Question:
What day of the week is the Lord’s day of Revelation 1:10?
Answer:
The question is essential, yet the answer is straightforward if we stay by the Word. The text itself—”I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”—does not tell us what day the Lord’s day is; neither are we to suppose for one moment that John would expect us to find out what day was meant by the use of the term a hundred years later by Tertullian, the first of the fathers of the Catholic Church that unquestionably applies the term “Lord’s day” to the first day of the week. John believed in the Word, and he used the language of the Word. To the Word of the Lord must we turn to find out what the Lord’s day is. Two or three scriptures quickly settle this.
First, the Bible tells us in Exodus 20:10 that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” The Lord, through Isaiah 58:13, teaches that the Sabbath is His “holy day.” “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day.” In Mark 2:28, Jesus declares, “The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Then according to the Lord’s Word, the Lord’s day is the seventh day of the week—Saturday, the Sabbath of the Lord our God. That is conclusive if we hold to the Word rather than human tradition.
