Should we go to church on Saturday instead of Sunday?

[Lou Newton]

Linda asked this question on Facebook:

Linda Shaffield Cook

January 2 at 1:05 PM ·

Ok....I want to pose a serious question. If you don’t like religious discussions, don’t read this. I hesitate to pose it, because it has the potential to make folks upset or mad, but it is on my heart and mind.

First, let me say this has nothing to do with the beliefs of the Seventh Day Adventist, though they might have some of it right. I do believe they are too legalistic for me. But.....

Are we forsaking one of the Ten Commandments by not keeping the Sabbath holy?

I am not saying we have to abide by all the laws the Pharisees set up, but should we remember The day God set aside?

Argument by the church.....Jesus arose on the first day of the week.

But.......I read that for over 300 years the Christians worshiped on Saturday, then Constantine decided to change it. Did he have a mandate from God? The early Christians, sometimes met on Sunday, but the disciples preached on The sabbath.

This is very serious with me. I don’t want to willingly break a commandment. Now that my conscience feels this may be a sin.

I have so many learned Christian friends, I would appreciate your response.

[Lou Newton]

Lou Newton --Hi Linda- The law of the Sabbath was only a shadow of the coming of Jesus who would be the Sabbath for all. I celebrate the Sabbath 24/7 by resting in Christ instead of trying to work my way into heaven. The apostles met on the Lord's day, or the day Jesus raised Himself from the dead. That was on Sunday. But any day is a good day to meet and worship God.Here is what the Holy Spirit said about the Sabbath through Paul: Col 2: 16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. - Jesus is our Sabbath, we rest in Him .24/7. - Back in the OT people were stoned for working on the Sabbath, or put to death. But everyone will die an eternal death if they refuse to rest in the Lord of The Sabbath, who is Jesus. The only condition to being saved is to trust in Jesus, and nothing else, to save you.

[Lou Newton]

Linda Shaffield Cook --Thanks, Lou. This is what I have been taught and always believed. But......salvation is different from obedience. Is it possible that though Christ is the fulfillment of the Sabbath, that the fourth commandment has not been voided???

There are many scriptures showing the early preaching being done in the Temple on Sunday.

Is it possible the scripture saying not to allow people to judge you for worshiping on a certain day was directed at people mocking those sin a pagan country worshiping on the Sabbath?

Now that this has been laid on my heart, I wonder if God wants us to follow the Ten Commandments instead of Constantine. I know if I went to a church and they told me their church met on the day of thenSun god, and they had a holiday on his birthday, etc......I would not attend.....and yet....we do.

I have no doubt of my salvation. What I doubt is my obedience.

I read that the early Christians met on the Sabbath...did I get that wrong?

I trust your wisdom and years of service to God. This is very new to me and I am really struggling with it

[Lou Newton]

• Lou Newton We follow the 4th commandment by resting in Christ. We are defiantly keeping the Sabbath ( Christ) Holy by resting in Him. We are to keep EVERYDAY of the week Holy, not just one, by resting in Christ everyday. If you read the Holy Scriptures that deal with the time after the resurrection, you will see it mentions they met on the Lord's day several times. I think the Lord's Day was the day Jesus rose form the dead which was the first instant of time on the day after the Sabbath. The Quakers call this FIRST DAY so as not to honor the sun god. They call all the days of the week, 1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day etc so as not to honor the Norse God's that the days are named after. Thursday is named after Thor etc. I have absolutely no conviction from attending Church on Sunday or any other day.
• 
  Lou Newton I feel the 7th Day Church is a cult. I spent quite a bit a time with one member and so studied the group. First they follow a dead false prophet named Ellen White ( I think I got that name right). Her so called prophecies are just not correct. Second they make their claim that Saturday is the only correct day to go to church their focus, instead of Christ. I think the scripture in Col 2 makes it clear that the day we choose to worship in not important. What is important is the Person we choose to worship, and that is everything. The person who possesses Christ has everything there is to possess and lacks NOT ONE THING. ---- God is not a Judge of, did we do this or that. God judges the intentions of our hearts.

[Lou Newton]

Linda Shaffield Cook thank you......actually, I stumbled onto one of those Torah followers. He made a lot of sense. His name is zackery Bauer. I know Watchmans Cry had a lot of trouble with the Torah keepers, so I have never looked into it....but I do a lot of off the grid research, and he has a lot of videos about organic farming, etc.

[Lou Newton]

• Lou Newton Jesus told us that there is ONE work we are to do for God. That is to trust in Him. - John 6:28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
  
  29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
• 
  Lou Newton Many groups want to get our focus off of Jesus and onto following some commandment of God. That is what the Pharisees were doing and they did not even recognize the Author of the Holy Scriptures they claimed to follow.

