I wrote "...not a judgment towards any belief you may hold as a result of reading Apocrypha."
You replied "...A belief I may hold from reading apocrypha....now that's judgement, you are now saying my belief (faith is a better word) comes from reading Apocrypha
WHAT??? And you accuse me of reading into something that you wrote??? I NEVER said you had ANY beliefs derived from reading the Apocrypha! Please...
I wrote "...Considering the amount of reading material that is available for Catholics, Apocrypha is not exactly high on the list of reliable items. Hence, the name "Apocrypha"
You replied "...And this statement means that the reading material you are referring is only available to Catholics? What time do you think we are living in"
I can see this conversation is going nowhere quick. Why are you twisting my words so much? There are dozens of Church Fathers that I would prefer to read. The Bible itself. The Catechism. Encyclicals. Writings of particular Saints. Why would I forego all of that to read a spurious writings? Sorry if I offended you, but I am not interested in reading Apocrypha right now!
You wrote "...All I was merely doing was asking someone else if they have read it and said that it helped...HELPED me. Since you have not read it why do you care if I do? And how do you know? Because someone told you? That is the problem today, people do what others say is o.k. And the record of some of those saying it is ok, (the Church) isn't very enlightening to me at this point. I read my bible and anything else I feel is acceptable in G-d's eyes, I will work my salvation out for myself. After all I will not say to Jesus, it is his fault, so I did not know....I do not have to take one church's word for the fact that it is not important, not even my own. You are acting as though that is all I have read"
I'm huffy? By the way, the Church infallibly stated the canon of Scripture, not the calendar.
I wrote "...Using the Hebrew canon as their guide is unimpressive, as the same Hebrew canon specifically DELETES the GOSPEL writings of the Christians, calling them worthless. Those who use the Hebrew canon as their guide should thus be consistent and remove the Gospels from their own canon.
You wrote "...Oh my I would be so careful if I were you and pray that it is not useless.
There you go again. When does an "unimpressive argument" tender the Gospels useless??? I can only wonder what is causing you to type such ridiculous things that I never said. The point is the ARGUMENT is unimpressive, not the Gospels. WOW!!!!
"I thought that was why you started pestering me without first reading what I was truly saying"
Again, do you realize you are doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing, over and over?
"Why don't you read back to Constantine and see how he manipulated the "church" from the very beginning."
Your funny. Perhaps you should try reading a more unbiased historical perspective, and not the anti-catholic version. There are many unbiased, secular histories that will disagree with you.
You said "...You must remember there are more church's than yours, and your's has admitted to quite a few errors in the past".
Thanks. I deal with people everyday who are of different beliefs. What in the world did I say to make you think that I didn't realize there are many supposed "churches"? As to errors, the Church is made up of humans. But infallible statements are not subject to such error as they are guided by the Holy Spirit (as Christ promised). Setting the canon of Scripture was one of those infallible statements.
You said "...So let us agree to disagree that you think the topic of conversation I was having with someone else was useless"
When did I say your conversation was useless? Again, you are finding it difficult to comprehend what I am saying.
Let me know when you are ready to respond to what I actually write.
Regards
all I can say is I am not anti Catholic by any means does this read like I am????
and then let us drop it for the sake of WHO CARES, but I will not be called anti-Catholic because I am not....this I posted somewhere else a few days ago.....so I didn't just make it up.
I have studied over this using the means I have necessary looking at the views of four denominations including agnosticism. It is always nice to know what everyone thinks and then form your own opinion based on all facts, even if it is different view, as I have explained, traditional isn’t always correct. Through many ages we have believed what we have been told to, and by reading books from certain people, by attending a certain church all of our lives….etc. (but the real truth is found in history and scripture, together) With this in mind, who did change the Sabbath? How has this change been brought about? If the change was not made by Christ or His apostles, by whose authority was it made? There is absolutely no mention of Sunday sacredness in all the New Testament. There is no suggestion from either Christ or the apostles that it was to take the place of the seventh-day Sabbath. Then re-studying the gospels I saw that we are clearly told in the Gospels that the Sabbath comes between the sixth and the first days of the week (see Luke 23:54-56; 24:1); therefore it is the seventh day. We find Luke talking about the Sabbath “according to the commandment,” and stating that the followers of Jesus kept it even after Christ's crucifixion. (See Luke 23:56.) This companion of Paul, who wrote at least twenty-eight years after the cross, does not recognize any change as having taken place. Mark declares that when the first day of the week comes, the Sabbath is past. (See Mark 16.) It also shows that Mark did not note any change in the Sabbaths obligation. John in Revelation 1:10 speaks of the Lord's day, but he does not even hint that he was referring to Sunday. He only says “the Lord's day,” and both Jesus and inspired writers insist that the Lord's day is the original Sabbath. Thus through Isaiah, God calls it “My holy day.” Isaiah 58:13. And Jesus declared, “The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28. Can such a statement be produced in support of a Sunday Lord's day? I don’t believe so. If it had been there people would have found it. The Word of God is not divided against itself. It is not yes and no, but yeas and amen; that is, it is an affirmation in its whole. (See 2 Corinthians 1:19, 20.) When it declares in one place that one day is the Lord's day, it does not contradict it in some other place and substitute another Lord's day. Therefore no Sunday Lord's day is to be found in Scripture.
A catholic author wrote this, “In commemoration of Christ's resurrection, the church observes Sunday. The observance does not rest on any positive law, of which there is no trace.”
So here we have a confession of failure.
I also found that the Sunday worship day was originated with the Eastern or Greek Church, not with Rome in the West. All the first witnesses for the Lord's day were not Romans, but Greeks living in the East. This is what the Catholics said, (notice the past tense) so let us see.
It was not until after every ordinance of the Christian church had been instituted and placed in order; not until the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ, which finalized the new covenant. Not, in fact, until Pentecost that the gospel began to be proclaimed to the Greeks and other Gentile nations. In fact, the Pentecost shows that the Greeks heard the gospel on that occasion, and carried it to the countries in the East. Now…. But what has this to do with the Sabbath? The early church was already established, its laws and ordinances were fixed, it had been given its commission to “go ye, teach all nations,” and the teaching was to lead people “to observe all things whatsoever I [Jesus Christ] have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19, 20. The commands had been given, and with Peter's sermon on Pentecost the apostolic church, under the endowment of the Holy Spirit, entered upon its Heaven-appointed task of world evangelism. Any change of laws or ordinances after that would be invalid. It had not been left for Gentile converts of later centuries to make the rules and laws of the church, but Christ had carefully attended to all this Himself, and had given His disciples full instruction as to what to teach. Concerning the Ten Commandments, He had said to them: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail”; and “whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Luke 16:17; Matthew 5:19. This, then, included the Sabbath and all, every tittle. This is as though Jesus had said that not so much as the dot of an i or the cross of a t was to fail or be changed. And the disciples are commanded to both do and teach them. Thus the commission given by our Lord to the church to “teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” included the teaching of the whole Decalogue. Any subsequent change in the Sabbath, by either Greek or Roman, could therefore in no way affect our obligation to keep the original Sabbath of creation.
All the first witnesses for the Lord's day were not Romans, but Greeks living in the East. These were Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Dionysius, Clement, Anatolius, Origen, Eusebius.
The apostles knew nothing of a Sunday Lord's day, and therefore could not bear witness to it. No such thing as substituting Sunday for Saturday, the original seventh-day Sabbath, had been thought of in their day. All this change followed later, in the wake of the apostasy which engulfed Christendom during the Middle Ages.
Some time later after the apostles is when we must look to see where the change occurred. Here we look in history. It is not found in scripture not even in Revelation, so the change hadn’t taken place yet. The first recorded instance of religious meetings being held by some of the Christian churches on Sunday, which has any claim to be considered genuine, is mentioned by Justin Martyr, A.D. 140. Justin does not, however, even say that this day had any divine authority, either from Christ or from His apostles. Nor was it kept as a day of rest. This is about the time that the great apostasy started to commence. “I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” Acts 20:29, 30. also, “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” 2 Timothy 4:3, 4. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? … For the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-7.
For the first five centuries of the church there is no mention of any transfer or change of the Sabbath to the first day of the week. A Christian author wrote, The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect,—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.
Now, in early Christian worship Mithraism appeared, it was the seeming worship of the sun, however the greater thing is it also had high pretense to uphold moral standard. This new heathenism soon captured the Caesars, invaded the Roman armies and the centers of learning, and was embraced by the higher classes of society. Alexandria and Rome soon became important Mithran centers, and, in fact, history records. In the middle of the third century, Mithraism seemed to fast be becoming the world religion by majority and thus became the greatest antagonist of Christianity. Some of the peculiar doctrines enunciated by its priests were “the immortality of the soul,” “the use of bell and candle, holy water and communion. The devotees of Mithra held Sunday sacred because Mithra was identified with the ‘invincible sun. There soon set in a life-and-death struggle between Mithraism and Christianity, and since apostasy was already ripe in the Christian church, it was only a short step further for her leaders to agree upon a compromise. Many of these leaders had themselves come into the church as converts from Mithraism, and still had a certain veneration for the sun and those institutions held sacred to it. It was therefore agreed by them that, in order to facilitate the conversion of the heathen, and thus advance the cause of Christ over that of Mithra, they would incorporate many of the teachings and institutions of Mithraism into the church, and among these was the Sunday festival. “The sun was a foremost god with heathendom…. There is, in truth, something royal, kingly about the sun, making it a fit emblem of Jesus, the Sun of justice. Hence the church in these countries would seem to have said, ‘Keep that old pagan name. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.’ And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder [the god of light and peace], became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus.”
Christianity finally came to look just like paganism. Faustus, a pagan of the fourth century, in speaking to the Christians, declared:
“You celebrate the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, … and as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans except that you hold your assemblies apart from them.”—Faustus (a non-Christian) to St. Augustine (4th Century), cited in History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, John William Draper, M.D., LL.D.,
“It was near 900 years from our Savior’s birth, if not quite so much, before restraint of husbandry on this day, had been first thought of in the East; and probably being thus restrained, did find no more obedience there, than it had done before in the Western parts.”—History of the Sabbath, part 2, chap. 5, par. 6. Summing up what history teaches regarding the origin of Sunday and the development of the doctrine about Sunday, then this is the sum: It is not the apostles, not the early Christians, nor the councils of the ancient church which have imprinted the name and stamp of the Sabbath upon the Sunday, but it is the Church of the Middle Ages and its teachers.
A gradual change from Sabbath observance to Sunday observance came in after the first centuries of the Christian Era had passed. The more the pagan world came to favor Christianity.
From the Encyclopedia Britannica we read:
“The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in 321 A.D., enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die solis), with an exception in favor of those engaged in agricultural labor.”—Article “Sunday,” vol. 26 (11th ed.), p. 95.
This, then, is admittedly the very first law for the sabboth. He was however heathen Christian, he was not “the church” even though he had ruler ship influence over it, to instate laws and what not. When Constantine made his law, it was to the effect that people were to “rest on the venerable day of the sun,” not on the Sunday—Lord's day. “This legislation by Constantine probably bore no relation to Christianity; it appears, on the contrary, that the emperor, in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, was only adding the day of the sun, the worship of which was then firmly established in the Roman Empire, to the other ferial days of the sacred calendar.”—Prof. Hutton Webster, Ph.D. (University of Nebraska), Rest Days, p. 122.
“What began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees,
If a single text of Scripture in favor of Sunday observance could have been found, how totally unnecessary would be all this effort to prove Constantine to have been a great benefactor to the Christian church! The Sabbath law is found in the Word of God. Failing to find a Sunday law there. So it is to the edict of a half Christian, half pagan emperor, of the fourth century. The first day of the week was known throughout the pagan world as the sun's day. The name given to it was Dies Solis, or the day of the sun, sacred to the sun-god.
The Religious Encyclopedia says:
“The Ancient Saxons called it by this name, because upon it they worshiped the sun.”
“It is not to be denied but [that] we borrow the name of this day from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and we allow that the old Egyptians worshiped the sun, and as a standing memorial of their veneration, dedicated this day to him.”—Dialogues on the Lord's Day.
Constantine probably had no thought of enforcing respect for a Christian institution by his famous Sunday law, but rather a very ancient heathen festival, which was then beginning to compete strongly with the Christian Sabbath (Saturday). This resulted from the influence of paganism upon the Christian church.
Of the popularity of sun worship at Rome at that time, and the consequent influence this had on the Christian religion, the following historical quotations will testify:
“Sun worship, however, became increasingly popular at Rome in the second and third centuries A. D. The sun god of Emesa in Syria—Deus Sol invictus Elagabalus—was exalted above the older gods of Rome by the emperor [Macrinus, A. D. 217, taking the name Elagabalus], who, as his priest, was identified with the object of his worship; and in spite of the disgust inspired by the excesses of the boy priest, an impulse was given to the spread of a kind of ‘solar pantheism,’ which embraced by a process of syncretism the various Oriental religions and was made the chief worship of the state by Aurelian.”—H. Stuart Jones, Companion to Roman History, p. 302.
Due to Constantines authority over his kingdom, was the church at Rome, therefore, that took the lead in authoritatively substituting the papal Sunday for the Christian Sabbath. Many of the churches in the East, however, soon followed its example. At the Laodicean Council began the long struggle to enforce its observance upon all. Thereafter everything was done that “Christian” emperors, kings, popes, councils, and synods could do to swing all the churches, both east and west, into line, to uphold the canon of Laodicea, and to add to the sanctity of the day of the sun. Charlemagne did more, perhaps, than any other emperor to make this part of the faith of the church effective, and in his first decree he referred directly to this canon of the Council of Laodicea. But it required repeated councils, actions, bulls, and encyclicals of the bishops and popes finally to establish the change. Yes, more still, it required bitter persecution, and a large number of those who refused to surrender their observance of the true Sabbath upon the mere authority of the church, had the privilege of sealing their faith with the blood of martyrdom. So who is originally guilty? Satan, the leader of a kingdom not the church instituted the change of the commandment into authority, there for everyone that could not stand against it, due to weakness would fall for sometime until it completely took over most of the world through violence and then through just acceptance. Therefore we owe the blame to many, catholics, Rome, Christians and anyone else who followed the teachings of Satan and his pagan authoritarians. Now I will go a bit farther and say, the catholic church has made admissions to this, therefore accepting their responsibility, but so should many others. In the long run, we should look at the fact that Catholics have done a lot of great things and be so very careful in examining the anti Christ. As a whole the church has helped to defeat communism, they also request continuously that we pray and read scripture, without taking the books and writings of others and their opinions into first context. The answer is most of the things that went wrong happened shortly after or soon after the death and resurrection of Christ, by people from all sides. However what is important is that we examine them today.