How Sunday Worshipers Acknowledge the True Sabbath Day

In this post, let us take a look at some of the surprising admissions of various churches and religious leaders about the Sabbath Day.


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It might surprise you but the same churches who keep Sunday as their Sabbath have admitted they are wrong!

Yes, that’s right. 

There are a lot of statements made by various churches and Christian denominations that the Sabbath is not on Sunday, but rather it is on Saturday.

Don’t believe me?

Here are some of the quotes from religious leaders and publications that acknowledged that the Biblical Sabbath is on Saturday and not on Sunday.

The Sabbath and the Bible

“Sunday-keeping could not have been a part of the new covenant, because when Jesus died, He sealed His will or testament. Nothing could have been added to it afterward. Before He died, He had given the plan of salvation. He had commanded the ordinance of baptism and had instituted the Lord’s Supper. He had kept the Sabbath holy and, by His example and instruction, had showed how to keep it. He had not taught or inferred that another day was to be substituted. The inserting of a clause in a will after the testator has died is a criminal act and is punishable by law. Thus it was not possible for any of the disciples by themselves to add Sunday-keeping to the will of Christ after He had sealed it with His own blood.” (Roy B. Thurman, The Sabbath Today, p. 69)

* * *

“Finally, we have the testimony of Christ on this subject. In Mark 2:27, he says: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ From this passage it is evident that the Sabbath was made not merely for the Israelites, as Paley and Hengstenberg would have us believe, but for man…that is, for the race. Hence we conclude that the Sabbath was sanctified from the beginning, and that it was given to Adam, even in Eden, as one of those primeval institutions that God ordained for the happiness of all men.” [Robert Milligan, Scheme of Redemption, (St. Louis, The Fethany Press, 1962), p.165]

The Bible is not the basis of Sunday Worship

“If we would consult the Bible only, without Tradition, we ought, for instance, still to keep holy the Saturday with the Jews, instead of Sunday…” (Deharbe’s Catechism, translated by Rev. John Fander, published by Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss, 53 Park Place, New York, Sixth American Edition, Copyright 1912, 1919, 1924, page 81)

* * *

“Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. “The Day of the Lord” (dies domini) was chosen, not from any directions noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church’s sense of its own power. The day of resurrection, the day of Pentecost, fifty days later, came on the first day of the week. So this would be the new Sabbath. People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy.” (The Pastor’s page of The Sentinel, Saint Catherine Catholic Church, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995)

* * *

“Nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the apostles ordered the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the seventh day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] Church outside the Bible.” (Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947. p. 9)

* * *

“Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of the weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None.” (Manual of Christian Doctrine, p.127)

* * *

“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.” (Philip Carrington, Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949)

* * *

“You will have noticed, my dear children, that the day on which we keep Sabbath is not the same as that on which it was observed by the Jews. They kept and still keep the Sabbath upon Saturday, we on Sunday; they on the seventh, we on the first day of the week…understand how great is the authority of the [Roman Catholic] Church in interpreting or explaining to us the commandments of God–an authority which is acknowledged by the universal practice of the whole Christian world, even of those sects [i.e., protestants] who profess to take the Holy Scriptures as their sole rule of faith, since they observe as the day of rest not the seventh day of the week commanded by the Bible, but the first day, which we know is to be kept holy, only from tradition and teaching of the Catholic Church.” (Henry Gibson, Catechism Made Easy (No.2), Ninth Ed., Vol. 1, pp.341,342)

* * *

“…it is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath — …’The Sabbath was founded on a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday…There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday.” (Dr. R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments, New York: Eaton & Mains, p. 127-129)

* * *

“But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel . . . These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect” (John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15-16).

* * *

“The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change” (Alexander Campbell, First Day Observance, pp. 17, 19).

* * *

“If you follow the Bible alone there can be no question that you are obliged to keep Saturday holy, since that is the day especially prescribed by Almighty God to be kept holy to the Lord. In keeping Sunday, non-Catholics are simply following the practise of the Catholic Church for 1800 years, a tradition, and not a Bible ordinance…. With the Catholics there is no difficulty about the matter. For, since we deny that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, we can fall back upon the constant practise and tradition of the Church.” (Francis G. Lentz, The Question Box, 1900, pp. 98, 99)

* * *

“Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day” (Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p. 26).

