I'm starting to think the Biblical Day does begin at Sunrise

I still stand by my post arguing agaisnt the Lunar Calendar.  But at the time I made that I still agreed with days beginning at Sunset.

Then I discovered some websites like these.

http://www.isawthelightministries.com/daystarts.html

https://www.bibletimemarkers.com/a-day-begins-at-sunrise

I am not at this time endorsing anything else on those sites.  But the first one I notice does support a Rapture view similar to mine in being at the 7th Trumpet and before the Bowls.  That site however is still assuming a Lunar Calendar for determining the Months, which I am now highly skeptical of.  I also probably do not agree with their Passion Week chronology.

Both argue that during the Creation Week, the Day is when God does the work, and at the end of each day it describes the times of Sunset and Sunrise (evening and morning) following.  The first act of Creation is the creation of Light, which thematically supports the day beginning at Sunrise.  Then in Genesis 1:5, 15-16 and 18 the Day is listed before the Night.  Like many other times later on when referring to "forty days and forty nights" or "three days and three nights", in fact almost any time you see "nights" plural, and there are 27 verses that refer to "day and night".  Also the Sun is always listed before the moon in verses like Genesis 37:9, Deuteronomy 4:19. 17:3 and 33:14.  And in Numbers 28 the daily sacrifices are listed as morning first then evening.

In Leviticus 23 a few things make more sense when you remove the Sunset to Sunset based assumptions.  And this is the most important chapter to understanding the Torah Calendar.

What's said about the 14th of Nisan and Passover when compared to Exodus 12 and other Passover passages is a lot less confusing if the days begin and end at sunrise, since then the evening is the middle of the day.  

But the Yom Kippur instructions are what's really revealing.  The Day of Atonement is the Tenth day of the Seventh Month, that was determined already back in chapter 16.  But in verse 32 the Ninth Day is mentioned for some reason.  What the verse seems to be saying is this 24 hour period that functions like a Sabbath begins at the Sunset of the 9th and ends the next Sunset.  The emphasis on that here clearly implying that's not when actual calendar days begin and end.

I have argued in the past agaisnt viewing Yom Kippur as a Fast day.  But this understanding of verse 32 can negate my main argument, since it can allow the Fast to be from Sunset of the 9th to the Sunset of the 10th so that in the Evening of the 10th you eat the meat of Sacrificed Animals, similar to how the 14th as Passover works in this model.

Likewise is Exodus 12:18, everywhere else the Seven Days of Unleavened Bread are 15-21 of the first month, but in this passage it includes the Evening of the 14th.  

This also explains how confused the Rabbinic Jewish observance of Passover is.  While Deuteronomy 16 and Ezekiel 45 provide Hebrew Bible precedent for expanding the use of the word Passover to cover the entire seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread, the change to a Sunset based observance causing the Evening of the 14th to become the Evening of the 15th explained why Rabbinic observance basically forgets that the 14th is Passover.  Rabbinic tradition does call the 14th the Fast of the Firstborn.  Originally that was clearly tied to the 14th being the day the Egyptian First Born were killed and Israel's spared, but that is supposed to be happening during the Seder so the Sunset based reckoning now has that happening on the 15th so why the 14th is called the Fast of the Firstborn is something the Rabbis struggle to explain.

Speaking of Rabbinic tradition, Fasts are still traditionally supposed to begin at Sunrise, so that sounds like a carry over from the original reckoning.

1 Samuel 30:17 also arguably makes more sense on a Sunrise to Sunrise calendar.

It also mirrors the Torah year better.  Biblically the year begins in Spring, and Dawn is essentially the Spring of the day, hence Sunrise sometimes being refereed to as "dayspring".

Malachi says Jesus is the Sun of Righteousness, and the Fourth Gospel says He is the Light, and Peter calls Him the Lightbearer, there is also the Womb of the Morning reference in Psalm 110.  Revelation says Jesus is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.  So the day beginning and ending with Sunrise fits that typological pattern.