[Lou Newton]

Linda Shaffield Cook yes.....I totally agree with that.....but what about James saying faith without works....

Lou you are so patient. This is heavy on my heart. Not saying I agree with any of it. Just need the Holy Spirit to assure me I don’t need to grow from milk to meat.

[Lou Newton]

Lou Newton “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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 20:8-11). - Notice that the Lord tells us a reason that it is 6 days of work and one day of rest. Because He worked 6 days and rested on the 7th. BUT God was not talking about time or earth days. He gives a start to the 7th day, BUT no end to the 7th day. That is because God is still resting from creating. He tells most of the people of Israel they will never enter His rest. That means that God was still in the 7th day, or His day of rest. Day simply means a period of time, OR the coming of light. If one reads Genesis 1 with great care they will see that God defines the day. God says - 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. We see that God tells us that the day had nothing to do with time, but with the coming of light. - Jesus is LIGHT and His coming was the real Sabbath, or the real coming of Spiritual Light and not the coming of natural light.

[Lou Newton]

Linda Shaffield Cook Lou Newton love you. I have always believed this...growing up in thenSouthern Baptist Church. I feel much more assured that I am not failing the Lord

[Lou Newton]

• Lou Newton We are in the 7th day until Jesus returns. That means that when Jesus returns we will be in the 8th day, or the day of new beginnings. THE REAL SABBATH will cover the whole earth.
• 
  Lou Newton Linda I never, ever, tire of spending time on questions like this. I , will gladly write for days or weeks, or months, or years to answer any question from anyone who truly seeks the truth.

[Lou Newton]

Linda Shaffield Cook you are a good Christian friend. I know you give sound answers

[Lou Newton]

Ann ----- Lou Newton Sorry, I disagree with you. The 4th commandment says remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. The 7th day Church does not follow Ellen White . They follow Jesus.

[Lou Newton]

• Lou Newton Ann - I am no longer under the law, but the children of God follow His Holy Spirit instead. You can remain under the law if you wish; BUT then you must obey all of the law or perish for disobeying even one point of it. Certainly the law of circumcision is an even more serious law than the sabbath for it was given to Abraham long before Moses was even born. Do you say everyone has to also follow that law. Look what The Holy Spirit said through Paul about following the law of circumcision:
• 
  Lou Newton Galatians 3 (TLB)
  3 Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has hypnotized you and cast an evil spell upon you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death as clearly as though I had waved a placard before you with a picture on it of Christ dying on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: DID YOU RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT BY TRYING TO KEEP THE JEWISH LAWS? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you heard about Christ and trusted him to save you. 3 Then have you gone completely crazy? For if trying to obey the Jewish laws never gave you spiritual life in the first place, why do you think that trying to obey them now will make you stronger Christians? 4 You have suffered so much for the Gospel. Now are you going to just throw it all overboard? I can hardly believe it!
  
  5 I ask you again, does God give you the power of the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you as a result of your trying to obey the Jewish laws? No, of course not. It is when you believe in Christ and fully trust him.
  
  6 Abraham had the same experience—God declared him fit for heaven only because he believed God’s promises. 7 You can see from this that the real children of Abraham are all the men of faith who truly trust in God.
  
  8-9 What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would save the Gentiles also, through their faith. God told Abraham about this long ago when he said, “I will bless those in every nation who trust in me as you do.” And so it is: all who trust in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received.
  
  10 Yes, and those who depend on the Jewish laws to save them are under God’s curse, for the Scriptures point out very clearly, “Cursed is everyone who at any time breaks a single one of these laws that are written in God’s Book of the Law.” 11 Consequently, it is clear that no one can ever win God’s favor by trying to keep the Jewish laws because God has said that the only way we can be right in his sight is by faith. As the prophet Habakkuk says it, “The man who finds life will find it through trusting God.” 12 How different from this way of faith is the way of law, which says that a man is saved by obeying every law of God, without one slip. 13 But Christ has bought us out from under the doom of that impossible system by taking the curse for our wrongdoing upon himself. For it is written in the Scripture, “Anyone who is hanged on a tree is cursed” (as Jesus was hung upon a wooden cross[a]).
  
  14 Now God can bless the Gentiles, too, with this same blessing he promised to Abraham; and all of us as Christians can have the promised Holy Spirit through this faith.
  
  15 Dear brothers, even in everyday life a promise made by one man to another, if it is written down and signed, cannot be changed. He cannot decide afterward to do something else instead.
  
  16 Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons—all the Jews—were being spoken of, but to his Child—and that, of course, means Christ. 17 Here’s what I am trying to say: God’s promise to save through faith—and God wrote this promise down and signed it—could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments. 18 If obeying those laws could save us, then it is obvious that this would be a different way of gaining God’s favor than Abraham’s way, for he simply accepted God’s promise.
  
