By constantly crying in the ears of the people: “Sunday is a heathen day; and all who observe it keep ‘the venerable day of the sun’” “The bishop of Rome is authority for Sunday observance”; “Constantine changed the Sabbath”; “The observance of the first day of the week began with the pope of Rome,” etc., etc., Adventists frighten a few ignorant souls into this belief; and the result is, they cease to observe the great memorial day of the gospel, and go back under the “yoke of bondage.” This man of straw is one of the most effectual means in the hands of Sabbatarians. But the whole is wrong from the ground up. Not a word of truth is there in any of the assertions quoted. The facts of history utterly refute them. Let us examine.
The heathens never kept Sunday, as Adventists affirm. I quote from Canright:
‘Such statements are utterly false. Each day of the week was named after some god, and, in a certain sense, was devoted to the worship of that god, as Monday to the moon, Saturday to Saturn, Sunday to the sun, etc. But did they cease work on these days? No; if they had they would have kept every day in the week. Did they observe Sunday by ceasing to work? No indeed. No such thing was taught or practiced by the Romans. They had no weekly rest-day.
‘Prof. A. Rauschinbusch, of Rochester Theological Seminary, quotes Lotz thus: “It is a vain thing to attempt to prove that the Greeks and Romans had anything resembling the Sabbath. Such opinion is refuted even by this, that the Roman writers ridicule the Sabbath as something peculiar to the Jews.’ In proof he cites many passages from the Roman poets, and one from Tacitus. Seneca also condemned the Sabbath observance of the Jews as a waste if time by which a seventh part of life was lost.”—Saturday or Sunday? (page 83). “No special religious celebration of any one day of the week can be pointed out in any one of the pagan religions.—”Herzog (Art. “Sabbath.”) The pagans never kept Sunday. So much for that. Saturday was sacred to Saturn as Sunday was to the sun.’ So if Christians keep a heathen day, Adventists also do.
Next we inquire, Did Constantine change the Sabbath? Adventist literature and teachings say, “Yes.” History and facts say, “No.” Notice the Adventists’ dilemma. One time they cry, “Constantine changed the Sabbath,” and again they say, “It was the pope.” Pray how can this be? Constantine’s Sunday law was made in A. D. 321, long years before there was a pope recognized as controlling Christendom. Then, their talk about the pope’s changing the observance of the day is refuted by their own literature, which teaches that it was Constantine. Now comes the climax. Elder Waggoner, a leading Adventist, finally admits that “it is safe to affirm that there was nothing done in the time of Constantine, either by himself or any other that has the least appearance of changing the Sabbath.” —Replies to Elder Canright, (page 150). Amen. Then, from their own admission, we are forced to conclude that they know better themselves when they try to scare the people into believing that Constantine or the pope of Rome changed the observance of the day.
The facts are, as proved in preceding chapters, that the Christian church observed the Lord’s Day as the great memorial day of the gospel, from the resurrection day on. When Constantine was converted, or became favorable to the Christian religion, he simply issued an edict throughout his empire for people to observe the Christian’s day. That is all there is to it. “The first day of the week, which was the ordinary and stated time for the public assemblies of the Christians, was, in consequence of a peculiar law enacted by Constantine, observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been.”—Mosheim (Part II, chap. 4. sec. 5). The united testimony of the early Christian writers as seen in a preceding chapter, was that they all held Sunday as a sacred and memorial day, and this long before Constantine’s time.
The following quotation is from The Sabbath. After quoting Mrs. White, who says in her book Great Controversy that the observance of days was changed by Constantine and the bishop of Rome, the writer, D. S. Warner, says:
“Look at the impudence of this prophetess! The apostle John called the resurrection day ‘the Lord’s day’ in A. D. 96. She says that title was conferred upon it by the bishop of Rome in the fourth century. She speaks of the ‘false’ and the ‘true,’ calling the first day of the week the false and the seventh day the true. But eighteen hundred years before she was born, Justin Martyr wrote under the same head, and denounced the Jewish Sabbath as the false, and declared the first day the true Lord’s day. He wrote in the virgin purity of Christianity; she writes under the thick fogs of Babel confusion. He wrote as the Apostle did who pronounced the curse of God upon the false teachers who troubled the Galatian church, ‘subverting the gospel of Christ’ by enjoining the law and its ‘days.’ She writes largely the doctrine of the Ebionites, one of the first and most abominable heresies.
