Brief Outline of the Sabbath Question
By W. A. S.
No. 4—The Papacy and the Sabbath
THE God of heaven made the seventh day his Sabbath, and commands all men to keep it holy. When men choose to set apart another day, it does not alter the fact that it is another day. It is only setting up human authority against divine authority. It is putting the humanly appointed time against divinely appointed time. It is exalting man's sabbath against God's Sabbath. It is man exalting himself “above all that is called God, or that is worshiped.” 2 Thess. 2:4. This is what made the papacy. Paul said that in his day the spirit of the “lawless one” was already working. He said it would lead to a “falling away” from the truth. 2 Thessalonians 2. Dr. Killen, Presbyterian Church historian, says in his “Ancient Church:” — In the interval between the days of the apostles and the conversion of Constantine, the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect. . . . Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. Thus Sunday came in, first as a humanly appointed festival, then as a rival of God's Sabbath. Then the apostate church, having fully adopted the “venerable day of the sun,” as the edict of Constantine called it, assumed to set aside the Lord's Sabbath. Thus the growth of Sunday and the growth of the papacy went on side by side. The Bishop Eusebius, the friend and flatterer of the corrupt Constantine, said: — All things whatsoever it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day. Dean Stanley says of the associations of the Sunday with sun-worshiping paganism: — The retention of the old pagan name Dies Solis, or Sunday, for the weekly Christian festival, is, in a great measure, owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as the “venerable day of the sun.” . . . It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religions of the empire under one common institution. Dean Milman says that Constantine, who at the time of his Sunday edict had not even professed his spurious conversion, had an ambitious scheme to bring about “one great system of religion” for all, “of which the sun was to be the central object of adoration.” The leaders in the apostasy of the church were ready to compromise. Cardinal Newman says: — Confiding in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments and appendages of demon worship to an evangelical use . . . the rulers of the church from early times were prepared to adopt or imitate the existing rites and customs of the populace. So came the church festival days, Sunday included, blending the Christian and the pagan ideas. The pagan philosopher Faustus charged Augustine: — You have substituted your agapoe for the sacrifices of the pagans; for their idols, your martyrs, whom ye serve with the very same honors. You appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their calends and their solstices; and as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans except that you hold your assemblies apart from them. God forbade his people of old to pattern in any way after heathen observances. Deut. 12:29-32. “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.” But the Jews continually adopted heathen ways, and forsook God's Sabbath and “observed times.” Their history of failure was written as a warning example to later times. But the early church went in the same path of apostasy. Even in the apostles' days the spirit of lawlessness and compromise and self-exaltation, the essence of the papacy, was already at work. A few centuries later the full system was revealed, fulfilling Daniel's prophecy of the power that was to wear out the saints, and “think to change times and laws” of the Most High. Dan. 7:25; 2 Thessalonians 2. The Roman Church claims the Sunday as the mark of her authority, challenging Protestants to produce any authority for its observance save the tradition of the church. Cardinal Gibbons, of America, declares by his chancellor: — Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act. It could not have been otherwise, as none in those days would have dreamed of doing anything in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical and religious without her. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power. Many have unknowingly been following the papacy instead of God's Word in this matter of Sunday-keeping. “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” Acts 17:30. When the apostle spoke this, he said the call to repentance was “because He hath7appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world.” The Message for This Judgment Hour
Now, in these last days, we are living in the time of God's judgment, which is to decide who shall be raised to life in the first resurrection, at Christ's second coming. The gospel message to be preached now is, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” Rev. 14:7. It proclaims the most solemn message against following the way of apostasy, symbolized by the leopard beast of Revelation 13. “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.” Rev. 14:9, 10. Whosoever preaches the genuine gospel in these last days must sound this warning. The result of preaching this gospel of Christ's salvation is to gather out a people of whom the Lord says: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Verse 12. This preaching of the gospel that really saves men from their sins and makes them keepers of God's commandments, arouses the wrath of Satan. He makes war against the “remnant,” or last, of the church of Christ, because they “keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 12:17. Let the Lord Jesus save you from every known sin, and live his own blessed life of righteousness in you day by day. The unsaved man can not keep the Sabbath. The man who lives a selfish life during the week, who is not honest in business, paying his debts, and true, and pure, can not keep God's Sabbath, which he says is the sign of his power to sanctify, or save. Eze. 20:12. We must yield to his salvation, being transformed by his grace; then may we enter into his blessed rest, which he says still “remains” to “the people of God.” Heb. 4:4, 9. Men may say it is abolished, but God says that it remains. It is the one relic of Eden which remains untouched by the curse. It is the memorial of a new creation, the sign of God's power to create man anew. God says he made his Sabbath the sign by which it might be known that he is the Lord, the Creator. Eze. 20:20. This is what all men need to know. Why should any one disregard the very sign, or mark, by which God says he is to be known as God? It is neither a new idea nor man's idea that we preach in this message of Sabbath reform. God sends the truth of his blessed Sabbath to be a blessing to men. It is preached by the “everlasting gospel” of Rev. 14:6-12, which is to be heralded to every nation and tongue and people. Those who carry it can judge no man. They can only exhort all men to prepare to stand before the Judge of all at the Great Assizes already in session. W. A. S.