52 Shocking Catholic and Protestant Confessions About Sunday

Most in our generation are abysmally ignorant of, and woefully oblivious to the deceptions and manipulations done in the past to change one of the most important commands of God. Surprisingly, what has happened is a direct fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy! God inspired him long ago to predict the massive changing of the Sabbath to another very popular worship day.

But due to massive spiritual blindness and a worldwide satanic deception, the fulfillment of that prophecy has been surprisingly unnoticed even by most church leaders and Christians today. Please don’t allow yourself to be one of them. Set aside a few minutes to completely read this eye-opening article!

This article presents a summarized compilation of 52 documented testimonies of many notable religious leaders and authorities, recorded in the pages of history, regarding the facts about the Sunday issue. This was written as a handy reference, which you can also share with others.

Most historians know that decades after the death of the original apostles, a powerful politico-religious system systematically changed the biblical Sabbath and transferred such observance to Sunday, the first day of the week.

A fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel 7:25

He [the human leader in the seat of power and authority] shall speak pompous words against the Most High [NLT: “defy”; ESV, KJV, NASB, NIV, RSV: “against”; YLT: “as an adversary”], shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law. Then the saints shall be given into his hand for a time and times and half a time.
~Daniel 7:25

The dire fulfillment of this prophecy is ongoing, due to two major events in history which have already produced its effect. Please note below the outline of the stages of its fulfillments:

1. The first stage was when Emperor Constantine the Great, in A.D. 321, decreed that worship of the sun god on Sunday should be imposed in all of the Roman Empire.
2. The second stage was when the Roman Catholic Church convened the Council of Laodicea in A.D. 363 and supported Constantine’s decree by proclaiming Canon 29 which legislated punishment upon Sabbath-keepers with the much-feared “anathema.” [Details on this topic is contained in our article, “Why Did Popular Christianity Replace the Sabbath With Sunday?”]
3. The third and final massive stage is still expected to come in the future, during the imposition of the “mark of the beast” when “no man can buy or sell” during the three-and-a-half years of the Great Tribulation (Revelation 13:17).

The first portion of this presentation contains 30 quotations from Roman Catholic sources, freely acknowledging that there is no biblical authority whatsoever for the observance of Sunday; it was the Roman Catholic Church that simply changed the Sabbath to Sunday.

The second portion of this article likewise contains 22 quotations from major Protestant theologians, also acknowledging that there is no biblical authority for their observance of Sunday; they admit that they simply copied it from the Roman Catholics.

14 Roman Catholic confessions:

In his book, The Faith of Our Fathers, 88th edition, page 89, James Cardinal Gibbons wrote:

But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.

In a question-and-answer letter that Cardinal Gibbons personally signed, we find these statements:

Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments?

I answer yes.

Is Sunday the first day of the week, and did the Church change the seventh day — Saturday — for Sunday, the first day?

I answer yes.

Did Christ change the day?

I answer no!

Faithfully yours,
J. Cardinal Gibbons (his signature appears in the original document)

Also published in The Catholic Mirror, an official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, dated September 23, 1893:

The Catholic Church … by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.

From the office of Cardinal Gibbons, through Chancellor H.F. Thomas, November 11, 1895, we read the following:

Of course, the Catholic Church claims that the change [of the Sabbath to Sunday] was her act … and the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power.

Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Letter, dated June 20, 1894, wrote this:

We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.

The Catholic National (July 1895 issue) followed up on the previous statement with these words:

The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ, hidden under veil of flesh.

With the Catholic Church’s claim of authority equal to God, we read the following:

Not the Creator of the Universe (in Genesis 2:1-3), but the Catholic Church can claim the honor of having granted man a pause to his work every seven days.
~S. C. Mosna, Storia della Domenica, 1969, pages 366-367

Confirming the previous statements, we read this from the Council of Trent:

We define that the Holy Apostolic See (the Vatican) and the Roman Pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world.
~A Decree of the Council of Trent, quoted in Philippe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, The Most Holy Councils

Another confirmatory statement of the power and authority of the Catholic Church:

God simply gave His [Catholic] Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days.
~Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations, p. 2

In the book, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927), on page 136, we read:

Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to Sunday … Now the [Catholic] Church … instituted, by God’s authority, Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church, by the same divine authority, taught the doctrine of Purgatory long before the Bible was made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for Sunday.
~Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927), p. 136.

The Catholic Press, published in Sydney, Australia (August 1900), has these words:

Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claim to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles … From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first.
~Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August 1900.

Excerpts from A Doctrinal Catechism, by Stephen Keenan, third edition, page 174:

Question: Have you any other way of proving that the [Catholic] Church has power to institute festivals or precept?

Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her — she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.

Peter Geiermann’s The Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1957), page 50:

Question: Which is the Sabbath day?
Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day.

Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.

Excerpts from Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916), p. 67, edited by Daniel Ferres:

Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days?

Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church.

