Commenting on the popular claim of many Sabbatarians (or “Saturdarians” as he called them) that the papacy changed (“perverted”) the Saturday Sabbath to Sunday, Samuel Walter Gamble offered the following insightful refutations of such a nonsense claim that, sadly, is still repeated by some Seventh Day Adventists and others:
1. . . . if the pope made Sunday Sabbath in opposition to the Bible Sabbath several hundred years after the resurrection of Christ, and compelled Christians to abandon Saturday-keeping and to keep Sunday in opposition to Bible teaching, the Christians living when it was done were aware of it. They could not have been compelled to abandon a God-given practice, and accept a contrary practice without knowing it. Knowing that the pope compelled them to keep Sunday in opposition to the Bible Sabbath, if they charge it upon some one else they deliberately misrepresent the truth. To know that the pope instituted Sunday keeping, and attribute it to Jesus Christ, would be false. To have kept Saturday all the forepart of their lives, and then be compelled to quit and keep Sunday, and then all unite in asserting to all future generations that it had been kept from Christ’s resurrection, would be to assert a deliberate falsehood . . . . 2. If the pope, centuries after the apostolic times, changed the Sabbath, there would be no trouble to locate the time and the pope who did it. Such person has never been found. 3. If the pope did it, the Eastern Church, that is, and always has been, free from his dominion, and which is strongly opposed to the pope, will be free from the papal Sabbath, and will be keeping “Saturday, the Bible Sabbath.” But “in the Eastern Churches the planetary names never came into general use. The Slavi, Lithuanians, and Finns count the days of the week, calling Monday the first day (after the Sabbath)” (McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopedia,” Volume II, page 318, “Chronology”). The above quotation brings to us the changed week, counting from apostolic times, calling Sunday the Sabbath, and “Monday the first day after the Sabbath,” or the first day of the week. Hence the third refutation of the papal origin of Sunday keeping. (Samuel Walter Gamble, Sunday, The True Sabbath of God [Western Methodist Book Concern, 1900; repr., Forgotten Books, 2015], 146-48)
For more, see the powerpoint slides for a presentation I gave on the issue:
