Sunday on a Par with the Manchu Cue
By W. E. Gillis
By W. E. Gillis, in Chinese “Signs of the Times” MANY of the Christians living in the civilized countries of the world know that Sunday is not the Sabbath the Creator Himself instituted and enshrined in the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, but that the true Sabbath is the day now generally called Saturday. Why do they ignore the fact when inspiration, in Gen. 2: 1-3 and Mark 2: 27, 28, so clearly reveals that the seventh-day Sabbath was made for man — the first man on this earth — when there was not a Jew at all? The reason I will tell you, but it is like the excuse for sin — a house built on sand and of sand. In the fourth century after Christ, when the Christian church at Rome came under the control of ambitious men who joined in confederacy with Constantine, the head of the Roman Empire, Sunday, the sacred day of the sun-worshippers, was substituted in the church for the Sabbath of the Lord. For centuries cruel laws compelled its observance, until at the present time Sunday is almost universally observed, and the people for the most part had become ignorant of its origin. This extraordinary thing is paralleled by the people of China, who were compelled by Shun Tz, their Manchu conqueror, to wear a cue. So long had this custom prevailed, the Chinese people universally believed that to discard it would be a denial of their native land. But when the true origin of the custom was revealed, during the revolution three years ago, almost all China arose with a true spirit of patriotism and had the humiliating symbol struck off. But what a pity, although the true origin of Sunday as a symbol of the captivity of the church to Constantine is now well known, very few Christians are loyal enough to God to have the symbol of their humiliation struck off! I pray the Lord to enable us by His grace to be loyal to His commandments and the observance of the true Sabbath.