Basic HTML Version
250
From Here to Forever
“Up to the time of Christ’s death, no change had been made in
the day”; and, “so far as the record shows, they [the apostles] did
not ... give any explicit command enjoining the abandonment of
the seventh day Sabbath, and its observance on the first day of the
week.
Roman Catholics acknowledge that the change of the Sabbath
was made by their church, and declare that Protestants, by observing
Sunday, recognize her power. The statement is made: “During the
old law, Saturday was the day sanctified; but the Church, instructed
by Jesus Christ, and directed by the Spirit of God, has substituted
Sunday for Saturday; so now we sanctify the first, not the seventh
day. Sunday means, and now is, the day of the Lord.
As the sign of the authority of the Catholic Church, papist writers
cite “the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protes-
tants allow of; ... because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the
church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin.
What then is the change of the Sabbath, but the sign, or mark, of
the authority of the Roman Church—“the mark of the beast”?
[278]
The Roman Church has not relinquished her claim to supremacy.
When the world and the Protestant churches accept a sabbath of her
creating, while they reject the Bible Sabbath, they virtually admit this
assumption. In so doing they ignore the principle which separates
them from Rome—that “the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion
of Protestants.” As the movement for Sunday enforcement gains
favor, it will eventually bring the whole Protestant world under the
banner of Rome.
Romanists declare that “the observance of Sunday by the Protes-
tants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority
of the [Catholic] Church.
Enforcing a religious duty by secular
power would form an image to the beast; hence the enforcement of
Sundaykeeping in the United States would be an enforcement of the
worship of the beast and his image.
Christians of past generations observed Sunday supposing they
were keeping the Bible Sabbath, and there are now true Christians in
4
A. E. Waffle, The LorD’s Day, pp. 186-188.
5
Catholic Catechism of Christian Religion.
6
Henry Tuberville, An Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine, p. 58.
7
Mgr. Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, p. 213.