Friday, June 16, 2017

Sabbath or Sunday?: 10 Reasons SERIES #8

8. Sunday cannot be the Lord’s Day because Protestant leaders acknowledge that the seventh day is the Sabbath, and not the first day Sunday. 
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Exodus 20:11
Baptist: "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath . . . There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation."—The Watchman.

Presbyterian: "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters."—Canon Eyton, Ten Commandments.

Presbyterian: "God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race." American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175.

Anglican: "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."—Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pp. 334, 336.

Methodist: "It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition."—Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, pp. 180-181.

Methodist: "Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week... and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary, "Sabbath."

Episcopalian: "We have made the change from the seventh to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic church of Christ."—Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.

Episcopalian: “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." Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, Oct 26, 1949.

Moody Bible Institute: "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?"- D.L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, page 47.

Southern Baptist: "The sacred name of the seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10, quoted]. On this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages. Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week,—that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh."—Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbatic Question, pp. 14-17, 41.

Congregationalist: "The current notion, that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."—Dr. Lyman Abbot, Christian Union, June 26, 1890.

Christian Church: "Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord’s Day came in the room of it."—Alexander Campbell, Reporter, October 8, 1921.
Disciples of Christ: "If it [the Sabbath commandment] yet exists, let us observe it... And if it does
not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. 'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? When? and by whom? - No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned [in Genesis 2:1-3] 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.'" Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol 1, no. 7.

Church of Christ: "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day ‘the Lord’s Day.’ "—Dr. D. H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890.

Church of England: “Many people think that Sunday is the Sabbath. But neither in the New Testament nor in the early church is there anything to suggest that we have any right to transfer the observance of the seventh day of the week to the first. The Sabbath was and is Saturday and not Sunday, and if it were binding on us then we should observe it on that day, and on no other." Rev. Lionel Beere, All-Saints Church, Ponsonby, N.Z. in Church and People, Sept. 1, 1947.
"Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None." Church of England - Manual of Christian Doctrine, page 127.

Baptist: "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ discussion with His disciples, often conversing upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false [Jewish traditional] glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject.
There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath day was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament, absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week. Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism."— Dr. E. T. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Minister’s Convention, New York Examiner, November 16, 1893.

Lutheran: "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance." Augustus Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, Vol. 1, page 186.

Lutheran: "The observance of the Lord's Day (Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the Church." Augsburg Confession of Faith.

Lutheran: "They [the Roman Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord's day… and they have no example more in their mouths than they change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church's power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with the precept of the Decalogue." The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art 7, in Philip Schaff’s The Creeds of Christiandom, 4th Edition, vol 3, p. 64.

Lutheran: "They allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appear, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, they say, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, art. 28.

 
RichardVaughn