Which day is the true Sabbath?

Cuthbert Mavheko, Correspondent

THE world today is made up of millions of people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Some of them go to church on Sunday, the first day of the week, while others go to church on Saturday, the seventh day of the week. But which day is the true Sabbath? Is it Saturday or Sunday?

This question has been the subject of much contention among Christians since time immemorial.

The Holy Bible, which is the inspired word of God, reveals that God has a particular day of worship. Amid the thunder and lightning, and literal shaking of Mount Sinai, God’s voice thundered the fourth commandment:”Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it(Exodus 20 verse 8 to 11).”

It is insightful to note that this commandment starts with the injunction to “remember”.

This clearly shows that the Sabbath command was already understood by God’s chosen people and that, in incorporating it as part of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments), God was reminding them of a spiritual command of which they already had knowledge.

This truism is buttressed by the book of Genesis which reveals that on the seventh day of creation week, God instituted the Sabbath. Genesis 2 verses 2 to 3 says:”And on the seventh day God ended His work which he had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which He had created and made.”

Research indicates that in over 100 languages of the world, the word for the seventh day of the week is “Sabbath”. In Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian it is “Sabbota”. In Arabic it is “As-Sabat” and in Hebrew it is “Shabbat”.

These languages make it quite clear that the day we call Saturday in English is the Sabbath. God made the seventh day of the week holy, and on His authority as our Creator, He commands us to keep it that way.

Our Creator knew that we would need a period of rest and worship every seventh day and this is the basic purpose for which the Sabbath was created. Each of us tends to be overly absorbed in our daily cares, work and pleasures during the week.

But the Sabbath day is not only for the purpose of physical rest, it is also a time for worship, for spiritual rededication and for the contemplation and exercise of the spiritual purposes and laws of life which God has set. In the observance of the seventh day, which God has made holy, and which alone points to creation, man is brought into close communion with his Maker and God.

In this age of intense competition, strife and personal tensions, most people seem to have little or no time for the contemplation of the spiritual purposes and goals of life-the most important issues that people ought to be considering.

The tremendous blessing of God’s true Sabbath is that it enables people to take time to consider these most important issues in life, and to keep in contact with the Creator. However, without this contact with God, a person is completely cut off from the very purpose of his/her existence; from the laws that govern his or her success or failure in life; from understanding what he /she is and where he/she is going when this mortal life is over.

The life of a person who has no contact with the Creator is reduced to a thing of vanity. We can keep the Sabbath day of rest and spiritual rejuvenation with complete confidence that God will bless and prosper us for adherence to His command to keep the day holy. It is of paramount importance to note that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Such an honour was not conferred on any of the preceding six days.

When God blesses something, He bestows His divine presence in that thing. The very word “sanctify” means to set aside for holy use or purpose. Thus we see that in the very act of creation, the Almighty Creator put His divine favour upon and set apart for holy use and purpose the seventh day of the week – Saturday.

As I mentioned in a previous article, I was born and nurtured in a family that attended the Roman Catholic Church. One of the things that I learned from this church was that God sanctified Sunday as His particular day of worship. However, as I matured into adulthood, I began to study the Bible to prove whether or not this was true. The Creator God, through his Instruction Manual (the Holy Bible) admonishes us “to prove all things and hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21). In my in-depth study of the Bible and research on why churches observe Sunday, I read the book “Faith of our Fathers” by Cardinal Gibbons. Page 89 of the 11th edition of the book says: “You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but you will not find a single line authorising the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday…”

The Church of England’s ‘Plain Sermons on the Catechism’ by Isaac Williams says the following :”And where are we told in scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh day, but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day… the reason why we keep the first day of the week instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it… “

For the acknowledgement of the Sabbath and what the Bible says about the first day of the week, here is what I found in the Theological Dictionary by Charles Buck, a Methodist minister: “Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week… and it must be confessed that there’s no law in the New Testament concerning the first day of the week.”

Upon reading these books, I felt my mental underpinnings slipping away. As I had been reared in a family of the Catholic faith, l had merely assumed that Sunday was the Sabbath day that God had sanctified as His particular day of worship.

The Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course exposed the theories and myths of my previous religious background and helped me understand the Inspired Word of God. In my study and research, I was awakened to the realisation that the teachings of most Christian churches are not in harmony with the Bible.

Let me illustrate this by an analogy. Traditional Christianity today teaches that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was on a Friday(Good Friday)and that his resurrection occurred on a Sunday morning(Easter Sunday). It is instructive to note that when the doubting Pharisees and scribes approached Jesus Christ and demanded a sign from him to authenticate his claim that he was the Messiah, he said to them :”An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth “(Matthew 12 verse 39 to 40).

According to the Bible, a day time period and a night time period are each 12 hours, making a full 24-hour day (John 11 verse 9 to 10). If we are to use this plain biblical truism as our yardstick, there’s absolutely no way that anyone can figure three days and three nights – that is three 24-hour periods- between Friday sunset, when the crucifixion of Christ is said to have occurred and Sunday morning, when the resurrection is believed to have occurred.

A Friday sunset burial and a Sunday morning resurrection allows for only two nights and one day in the grave or rock-hewn sepulchre.

In my study and research, I found irrefutable evidence that Jesus Christ was indeed resurrected back to life after spending three days and three nights in the grave, as he had told the doubting Pharisees and scribes. But His resurrection did not occur on Sunday morning (Easter Sunday).

This knowledge completely destroyed the Easter Sunday tradition. This may seem strange because it is a dimension of knowledge hitherto unknown to most people. However, the unfaltering truth is that the teaching that Sunday was sanctified by God as His particular day of worship, is based on the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching that the resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred on a Sunday morning. It just cannot be over-emphasised that this teaching is misguided and far removed from reality. But that is a topic for another day.

The Scriptures reveal that Jesus Christ, the inspired example of how every true Christian ought to live, taught by His own life and actions, that the true Sabbath is a holy convocation for God’s people-a time when Christians are taught to live by every word of God. Jesus’ example and customary practice is recorded in Luke 4 verse16, which says:” So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as

His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.”

The Apostle Paul also kept the Sabbath. In Acts 17 verse 2 we read that:”Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures.” “We should learn to keep the Lord’s true Sabbath in a positive way. We use the seventh day that God has sanctified and made holy by resting from worldly labour, praying, studying and meditating on God’s Word. We should also take time to do good to others, care for the sick, visit the afflicted and assemble with other Christians in the church. Properly understood and observed, the keeping of God’s holy Sabbath is one of the greatest blessings that our benevolent Creator has ever bestowed upon the children of men.

“The Sabbath is actually an identifying sign between men and God and we should remember to keep it holy,” said Elder Jonathan Mpofu of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Cuthbert Mavheko is a freelance writer and theologian based in Bulawayo. He can be contacted on 0773963448 /0775522095.