Recently I was asked why I say the true Sabbath is Saturday and NOT Sunday, this article addresses this question.
Many years ago Father showed me that He had NOT changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday as practiced by nearly all Christians and that I should strictly observe Saturday as the Sabbath in accordance with the Fourth Commandment of the Ten Commandments as reported in Shemoth {Exodus} 20:8-11 “8“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of Yah the Eternally Self-Existing {the Lord} your Mighty One {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. 11 For in six days Yah the Eternally Self-Existing made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore Yah the Eternally Self-Existing blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” https://biblehub.com/nkjv/exodus/20.htm
This is very explicit and relates to ALL secular work including housekeeping – anything that is not absolutely critical such that there will be serious consequences if it is NOT done on the Sabbath.
I have also noted that, whereas, when I first became aware of the Saturday Sabbath that most calendars had Saturday as the Seventh day of the week with Sunday as the first, many calendars today have Monday as the first day of the week and Sunday as the Seventh. So it has become increasingly difficult to determine the truth. Hence this article.
The Ten Commandments were given by Yah {incorrectly The LORD} audibly to millions of people at Horeb and then confirmed in writing by the Almighty carved into two stone tablets by Him and given to Moshe {Moses} – Shemoth 19 and 20 and related passages.
Shemoth 31:8 “And when He [Yah] had made an end of speaking with him [Moshe] on Mount Sinai, He gave Moshe two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of Yah {God}.” https://biblehub.com/exodus/31-18.htm
The Ten Commandments on the two Tablets of Stone were the ONLY items placed within the Ark of the Covenant 1 Melakim {Kings} 8:9 “Nothing was in the ark except the two tablets of stone which Moshe {Moses} put there at Horeb [Sinai}, when Yah the Eternally Self-Existing {the LORD} made a covenant with the children of YisraEl {Israel}, when they came out of the land of Mitzraim {Egypt}.” -- https://biblehub.com/1_kings/8-9.htm
So we see clearly that the Sabbath is ordained as the Fourth Commandment of the Ten, written by the finger of Yah in stone which means that it NEVER changes.
Yahooshua did NOT come to change the Ten Commandments, he repeatedly enjoined his followers to keep the Ten Commandments, MattihYahoo {Matthew} 5:18 “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the Ten Commandments {law} till all is fulfilled” -- https://biblehub.com/matthew/5-18.htm
Therefore the followers of Yahooshua after his death did NOT have the authority to change the Ten Commandments and specifically the Fourth Commandment with regard to the Sabbath or anything else.
Yahooshua DID Fulfil many clauses
That said, Yahooshua DID fulfil many of the provisions of the wider “law” and the “prophets” as stated in MattihYahoo 5:17 ““Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” See the article “2020.10.01 The miraculous planning of the death of Yahooshua – where, how and what” at https://www.etimin.org/miracle-of-yahooshua-jesus-death which discusses the parts of the “law” that WERE fulfilled by Yahooshua.
Thus, it IS true that Yahooshua FULFILLED a number of passages but he did NOT change any of the Ten Commandments. To suggest that he did is serious error.
Proving Saturday
In response to the question referred to above it is relatively difficult to prove that the TRUE Sabbath is Saturday NOT Sunday – there is nothing in the Bible that specifically addresses this point in an explicit way. Throughout the so-called “Old Testament” it is taken as a given that the Sabbath corresponds to the day of the week that we today call “Saturday” and a Google search on “Hebrew meaning of Saturday” returns “The Hebrew word for Saturday is Shabbat, which means "rest" or "cessation".” Inherently it is taken that the Sabbath is Saturday!
However, it is widely accepted Christian teaching that Sunday is the day of rest that has REPLACED Saturday.
Considering how to answer the question of why I say that the Sabbath is Saturday NOT Sunday, I undertook some research of Catholic teaching since the principal proponents of observing Sunday as the Day of Rest and NOT Saturday, are from the Catholic view.
Wrong Thinking
Following are two documents from www.Catholic.com that evidence that the Catholic Church formally changed the day of rest, the Saturday Sabbath, to Sunday although they seem to steer clear of calling Sunday the Sabbath and go the route of saying that they are NOT required to observe the Sabbath but observe Sunday as “The Lords Day”. In some cases there is vitriolic rejection of “Judaism” which is an offence to Yah.
I have highlighted a few of the passages that really stand out for me.
Firstly, note that the argument equating an alleged abolition of circumcision with abolishing the Saturday Sabbath is spurious, circumcision is NOT one of the Ten Commandments.
Various other arguments are advanced on the basis of Bible verses in the so-called “New Testament” from MattihYahoo to Revelation which allegedly prove that the early Believers observed “the Lords Day” being Sunday and that this justifies the position of the “Church”. These arguments simply confirm that the early Believers were in significant error at an early stage.
The wrong thinking in these two articles is indicative of the wrong thinking and error that crept into Christianity at an early stage that resulted in many of the errors that are today widely accepted as truth.
Further arguments are advanced none of which recognizes that the seventh day Sabbath is literally Cast in Stone! – These arguments must therefore be discounted.
Observing Sunday instead of Saturday is NOT valid for True Believers whose focus is on pleasing Yah. Observing the Sabbath or day of rest as Sunday instead of Saturday (working on Saturday) is sin and will result in time in Hell at the end of life for Believers unless repented of, see “2022.08.03 Believers in Hell for Unrepented Sin” at https://www.etimin.org/believers-in-hell-for-unrepented-sin
It is entirely acceptable to engage in secular activities and work on Sunday, it is NOT on Saturday.
A Complication -- Sunset or Sunrise
In considering the Sabbath, there is a further complication.
Most people, including most (all?) Jews hold that the Sabbath commences at Sunset on Friday and runs to Sunset on Saturday.
If one considers this prayerfully it does NOT make sense for the Day to commence with Night. A Day commences when the Sun rises, that is at the commencement of daylight. Father Yah has been very explicit about this to me going back many years.
Prayer for Forgiveness
It is absolutely certain that the Sabbath that is referred to in Shemoth {Exodus} 20:8 is Saturday from Sunrise Saturday to Sunrise Sunday and NOT Sunday. It is sin to engage in secular activities on Saturday see “2022.03.01 The Essence of my Message Regarding Sabbath Observance” at https://www.etimin.org/essence-of-message-re-sabbath-observance and “2023.04.10 Sabbath Observance is Critical” at https://www.etimin.org/sabbath-observance-is-critical
If you now realise that you have sinned in this regard pray as follows “Father Yah, I come to you in the name of Yahooshua, I confess that I have sinned by working on Saturday and NOT observing the TRUE Sabbath. I repent and ask you to forgive me. I thank you that you forgive me and I ask you to help me walk the right path with you from now on. Amen.” Take the Bread and Wine of the Covenant Meal as set out in the Article “2024.07.03 Prayers to Rehearse the Covenant Meal {Communion} for Forgiveness of Sin and Protection” at https://www.etimin.org/prayers-to-rehearse-the-covenant-meal-communion-for-forgiveness-and-protection
Conclusion
I strongly encourage you to observe the true Saturday Sabbath from now on. Happy to answer your questions, be great to hear from you 😊
Please feel free to email me by replying to this email if you have questions or comments.
May Father bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and grant you His Peace
May Yah judge me severely and correct me harshly and show me the level of my present deception and how to correct it with regard to everything that I write and publish
Warm regards and blessings,
Dr James A Robertson
Spokesman and Emissary of Yah
End Time Issue Ministries
02 March 2025
Please forward to anyone you think will benefit from this article.
Appendix A
Did the Early Church Move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday?
Peggy Frye
https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-the-early-church-move-the-sabbath-from-saturday-to-sunday
Question:
Until recently, I always thought Catholics worshiped on the Sabbath, and that the early Church moved the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Is this true?
Answer:
This is a common misunderstanding. Catholics do not worship on the Sabbath, which according to Jewish law is the last day of the week (Saturday), when God rested from all the work he had done in creation (Gen. 2:2-3). Catholics worship on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week (Sunday, the eighth day); the day when God said “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3); the day when Christ rose from the dead; the day when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles (Day of Pentecost). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “The Church celebrates the day of Christ’s Resurrection on the ‘eighth day,’ Sunday, which is rightly called the Lord’s Day” (CCC 2191).
The early Church did not move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Instead “The Sabbath, which represented the completion of the first creation, has been replaced by Sunday, which recalls the new creation inaugurated by the Resurrection of Christ” (CCC 2190). Sunday is the day Catholics are bound to keep, not Saturday.
We see evidence of this in Scripture:
- On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he kept on speaking until midnight (Acts 20:7).
- On the first day of the week each of you should set aside and save whatever one can afford, so that collections will not be going on when I come (1 Cor. 16:2).
- Let no one, then, pass judgment on you in matters of food and drink or with regard to a festival or new moon or Sabbath (Col. 2:16).
The Catechism also says:
By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ’s Resurrection, the Church celebrates the Paschal mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord’s Day or Sunday. The day of Christ’s Resurrection is both the first day of the week, the memorial of the first day of creation, and the “eighth day,” on which Christ after his “rest” on the great Sabbath inaugurates the “day that the Lord has made,” the “day that knows no evening.” (CCC 1166)
Other CCC references to the Lord’s Day: 349, 2174, 2175, 2191
For more on this topic, see our Q&A, “Did Jesus Alter the Commandment about Observing the Sabbath?” and our tract, “Sabbath or Sunday?“
Appendix B
What the Early Church Believed: Sabbath or Sunday?
https://www.catholic.com/tract/sabbath-or-sunday
Some religious organizations (Seventh-day Adventists, Seventh-Day Baptists, and certain others) claim that Christians must not worship on Sunday but on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
They claim that, at some unnamed time after the apostolic age, the Church “changed” the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.
However, passages of Scripture such as Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, Colossians 2:16-17, and Revelation 1:10 indicate that, even during New Testament times, the Sabbath is no longer binding and that Christians are to worship on the Lord’s day, Sunday, instead.
The early Church Fathers compared the observance of the Sabbath to the observance of the rite of circumcision, and from that they demonstrated that if the apostles abolished circumcision (Gal. 5:1-6), so also the observance of the Sabbath must have been abolished.
The following quotations show that the first Christians understood this principle and gathered for worship on Sunday.
The Didache
“But every Lord’s day . . . gather yourselves together and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned” (Didache 14 [A.D. 70]).
The Letter of Barnabas
“We keep the eighth day [Sunday] with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead” (Letter of Barnabas 15:6–8 [A.D. 74]).
Ignatius of Antioch
“[T]hose who were brought up in the ancient order of things [i.e. Jews] have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death” (Letter to the Magnesians 8 [A.D. 110]).
Justin Martyr
“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead” (First Apology 67 [A.D. 155]).
The Didascalia
“The apostles further appointed: On the first day of the week let there be service, and the reading of the holy scriptures, and the oblation [sacrifice of the Mass], because on the first day of the week [i.e., Sunday] our Lord rose from the place of the dead, and on the first day of the week he arose upon the world, and on the first day of the week he ascended up to heaven, and on the first day of the week he will appear at last with the angels of heaven” (Didascalia 2 [A.D. 225]).
Origen
“Hence it is not possible that the [day of] rest after the Sabbath should have come into existence from the seventh [day] of our God. On the contrary, it is our Savior who, after the pattern of his own rest, caused us to be made in the likeness of his death, and hence also of his resurrection” (Commentary on John 2:28 [A.D. 229]).
Victorinus
“The sixth day [Friday] is called parasceve, that is to say, the preparation of the kingdom. . . . On this day also, on account of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we make either a station to God or a fast. On the seventh day he rested from all his works, and blessed it, and sanctified it.
On the former day we are accustomed to fast rigorously, that on the Lord’s day we may go forth to our bread with giving of thanks. And let the parasceve become a rigorous fast, lest we should appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews . . . which Sabbath he [Christ] in his body abolished” (The Creation of the World [A.D. 300]).
Eusebius of Caesarea
“They [the early saints of the Old Testament] did not care about circumcision of the body, neither do we [Christians]. They did not care about observing Sabbaths, nor do we. They did not avoid certain kinds of food, neither did they regard the other distinctions which Moses first delivered to their posterity to be observed as symbols; nor do Christians of the present day do such things” (Church History 1:4:8 [A.D. 312]).
“[T]he day of his [Christ’s] light . . . was the day of his resurrection from the dead, which they say, as being the one and only truly holy day and the Lord’s day, is better than any number of days as we ordinarily understand them, and better than the days set apart by the Mosaic law for feasts, new moons, and Sabbaths, which the apostle [Paul] teaches are the shadow of days and not days in reality” (Proof of the Gospel 4:16:186 [A.D. 319]).
Athanasius
“The Sabbath was the end of the first creation, the Lord’s day was the beginning of the second, in which he renewed and restored the old in the same way as he prescribed that they should formerly observe the Sabbath as a memorial of the end of the first things, so we honor the Lord’s day as being the memorial of the new creation” (On Sabbath and Circumcision 3 [A.D. 345]).
