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The Watch Tower and the Day of the Lord

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John begins the account of his Revelation, ‘I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet…’ The New World Translation has:

‘By inspiration I came to be in the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a strong voice like that of a trumpet…’ (Rev.1:10) More on this later.

Having, inevitably, their own take on this, the Watch Tower, in the May 2022 Watchtower Study Edition, Study 19, writes:

‘The aged apostle John identified that time when he said: “By inspiration I came to be in the Lord’s day.” (Rev. 1:10) When John wrote those words in about 96 C.E., “the Lord’s day” was still far off. (Matt. 25:14, 19; Luke 19:12) But according to Bible prophecy, that day started in 1914 when Jesus was enthroned as King in heaven. From that year onward, the prophecies of Revelation, which involve God’s people, started to undergo fulfillment. Yes, we are now living in “the Lord’s day”!’

Jehovah’s Witnesses see ‘the Lord’s day’ as the day of his being enthroned in 1914 (which happened invisibly, so we must just take their word for it). The vision of John involves time travel, as he moves forward in the Spirit to 1914, then goes back to report to the first century church what he saw. Is this how prophecy works, not revelation and foresight but HG Wells type time travel and reportage? Is this even what the passage actually says?


On The Lord’s Day

It is fondly believed by many that a definitive model for church may be gleaned from the pages of the New Testament. Much of what we do as church, however, derives, not from instruction, but from tradition and established practice. There are elements we seek to include in our worship, such as those described at the end of Acts 2: devotion to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers, and the common life. When it comes to identifying the Lord’s Day, we get our understanding from what we see the early church doing.

Acts 20:7 is the first reference in Acts to Sunday worship, ‘On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread…’

1 Cor.16:2 gives instruction regarding the collection for the saints, ‘On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up…’ and, of course, there is the reference in Rev.1.

‘The first day of the week’ is an established Jewish expression for Sunday. The phrase is used in the gospels to describe the day Jesus rose from the tomb (Mt.28:1; Mk.16:2; Lk.24:1; Jn.20:1) It is important to recognise ’the first day of the week’ in the Jewish calendar begins on Saturday evening, following the rabbinic interpretation of Gen.1:5, ‘There was evening and there was morning, the first day.’

Sunday, by this reckoning, begins after sunset on Saturday and ends after sunset on Sunday. The early church, under the Jewish calendar, met on Saturday night. This explains Paul’s prolonging his speech (logos) until midnight, and a sleepy Eutychus falling asleep and tumbling from a third floor window (Acts 20:7-10): He didn’t speak from the morning service until midnight!

By this reckoning, the church met early on the first day of the week, even though we would regard it as late on the seventh day. It was the day Christ rose from the dead, which is why it is called the Lord’s Day. It was the first day of the new creation: ‘If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation’ (2Cor.5:17). These are the powerful types underpinning the choice of the first day of the week.

Over time the shape and timing of Sunday worship changed, which has not always been a good thing, but the core of our meeting, fellow-shipping, and practice can always be brought back to the fundamentals of devotion to Bible teaching, fellowship, prayer, breaking of bread, and the common life. As those in the Reformed tradition have it, Ecclesia semper reformanda est, ‘the church must always be reformed.’

The Lord’s Day is generally Sunday, but I know a church that meets on Saturday because the building in which they meet is not available on Sunday. Are they less faithful for that? Of course not.


In The Lord’s Day?

Finally, in a Facebook comment last week, Bavesh Roger observed:

In the NWT they mistranslate Rev. 1:10 purposefully, discarding the grammatical rules which they themselves follow elsewhere. They place the verb egenomen (came to be) in this verse after en pnuemati (in spirit), whereas in Rev. 4:2 it is placed correctly before "in spirit".

Grammatically, the correct translation would be "I came to be in the spirit on the Lord's day", but, to prove that John was transported supernaturally to 1914, they render it incorrectly "by inspiration (spirit) I came to be in the Lord's day" which completely changes its meaning.

Also, the Watch Tower seems to confuse "the Lord's day" with "the day of the Lord". Biblical scholar Craig Evans notes that "te kyriake hemera" (the Lord's day) is an early Christian expression for the first day of the week. The same phrase is used in Didache, Ignatius' epistle to Magnesians and in the Eccl. History of Eusebius referring to the first day of the week. In the LXX also it never refers to the eschatological day, therefore there is no historic ground for the futurist interpretation of this expression.’

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