A Green Sabbath—or God’s Sabbath?

Have you heard of the Green Sabbath Project? Visit its website, and you will be greeted with a page that says:

Is there nothing you can do about the environment?

Nothing may be one of the best things you can do.

One day every week. Do nothing.

Take a weekly day of rest. Make it a real sabbath. For you. For earth.

Don’t drive. Don’t shop. Don’t build.

Take a walk. Eat with friends. Play or read with your kids. Sing. Meditate. Celebrate contentment.

A similar movement is called the Earth Sabbath, and its website states:

Give the Earth a rest one day a week, every week or for a morning or afternoon or even one hour a week.

Today’s world is not as religious as that of previous generations, so this might sound like a novel idea. But for anyone with biblical understanding, it sounds as if the Sabbath of rest that God created is being reinvented for a secular audience, focusing not at all on God but on saving the earth.

“Make it a real sabbath,” advises the website. In reality, this has nothing to do with the real Sabbath and demonstrates the widespread confusion about the Sabbath.

What does the Bible say about the real Sabbath? How did it come to be? What is its purpose? And what might we see in the future regarding those who would strive to observe it?

The biblical Sabbath is the seventh day of the week

You may have heard someone say, “Sunday is my Sabbath,” or “I worship God every day.” The idea is that no day is special, that all days are the same.

But is that true?

The first mention of the Sabbath is found early in the Bible. When God ended His creative acts, He rested on the seventh day, blessing and sanctifying it (that is, establishing it for a holy purpose). The creation account shows that what is called a “day” began and ended in the evening (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; compare Leviticus 23:32).

Later, in the fourth of the 10 Commandments, God ordered the holy observance of the seventh day (Exodus 20:10; Deuteronomy 5:14).  

The seventh day begins on Friday at sunset and ends on Saturday at sunset. This is nothing new to Christians who keep the Sabbath and to Jews, but it’s not common knowledge for many.

However, humans, as they’ve done with so many other things of God, began changing days. Most today have adopted the Roman custom of beginning days at midnight, instead of at sunset as the Bible does (Genesis 1:5; Leviticus 23:32).

And the week itself is no less confusing! Depending on the culture or religion, the first day of the week can be Saturday, Sunday or Monday on the various calendars around the world.

But no matter how humans have drifted from God’s definition of the day or the week, the Bible has never varied or given authority to change the seven-day cycle that was founded in Genesis and continues uninterrupted to this day. The Sabbath of the Bible has always been, and will always be, the seventh day of the week, from sunset Friday evening to Saturday sunset.

But what is the purpose for the Sabbath? Why did God ordain the Sabbath?

On the Sabbath, we rest from our work

In the Fourth Commandment, God says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), explaining that by doing so we follow His example at creation of working six days and resting the seventh (Exodus 20:11).

The Genesis account says, “He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (2:2). The word rest in Hebrew is shâbath, a verb that is the root word for the noun Sabbath. It means to stop or cease, to cease from labor, to cease from work. God stopped His work as an example for us to stop our work.

Will we see growing pressures coming to bear in the future, not only from religious forces but from other sources, on those who believe in following God’s commandment to keep His Sabbath holy? Today a common idea (akin to what the Green Sabbath Project promotes) is that keeping a Sabbath is just taking a break—setting aside time for nothing more than rest and relaxation. Others who look at it through religious eyes may believe they should go to church, but then spend the rest of the day in any other pursuit—recreation, personal chores, etc.

Is that what God intended? Not at all.

God set the Sabbath apart for a special purpose. Instead of pursuing our own ways or finding our own pleasures, we are to delight in God’s ways, worshipping Him and doing things that please Him (Isaiah 58:13-14). To learn more, read “God’s Sabbath Rest: A Day of Refreshing.”

Submit to God’s authority

But a more basic question remains: Can a human, a government or even a religious institution transfer the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath to another day?

The Roman Catholic Church, for example, claims to have the authority to change the Sabbath to Sunday. As its answer to the question “For what reason has the Sabbath been changed to Sunday for Christians?” the Vatican website states:

“The reason is because Sunday is the day of the Resurrection of Christ. As ‘the first day of the week’ (Mark 16:2) it recalls the first creation; and as the ‘eighth day,’ which follows the sabbath, it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by the Resurrection of Christ. Thus, it has become for Christians the first of all days and of all feasts. It is the day of the Lord in which he with his Passover fulfilled the spiritual truth of the Jewish Sabbath and proclaimed man’s eternal rest in God” (vatican.va).

Reading that carefully, one notes that even though it cites one scripture mentioning “the first day of the week,” no other scriptural authority is offered for changing the day God established and commanded to be kept holy! The stated rationale has no biblical backing—only human reasoning.

