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The Great Controversy
did not ... give any explicit command enjoining the abandonment of
the seventh-day Sabbath, and its observance on the first day of the
week.”—A. E. Waffle, The Lord’s Day, pages 186-188.
Roman Catholics acknowledge that the change of the Sabbath
was made by their church, and declare that Protestants by observing
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the Sunday are recognizing her power. In the Catholic Catechism
of Christian Religion, in answer to a question as to the day to be
observed in obedience to the fourth commandment, this statement is
made: “During the old law, Saturday was the day sanctified; but the
church, instructed by Jesus Christ, and directed by the Spirit of God,
has substituted Sunday for Saturday; so now we sanctify the first, not
the seventh day. Sunday means, and now is, the day of the Lord.”
As the sign of the authority of the Catholic Church, papist writers
cite “the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protes-
tants allow of; ... because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the
church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin.”—
Henry Tuberville, An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine, page 58.
What then is the change of the Sabbath, but the sign, or mark, of the
authority of the Roman Church—“the mark of the beast”?
The Roman Church has not relinquished her claim to supremacy;
and when the world and the Protestant churches accept a sabbath of
her creating, while they reject the Bible Sabbath, they virtually admit
this assumption. They may claim the authority of tradition and of the
Fathers for the change; but in so doing they ignore the very principle
which separates them from Rome—that “the Bible, and the Bible only,
is the religion of Protestants.” The papist can see that they are deceiving
themselves, willingly closing their eyes to the facts in the case. As the
movement for Sunday enforcement gains favor, he rejoices, feeling
assured that it will eventually bring the whole Protestant world under
the banner of Rome.
Romanists declare that “the observance of Sunday by the Protes-
tants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority
of the [Catholic] Church.”—Mgr. Segur, Plain Talk About the Protes-
tantism of Today, page 213. The enforcement of Sundaykeeping on
the part of Protestant churches is an enforcement of the worship of
the papacy—of the beast. Those who, understanding the claims of the
fourth commandment, choose to observe the false instead of the true
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Sabbath are thereby paying homage to that power by which alone it