So why did the church change the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week (Sunday)?
Before Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the previous religion was known as Mithraism. Mithraism is sun-worship; and in Mithraism, the sun-god (Ra) was thought to personally attend the Roman emperor.
Because the Roman citizens believed their god would sit in personal attendance to the Roman emperor, it gave him unparalleled power and prestige in their eyes. To disobey the decree of such a demigod was not only considered treason, but (almost) heresy.
Opposed to the Nazarene faith, Mithraism was not Torah-based. The Torah teaches that it is idolatrous to worship men, and idolatry is therefore prohibited by the jealous Elohim. For this reason, the Roman emperors did little to disguise their ill feelings toward the Nazarenes. By teaching the people that the emperors were not demigods, the Nazarenes had weakened the emperor’s basis of prestige and power. No politician likes that.
The Roman emperors also initially despised the Christians, for similar reasons. Christianity also taught that one’s truest allegiance should not go to Caesar, but to Yahshua, the King of Kings. This also weakened the emperors’ power structure; but there was a way for a clever emperor to turn this to his advantage. Because Christianity is not based on Torah, if Scripture could be misconstrued to suggest that the emperor was divine, then Constantine could adopt Christianity as his ‘official’ religion, and continue to teach the people to worship him as a demigod.
If Emperor Constantine was to remain the most powerful man on the planet, he would have to find some way of re-forming Christianity around Mithraism, so that he might continue to appear an all-powerful demigod. His means of doing this was to take certain verses in the New Covenant and twist them, to make it appear as if they said things they actually did not.
If one forbids the people to read or interpret the Scriptures for themselves (as the Catholic Church historically did) then one can suggest that certain verses say whatever it is that one needs them to say. What Emperor Constantine needed these verses to say, then, was that he was not just an ordinary mortal. Here is the passage the Catholics use to suggest that the Emperor was a demigod: 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter (Petros); and on this rock (petra) I will build My assembly, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
The Catholic Church asserts that Yahshua intended to build His assembly upon an individual named Shimon Kefa (Simon Peter) personally: Therefore, whomever Shimon Kefa would designate as his successor would become the head of the Body of Messiah, as if the Messiah ruled through him. One problem with this assertion is that Petros and petra are not the same word. Yahshua does not say He will build His Assembly upon Petros (Kefa). Rather, what He said was that He would build His assembly upon the divine revelation that He was the Messiah, the Son of the Living Elohim. English translations give an inaccurate rendering of Matthew 16:19: 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
This inaccurate rendering seems to suggest that Kefa was in fact some sort of larger-than-life demigod. However, when we take this passage back to the Greek Text that the Roman Church asserts is the original, what it actually says is that the Apostles would bind what had already been bound, in Heaven: 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will already have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will already have been loosed in heaven.
Rather than suggesting that Kefa was some larger-than-life demigod (consistent with Greco-Roman theology), what it says is that by surrendering to the leading of the Spirit, Kefa and the other Apostles became tools in the Master’s hand. The Roman Emperor, however, saw his opportunity to lay claim to continuing demigod status, and he took it. The official Roman dogma became that this verse implies a so-called ‘Apostolic Succession.’
This doctrine of alleged ‘Apostolic Succession’ says that just before his death, Kefa allegedly passed his supernatural powers to his alleged designee Clement. Catholic legend maintains that when Kefa (Peter) was taken to Rome to be crucified, that before he was killed he laid hands on Clement, thereby designating him as the alleged receiver of the so-called ‘Apostolic Succession.’ Clement later became the first bishop of the Church of Rome. The baton had allegedly been passed. It was then transferred to the next alleged designee (and etceteras), to Emperor Constantine; and right on up to the modern day [the Pope].
The problems with this version of “Apostolic Cuccession” are these:
First, Matthew 16 does not speak of an ‘Apostolic Succession.’ Second, Scripture indicates that it was actually Ya’akov (James, Yahshua’s half-brother) who was originally designated head of the Jerusalem assembly. That headship was passed to Kefa after Ya’akov’s death (in Acts 12) is not proven anywhere.
Second, if headship had been given to Kefa, why would he have transferred it next to the capital city of the empire that had long subjugated Judea, and had chosen to destroy both Jerusalem and the Temple?
Third, when we read Clement’s epistles, we see something very odd, which can perhaps only be described in political terms: A careful read of the New Covenant shows us that even though the Apostles had learned directly from Yahshua, they continued to maintain a generally humble attitude. [Clement did not seem to have this humble attitude.]
Even though he officially converted to Christianity, Emperor Constantine still reverenced the sun. His belief in Christianity was inextricably merged with his belief in sun worship, and he continued to live his life by sun-worship constructs. He continued to wage war for personal advantage, continued to rest on the sun day (in honor of the sun god), and even minted coins to the Roman sun god, Sol Invictus Mith-Ra.
It is also reported that he had his wife and son beheaded, even though he considered himself to be a Christian. About the same time he established himself as the undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire, Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea. This council blended Christianity and Mithraism, establishing the new Catholic (‘Universal’) Christian faith. This new faith took the same core of familiar Mithraic festivals, but renamed them according to Christian themes. This was done to such an extent that the accusation has been made that Catholicism (‘Universalism’) is really more Mithraism-in-disguise, than anything else.
The Catholic Church condemned the Nazarenes as heretics, in that they continued to keep the Torah, as the Apostles had: “Christians must not ‘Judaize’ by resting on the Sabbath; but must work on that day, honoring rather the Lord’s Day [‘Sun’ day] by resting, if possible, as Christians. However, if any [Nazarene] be found ‘Judaizing’, let them be shut out from Christ.” [The Church of Imperial Rome; Council of Laodicea under the Emperor Constantine; Canon 29, 336 AD]
Thus, those who were willing to adopt Mithraic traditions would become safe from the lions in the arena, but the Nazarenes never became so. Shut out of the synagogues in the first century by the Jews, and now thrown to the lions by the Papacy in the fourth, the Nazarene faith (original faith of the disciples) eventually died out. Its adherents either yielded to Roman persecution, or were killed by the gladiators for sport.
By making a variation of the faith that would glorify and exalt the Roman Emperor as a demigod (i.e., the Pope), the Roman Emperor would then have a personal incentive to spread the Good News throughout his Empire much faster than the Nazarenes would have been able to spread it in the same amount of time.
Thus, while the Christian Church would fulfill a prophetic role in helping to spread the Good News of Yahshua to the ends of the Earth, it would also serve as the means by which the faith once delivered to the saints would be snuffed out for two thousand years. It was simultaneously a blessing to the world, and a stumbling block to the faithful.
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