6. Did the apostles keep the Sabbath on the seventh day?
“Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2).
“Paul and his party … went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down” (Acts 13:13, 14).
“On the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there” (Acts 16:13).
“[Paul] reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 18:4).
Answer: Yes. The book of Acts makes it clear that Paul and the early church kept the Sabbath.
7. Did the Gentiles also worship on the seventh-day Sabbath?
God said, “Blessed is the man … who keeps from defiling the Sabbath. … Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord … everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant—even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer … for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:2, 6, 7, emphasis added).
The apostles taught it: “When the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. … On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:42, 44, emphasis added).
“He reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 18:4, emphasis added)
Answer: The apostles in the early church not only obeyed God’s Sabbath command, but they also taught the converted Gentiles to worship on Sabbath.
8. But wasn’t the Sabbath changed to Sunday?
Answer: No. There is no suggestion anywhere in the Scriptures that Jesus, His Father, or the apostles ever—at any time, under any circumstance—changed the holy seventh-day Sabbath to any other day. Indeed, the Bible teaches the opposite. Consider the evidence for yourself:
A. God blessed the Sabbath.
“The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:11).
“God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it” (Genesis 2:3).
B. Christ expected His people to be still keeping the Sabbath in A.D. 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed.
Knowing full well that Jerusalem would be destroyed by Rome in A.D. 70, Jesus warned His followers of that time, saying, "But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter,
neither on the sabbath day." (Matthew 24:20, emphasis added). Jesus made it clear that His people would be keeping the Sabbath even 40 years after His resurrection.
C. The women who came to anoint Christ’s dead body kept the Sabbath. " (Mark 15:37, 42), which is now called Good Friday.
Jesus died on “the day before the Sabbath” (Mark 15:37, 42), which is often called “Good Friday.” The women prepared spices and ointments to anoint His body, then “rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). Only “when the Sabbath was past” (Mark 16:1) did the women come “on the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2) to continue their sad work. They then found Jesus “rose early on the first day of the week” (verse 9), commonly called “Easter Sunday.” Please note that the Sabbath “according to the commandment” was the day preceding Easter Sunday, which we now call Saturday.
D. Luke, the author of Acts, doesn’t refer to any change of the day of worship.
There’s no biblical record of a change. In the book of Acts, Luke says that he wrote his Gospel (the book of Luke) about “all” of Jesus’ teachings (Acts 1:1–3). But he never wrote about a change of the Sabbath.
Everybody in God's eternal kingdom will keep the Sabbath holy.
9. Some people say the Sabbath will be kept in God’s new earth. Is this correct?
“ ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me,’ says the Lord, ‘So shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me,’ says the Lord” (Isaiah 66:22, 23).
Answer: Yes. The Bible says the saved people of all ages will keep the Sabbath in the new earth.
10. But isn’t Sunday the Lord’s Day?
“Call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord” (Isaiah 58:13).
“The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8).
Answer: The Bible speaks of the “Lord’s Day” in Revelation 1:10, so the Lord does have a special day. But no verse of Scripture refers to Sunday as the Lord’s Day. Rather, the Bible plainly identifies the seventh-day Sabbath as the Lord’s Day. The only day the Lord has ever blessed and claimed as His own is the seventh-day Sabbath.