When was worship day changed from saturday to sunday

Posted: August 8 , The Place of Prayer. Beginning as a despised, illicit religious sect, Christianity endured years of hostility to emerge as the dominant force in the Roman Empire.

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John , the last of the 12 apostles to die, wrote five books of the Bible—one gospel, three epistles letters , and the prophetic book of Revelation. He died about A. Nowhere in all of his writings does he speak of a change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week.

In fact, John himself kept the Sabbath. The New Testament mentions the first day of the week only eight times. In none of these instances is the first day of the week spoken of as a holy day, nor is it even hinted that we should observe it as a day of worship. A careful examination of the eight texts referring to the first day of the week clarifies what occurred during these Sunday events:.

The passage does not mention any religious meeting. Read more: Does Paul condone Sunday worship in 1 Corinthians ? Read more: Did the disciples worship on Sunday in Acts ? None of these verses suggest that the apostles intended to stop observing the seventh-day Sabbath and begin worshipping on Sunday. There is clearly no New Testament evidence for a change of the Sabbath from Saturday, the seventh day of the week, to Sunday, the first day of the week.

The change came after the days of Jesus and the apostles, so we must turn to history to see when and how this change came about. The change from Sabbath observance to Sunday observance took place after the New Testament was completed and all the apostles had died. History records that Christians eventually shifted from worshipping and resting on the seventh day to the first day of the week.

The earliest authentic instance of Sunday observance by Christians occurred in Italy, in the middle of the 2nd century after Christ. For a long time after that, many Christians observed both days, while still others kept the seventh-day Sabbath only. On March 7, A. This, with five other civil laws decreed by Constantine concerning Sunday, set the legal precedent for all civil Sunday legislation from that time to the present.

In the 4th century, the Council of Laodicea urged Christians to honor Sunday by abstaining from work on that day if at all possible, and prohibited them from abstaining from work on the Sabbath. Languages Study in More Languages. Who changed the Sabbath to Sunday? Who changed the Sabbath? Did God change the Sabbath? How the Sabbath was Changed. The Council of Trent. Sabbath through the Centuries. Sunday in the Bible.

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Sunday References. Ask a Bible Question. Submit a Prayer Request. Submit a Sabbath News Story. Subscribe to The Rest of the Week. Home Sabbath History. 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 one of the most disturbing religious questions among thinking Christians 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. 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 seventh-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 one 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 matter of weekly worship never was an issue. For the simple reason that no change was made from the historic seventh day of Old Testament times, and from creation itself.

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.

History Gives Some Clues If the change did not take place in the Scriptures or through the influence of the apostles, when and how did it happen?