Sunday is commonly the target of Sabbatarian theology, used for the purpose of creating a classic straw-man argument. By disparaging Sundays, the Sabbath “wins by default.” But, it is an apples and oranges comparison. The Sabbath was instituted as a day of rest from labor, done on the previous six days a week. The first day of the week, now called “Sunday” was originally instituted, not as a day of rest, but solely as a day of corporate worship, prayer, and fellowship. It was not treated by the early church in any sacred manner. There are, in fact, no sacred days established in the New Covenant dispensation. That some churches, later in history, applied Sabbath-like attributes erroneously to Sunday does not in turn validate the Sabbath as a requirement in Christianity.
Rest is not worship. Worship is not rest.
Sabbatarian theology appears to be little more than a veiled attempt to disparage Sunday worship more-so than establishing Saturday as their Sabbath. The rules governing the Sabbath are often ignored in Sabbatarian organizations. The fact that the Sabbath was originally determined using an entirely different calendar schema is of little to no interest to them. Theirs is, in fact, a contrived sabbath that bears very little resemblance to the Sabbath of the Bible. More effort is expended knocking down their straw-man Sunday than is expended defending their own position regarding their Sabbath.
Compounding all this is the fact that we live on a round, globe shaped earth. When the Sabbath came about for Israel, half of the earth was not in that time frame of being the Sabbath. And, Scripture does not address the issue regarding the keeping of the Sabbath outside the confines of the nation of Israel.
Do you determine the Sabbath outside the confines of Israel going east or west, paying attention to sunsets?
At first, a Sabbatarian is confused by the very question. But, for every thousand miles (approximately) you go west from Israel, the Sabbath would begin an hour later. Traveling east, the Sabbath would begin an hour earlier. Take one person going west, and one going east, and have them meet on the other side of the world, and they are both keeping the Sabbath on a different day.
God gave prophesies in the Old Testament writings that He would do away with the Sabbath. God did not lie. It is no longer extant. It is no longer relevant. It, like so many other things in the old covenant, was a shadow of a greater, spiritual “reality.” There is a rest found in Christ that is permanent, and not temporary like the weekly Sabbath. There is God's Rest, which He entered into on that seventh day of Creation Week, that Scripture states is entered into through faith; something the Hebrews could not do, yet they did enter into the weekly Sabbath- rest that foreshadowed God's Rest, that they did not enter into due to their unbelief. (Heb. 4)
The Sabbath serves but one purpose to the advocates of the Sabbath. It is a means of recruiting people who are willing to compromise with Scripture, a little, even nearly imperceptibly to begin with, who will then in turn compromise more when introduced to tithing as a means of exploiting them into feeding wolves. It is a way to incrementally get people to compromise with Scripture through Assumptive Reasoning. This is the hermeneutic of the deceived. Once instilled with this spurious method of interpretation, it is hard to see it for what it is, and jettison it.
The most common argument (deception) put forth to convince people to keep the Sabbath, and in turn fund the wolves, is to convince the recruit that they are not free to sin, sin being defined as the transgression of the law, (read: the Ten Commandments to the exclusion of the rest of the law) citing the flawed translation found in the King James translation, which translation was lifted from the earlier Geneva Bible, whose translators borrowed it from the even earlier English translation, the Bishop's Bible. This was all in regards to a time when rules of translation were nearly non-existent. Sin could be the result of transgressing the law, for one under the law, but not always even for those Hebrews. Jesus points this out in His discourses in Scripture. Regardless, a Christian, who is not under the law, is also described and defined as being freed from the law, and dead to the law, as well as dead to sin and freed from sin. These concepts are poorly understood by many a Christian, and wolves know how to exploit people's ignorance.
God states in Scripture that He will (and did) take away the Sabbath.
I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. – Hosea 2:11
The most common argument to circumvent what God prophesied is to claim God is saying “her” Sabbaths, and not “His” Sabbaths. God gave them “His” Sabbaths, along with these other things. They had no such other days. The day would come when all these things would cease. That day was the day that covenant legally ended upon the death Christ; God Incarnate.
The most effective deceptions are the ones that the adherents to them refuse to question. Those who have bought into the Sabbath, end up believing no other possibility exists regarding a belief system. It must be true. To them, it is impossible that it might not be true. That is the veil before the eyes Paul wrote about in II Corinthians chapter 3. If you believe in the Sabbath; that you have to keep the Sabbath, you will look at that, and not comprehend. It says those who have that veil before their eyes are those who are hung up on what Moses both wrote and taught; the law, including the Sabbath. Your gaze is on the wrong things. And you pay dearly for your “oversight.”
Sabbatarianism exists for one main, overarching reason. It exists as but another arrow in the quiver of the devil’s arsenal to wreck havoc on the true gospel so that people abandon and reject a faith-based Christianity.
If those advocating the Sabbath actually kept the Sabbath, they would be keeping the Sabbath of Scripture, in the manner prescribed in Scripture, using the lunar calendar of Scripture that resets the week every new moon.
Again, it isn’t really about keeping THE old covenant law and Sabbath. It is about convincing people to abandon a faith based Christianity. The serpent’s deception was to get Eve to not believe God, and belief is tied to faith.
Keeping a fake sabbath and a truncated law is just as effective in this scenario as trying to keep all the law and the real Sabbath of Scripture. Most people would figure out quickly enough that the “whole” law, with all the temple requirements, could never truly be kept today, hence the truncated law embodied in the Ten Commandments. It is a “dumbed-down” law that appears “do-able.” A Critique of Which Day is the Christian Sabbath? by William Hohmann