Which then leads to overlooked details of the Passion narrative.  Matthew 27:57 and Mark 15:42 depict the evening following the Crucifixion as still the day before The Sabbath.  And John 20:19 depicts the Evening following when Jesus had Risen and been seen Risen as still the First Day of The Week.

Lunar Sabbath proponents are misinformed

I already did one post on The Lunar Sabbath Issue.  But I want to add something important.

They keep saying the idea of a Weekly Sabbath synchronized to the month comes from Pagan Babylon.  This is literally the Opposite of the Truth.

From the Seven Day Week Wikipedia page's History section.

While the seven-day cycle may have deep historical origins in the Ancient Near East, the "planetary theory" of horoscopy is a development of Babylonian astrology roughly around 500 BC, with the oldest extant horoscope dated to just before 400 BC.^[8]

The seven-day week being approximately a quarter of a lunation has been proposed (e.g. by Friedrich Delitzsch) as the implicit, astronomical origin of the seven-day week,^[9] and indeed the Babylonian calendar used intercalary days to synchronize the last week of a month with the new moon.^[10]

Meaning the oldest references to a Week like concept to occurs in Ancient Mesopotamia were using something probably not identical to the modern Lunar Sabbath concept, but the same basic logic behind it.  Sumerian Texts and the Enuma Elish seem to imply every Full Moon was a Sabbath.

The Astrological idea of affiliating the Days with Planets not showing up till 500 BC, means they didn't show up till after the Babylonian Captivity, and well after the Assyrian.  So there is no evidence of a strict seven day week not synchronized to a new moon that can be proven to exist independent of Jewish and/or Christian influence.  Which backs what I proposed in The Manna Miracle and The Sabbath.

The people running Wikiepdia of course want to convince people that the idea of a Week was borrowed by the Israelites from Babylon.  But we know better.

The Lunar Sabbath model also argues for a Friday Crucifixion, which I have firmly refuted.

The Manna Miracle and the origins of The Sabbath, Exodus 16

The precedent for The Sabbath was absolutely set by the Creation week recorded in Genesis 1&2.

But there is a debate about if it was kept by believers as a custom before the Exodus.   We have evidence of what animals are clean and unclean being known in Genesis.  But nothing from Genesis 3 on through the first Passover that in any way alludes to Patriarchs or Hebrews keeping The Sabbath.

Now Exodus 16 which is the account of The Manna miracle is constantly cited as proof it was known before the giving of The Law.  Indeed the Decalogue in Exodus 19 refers to it as something they already knew.

The thing is, if you study Exodus 16 carefully, it seems to be presenting this story as the origin of The Sabbath.  Nothing in here suggests it was already being practiced.

On the 15th day of the Second Month, the Israelites complain.  Then Moses tells them what is about to happen.  This was BTW the month following the very first Passover.

At evening, when the 16th started, Yahuah's Glory appeared onto them and they eat Quail (and no vice president had to shoot anyone in the face).  Then in the morning of that day they found the first Manna.

On the 6th day that the Manna fell they were instructed to gather twice what they usually did so they'd have Manna the following day which they were told not to collect Manna on.  And thus that seventh day was named The Sabbath.

Now to many this would be an argument against Christians needing to keep it.  I however see no correlation between what we have to keep and what came in with Moses, to me those issues are addressed elsewhere.

I'm writing this here because I feel understanding this could help us understand the Eschatological importance of The Sabbath.  Because the Manna is often seen as another miracle repeated in Revelation in chapter 12.

If The Sabbath was a rule already.  That would have to make this 15th of Iyar a Sabbath, but they don't seem to be keeping a Sabbath at the moment and no comment is made on it.  Yahuah waits till it's Sunday to speak to the people.

If you counted hypothetical Sabbaths backwards from this.  The 8th and 1st of that Iyar would have been Sabbaths.