* * *

“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.  Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890)–American Congregationalist

* * *

“The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution . . . Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand . . . The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath” (T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp. 474-475).

* * *

“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.” (Buck’s Theological Dictionary, p.403)

* * *

“ ‘Our Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week’, Said Father Hourigan of the Jesuit Seminary. ‘That is why the Church changed the day of obligation from the seventh day to the first day of the week. The Anglican and other Protestant denominations retained that tradition when the Reformation came along’.” (Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949)

* * *

“I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says: ‘No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.’ And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church.” (T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884)

* * *

“You will read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we [Catholics] never sanctify.” (Cardinal Gibbons’ Faith of Our Fathers, p. 111)

Sunday is commanded by the Catholic Church

“Sunday…It is the law of the Catholic Church alone…” (American Sentinel, June 1893)

* * *

“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?” (Dwight L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, pp. 47-48).

* * *

“From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, as the Lord’s day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it as tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it. Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.” (D.B. Ray, The Papal Controversy, 1892, p.179)

* * *

“They [the Protestants] deem it their duty to keep the Sunday holy. Why? Because the Catholic Church tells them to do so. They have no other reason. …The observance of Sunday thus comes to be an ecclesiastical law entirely distinct from the Divine law of Sabbath observance. …The author of the Sunday Law…is the Catholic Church.” (Walter Drum, Catholic priest, Ecclesiastical Review, February, 1914)

* * *

“The authority of the church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the Church had changed the Sabbath into Sunday, not by command of Christ, but by its own authority.” (Canon and Tradition, p. 263)

* * *

“The Roman Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days.” (Vincent Jo Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast day Occupations, Catholic University Press, 1943, p. 2)

* * *

“Sunday is a Catholic institution and its claim to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles….. From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first.”  (Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August 1900)

* * *

“Question: Which is the Sabbath day?”

“Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath.”

“Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?”

“Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336) transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.”  (The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, by Peter Geiermann, 50)

* * *

“Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:

  1. That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man.
  2. We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws.

It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.” (Peter R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Society, 1975, Chicago, Illinois)

* * *

“Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change [Scriptural Sabbath to Sunday] was her act… And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical authority in religious things.” (H.F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons)

* * *

“But the Church of God [that is, the Romish church, NOT the true Church] has thought it well to transfer the celebration and observance of the Sabbath to Sunday.” (‘Catechism of the Council of Trent’ translated by John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan, p 402)

* * *

“It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest to the Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is a homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church.” (Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, by Mgr. Louis Segur, 1868, p.213)

* * *

“Question: How to prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days?”

“Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church.”

“Question: How can you prove that?”

“Answer: Because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the Church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin: and by not keeping the rest [of the Catholic feasts] by her commanded, they again deny, in fact, the same power.” (Rev. Henry Tuberville’s, (D.D.R.C.) “An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine”, p.58.  New York: Edward Dunigan and Brothers, approved 1833)

* * *

“Question:  What day was the Sabbath?”

“Answer: Saturday.”

“Question: Who changed it?”

“Answer: The Catholic Church.”

(Rev. Dr. Butler’s Catechism, revised, p. 57)

* * *

“The church has changed the Sabbath into the Lord’s day by its own authority, concerning which you have no Scripture.” (Johann Eck, Handbook of Common Places Against the Lutherans, 1533)

* * *

“Question: Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals or precepts?”

“Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her, -she could not have substituted  the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” (Rev. Stephen Keenan’s A Doctrinal Catechism, p. 174: Edward Dunigan and Brothers, New York, 1851)

* * *

“The Sunday, as a day of the week set apart for the obligatory public worship of Almighty God…is purely a creation of the Catholic Church. It is…not governed by the enactments of the Mosaic law. It is part and parcel of the system of the Catholic Church.” (John Gilmary Shea, The American Catholic Quarterly Review , January, 1883)

Pagan Sunday

“The church…took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday…. The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom…. And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday.” (Dr. William L. Gildea, The Catholic World , March, 1894)

History of Sabbath to Sunday

“A history of the problem shows that in some places, it was really only after some centuries that the Sabbath rest really was entirely abolished, and by that time the practice of observing a bodily rest on the Sunday had taken its place…It was the seventh day of the week which typified the rest of God after creation, and not the first day.” (Vincent Jo Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast day Occupations, Catholic University Press, 1943, pp. 15, 22)

* * *

“My brethren, look about the various wrangling sects and denominations. Show me one that claims or possesses the power to make laws binding on the conscience. There is but one on the face of the earth–the Catholic Church–that has the power to make laws binding upon the conscience, binding before God, binding upon the pain of hellfire. Take for instance, the day we celebrate–Sunday. What right have the Protestant churches to observe that day? None whatsoever. You say it is to obey the commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ But Sunday is not the Sabbath according to the Bible and the record of time.

