www.bible.ca

www.bible.ca is a web site operated by Steve Rudd, and contains a lot of material that we would likely agree with. However, we are hesitant to accept his material at face value because of some pretty major discrepancies.

On other parts of our site, we deal with criticisms that www.bible.ca levels directly at Ellen White. For this analysis here, we'll instead take a look at some information from www.bible.ca that touches on one of Mrs. White's favorite topics, the seventh-day Sabbath. On one of his pages, Steve makes the following claims:

The Historical Record! Christians always worshipped on the first day (Sunday) . . . While Sabbatarians will quote 20th century authors who guess about what happened 1900 years earlier, we quote Christians whose writings are 1900 years old and spoke what they saw! The record of history, from the Resurrection of Christ, [sic] Christians have always worshipped on the first day of the week (Sunday) and never on the Sabbath (7th day).

Then to back up this rather bold claim, Steve gives a number of quotations from the church "fathers."

Here are just a couple:

90AD DIDACHE: ...every Lord's day, hold your solemn assemblies, and rejoice: for he will be guilty of sin who fasts on the Lord's day, being the day of the resurrection... (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 7, pg. 449) 90AD DIDACHE: And on the day of our Lord's resurrection, which is the Lord's day, meet more diligently, sending praise to God that made the universe by Jesus, and sent Him to us, and condescended to let Him suffer, and raised Him from the dead. Otherwise what apology will he make to God who does not assemble on that day to hear the saving word concerning the resurrection...? (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 7, pg. 423)

Sound pretty good? Actually, these two quotes are neither from the Didache nor from 90 AD. They're from the Apostolic Constitutions, a document from around 250 to 350 AD.

By that point in time, some Christians had started calling Sunday the Lord's Day, a practice dating from the second half of the second century AD. While most Christians were still worshipping on the Sabbath, some were not, and many were worshipping on both the Sabbath and Sunday.

How do we know that? Why, the very document that Steve Rudd quotes from on www.bible.ca tells us so. Take a look at what Steve omitted from these two quotes:

[c. 250-300 AD Apostolic Constitutions:] . . . every Sabbath-day excepting one, and every Lord's day, hold your solemn assemblies, and rejoice [without fasting] . . . .—bk. 5, sec. 3, xx. [c. 250-300 AD Apostolic Constitutions:] . . . but assemble yourselves together every day, morning and evening, singing psalms and praying in the Lord's house: . . . but principally on the Sabbath-day. And on the day of our Lord's resurrection, which is the Lord's day, meet more diligently . . . .—bk. 2, sec. 7, lix.

Of course you see the problem. You cannot ethically use a quotation that commands Christians in 300 AD to meet "every Sabbath-day" and "principally on the Sabbath-day" to prove that "Christians have . . . never [worshipped] on the Sabbath."

We pointed out these and other discrepancies about these quotations to Steve, and after emailing back and forth a number of times, he replied:

That raises the question, Who was the quote collector? Did Steve tamper with these quotations himself, or did he "plagiarize" them from someone else? (We use the term "plagiarize" only because his site repeatedly accuses Ellen White of plagiarism.) His page gives no credit whatsoever to any secondary source from which he might have gotten these tampered quotations, but for that matter, neither do the other web sites which copy these quotes verbatim without giving credit, even falsely stating that they come from "90AD DIDACHE."

Well, Steve updated the page in question in November of 2003, though as of June 2004, he has not updated three other pages that also refer to some of these so-called Didache quotes. While the page in question still says, "The record of history, from the Resurrection of Christ, [sic] Christians have always worshipped on the first day of the week (Sunday) and never on the Sabbath (7th day)," it also gives more context for these quotes so that the reader can see that his statement is false. All the more is this true since he included the following quote:

350 AD APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS ". . . But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord's day festival; . . . ." (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, book 7)

Yes, it's absolutely true. The very document that's supposed to prove that "Christians . . . never [worshipped] on the Sabbath" actually commands Christians to not only worship on the Sabbath, but also to keep the Sabbath, around 300 AD.

And that's just part of why we feel that the information on www.bible.ca is unreliable, and why we are reluctant to accept any of it at face value.