Sun Worship
Another early variation or falling away from the original beliefs was the elevation of Sunday as the day of rest. Christians like their Jewish progenitors originally kept the seventh-day as the Sabbath. There is absolutely no record, recorded in scripture, where the day was changed. There is ample evidence of it's importance however. No other issue has so many instances of Divine intervention to demonstrate it's specific and exact nature.
Consider the case the Israelite wanderings in the desert. They had recently been redeemed out of 400 years of slavery, and as slaves, had lost all sight of the Creation Sabbath and it's importance. In the desert, with at least hundreds of thousands of people, food was quickly a critical issue. God sent manna for them to eat and they were miraculously preserved for 40 years. During that time, every day the manna fell, except on the Sabbath day. In addition to this daily miracle, was another separate miracle. If you gathered more than you needed for one day, the manna bred worms and stunk. On "the Preparation" day, (what we would call Friday) however, if you didn't gather twice the normal amount, you weren't going to be eating on the Sabbath (Saturday). On Sabbath, none fell, and the larger than usual Friday gathering was preserved fresh. Any attempts to choose another day of rest would have resulted in hunger at best. (It is interesting to hear some today voice doubts about whether we really know today if Saturday is really the seventh day since the calender was changed. The calender WAS changed, but it did not involve the days of the week being changed. These same detractors, still have NO problem discovering which day to celebrate Easter Sunday on. According to scripture, the day before Easter Sunday was the Sabbath, and the day before that was "The Preparation", celebrated today as "Good Friday".)
In Bible times, those who were caught actually working on the Sabbath were stoned to death by Divine Law. In this way, God meant to teach them that they were to put distinctions between Holy and common. If you count the number of direct miracles involved day in and day out x 40 years x millions of people you begin to get some idea of the importance God places on it.
So why did the change take place anyway? Contrary to popular fables and misconceptions, it did not take place during the time of the apostles. In fact from the time of the apostles until now, there has always been Christians somewhere in the world keeping the 7th day as the sabbath.
At the same time that the early Christian church was spreading rapidly, paganism was organizing for a sneak attack. Roman Emperor Aurelian began a new Sun Cult in 274 A.D.
[p. 55] In 274, Aurelian … created a new cult of the "Invincible Sun." Worshipped in a splendid temple, served by pontiffs who were raised to the level of the ancient pontiffs of Rome, celebrated every fourth year by magnificent games, Sol Invictus was definitely promoted to the highest rank in the divine hierarchy and became the official protector of the Sovereigns and of the Empire… He [Aurelian] placed in his new sanctuary the images of Bel and Helios, which he captured at Palmyra. In establishing this new State cult, Aurelian in reality proclaimed the dethronement of the old Roman idolatry and the accession of Semitic Sun-worship…
[p. 56] This sidereal theology, founded on ancient beliefs of Chaldean astrologers, transformed in the Hellenistic age under the twofold influence of astronomic discoveries and Stoic thought, [was] promoted, after becoming a pantheistic Sun-worship, to the rank of official religion of the Roman Empire.
Source: Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans (reprint; New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960), pp. 55, 56.
Emperor Constantine's pseudo-conversion to Christianity shortly thereafter paved the way for further changes. With his conversion he brought these sun-cult beliefs into the church in a major way. His 'conversion' was commemorated on the coins he had minted. The inscriptions on many of them read SOLI INVICTO COMITI or claiming the Unconquered Sun as a companion to the Emperor. As emperor he had inherited the power of the Sol Invictus cult. The Romans held a festival on December 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun." Not only was this holiday gradually brought into the church as Christmas, but Sunday was brought in as well.
Shortly thereafter the first Sunday Law was enacted by Emperor Constantine -
March, 321 A.D.
On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or for vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls each of them for the second time [A.D. 321].)
Source: Codex Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3; trans. in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3 (5th ed.; New York: Scribner, 1902), p. 380, note 1.
Perhaps the best historian of the change is the Catholic Church herself. Here is a reprint from the pages of the Catholic Mirror from September 1893. It was written following an outcry by Protestant Clergy when the Worlds Fair exhibit was opened on Sunday. Emphasis are mine in bold. The haughty tone however, is entirely theirs. 
" These superlatively good and unctuous Christians, by conning over their Bible carefully, can find their counterpart in a certain class of unco-good people in the days of the Redeemer, who haunted Him night and day, distressed beyond measure, and scandalized beyond forbearance, because He did not keep the Sabbath in as straight-laced manner as themselves.
They hated Him for using common sense in reference to the day, and He found no epithets expressive enough of His supreme contempt for their Pharisaical pride. And it is very probably that the divine mind has not modified its views today anent the blatant outcry of their followers and sympathizers at the close of this nineteenth century. But when we add to all this the fact that whilst the Pharisees of old kept the true Sabbath, our modern Pharisees, counting on the credulity and simplicity of their dupes, have never once in their lives kept the true Sabbath which their divine Master kept to His dying day, and which His apostles kept, after His example, for thirty years afterward, according to the Sacred Record.
This most glaring contradiction, involving a deliberate sacrilegious rejection of a most positive precept, is presented to us today in the action of the Biblical Christian world. The Bible and the Sabbath constitute the watchword of Protestantism; but we have demonstrated that it is the Bible against their Sabbath. We have shown that no greater contradiction ever existed than their theory and practice. We have proved that neither their Biblical ancestors nor themselves have ever kept one Sabbath day in their lives. The Israelites and Seventh-day Adventists are witnesses of their weekly desecration of the day named by God so repeatedly, and whilst they have ignored and condemned their teacher, the Bible, they have adopted a day kept by the Catholic Church. What Protestant can, after perusing these articles, with a clear conscience, continue to disobey the command of God, enjoining Saturday to be kept, which command his teacher, the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, records as the will of God?
The history of the world cannot present a more stupid, self-stultifying specimen of dereliction of principle than this. The teacher demands emphatically in every page that the law of the Sabbath be observed every week, by all recognizing it as "the only infallible teacher," whilst the disciples of that teacher have not once for over three hundred years observed the divine precept! That immense concourse of Biblical Christians, the Methodists, have declared that the Sabbath has never been abrogated, whilst the followers of the Church of England, together with her daughter, the [pg. 9] Episcopal Church of the United States, are committed by the twentieth article of religion, already quoted, to the ordinance that the Church cannot lawfully ordain anything "contrary to God's written word." God's written word enjoins His worship to be observed on Saturday absolutely, repeatedly, and most emphatically, with a most positive threat of death to him who disobeys.All the Biblical sects occupy the same self-stultifying position which no explanation can modify, much less justify.
How truly do the words of the Holy Spirit apply to this deplorable situation! "Iniquitas mentita est sibi" — "Iniquity hath lied to itself." Proposing to follow the Bible only as teacher, yet before the world, the sole teacher is ignominiously thrust aside, and the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church — "the mother of abomination," when it suits their purpose so to designate her — adopted, despite the most terrible threats pronounced by God Himself against those who disobey the command, "Remember to keep holy the Sabbath."
Before closing this series of articles, we beg to call the attention of our readers once more to our caption, introductory of each; viz., 1st—The Christian Sabbath, the genuine offspring of the union of the Holy Spirit with the Catholic Church His spouse. 2nd—The claim of Protestantism to any part therein proved to be groundless, self-contradictory, and suicidal.
The first proposition needs little proof. The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday. We say by virtue of her divine mission, because He who called Himself the "Lord of the Sabbath," endowed her with His own power to teach, "he that heareth you, heareth Me;" commanded all who believe in Him to hear her, under penalty of being placed with "heathen and publican;" and promised to be with her to the end of the world. She holds her charter as teacher from Him — a charter as infallible as perpetual. The Protestant world at its birth found the Christian Sabbath too strongly entrenched to run counter to its existence; it was therefore placed under the necessity of acquiescing in the arrangement, thus implying the Church's right to change the day, for over three hundred years. The Christian Sabbath is therefore to this day, the acknowledged offspring of the Catholic Church as spouse of the Holy Ghost, without a word of remonstrance from the Protestant world.
Let us now, however, take a glance at our second proposition, with the Bible alone as the teacher and guide in faith and morals. This teacher most emphatically forbids any change in the day for paramount reasons. The command calls for a "perpetual covenant." The day commanded to be kept by the teacher has never once been kept, thereby developing an apostasy from an assumedly fixed principle, as self-contradictory, self-stultifying, and consequently as suicidal as it is within the power of language to express. Nor are the limits of demoralization yet reached. Far from it. Their pretense for leaving the bosom of the Catholic Church was for apostasy from the truth as taught in the written word. They adopted the written word as their sole teacher, which they had no sooner done than they abandoned it promptly, as these articles have abundantly proved; and by a perversity as willful as erroneous, they accept the teaching of the Catholic Church in direct opposition to the plain, unvaried, and constant teaching of their sole teacher in the most essential doctrine of their religion, thereby emphasizing the situation in what may be aptly designated "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare."Catholic Mirror September 23, 1893
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James Cardinal Gibbons |
* The Supreme Court said in a decision, "this is a Christian nation" (Holy Trinity Church v. U.S.), on February 29th, 1892. The Congressional legislation was H.R. 7520 (the Durborow World's Fair Bill), a bill passed by the 52nd U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Harrison on August 5, 1892, appropriating $2,500,000 to the Chicago World's Fair (Columbian Exposition), on the condition that the fair be closed to the public on Sundays. The bill declared "the first day of the week commonly called Sunday" to be "the Christian Sabbath," "the Sabbath of the nation". (U. S. Statutes, Vol. 27, Part 1, pp. 363, 388.) Despite this, the fair directors eventually bowed to public pressure and opened the fair on Sundays, beginning on May 28th of 1893.
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