And if the Nisan of the first Passover had 30 days, then it's Sabbaths would have been the 24th, 17th, 10th and 3rd.  But if it had 29 days then they would have been the 23rd, 16th, 9th and 2nd.

The latter would happen to fit my model for the Nisan of the Crucifixion as a Thursday supporter.  The former would happen to fit what is usually argued for by Wednesday supporters.  But you can't get a Friday model from it.  That doesn't prove anything but it's amusing.  And either of those would put the hypothetical anniversary in advance of The Ascension on the 27th of Iyar, which might be interesting.

Maybe God arranged this so it would happen to fit where The Sabbath would haven been if it'd been being kept since Adam.  But either way, I'm convinced now that the origin of The Sabbath as a custom kept by humans is in Exodus 16.

Nehemiah 9:12-15 also states that it was at this time that Yahuah made The Holy Sabbath known to them.

Jesus wasn't Buried the same day He was Crucified.

Matthew 27:57-58 after Jesus had died says.

"When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered."

That is in the Hebrew reckoning the beginning of the next day, when the Evening had come.  Mark's account of the same event in 15:42-44 also says this.  It's lacking from Luke and John's accounts but isn't contradicted, maybe because they were writing for more gentile audiences.

All the ongoing debates on what day to place the Crucifixion seem to not be aware of this detail.  Typologically it can also fit Numbers 33:4 which says the 15th of Nisan was the day the Egyptians buried their First Born.  Jesus is the Firstborn of Creation.

John 19 (verse 14) calls when Jesus was on The Cross the Preparation Day of the Passover, which was the 14th of Nisan, unambiguously.  Later in John 19 (31 and 42), and in the Synoptic accounts, Jesus burial is described as being on the Preparation Day of the Sabbath.  It seems people have assumed they must be the same Preparation, but they are not, if the Sabbath fell on the 16th of Nisan, then the first day of Unleavened Bread would also be the Preparation day for the weekly Sabbath.

The strongest argument the Friday Crucifixion people have is their insistence we're torturing the text in insisting the 15th of Nisan would be called a Sabbath regardless of the day it fell on.  While Leviticus 23 does say not to do servile work that day, those restrictions have been interpreted as not as strict as the weekly Sabbath.  The Tishri Holy Days use the word Sabbath to describe these days, but it's not used of the first day of Unleavened Bread, though you could argue it is of the seventh day of Unleavened Bread in that the word Seventh is essentially the same word.

The basis for defining Friday as preparation for the Sabbath goes back to the Manna account in Exodus 16.

The Friday Crucifixion people are also right that you don't need a full 72 hours to get to the Third Day.   The desire of Wednesday proponents like Chuck Missler to mock that is unwittingly also mocking how the day for Circumcision and the Eight day of Tabernacles are counted.  I personally see every reference to Jesus Rising on the Third Day as the Third Day of Unleavened Bread, the 17th of Nisan.  The 17th of Nisan is also important in Esther and possibly in The Flood account.

However Friday proponents can't get three days AND three nights.  They can only get two nights (Friday/Saturday and Saturday/Sunday).  And it's similar with this new argument that every "First day of The Week" in the New Testament is really the Sabbath, I don't see how that model can get three nights either, because the third night has always been in Hebrew reckoning Sunday night.

Debating what day Jesus was Crucified I've seen rarely looks at the arguments typologically in Genesis 1.

Wednesday model supporters are also often people paranoid about doing anything on Sunday being Sun worship.  Well in the Biblical Week the Sun and Moon were created on Woden's day.

I place the Crucifixion on Thursday, now with a different argument then I used to.  That's the day God first Created Life, because Biblically plants aren't Life.

I now place Jesus burial on the Sixth day.  The same day the First Adam was formed out of The Earth is the day the Last Adam was placed in it.

Then Jesus Rested on The Sabbath, and rose again on the Eight Day, a New Beginning.  But also the Third Day of Unleavened Bread.  It's also First Fruits and the day God made Light.  It was also on a Sunday that the Manna first fell from Heaven.

