We have been reminded that in keeping with the prophecy of the apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:3-10), the church early in its history experienced a "falling away." There was a gradual compromise between pure Christian doctrine and the teachings of Paganism. The church began to sacrifice principle for political advantage, so that the main Christian body adopted several unbiblical beliefs and practices. Most Christians keep Sunday, the first day of the week, rather than the seventh-day Sabbath, as their weekly rest day. We have seen that the seventh day was sanctified by God at the end of His week of creation. We have studied how God required that this day be observed all through Old Testament times, and how Jesus and His apostles kept the day in New Testament times. We have also noticed the Bible passage in Matthew 24:20, which shows that the Savior expected His followers to be honoring the Sabbath at the time Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70. At this point we ask, "Why do most Christians keep Sunday?" That was the "venerable day of the sun," the day on which heathen sun worshippers paid homage to the sun. How could God’s people ever have "traded in" the observance of the Lord’s holy Bible Sabbath for a pagan holiday? This is a logical, legitimate question. To find the answer, we must look outside the Bible. Since the Scriptures provide no mention of Sunday sacredness, we must go elsewhere to see the history of this attempted transfer of holiness. To understand how this change came about, we must go to the early "church fathers." Polycarp is believed to have been an associate of the Apostle John. Irenaeus and Ignatius were later contemporaries of Polycarp. The writings of these three reliable men provide no evidence that they knew anything about a change of the weekly day of worship. But we do read about this attempted change beginning to take place as early as the second century. Justin Martyr is "the first man we know who gives a clear statement about regular Sunday services, and Clement is the first to apply the expression ‘Lord’s day’ to Sunday" (Walter E. Straw, Origin of Sunday Observance, Washington: Review and Herald, 1939, 55). This is Clement of Alexandria (about 150-215), who of course had no more information than we have as to what John meant when he used the term "Lord’s day" in Revelation 1:10. The Bible itself knows only one "Lord’s day"; that is, the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week (See Mark 2:28). If you scan the Gospel of John, you will notice that it was his habit to insert a brief note of explanation whenever he felt it necessary to make his point clear. While the book of Revelation is not historical, as is his Gospel, yet his mention there of the Lord’s day is historical. Why, then, did he not explain what he meant by the term "Lord’s day" in Revelation 1:10? Logically, it was because any reader would know that the Bible recognizes only one day, the seventh, as the Lord’s day. To understand the change from Sabbath-keeping to Sunday-keeping, we need to consider three very persuasive influences that exerted pressure on the early church. The first of these influences can be traced back to AD 70, when the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem. After that holocaust, the Jews lived with a constant resentment against Rome. In the early part of the second century, they rebelled. This revolt only served to earn them more severe restrictions. They were forbidden to conduct religious services, to circumcise, and to keep the Sabbath. During this time a Jew named Bar Cochba emerged and claimed to be the Messiah. He led a futile rebellion against Rome, which lasted for three years, AD 132-135. As a result, the Jews were driven from their country and banned from returning. Since they were barred from Jerusalem, the church named a Gentile bishop to preside there. It was at this time that the Gentile Christians began to set themselves apart from the Jews. By exhibiting a clear difference between themselves and the Jews, they became more acceptable to the Romans. And so gradually the Christian church turned its back on many practices which would be looked upon as Jewish. Keeping God’s Sabbath day was one of these practices. A second influence contributing to the adoption of Sunday as the weekly rest day was Gnosticism. This was a strange mixture of Christianity with traditions of pagan philosophies:
To support the purpose of this study, we refer now to some strange doctrines promulgated by the Gnostic teachers:
The Gnostics embraced the ideas of the Docetic heresy, which taught that Christ did not really become human and actually die. He only seemed to have done so. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes this Gnostic doctrine:
These words of the beloved Apostle John show that Satan was working to muddy the waters of doctrinal purity very early in the church:
Gnosticism resulted from an intermingling of Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish religions, all flourishing together in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. The Gnostics had a theory of "intermediary divinities," they allegorized Scripture, they worshiped images, they practiced sun worship, and they observed Sunday. Prominent Gnostic teachers, such as Basilides, Valentinus, Plotinus, Marcion, and Justin Martyr went on to Rome and taught there, from where the influence of Gnosticism spread throughout the Roman Empire.
Now notice this startling comprehensive statement:
It is sad indeed that the spurious and unsound doctrines of Gnosticism became foundational in the main body of the Christian church. The church "fell away" from the pure apostolic faith, and very early on attempted to lay a foundation that flew in the face of Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 3:11: "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." The men who espoused and taught Gnosticism became agents of the forces of evil that war against Christ and the purity of His church. And these are the men who attempted to substitute a false holy day for God’s precious holy Sabbath. We must turn our backs on them and their heathen ideas! "Even down to the latter part of the fourth century, almost all churches throughout the world celebrated the Sabbath every week, except Rome and Alexandria, according to two of the great early historians, Socrates and Sozomen" (Straw, p. 101). And of course it was Alexandria and Rome that provided the sprouting soil for the unfortunate conglomeration of Christianity and paganism that blossomed into Gnosticism. This gradual blending of religions that were innately diametrically opposed to each other brought multitudes of semi-heathen "converts" into the church. The third important influence in promoting Sunday observance in the early church was the ostensible conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity at the beginning of the fourth century. He was the first "Christian" Roman emperor. As an astute politician, he was kind to the Christians, all the while giving substantial support to the customs and monuments of heathenism. Such a phenomenon helped the church to grow numerically, but not spiritually. Constantine issued the first Sunday law, which was in honor of the "venerable day of the sun," the day honored by sun worshippers. While this was not a Christian law, it did serve to strengthen the cause of Sunday-keeping Christians in their erroneous efforts to make a holy day out of this pagan holiday. As we look back upon the history of the early church, we are moved to lament this very sad experience of a blending of beliefs and practices between Christ’s followers and the devotees of heathenism. And we must be careful in our day not to fall into any similar trap of compromise between truth and error. By the time we come to the reign of Constantine, we find the main body of Christians venerating the day of the sun. They had claimed that Sunday worship was adopted by the apostolic church as a memorial of Christ’s resurrection. Such an idea, of course, contravenes the true memorial of our Savior’s triumph over the tomb, which is the beautiful rite of baptism:
To summarize, Sunday-keeping came about in a very gradual manner, facilitated by anti-Jewish sentiment, by the influence of Gnosticism with its pagan ideas, and by the "conversion" of the Roman emperor who already revered the venerable day of the sun. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has claimed that, by the authority vested in her by Jesus Christ, she has officially transferred holy time from the seventh to the first day of the week. Such an assertion is in direct fulfillment of Daniel 7:25, which predicted that this power would "intend to change times and law." Here is one statement of the Roman Catholic claim: "The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday" (The Catholic Mirror, Sept. 23, 1893). While there is an abundance of literature available to underscore the historical facts presented in this chapter, the limits of time and space constrain us to confine our efforts to this brief account. We conclude with this statement by Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual:
Chapter 8
Index
Chapter 10
Copyright © 2001
- by McDonald Road SDA Church
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are
taken from the New King James Version.
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