What God demands from people: the followers of Jesus must come together regularly

The right attitude towards the Sabbath.

During His entire life Jesus was a Jew and as such He kept the Sabbath (the Saturday) as the God-ordained day of rest and sanctification. During Jesus’ life the Jewish law was still in force and Jesus has always obeyed the commandments of this law.

However, Jesus’ peace offering at which He offered His perfect human life to His Father put a definitive end to the validity of the Jewish law covenant and the validity of the Jewish laws. The Bible clearly states that Christians have been exempted of all Jewish laws. The Bible says this with the following words: “God has wiped out the hand-written document. The document which was against us and consisted of regulations. Christ has done away with it by hanging it on His torture wood.”

In short: at Jesus’ death all Mosaic laws were abolished and done away with for His followers. Among them the Sabbath law. For the followers of Jesus all the days of the week are the same, there is no special day of the Lord.

Nowhere in the Bible is it said that Jesus’ followers ordered people who were converted to follow the Jewish Sabbath law.

And: though Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday, there are no Bible passages which say that Jesus’ followers considered this fact a valid reason to make the Sunday instead of the Saturday the new day of the Lord.

The Sunday as a day of rest for working people was only introduced in the year 321 A.D. by the Roman emperor Constantine. Actually the name Sunday does not refer to a verse in the Bible, but to a day and a name which were used in Rome for centuries preceding the year 321 B.C.: the dies solis in Latin, the day of the sun. This means that the name Sunday refers to worship of the sun.

In principle all days of the week are the same for Christians.

The need for the followers of Jesus to come together with other Christians.

In the law-covenant, which was established between JHWH and the Israelites in 1513 B.C. and which was in force until the year 33 A.D., JHWH ordered His people to come together regularly at certain places and at certain times. JHWH gave this command to the Israelites to make them aware of the fact that they must not only serve Him as individuals, but also as a group. In alliance with each other.

When the nation of God had finally settled in the Promised Land everyone was obliged to come together in the temple of Jerusalem and to appear there as a group before God, at least three times a year for the great annual celebrations.

After the exile Jewish houses of prayer, called synagogues, arose all over the country. And also in other countries in places where there were sufficient numbers of Jews. In those days the Sabbath was a day of complete rest on which all people came together in the mentioned synagogues. In these houses of prayer people prayed and sang together to God on every Saturday and there were religious leaders who read Bible passages to them. These Bible passages were also explained to the people.

Jesus Himself, being a good Jew, went up to Jerusalem on the occasion of the great Jewish festivities three times a year and on every Saturday He went to the local synagogue.

During Jesus’ life this was also done by His apostles and other followers.

After Jesus’ death Paul and other preachers of the good news still often went to the Jewish synagogues on Saturdays to try to convert the Jews to Christendom. But on the other hand the Greek Scriptures make it clear that baptized Christians did not have religious gatherings together with the Jews on Saturdays. They had their own meetings, either in the homes of people or in suitable public buildings. No mention is made in the Greek Scriptures of buildings that were specifically and exclusively used for Christian gatherings and religious services and resemble our present day churches.

From what the Greek Scriptures tell us about the gatherings of the first Christians around the middle of the first century A.D. (read about this subject particularly 1 Corinthians chapter 14) it appears that these conventions strongly resembled those of the Jews in their synagogues. It is certain that in the first few decades of the existence of Christianity there was no separate class of priests and during the Christian gatherings every pious male Christian was allowed to speak, to preach and to read from the Scriptures. And just like women were not allowed to explain the Bible in the Jewish synagogues or to play leading roles within the Jewish congregation, women were not permitted to explain the Bible or have leading positions within the first Christian congregations and during Christian meetings.

There can be no doubt about it that the Bible calls upon all followers of JHWH and His Son to come together regularly and to establish organizations or congregations for that purpose.

However, people who want to respond positively to this Biblical appeal and want to come together with other Christians on a regular basis are faced with an immense problem: Christendom has fallen apart into many hundreds, not to say thousands, of church organizations which all have their own teachings which cannot be reconciled with each other, but contradict and exclude each other. This means that it looks like it that a good Christian must not only make a thorough study of the Bible, but after that an equally thorough study of the question which of the hundreds or thousands of present day Christian denominations is nearest the Bible as regards teachings and practices.

This subject is dealt with in the second part of this website.