The Lunar Sabbath issue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-s31DlZNTs

Earlier today (October 11th 2016) I watched this video.  And this was the first time I heard of the Lunar Sabbath issue.

First assumption I had was this involved the Sabbath being kept on the multiple of 7 days of each month.  As I looked it up elsewhere (the Hope For Israel site which I have many issues with starting with it's Racism) I saw that it actually involves not counting the New Moon as a work day (a detail Rob clearly missed) and making the Sabbaths the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th of each month.

As I contemplated this I was reminded of how I'm always puzzled by all these often conflicting Rabbinic customs about what to do if the Sabbath falls on the 14th of Nisan or 10th of Tishri or some other inconvenient day, and would ask myself "why didn't God deal with that in The Torah?"

But then as I contemplated it more I remembered that Jesus said "God made The Sabbath for Man not Man for The Sabbath".  Which means you really shouldn't stress about it.

Both key arguments Rob made against it are flawed.  One I alluded to already, you never work more then 6 days because of the New Moon.  The other about God creating the Moon on the 4th day is that I feel God created the Moon in it's 4th day (or 18th day in a Tabernacles Creation Week theory) position, I don't think the first New Moon was a Wednesday.

The biggest flaw to me is that this theory can't explain how Pentecost works, how can the Fiftieth day also be the day after a Sabbath?

In fact First Fruits and Pentecost as a whole weaken the argument.  If those days were always supposed to be the same day of a Month then God would have just said that like he did with the other Holy Days.  Instead he said the morning after the Sabbath.  This is my same argument against the Rabbis starting the Omer on the 16th of Nisan.

A minor observation is everything I read so far seemingly ignores that sometimes a Hebrew month has 30 days, meaning a single work day between the 29th Sabbath and the New Moon in this model.  I have long theorized that in God's original perfect creation all years were 360 days, 12 months of 30 days each.  I do NOT however then interpret that to mean Daniel 9 should be counted as 360 day years.

This model also overlaps with the absurd Friday Crucifixion model.  The Thursday model which I favor and even more the Wednesday model need the weekly Sabbath to NOT be the 15th special Sabbath in that particular Nisan.  And as Greek students know the text itself refers to there being plural Sabbaths passing between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

Jesus was Crucified on the 14th, Liberated Sheol on the 15th, rested on the Weekly Sabbath on the 16th, and Rose again on the 3rd day of Unleavened Bread which was the 17th of Nisan, the day Mordecai was honored and Haman hanged in Esther, and probably the day Noah's Ark landed on Ararat.

I did once did calculations and concluded that IF the original first month was Tishri as many assume, and IF my originally months were 30 days theory is true. Then the 10th and 17th of of the first Nisan would have also fallen on Sundays and the 16th would have been a weekly Sabbath.  That's an interesting observation but I wouldn't read anything profound into it.

Update October 28th 2016:  Lunar Sabbath supports have often sought to say the synchronized week goes back to Babylonian Paganism.  But it was actually Mesopotamians who used a Lunar cycle to determine their days of Rest.  As discussed (with an Anti-Judeo Christian bias) on the Wikipedia pages for Week and Sabbath.  We however don't need a Sumerian origin for the word Sabbath, it comes from Sheba, the Hebrew word for Seven.

The Ressurection was on Sunday

So Rob Skiba is again promoting something bizarre.

He's recently argued that EVERY reference to "the first day of the Week" in The New Testament is really The Sabbath.  Now I have shown on this Blog that there is no overturning of The Sabbath in the New Testament.  But Sunday is not inherently evil just because Pagans named it after the Sun.

It's already popular among Sabbath worshipers to say the Resurrection was actually on The Sabbath and it was only "The first day of The Week" that the Women found The Tomb empty.  And I've already argued against that silliness.  I don't think the Risen Jesus lingered there for 12 hours.