  19 Well then, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God’s laws. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of Christ, the Child to whom God’s promise was made. (And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who then gave them to the people; 20 but when God gave his promise to Abraham, he did it by himself alone, without angels or Moses as go-betweens.)
  
  21-22 Well then, are God’s laws and God’s promises against each other? Of course not! If we could be saved by his laws, then God would not have had to give us a different way to get out of the grip of sin—for the Scriptures insist we are all its prisoners. The only way out is through faith in Jesus Christ; the way of escape is open to all who believe him.
  
  23 Until Christ came we were guarded by the law, kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could believe in the coming Savior.
  
  24 Let me put it another way. The Jewish laws were our teacher and guide until Christ came to give us right standing with God through our faith. 25 But now that Christ has come, we don’t need those laws any longer to guard us and lead us to him. 26 For now we are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, 27 and we who have been baptized into union with Christ are enveloped by him. 28 We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free men or even merely men or women, but we are all the same—we are Christians; we are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And now that we are Christ’s we are the true descendants of Abraham, and all of God’s promises to him belong to us.
• 
  Lou Newton Most of Abraham's children were circumcised, but only those that truly trusted in God to save them were saved. Both Jacob and Esau were circumcised, but only Jacob trusted in God alone to save him, and became Israel, while Esau became their enemy.
• 
  Lou Newton Gal 2: 17 But what if we trust Christ to save us and then find that we are wrong and that we cannot be saved without being circumcised and obeying all the other Jewish laws? Wouldn’t we need to say that faith in Christ had ruined us? God forbid that anyone should dare to think such things about our Lord. 18 Rather, we are sinners if we start rebuilding the old systems I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws, 19 for it was through reading the Scripture that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favor by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ.
• 
  Lou Newton Ann - I can only testify of the 7th Day people I have known. Not one focused on preaching Jesus, but always preached that I should attend church on Saturday and not 1st day. Of course Saturday is named after the false god Saturn. ------ One should ask what is a cult ? - Is not a cult any group that would think themselves better for doing what their group does then any other group that does not do those things. --- If one thinks himself better than others for going to church on Saturday, what about the other laws of God they are disobeying. There is not one place in the Bible where we are told we will be saved by obeying any law of God. But we are told this instead: 1 John 1: 5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
  
  8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
• 
  Lou Newton Now Ann please answer me this one question: How can any of us walk in the light as Jesus in in the light considering Jesus is The Light and God tells us all men are liars ?
• 
  Lou Newton Notice that following the law of circumcision did Esau and most of the Pharisees, no eternal good, for they all perished. Also notice that the law of circumcision was given directly from God over 400 years before the law of Moses was given to men through other men.

[Lou Newton]

• Ann Lou Newton God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His word never changes. Are you saying we don't have to keep the Ten Commandments now if we are not under the law.
• 
  Mary-- If we are trying to be Christ-like ie Christian, might want to remember He was a practicing Jew! So Sabbath is for observance then sharing with family and friends on Sunday?

[Lou Newton]

• Lou Newton Ann - Yes, God never changes. There was no Sabbath law for Abraham. There is no mention of it until the law was handed down to men by another man, Moses. God gave Abraham a higher law of circumcision and it came from God directly. Did you read what The Holy Spirit wrote through Paul about following the law in Galatians 3. Did you receive the Holy Spirit by following the law, or trusting in Christ to save you ? Abraham was saved by God and was not even asked to follow any Sabbath 24 hour day. But Abraham was saved by trusting in the Sabbath ( who is the Lord Jesus) to save him. So if God never changes then the first Sabbath is the one that is important. I fail to see how anyone could argue that we have to follow a Sabbath Day after reading Galatians 3. I follow the privilege of a day of rest in my life. But I do not trust that it makes me one bit more righteous before God. How can allowing God to give me a day of rest make me one bit more righteous. It is simply a gift from God to us, not a service from us to God. Does worshiping God on a certain day make us righteous ? If one trusts in Jesus ( the real Sabbath) to save them, then what could anyone add to that by any act. Did you read my post about Galatians 3 ?
• 
  Lou Newton - Mary, why did the Pharisees first want to kill Jesus ? Was it not for not observing the Sabbath day according to their law ?
• 
  Lou Newton Ann and Mary- Certainly the 1st commandment is far more important than the 4th one. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. - Do either of you follow that one. Do you ever put ANYTHING before God. Do you always make God the most important thing in your life everyday ? I have not been able to follow that one and so I have not put much thought in trying to follow one less important until I can follow that one.