What does the new political trend in America mean?
Will separation of Church and State continue?
Here is what could happen if God would not intervene!
AN OLD controversy has suddenly taken on new meaning with the presidential election of 1960. Here, quoted from the Catholic magazine AMERICA, Feb. 11, 1961, is the controversy in a nutshell:
"Controversy over Sunday-closing could be minimized if, in law, religious significance were removed from the weekly rest day. Rather than being called Sunday, the day should be referred to as . . . 'the President's day.' Article 1, Section 7, of our Constitution certainly orders the Government and the President to rest on Sunday" — and then the writer quotes from the U.S. Constitution as follows: . . . If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sunday excepted) after it shall have been presented to him. . . .' "
Did you catch the vital significance of this statement?
The Government and the President, argues the writer, are ordered to rest on Sunday! It is suggested that it be called "the President's day"!
And if the Government is required to rest this day and work on the other days, why should the common people be excepted?
Will Sunday again be enforced? Will it be by a Protestant-Catholic Church-State union as Seventh Day Adventists assume? Or is the present "blue law" controversy merely a forewarning of what is to be enforced by another government altogether?
WHO is going to enforce the "mark of the beast"?
It Happened Once Before
Notice the shocking record of history. Over 1600 years ago the same controversy raged in the world. Shall Sunday be a matter of private choice — or shall it be "the Emperor's day"?
It turned out to be "the Emperor's day" — and it was branded on the whole Roman world. It was branded on professing Christianity.
In your Bible that ancient Roman system is pictured as a wild animal — a wild beast. And the MARK OF THE BEAST was branded on all the ancient world! Sunday was not the mark of a church organization — it was the mark of a political government — Satan's government!
It was — and is — the mark of the beast!
And it is soon to be enforced on a heedless, deceived world. But it will not come in the manner or at the time usually expected. This quote from the AMERICA magazine is only a straw in the wind. The mark of the beast is not going to be enforced by an American — Catholic alliance, but by the BEAST-soon to arise in Europe and bring about the birth of the new Roman Empire and enforce its religion on the whole western world!
How a State Religion is Enforced
Few realize how Sunday was once enforced upon the professing Christian world. How a Gentile world-empire branded this pagan holiday upon millions of people and imposed the death penalty on all who would not submit to it!
Few have even read the astounding decree which required the death penalty for all who opposed the dictates of the Roman State.
And fewer still know that right now, behind closed doors, a controversy is being fought in secret about whether the Euromart nations are to impose Sunday as a compulsory rest day on the millions who live in Europe. Great pressure is being brought on the present German government to close its booming industries on Sunday.
Let us turn back the pages of history for a moment and read the decree which banished the true Church from the confines of the Roman Empire. This same kind of decree is soon to be enforced on our world by a revival of the same Roman system in Europe. Here it is.
Constantine's Edict
"VICTOR CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the heretics. . . ." 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, and uniting with it in holy fellowship, whereby you will be enabled to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. In any case, the delusions of your perverted understandings must entirely cease to mingle with and mar the felicity of our present times: . . .
"And in order that this remedy may be applied with effectual power, we have commanded, as before said, that you be positively deprived of every gathering point for your superstitious meetings, I mean all the houses of prayer, if such be worthy of the name, which belong to heretics, and that these be made over without delay to the catholic Church; that any other places be confiscated to the public service, and no facility whatever be left for any future gathering; in order that from this day forward none of your unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private place. Let this edict be made public."
That is how the religion of the Roman State was enforced on all the civilized world.
Notice how Eusebius, the Catholic historian, describes the enforcement of this decree.
"THUS were the lurking-places of the heretics broken up by the emperor's command, and the savage beasts they harbored (I mean the chief authors of their impious doctrines) driven to flight. . . . Accordingly, numbers . . . acknowledged the Church as a mother from whom they had wandered long, and to whom they now returned with joy and gladness. Thus the members of the entire body became united, and compacted in one harmonious whole; and the one catholic Church, at unity with itself, shone with full luster, while no heretical or schismatic body anywhere continued to exist. And the credit of having achieved this mighty work our Heaven-protected emperor alone, of all who had gone before him, was able to attribute to himself."
And that is how the tribulation of the Dark Ages began. Truth was suppressed. Sunday was everywhere enforced. The people were branded with the mark of the beast — a political brand marking the people as subjects of the Government of Satan the devil!