There is a modern Greek word for "week" that Rob says should have been used if the text meant week.  Problem is we can't even prove that was used yet in NT times.  I've never seen any solid proof the Greco-Romans observed 7 day weeks before they adopted Christianity.  It's used in the NT texts only as a word for Seven, and once is used with the word for day to refer to a period of seven days, but if it meant week it wouldn't have needed the word for day.  And The Septuagint is a Christian document far younger then the NT texts.

The NT texts borrow many Hebrew words, and the Hebrew word for Week comes from the same root as the word for Sabbath.  It even has a form then ends with an N.

The parable he references cannot fit his interpretation, you can't Fast twice in 1 day, you have not Fasted at all until you have not eaten for a whole day.

This website explains why the term is translated this way and why It's accurate.  It's wrong on saying there was any call for weekly Sunday worship, but that's another post I already linked to.

In the video Rob applied this logic to both when the Tomb was found Empty and Pentecost.  He never once stopped to realize how he was dismantling the fulfillments of First Fruits and Shavot, which were both REQUIRED by Leviticus 23 to be on Sundays.

Look I agree the italics of the KJV adds some things they shouldn't (Rob himself since he became a Flat Earther is unwilling to notice what isn't in the Hebrew in Genesis 11).  But when it suites him he is determined to proclaim anything in the italics besides the most basic pronouns to be part of some massive conspiracy to distort God's Word.  I believe God's promise to preserve God's Word.  Greek is a far more precise language then English, there is often much implied in the Grammar that is difficult to translate word for word, so just because something lacks a word for it in the text doesn't mean what the text says doesn't justify it being there.  Neither I or Rob is a Greek expert.

Leaving all that aside, the entire context and set up of the Women finding the Tomb empty does not fit this theory of it being on The Sabbath.  We are told they did not anoint Jesus Body when they first buried him because the Sabbath was about to start.  And we are told the Sabbaths (plural) had passed when they came to the tomb on Sunday morning.  And you can't just say they were only skipping the 15th of Nisan (which I do place on a Friday) because, the restrictions on those special Holy Convocations were actually less then the Weekly Sabbath's restrictions.

I believe Jesus Rested on The Sabbath.

The Sabbath is important, but it's not impossible for God to do things on other days.  The First Day of a Week can also be an Eight Day, this is why the Gemetria of Iesous is 888 in contrast to 666 as the Gemetria of The Beast which I think has a connection to the 6th day of the Week.  The first day of the Week symbolizes New Beginnings, just like the Eight Day of Tabernacles.  I believe the Creation week was Tabernacles.  Circumcision is on the Eight Day and so is the first verse of Leviticus 9.  And the 8th of Tishri is the day the dedication festival for Solomon's Temple began.

Sunday is also the day God created Light, so it's not a coincidence the Pagans wound up affiliating that day with the Sun.  Jesus is The Light of The World and the Sun of Righteousness of Malachi, which is why I believe He Rose from The Dead at Sunrise.  It was also a Sunday the Manna was first given in Exodus 16.  So the First Day is not without Torah significance.

Can Sunday worship be the Mark of the Beast?

Seventh Day Adventists and similar groups are obsessed with this idea, tying it into The Pope being The Antichrist theories.

Obviously it departs from the plain reading of The Text of Revelation 13.  Which says it is the Number of the Name of a Man (Anthropos).

Some people will try to deny it actually is a number by saying no other time does The Bible use Gemetria, it always spells out numbers phonetically.  Problem is the Greeks texts all put a line over the Chi-Xi-Stigama which in the rules of Koine Greek tells us it's Gemetria.  The Bible does it different here because the context tells us Gemetria is what it is about.

But for Seventh Day Adventists (who I think are right that there is no NT basis for replacing The Sabbath with a different day) everything revolves around The Sabbath issue which is why they name themselves that.

