Is it true that the Sabbath is actually Saturday and that we worship Sunday because of Constantine the Great?

Question

So Sunday is actually the day of the sun which is borrowed from pagans.
And in the Bible it's said clearly that Jesus rose from the grave after Sabbath in the first day of the week.=>Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday the seventh.

So that means that on Sundays we should not go to church. We should go on Saturdays...right? Can someone explain it to me? i'm lost...lol

oh and in spanish you say "sabado" i guess to Saturday so i makes sense...

Sabbath-Sabado

Answer 1

The Sabbath was given to Israel, not the church. The Sabbath is still Saturday, not Sunday, and has never been changed. But the Sabbath is part of the Old Testament Law, and Christians are free from the bondage of the Law (Galatians 4:1-26; Romans 6:14). Sabbath keeping is not required of the Christian—be it Saturday or Sunday. The first day of the week, Sunday, the Lord's Day (Revelation 1:10) celebrates the New Creation, with Christ as our resurrected Head. We are not obligated to follow the Mosaic Sabbath—resting, but are now free to follow the risen Christ—serving. The Apostle Paul said that each individual Christian should decide whether to observe a Sabbath rest, “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). We are to worship God every day, not just on Saturday or Sunday.

Answer 2

Sort of. The Sabbath of the Bible begins at sundown Friday and continues until sundown Saturday. The Bible really doesn't say when Jesus arose, but says that his grave was found empty at the beginning of the first day of the week (Sunday). Matthew's account seems to say that this was Saturday evening. The American Standard Version of the Bible translates Matt 28:1 as
"Now late on the sabbath day, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre."

In the late 1st and early 2nd centuries there was a great persecution of the Jews. Many christians wanted to distance themselves from Jewish customs. Apparently the early church was meeting weekly on the Sabbath for worship, and many were also meeting on Sunday to celebrate the resurrection. When they decided to distance themselves from the Jews, corporate Sabbath worship was dropped. By the time Constantine converted to Christianity, meeting on Sunday was the customary practice of the majority of Christians. His proclamation that the official holy day would be Sunday was not really that new.

Should we worship God on Saturday? Yes! Should we worship on Sunday? Again, yes! Worshipping God should be a daily practice, not just something we do when we meet together for church. Worship is not only Bible study, but it is also practical, in-the-streets application of christian principles.

Answer 3

The Sunday observance predated Constantine. The first, Jewish Christians went to Synagogue or Temple on the Sabbath, then held a fellowship meal ("agape") on the "Eigth Day", the Day of Resurrection. In time, when their peculiar interpretations of Jewish prophecy got them ejected from the Temple and the synagogue, only the Sunday agape remained. As a persecuted minority, it was impractical to set up their own version of sabbath practices on a separate day. So the Saturday Bible readings eventually were added to the meal, developing into a proto-mass worship service. It wasn't Constantine, it was just what developed.

Some people call Sunday the "Sabbath", but that is not technically correct. As your Spanish note indicates, the Sabbath is always Saturday. But the significance is different for most Christians. In Spanish, Sunday is "Domingo", the Lord's Day.

Answer 4

The sabbath is Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. Constantine changed it to Sunday in order to make it easier to convert pagans who worshipped their fake gods on Sunday. The "Christ rose on Sunday" excuse didn't come up until a couple of hundred years later. Honor the sabbath and keep it holy does not mean change it to Sunday. It's fine to go to church on Sunday, or any day of the week you want, as long as you keep the sabbath on the sabbath. The sabbath doesn't mean church, considering church didn't exist at the time the commandments were given. The commandment meant what it said, a day of rest. Jesus held the correct sabbath, so did the apostles, it did not change to Sunday until hundreds of years after the crucifiction. Also, "meeting together" did not mean the sabbath changed, only that the apostles met together, which they actually did quite often, as they had many meals together. Meeting together had nothing to do with changing the sabbath, just more muck used to try to justify our "changing the sabbath".

Answer 5

Father K - Good detailed answer, but I think it misses the focus of the question -- as I read it, the question is getting at the issue of whether the Sabbath is actually (or orignally) Saturday and was changed by Christians -- whether or not it was Constantine seems to me secondary.

The answer is yes -- "Sabbath" is Saturday and Sunday is, in Christian terms, the "Lord's Day".

The official Catholic view is that ". . . the Sabbath is no longer binding and that Christians are to worship on the Lord’s day, Sunday, instead. " [Catholic.com]. The earlier answers to this question all either state or imply the same thing.

The interesting question is why did Christians start insisting on calling Sunday the "Sabbath" instead of the "Lord's Day" and to some extent, treating it as the Sabbath (day of rest), when the emphasis was on the elimination of the Sabbath observance entirely (see e.g., Pope Gregory I: "It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these [men] but preachers of Antichrist, who when he comes will cause the Sabbath day as well as the Lord’s day to be kept free from all work. For because he [the Antichrist] pretends to die and rise again, he wishes the Lord’s day to be held in reverence; and because he compels the people to Judaize that he may bring back the outward rite of the law, and subject the perfidy of the Jews to himself, he wishes the Sabbath to be observed.")

Answer 6

From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday is the TRUE Sabbath. It was changed by the Roman Catholic Church and no it does not please God that it was changed by man. God and only God can make changes to the Bible and to the Sabbath. In Bible times a day was measured by a 24-hour day from sundown to sundown. It was like that through the whole Bible. Old Testament AND New Testament. The scriptures that people use to prove that Jesus had changed the Sabbath have been grossly misunderstood because they were taken out of context and the sundown to sundown was not taken into consideration. And many people say that the Saturday Sabbath is just for the Jews, BUT the Sabbath was made many years before the Jews came on the scene. At creation in six literal days God created the earth and man and on the seventh day He hallowed that day. He blessed that day and made it Holy. That was the first Sabbath. I mentioned this fact to an old friend of mine who was certain that Sunday was the new Sabbath and he had no response. It was a surprise to him.

Answer 7

The ceremonial laws ended on the cross with Jesus . he rose on a Sunday that is why it is called the Lords day . In Acts 20:7, Paul led the church service on th first day if the week . Jewish people still observe the Sabbath same with the j w

Answer 8

Saturday is in fact the Sabbath. The Bible described the early Christians gathering on the first day of the week to break bread. Sunday is known as the Lord's day because that is the day that Jesus raised from the dead. We come to worship together on Sundays because that is the Lord's day. The day that he defeated death once for all.

Answer 9

I am unaware of anyone who claims to be Christian worshipping the day Sunday, or any day for that matter.

And if there were any relevancy to Sunday being the day wherein pagans worshipped the sun, then those who worship on Saturday must be worshipping Saturn.

What a logical disjoint....

No day is required as a day of spiritual rest or observation in Christianity. Paul writes about people observing a day or not observing a day (or days) and that we are free to do either.

If you wish to worship God on Saturday, then why not? You can worship God any and every day, right?

And as far as going to church; again, any day is as good as another. Sunday just happened to be the day that developed into a day for communal worship. I believe though that it was around the time of Constantine that Sunday started to take on the characteristics of the sabbath as far as being a forced day of rest, whereas before, even though Christians in and around Rome were meeting on Sundays, they were going about their normal business activities after their meetings were over.

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Answer 10

Sabbath is actually from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. Even Jesus celebrated this time as the Sabbath. Sunday was a man chosen day to have Sabbath, not the day God instituted.