16 Other Statements from Catholics:

For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible.
~Catholic Virginian, Oct. 3, 1947, p. 9, article: “To Tell You the Truth”

We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed, namely, the authority of the Church … whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it [Sunday sacredness] in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else.
~Brotherhood of St. Paul, “The Clifton tracts,” vol. 4, tract 4, p. 15

It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest [from the Bible Sabbath] to the Sunday … Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church.
~Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, page 213

It would be an error to attribute [the sanctification of Sunday] to a definite decision of the Apostles. There is no such decision mentioned in the Apostolic documents [that is, the New Testament].
~Antoine Villien, A History of the Commandments of the Church (1915), page 23

It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.
~McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, volume 9, page 196

Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. [Church] officers for whom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles which to them would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention, and to be named apostolic.
~William D. Killen, The Ancient Church, p. xvi

Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a ‘holy’ day, as in the still extant ‘Blue Laws’ of colonial America, should know that as a ‘holy’ day of rest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus … It formed no tenet [existing teaching] of the primitive Church and became ‘sacred’ only in the course of time. Outside the church, its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with the famous one of Constantine in 321, an edict due to his political and social ideas.
~W. W. Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire (1946), page 257

It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.
~Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. News of March 18, 1903

Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the [Roman Catholic] Church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday as the Sabbath.
~John Gilmary Shea, The American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883

If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.
~Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal, in a letter dated February 10, 1920

Protestants … accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change. But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope.
~Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950

Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these two alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday or Catholicity and the keeping holy of a Sunday. Compromise is impossible.
~Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893.

Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days.
~John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies (1936), vol. 1, p. 51

From Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago IL, by Peter Kraemer:

Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:

1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man.

2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday…

We frankly say, yes, the [Roman Catholic] Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws…

It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.
~Peter Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago

Challenge from the Lecture of T. Enright on February 18, 1884:

I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says: ‘No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.’ And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church.
~T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford KS, Feb. 18, 1884

Four days later, on February 22, 1884, at another lecture in Hartford…

I am not a rich man, but I will give $1,000 to anyone who can prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep. No, it cannot be done, it is impossible. The observance of Sunday is solely a law of the Catholic Church, and therefore is not binding upon others. The church changed the Sabbath to Sunday and all the world bows down and worships upon that day in silent obedience to the mandates of the Catholic church.
~T. Enright, C.S.S.R., from a lecture at Hartford, Feb. 22, 1884

22 Protestant Confessions:

The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day … but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the [Catholic] church.
~The Protestant Episcopal Explanation of the Catechism

And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day … The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the [Catholic] church has enjoined it.
~Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, pages 334, 336.

We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church.
~Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday

The sacred name of the seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10, quoted] … On this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages … Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week — that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh.
~Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbathic Question, pages 14-17, 41

There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance.
~William Owen Carver, The Lord’s Day in Our Day, page 49

It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath — the Sabbath was founded on a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday … There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday.
~Dr. R.W. Dale, The Ten Commandments (New York: Eaton & Mains), pages 127-129

The current notion, that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.
~Dr. Lyman Abbot, Christian Union, June 26, 1890

The Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive Church called the Sabbath.
~Timothy Dwight, Theology: Explained and Defended (1823), Ser. 107, vol. 3, page 258

But, say some, ‘it was changed from the seventh to the first day.’ Where? When? And by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance, or respect to the reason, can be changed! It is all old wives’ fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage who changes times and laws ex officio — I think his name is Doctor Antichrist.
~Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824, vol. 1. no. 7, page 164

The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change.
~First Day Observance, pages 17, 19

There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord’s Day.
~Dr. D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890

The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.
~Dr. Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church, Henry John Rose, tr. (1843), page 186

They [Roman Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the Lord’s Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments!
~Augsburg Confession of Faith, art. 28; written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Henry Jacobs, ed. (1911), page 63

We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish Sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never confused one with the other…
~The Sunday Problem, a study book of the United Lutheran Church (1923), page 36

But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel … These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect.
~John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pages 15-16

Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day.
~Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, page 26

It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.
~Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, pages 180-181

But, the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken … Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.
~John Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, ed. (New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25, vol. 1, p. 221

The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?
~D. L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York), pages 47-48

There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday … into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters … The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday.
~Canon Eyton, The Ten Commandments, pages 52, 63, 65

The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue — the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution … Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand … The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath.
~T. C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pages 474-475

Excerpts from Dr. Edward T. Hiscox’s paper read before a New York ministers’ conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in the New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893:

There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week … Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament, absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.

To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question … never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.

Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history … But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!

What does the Bible say about this apostasy?

A solemn warning from the apostle Paul:

That you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thessalonians 2:2-4, NASB).

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders (2 Thessalonians 2:7-9).

Conclusion

We have just seen how Satan has been very clever and successful in deceiving most of humanity with a false, unbiblical teaching — substituting the truth of God’s Sabbath with a counterfeit! And sadly, most Christians ignorantly believe the lie and worship on Sunday!

The question now is, since you have discovered the truth, what will you do?

If you need help, please feel free to contact us at BiblicalTruths.com for advice.