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C h a p t e r & V e r s e
CHANGING THE SABBATH
By James Akin
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 12
 December 1993 
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MANY Seventh-Day Adventists were at World
Youth Day 1993 to try to pull Catholics out of the Church. Adventists
believe the Catholic Church to be the Whore of Babylon spoken of in
Revelation 18:4, where a heavenly voice cries out against the Whore,
saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins,
and lest you receive of her plagues." Adventists conclude they
must exhort people to leave Catholicism to escape divine wrath. [The
identification of the Church as the Whore of Babylon is also a theme
found in much anti-Catholic literature from non-Adventist Protestants.
But one cannot identify the Church as the Whore of Babylon since Rev.
18:20-24 shows God judges the Whore to avenge the apostles and prophets
(v. 20) because "in her was found the blood of prophets and saints,
and of all who have been slain on the earth" (v. 24). But the
Catholic Church never killed apostles or prophets. Indeed, anti-Catholics
continually claim that the Catholic Church did not even exist in the
apostolic age.].
One reason they would suffer God's wrath if they did not leave, Adventists
believe, is that they have accepted the mark of the Beast (Rev. 13:16-17).
Adventists claim this mark is worshipping on Sunday. Since Catholics
worship on Sunday, this makes them minions of Antichrist. To be saved,
they must leave the Church and worship on Saturday instead. This is
why the Adventists are called Seventh-Day Adventists--they
claim that one must keep the Jewish sabbath by worshipping on Saturday,
the seventh day of the week, rather than on Sunday, the first day
of the week. [Belief in Saturday worship has been shared by a few
non-Adventist groups; in fact, the Adventists acquired it from a nineteenth
century group of Seventh-Day Baptists].
In Judaism the sabbath (Hebrew, "rest") was a day of the
week God set aside for the Jews to rest and worship. The weekly sabbath
was one of three kinds of holy days on the Jewish calendar. The other
two were the monthly new moons and the seven yearly festivals (Neh.
10:33, Lev. 23, Num. 29:6). Because of the Jewish way of reckoning
time, according to which the new day began at sunset rather than midnight,
the sabbath actually began at sundown on Friday and lasted until sundown
on Saturday (though some Adventists do not realize this and celebrate
Saturday from midnight to midnight, according to the modern way of
reckoning days).
Identifying Sunday worship as the mark of the Beast is exegetically
impossible. Revelation 13:16-18 pictures the mark as a number on the
foreheads or right hands of the Beast's worshippers and states it
corresponds to a man's name (v. 17).
Adventists agree that the mark is also the number of a man's name.
They argue that one of the pope's supposed titles--they invariably
give Vicarius Filii Dei, which means "Vicar of the Son
of God"--adds up to 666 in Latin numerals. [Vicarius =
V(5) + I(1) + C(100) + I(1) + U (5) = 112, Filii = I(1) + L(50) +
I(1) + I(1) = 53, Dei = D(500) + I(1) = 501. 112 + 53 + 501 = 666
(the remaining letters in the title have no numerical values in Latin)].
This argument fails because (1) Vicarius Filii Dei, although
it adds up to 666, is not a title of the pope; (2) it
is similar to one of his authentic titles, Vicarius Christi,
which does not add up to 666; (3) the mark probably is the
number of a man's name, not a man's title, and (4) many people's names
can be made to total 666. (It doesn't follow that because a person's
name can be made to total 666 he is the beast.) But the most fundamental
problem with the Adventist position is that Scripture pictures the
mark of the beast as the number of a man's name, not a day of the
week.
Further convincing will be needed to get a Seventh-Day Adventist to
give up his church's teaching that Sunday worship is an invention
of the apostate Catholic Church and that God requires one to worship
on Saturday. I had a conversation with an Adventist at World Youth
Day in which I presented him with an argument he found difficult to
refute.
Since Jesus was the Son of Man, he had authority to change the sabbath
if he wished. When his disciples were chastised for plucking grain
on the sabbath (Mark 2:23-28), Christ pointed to an example from the
life of David to justify the conclusion, "The sabbath was made
for man, and not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is
also Lord of the sabbath" (v. 27-28).
