The Sabbath! I can’t think of a marker more distinctive to a working grunt than the clause, “Oh! Ahh… I don’t work on Saturdays…”. This phrase, said however gently, can and does affect and direct the paths we tread as we wander through our lives. The reactions people have to this phrase range from very negative to positive.
I love Sabbath! It is my favorite day of the week. Obedience is not even in my thoughts about it. It is a time for renewal, refreshment, and fellowship with family, friends, and God. Point to mention, I prefer Sabbath school class over sermon time any Sabbath.
Thank you for the encouraging story you have told.
Yet I have learned that it is Christ that sets us free, not the Sabbath. Sure the Sabbath set slaves, animals and farm families free from farm work. “On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.” Dt 5
However the Sabbath does not offer forgiveness, grace or salvation. This comes from faith alone, without any work that law requires (including the Sabbath). "A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. “So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.” Gal 2:16
“through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Rom 8:2
“For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” Heb 9:15
“To him who loves us and has free d us from our sins by his blood.” Rev 1:5
“Here is the patient endurance of the Saints, here are they that keep the commandants of God and have the testimony of Jesus” If you love God you will obey Him. Obedience includes valuing and obeying His Law including the Sabbath. The keeping of God’s commandments including 7th day Sabbath is how God’s people are identified. Just as those who worship the Roman Papal AntiChrist are identified by their keeping of the Papal Sunday.
Catholic Record (September 1, 1923):
“Sunday is our mark of authority…The [catholic] Church is above the Bible, and this transference of the Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.”
Chancellor Albert Smith for Cardinal of Baltimore Archdiocese, letter dated February 10, 1920:
“If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath day [which] by God is Saturday. In keeping the Sunday, they are following a law of the Catholic Church.”
The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1957): 50:
“We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.”
Our Sunday Visitor (February 5, 1950):
“Practically everything Protestants regard as essential or important they have received from the Catholic Church… The Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible and observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope.”
Louis Gaston Segur, Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-Day (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1874): 213:
"Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is a homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the (Catholic) Church.
I appreciate your experience and personal anecdotes. However, they do little to explain the many Saturdays where business goes on as usual for many, with no supernatural explanation for how things turned out or didn’t.
With that said, no real freedom other than the sabbath? Have you not read the NT and experienced Christ himself? “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free…”. This is the freedom of the gospel and faith in Christ of which Paul was speaking. Sabbath observance and the law had nothing to do with this…in fact, it was the yoke of bondage (yoke of Torah) that Paul was pleading with the Galatians not to be entangled with again.
If one wants to say that the sabbath acted as a type of shadow pointing to the freedom that Christ would bring, that would be appropriate. As Jesus read in the synagogue, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me… to preach deliverance to the captives…to set free them that are bruised…” Sabbath was pointing to what Jesus would do through the power of the Spirit, the freedom he would bring…not as the existential freedom itself. Those that rejected him could never know that freedom…even as they kept on observing the sabbath. And, many know this freedom, whether they observe the sabbath or not.
The emPHAsis is once again on the wrong sylLABle. As it often is in Adventist theology…
Frank
Thanks to both Franks for those important reminders. It is Christ who sets us free, and not the Sabbath. As important and helpful as Sabbath may be, let us look to and embrace real freedom in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour.
Those are trash arguments invented to tease Adventists with our own claims! Just try to find evidence of a pope changing the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday–EVER.
The Bible does NOT say that sabbath began at the International Dateline and it doesn’t say it began at sundown. Genesis tells us that the first day began when God said to let there be light, not let there be dark. And the Bible doesn’t endorse the designation of some sabbaths as moral and some as ceremonial. The commandment told the Israelites to rest on whatever day that would have been their seventh straight day of laboring, not God’s.
It wouldn’t kill us to admit that our pioneers messed up on a few things. 
Here are a few statements from Catholicism on the changing of the Sabbath.
Catholic Record (September 1, 1923):
“Sunday is our mark of authority…The [catholic] Church is above the Bible, and this transference of the Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.”
Chancellor Albert Smith for Cardinal of Baltimore Archdiocese, letter dated February 10, 1920:
“If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath day [which] by God is Saturday. In keeping the Sunday, they are following a law of the Catholic Church.”
The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1957): 50:
“We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.”
Our Sunday Visitor (February 5, 1950):
“Practically everything Protestants regard as essential or important they have received from the Catholic Church… The Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible and observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope.”
Louis Gaston Segur, Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-Day (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1874): 213:
"Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is a homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the (Catholic) Church.
The Catholic Mirror (September 23, 1893):
“The Catholic Church, for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday…”
Catholic Priest T. Enright, CSSR, Kansas City, MO:
“It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the 1st day of the week. And it not only compelled all to keep Sunday, but at the Council of Laodicea, AD 364, anathematized those who kept the Sabbath and urged all persons to labor on the 7th day under penalty of anathema.”