First of all, Sunday worship does not actually break The Sabbath law, even if you think we are still under the Law.  The Sabbath Law can only be broken by what you do or don't do on The Sabbath.  Nothing in the Sabbath commands make it a sin to, if you're able, also rest a different day.  In modern America most people get both Saturday and Sunday off work.  So even if some global Law DEMANDING Sunday observance was made as Adventists predict, it would not stop Torah observing Christians or Jews from doing what they do on The Sabbath.

The only way it could be even remotely possible to violate The Sabbath with what you do on a different day would be maybe on Friday.  We see for example with The Manna that Israelites tended to do extra work on Friday to prepare for The Sabbath.  But on the First Day of the Week the Sabbath is over, so it's the least likely to be a day you would even be worrying about the Sabbath issue.

Meanwhile nothing in Revelation 13 can be taken as pointing to Sunday.  Nothing about the First Day of the Week, and nothing about Sun-Worship.

If you really want to twist the text of Revelation 13 to allude to a Day of the Week, the Sixth Day is what makes sense, 666 being a multiple of 6.  And I've observed reasons before to thematically link this part of Revelation 13 to Genesis 2 and Adam's creation.  And that the Gemetria of Iesous is 888 has been thematically linked to the Resurrection being on Sunday.

The Antichrist would presumably be taking titles of Christ for himself.  One of those is The Last Adam.  Gnosticism and Kabbalah have given the Last Adam concept their own special meanings.

Islam interestingly does call for weekly observance on Friday to commemorate the creation of Adam.  Because Islam has actually canonized the Apocryphal legend that God ordered The Angels to worship Adam.

Main article: Jumu'ah

The Quran acknowledges a six-part Creation period (32:4, 50:38) and the Biblical Sabbath as the seventh-day (yaum as-Sabt: 2:65, 4:47, 154, 7:163, 16:124), but Allah's mounting the throne after Creation is taken in contradistinction to Elohim's concluding and resting from his labors, and so Muslims replace Sabbath rest with jumu'ah (Arabic جمعة ). Also known as "Friday prayer", jumu'ah is a congregational prayer (salat) held every Friday (the Day of Assembly), just after midday, in place of the otherwise daily dhuhr prayer; it commemorates the creation of Adam on the sixth day, as a loving gathering of Adam's sons. The Quran states: "When the call is proclaimed to prayer on Friday, hasten earnestly to the Remembrance of Allah, and leave off business: That is best for you if ye but knew" (62:9). The next verse ("When the prayer is ended, then disperse in the land ...") leads many Muslims not to consider Friday a rest day, as in Indonesia, which regards the seventh-day Sabbath as unchanged; but many Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh, do consider Friday a nonwork day, a holiday or a weekend; and other Muslim countries, likePakistan, count it as half a rest day (after the Friday prayer is over). Jumu'ah attendance is strictly incumbent upon all free adult males who are legal residents of the locality.

I remain highly skeptical of the Islamic Antichrist theory, but this is an interesting observation.

But of course a Friday reverence can be connected to Catholic and other heretical Christian beliefs via the completely unsupported by Scripture Friday Crucifixion tradition.  Perhaps the counterfeit mortal wounding and healing of the Beast will follow the Catholic model.

The fact remains, the plain reading of Revelation is that it's a name not a day of the week.

The Lords Day is The Sabbath not Sunday

First I want to make clear I'm not a Seventh Day Adventist or a member of any any other Sabbath based sect. I do not support Legalism, Christians are not bound to observe any weekly service, at all. I'm writing this to refute the notion that The New Testament "Lords Day" is Sunday.

Not everyone who believes weekly Sunday worship is Biblical defines it as Sunday supplanting the Sabbath.  Some like Chris White  just define it as the New Testament ordaining weekly Sunday worship as a separate thing from The Sabbath.  I'm making this post in response to any form of suggesting The New Testament ordains weekly Sunday worship.

