The Change of the Sabbath

A Preposterous Claim

Of all the arrogant, preposterous claims-and they have been many-put forth in behalf of the “venerable day of the sun,” the most preposterous is reserved for the last-that of claiming for it the authority of the fourth commandment. It took some fourteen centuries to invent this claim, so contrary to the Bible record. If it is not “stealing the livery of heaven,” for the first day of the week to shield itself under and clothe itself with the commandment of God. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,”-then we know not what would be. The command requiring us to observe the day of Jehovah’s rest which he blessed and set apart for a sacred use at the creation of the world, for man to keep ever holy, is now sanctimoniously appropriated to bolster up another day entirely, the one on which he began his work of creation. We do not know how mortal man could go farther in doing despite to the rest-day of the great God. ChSa 137.3

Here is where first-day observers have entrenched themselves for some two hundred years past. Here is where we find them today. The great heathen “memorial” of idolatry entrenched in the sacred temple of the memorial of the Creator! The first day of the week claiming as its fundamental authority the commandment of God which was given to enforce the observance of the seventh day, an entirely different day! ChSa 138.1

Well does J. N. Andrews say concerning this last step taken to save Sunday: ChSa 138.2

“Such was the origin of the seventh-part-of-time theory, by which the seventh day is dropped out of the fourth commandment, and one day in seven slipped into its place, a doctrine most opportunely framed at the very period when nothing else could save the venerable day of the sun. With the aid of this theory, the Sunday of ‘Pope and pagan’ was able coolly to wrap itself in the fourth commandment, and then, in the character of a divine institution, to challenge obedience from all Bible Christians. It could not cast away the other frauds on which its very existence had depended, and support its authority by this one alone. In the time of Constantine it ascended to the throne of the Roman empire, and during the whole period of the Dark Ages it maintained its supremacy from the chair of St. Peter; but now it had ascended to the throne of the Most High. And thus a day which God ‘commanded not nor spoke it, neither came it into’ his ‘mind,’ was enjoined upon mankind with all the authority of his holy law.”-History of the Sabbath, pages 479, 480. ChSa 138.3