Christ tells us the sabbath exists to meet the needs of man (for a
day of worship and rest),[This is important since sabbatarians
often cite passages such as Exodus 20:11 and 31:17, which parallel
Israel's sabbath with the Lord's rest on the seventh day of Gen. 1,
to prove the sabbath is a "creation ordinance," something
demanded by the way the universe was created. But Christ's statement
that the sabbath was made for man--to meet man's needs for worship
and rest--shows this is false. The reference to God's rest is
brought in as a parallel to argue, "Look, even God ceased from
work. How much more should you, who actually need to cease from work!"]
that the sabbath can be altered by human need (such as the disciples'
hunger), and that the Son of Man has the authority to alter it (as
he did for the disciples). Christ both possessed and exercised the
authority to change the sabbath. But was this change a permanent thing--something
that extended beyond Christ's own time?
The New Testament writers regarded Christ's sayings about the Mosaic
law as permanently binding. In Mark 7:19, the evangelist explains
Christ's statement concerning eating with unwashed hands to mean all
foods were henceforth clean--a statement Seventh-Day Adventists
need to take to heart since they are vegetarians.
We can verify that the apostles understood Christ's coming as having
made a permanent change in the sabbath by looking at Paul's epistles.
In Galatians 4:10, in the middle of his letter urging the Galatians
not to subject themselves to the Law of Moses, Paul states, "[Y]ou
have come to know God . . . how can you turn back again to the weak
and beggarly elements, whose slaves you want to be once more? You
observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have
labored over you in vain." Paul thus worries about the Galatians
keeping the Jewish festal calendar (including the sabbath), which
would render his labor to save them vain (see Gal. 5:2-5).
In Colossians 2:14-16, Paul mentions the sabbath by name, stating
that Christ has "canceled the bond which stood against us with
its legal demands . . . Therefore let no one pass judgment on you
in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new
moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but
the substance belongs to Christ." Festivals, new moons, and sabbaths
were the three kinds of feast days of the Mosaic calendar (see Neh.
10:33, Lev. 23, Num. 29:6). Paul thus states that the whole Jewish
festal calendar, sabbath days included, is not binding on Christians.
Adventists try to bolster their position by pointing out that Paul
often went to the synagogue on Saturday (Acts 13:14, 44, 18:4). Paul
did this because his pattern was to preach the gospel to the Jews
first and then to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). By going to a synagogue
on Saturday, he would be assured the opportunity to preach to a large
number of Jews (as he did in Acts 13:15ff and 18:4).
By this Paul was doing what he always did, meet people on their own
ground in order to win them to Christ. "For though I am free
from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win
the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to
those under the [Mosaic] law I became as one under the law--though
not being myself under the law--that I might win those under the
law" (1 Cor. 9:19-20).
Going to the synagogue on Saturday was simply a shrewd evangelistic
strategy on Paul's part, not a binding command for all Christians.
The fact Paul went to the synagogue on Saturday does nothing to change
the fact that the sabbath is not binding since it was part of the
law of Moses, which has passed away (Rom. 6:14, Col. 2:13-17).
Of course, the moral principles contained in the Old Testament law
are still binding on us, including the moral principle behind the
sabbath commandment. This was that we should set aside sufficient
time for worship and rest. We no longer have to do this on Saturday,
since the law of Moses is gone, but we still have to do it.
To ensure that people will set aside sufficient time for worship and
rest, the Church has decreed that all Catholics must refrain from
menial labor on Sunday and worship God by attending Sunday Mass. Exceptions
to this law are made in cases of necessity, just as with the Old Testament
sabbath law (see Matt. 12:11-12, 1 Macc. 2:38-41.) For example, for
those who are obliged to work on Sunday, the Church permits attendance
of an anticipatory Mass on Saturday instead.
By requiring Sunday worship the Church is simply following the lead
of the apostles. There was clearly a day which the early Church considered
specially consecrated to the Lord. John tells us that he wrote the
book of Revelation because of a vision he saw "on the Lord's
day" (Rev. 1:10).
Elsewhere we learn which day that was. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul
tells his readers, "On the first day of every week, each of you
is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that
contributions need not be made when I come." Paul exhorts his
readers to get their church's contribution together ahead of time
so it won't have to be put together when he arrives (see 2 Cor. 9:3-5).
He tells them when to contribute to the gift: every first day of the
week--every Sunday. Why? Because that is the day the early Church
met for worship. Even though the Old Testament sabbath had passed
away, the early Church commemorated Christ's resurrection on Sunday,
the first day of the week, because that was the day Christ arose (Mark
16:9, see also Mark 16:2 and Luke 24:1).
A Catholic can be confident he should worship on Sunday because that
is what the apostles did since Christ, by his authority as the Son
of Man, both had and used the power to change the sabbath.
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