Question:
Mr. Gamble writes in The True Sabbath of God, page 147:
“If the pope, centuries after the apostolic times, changed the Sabbath, there would be no trouble locating the time and the pope who did it. Such a person has never been found.”
He also states that the Papacy did not begin until A.D. 1073. However, I understand that you teach that the Sabbath was changed long before then. If there was no pope at that time, how could the pope have changed the Sabbath?
Answer:
We do not teach that one particular pope arose on a certain day and personally changed the Sabbath by a single decree. That presents the matter far too simply. The change from Sabbath observance to Sunday observance developed gradually through the great apostasy that took place over several centuries. The growing authority of the Roman Church played a leading role in establishing and enforcing that change.
Roman Catholics trace the papal office back to Peter and maintain a succession of bishops of Rome from apostolic times. Protestants, of course, do not accept that claim. Nevertheless, it is historically incorrect to suggest that the Papacy suddenly appeared in A.D. 1073. That date marks the beginning of the pontificate of Gregory VII, formerly Hildebrand—not the beginning of papal power. The Roman bishop had been claiming and exercising increasing authority for centuries before Gregory VII.
Mr. Gamble’s statement that there was no pope before 1073 reveals a serious misunderstanding of the historical development of the Papacy. The essential characteristics of the papal system—the growing supremacy of the bishop of Rome, the claim to authority over other churches, and the union of ecclesiastical influence with civil power—had een developing over many centuries before that date. One cannot deny the existence of the earlier system merely because it had not yet reached the height of power seen under Gregory VII.
As early as the second century, Victor, bishop of Rome, attempted to compel the churches of Asia to conform to the Roman practice of observing Easter on Sunday. This controversy did not itself change the Sabbath, but it demonstrates how early a bishop of Rome was attempting to enforce ecclesiastical conformity beyond the Roman church itself.
The movement toward Sunday observance continued through a combination of religious compromise and civil authority. Constantine’s Sunday law of A.D. 321 gave the day legal recognition within the Roman Empire. Later church councils, including the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century, further encouraged Christians to honor Sunday while condemning continued rest upon the seventh-day Sabbath.
The change, therefore, was not the work of one man at one identifiable moment. It was a gradual departure from the commandment of God, strengthened over time by ecclesiastical tradition, the rising authority of the Roman Church, and the power of the state.
The real question is not whether we can identify one pope who personally changed the Sabbath. The question is whether Scripture ever transferred the sacredness of the seventh day to the first day of the week. It did not. God blessed and sanctified the seventh day at creation, wrote it into His law, and nowhere authorized any church or civil power to replace it with Sunday.
