14/09/2021
NEITHER SATURDAY NOR SUNDAY IS SABBATH.
Is Saturday the true Sabbath?
A study by Rev Walter Mwambazi
Colossians 2:16-17 (NKJV)
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
I know this one is gonna open a Pandora's box but let’s check out some info below.
I am writing this because my wonderful brothers in a known sector within Christendom always accuse us (Catholics and Protestants alike) of carrying the "mark of the beast" or loosely rendered as Sunday worship. (666)
I have some news for you, neither Saturday nor Sunday are the Sabbath! 🤔
It is true that the seventh day of the GREGORIAN CALENDAR is called Saturday. However, the Gregorian Calendar is of relatively recent origin, and was not used by the Jews.
The modern calendar is entirely ROMAN. The Gregorian Calendar (AD 1582) is Pope Gregory's refinement of Constantine's calendar.
It was Constantine who invented the modern continuous week, with Sunday as the first day.
The modern calendar began in 46/45 BC, when Julius Caesar, in consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria (that's in Africa by the way - Egypt to be precise - but i digress ☺️) developed the Julian Calendar of 365.25 days. The big innovation was to separate the week from the lunar cycle and to make it a continuous cycle. It used an eight-day market week, with the days simply named "A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H".
You may be surprised to find that the Julian calendar had an EIGHT DAY WEEK. You may be even stunned to find that, a little more than 100 years later, the seven day planetary week was becoming popular in Rome BUT SATURDAY was the FIRST DAY of the WEEK, not the seventh.
Later on, the Roman Church changed the Sabbath, but you do not realize the extent of their change.
As mentioned earlier, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 (where the Bible as we know it was “bound” together – the 66 books we now call the Bible were scattered all over Asia Minor back then) replaced Passover with Easter.
This was not just a matter of replacing one day with another. It's a completely different system of calendation, since Passover (and the Sabbath) use the Lunar calendar, not the continuous weekly Julian calendar.
This has great implications on the so-called Sabbath or Saturday as the seventh day because it has not been a “seventh” day until the 4 century AD!
The reason most Jews keep Saturday today is the same exact reason that most Christians keep Sunday – because of Constantine's calendar change (approved by Hillel II), and the persecutions by which he enforced these changes. Neither Saturday nor Sunday is the Biblical Sabbath.
⚠️ Now note this bracketed statement below because it has serious implications ⚠️
(The Biblical calendar starts every month on New Moon Day, and the Sabbaths are always in the same place: The 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th of the month. This is why the feast days in Leviticus 23 have a Sabbath on the 15th of the month, and why the words "New Moon" and "Sabbath" often occur together in Scripture.)
So in short, it is virtually impossible going by days and counts to either have Saturday or Sunday as the Sabbath. Let me close with this scripture below...
John 4:21-24 (NKJV)
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 🤔
In all sincerity, I do not believe God is concerned as much with the Sabbath (though it once was very cardinal to observe it along with the entire Law) as He is with His grace, Salvation for mankind and the regeneration of man from darkness, sin and death to light, righteousness and life.
Now there is something to seriously ponder today. 🤔
