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The Great Controversy 1888
enthroned in the world’s great capital, was the true church of Christ,
the guardian of the treasures of truth which God has committed to his
people to be given to the world.
Among the leading causes that had led to the separation of the
true church from Rome, was the hatred of the latter toward the Bible
Sabbath. As foretold by prophecy, the papal power cast down the truth
to the ground. The law of God was trampled in the dust, while the
traditions and customs of men were exalted. The churches that were
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under the rule of the papacy were early compelled to honor the Sunday
as a holy day. Amid the prevailing error and superstition, many, even of
the true people of God, became so bewildered that while they observed
the Sabbath they refrained from labor also on the Sunday. But this did
not satisfy the papal leaders. They demanded not only that Sunday be
hallowed, but that the Sabbath be profaned; and they denounced in
the strongest language those who dared to show it honor. It was only
by fleeing from the power of Rome that any could obey God’s law in
peace.
The Waldenses were the first of all the peoples of Europe to obtain
a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the
Reformation, they possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native
tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the
special objects of hatred and persecution. They declared the Church of
Rome to be the apostate Babylon of the Apocalypse, and at the peril
of their lives they stood up to resist her corruptions. While, under the
pressure of long-continued persecution, some compromised their faith,
little by little yielding its distinctive principles, others held fast the
truth. Through ages of darkness and apostasy, there were Waldenses
who denied the supremacy of Rome, who rejected image worship as
idolatry, and who kept the true Sabbath. Under the fiercest tempests of
opposition they maintained their faith. Though gashed by the Savoyard
spear, and scorched by the Romish fagot, they stood unflinchingly for
God’s Word and his honor.
Behind the lofty bulwarks of the mountains,—in all ages the refuge
of the persecuted and oppressed,—the Waldenses found a hiding-place.
Here the light of truth was kept burning amid the darkness of the
Middle Ages. Here, for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth
maintained the ancient faith.
God had provided for his people a sanctuary of awful grandeur,
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