THE NORTHERN KENTUCKY SEARCHER
"Search the scriptures: for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. " (John 5:39)

VOLUME 4, NUMBER 52, DECEMBER 26, 2004

UPON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK

PART 3

            This is a continuation of last week’s article.  It is the manuscript of a lecture I am scheduled to give in Florida in February.  It helped me while I was preparing it.  Perhaps it will help you as well.

The Lord’s Day

            The first day of the week is also referred to in scripture as the Lord’s Day.  We find this in Revelation 1:10, where John wrote, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day…” It helps to understand John’s use of this expression if we consider the only other time the Greek word for “Lord’s (kuriakos) appears.  It is found in 1 Corinthians 11:20, which says, “Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper…”   There is an obvious connection between the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s Day, both of them pertaining to Christ.  As we have observed, the Lord’s Supper was partaken of on the first day of the week.

            “Surely the Lord’s Supper was observed on the first day of the week, and if so, it must follow that the Lord’s day was the first day of the week.  The Lord provided this new name for a new day  on which new religious service was observed.”  (Hailey 107)

            I will have more to say concerning extra-biblical evidence supporting the conclusion that the first day of the week was called the Lord’s Day by Christians when we examine the primary arguments of the sabbatarians.

Arguments From the Sabbatarians

            It must be admitted that over the years various groups have denied that they early church met on the first day of the week for worship and have contended that faithful Christians have continued to meet upon the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week.  They have argued that the regular assembly on the first day of the week was, in fact, a man-made perversion of the scriptural pattern.  Let’s take the time to examine the primary arguments advanced by those who hold to that erroneous view, focusing upon Seventh-Day Adventism.

            In my study of that false system of belief, it appears that the rejection of the regular assemblies on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, by Christians, and the demand for the keeping of the Sabbath day by all people for all time, is based upon three basic assertions.  First, that God bound Sabbath keeping upon all men from the Garden of Eden.  Second, that in the Old Testament law a distinction must be made between the Law of God and the Law of Moses, also called the eternal law and the temporary law, the moral law and the ceremonial law.   Third, that the change from Saturday as the day of worship to Sunday was the result of apostasy, with the Roman Catholic Pope officially changing the day for the apostate church.  Each one of these assertions rests upon the others.  If even one of them proves to be false, the case for Sabbath keeping crumbles.

            Is it true that God bound Sabbath observance upon all men from the Garden of Eden?  In Who are Seventh-Day Adventist?,  the claim is made in the following way:

            “God established the Sabbath institution at the very beginning of man’s history upon the earth when, as the climax of creation, He set the seventh day apart as a time of surcease from labor.  Gen. 2:1-3.   The seventh-day Sabbath was given to mankind as a memorial of the creation of the heavens and earth by the hand of God Himself.  Ex. 20:11.  It was also given  as a sign of that personal relationship that exists between man, the creature and God, the creator. Ezek. 20:20 (63-64).

            It is true that God rested from His work of creation on the seventh day and it is true that when God did give the Sabbath He used the same day upon which He had rested.  But did He enjoin Sabbath keeping upon all men for all time beginning in the Garden of Eden?  The answer to that question is NO.

            Try as we might, we can find no mention of the Sabbath before Exodus 16:23.  There is no indication that anyone ever kept the Sabbath before that time, or for that matter, that anyone even knew upon what day God rested before the Book of Genesis was written.  We do not have to speculate about when the requirement for Sabbath keeping was made know to man, for Nehemiah tells us in Nehemiah 9:13-14, “Then Thou didst come down on Mount Sinai, and didst speak with them from heaven; Thou didst give to them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments.  So Thou didst make know to them Thy holy Sabbath, and didst lay down for them commandments, statutes, and law, through Thy servant Moses.”

To be continued…

                                                                        Greg Litmer

INTERESTING QUOTES FROM RADICAL RESTORATION

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.”  Henry David Thoreau

“He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the Church he currently did not attend was Catholic.”  Kingsley Amis

“Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”   Mark Twain

“I was born in the wrong generation.  When I was a young man, no one had any respect for youth.  Now I am an old man and no one has any respect for age.”  Bertrand Russell