THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Early Christian Sabbath
the philosophizing teachers had once presided, and through allegorizing interpretation of
Scripture, these men had emphasized the keeping of Sunday, as their writings clearly
indicate. We see in the defeat of Sabbath keeping a result of their influence, which led the
people of Alexandria away from the simplicity of Bible truth.
Rome also, say Socrates and Sozomen, set aside the observance of the seventhday
Sabbath. This was exactly in line with the attitude of Rome toward the
commandments of God, and particularly toward the Sabbath. This church has always
been consistent in substituting for the commandments of God the precepts of men. It has
done the very thing for which Christ condemned so severely the Pharisees of His day.
Matthew 15:9, 13. In these two churches the people were led astray from keeping the
Sabbath. In almost all other churches the Sabbath was still observed.
How displeasing it must have been then to Pope Gregory of Rome to find in his
own territory those who were keeping the Sabbath! In book 13 of his Epistles, Letter 1,
he says, in great bitterness of soul. It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse
spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so
as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these but
preachers of antichrist?” We can answer Pope Gregory. These were not preachers of
antichrist. They were preachers who would obey the commandments of God and serve
Christ, who is the Lord of the Sabbath. In emphasizing the Sabbath, they were not
preaching a depraved faith, but the very truth of Scripture.
But Gregory was consistent with what Rome was attempting throughout the early
centuries and has continued ever since to carry out. Here was the very spirit of the “little
horn” of Daniel 7:8,25, which, we are told, shall “think to change times and laws.” The
revival of true Sabbath observance, which began in the sixteenth century, has been
renewed earnestly and determinedly in the last hundred years. The prophecy of
Revelation 14:12 speaking of the time of Christ's second advent, says of faithful
Christians of that time: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the
commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Today Sabbath keeping people all over
the world are fulfilling this scripture in obedience to Christ.
This does not mean keeping some of the commandments, or a few of the
commandments, or those commandments one may wish to keep, or the keeping of them
in any way one may wish. It means keeping all ten of them, including the fourth, in the
way God wants them kept. And there is a people, serving Christ earnestly, successfully,
militantly, all over the world, who in the strength of Christ, are doing this. The Sabbath
has survived through the centuries because it is the will of God that it should do so.
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