The True Sabbath

I've run across a few people in the last few months that practice a true seventh day sabbath. That is, Saturday is and always has been the day that God intended for us to set aside for him. This has caused me to think about the concept and put in a few hours of studying. Here is what I've come up with:


First of all, I could only find one passage in the New Testament that talks about a day that the early church met. Acts 20:7 tells us that they met on the first day of the week. This may very well be a special circumstance or a one time ting, but the fact remains that it is the only New Testament example I have to go off of.


To the best of my knowledge, the New Testament never commands us to obey the Sabbath. In fact Colossians 2:16-17 seems to teach us that we are NOT bound by the Sabbath anymore. The Sabbath was "a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." That is to say that now that Christ (the Substance,) is here, the Sabbath (the shadow) is no longer needed.

Furthermore, I could find nowhere in the Old Testament where God commands the Gentile nations to observe the Sabbath. If it were meant to be observed until the end of time, it seems that God would institute it from the get go.

The part that troubles me most is that we do not, in fact, set aside the true sabbath as the Lords day. The 9th Commandment clearly tells us to do so, but we do not. I do buy into the common belief among evangelical Christianity that we are no longer bound by the sabbath, but I'm not sure that my argument, (or the arguments that I've studied,) is a convincing one. I'm interested in my readers thoughts.