Author Archives: Svigel

About Svigel

Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, author, husband, father.

Putting the Sabbath to Rest

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Lately I’ve been encountering Christians from both denominations and “home churches” who are meeting on Saturday (the Sabbath) to worship, rather than on Sunday. When asked why they do this, the responses are diverse. Some believe the regulation in the Ten Commandments requires the observance of the Sabbath day. Others claim that this was the day the New Testament believers and the ancient church assembled for worship, and they want to return to that original practice.

Obviously, if the earliest Jewish believers (that is, the apostles and their first and second-generation converts) worshipped on Saturday, somewhere along the way the Christians changed from Saturday to Sunday. In fact, in The Da Vinci Code, this was one of the charges the dreadful fictional historian laid at the feet of Emperor Constantine and the “paganizing” of Christianity. He claimed that the earliest Christians worshipped on Saturday, but that when Christianity “sold out” to the world, they started worshipping on Sunday, the day the Roman and Greek pagans worshipped the sun.

Because this question comes up all too frequently, I wanted to debunk the myths and set things straight as a historian who actually knows what really happened. And unlike many biblical and historical issues, this matter is an open-and-shut case. The historical evidence is clear.

The Bible says the earliest Christians gathered together on “the Lord’s Day.” By AD 95, the phrase “the Lord’s Day” (Greek kuriake hemera) had apparently become a common term for the day of Christian corporate worship centered on preaching and the Lord’s Supper (called the “eucharist” or “thanksgiving”). We see that the Apostle John so used it in Revelation 1:10, assuming his readers in western Asia Minor would know immediately what he meant by “the Lord’s Day.”

Prior to that, the apostles referred to Sunday as “the first of the week,” on which Christ rose from the dead (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Jews at the time regarded Saturday (the Sabbath) as the seventh or “last” day of the week.

We see indications already in the earliest days of the church that the apostles and their disciples gathered together for worship on the “first day of the week,” that is, Sunday, in commemoration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts 20:7, we read: “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight” (KJV). The practice of “breaking bread” is an early reference to the corporate worship of the believers, centered on the Lord’s Supper and fellowship around the preached Word. We also see Paul addressing the issue of the collection of money for the churches in 1 Corinthians 16:1–2, instructing the Corinthians to make the collection “upon the first day of the week” (16:2). Because this was a collection from among members of the church, it indicates that this was the day they gathered together as a corporate body.

Now, we do know that on the Sabbath the apostles would go to the Jewish synagogues and preach about Christ to the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles. This is absolutely clear (Acts 13:14; 13:42; 13:44; 16:33). But this evangelism is not the same as gathering together for the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer—characteristics of early Christian worship.

So, from the New Testament we see that there’s an early emphasis on Sunday, the “Lord’s Day,” the day the Lord rose from the dead, also called the “first of the week.” When we move forward in church history to the very next generation of Christians—to people who actually sat under the teachings of the apostles and their disciples themselves—the picture becomes even more clear.

In Didache 14.1, a church manual which, according to an emerging consensus of specialists, was probably written in Antioch in stages between AD 50 and 70, the instruction is simply, “And on the Lord’s own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks.” The “Lord’s own day” is the same phrase used in Revelation 1:10 by John.

At about the same time (around A.D. 80 or so), an anonymous but highly-respected letter later attributed to “Barnabas” makes it clear that Christians intentionally worshipped not on the “seventh day” (the Sabbath), but on the “eighth day,” as a memorial of the resurrection:

Further, He says to them, “Your new moons and your Sabbath I cannot endure.” Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that which I have made, namely this, when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead. And when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the heavens. (Barnabas 15.8)

This evidence is important, because it comes to us from a very early and respected Christian document that helps us understand historically when the earliest Christians worshipped. It was the “eighth day” of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead: Sunday. Clearly th

Around AD 110, Ignatius, the pastor of Antioch, wrote a letter to the church in Magnesia of Asia Minor while on his way to martyrdom in Rome. In that letter he addressed the problem of Judaizers infecting the church with divisions and false doctrine, and found himself having to explain the Christian practice of worshipping on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath:

If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things [Judaism] have come to the possession of a new hope [Christianity], 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—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master . . . (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9.1)

Before you dismiss this evidence as “outside the Bible” and a later corruption by the church fathers, remember that Ignatius was not just some monk from the Dark Ages. He was an old man already by AD 110, which means he was middle aged when the apostles themselves still lived and as pastor of Antioch would have known some of them. Further, history tells us that he was close friends with Polycarp, pastor of Smyrna, who was himself ordained into the pastoral office by the apostle John himself. So, the teaching about Sunday worship by Ignatius almost certainly came from the apostles and their disciples, whom Ignatius knew. Furthermore, note that Ignatius was not pushing for a new day of worship, nor was he defending it. Rather, he was simply explaining why the original Jewish disciples of Jesus switched from keeping the Sabbath to worshipping on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of His resurrection.

