Churches Admit Sabbath

BAPTIST: “There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday…. It will be said, however, 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.” ~Dt. Edward T. Hiscox, author of The B~itit Manual, in a paper read hefore a New York ministers’ conference held Nov.13, 1893.

CATHOLIC: “You may 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 ICatholics] ne~r sanctify. ” -James Cardinal Gibbons, The Fuidi ofGarFathers, 16th edition, 1880, p.111.

CHURCH OF CHRIST: “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 ….. 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, Schetne of Redempiten, (St. Louis, The Fethany Press, 1962), p.165.

CONGREGATIONALIST: “The Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath.” -Dwight’s Theology, Vol.4, p.401.

EPISCOPAL: “Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, ‘day of the sun,’ because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined.””Sunday,” A Religious Encyclopedia, Vol.3, (New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1883) p.2259.

LUTHERAN: “The observance of the Lord’s day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church,” -Augsbutg Confession of Faith, quoted in Cadzolc Sdbla~ Manual, Part 2, Chapter 1, Section 10.

METHODIST: “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 Ft~nklin Fall, Chnstian Advocate, July 2,1942.

MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE: “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?” -D. L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, p.47.

PRESBYTERIAN: “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.

PENTECOSTAL: “‘Why do we worship on Sunday? Doesn’t the Bible teach us that
Saturday should be the Lord’s Day?’…
Apparently we will have to seek the answer from some other source than the New Testament.” -D5~d A. Womack, “Is Sunday the Lord’s Day?” The Pentecostal Evangel, Aug. 9,1959, No.2361, p.3.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: “Sunday was a name given by the heathen to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshiped the sun, … the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and… He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation.” -Eudle’s Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 ed., p.561.

(Above Original List of Quotes Compiled by -Amazing Facts That Affect You- Study Guide #20 P.13)


“The first Christian church established at Jerusalem by apostolic authority became in its doctrine and practice a model for the greater part of those founded in the first century. . . . These Judaizing Christians were first known by the outside world as ‘Nazarenes.’. . . All Christians agreed in celebrating the seventh day of the week in conformity to the Jewish converts.” (History of the Christian Church, pp. 50, 51, 69). 

“While the Jewish Christians of Palestine, who kept the whole Jewish law, celebrated of course all the Jewish festivals, the heathen converts observed only the Sabbath, and, in remembrance of the closing scenes of our Saviour’s life, the Passover, though without the Jewish superstitions. Besides these, the Sunday, as the day of our Saviour’s resurrection, was devoted to religious worship.” (Church History, Apostolic Age to A.D. 70, Section 29) 

“Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always remember the ten commandments of God, – to love the one and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational beings or demons. Consider the manifold workmanship of God, which received its beginning through Christ. Thou shalt observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who ceased from His work of creation, but ceased not from His work of providence; it is a rest for meditation of the law, not for the idleness of the hands.” (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 7, p. 413, 1951 edition). 

“There is another sect,. . . ‘Hypsistarians,’ that is, worshipers of the most high God, whom they worshiped as the Jews only in one person. And they observed their Sabbaths, and used distinction of their meats, clean and unclean, though they did not regard circumcision, as Gregory Nazianzen whose father was one of the sect, gives account of them.” (Antiquities of the Christian Church, Book 16, Chapter 6, Section 2).

“We also find in ancient writers frequent mention made of religious assemblies on the Saturday, or seventh day of the week, which was the Jewish Sabbath. It is not easy to tell the original of this practice, nor the reasons for it … I consider it here only as a day of public divine service … Athanasius, who is one of the first that mentions it says: They met on the Sabbath, not that they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath (Antiquities of the Christian Church, Book 13, Chapter 9, Section 3)

“Likewise some meet both upon the Sabbath and upon the day after the Sabbath, as at Constantinople, and among almost all others. At Rome and Alexandria they do not. Among the Egyptians, likewise, in many cities and villages, there is also a sacred custom among all of meeting on the evening of the Sabbath, when the sacred mysteries are partaken of.” (Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, in The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Book 7, Chapter 19).

“Centuries of the Christian era passed away before the Sunday was observed by the Christian church as the Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321” (Examination of the Six Texts).


“The last day of the week was strictly kept in connection with that of the first day for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing.” (Ancient Christianity Exemplified, Chapter 26, Section 2) 

“The Paulicians, Petrobusians, Passaginians, Waldenses, Insabbatati were great Sabbath keeping bodies of Europe down to 1250 A.D.” (The Sabbath of God through the Centuries, Coltheart, 1954)

“In 1310 two hundred years before Luther’s theses, the Bohemian brethren constituted one-fourth of the population of Bohemia, and that they were in touch with the Waldenses who abounded in Austria, Lombardy, Bohemia, north Germany, Thuringia, Brandenburg, and Moravia. Erasmus pointed out how strictly Bohemian Waldenses kept the seventh day Sabbath.” (Armitage, A History of the Baptists, pg.313)

“The Waldenses took the bible as their only rule of faith, abhorred the idolatry of the papal church, and rejected their traditions, holidays, and even Sunday, but kept the seventh-day Sabbath, and used the Apostolic mode of baptism.” (Facts of Faith, Christan Edwardson, pg. 21)