The Change of the Sabbath

“He Shall Think to Change”

He shall “think to change times and laws,” or “the times and the law,” as it is rendered by many other versions. The late revised version has it “the law.” It was not mere human laws to which the angel referred, but the law of the Most High, the power against which he was warring. He shall speak “great words against God”, “wear out the saints” of God, and undertake (“think himself able,” Dr. Clarke) to change the law of God. ChSa 170.1

“They shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” This can only mean that he shall seem to have accomplished his purpose of changing the law of God during this period. A time is one year (the ancient year of 360 days); times (plural), twice as much, 720; a dividing of time, half as much, 180; making in all 1260 prophetic, or symbolic, days, each day representing a year. Ezekiel 4:6; Numbers 14:34. He received his power from Justinian, AD. 538, and retained it until 1798, a period of just 1260 years, when the French Republic captured Rome, and carried the pope into France, where he died in exile. The papacy then received a terrible blow, from which it has not yet fully recovered. ChSa 170.2

This language plainly implies, even to a certainty, that the law of God would be changed by a blasphemous apostate power. Those who have read the foregoing chapters can hardly fail to see how wonderfully the Roman Catholic power has fulfilled these predictions, by changing the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and placing the Sun-day of “pope and pagan” in its stead. ChSa 170.3