The Lord's Day is the Sabbath!!

In the Greek New Testament, the day of Christ's Resurrection is always called the SABBATH....The corrupt Latin Vulgate changed the word to WEEK thus obscuring the fact that the Sabbath was changed from the 7th day to the 1st day of the week.

Since the Conquest of Canaan by Joshua (about 1400 B.C.), all the days were moved one day forward so the 7th day actually became the first day thereby anticipating the Resurrection of Joshua (JESUS in Greek).

The Sabbath in the Old Testament

"And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God CREATED and MADE."Genesis 2:3).

The Sabbath was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was to remind them and ALL their posterity that the universe was CREATED by JEHOVAH . . . and did not EVOLVE out of nothing!!

From the beginning, Satan hated the Sabbath and tried to destroy it . . . just like he does today....By the time of Noah, about 1500 years later, most people believed in EVILution and the Sabbath was all but ignored or forgotten. That is why God destroyed the old corrupt world with a universal Flood.

JEHOVAH reintroduced the Sabbath to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai when He gave them the 10 Commandments....It was given to fight EVILution by reminding the people once again of the CREATION of the universe:

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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 20:8-11).

The Sabbath was also given to remind the people of the Exodus or great deliverance from Egyptian bondage:

"And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." (Deuteronomy 5:15).

The Sabbath in the New Testament

The Sabbath was CHANGED by JEHOVAH/JESUS when he rose from the dead on the first day of the Jewish week....It is a commemoration of the CREATION of the universe and a remembrance of the Resurrection of Christ. The Sabbath is also called the Lord's Day:

"I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet" (Revelation 1:9-10).

This is the only place in the Greek New Testament where the term LORD'S DAY appears but there are 8 other verses that call the day of Christ's Resurrection from the dead the SABBATH. Here is just one of them in a literal translation from the Greek:

"Now when Jesus was risen early the first of the sabbaths, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils." (Mark 16:9).

Unfortunately, in the English language, the word for the FIRST DAY of the week is SUNDAY but many other languages retain the original significance of the word which means LORD'S DAY:

All of these words derive from the Latin dies Dominica, which is a direct translation of the original Greek Kyriake which literally means "the Lord's Day.

The Russian word for Sunday is the word Voskresen'e which means RESURRECTION,and the history of that GREAT country is always resurgence or revival after seeming defeat!!

Pope Constantine legalized the Lord's Day!!

The ancient world was familiar with the concept of a 7 day week, with one day of rest each week, because the Jews were found in most countries of the Roman Empire:

"For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day." (Acts 15:21).

No other nation adopted that blessed custom however, as paganism was controlled by Satan, and he never gives his slaves any rest... It was the early Christians, who won the battle against paganism, that caused Emperor Constantine and the entire Roman Empire, to adopt the 7 day week with the Lord's Day of rest.

Constantine HATED true Christianity and actually changed the time and the place of the Lord's RESURRECTION. However, in merging Christianity with paganism, he was forced to adopt the Christian Sabbath:

"He (Constantine) ordained, too, that one day should be regarded as a special occasion for prayer: I mean that which is truly the first and chief of all, the day of our Lord and Saviour. The entire care of his household was entrusted to deacons and other ministers consecrated to the service of God, and distinguished by gravity of life and every other virtue: while his trusty body guard, strong in affection and fidelity to his person, found in their emperor an instructor in the practice of piety, and like him held the Lord's salutary day in honor, and performed on that day the devotions which he loved. The same observance was recommended by this blessed prince to all classes of his subjects: his earnest desire being gradually to lead all mankind to the worship of God. Accordingly he enjoined on all the subjects of the Roman empire to observe the Lord's day, as a day of rest, and also to honor the day which precedes the Sabbath; in memory, I suppose, of what the Saviour of mankind is recorded to have achieved on that day. And since his desire was to teach his whole army zealously to honor the Saviour's day (which derives its name from light, and from the sun), he freely granted to those among them who were partakers of the divine faith, leisure for attendance on the services of the Church of God, in order that they might be able, without impediment, to perform their religious worship."(Eusebius, Life of Constantine, pp. 544-555).

Constantine's Lord Day edict was promulgated throughout the Roman Empire about 321 A.D.

The word WEEK does not appear ONCE in the Greek New Testament!!

According to the Greek New Testament, Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the JEWISH WEEK. This is correct as far as chronology is concerned, because the Resurrection took place the day AFTER the 7th day Jewish SABBATH which would be the 8th day . . . or the first day of the week.... However, that blessed day is never once called the FIRST DAY of the WEEK in Greek, but rather the first of the SABBATHS. The reason for this is obvious when we consider that the Romans had an 8 day week and the Greeks had a 10 day week.