But how did Sunday ever become the symbol of the devil's Government? How did it all originate? Why was the Sabbath stamped out?
Facts of History You Should Know
How AND WHEN did Sunday replace the Sabbath in this Western Christian-professing world? Why did the churches lose the one and only SIGN — the Sabbath — which designates who God's people are?
How did Sunday become known as the "Lord's Day"?
It is time we — in God's Church — peer behind the curtain for the facts! It is time we become grounded in the faith and understand HOW, WHEN and WHERE Sunday observance originated. You will be shocked to learn that Sunday originated with human government just after the Flood! It became the MARK or symbol of authority imposed by the State to commemorate Nimrod's name! The facts of history will shock you!
Sunday Is the "Lord's Day!"
The churches today are in a Babylon of confusion. And no wonder! For their religion sprang from Babylon! (Rev. 17)
Most Church doctrines and practices have Christian-sounding names, but they are in reality Babylonish customs falsely labeled. This is especially true of Sunday — the "Lord's Day"!
Believe it or not, Sunday was celebrated by pagans as the "Lord's Day" over 2000 years before the resurrection of Christ. The apostle Paul saw the heathen observing it. Yet never once did he observe it. And he forbade Christians to celebrate it (Gal. 4:10).
Then why do we find the churches today observing Sunday supposedly in honor of Christ?
The answer is simple. Consider I Corinthians 8:5. The heathen world, in which the New Testament Church began to grow, was filled with pagan holidays in honor of "gods many, and lords many."
WHICH "LORD" IS IT, THEN, WHOSE RESURRECTION IS CELEBRATED ON SUNDAY TODAY?
Certainly NOT Jesus Christ! He was resurrected near the close of the Sabbath, or Saturday. Jesus Christ was not there when the women came to the tomb Sunday morning (Luke 24:1-5).
If Christ is not the "Lord" whose resurrection is honored on Sunday, then who is the "Lord" whom the churches worship today when they observe Sunday, the "Lord's Day"?
It is none other than Nimrod, the world's first recorded false Messiah! It is Nimrod's fictitious resurrection — a clever counterfeit of Christ's resurrection — that the nations celebrated every Sunday in Abraham's day and in Paul's day, and that professing Christians are celebrating today!
But how is it possible that Nimrod — who was known among the heathen as "Baal," the "lord," and the "Sun God" — came to be honored on Sunday as the "Lord" among Christians? How is it that his day — Sunday instead of God's Sabbath, has become the chief of "Christian holidays"?
Now let us peer behind the curtain and understand the almost unbelievable record of history. If it were revealed it would shatter the traditions of the churches!
Now let us consider when and how it all came about.
The Testimony of Justin Martyr
About a century and a half had elapsed since the death of Jesus Christ. About this time Justin Martyr addresses his "Apologies" to the Roman Emperors. He explains to them "Christian" practices of the Catholic Church in the West.
Among the customs he relates are these:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. . . . Then we all rise together and pray, and . . . bread and wine and water [a pagan practice of Mithraic sun-worship] are brought . . . But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified" — so claimed Justin Martyr — " on the day before that of Saturn; and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration" (First Apology, ch., LXVII, Ante-Nicene Fathers).
The first reason for the observance of Sunday offered by Justin is that it was the day God began TO WORK! Justin, however, did not teach that Sunday ought to be kept as a rest day!
Notice also that Justin calls it the "day of the sun " Why? Terrullian gives us the answer a few years later!
When some Romans reproached the early Catholics for sun-worship, he admitted:
"It is a well known fact that we pray toward the east . . . we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you [pagans] do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affection of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. . . . It is you . . . who have admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day, as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponements until the evening, or for taking rest, and for banqueting" (Ad Nationes, book I, ch. xiii).
Sunday observance came from Sun-worship. Tertullian justified the practices of his day by appealing to the practices of the heathen, instead of the Bible!
Tradition Began Customs
Tertullian, the father of Latin Christianity, never cites any scripture for his beliefs. He claims tradition for the customs of his day. Here is what he wrote about Sunday:
"If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith, as their preserver. That reason will support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself perceive, or learn from someone who has" (De Corona, sect. 4).
Sunday did not come from the Bible.