Some Sabbath keepers teach: "first day of the week" as all Bibles read, in Acts 20:7 & 1 Cor 16:1 is a mistranslation. The Greek in these two passages [MIA TON SABBATON] clearly refers to the weekly Sabbath! Just take a look at it with an interlinear! So Christians were told to take a collection (1 Cor 16:1-2) and partake of the Lord's supper (Acts 20:7) on the Sabbath day, not Sunday

     The "first day of the week" is examined in detail in the free online book on this site: The Scroll of Biblical Chronology and Prophecy:  Mapping the Times And Seasons of The Holy Scriptures.  Also the Sabbath Resurrection is a brief popular article on the subject.  Now that you know about these resources, I will return to the above quotation.  The first thing one can notice is their quotation seems to be a misprint.   It actually agrees with what we say here at www.torahtimes.org: "The Greek in these two passages clearly refers to the weekly Sabbath!"   Perhaps they meant to quote their opposition, but failed to state it?  Probably.  We will assume that.

        Sunday promoters are "under learned" in the Bible.  What they have learned is a tradition, and then by their tradition they corrupted the Bible texts.  Not only do these two texts (Acts 20:7; 1Cor. 16:2) say 'one of the sabbaths';  they all do, including the resurrection passages (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19).   The reason that they do not know God's covenant sign is that they do not keep his commandments (1John 2:3-4; John 15:10).   If one looks at J.P. Green's, "The Interlinear Bible" (vol. iv., 2nd edition) then one will see that it says, "one of the sabbaths" in Acts 20:7.   

        Further, the breaking of bread has nothing to do with the Lord's Supper in Acts 20:7.   The Lord's Supper is the Passover, and it was after the Passover (cf. Acts 20:5-6).  Further, they were not told to take a collection on the Sabbath!   1Cor. 16:2 says they were to put something aside at home!   So it is the Sunday worshippers that are promoting errors.  The Scripture does not teach to take communion on either Sabbath or Sunday, nor does it teach to take collections on either Sabbath or Sunday.    Here is their opening argument:

       Lexicons are full of the opinions of men and disagreements between scholars.   So we should not treat them like the Bible, yet we need them to help understand the original language.   They were written by men indoctrinated in Church tradition and ecclesiastical or Byzantine Greek.   Even so, they are useful provided one uses discernment and actually learns the meanings and grammars of words.  Remember that the Sunday Church argues from their own authority, and seldom from the facts themselves.   Any Lexicon will tell you that 'Sabbaton' means 'SABBATHS';  they have to because the word is used many times to mean 'Sabbaths' in the Apostolic  Greek texts.  They added the definition 'week' to the lexicons on the basis of their own tradition.  However, there is no independent confirmation of this addition to the lexicons from ancient sources contemporary with the Apostles.  There are no papyri or manuscripts showing this.  There are no letters, no comments.  There is nothing!    The trail of their chain of 'authority' goes cold in the second century A.D.  They cannot trace farther back than this time which was known to be an era of great apostasy and heresy.

       'One of the Sabbaths' was a common way of saying, 'a Sabbath' or 'first Sabbath Day';   It was not a common way of counting Sunday.  There is no authority for such a change inside the first century.   It was simply a common way of counting Sabbaths.  Our evidence for this is that this is what the phrase means from its literal linguistic components, plus it is the ONLY sense that agrees with the chronological context of Passion week.  The Scroll of Biblical Chronology and Prophecy:  Mapping the Times And Seasons of The Holy Scriptures proves this by finding the solution to all of Biblical chronology, and then showing how only the Sabbath Resurrection fits.  Their evidence is purely an argument from silence that is based on later Church tradition that contradicts the chronology of passion week.    Remember that Yeshua kept the Sabbath and that it took the Roman Catholic Church over a thousand years to stamp out respect for the Sabbath in the Eastern Church by making it a fasting day.   And today the apostasy still increases, and will still increase until they join the anti-Christ's one world religion.  "Isaiah 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no dawn for them."

        Here is their next argument:

Mark 16:1-2, YLT, "And the sabbath having past, Mary the Magdalene, and Mary of James, and Salome, bought spices, that having come, they may anoint him, 2 and early in the morning of the first of the sabbaths, they come unto the sepulchre, at the rising of the sun."

