Untitled article by Jesse Hiestand

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, February 4, 1868

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 8

WHY WAS THE SABBATH CHANGED?

By Jesse Hiestand

This question is often asked, and as the Scriptures are silent in regard to any change, we must seek elsewhere for a reason. To ascertain, then, why, or for what reason or purpose the day was changed, we must apply to those who changed it, and they will be found in that numerous and popular family connection which was charged by our Lord with making void God's law by their traditions, and teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.

The most probable object or design of those who changed it, was, first, to so accommodate their religion to Pagan forms and customs as to secure popularity and avoid persecutions. So far as history gives any light on the question, by whom it was changed, we learn that the professed Christians, who had in many other things become greatly corrupted, some three hundred years after the organization of the gospel church, changed it. These nominal professors of Christianity, who have assumed to be the church, in compliance with the superstitions of the Pagans, who worshiped the sun, and by whom the first day had been set apart as a holy day, and called Sunday, or the day dedicated to the sun, adopted it as the Christian Sabbath; and their adoption of it has been followed by Protestants. JESSE HIESTAND. Palestine, Ill.