Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER XX.
PAUL GOES TO EUROPE THE SECOND TIME.
1. We learn (1 Corinthians 1:8) that Paul remained in Ephesus at this time, A.D. 57, till after
Pentecost, which was early in June, fifty days after April 14, having written the first Corinthian letter
and sent it on to them by Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus. After this memorable uproar, calling
together the disciples, exhorting and bidding them a loving adieu, he sails away to Macedonia.
2, 3. Spending the summer in the churches of Northern Greece, meanwhile Timothy and Titus
with their comrades at different times have gone down into Achaia and preached to the Corinthians;
bringing him word in reference to the effect of his first epistle, he writes the second [methinks at
Berea] and sends it on before him, prosecuting his peregrinations through the north, and arriving at
Corinth late in the fall, spending the winter of A.D. 57-58 in that genial southern climate. Meanwhile
he writes the epistle to the Romans, setting out in the spring for the great East again and returning
through Macedonia.
4-6. Meanwhile his evangelistic comrades, Sopater of Asia, Aristarchus and Secundus, Gaius and
Timothy, Tychicus and Trophinius, embarking, sail directly to Asia, landing at Troas, whither Paul
and Luke, leaving Philippi after the Passover, April 14, arrive in five days, and there remain for a
week, preaching.
THE SABBATH CHANGED.
7. “On the first day of the week we assembling to break bread,” i.e., to celebrate the love-feast
and the eucharist. Paul spoke to them, being about to depart the following day, and continued his
discourse till midnight. Justin Martyr was a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John.
Hence he lived, wrote and suffered martyrdom within a generation of the apostles. I have now before
my eye his testimony in his native Greek, certifying that all the saints kept Sunday, in his day, as a
day of sacred rest, devoted to the worship of God in commemoration of our Lord’s resurrection, in
consequence of which it was denominated “the Lord’s day,” a phrase never applied to the Jewish
Sabbath. As a confirmation of this we find the Hebdomidal division of time prevailing throughout
the whole Gentile world very early in the Christian era, there being no such a seventh day division
of time among the heathens. As the first converts of Christianity were all Jews, of course they kept
the seventh day during their generation, and while the Jewish element remained in the church, as we
see from this verse and other Scriptures, and the corroborations of Justin Martyr and other Christian
fathers, also observing the first day of the week, i.e., Sunday, as a day of sacred rest, devoted to the
worship of God. The Seventh Day Adventists most glaringly and erroneously tell us that the pope
of Rome made the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday! What an awful mistake! when
there never was a pope until the seventh century, while we see right here, in New Testament times,
they kept Sunday as we do, and history shows that it was ever afterward continued, down to the
present day. The Roman historians, Suetonius and Pliny, who lived and wrote in the first centuries
of the Christian era, during the bloody martyr ages, are good witnesses in this problem. As they were