The first day of the week is mentioned eight times in the New Testament. If there is any proof for the keeping of the first day of the week, Sunday, it will be found in connection with these texts which mention the first day of the week. We will examine each of these texts. They are the first six, and the eighth and ninth texts in this lesson.

1FD Mark 16:9. This text says that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, but here is not one word to the effect that anybody should keep the first day of the week as a holy day because Jesus rose that day.

2FD Mark 16:1,2. After the Sabbath was past, the women came to the tomb early in the morning on the first day of the week.

3FD Matt. 28:1. This text in Matthew tells the same fact that Mark tells in Mark 16:1,2.

4FD Luke 23:54-56; 24:1. The women came to the tomb on the first day of the week, Sunday, to embalm the body of Jesus, something they would not do on the seventh day, Saturday.

5FD John 20:1. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb before sunrise on the first day.

6FD John 20:19. The evening of the same day that Jesus arose, He appeared to His disciples to convince them that He was risen from the dead. The disciples did not meet on the Sunday night of the day that Jesus arose, to honor His resurrection on that day, because they did not believe that He was risen, and Christ had to come and convince them that He was alive. Mark 16:9-13. The fact that these six texts mention the first day of the week as the day on which Jesus rose, and yet do not say one word about the first day of the week becoming a holy day at that time in honor of our Lord's resurrection, proves that the first day of the week was never appointed as a holy day by the Lord Jesus Christ. Three of these texts show that God's holy day, the Sabbath, the day that we ought to keep, was the day which came just before the first day of the week.

7FD John 20:26-28. The second meeting of Jesus with the disciples after He had arisen was not to honor any day of the week, but to convince Thomas of His resurrection.

8FD 1 Cor. 16:1,2. This was not an order for a public collection at church, but a private laying by at home on the first of each week of something for the poor saints at Jerusalem, which Paul was to carry up to Jerusalem when he came to Corinth.

9FD Acts 20:7. This is merely the record of an incidental and farewell meeting that Paul held with the Christians at Troas. There is positive proof in the book of Acts that the first day of the week did not take the place of the seventh day as God's holy day. In eight different places, from thirteen to twenty-three years after Christ's resurrection, the book of Acts plainly refers to the seventh day, the identical day on which the Jews met to worship, as the Sabbath day. Acts 13:14,27,42,44; 15:21;16:13;17:1-3;18:4. The book of Acts could not and would not have done this these eight times if the first day of the week had taken the place of the seventh as God's holy day. Baptism and the Lord's Supper did come in as new ordinances under the new covenant, and they are fully explained and commanded in the New Testament. If the first day, Sunday, had come in as a new day to be kept, it would also have been fully explained.

10FD 1 Cor. 11:26. No one needs to keep Friday to honor our Lord's crucifixion on that day, because the Lord's Supper is the divinely appointed way of commemorating the Saviour's death.

11FD Col. 2:12. No one needs to keep Sunday to honor Christ's resurrection on that day, because baptism is God's memorial of the resurrection.

12FD Matt. 15:13. God never planned Sunday, the first day, as a holy day and it is certain to be rooted up some day.

Read about The Origin of Sunday Observance.