How did some Christians start observing Sunday instead of Saturday Sabbath?

The history of Sunday observance is intricate and varied, mostly influenced by Roman culture. Dies Solis, or Sunday, was already devoted to the sun god Sol Invictus in Roman society. In 321 AD, the first Christian emperor, Constantine I, declared Sunday to be a day of rest for everyone, even pagan people.

Even if it wasn't a very religious decision, it surely increased the significance of Sunday in society. Sunday, the first day of the week, began to acquire importance over time. With the passage of time, Sunday worship became firmly entrenched, and most faiths still consider it as such today.

1. 1.WHAT was Satan's ambition?

   Bible⇒ Isaiah 14: 14..

2. 2.When men turned from worshiping God, what did they worship?

   Bible⇒ Deuteronomy 17: 3; Jeremiah 10: 2 .

3. 3.What was the particular god of all heathen worship?

   — The sun. Exodus 32: 1-8. The calf was the Egyptian sun god ( Numbers 25: 1-4) — sun worship

   The golden calf was a representation of the sacred bull called Apis, which the Egyptians worshiped, and with which the Israelites had necessarily become very familiar during their long sojourn in Egypt. Concerning this god Apis and what it signified, we find the following : "Apis, the bull worshiped by the Egyptians, who regarded it as a symbol of Osiris, the god of the Nile, the husband of Isis, and the great divinity of Egypt."— Chambers' Encyclopedia. "All the mysteries of the Egyptians, and their whole doctrine of the future state, attach themselves to this worship [of Osiris]. Osiris was identified with the sun. . . . Sun worship was the primitive form of Egyptian religion, perhaps even pre-Egyptian." — Encyclopedia Britannica.

4. 4.Who was being worshiped in all heathen worship?

   Bible⇒ Deuteronomy 32: 16, 17.

5. 5.Why did the devil want worship?

   To be like the Most 'High.

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7. 6.When God's own people, Israel, turned from Him, to what did they go?

   Bible⇒ 2 Kings 23: 4, 5; Jeremiah 7:17-19; Jeremiah 7:9, 10; Ezekiel 6: 4 (margin, sun images) ; Ezekiel 8: 16 (sun worship).

8. 7.What day was dedicated to sun worship?

   " Sun-day, so called because this day was anciently dedicated to the sun, or to its worship." — Webster's Dictionary . " Sunday, the wild solar holiday of all pagan times." —The North British Review

9. 8.When they turned to sun worship, how did they treat God's Sabbath?

   Bible ⇉ Ezekiel 20: 13; Ezekiel 20: 16; Ezekiel 20: 24

10. 9.What message did God send to them to save them?

    Bible ⇉ Ezekiel 20: 19, 20; Jeremiah 17: 21-27

11. 10.When Christ was on earth, were the heathen still wor shiping the sun?

    — Rome ruled the world, and sun worship was the principal form of worship.

12. 11.What day did Jesus and all associated with Him observe?

    — The seventh day, Sabbath. Luke 4: 16

13. 12.What change did the apostle Paul say would come over the church?

    Bible ⇉ 2 Thessalonians 2: 3, 4.

    The theology of this [fourth] century began to be much adulterated and corrupted with superstition and heathen philosophy. Hence are to be seen evident traces of excessive veneration for departed saints, of a belief in a state of purgatory for souls after death, of the celibacy of the clergy, of the worship of images and relics, and of many other opinions, which in process of time almost banished the true religion, or at least very much obscured and corrupted it. . . . The same regard was paid, and efficacy was ascribed, to their temples, to water consecrated in due form, and to the images of holy men, that the heathen had paid to their temples, statues, and lustrations, long before. Images, however, were as yet but rare, and statues did not exist. The same worship began now to be paid to the martyrs which the pagans had paid to their gods, which were only deified men. From these specimens we may readily imagine how much injury resulted to Christianity from the peace and prosperity procured by Constantine, and from an indiscreet eagerness to allure the pagans to embrace this religion, by conforming to their rites and superstitions. Indeed, almost every error, either in doctrine or in form, may be traced to this source, its prototype may be found either in heathen philosophy or in the rites of pagan worship."— " Church History," Rev. James Wharey, cent. 4, sec. 7, pp. 60, 61.

14. 13.From what would the church fall?

    Bible ⇉— From the standard of the word of God. Acts 20: 29, 30. What would come into the church then?—The man of sin. 2 Peter 2:1, 2 .

15. 14.What would this power attempt to do?

    Bible ⇉ — To change the law of God. Daniel 7: 25. Does the Roman Catholic Church claim to have changed the Sabbath to Sunday?

    Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath. . . . The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws • of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place ; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin."— Neander's " History of the Christian Re• ligion and Church," p. 186.

    Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the Sabbatical observance of that day is known to have been ordained, is the edict of Constantine, 321 A. n."— Chambers' Encyclopedia, art. " Sabbath."

    It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest to the Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay. in spite of Themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] church."—" Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today," Mgr. Segur, p. 213.