The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

III. Daniel’s Prophecy of Sabbath-Change Constantly Affirmed

As mentioned, the prophetic aspect of the Sabbath issue runs like a golden thread all through the tapestry of this Sabbath-Sunday literature. Thus it was with the Sailer and Spittalhouse Appeal to the Consciences of the Chief Magistrates of This Commonwealth (1657), which persuaded Thomas Bampfield. In speaking of the prophesied change of the Sabbath, they said: PFF4 915.4

“It is as much a changing of the Truth of God into a lie, as in any other action of the Man of sin, 2 Thessalonians 2:4, & it being a grand Character of the man of sin to change Times and Laws, Daniel 7:25.” ¹⁷ PFF4 916.1

On the contrary, in his opposing treatise on The Jews Sabbath Antiquated, and the Lords Day Instituted (1659), Edmund Warren takes issue with such an exposition, and has recourse to the familiar old Antiochus Epiphanes theory, in these words: PFF4 916.2

“He [Thomas Tillam] would fain perswade silly people, That Antichrist changed the Sabbath, and goes about to prove it from Daniel 7. where we read of a little horn that thought to change Times and Laws; and with this little horn he makes a loud noise up and down his Book. But who told him that this horn was Antichrist? Our best Expositors take it to be meant of Antiochus Epiphanes, and indeed Daniel 8. clearly proves it. But what desperate insolency is this, to take the crown of Christ and set it upon the head of Antichrist?” ¹⁸ PFF4 916.3

So the Sabbath, and the prophecy of its change, were regarded back in the seventeenth century as inseparable. PFF4 916.4