YES, THE NEW TESTAMENT DOES ACTIVELY SUPPORT THE SEVENTH DAY SABBATH.
Many nominal Christians assert that they do keep the fourth commandment. They just support a different day. Nominal believers are taught that keeping any day in a seven day week is obeying and keeping the Sabbath commandment. What Biblical evidence do they rely upon? They see a partial list of the ten commandments in the New Testament that does not include the seventh day Sabbath. They then assert that nowhere does the New Testament support the Sabbath. This is not true. Let us examine Hebrews the fourth chapter that does support the Sabbath. The third and fourth chapters are about the Israelites who, because of lack of trust in God, did not get to enter into their place of rest, the promised land. Paul encourages New Covenant believers to have greater trust and faith in God so that we can enter our place of rest, the Kingdom of God.
Hebrews 3:8-11 NKJV 8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. 10 Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, 'They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.' 11 So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest.'"
Paul is recommending that New Testament believers encourage each other on the Sabbath and not get discouraged since they had expected Christ to have returned sooner. Paul warns, the world in deceitful sins, will strangle our faith and we need the Sabbath.
Hebrews 3:12-13 NKJV 12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
Paul then explains in the next chapter how we true believers should fear losing our reward through unbelief. Therefore, practice entering that rest or promised land of God each seventh day Sabbath.
Hebrews 4:1-4 NKJV 1 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it...; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. 3 For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: "So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest,'" although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: "And God rested on the seventh day from all His works";
Note the emphasis Paul puts on the seventh day. God rested on the last day or the seventh day of the creation week and made that day holy. God has not made any other weekly day holy. Paul goes further and says true believers have rest every Sabbath which will help us resist the unbelief that undermined the Israelites.
Hebrews 4:9-10 WNT 9 It follows that there still remains a sabbath rest for the people of God. 10 For He who has been admitted to His rest, has rested from His works as God did from His.
Many translators try and obscure this verse by just saying 'rest' and not 'Sabbath rest'. The Greek word is 'sabbatismos'. Paul uses a combined word , the Hebrew word Sabbat with a Greek suffix ismos. The suffix ismos means keeping or doing. The word means there remains a 'keeping of the Sabbath rest'. Paul wants our weekly Sabbath assemblies to strengthen us !
Hebrews 10:24-25 NKJV 24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
Paul told the brothers to use the seventh day Sabbath to strengthen our faith. So the the New Testament does affirmatively support the Sabbath. But are there other things in the New Testament that support the Sabbath?
PROOF THAT THE NEW COVENANT CHURCH KEPT THE SAME SABBATH AS OTHER JEWS
When the Apostle Paul was in the “persecute believers in Christ” portion of his life, where did he go to find true believers in Jesus? He hunted them down in the synagogues? How do we know this? Paul tells us so.
Acts 22:19 NKJV 19 "So I said, 'Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You.
Is there anyone who will objectively state that synagogue services are not on the seventh day Sabbath? I don't think so! Usher has this statement made by the Apostle Paul in 60 CE. Remember printed copies of the Bible did not exist so where did gentiles also go to hear the scriptures read and to learn about Godly requirements.?
Acts 15:19-21 NKJV 19 "Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, 20 "but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood. 21 "For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."
Where and when were the gentile believers going to learn about God? They would hear God's truth preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath like all the Jewish believers. We believe that most were able to go to smaller groups afterwards and hear the words of the Bible expounded upon by Elders in God's Church on the Sabbath. Paul also explains that they were exempt from the circumcision requirement which was for the Nation of Israel. Note Roman 2:27-29. Changing the Sabbath would been much bigger controversy.
Paul, on one of his first missionary journeys, found that just about all Jews in this city rejected the message. If the church had already authorized members and gentiles to switch to Sunday why then does he insist that they still meet on the next seventh day Sabbath?
Acts 13:42-44 NKJV 42 So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. 43 Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. 44 On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God.
Why didn't Paul say we only met on the Sabbath when arriving to reach the Jews who know the Bible and the true God but we really have been meeting on the first day of the week normally? We will see you on the first day of the week. But he did not make this claim. Why? Because it is not true and God would not alter a major commandment. God does not change. The seventh day Sabbath is His sign. The day of the sun or Sunday is the sign of the worldly pagan sun worshipers. Constantine who made nominal Christianity or Catholicism the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire was a sun worshiper.
DID JESUS CHRIST RISE FROM THE GRAVE ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK?
Remember the resurrection of Christ was not witnessed by anyone. When the women arrived, He was already gone from the tomb. The tomb was already empty when they arrived.
John 20:1 NKJV 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. John 20:2 NKJV 2 Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him."
Jesus did not rise at sunrise on Sunday morning, He was already risen before the sun came up. The sign of Jonah said Christ would be three days and nights in the heart of the earth. Since He was buried a short while before the annual Sabbath, possibly at 5pm Wednesday, with sunset at 6 pm, then He rose at 5 pm on the weekly Sabbath.
Matthew 12:40 DBY 40 For even as Jonas was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights, thus shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.
People in Judah were not supposed to visit the graves on the Sabbath so the women waited until the first day of the week early Sunday morning just prior to sunrise to visit.
Therefore, the New Testament does not support a Sunday sunrise resurrection when all details are carefully examined. But the Bible does have a pattern of six days struggling and seventh day rest. In other societies, people who would be in debtors prison had six years maximum of servitude then freedom during the seventh year in OT law. Debt freedom came on the seventh year. Land was worked for six years then there was a seventh year land Sabbath during which the land rested and revitalized. This world has six millenniums of days of the evil of mankind, and then a seventh millennium paradise with our king Jesus Christ.
Deuteronomy 15:1-2 NKJV 1 "At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. 2 "And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it;... because it is called the LORD'S release... 9 "Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,' and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you.
God does not change the pattern of freedom given on the seventh day or year.
Malachi 3:6 NKJV 6 "For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus is the same yesterday, and today and forever.
Undoubtedly God has not altered His Sabbath pattern from the seventh day to a first day of the week to go along with the world's sun worship culture. In conclusion Paul is saying believers must keep the weekly Sabbath rest now in order to enter the millennial rest later.
