Chapter 4 - part 3
"There are
two kinds of spirits, she said, evil and good spirits, and we must try the
spirits (1 John 4:1) to see if they are of God or of the devil. And the
way to try them is told in Isaiah 8:20, which says, ’To the law and to
the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because
there is no light in them.’ And the Saturday commandment is right in the
midst of the law with which we are to test the spirits. Therefore, any
spirit that tells us to keep some other day cannot be the Spirit of God.
"Christ said that
His Spirit would come and guide us into all truth, but that the Spirit
would not speak of Himself, but would speak what He hears from God. (John
16:13.) And always God has commanded the seventh-day Sabbath. And, too,
the Spirit reproves the world of sin (John 16:9)— and sin is the
transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). So, logically, the Spirit of God
would reprove the world of Sabbath breaking, which would be to reprove it
for Sunday keeping.
"When I asked
her why it wasn’t found out before, and why learned theologians and
great Christians didn’t keep it, she told me some interesting history of
how the Sabbath was really ‘as old as the hills,’ for it was made at
creation; and how it was kept very carefully by God’s chosen people up
to and past the time of Christ; and then it was lost to most men’s
knowledge for centuries, but that always some few have kept it. The people
of Christ’s day thought the doctrines that Jesus and the apostles taught
were new, but these teachers proved to the people that what they taught
was very ancient, but that the knowledge of the doctrines had been
lost and only the rediscovery of them was new. Every reformer is accused
of teaching something new and strange, but he is just bringing the people
back to the old truths. The fact is, Sunday keeping is a very new thing
compared with Sabbath keeping.
"She said the
truth of God has never been popular with the masses and the great men of
earth. Christianity was once very unpopular and was despised. But we are
glad now that someone espoused that unpopular truth and passed it on to
us. The great and wise men in Christ’s day did not accept His truth, nor
did they in Luther’s day accept the Reformation. We must not despise the
day of small things. Every great movement for right started in a small and
obscure way. The many go in the broad way that leads to
destruction. Paul said, ‘Not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble, are called.’ (1 Corinthians 1:26.) Christ
thanked God that He had hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
had revealed them unto babes. (Matthew 11:25.) The world does not learn
God by wisdom, but by simply believing in His written word.
"She told me
how and why the Sabbath was obscure for a long time, and how Sunday
keeping started. I wish you could have heard that little woman reel off
the history; and you would think to look at her that all she knew or
thought of was making a living and keeping house. It seems that reliable
histories record that Sunday was not kept as a sabbath during the early
centuries of the Christian church, but that Saturday was. The apostles
were dead long before a change was even suggested. And when the change did
come it came so gradually during two or three centuries that people did
not pay much attention to it. A number of causes helped the change:
Christians turned against the Jews more and more because they had
crucified Christ, and so would have nothing to do with anything Jewish;
and they thought of the seventh-day Sabbath as Jewish. Sunday was held in
some honor because it was the resurrection day, but was not observed at
first as a sabbath any more than was Friday the crucifixion day. Then,
too, the Church was trying hard to convert the heathen, and the heathen
had for centuries worshiped on the first day of the week in honor of the
sun god. In fact, the day was named for that god, Sun-day. The church
became worldly and wanted to be popular, and it compromised with the
heathen by all together keeping the ‘venerable day of the sun,’ as it
was called.
"Then
Christianity became the state religion, and Sunday laws were made, and the
true Sabbath was crowded out altogether. The pope didn’t exactly change
the day, but what is now known as the Roman Catholic Church slowly brought
in Sunday keeping as a mark of its power. In Daniel 7:25 it was prophesied
that such a power would think to change God’s law; and history says it
did just that; and the Catholics boast they did it, and they offer a large
money reward to any Protestant who will show even one text to prove from
the Bible that we ought to keep Sunday. The Catholics claim authority from
God to command men and make laws, and they are responsible for Sunday
keeping, and they laugh at Protestants for being so inconsistent as to
take the Bible and the Bible only as their rule of faith and practice, yet
keep Sunday, for which there is no Bible authority. Christ said of them,
‘In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of
men.’ Matthew 15:9.
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