Everyone knows that Sunday is the first day of the week, while Saturday is the seventh, and the Sabbath, the day consecrated as a day of rest. It is so recognized in all civilized nations…It was the Holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the first day of the week. And has not only compelled all to keep Sunday, but at the council of Laodicea, A.D. 364 anathemized those who kept the Sabbath and urged all persons to labor on the seventh day under penalty of anathama.

Which church does the whole civilized world obey? Protestants call us every horrible name they can think of–anti-Christ, the scarlet-colored beast, Babylon, etc., and at the same time profess great reverence for the Bible, and yet by their solemn act of keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the power of the Catholic Church.” (Industrial American, Harlan Iowa; a published lecture by T. Enright, December 19, 1889)

* * *

“The idea of importing into the Sunday the solemnity of the Sabbath with all its exigencies was an entirely foreign one to the early Christians.” (Director of at Rome’s Ecole Francaise, Louis M.O. Duchesne (1843-1922), Christian Worship, p.47)

* * *

“A history of the problem shows that in some places, it was really only after some centuries that the Sabbath rest really was entirely abolished, and by that time the practice of observing a bodily rest on the Sunday had taken its place…It was the seventh day of the week which typified the rest of God after creation, and not the first day.” (Vincent Jo Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast day Occupations, Catholic University Press, 1943, pp. 15, 22)

* * *

“If it [Sabbath] 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 man can tell. No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned 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, Feb. 2, 1824, vol. 1. no. 7, p. 164.)

* * *

“The Sabbath was religiously observed in the Eastern church three hundred years and more after our Saviour’s Passion.” (Prof. E. Brerewood of Gresham College, London in a sermon)

* * *

“Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath…. The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps, at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered labouring on Sunday as a sin.” (Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, (Rose’s translation), Vol. 1, p.186)

Protestantism and Catholicism

“It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.” (Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. ‘News’ of March 18, 1903)

* * *

“Protestants…accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change… But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that…in observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church–the Pope.” (Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950.)

* * *

“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….The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because of the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it.” (Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, pp.334, 336.)

* * *

“But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn’t it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible, and not the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Yes of course, it is inconsistent; but this change was made about 15 centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed. They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon an explicit text in the Bible” (Dr. John O’Brien, Faith of Millions, pp. 543-544).

* * *

“There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday….Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters….The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday.” (Canon Eyton, The Ten Commandments, pp. 52, 63, 65.)

* * *

“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the Seventh to the First day of the week . . . 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 . . .

“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated . . .

“Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history . . . But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, adopted and sanctioned by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism” (Dr. Edward Hiscox, before a New York ministers’ conference, Nov. 13, 1893, as reported in the New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893).

* * *

“Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the [Roman Catholic] Church, has no good reasons for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday.” (John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883)

* * *

“The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do. But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o’clock on Friday evening [it actually begins at sunset and continues until the following sunset]. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a [Sunday] Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday.” (D. Morse-Boycott, Daily Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931)

* * *

“There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance.” (William Owen Carver, The Lord’s Day in Our Day, p. 49.)

* * *

“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)

* * *

“There’s nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day.” (Harold Lindsell, editor, Christianity Today, Nov. 5, 1976)

* * *

“If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.” (Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal, in a letter dated February 10, 1920.)

The sad reality of Christians and the Sabbath

A lot of Christian leaders know the true Sabbath is not on Sunday. Yet, many of them would only stumble upon the truth, but won’t let it change them.

Sad, but that’s the reality.

The majority of Christian denominations today would rather follow the authority of a man-made church rather than follow the God whom they claim to worship.

The Bible is clear that the Sabbath is observed from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

Nowhere do we see in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, that the Sabbath was transferred to Sunday.

A lot of learned and honest men would admit this Biblical truth.

However, what difference will it make if you only know the truth, but you don’t apply it in your life?

Be different. 

Now, you know the truth, it’s time to keep the true Sabbath of the Most High God!