The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.

The gospel commission is the great missionary charter of Christ's kingdom. The disciples were to work earnestly for souls. They were to go to the people with their message. Their every word and act was to fasten attention on His name, as possessing that vital power by which sinners may be saved. Christ's name was to be their badge of distinction, the authority for their course of action, and the source of their success.

At Troas, on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, "a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us."

"After he had seen the vision,' declares Luke, who accompanied Paul and Silas and Timothy on the journey across to Europe, "immediately we endeavored to go... to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony. On the Sabbath," Luke continues, "we went out of the city by a riverside, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple,... which worshiped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened." Lydia received the truth gladly. She and her household were converted and baptized. [See Acts 16:11-40]

After leaving Philippi, Paul and Silas made their way to Thessalonica. Here they were given the privilege of addessing large congregations in the Jewish synagogue. For three successive Sahbaths Paul preached to the Thessalonians, reasoning with them from the Scriptures regarding the life, death, resurrection, and future glory of Christ.

It was on the Sabbath that the Lord of glory appeared to the exiled apostle [John]. The Sabbath was as sacredly observed by John on Patmos as when he was preaching to the people in the towns and cities of Judea. He claimed as his own the precious promises that had been given regarding that day. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day," John writes.

In the first centuries the true Sabbath had been kept by all Christians. They were jealous for the honor of God, and believing that His law is immutable, they zealously regarded the sacredness of its precepts.

To prepare the way for the work which he designed to accomplish, Satan had led the Jews, before the advent of Christ, to load down the Sabbath with the most rigorous exactions, making its observance a burden. Now, taking advantage of the false light in which he had thus caused it to be regarded, he cast contempt upon it as a Jewish institution. While Christians generally continued to observe the Sunday as a joyous festival, he led them, in order to show their hatred of Judaism, to make the Sabbath a fast, a day of sadness and gloom.

In the early part of the fourth century, the emperor Constantine issued a decree making Sunday a public festival through out the Roman empire. The day of the sun was reverenced by his pagan subjects, and was honored by Christians; it was the emperor's policy to unite the conflicting interests of heathenism and Christianity. He was urged to do this by the bishops of the church, who, inspired by ambition and thirst for power, perceived that if the same day was observed by both Christians and heathen, it would promote the nominal acceptance of Christianity by pagans, and thus advance the power and glory of the church. But while many God-fearing Christians were gradually led to regard Sunday as possessing a degree of sacredness, they still held the true Sabbath as the holy of the Lord, and observed it in obedience to the fourth commandment

The arch-deceiver had not completed his work. He was resolved to gather the Christian world under his banner, and to exercise his power through his vicegerent, the proud pontiff who claimed to be the representative of Christ. Through half-converted pagans, ambitious prelates and world-loving churchmen, he accomplished his purpose.

The great apostate had succeeded in exalting himself "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped." 2 Thess. 2:4. He had dared to change the only precept of the divine law that unmistakably points all mankind to the true and living God. In the fourth commandment God is revealed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and is thereby distinguished from all false gods.

Amid the gloom that settled upon the earth during the long period of papal supremacy, the light of truth could not be wholly extinguished. In every age there were witnesses for God, -- men who cherished faith in Christ as the only mediator between God and man, who held the Bible as the only rule of life, and who hallowed the true Sabbath. They were branded as heretics, their motives impugned, their character maligned, their writings suppressed, misrepresented or mutilated. Yet they stood firm, and from age to age maintained their faith in its purity, as a sacred heritage for generations to come.

In lands beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, there existed for many centuries bodies of Christians who remained almost wholly free from papal corruption. They were surrounded by heathenism, and in the lapse of ages were affected by its errors; but they continued to regard the Bible as the only rule of faith, and adhered to many of its truths. These Christians believed in the perpetuity of the law of God, and observed the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Churches that held to this faith and practice, existed in Central Africa and among the Armenians of Asia.

But of those who resisted the encroachments of the great papal power, the Waldenses stood foremost. In the very land where popery had fixed its seat, there its falsehood and corruption were most steadfastly resisted

Among the leading causes that had led to the separation of the true church from Rome, was the hatred of the latter toward the Bible Sabbath. As foretold by prophecy, the papal power had cast down the truth to the ground. The law of God was trampled in the dust, while the traditions and customs of men were exalted.

Hundreds of years before the Reformation [the Waldenses] possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution. They declared the Church of Rome to be the apostate Babylon of the Apocalypse, and at the peril of their lives they stood up to resist her corruptions... Through ages of darkness and apostasy, there were Waldenses who denied the supremacy of Rome, who rejected image worship as idolatry, and who kept the true Sabbath.

"But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day." Matthew 24:20