Tag: Sunday

Aug 22 2006

Orthodox, Catholics, and Adventism

Mother of God of Vladimir, a 12th century icon

The Orthodox share with Catholicism most of the teachings that Catholicism and Protestantism disagree on. Mary, her sinlessness, her body taken up into heaven, the Eucharist being literally the physical body and blood of Christ, asking saints in heaven to pray for us, Apostolic succession, the liturgical expression of our faith, 46 books in the Old Testament instead of the Protestant 39 (actually, some Orthodox have more.) And so it goes on. On issues such as Mary and Purgatory, they tend to share the same beliefs, but express them in very different ways.

Continue reading

Jul 23 2006

Adventists changing the Bible?

10 Commandments

He chopped out the word “commandments” in Exodus 16:28, and replaced it with “Sabbaths” – he may well be quoting from the Clear Word Bible, but I am not sure of that. The Clear Word Bible is an Adventist composition that makes tremendous changes to the actual text in order to support Adventist teachings.

Continue reading

Jul 23 2006

Who changed the Sabbath?

Pope Pius V

Adventists often make the claim that Catholicism claims to have changed the Sabbath. They then cite their proof – unofficial texts, usually newspaper quotes, statements that disagree with the official Catholic position. This is a classic Adventist ploy. I’ve discussed it further here. Without that, Adventism can’t pinpoint which pope they claim changed the Sabbath.

Continue reading

Jul 07 2006

The anti-Catholic Oneness Pentecostal again

Angry ant

If people are not willing to be civil, to engage in reasonable discussion, I’m not interested. I have no time for rhetoric and misguided propaganda. How can they claim to be answering Catholicism when they aren’t able to even represent its teachings properly when they disagree with them? They can serve as an example … that’s all such a discussion can do. So here it is.

Continue reading

Jul 07 2006

Example of an anti-Catholic’s rhetoric

Angry ant

In summary, this seems to be a denomination on the very fringe of Christianity, even further out than the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who also have a peculiar set of beliefs. They appear to be Oneness Pentecostals … who, in my experience, are not good at honesty when it comes to Catholicism and others they disagree with.

Continue reading

Apr 06 2006

Bacchiocchi’s thesis – the Gregorian Controversy

Samuele Bacchiocchi’s book “From Sabbath to Sunday” attempts to discredit the claims of Protestants and Catholics that Sunday observance is an Apostolic institution, and promotes the idea that it was a later Catholic development. In his latest newsletter, Bacchiocchi mentions that his alma mater, the Gregorian University, has negated several of his claims about his credentials.

Continue reading

Dec 23 2005

Worshipping Ellen White

In his latest Endtime Issues (#141,) Samuele Bacchiocchi again criticises the papal stand on moral issues, and the commitment of Catholics to the support of Catholic moral teaching. It looks like moral strength is a sign of the end-time evil power. Or so many Adventists would have us believe.

Continue reading

Oct 23 2005

Who changed the Sabbath: Adventist misquoting

Often one sees Adventists quoting Catholic sources to show that the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath to Sunday. Usually these quotes are either from sources that are not real sources of Catholic teaching (e.g. newspapers) while others are taken out of context.

Continue reading

Oct 21 2005

Missing Sunday Mass a sin?

The Mass

Unless there is a good reason not to, refusal to worship with fellow Christians must be seen in a negative light – it is not good for the Christian, and it is not good for the fellowship of the Church. It is in that sense that not going to church is considered to be a sin. That is the moral sense that existed when the Sabbath was in force as well, and while the timing on the 7th day is no longer of importance to Christians, the same moral requirement to worship God applies to Christians on Sundays, Easter, Christmas, and any day when the faithful gather together as a group to celebrate some aspect of Christ’s life and work. For those who still keep the 7th day, God will judge their hearts, not their calendar, and so the same moral principle would apply to them regarding the Sabbath.

Continue reading

Oct 21 2005

Pope Sylvester I – who changed the Sabbath?

Michael Scheifler has a “rebuttal” on his website to something I wrote. He claims that the pope who changed the Sabbath to Sunday was Pope Sylvester I. In light of the teachings of Ellen White, and in light of history – as taught by real historians – this cannot be seen as more than a failed attempt to make the argument seem viable. But it is not viable.

Continue reading

Aug 05 2005

“Whatever happened to Sunday?”

Sometimes we should look past Adventism’s devotion to the Sabbath and see in it their devotion to God.

Continue reading

Aug 05 2005

Why Do We Worship on Sunday?