In The New Testament the term "The Lord's Day" occurs only once. Revelation 1:10 "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet".

We're not told what day of the week this is, or if it's a weekly day at all. Sunday supporters just assume this phrase means something distinct from the Sabbath and therefore it backs up their other reasons for saying The New Testament calls for worship on the First Day of The Week.

But in Matthew 12:8 Jesus said he was the Lord of the Sabbath, and Isaiah 58:13-14 calls the Sabbath, "The LORD's Holy Day". So using Scripture to Interpret Scripture this can only mean the Sabbath.

As far as extra Biblical references go (which don't actually matter to me). The Didache (supposedly the oldest Extra-Biblical Christian writing) also does not say when "The Lord's Day" is, just refers to it. The one quote of Ignatius of Antioch often used in this debate dated to 110 A.D. says in the only surviving Greek text (which is the language he wrote in) "If, then, those who had walked in ancient practices attained unto newness of hope, no longer observing Sabbath, but living according to the Lord's life ...". Clearly not about when or if we should do a weekly observance at all, simply referring to us not being bound by The Law. Some later Latin texts add "The Lord's Day" to this, and some even make clear it's Sunday, but these are clearly latter corruptions.

It's not till the second half of the Second Century A.D. that indisputable references to The Lord's Day being Sunday occur, in texts like the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, or Acts of Peter, or Acts of Paul, or Acts of John, or Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in 170 A.D. You might think that sounds sufficiently early, but they're after the Bar Kochba revolt which occurred around about a third of the way into the Second Century. That is when the Church started taking on Anti-Semitic tendencies in response to the persecution of Christians carried out under Bar Kochba, I've written on this elsewhere. I feel this separation of Christian observance from the Sabbath was based solely on that agenda.

Now, for Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2.

The Corinthians reference is to me certainly not about weekly observance. "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." One could argue that Paul expected his Epistle to be read to the congregation on a Sabbath meeting, and that they should then begin saving up this money the very next day.

Acts 20:7 I don't really see as calling for anything. It just says they broke bread together, and then Paul preached.

I personally find the debating that goes own between Protestant and Evangelical denominations on when to observe the "Lord's Supper", should it be Weekly, Monthly or Yearly, and so on to be silly. Jesus told us when in the actual account of the Supper itself "when ye eat". It's not supposed to be an appointed ceremony, it's simply a matter of whenever we eat we remember that Jesus's Body was Broken and his Blood was Shed for us.

And Paul I don't think needed a special day to Preach on either, Preaching is simply what he did.

But another thing about the Acts reference is it's a Translation issue.

If your ability to check the Greek is only via using a Strongs, or a Strongs based Computer Program, then you probably just saw that the two words translated "first day of the week" here are the same every time that phrase is used of The Resurrection of Jesus. But the thing is the Strongs tells us nothing about grammar or word forms. And the word for Week here, even used in this exact same form "Sabbatwn" is also used in contexts that are indisputably about the Sabbath day, like in Acts 13:14 and 16:13 and Colossians 2:16. The Colossians reference BTW clearly implies in context that early Christians were keeping all those observances refereed to.

Almost no English Translations translate this phrase differently, but that doesn't mean the majority can't be wrong. What leads me to support the minority view here is the anomaly that occurs in my Greens Interlinear Bible.

In the Column on the side where the Greens puts things in a way that grammatically works in English, it reads like most translations "The first day of the week". But where the English words are placed under the actual Greek text it reads "on one of the Sabbaths". Reading the whole narrative in context I feel supports that reading.

Acts 20:6-7 "And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. And on one of the Sabbaths, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight."

Being so soon after the Days of Unleavened Bread means this is during the counting of the Omer, the Seven Sabbaths that pass between First fruits and Pentecost. So "one of the Sabbaths" probably means one of those Seven Sabbaths.

Even if we take the KJV at face vale, that it's between First Fruits and Pentecost means it's not a First Day of the Week that wasn't already ordained by the Torah in Leviticus 23.

