The message of “the everlasting gospel,” in this generation, is a message of Sabbath reform; for it is in the Sabbath of the fourth commandment that Christendom has in doctrine as well as in practice set aside the commandments of God and followed papal tradition. The call of God, in this threefold message of Revelation 14, opens with the words:
“Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water” (verse 7).
This call to reformation in the worship of God is based on the terms of the fourth commandment. It is an appeal to worship the God who “made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:11).
It is the Creator, the God who made the Sabbath the sign of His creative power, that is to be worshiped. “Hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God” (Ezekiel 20:20).
The Sabbath is a sign, the divinely appointed mark of the living and the true God.
But the Roman Papacy has set up a mark of its own, a badge of the assumed power of the Catholic Church, to speak for God independently of His Holy word. The Papacy points to the existence of the Sunday institution in Christendom as a mark of its power and authority; and so it is.
It was on this very point that the famous Council of Trent based Rome’s answer to the Protestant Reformation, that tradition and not Scripture alone is the guide, with the voice of the Catholic Church the living voice, instead of the Bible, the living word of God. The council had long debated the ground of its answer. The history records:
“Finally, at the last opening on the eighteenth of January, 1562, their last scruple was set aside; the archbishop of Rheggio made a speech in which he openly declared that tradition stood above Scripture. The authority of the church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the church had changed Sabbath into Sunday, not by the command of Christ, but by its own authority. With this, to be sure, the last illusion was destroyed, and it was declared that tradition does not signify antiquity, but continual inspiration.” Dr. J. H. Holtzman, Canon and Tradition, page 263.
In this speech of the archbishop of Rheggio, Caspar del Fossa by name, arguing, from the generally accepted change of the Sabbath, that the world had acknowledged that the church has power to change the written word and law of God, it was stated:
“Such is the condition of the heretics to-day that they appeal to no other matter more than that they, under the pretense of the word of God, overthrow the church; as though the church, which is the body of Christ, could be opposed to this Word, or the head to the body. Yea, the authority of the church is most gloriously set forth by the Holy Scriptures; for while on the one hand she recommends the same, declares them divine, offers them to us to be read, explains them faithfully in doubtful passages, and condemns whatever is contrary to them, on the other hand, the legal precepts of the Lord contained in them have ceased by virtue of the same authority. The Sabbath, the most glorious day in the law, has been changed into the Lord’s day … . This and other similar matters have not ceased by virtue of Christ’s teaching (for He says He came to fulfill the law, not to destroy it (Matthew 5:17)), but they have been changed by virtue of the authority of the church. Should this authority cease (which would surely please the heretics), who would then witness for truth, and confound the obstinacy of the heretics?” Mansi, Paris, 1902, pages 526–533, quoted in The History of the Sabbath, page 588, Andrews and Conradi (Review and Herald, Washington, D. C.).
Ever since, the Papacy has been boldly challenging Protestants with inconsistency in holding to the observance of Sunday while rejecting the authority of the Roman Church. One finds it in almost any Roman Catholic catechism. Thus:
Question: Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?
Answer: Had she not such power, … she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority. Kennan’s Doctrinal Catechism, page 174.
Again, a standard Roman Catholic work written for Protestants, says:
“The observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the church.” Plain Talk About Protestantism of To-day.
There can be no question as to the fact that the Bible recognizes no change of the day of the Sabbath. As Cardinal Gibbons says:
“You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.” Faith of Our Fathers, page 141.
Protestant authorities—men who themselves observe the traditional Sunday—have freely declared that the New Testament nowhere teaches the substitution of the first day of the week for the seventh as the day of rest. Smith and Cheetham’s “Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,” a standard work edited by Church of England clergymen, says:
“The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord’s day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath, and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the Sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity.” Article Sabbath.
And all the time the fourth command of God’s holy law declares the seventh day to be the Lord’s day, not a “Jewish” sabbath, but “the Sabbath of the Lord thy God” (Exodus 20:10). Whoever takes Jehovah as God and Lord is asked by Him to take His Sabbath also.
Here are statements by another Church of England writer, Dr. Eyton, canon of Westminster:
“There is no word nor hint, in the New Testament, about abstaining from work on Sunday.
“No commandment of God bids us do this or not do that on Sunday; we are absolutely free as far as His law goes.
“The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands on exactly the same footing as the observance of Sunday.
“Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters.” The Ten Commandments, Trübner & Co. (London).
The late Dr. R. W. Dale, Congregationalist, famous in all the churches as one of England’s foremost writers and scholars, said:
“It is quite clear that however rigidly or devoutly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.
