“A history of the problem shows that in some places, it was really only after some centuries that the Sabbath rest really was entirely abolished, and by that time the practice of observing a bodily rest on Sunday had taken place.”—Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1943), p. 15.

But of course believers didn’t stop observing the seventh-day Sabbath on a given weekend and then suddenly begin keeping Sunday as the Lord’s day. The earliest authentic instance of Sunday observance by Christians occurred in Italy, in the middle of the second century after Christ. For a long time after that many Christians observed both days, while still others kept the Sabbath only.

On March 7, A.D. 321, Constantine the Great issued the first civil Sunday law, compelling all the people, except farmers, in the Roman Empire to rest on Sunday. This, with five other civil laws decreed by Constantine concerning Sunday, set the legal precedent for all civil Sunday legislation from that time to the present. In the fourth century the Council of Laodicea prohibited Christians from abstaining from work on the Sabbath. It urged them if at all possible to honor Sunday by abstaining from work.

History shows that Sunday worship and observance is a man-made convention. The Bible gives no authority for doing away with the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment. In the Old Testament, the prophet Daniel predicted that during the Christian era a deceptive power would attempt to change God’s law. The God Cares Daniel book presents a detailed explanation of that prophecy.