In fact, the explanation begins with the assumption that Jesus died on Friday and was resurrected on Sunday. Your Bible proves that to be false. For proof that Jesus died at the end of the Passover day, on a Wednesday afternoon that year, and rose on Sabbath afternoon, exactly three days and three nights later, read “How Do You Count Three Days and Three Nights?”

But one must challenge the underlying premise: Did God give the Catholic Church the authority to change the day God made holy for weekly worship?

Interestingly, Catholics are quite honest about this, stating very directly that they believe God did indeed give the Catholic Church sole authority to make doctrinal changes—including changing the Sabbath to Sunday—even if they conflict with the Bible. (For a study on what the Bible says regarding this interpretation, read “On What Rock Did Christ Build His Church?”)

History shows this change came about nearly 300 years after Jesus’ death. Before then, the early Church continued to observe the Sabbath. But Emperor Constantine, after beginning his conversion from paganism, exercised his power at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 and led the Catholic Church to institutionalize the change from Sabbath to “the venerable day of the Sun.”

Later at the Council of Laodicea, in a blatantly anti-Semitic move, the Catholic Church outlawed Sabbath-keeping, stating, “Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, resting rather on Sunday. But if any be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ” (Canon XXIX).

How strange that 300 years after Jesus’ death, those who honored His statement that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28) would find themselves accursed by the religious authorities claiming to represent Him!

No, He is the One who has authority over the Sabbath day, and no person or organization has the right to change the day God sanctified and made holy.

When we keep God’s Sabbath, we submit to His authority. When we substitute Sunday, or any other day, for the Sabbath as the day of worship, we are submitting to the authority of man.

A push for a counterfeit Sabbath

Any declared day of rest other than the seventh day is a counterfeit of the true Sabbath. Are we seeing signs of a renewed push for a counterfeit Sabbath that will potentially create a conflict for anyone seeking to keep God’s true Sabbath?

In January 2024, a Washington Post article in the climate section, titled “Why Reviving a 2,600-Year-Old Spiritual Practice Made My Life Better,” pointed to Pope Francis’ argument about “Sunday in his 2015 ‘Laudato Si,’ an encyclical about caring for the natural world. Not resting is not just bad for the soul, he says, but it’s also bad for the Earth. The constant drive to produce and consume more is squandering natural resources, and it prevents us from treating the living world, and one another, with dignity and respect. The Sabbath forces us to consider how we spend all our days.

“Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world.”

Pope Francis was expanding on the Catholic teaching that Sunday is sacred, trying to give it new meaning for a modern audience in a secular age. Before the last climate talks, he wrote, “The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” pushing for urgency to do something about it. The Green Sabbath Project may be an example of such an attempt.

Recent trends show other signs of Sunday sacredness coming back into focus. In Germany, the supermarket chain Tegut ran into legal opposition by operating its stores seven days a week. Its case ended up in a German court, which ruled that Tegut violated the German Sunday law by remaining open on Sunday.

Ironically, this store did not require any workers to be on the scene. It was 100 percent automated, with workers coming in on weekdays to restock the shelves. Board member Thomas Stäb argued that the stores were “basically walk-in vending machines.” Nevertheless, in April 2024 a German court ruled that it violated the Sunday rest law.

The Daily Mail headlined its report on this story, “Even Shop Robots Should Have Sundays Off, German Court Rules as It Says Automated Supermarkets Must Close on the Seventh Day.” (Of course, this headline goes back to the point about confusing Sunday as the seventh day.)

Many other European nations also give Sunday a protected status. Some of these allow companies to require employees to work six days a week, with Sunday being the required day off.

These laws have little to do with enforcing religious observance (though the fact that Sunday is the imposed rest day is rooted in centuries of church law). The requirements to work six days are based on economic needs. For example, as part of their 2012 bailout package for Greece, eurozone creditors pressured that nation to allow a six-day workweek to improve its economic condition.

In light of end-time prophecies, we should be watchful of two parallel forces. The first is to hold a day of rest (Sunday, naturally) as an environment-saving tactic, and the second is the economic tactic, pressuring people to work a six-day workweek (including, naturally, Saturday).

Similar forces were at play in the Roman Empire when Emperor Constantine instituted Sunday sacredness in A.D. 321, stating, “On the venerable day of the Sun, let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.” With the weight of the empire behind the Catholic Church, Sabbath-keeping Christians were forced to flee or face persecution.

Will we see growing pressures coming to bear in the future, not only from religious forces but from other sources, on those who believe in following God’s commandment to keep His Sabbath holy? Keep your eyes on this!

To learn more, read:

• Who Changed the Day of Worship From Saturday to Sunday? Why?
• Why the Push for European Sunday Laws?
• The Prophesied Restoration of All Things
• Mark of the Beast