Pope Benedict is committed to reinstating the active observance of the Roman Catholic Church’s chief icon: Sunday. He knows that to popularize religion in Europe, he has to reintroduce a means of promoting what marketers call brand loyalty. The most historic brand the pope can offer to bond the people together is the ancient day of worship, fashionable since Babylon, the old day of the sun—Sunday. Hence his promotion of that old Roman brand in his recent addresses.November 2005
In August, Pope Benedict xvi made Germany the destination of his first trip abroad. On Sunday, August 21, as part of the World Youth Day celebration, the pontiff conducted a mass with over 1 million people where he stressed the importance of Sunday worship: “Sunday is a free day ….
Yet this free time is empty if God is not present,” he said. “Sometimes our initial impression is that having to include time for mass on a Sunday is rather inconvenient. But if you make the effort, you will realize that this is what gives a proper focus to your free time” (International Herald Tribune, August 22).
These comments came just a few months after similar statements at a mass celebrating the closing of the 24th National Eucharistic Congress on May 29. In front of 200,000 in the Italian city of Bari, Benedict declared that the reinforcement of Sunday worship is fundamental to his mission.
To students of history, this focus represents a return to the papacies of old, the papacies of that
ever-recurring imperial European power, the Holy Roman Empire.
Pope Benedict perceives the secularist moral vacuum that has plagued Europe since the time of the Enlightenment. Now, after resounding rejections of the European Constitution by both France and the Netherlands in referenda earlier this year, European unification appears to be in disarray.
But
it seems Benedict wants to fill that vacuum—the old Roman way. That way was never sympathetic to the idea of the public voluntarily accepting its tenets. Rather, as even a cursory study of history will reveal,
it was imposed by force.
This pope’s dream coincides with that of his predecessor, John Paul II. It is a huge vision—a vision of a Europe united from the North Sea in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east.
But here is the trouble:
The only times throughout history this vision has been fully realized is when Rome imposed its religion. Since Charlemagne’s “conversion” in the eighth century, the Roman Empire, with its common religious ideology, was able to hang together in repeated resurrections and wreak havoc on those who resisted it.
As Texas-based think tank Stratfor said,
“Europe, for geopolitical reasons, cannot be unified except beneath the heel of a conqueror” (June 2).
Pope Benedict is committed to reinstating the active observance of the Roman Catholic Church’s chief icon: Sunday. He knows that to popularize religion in Europe, he has to reintroduce a means of promoting what marketers call brand loyalty. The most historic brand the pope can offer to bond the people together is the ancient day of worship, fashionable since Babylon, the old day of the sun—Sunday. Hence his promotion of that old Roman brand in his recent addresses.
If we understand how the church has enforced this day in its past history, we should be very alarmed.Who Changed the Sabbath?The Bible commands worship on a seventh-day Sabbath. Who changed the Sabbath to the first day of the week?
Here is what Herbert W. Armstrong wrote on this subject:
“Where did Sunday originate? Not with the Roman Catholic Church, but with the pagan religion of the Roman Empire, long before there was any Catholic Church! It is the day on which the ancient pagans assembled at sunrise, faced the east (as they do Easter Sunday morning today), and worshiped the rising sun. It was Constantine, emperor of the Roman Empire, not a pope, who made Sunday the official so-called ‘Christian day of rest.’ But it was enforced—people were caused to accept it universally—by the Roman Catholic Church!” History proves Mr. Armstrong to be absolutely correct! Sunday observance was initiated by Constantine, not a pope—but it was enforced by the Roman Catholic Church. According to The History of Roman Catholicism (1836), “The accession of Constantine the Great to the throne of the caesars and his subsequent conversion to Christianity, forms a most important era in the history of the church.”It is important, as the writer points out, because this began the intimate relationship the Roman Empire developed with the Roman Church—a relationship that lasted for many centuries.
Constantine changed the official day of worship to Sunday during the Nicene Council of a.d. 325.
In a letter regarding the council, Constantine spoke of the enforcement of Sunday worship for Easter services: “At this meeting the question concerning the most holy day of Easter was discussed, and it was resolved by the united judgment of all present that this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place on one and the same day.”
This statement was directed at those who kept the Passover—one of God’s seven annual festivals commanded in Scripture—rather than Easter, and kept it several days before Easter.
“[F]irst of all, it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews. … Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd …. [I]t has been determined by the common judgment of all, that the most holy feast of Easter should be kept on one and the same day” (emphasis mine throughout).
In other words, Easter was to be kept on Sunday, and the “Jewish” Passover—which is actually God’s biblically commanded assembly—was expressly forbidden!
In another letter, specifically regarding Sabbath worship, Constantine wrote, “Forasmuch, then, as it is no longer possible to bear with your pernicious errors, we give warning by this present statute that none of you henceforth presume to assemble yourselves together. We have directed, accordingly, that
you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies: and our care in this respect extends so far as to forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. Let those of you, therefore, who are desirous of embracing the true and pure religion, take the far better course of entering the Catholic Church ….
[F]rom this day forward none of your unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private place. Let this edict be made public.”
This was confirmed at the Council of Laodicea almost 40 years later in a.d. 363. At that conference, it was determined, “Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s Day. … But if any shall be found to be Judaizers, let them be anathema [cursed and excommunicated] from Christ.”
There you have it: historical proof of the enforced observance of Sunday. To assemble together on any other day for a religious observance was unlawful.... this will happen again, folks; WORLDWIDE. It will be called (in part);
The Mark of the Beast.
