Day 13

“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet” Rev 1:10 NASB

What did John mean by the “Lord’s Day?” When was it that John received his vision? This is the only time the phrase occurs in the NT. There are 3 options that scholars put forward for understanding this text.

The first option is the day we call Sunday. Christian writings from the Second Century (as close as 35-40 years after the book of Revelation) clearly use the phrase “the Lord’s Day” as a figure of speech for Sunday. The idea arose in relation to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week (our Sunday), so “the Lord’s Day” could be a reference to that. But there is no evidence that Christians in the First Century kept Sunday as a replacement for the fourth commandment.

Secondly it could have been the day we call Saturday. Saturday is the seventh day of the week on the Hebrew calendar, known to the Jews as the Sabbath. The Sabbath is often called “the Lord’s Day.” In Isaiah 58, The Lord Himself speaks of the Sabbath as “my holy day.” And in Mark 2:27-28 Jesus declares that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath.” So a strong biblical option for understanding John is that he was alluding to these earlier texts to identify the Sabbath as the day on which the vision came.

Thirdly, perhaps John had in mind the Old Testament Day of the Lord, a phrase used in the Bible for God’s great intervention at the end of earth’s history. The Lord’s Day is in what we call the ‘genitive case’ and could be translated “The day of the Lord.” The appearance of “a trumpet” in this verse, which is a judgement symbol, makes this my preferred option.