A short series based off of a recent question someone asked. There is a lot of controversy when it comes to the Sabbath day. I plan on showing what we believe and give the sources behind it.
To start off: What day of the week is it? This is part one of at least two parts.
What I am not going to cover in these is when a day begins. I know there are different thoughts on that, but that is not the scope here. In both views that I am aware of (a day starting at evening and a day starting at morning) the daytime of a day of the week is still part of the day. For example, Sunday daytime is still Day 1 to both views. So I will just be using the Gregorian day names.
We have established in Genesis chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2 how a week goes. Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and then Rest/Sabbath. Move onto the Exodus and we are given this same pattern again a few times. Exodus 16 gives the account of mana being gathered and how in 6 days it should be gathered, and on the 7th, none will be gathered. They are to rest. In Exodus 20 we are given the 10 Commandments and the 4th commandment is about the Sabbath. Again, mentioning that we work only 6 days and rest on the 7th day, the Sabbath. These accounts also reference the account in Genesis as the basis. Then just before the golden calf incident in Exodus 31, we are reminded again to keep the 7th day as the Sabbath.
These verses are the main witness here as to why what we call Saturday on the Gregorian calendar is the Sabbath. Now, I know there are objections to this, the main one being that the calendar has changed so many times since we have these accounts in Exodus and it is impossible to know when the real Sabbath day is. To this, I want to give more witnesses.
First is the picture drawn. This is an example of when peoples around the world converted their calendar over from Julian to Gregorian. Notice that the days of the week stayed the same? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We go from Thursday the 4th, to Friday the 15th. The 7 day cycle stayed the same, we just jumped further into the month. But there were many other calendars before the Julian, so why is this change important? That leads us to our second point.
Second: The Jews keep Saturday as the Sabbath. This can be seen by Jewish people today and throughout their history. We also have records of historians to attest that it is the 7th day that they are observing. Roman historian Tacitus documents them not working on Saturn’s Day (Saturday) https://www.livius.org/sources/content/tacitus/tacitus-on-the-jews/ . But one could argue that just because the Jews do it, doesn’t make it right. Which leads to the third point.
Third: Yeshua/Jesus’ time in Israel is documented during the time that the Julian calendar is being used. Yeshua spoke on many things and corrected the Jews on several things that they weren’t doing exactly according to the Father’s instructions, but never is it recorded that He reprimanded them for keeping the Sabbath on the wrong day. There is even accounts of Him attending a Sabbath service in Luke 4.
With these 4 witnesses, we can show that Saturday is the Sabbath.