The biblical and historical facts are clear: every bit of evidence we have shows that from the apostles themselves throughout the early church up until this very day, the true church met together for worship on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath, Sunday. On this day they commemorated week after week the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any teachers or traditions today that seek to establish Sabbath observance or corporate Christian worship on Saturday are not in keeping with the apostolic practice or the most ancient practice of the church, but are, in fact, deviating from the teachings of the apostles.

But what about Emperor Constantine in the fourth century? Didn’t he make Christianity the official Imperial religion, establish the State Church, and change Christian worship to Sunday? No! First, Constantine legalized Christianity (which had previously been outlawed). He did not make it the official state religion (that came later by future emperors). Second, his program of funding the construction of church buildings and the copying of Scripture was to replace the buildings and Bibles that had been destroyed or burned in the last great persecution. Those acts of Constantine were matters of restitution for wrongs inflicted on the church. Third, with regard to Sunday worship, Constantine simply decreed that Christians would be allowed to take Sunday mornings off for worship, making room in the laws for Christians to observe legally what they had already been observing illegally, that is, Sunday morning worship. Constantine did not, in fact, change Saturday to Sunday worship. (This myth, by the way, has been thoroughly debunked by patristic scholars, and I have recently attended meetings of patristic experts who were amazed that anybody would still allege such an indefensible version of history.)

Let’s briefly return to the reasons I’m often given for changing Christian worship to Saturday. 1) “Because the regulation in the Ten Commandments requires the observance of the Sabbath day.” If this were true, then the apostles and their original disciples themselves broke the Sabbath and set a bad precedence. This is unacceptable. 2) “The Sabbath was the day the New Testament believers and the most ancient Christian church assembled for worship.” This is simply not true and there is no evidence that it ever was. Those who maintain this claim are guilty of revisionist history.

Fact: from the days of the apostles themselves Christians have celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday. So, let’s stop this nonsense about “ancient Saturday worship” and put the Sabbath to rest.

When the Good Fight Goes Bad

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A new book came across my desk this morning for me to “review.” The title? From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime. The authors? Ted and Gayle Haggard.

Let me be the first to confess it. My Christian life has all the ingredients of a moral fall. And so does yours. For even the most godly Christians periods of growth seem to be disrupted by stagnation, fermentation, regression, repentance, and reformation . . . over and over again the cycle repeats itself.

But I’ve discovered that in those moments of stagnation—when I start to let the good fight go bad by dropping my spiritual fists lazily to my sides—God cries to me from the corner of the ring, “Get those gloves up! This fight isn’t over!” And many times the reviving bucket of icy water splashed in my face comes in a chilling form: the news of a moral fall.

If I reach the end of my life without losing my ministry and family to sin, it will be due in part to a hundred men and women who fell. Every time I hear or see a fellow soldier of Christ succumb to the sniper’s bullet of temptation, I instantly drop my head and inspect my own spiritual helmet and armor. I inevitably find that I’ve loosened the chin strap a little too much. Or I’ve stripped myself of the clunky flack jacket and donned a flannel shirt. Or I’ve exchanged my combat boots for Birkenstocks. Sadly, I sometimes get so used to the buzzing bullets of lusts and temptations that it takes the hideous carnage of somebody else’s moral fall to shock me back into combat mode.

In short, when we witness another Christian’s good fight go bad, we should fear. The words of 1 Corinthians 10:12 should nag us: “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”

You see, I have no doubts about whether or not I can withstand the barrage of trials and temptations leveled against me by the flesh, the world, and the devil. I am completely confident that left to my own strength, I will fall. When I see a spiritual giant take a mammoth tumble, I fear. Why? Because I know that in some dark, musty closet of my life—unvisited for months by God’s cleansing breathe—some toxic black mold spreads along the walls. And in the life of a fallen giant the mold’s poison was allowed to cultivate in the heart until the viscous spores consumed every chamber of his life.

When I discover the deterioration in my own life, I have a choice—to heed the warning God has placed before me through the downfall of one of his beloved saints . . . . or to pretend like the infection is minor, that it will heal itself, or that it isn’t the same kind of growth that takes a man down. If I choose the latter, stagnation becomes fermentation. Then fermentation leads to regression. Soon I will be drunk by my own self-deception, losing all discernment, tripping inebriated through life with blurred vision and muffled hearing, unable to judge right from wrong. I know that without God’s rude and intrusive call to repentance, my fate will be like the giants who have fallen before me.

Because I know the depravity of my own heart, I also know that the possibility that my good fight could go bad is very real. Given the wrong set of circumstances and left to my own devices, I would find myself up against the ropes reaching for the white towel. Or worse, I would find myself knocked out on the mat with the count of ten ringing in my ears.