Likewise The Resurrection and Pentecost were on Sundays because Leviticus 23 ordained them to be, those Sundays being important did not introduce anything new.

I keep hearing that ALL of Jesus post Resurrection appearances were on Sundays from the Evangelical Sunday supporting people.

Besides that it's well known The Ascension was a Thursday being day 40 of the Omer (Acts 1:3).  Most of them aren't clearly dated at all besides ones that occurred on the very Sunday of the Resurrection.  Or what John 20:26 says for the Doubting Thomas incident which mathematically does NOT tell me it was the same Day of the Week as the previews event.  Eight Day would make it at the same day of the week, but after eight days makes it a day later.

When you read through Acts, you'll see Sabbath observances are definitely still kept by Early Christians, even Paul. Even if the word Sabbath isn't used, if Paul is disputing with Jews in a Synagogue, you can infer that it is a Sabbath or a New Moon or a Holy Day. And for this reason it's clear that even the Mars' Hill Sermon was preached on a Sabbath not a Sunday, in Acts 17:16-19.

Ezekiel 45 clearly has the Sabbath still being observed in the Messianic Temple.  And I believe that is the New Heaven and New Earth not The Millennium.

So what day we do a weekly observance is not something to be Dogmatic on. Or even if we do a weekly observance at all.  I'm ultimately against the entire modern definition of what a church is, archaeology shows no church buildings were built till the Third Century. But the evidence both Biblical and Extra-Biblical shows that the first 2 or 3 generations of The Church met on the Jewish Sabbath, not Sunday.

But there is something else I want to note on the Western Sunday worship issue.  I was raised Catholic, and I remember during a catechism class on the Ten Commandments they showed a corny little video about a kid being a stubborn brat for not wanting to wake up early on Sunday morning to go to church.  I felt like the whole being a Day of Rest part of the command was being contradicted by forcing someone to wake up before it came naturally to them.  I didn't say that because I knew they'd just find applying that logic to be outright bizarre.

You see besides just changing what Day we should observe the Sabbath command on, we don't follow the Biblical definition of when a day begins either.  Sunset of the previous day is when the Day begins for Jews.  Jews and Torah observing Christians do their Sabbath worship service after the Sun sets on Friday, they do not worry about waking up early in the morning.  The Priests in The Temple may have had to get up early to make the morning offerings, but their responsibilities were different from most people.  If an additional Synagogue service happened during the daylight hours of The Sabbath, it wasn't first thing after Sunrise.

The Women came to Jesus Tomb early Sunday morning precisely because it wasn't a Sabbath, they came to do something they couldn't do on The Sabbath.  If you want to do a Sunday service based on The Resurrection, when they fond the Tomb Empty isn't the time you should use, but rather much later in the day when Jesus appeared to the Disciples which was at dinner time, or the Road to Emmaus which was a little earlier then that.  The reference to Bread there isn't a coincidence, they keeping the seven day feast of unleavened bread, of which I believe the Resurrection and First Fruits of that years was the third day, the 17th of Nisan.

But now after all that I want to advice my fellow Sabbath advocates not to make the ridiculous "Sunday is because of Sun worship" argument.  As I showed early on there were pre Constantine Christians claiming the Lord's Day was Sunday because of Anti-Semitism.  Constantine probably choose Sun Worhip to try and meld Christianity with because they happened to be worshiping that day already.

Each day of the week has a Pagan god attached to it on secular calendars.  That the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday was used by confused ancient Pagans like Tacitus to argue the Jewish God was actually Saturn.  That the Pilgrimage Feast days all revolved around the Harvest cycle probably would have backed that if he'd been aware of it, with Saturn being the god of the harvest.

Jesus is called by Malachi the Sun of Righteousness, and Genesis 1 says he Sun, Moon and stars were given for times and for seasons.  So I think it's fitting that He rose from the dead at sunrise on Sunday.