Cyril of Jerusalem
“Fall not away either into the sect of the Samaritans or into Judaism, for Jesus Christ has henceforth ransomed you. Stand aloof from all observance of Sabbaths and from calling any indifferent meats common or unclean” (Catechetical Lectures 4:37 [A.D. 350]).
Council of Laodicea
“Christians should not Judaize and should not be idle on the Sabbath, but should work on that day; they should, however, particularly reverence the Lord’s day and, if possible, not work on it, because they were Christians” (Canon 29 [A.D. 360]).
John Chrysostom
“[W]hen he [God] said, ‘You shall not kill’ . . . he did not add, ‘because murder is a wicked thing.’ The reason was that conscience had taught this beforehand, and he speaks thus, as to those who know and understand the point. Wherefore when he speaks to us of another commandment, not known to us by the dictate of conscience, he not only prohibits, but adds the reason. When, for instance, he gave commandment concerning the Sabbath— ‘On the seventh day you shall do no work’—he subjoined also the reason for this cessation. What was this? ‘Because on the seventh day God rested from all his works which he had begun to make’ [Ex. 20:10-11]. . . . For what purpose then, I ask, did he add a reason respecting the Sabbath, but did no such thing in regard to murder? Because this commandment was not one of the leading ones. It was not one of those which were accurately defined of our conscience, but a kind of partial and temporary one, and for this reason it was abolished afterward. But those which are necessary and uphold our life are the following: ‘You shall not kill. . . . You shall not commit adultery. . . . You shall not steal.’ On this account he adds no reason in this case, nor enters into any instruction on the matter, but is content with the bare prohibition” (Homilies on the Statutes 12:9 [A.D. 387]).
“You have put on Christ, you have become a member of the Lord and been enrolled in the heavenly city, and you still grovel in the law [of Moses]? How is it possible for you to obtain the kingdom? Listen to Paul’s words, that the observance of the law overthrows the gospel, and learn, if you will, how this comes to pass, and tremble, and shun this pitfall. Why do you keep the Sabbath and fast with the Jews?” (Homilies on Galatians 2:17 [A.D. 395]).
“The rite of circumcision was venerable in the Jews’ account, forasmuch as the law itself gave way thereto, and the Sabbath was less esteemed than circumcision. For that circumcision might be performed, the Sabbath was broken; but that the Sabbath might be kept, circumcision was never broken; and mark, I pray, the dispensation of God. This is found to be even more solemn than the Sabbath, as not being omitted at certain times. When then it is done away, much more is the Sabbath” (Homilies on Philippians 10 [A.D. 402]).
The Apostolic Constitutions
“And on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, which is the Lord’s day, meet more diligently, sending praise to God that made the universe by Jesus, and sent him to us, and condescended to let him suffer, and raised him from the dead. Otherwise what apology will he make to God who does not assemble on that day . . . in which is performed the reading of the prophets, the preaching of the gospel, the oblation of the sacrifice, the gift of the holy food” (Apostolic Constitutions 2:7:60 [A.D. 400]).
Augustine
“Well, now, I should like to be told what there is in these ten commandments, except the observance of the Sabbath, which ought not to be kept by a Christian” (The Spirit and the Letter 24 [A.D. 412]).
Pope Gregory I
“It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these [men] but preachers of Antichrist, who when he comes will cause the Sabbath day as well as the Lord’s day to be kept free from all work. For because he [the Antichrist] pretends to die and rise again, he wishes the Lord’s day to be held in reverence; and because he compels the people to Judaize that he may bring back the outward rite of the law, and subject the perfidy of the Jews to himself, he wishes the Sabbath to be observed. For this which is said by the prophet, ‘You shall bring in no burden through your gates on the Sabbath day’ [Jer. 17:24] could be held to as long as it was lawful for the law to be observed according to the letter. But after that the grace of almighty God, our Lord Jesus Christ, has appeared, the commandments of the law which were spoken figuratively cannot be kept according to the letter. For if anyone says that this about the Sabbath is to be kept, he must needs say that carnal sacrifices are to be offered. He must say too that the commandment about the circumcision of the body is still to be retained. But let him hear the apostle Paul saying in opposition to him: ‘If you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing’ [Gal. 5:2]” (Letters 13:1 [A.D. 597]).
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