday, it is because on that day the Resurrection of Christ occurred." Pope John Paul II-July 12 1998

Stephen Keenan- A Doctrinal Catechism Third Edition "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 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."

Daniel Ferres- ed., Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916) "Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days? "Answer. By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church.'

The Catholic Press said, "Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observation can be defended only on Catholic principles . . . From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of week public worship from the last day of the week to the first."- CATHOLIC PRESS, (Sydney, Australia), Aug. 25, 1900.

James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921), in a signed letter."Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments? I answer yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did the Church change the seventh day - Saturday- for Sunday, the first day? I answer yes. Did Christ change the day'? I answer no!" Faithfully yours, J. Card. Gibbons"

"The Catholic Church, . . . by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday."- The Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, Sept. 23, 1893.

Catholic Virginian Oct. 3, 1947- "To Tell You the Truth." "For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible."

"Wise pastoral intuition suggested to the Church the christianization of the notion of Sunday as "the day of the sun", which was the Roman name for the day and which is retained in some modern languages.(29) This was in order to draw the faithful away from the seduction of cults which worshipped the sun, and to direct the celebration of the day to Christ, humanity's true "sun "-Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis, May 31, 1998

"They despise our sun-god, Did not Zoroaster, the sainted founder of our divine beliefs, institute Sunday one thousand years ago in honour of the sun and supplant the Sabbath of the Old Testament. Yet these Christians have divine services on Saturday. - O'Leary, The Syriac Church and Fathers, pp 83,84

Episcopalian- Bishop Seymour, -Why We Keep Sunday. "We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church."

Alexander Campbell,- The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824, "'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance, or respect to the reason, can be changed! It is all old wives' fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio - I think his name is Doctor Antichrist.'

"Examining the New Testament from cover to cover, critically, we find the sabbath referred to sixty-one times. We find too, that the Saviour invariably selected the Sabbath (Saturday) to teach in the synagogues and work miracles. The four Gospels refer to the Sabbath fifty-one times. In one instance , the Redeemer refers to Himself as 'Lord of the Sabbath' as mentioned by Matthew and Luke, but, during the whole record of His life, while invaribly keeping and utilizing the day, (Saturday), He never once hinted at a desire to change it. "- The Catholic Mirror Nov. 25 1893. J. Cardinal Gibbons.

"...with the Bible alone as the teacher and guide in faith and morals. This teacher most emphatically forbids any changes in the day for paramount reasons. The command calls for a 'perpetual covenant'. The day commanded to be kept by the teacher (The Bible) has never once been kept (by the Protestant or Catholic churches), thereby developing an apostasy from an asumedly fixed principle, as self-contradictory, self-stultisfying, and consequently as suicidal as it is within the power of language to express." - The Catholic Mirror Nov. 25, 1893, Cardinal Gibbons

"The Sabbath is a part of the decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution . . . . Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand . . . . The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath." Presbyterian T. C. Blake, D.D., -Theology Condensed.

We hope you found these "confessions" helpful in your quest for the truth. We truly hope that this was edifying and that you, the reader, have gained the knowledge needed to see that God never changed His holy Sabbath or transferred its solemnity to Sunday. Who will you believe? Whom will you follow? God ...or mere men?

Ecclesiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

©1998 Truth On The Web Ministries: All the articles originated by Kenneth Hoeck or Brian Hoeck may be freely distributed or mirrored as long as presented in there entirety, attributed to Truth on The Web, and that proper author credit is given.

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