“She says that in the first centuries the seventh day had been kept by all Christians. And her own word is the only proof she offers. But we have seen that both the Word of God and the early church Fathers teach us that only persons who were weak and ignorant of the liberties of the sons of God thought it necessary to observe the law respecting meats and the Sabbaths. And Justin told Trypho that the Sabbath of the law belonged only to the Jews, and that it was not proper for Christians to observe it; and by others we are positively told that Saturday was a common work-day in the primitive church of God. This prophetess leaves the impression that Constantine, as a heathen, enjoined the observance of Sunday as a public festival, and after his professed conversion still adhered to it, thus making him the author of that day of worship. So Adventism teaches. But all readers of the New Testament and of early history know better. For two hundred years before Constantine’s day, in fact from the resurrection of Christ, the first day was kept by the church of God, as a memorial day, a weekly day of worship. Constantine had nothing to do with the establishment of the Lord’s Day in the church. God’s institutions need no kingly decrees. But what that emperor did simply related to the day in his empire.
“Should the head of the Chinese empire become specially favorable to the Christian religion, nothing would be more natural than that he would adopt the first day of the week as their national holiday. This is substantially what Constantine did. Yet there is no more reason of truth in ascribing to him the origin of the observance of the Lord’s Day than there would be in making the emperor of China father of it, were he to do the same thing in this century. When Constantine called the first day ‘the venerable day of the sun,’ he had no reference to any idolatrous use of that day. More than a hundred years before, the days of the week had all been named after planets, as follows: the first day after the Sun—Sunday; the next after the moon—Monday; the last after Saturn—Saturday; etc. And these names had passed into common use. Constantine, having been convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, would naturally speak of the preeminence of their day of worship, of which preeminence he had a beautiful illustration of the fact that the sun is the greatest planet of the solar system, and the source of all light. So this constant cry of Adventism that ‘Constantine changed the Sabbath,’ etc., is false. And no person can inform himself of the historical facts and make the assertion without knowing he is wrong. They dispute the plain scriptures, renounce all early history that exposes their creed, and virtually make their own history to suit their purpose.
“They are now sending out two pamphlets, the first of which is entitled Rome’s Challenge, Why do Protestants Keep Sunday? the second, Our Answer. In the first, Roman authorities are quoted, affirming that they changed the day from the seventh to the first day; that there is no evidence in Scripture or early history in favor of the first-day observance; that it rests only upon Rome’s authority to change the laws of God. To this false statement Adventists give consent, and then claim to be persecuted because they do not keep the day Rome made. But God’s Word and the writings of the church Fathers rebuke both.”
After Waggoner (Adventist) admitted that Constantine did not change the Sabbath, he then attempted to fix the Council of Laodicea, A. D. 364, as the exact place where and time when the pope made the change. Adventists of late accept Waggoner’s position. The twenty-ninth canon of that council reads thus: “Christians ought not to Judaize and to rest in the Sabbath, but to work in that day; but preferring the Lord’s Day, should rest, if possible, as Christians. Wherefore if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed from Christ.” On this Waggoner says, “Now, if anyone can imagine what would be changing the Sabbath, if this is not, I would be extremely happy to learn what it could be.” As a thorough refutation of the Adventists’ position on this important point, I quote the following facts and able arguments from Seventh-day Adventism Renuonced:
“1. If the Sabbath was changed to Sunday by the pope right here, as he affirms, then certainly it was not changed before nor after nor at any other place. So if this fails their whole cause is lost. Let the reader mark the importance of this fact.
“2. He admits what every scholar knows, that till after the time of Constantine the bishop of Rome had no ‘authority whatever above the other bishops’ and so could not have changed the Sabbath before that time. He says: ‘It was Constantine himself that laid the foundation of the papacy.’—Replies to Elder Canright, (page 148). Surely the papacy did not exist before its foundation was laid.
“3. He admits, as above, that Constantine did nothing to change the Sabbath.
“4. But we have abundantly proved in preceding pages that all Christians long before this date were unanimous in observing the Lord’s Day. This one simple fact proves the utter absurdity of the claim that it was changed at Laodicea, A. D. 364, or by the papacy at any time.