      There is no contradiction because the Sabbath in Mark 16:1 was the annual Sabbath which fell on Thursday that year, and the 'first of the Sabbaths' in Mark 16:2 was the first weekly Sabbath after the annual Passover Sabbath.  The women bought the spices between the two Sabbaths on Friday. Matthew 28:1 says, "And the later of the Sabbaths, at the dawning on the first of the Sabbaths ...." thereby confirming what was said in Mark.   "One of the Sabbaths" refers to Lev. 23:15, "You shall count ... seven Sabbaths shall be complete", and this is after the annual Sabbath (Lev. 23:11).  So the two Sabbaths are different.    MIA TON SABBATON is later than the annual SABBATON.

       What will their next argument be?  Let's see:

        This argument is not really an argument.  It's just an insult.  Actually most Sabbath faithful are deceived by the relentless attacks of the Sunday Church on the word of God and now think that the resurrection was on Sunday.   However, this was not always the case, and God will restore true shepherds to the remnant of Israel while the rest are perishing.  But even if the resurrection were on Sunday, this would not prove that Sunday observance is legitimate.   The commandment says that the seventh day is the day for a holy convocation and rest (Lev. 23:1-3; Exodus 20:8-11).   There is no commandment for Sunday, though they keep trying to make rules and keep forcing Jewish believers by their cultural tradition and peer pressure to violate the commandment.

        God's wishes for the observance of the Sabbath are clearly stated in the Scripture to Israel, and then by the Prophets for the age to come.  God has not changed his mind.  However, the excuse is that the Sunday crowd justifies their disregard of God's holy day by saying that they are honoring the resurrection of Christ.    However, they are not honoring Christ, because he said to keep his commandments, and that includes the Sabbath.   They only honor him with their lips and not in their hearts, because they know that even if the resurrection were on Sunday that this is no legitimate reason for changing God's commandment.

         Since they have justified their observance with a lie, it behooves us to refute that lie, even though we have no necessity to refute the lie in order to teach the legitimacy of the Sabbath.   The lie must be refuted because the Sabbath is a defense against apostasy.   For the one who keeps his commandment knows God, and if one knows God, then one is safe from apostasy.

         And even if Acts 20:7 read 'first day of the week', the service would have begun on the Sabbath and only have run late into Saturday night.    Likewise, the suggestion of Paul was for private persons to put something aside at home (1Cor 16:2).   It has nothing to do with a service or worship.  So even if that is the 'first day of the week', it proves no more than a command to those people to put something aside for his missionary efforts, and even then it is not a command to all, but just a command to the congregation leaders so that a collection will not have to be organized later.  For all persons, the giving is voluntary as the Lord leads.   Do not envision that Paul was saying a collection plate was to be passed around the pews on Sunday morning suggesting a service in progress.   That is not what it says.   Nor should Acts 20:7 be pictured as a Sunday morning service.  That is not what it says.   It says that there were 'lights' in the house.  So it was dark.   It was not a Sunday morning Church service.   The Sunday plate collection and Sunday service are rebellious church traditions learned from apostates long ago.

        Here is the final argument on their page:

          Point 1 is not true.   Point 2 is not true, because they haven't proved anything we say is wrong, except perhaps some of their own traditions that Sabbath observers have unwittingly borrowed.  The truth is that Sunday observance is promoted by liars who do not know the truth, and do not know God like they should.

          Here are some more arguments they put up in the form of graphics:

                 No they do not speak the truth.  Therefore, it is not done with love.  For the Scripture says that he who loves God will keep his commandments (John 15:10) and that God shows mercy to those who keep his commandments (Exodus 20:6).   God has not changed.  The Apostle John says that if we do not keep his commandments then we do not know him (1John 2:3-6).   The only reason that the Sunday Apostasy has any success in arguing with Sabbath observers is because the Sabbath observers, a) have adopted part of the apostasy themselves which is then used against them as a sort of circular argument b) the Sunday crowd attacks other sins not related to the Sabbath argument that Sabbath observers may be involved in when they themselves are committing worse sins.  Thus the proverbial picking of a mote out of the Sabbath observers eye while they have a plank in their own.

daniel@torahtimes.org

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