Bible Readings — Bible Questions Answered

A Gradual Change

How did this change in observance of days come about? BR-ASI9 304.4

Through a gradual transference. BR-ASI9 304.5

Note.—“The Christian Church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious, transference of the one day to the other.”—F. W. Farrar, The Voice From Sinai, p. 167. This of itself is evidence that there was no divine command for the change of the Sabbath. BR-ASI9 304.6

For how long a time was the seventh-day Sabbath observed in the Christian church? BR-ASI9 304.7

For many centuries. In fact, its observance has never wholly ceased in the Christian church. BR-ASI9 304.8

Note.—Mr. Morer, a learned clergyman of the Church of England, says: “The Primitive Christians had a great veneration for the Sabbath, and spent the Day in Devotion and Sermons. And ’tis not to be doubted but they derived this Practice from the Apostles themselves.”—A Discourse in Six Dialogues on the Name, Notion, and Observation of the Lord’s Day, p. 189. BR-ASI9 304.9

“A history of the problem shows that in some places, it was really only after some centuries that the Sabbath rest really was entirely abolished, and by that time the practice of observing a bodily rest on the Sunday had taken its place.”—Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations, p. 15. BR-ASI9 304.10

Lyman Coleman says: “Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and a solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.”—Ancient Christianity Exemplified, chap. 26, sec. 2. BR-ASI9 305.1

The church historian Socrates, who wrote in the fifth century, says: “Almost all the churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this.”—Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chap. 22, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d Series, vol. 2, p. 32. BR-ASI9 305.2

Sozomen, another historian of the same period, writes: “The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the first day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria.”—Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chap. 19, in the same volume as the above quotation. BR-ASI9 305.3

All this would have been inconceivable had there been a divine command given for the change of the Sabbath. The last two quotations also show that Rome led in the apostasy and in the change of the Sabbath. BR-ASI9 305.4