Michael Belina Czechowski, once a Polish Catholic priest, emigrated to America in 1851 where he left Catholicism, married, and became a Baptist minister. He heard James White preach in 1857 and became a Sabbathkeeper. Apparently something of a maverick, he sold his autobiography to fund his preaching among immigrants in New York, Canada, and northern Vermont.
Czechowski wanted to return to Europe, but the Adventists would not support him. In fact, it is possible that his independence annoyed the “brethren”, because Ellen White counseled him more than once, warning him that if he went his own way he would eventually blame the brethren for his discouragement that would inevitably result. For whatever reason, the Adventist leaders would neither make him an officially funded missionary nor approve his going out independently. Consequently, Czechowski, his wife and children, and his secretary Annie Butler (the older sister of George I. Butler, one of the nineteenth-century Adventist General Conference presidents) travelled to northern Italy under the auspices of another Millerite group: the Evangelical Adventist Christian church—a Sunday-keeping organization.
In Italy Czechowski worked among the Waldenses and baptized two before moving to Switzerland where he baptized 50 more as Adventists. In 1867, during his Switzerland period, he began publishing a French Sabbath-keeping journal, L’Evangile Eternal, “the first Sabbathkeeping Adventist periodical published in Europe.” All this was still under the umbrella and the funding of the Evangelical Adventist Christian organization. He did send copies of his French journal to the home offices of his funding organization in America, but perhaps not surprisingly, since the journals were in French, they apparently went unread.
Eventually, however, the first-day Evangelical Adventists figured out that Czechowski was teaching Sabbath-keeping Adventism, and they immediately withdrew his funding. Meanwhile, he organized the first church of Sabbathkeepers in Europe in the city of Tramelan, Switzerland. He left eventually and moved on to France, Hungary, and Romania, but after he left, one of his converts discovered a copy of the Review and Herald, the Adventists’ official publication, in the room where Czechowski had been staying before his move. The convert who discovered the magazine wrote to the Battle Creek publishing address, and for the first time “Sabbathkeepers in Europe learned there were Sabbathkeepers in the United States, and Sabbathkeepers in America discovered there were Sabbathkeepers in Europe.”
It is somewhat ironic that the recent discovery of a leather-bound copy of Czechowski’s autobiography unearthed the nearly-forgotten story of this man. Originally marginalized and not supported by the Seventh-day Adventist organization, this man self-styled his own dream-accomplishment, even posing as a Sunday-keeper to obtain the funding he needed to preach the Sabbath in Europe. Today, the Adventists are happy to claim him as a maverick pioneer who brought Adventism to Europe.
Source: Adventist Review Online
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