THEY CHANGED THE SABBATH TO SUNDAY There is no point of greater distinction between the reign of law and of grace then the observance of the seventh day and the first day of the week. Each represent a different dispensation and how God related to man.There are many Sabbatarian groups that trace this event to Constantine in 321 A.D. and the council of Laodicea held in 364 A.D. In changing the Sabbath day of worship to Sunday. In the 4th cent. Sunday was declared to be the day of rest and worship. This does not mean Constantine changed the Sabbath day to Sunday, the Sabbath is still Saturday. On the contrary there is much historical evidence to show Sunday worship was a universal practice of all the church’s outside the land of Israel by the beginning of the 2nd century. While there was a dispute between the Roman Catholic and eastern church hundreds of years later, on which day to worship there certainly was a repulsion to keep anything that was related to Judaism. While there may be a grain of truth in some of the arguments their is much exaggeration and even more extremism in changing the historical facts. Some go as far as to say Sunday is the day of the sun (worship ) so that is what Christians are doing they are practicing paganism. That early Christianity was mixed with pagan practices that led to the adoption of Sunday worship. This kind of rhetoric appeals to ignorance. Those who motivate others with guilt say you must worship on Saturday know this word is named after the Roman god Saturn. Like every day of the week it has a reference to a pagan name since many of these words come from that time period. The point is we don’t worship the day or the name of that day which would be idolatry. We worship the maker of that day and every day. God made all the days of the week and does not expect to be worshipped on only one day. |
Why is there so much controversy on this one Commandment, and why do Christians have so many different reasons to why they disobey it? If the Sabbath was moved to Sunday or abolished, there should be one clear reason why that everyone agrees on, but no so!
Some say it is Ten Commandments and some say it is nine and others say all Ten Commandments are gone. And if that isn't enough contradiction, some say the Sabbath was moved to Sunday in the Bible, and yet those arguing this fallacy do not keep the Sabbath as God Commanded anyway. There is not doubt that something is very wrong here and when you have so much confusion, you know that Satan has to be behind it.
God informed us that Satan wanted to be worshipped like the most high (Isaiah 14:12-14) and that the day of worship of God is the Seventh Day being Saturday. So Satan set out to do two things. One was to rob God of the worship He desired on His Holy day that He instituted at creation, and two, to institute his own day of worship in place of God's day of worship by setting up his own counterfeit Christian Church.
Satan used idolatrous sun worship from Babylonian paganism to begin implementing his plan that was despised by God. Babylon was the seat of Satan worship until its fall to the Medes and the Persians in 539 BC. At this time the Babylonian pagan priests left Babylon and went to Pergamos and some to Alexandria. So for many centuries after the fall of Babylon, Pergamos became the new seat of Satan (Revelation 2:12-13). Opportunity arose around 129 B.C. for the priests to leave Pergamos and go to Rome and thus Rome became the final seat of Satan and where he set up his church. Hence sun worship, which was practised on Sunday, was most prevalent in Alexandria and Rome by the time of Christ. It is not a coincidence that Sun-day worship in the Church began in these exact same two locations that sun worship went! This also proves the origin of Sunday worship in the Church.
Church historian Socrates Scholasticus (5th century) wrote:
And while on this topic, scripture reveals the Sabbath to be the Lord's Day yet Lucium who was an early church historian wrote that it was in the fourth century when Christians begun calling Sunday the Lord's Day and of course against the will of God.
In 330 A.D., Constantine moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople preparing the way for the Roman Catholic Popes to reign in Rome as the successors of Constantine. As the Roman Church grew in power, it opposed Sabbath observance in favour of Sunday sacredness and made the day change official in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363-364). So Constantine’s law resulted in the final change of the Sabbath to Sunday.
Around 364 AD, the Roman Catholic Church outlawed resting on the Sabbath in the Council of Laodicea when they decreed 59 Canon laws. Here is the final law.
Canon XXIX: “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.” (Percival Translation).
While resting on the Sabbath was outlawed in favour of resting on Sunday as per Constantine’s Sunday Law, Cannon law 16 was also issued by the Bishops in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363-364) that confirms that Christians were in fact still worshipping on the Sabbath.
Canon XVI “The Gospels are to be read on the Sabbath [i.e. Saturday], with the other Scriptures.”
The fact that the council of Laodicea found it necessary to deal with this issue verifies that more than 330 years after the cross that there were many Christians who were still observing the Sabbath according to the Commandment.
Four hundred years after the death of Christ and one hundred years after Constantine’s linking of Church and State by his Sunday law edict, Rome and Alexandria were the only places in the world where many Christians kept only Sunday and not the true Sabbath. Why? Because this is where the pagan practices of Babylon landed after it was conquered. And what was the dominant pagan practice that the Babylonian priests brought with them? Sun worship which was done on Sun-day! See the history of Sunday worship for more.
So one can understand why Rome and Alexandria did not bother to keep the true Sabbath as they had not done so for 200 years. Throughout the entire history of the changeover from Sabbath to Sunday, Rome and Alexandria had worked together. Alexandria provided the philosophical reasons for the changes and Rome provided the decrees and anathemas. Constantine’s help was given only to the worldly Church leaders at Rome and those Christians that resisted the errors that were being introduced into the Church met with his opposition. “Unite with the bishop of Rome or be destroyed,” was Constantine’s position.
No comments:
Post a Comment