Sunday, not Saturday, is the Christian Sabbath. To continue to observe the fourth commandment on the last day of the week is to deny, by implication, the coming of Christ and his once and for all redemptive work. On the other hand, observing Sunday testifies to the fact that Christ has conquered sin and death so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Continue reading

Jul 14 2005

Bacchiocchi on the 58th General Conference

Doctor Bacchiocchi, don’t confuse type and antitype. Don’t try to prove your Sabbath theology by discrediting the New Testament’s fulfilment of the Old by means of false dichotomies used to water down the prophetic fulfilment of David’s words in Christ.

Continue reading

Dec 31 2004

The Sabbath and the Catholic Church

… by Dan Severino, circa 2004 – I used to be a member of the Worldwide Church of God. I returned to the Catholic Church about a year and a half ago. My mother is a member of one of the branches of this organization and the attached article is a rough draft I’m sending her to explain the Catholic position. … This paper will, as clearly as I am capable, explain the Catholic position. I will use Catholic documents; e.g. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the papal letter of Pope John Paul II entitled Dies Domini – On Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy, various writings of Catholic scholars, secular historians, Protestant scholars, as well as the Sacred Scriptures. Even though you may not agree with the conclusions, you will understand the Catholic position.

Continue reading

Apr 11 2004

Acts 18 – do Christians keep the Sabbath in Acts?

Yes, 72 Sabbaths spent preaching to unbelievers in a service organised by unbelievers. That was not a Christian worship service. In fact, every single such Sabbath gathering mentioned in Acts is of the same type – a NON-Christian service that some Christians were also attending to witness to those who had not yet accepted Christ. If your local Adventist pastor spent 72 Sundays preaching to Sunday-keepers in a Sunday-keeping church hall, would he be keeping Sunday? No … by the same logic, these texts are not evidence of Sabbath observance by Paul or other Christians.

Continue reading

Apr 11 2004

Acts 20:7 – a service on the first day of the week?

Acts 20:7 refers to a Christian worship service that was held on the first day of the week. According to the text, the service began AFTER the sunset which signaled the start of the first day, so it wasn’t even a continuation of a service that began the day before. A look at the grammar of the text in a reliable English translation, and better still, the original Greek, will prove wrong the claims by some Sabbatarian groups that this was a Sabbath service that extended into the next day – the text is explicit that the Christians only gathered for the service AFTER the first day had already begun.

Continue reading

Apr 11 2004

Easter weekend and the Sabbath / first day

Some Adventists try to avoid accepting that Jesus appeared on the Sunday of his resurrection, and the Sunday after that. But Luke 24:29 is pretty explicit that this was STILL Sunday. Look at the wording. In my RSV, it says that “it is TOWARD evening and the day is far spent.” This says that the day is NEARLY over, but still the same day … not yet Monday, sunset has not yet passed. This is a desperate attempt to defuse the evidence by destroying ANY Sunday visits by Jesus. But the Bible again proves the Adventist position wrong.

Continue reading

Dec 31 2003

The Sabbath and the 8th day

The Sabbath command is the only one of the Ten Commandments which can be altered in any way, because only it is a part of the ceremonial law. This is taught by the Roman Catechism issued after the Council of Trent: “The other commandments of the Decalogue are precepts of the natural law, obligatory at all times [and for all people] and unalterable. Hence, after the abrogation of the Law of Moses, all the Commandments contained in the two tables are observed by Christians, not indeed because their observance is commanded by Moses, but because they are in conformity with nature which dictates obedience to them

Continue reading

Nov 27 2003

1 Cor 16:2 – regular first day services?

1 Cor 16:2 is quite good evidence for regular Sunday observance. It shows that every week – regularly, weekly – on a certain day, the people collected money for mission work done by Paul. This day was the first day of the week. The passage does not directly state that there are worship services on the first day of the week, but one can deduce from the context that this had to be so. The money was brought together weekly to one place – when else but the weekly day of worship? What better day to collect such donations than the day on which the Christians came together as a group? If they kept the Sabbath, then this would have been the Sabbath. But it was Sunday Paul chose, which indicates that Sunday was an easier day to collect things into one place than the Sabbath was.

Continue reading

Nov 05 2001

Constantine, the Papacy, and the real origins of Sunday

If I understand the Catholic position correctly, they say the Pope did not change the Seventh Day Sabbath to Sunday. They contend this was done by the Apostolic Church and there is no record of a “Pope” making the change, but it was done on authority of the Catholic Church.

Continue reading