“5. In the year 324, or just forty years before the Council of Laodicea, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, Palestine, wrote his celebrated history of Christianity. He had every possible opportunity to know what Christians did throughout the world. He says: ‘And all things whatsoever it was the duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s Day as more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath.’—Quoted in Sabbath Manual (page 127)
“That is the way the Sabbath and Sunday stood forty years before Laodicea. They did not keep the Sabbath, but did keep the Lord’s Day…How much truth, then, can there be in the position that the Sabbath was changed to Sunday by the pope forty years later? Shame on such attempts to pervert the truth. But let us look at the real facts about the Council of Laodicea. Seventh-day Adventists claim two things, viz., that the Sabbath was changed by the Roman church, and that it was done by the authority of the pope. Then they select Laodicea as the place and time. But—
“1. Laodicea is not Rome. It is situated in Asia Minor over one thousand miles east of Rome. It was in Asia, not in Europe. It was an Eastern, not a Western town, an Oriental, not a Latin city.
“2. It was a Greek, not a Roman city.
“3. The pope of Rome did not attend this Council at Laodicea, A. D. 364. Does Waggoner claim that he did? No, he does not dare to.
“4. The pope did not attend, nor did he send a legate or a delegate or anyone to represent him. In fact, neither the Roman Catholic Church, nor the pope had anything to do with the council in any way, shape, or manner. It was held without even their knowledge or consent.
“5. At this early date, A. D. 364, the popes, or rather bishops of Rome, had no authority over other bishops. It was two hundred years later before they were invested with authority over all the churches. Even then their authority was stoutly resisted for centuries in the East where this council was held. See Bower’s History of Popes, or any church history.
“6. Liberius was bishop of Rome at the time of this council at Laodicea. He was degraded from his office, banished, and treated with the utmost contempt. Bower says that in order to end his exile, Liberius ‘wrote in a most submissive and cringing style to the eastern Bishops.’—History of the Popes (vol. 1, p. 64). And this was the pope who changed the Sabbath at a council of these same Eastern bishops, one thousand miles away, which he never attended!
“7. The council of Laodicea was only a local council, a small, unimportant affair, and not a general council at all.…The general councils are: 1. That at Nice, A. D. 325. 2. That at Constantinople, A. D. 381. 3. That at Ephesus, A. D. 431, etc. See the list in Johnson’s Cyclopedia, or any history. Bower in his extensive work, the History of the Popes, gives an account of all the general councils, the important local councils, and all with which Rome or the popes had to do, but does not even mention this one at Laodicea.…‘This council is not even mentioned by Mosheim, Milner, Ruter, Reeves, Socrates, Sozomen, nor by four other historians on my table.’ McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia says: ‘Thirty-two bishops were present from different provinces in Asia.’ All bishops of the Eastern church, not one from the Roman church! And yet this was the time and place when and where the Roman church and the pope changed the Sabbath.
“8. Now think of it: this little local council of thirty-two bishops revolutionizes the whole world on the keeping of the Sabbath!
“9. The fact is that this council simply regulated in this locality an already long-established institution, the Lord’s Day, just the same as council after council did afterwards.…The Lord’s Day had been kept by the church hundreds of years before the council of Laodicea mentioned it.
“10. The church of Laodicea where this council was held was raised up by Paul himself.…It was one of the seven churches to which John wrote (Rev. 3:14). Hence it is certain that it was well instructed and grounded in the doctrines of the apostles. Between Paul and this council, that is, A. D. 270, Anatolius was bishop of Laodicea. He wrote: “Our regard for the Lord’s resurrection, which took place on the Lord’s Day, will lead us to celebrate it on the same principle’ (Canon 16). Here we have that church keeping Sunday one hundred years before this council.
“11. Finally, if the Council of Laodicea changed the Sabbath, as Adventists say, then it was changed by the Greek church instead of the Roman church; changed by the Eastern churches over which Rome had no authority; changed before the papacy was established, before the pope had an authority over the East, by a small local council which neither the pope nor any of his servants attended. The absurdity of this claim is manifest without further argument.”
All chapters from The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day.
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. By H. M. Riggle, 1922. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
- The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day - October 2, 2021
- 27. Sunday-Keeping is Not the Mark of the Beast - July 8, 2020
- 26. The Pope and the Sabbath - July 2, 2020