Catholic Priest T. Enright, CSSR, lecture at Hartford, KS, Feb 18, 1884:
“I have repeatedly offered $1000 to any one who can furnish any proof from the Bible that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep…The Bible says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” but the Catholic Church says, “No, keep the first day of the week,” and the whole world bows in obedience.”
Letter from C.F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons on October 28, 1895:
“Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act…And the act is a MARK of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.”
American Catholic Quarterly Review (January 1883):
“Sunday…is purely a creation of the Catholic Church.”
1
Catholic American Sentinel (June 1893):
“Sunday…It is a law of the Catholic Church alone…”
“The Question Box,” The Catholic Universe Bulletin (August 14, 1942): 4:
“The (Catholic) Church changed the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday by right of the divine, infallible authority given to her by her Founder, Jesus Christ. The Protestant claiming the Bible to be the only guide of faith, has no warrant for observing Sunday.”
Except the Catholic Church, despite these out of date written claims, didn’t change it. Believers were already meeting for worship and celebrating the Lord’s supper on the first day as early as the later first and early second centuries. Before there ever was a Roman Catholic Church. This is a matter of history.
They didn’t call it a new sabbath. It came to be referred to as the lord’s day. The observance of days was a mixed practice in the early church, reflecting a mixed body of Jews and Gentiles. Romans 14 indicates that under the new covenant, believers were to accept one another with their different views and practices regarding observance of days…this included the sabbath. It became an ancillary issue to a unifying faith in Christ.
As the church became more Gentile based, practice reflected it. This was more organic than you think. It didn’t all of a sudden rise with Constantine and the RCC.
Frank
I keep the Sabbath because it is one of God’s commandants and it is a sign to the world that I worship the God “who created the heaven and the earth the sea and the springs of water” and not the Roman Papacy who claims its “Mark of ecclesiastical authority is Sunday”. I also really enjoy the freedom of that day and it is a good day to spend time with family and doing the Lord’s work. This is one of the reasons I recently joined the 7th Day Adventist church.
That’s good for you. You just need to get history straight and realize that what the RCC claimed in the past isn’t a fully accurate reflection of that history.
Frank
I need to get history straight? I suppose you have the “straight” history? The more I engage with people on this site the more I realize it isn’t an Adventist affiliation. 
Does anyone know of another site where there are actually more than one Adventist? I’d really like to engage in truth for a change.
I wrote a post to you outlining how the early Christians began worshiping on the first day, long before there was ever a Roman Catholic Church. That’s historical fact. Go look it up. The RCC claims are overblown, and the Adventist church uses them as propaganda. Even Samuel Bacchiocchi, the foremost sabbath scholar the SDA denomination has produced, acknowledged such in his doctoral dissertation.
Get your head into historical fact, and out of ecclesiastical propaganda.
Frank
Of course Bacchiocchi denies the truth about the Roman Church he’s a Jesuit. Where are the Adventists in this Adventist forum? I left Babylon only to debate Babylon within the remnant church. Help!
Bacchiocchi’s a Jesuit?!!
Btw, don’t use the present tense. He’s been dead for years now.
Enjoy your conspiracy theories…
Frank
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Yeah…I’m a Jesuit, too.
Get real. This has been said by extreme right wing loons in the Adventist church for years. It’s character assassination, and there is no proof or truth to it.
Did you ever bother reading Bacchiocchi’s dissertation? He’s totally pro sabbath…not against.
Anyone who is informed knows this. Apparently, you need to read primary sources and stop listening to smear and innuendo.
Frank
A man educated by Jesuits. The same Jesuits who have infiltrated Protestantism to destroy it. Happens to be a ranking member of the last Protestant organization. But he’s not a Jesuit. That would make sense except it doesn’t. (I know I know, Its a conspiracy theory and I’m uniformed and any actual facts are “overblown”, we Adventist are known for this, its almost like we’re a cult or something.)
Frank I hope I didn’t upset you. Seems you won’t have much luck getting and converts to your side especially when you insult them on a regular basis. I wish you well.
If I insulted you I’m sorry. But, I don’t take kindly to smearing people rather than dealing with the content of their work, views, and research.
You think that I won’t gain supporters for my views? While that’s not my overriding motivation for writing here, you need to consider that no one takes seriously anyone who labels people without proof, and without consideration of their arguments. Or, who won’t listen to what history is really saying beyond their own catalogued quotations. The RCC claims of their authority by their change of the sabbath is not taking into account the whole picture of how and when Christians actually started meeting for worship on the first day.
Instead of labeling Bacchiocchi, and instead of fighting with me, go do some research outside of your denominational sources. Those were the same quotes I was fed thirty five years ago. Then I began to see the wider historical picture.
Frank
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