“The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.
“There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday.” The Ten Commandments, Hodder and Stoughton (London).
Christ kept the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment, as He kept all His “Father’s commandments” (John 15:10, last part). He declared Himself “Lord also of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). It is the only Lord’s day of Holy Scripture, the only day blessed and made holy by the Lord. In keeping it, Jesus left His followers for all time an example that they should walk “even as He walked” (1 John 2:6). He is “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). He never changed the perfect law of God, which is “holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12); He magnified the law in His earthly life and death, and ever lives to bring repentant sinners into the obedience of faith. The new-covenant promise declares the joyful word, “I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people” (Hebrews 8:10). That is the work of Jesus Christ and His gospel.
But the Papacy, that antichristian power brought to view in Daniel’s prophecy that was to “think to change” (Daniel 7:25) the law of God, has set aside the sign, or mark, of the living God, the Sabbath, and set up its own mark, the Sunday institution. This mystic Babylon of the prophecies has “made all nations drink of the wine” (Revelation 14:8) of its errors and perversions. Even some professedly Protestant peoples are found seeking by civil law to compel the observance of the Sunday, the mark of papal authority. Therefore the Lord sends the last message to all nations, crying the warning:
“If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God” (Revelation 14:9, 10).
The whole question of loyalty and allegiance is bound up in this matter. The Lord sets forth His sign, the holy Sabbath, and the Papacy sets forth its sign, the Sunday institution. Whom shall we follow—the living God, or the Roman Papacy that “sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4, last part)?
The age-long controversy between truth and error is brought to the final crisis in this last generation. The issue is clear. There it stands written in the “sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19) for all mankind to read. The Reformation is not ended yet. Every movement of reform in past days has been leading up to this last stand for God and His Holy Word, on the platform of the primitive faith of the New Testament—“the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).
The closing work of the judgment-hour in heaven and this advent movement and message on earth are God’s answer to the great apostasy.
The prophet of old, as he saw the workings of apostacy treading down the sanctuary and the truth of God, heard the cry, “How long shall be the vision” (Daniel 8:13)? How long, O Lord, how long? was the cry of hearts through the dark night of papal error. The Lord’s answer was, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (verse 14). Interpreted, that answer was, Unto the year 1844, then will the judgment work begin in heaven that is to cut short the reign of sin and apostasy; and then will the Lord lift up on earth the standard of eternal truth against the Papacy in the final gospel message to the world.
Truths obscured by traditions and trampled under the foot of apostasy are to be proclaimed anew. The message of Revelation 14:6–14 is spreading to the world. Every year thousands of new voices join in telling it. Printing-presses are printing this message in many lands. Schools and colleges in every continent are educating thousands of Seventh-day Adventist youth, keeping before them, as the highest aim in life, the hastening of the advent message of Revelation 14 to the world. Sanitariums in many parts are training medical missionary evangelists, ministering at the same time to the sick, and teaching the principles of Bible health and temperance. The movement necessarily emphasizes every principle and every truth of “the everlasting gospel,” while pressing upon all the solemn issue that loyalty to Christ now means to turn from papal tradition to the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, from the Sunday of the Roman Papacy to “the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”
In times past Christian believers have been unwittingly following the Papacy in this matter; the Lord holds no man accountable for light that he did not have. Reformation is a progressive work. Of the past we may say with Paul: “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:30, 31, first part). And now, with this “hour of God’s judgment” already come, the entire covering of papal tradition is to be torn aside, and true believers will be found keeping the faith and keeping the commandments of God as Jesus comes in glory.
All this was shown to John on the Isle of Patmos—the coming of the judgement-hour, the rise of the advent movement, and the heralding of the last message to the nations.
What John saw in vision nearly two thousand years ago, we see fulfilling before our eyes today. It is not enough to see it. We must have a part in it, and be a part of it.
The Hand of God in History, William A. Spicer, ©1913, 208–216.
William A. Spicer (1865-1952) was born into a Seventh-day Baptist home, became a Seventh-day Adventist, and was employed as a call boy at Battle Creek Sanitarium and later as secretary to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the medical superintendent there. He later served as secretary to Elder S. N. Haskell, then helped establish the Solusi Mission on 12,000 acres of land obtained from Cecil Rhodes. In 1903 he became secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and was President of the General Conference from 1922–1930. He was General Field Secretary of the General Conference from 1930–1940. He authored several books and many magazine articles also, as he was an editor of several Adventist periodicals, including The Review and Herald.