Reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information about the history of
Sabbath-keepers can be of great benefit to us today. The Sabbath is under attack.
The inspiring story of others who have likewise struggled to maintain
their faith can help us to strengthen our commitment to the commandments of our
Creator and the faith of our Savior.
Dr. Benjamin G. Wilkinson (1871-1967), an eminent Seventh-day Adventist
scholar, who was fluent in six languages, in 1942 produced an exceptional
history of the Church in the Wilderness (A.D. 538-1798), entitled Truth
Triumphant, the Church in the Wilderness.
His splendid bibliography and footnotes demonstrate rigorous
scholarship. The history he relates is
unknown to most Sabbath-keepers today, to their detriment.
The worldwide extensive scope of Sabbath-keeping for many hundreds of
years is truly astounding. Lucian of
Syria (ca. A.D. 250-312) upheld the commandments of God and preserved the text
of the New Testament (minus the spurious apocryphal books). Vigilantius Leo (A.D. 364-408), not Peter
Waldo, was the first leader of the Waldenses in northern Italy and southern
France. He influenced Patrick, the
Sabbath-keeping saint of Celtic Ireland.
Columba (b. 521), Columbanus (A.D. 543-615) and other Celtic
Sabbath-keepers evangelized Europe and maintained the highest standards of
scholarship and learning during the Dark Ages.
In A.D. 285, Papas was chosen head of the Church of the East (also
called Assyrian Church, or wrongly called Nestorian Church). Excommunicated by Victor I, bishop of Rome
in the late second century, the Church of the East flourished, and kept the
Sabbath for hundreds of years, in spite of opposition from Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, and Hinduism. The thrilling
story of the Church of the East, including the St. Thomas Christians in India,
and the profusion of Sabbath keepers in China and Japan, is tempered with the
awful persecution in the 1500s of Sabbath-keepers by the Jesuits.
Wilkinson’s thorough treatment of the Waldensians in the Alps should be
enough to bury the false idea that the Waldenses did not begin until about
1160, and the wrong theory that most of the Waldenses never kept the Sabbath. He cites the fourth century church historian
Socrates, who wrote, “For although almost all the churches throughout the world
celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians
of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to
do this.” Sozomen, another historian
and contemporary of Socrates, declares, “The people of Constantinople, and
almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the first
day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria.”
The council held at Elvira, Spain, ca. A.D. 305, upholds the
Sabbath. Spanish Sabbath-keepers of the
Pyrenees influenced the Waldenses. The
Latin word for “valley dweller” is vallis. It is Vaudois in French, Valdesi in Italian, and Valdenses
in Spanish. Spanish Sabbath-keepers
were also called Sabbatati.
Wilkinson maintains, “A large portion of the Waldenses, whether called
by that name or by other names, believed the observance of the fourth
commandment to be obligatory upon the human race. Because of this, they were designated by the significant title of
Insabbati, or Insabbatati. Farmers or
townsmen going on Saturday about their work were so impressed by the sight of
groups of Christians assembling for worship on that day that they called them
Insabbatati.”
Some Bohemians of the fourteenth century held “that none of the
ordinances of the church that have been introduced since Christ’s ascension
ought to be observed, being of no worth; the feasts, fasts, orders, blessings,
offices of the church and the like, they utterly reject.” They were in contact with the Waldenses of
the Alps. Erasmus testified that as
late as about 1500, these Bohemians kept the seventh day scrupulously, and were
called Sabbatarians.
Wilkinson reports on Aba (ca. A.D. 500-575) and the Church in Persia,
Timothy of Baghdad (A.D. 700-824), how the Apostle Thomas established a
long-lived Sabbath-keeping community on the west coast of India, and how
Sabbath-keepers flourished during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) in China.
It appears that the key to the long term survival of Sabbath-keepers in
diverse groups scattered around the world was the fact that they were
relatively independent. As Wilkinson
notes, “It was the purpose of the Celtic Church to plant many centers rather
than to concentrate numbers and wealth in some ecclesiastical capital.” Wilkinson relates how many geographically
diverse groups nevertheless maintained contact with their brethren in other
lands. Today it is true that there is
strength in a diversity that nevertheless maintains frequent contact among the
scattered groups of brethren. Although
Wilkinson’s excellent book, Truth Triumphant, ends in 1798, the story of
the Sabbath-keeping Church continues.
We should be inspired to maintain the faith, and to continue to support
the scattered brethren, around the world.
Truth Triumphant, 424
pages, by Dr. B.G. Wilkinson, is available for a donation of $12.95 (plus $2.00
postage) from The Bible Sabbath Association, 3316 Alberta Drive, Gillette,
WY 82718.