So, when I see a book on marriage by Ted Haggard, the last thing I do is cluck my tongue and shake my head, pretending not to understand how a towering giant can stoop so low. I need only reflect for a moment on my own dark depravity for a simple explanation.

So, where are you in the cycle? Is your fellowship with God and His church in a period of stagnation? Are you fermenting in a sour odor of indulged sin? Are you regressing in your Christian life—neglecting family, skipping church, canceling accountability, shelving your Bible?

Or are you at the point of a decision? Has the moral fall of a giant shocked you into examining your own life? We all have a choice today. Either take a leap over the edge and plummet into shame . . . or turn around and run back to the arms of the Savior. He’s ready to grant repentance and revival to all of us who are stuck in a spiritual stupor (see Revelation 2:5; 3:3; 3:16–20).

Yes, another good fight has gone bad. But if we heed the warning of a fallen giant, it can be turned to our good.

Ahhhh . . . the Good Life of Faith!

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For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. (Hebrews 11:32–35)

Ahhhh . . . the good life of faith! That’s the kind of good news we like to hear, isn’t it? That’s the good life promised by the televangelist, the fruits of righteousness fertilized by the prosperity preacher. That’s our “best life now,” obtainable, we are told, by three simple steps to success . . . seven principles for happiness and joy . . . ten laws of abundant living. Filter the Bible’s story through the sieve of the American dream and that’s what you get: obtain promises, conquer kingdoms, escape the sword, be strong, successful, and victorious. Who wouldn’t want to live the good life of faith?

Years ago, at the beginning of my Christian life, I hung out with the Copeland-Hagin crowd, the famous “Word of Faith” peddlers of the prosperity gospel. I’ll be honest . . . there was something exciting about laying hands on anybody with a sniffle, interpreting every stray thought as a Word from the Lord, or warning Lucifer that we’d take him out to the woodshed and give him a holy whupping. Most of the time we treated Jesus like our own personal vending machine of blessing. If we said the right words, inserted the right amount of faith, pushed the right buttons, then we’d get what we wanted. Want a Cadillac? Name it and claim it. Want a bigger home? Gab it and grab it. Want to live in the lap of luxury? Confess it and possess it.

I recall one instance when I commented in passing to a particularly odd “prophetess” that I was starting to go bald. She instantly intervened, placing her hand on my head and shouting, “No you’re not in the name of Jesus!” Until that point I had no idea that balding was such a sickness, or that admitting it was such a sin. But in our “look good, feel good” culture, going bald was an unacceptable effect of the fall that Jesus died on the cross to reverse. (Incidentally, her magic spell obviously didn’t work on me and I suppose she would say it’s either Satan’s fault or mine.)

It was shortly after this incident that I escaped from that purgatory of Christian greed and its damnable prosperity “gospel.” It was out from under its spell that I saw the other side of the biblical witness, the life of faith those gurus and their goons had hidden from my eyes—the biblical and historical epics of those who, “having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised.”

…and others were tortured, not accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised. (Hebrews 11:35–39)

Note those last words well: they gained approval through their faith, but did not receive what was promised.

Now, we may think that as a non-charismatic, non-prosperity evangelicals, we’re off the hook. But think again. Though the means and method may be different, often our priorities and pursuits in the American evangelical subculture are exactly the same.

Take some time to scan the shelves of a Christian bookstore. Once you’ve gotten past the spiritual coffee mugs and inspirational key chains, you’ll soon be surrounded by positive-thinking, self-help, and moral development. Authors present the Christian life as an ascending ladder—seven steps to this, three keys to that, the one prayer that will revolutionize your world, expand your influence, fulfill your desire for happiness! The kind of dung stinking up the shelves of Christian bookstores is passed off as “Christian Living,” but it’s mostly useless psycho-babble or shallow pragmatism that assumes a few simple pointers and a couple encouraging words will solve fallen humanity’s most desperate problem: fallen humanity.

The real problem with many of us Christians today is that we think too highly of ourselves, that we are actually entitled to the “good life of faith.” We think our prayers will stop God in His tracks. We think God applauds us for accomplishing our personal goals. We think we were saved from sin to enjoy a big house, fancy car, and a great retirement (or at least that these things are neutral benefits that have no relevance to our spiritual life). In short, we think it’s all about us. But we’re wrong. It’s not all about us; it’s all about God. I’m convinced that many in the American evangelical church are in need of a change of heart and mind. We need to repent, not necessarily for what we have done, but for what we have become—a country club of soothsayers that have sold out to the American dream. We have gathered around us teachers to tickle our ears . . . and it feels too good to stop (see 2 Timothy 4:3–4).

We’ve exchanged the true life of faith with a false “good life” of faith. Yes, God prospers . . . but He also takes away. God heals . . . but He also afflicts. God delivers from adversity . . . but He also brings us through the crucible of suffering.

Trusting God doesn’t mean believing that He will bless, fix, or rescue us. Trusting God means accepting whatever His hand brings, knowing that all things are ultimately for our good and His glory.

That’s the good life of faith.

V.T. on T.V.?

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I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on the complexities of children’s television. If it’s like most human institutions, I’m sure it’s a swirling vortex of numerous interests—cultural, religious, political, and above all, economic. And I’m fairly certain that network executives are far more interested in turning a profit than in advancing their personal ideologies. But, acknowledging that I’m passing judgment on this complex world of television from the outside and probably over-simplifying it, allow me to comment on the sudden appearance of VeggieTales on NBC Saturday morning cartoons.

Although some have complained that VeggieTales had to water down its message to make it big, in my opinion this is really just a case of watered-down water. VeggieTales has never struck me as a distinctively Christian program. They never brought children face to face with the incarnate Son of God who died and rose again. They quoted a few Scriptures, told some Bible stories (mostly Old Testament), and pushed a Judeo-Christian ethic, but that alone could never introduce us to the Savior, without whom all the rest is powerless.

We have to remember that VeggieTales was always meant to appeal to a broader audience than evangelical Christians. Not only did evangelicals gobble it up like cotton candy, but so did Mormons and Catholics and everyone in between. Why? Because the morality was universal, the stories entertaining, the animation above average, the music outstanding, and the theology unobtrusive. It was, on all counts, safe viewing. You could allow kids to watch it without supervision. And you still can.

VeggieTales works best if you have believing parents helping them see that Christ is the center of the Christian life, not some moral dos or don’ts. However, this is probably done very rarely—even in Christian homes. And now the “Christian” message broadcast all over the world through VeggieTales T.V. is portraying Christianity as a set of moral choices without the heart of the Christian life—Jesus Christ. It’s all rather unfortunate, I think. But again, not much has changed between pre-NBC version of VeggieTales to the T.V. version. I don’t see how somebody could sustain a charge that VeggieTales “sold out” . . . they never had but crumbs to offer.

Like it or not, V.T. has come to T.V. Personally, as a father with three kids, I welcome the safe Saturday morning programming. However, I’m not counting on the T.V. version of V.T. for communicating to my children their spiritual need to know the person of Christ, the payment of His death, and the power of His resurrection.

In fact, I never have.

The Church Has Emerged . . . Deal with It!

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Postmodern Christians live with an uncomfortable tension between primitivism (going backward) and progressivism (moving forward). On the one hand, they are progressing, with the postmodern culture, out of the prison-like structures and strictures of modernism and the sometimes scientific approach to dogma that stripped the Christian life of its mystery. On the other hand, postmoderns sometimes see themselves as returning to the unity and diversity of the first century church, when the earliest Christians were joining together to find the right way to express their faith, hammering out Christian doctrine and practice in unique cultural contexts, and learning and teaching theology by doing and living theology. Those must have been exciting times as the church was emerging from the explosive event of the resurrection of Christ toward the rise of the worldwide body of Christ. Indeed, the first century church probably looked a bit more like the emerging church movement than do mainline churches, which probably look more like the churches of the second and third centuries.

But is this a good thing? Do we really want to retreat back to a first century, pre-catholic, pre-canon, pre-creedal Christianity?

No!

The Spirit led the church universal out of that period of infancy. Doctrinal standards were established. Scripture was collected and defined. The church has emerged. Paul wrote:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:11–16)

In Paul’s mind, the church was going to “grow up.” As in life, we learn from our childhood years and sometimes long for the innocence, nurture the naiveté, and wish we could relive some of the memories . . . but we cannot become infants or toddlers again. We must allow the youthful ingenuity and energy to continue to revive and revitalize us, but not to the detriment of maturity and wisdom.

The emerging church is not the only primitivist movement in Christianity. It is simply the latest. Every now and then we have groups of Christians that see themselves as direct heirs of the apostles, who want to plot themselves in the New Testament and stay there. They rewind the reels of history to around AD 100, chop off 1900 years of the Spirit’s recorded work, and try to splice their own strange version of Christianity at the end, hoping nobody will notice the inconsistency. In fact, they often re-interpret the early years of Christianity to support their new ideas.

But God sent the Spirit to lead the church into all truth. The Son did not leave us as orphans. He didn’t just throw us a thick book and tell us to keep struggling with the same conflicts as the Corinthians or to build on the same foundation as Peter and Paul. God has been building the body of Christ by the work of His Spirit for nearly 2000 years. Governed by the normative theology of the Bible, let’s continue to build on what has already been worked out in the history of the church.

And while we’re at it, let’s give up that strange idea of going back to the first century.

The church has emerged . . . deal with it!