St. Mark 16:9 in English:

"Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the WEEK, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils." (St. Mark 16:9).

San Marcos 16:9 in Espãnol

"Habiendo, pues, resucitado Jesús por la mañana, el primer día de la semana, apareció primeramente a María Magdalena, de quien había echado siete demonios." (San Marcos 16:9).

San Marcos 16:9 en français

"Jésus, étant ressuscité le matin du premier jour de la semaine, apparut d'abord à Marie de Magdala, de laquelle il avait chassé sept démons." (San Marcos 16:9).

All of the other world languages basically follow this same mistranslation.

The New Testament was written in the Koine Greek language. Not ONE place in the Greek New Testament does the word WEEK appear. You can easily check this out with a Greek Bible concordance. The word that is translated WEEK in all the versions is actually SABBATH or SABBATHS.

This is not because the Greeks had no word for WEEK, because the Septuagint version, which was a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, has a word for week which in English sounds like evthomades.

As the Jewish scholars were translating from Hebrew into Greek, they transliterated the Hebrew word SABBATH, because there was no corresponding word in Greek to properly convey the idea of a day of rest from work.

Saint Martin Luther correctly translated SABBATH as SABBATH and not WEEK!!

Saint Martin Luther correctly translated the Greek word SABBATH as SABBATH and not WEEK:

"Jhesus aber, da er aufferstanden war, fruee am ersten tage der Sabbather, erschein er am ersten der Maria Magdalene, von welcher er sieben Teufel ausgetrieben hatte."(Mark 16:9).

Modern German versions have changed the word to WEEK!!

After the fall of the Roman Empire (476 A.D.), Greek was replaced by Latin in western Europe. The Hibernian saints after Saint Patrick were renowned for their knowledge of Greek but those Christians were destroyed by centuries of persecution by the Vikings and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The fall of Constantinople to the Turks (1453 A.D.), caused a great exodus of Greek scholars to flee westward. This brought a revival of learning to Western Europe called the Renaissance. One of the most famous Greek scholars of that time was Erasmus of Rotterdam. In 1516, he collated all the Greek editions of the New Testament, and produced a superb Greek translation of the New Testament. Unfortunately, the priests kept the Bible locked up in Latin—a language incomprehensive to most of the common people— while the knowledge of Greek was almost nonexistent.

The 1516 Greek edition of Erasmus called the Textus Receptus or Received Text was the edition that Saint Martin Luther used to produce his superb translation of the Bible into German. The Bible in the vernacular guaranteed the permanence of the Reformation because it was founded upon Christ the Rock.

God gave Moses the SABBATH law on Mount Sinai to remember the creation week!!

There were 2 reasons given by God for observing the Sabbath: CREATION and REDEMPTION.

On Mount Sinai, God spoke directly to Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment was about setting aside one day in the week where no work of any kind was to be performed. The week was divided into 7 days with ONE DAY out of the week where all labor or work of any kind was prohibited.

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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 20:8-11).

The Jews were commanded to remember the Sabbath day because God made the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Evolution is sheer madness and no true Christian can entertain the preposterous belief that the universe is millions . . . or billions of years old.

Another reason for the Sabbath was to remember the great deliverance from Egyptian bondage.

Another reason for observing the Sabbath was to remember the Exodus from Egypt:

"And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." (Deuteronomy 5:15).

The Sabbath laws in the Bible were very strict. Anyone found working on that day was condemned to DEATH....Even lighting a fire in your house was prohibited.

The Jewish calendar was lunisolar with the year beginning at the spring equinox and the first month beginning at the new moon following the equinox. Since the year has 365.25 days and is not equally divisible by 7, this presented a problem with keeping track of the 7th day SABBATH from year to year.

The Jews seemed to solve this problem by having a PERPETUAL calendar of 364 days. This would require inserting a intercalary period of 35 days at the end of every 28 year period. Here is a quote from the ancient Jewish book of Jubilees:

"And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning—three hundred and sixty-four days, and these will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts. But if they do neglect and do not observe them according to His commandment, then they will disturb all the seasons, and the years will be dislodged from this order, and they will disturb the seasons and the years will be dislodged and they will neglect their ordinances. And all the children of Israel will forget, and will not find the path of the years, and will forget the new moons, and seasons, and sabbaths, and they will go wrong as to all the order of the years.. ."(Zerubavel, The Seven Day Circle, p. 71).

Joshua moved all the days ONE DAY forward

When general Joshua was conquering the Promised Land, he commanded the sun and moon to stand still for ONE WHOLE DAY in order to give him more time to defeat his enemies. This is the greatest instance of divine intervention in the Old Testament, and one of the most maligned miracles in the entire Bible, as Joshua is accused of ignorance of the movement of the earth.

"Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel" (Joshua 10:12-14).

Obviously anybody measuring time with a water clock, or any other means other than a sundial, would have noticed that a whole 24 hours had passed and the sun had not set, thereby moving the days one day forward.

God did not have to stop the universe from rotating in order to defeat the Canaanites who opposed Joshua. He performed that miracle in order to prefigure another Joshua (JESUS) who would change the day by a still greater miracle namely His Resurrection from the dead.

Pope Gregory XIII massacred the week in 1582

If the New Testament had said that Jesus arose from the dead on the first day of the WEEK the next question would obviously be: WHOSE WEEK????The Jews obviously had a very sophisticated calendar based on observations of the heavens but their nation was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

It is possible that the Christians followed the Jewish reckoning of the week until the time of Pope Constantine but the Julian calendar was the one in common use throughout the Roman Empire.

The week was MASSACERED in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII omitted 11 days from the calendar. This threw the week into utter confusion because the day they called Saturday was in actual fact the following Wednesday.

This notorious persecutor of Protestant Christians, was responsible for the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.

Jesuit Christopher Clavius was the "BRAINS" behind the Gregorian calendar in use all over the world today. Many nations refused to accept the Gregorian calendar because of the massacre of the week. Clavius believed in the geocentric system but was also a good friend of Galileo....The moving earth controversy seemed to overshadow the Gregorian calendar innovations and allowed it to be introduced by stealth into most nations of the world.

4 vital changes from the Old Testament to the New

With the death and Resurrection of Christ, Christianity became a UNIVERSAL religion. Here are 4 vital changes from the old dispensation to the new:

Satan uses Seventh-Day Adventists, professional sports and FAKE "Jews" to undermine the Christian Sabbath!!

Satan HATES the life saving message of the Resurrection of Christ....In the U.S., and around the world, he uses Seventh-Day Adventists to undermine the Lord's Day.

In the U.S., the devil uses professional sports like baseball and football to compete with the Lord's Day. Up to the year 1934, it was ILLEGAL to play professional baseball . . . or any sports on Sunday.

Satan also uses FAKE "Jews" to undermine and commercialize the Christian Sabbath. These fakes keep Saturday as the Sabbath and ignore the New Testament admonition to keep the Lord's Day holy. They are willingly ignorant of the fact that Christ's Congregation is the true and ONLY Israel of God.

It is doubtful if the Jewish religion could have survived for 1500 years prior to Christ without their weekly Sabbath reminding them of the creation and Exodus. It is also doubtful if Christianity could have survived and flourished without the weekly Sabbath to remind the believers of the Resurrection of their Saviour.

Editor's Notes

Thank God Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Sabbaths when He rested 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb.

On the Lord's Day Sabbath, true Christians still remember the fact that Jesus created the universe in 6 days, 6000 years ago. We no longer commemorate the deliverance from Egyptian bondage but the GREATER deliverance from sin, death and hell which Jesus accomplished for every believer by His death and Resurrection.

Vital links

7th Day Adventists exposed

All the verses in English that say WEEK instead of SABBATH

All the verses in German that correctly translate the word SABBATH

The Greek New Testament narrated on MPG files

A Modern English Translation of the Greek Septuagint

A Bible study on Sunday the Sabbath by Harold Camping

October surprise or the Pope's calendar is useless

Biblegateway.com.....over 50 Bible versions online.

References

Bevis, Charlie. Sunday Baseball. The Major Leagues' Struggle to Play Baseball on the Lord's Day, 1876-1934. McFarland & Co., Inc., North Carolina & London, 2003.

Brenton, Sir Lancelot C. L. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek & English. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA, 1986. (Originally published in 1851).

Canright, Rev. D. M. The Lord's Day. From Neither Catholics nor Pagans. Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, 1915.

Eusebius Pamphili, (260 — 340).Preparation for the Gospel, Proof of the Gospel, Ecclesiastical History, Life of Constantine, Oration to Constantine, etc., etc. Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1981.

Gamble, Samuel Walter. Sunday, The True Sabbath of God. Jennings & Pye Publishers, New York, 1900.

Rule, William Harris, D.D. The Holy Sabbath. Instituted in Paradise, and Perfected Through Christ. S.W. Partridge & Co., London, 1870.

Solberg, Winton U. Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MASS., 1977.

Zerubavel, Eviatar.The Seven Day Circle: The History & Meaning of the Week. The Free Press, Collier Macmillian Publishers, New York, 1985.

Copyright © 2007 by Niall Kilkenny

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