Christian Churches of God
No. 030
Timeline
of the Churches
of
God
(Edition 5.020010620-20021118-20081111-20100629-20191116-20220223) Audio
A historical and contemporary view of the persecution of Sabbath-keepers commencing from 27 CE.
Christian Churches of God
E-mail:
secretary@ccg.org
(Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2008,
2010, 2019, 2022 Christian Churches of God;
ed. Wade Cox;
sub-editors Scott Rambo anor)
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Timeline of the Churches of
God
27 CE |
Early Persecution of the Church
John the Baptist a man sent by God (John 1:6), A messenger preparing
the way (Mal.3:1) |
28 CE |
John the Baptist beheaded - Christ begins his ministry. |
30 CE |
Christ, the Sabbath-keeping Lamb of God crucified on Passover (Wednesday
April 5). |
|
The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth at the end of the Sabbath day
(Saturday April 8/Sunday April 9). Then, on the 1st day of the
week (Sunday April 9, 9:00 a.m.), he ascends into heaven as the wave sheaf
offering, the first of the firstfruits. See the paper The Wave
Sheaf Offering (No. 106b). |
30-31 CE |
The disciples are sent out to the various lands to establish the
churches. |
|
Joseph of Arimathea, with Aristobulus, is held to have taken the
faith to Britain. Judas Timothy took it to India, Mark took it to Alexandria,
John to Ephesus, Peter took it to Antioch and to Parthia with others who also
went to the other nations listed in Acts (see the paper Origin of the Christian Church
in Britain (No. 266) and
also Establishment of the Church
under the 70 (No. 122D)). This text (No. 122D) covers the diocese and
deaths of the early bishops of the church. |
30-70 CE |
Jerusalem Church ruthlessly persecuted by Jews. See the paper The Sign
of Jonah and the History of the Reconstruction of the Temple (No. 013). |
34 CE |
Stephen is stoned to death. Believers are scattered throughout Judea
and Samaria. |
|
Sudan. First Christians; gospel taken to Nubia (Meroc) by Ethiopian
eunuch baptized by Philip. |
|
Mission extended to Samaritans by Philip; fresh persecution. |
42 CE |
Mark the Evangelist arrives in Alexandria; founds what became the
Coptic Church. |
|
Phoenicia Cyprus, Antioch: “A great number that believed turned to
the Lord” (Acts 11.21). |
44 CE |
Persecution in Jerusalem under king Herod Agrippa I; James brother of
John executed; imprisonment and escape of Peter. |
50 CE |
Jews and Christians are banished from Rome. |
|
Assyrian Christians found Church of the East (later Nestorian). |
54 CE |
1st imperial Roman persecution of Christians, under
Emperor Nero. |
58 CE |
Paul arrested in Jerusalem. |
60 CE |
Paul sent for trial to Rome. |
61 CE |
Paul in Rome under military guard; gospel proclaimed in capital of
empire, |
|
Paul writes: “The Good News which has reached you is spreading all
over the world” (Colossians 1.6, Jerusalem); “The Good News, which you have heard,
has been preached to the whole human race” (Colossians 1.23; Greek “to all
creation under the sky”). Britain (later UK). First resident Christians
(Roman soldiers, merchants); origins of Celtic Church. |
63-64 CE |
End of the 62 weeks of years of Daniel 9:25. |
|
Martyrdom of James brother of Christ, first bishop of Jerusalem. |
|
Martyrdom of apostle Mark in Baucalis near Alexandria. |
|
Nero’s persecutions begin; Paul and Peter
martyred. |
|
Great
Fire of Rome; thousands of Christians burned or killed by Emperor Nero. |
66 CE |
Anti-Jewish riots and pogroms in Egypt: 50,000 killed in Alexandria,
60,000 elsewhere. Vespasian with 60,000 troops quells Jewish insurrection;
reconquers Galilee. |
70 CE |
End of the Seventy Weeks of Years and the destruction of the Temple.
Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus with 4 legions; 600,000 killed in Judaea,
10,000 Jews crucified, 90,000 Jews to Rome as slaves; Jews scattered abroad.
Christians earlier had taken heed to the warnings of the Messiah and fled to
Pella under Symeon to escape the Roman army. (See World Christian
Encyclopedia (pp. 23-32), A Comparative
Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, Oxford University
Press, 1982.) |
71 CE |
Roman Coliseum built - makes sport of martyring Christians. |
72 CE |
Christians who fled Jerusalem in 70 CE now return to Jerusalem. They
set up Christian churches all over Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia but they
came into conflict with the Greek Christian churches because of the problems
with the observance of the law or Torah. This is thought by modern
Catholicism to be because Peter and Paul had set up a separate system with
the Greeks, but that was not the case. It is also worth mentioning that the
title "pope" was carried by bishops in major Sees such as
Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch in the third century, but never by the
apostles. |
81 CE |
2nd imperial Roman persecution, under Domitian. |
98 CE |
3rd imperial persecution, under Trajan. |
111 CE |
Sunday worship first entered the church at Rome |
115 CE |
Martyrdom of Ignatius bishop of Antioch. |
120 CE |
The Waldensian
Church is formed in the Piedmont valleys after the dispatch of Polycarp,
disciple of the Apostle John, from Smyrna. From this date on they passed down
from father to son the teachings they received from the apostles including
the keeping of the Sabbaths, New Moons, and Feasts. See the papers: General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122); Establishment
of the Church under the Seventy (No. 122D), The New Moons of Israel (No.
132) and The Role of the Fourth
Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170)). |
|
Note: The Waldensians were Sabbath-keeping Subordinationist
Unitarians well before Waldo was on the scene – according to Dugger and Dodd,
A History of the True Religion,
(3rd ed. Jerusalem, 1972, p. 224ff.). |
132 CE |
Second Jewish rebellion under Bar Kokhba; second destruction of
Jerusalem by Romans in 134; almost entire Jewish population of Palestine died
or fled. |
154 CE |
Anicetus introduces the Pagan Easter festival into the Roman Church.
He is opposed by Polycarp disciple of John. Polycarp heads the church in the
East at Smyrna and speaks for all Quartodecimans. |
|
Justin Martyr writes his First
Apology to the Emperor of Rome on behalf of the Church of Rome. He
explained that Christ was the Great Angel of the OT who gave the Law to
Moses. On behalf of the Church at Rome, Justin wrote (Dial. LXXX)
that
if they came across people who said they were Christians and that when they
died they would go to heaven not to believe them because they were not
Christians. This was the test of a true Christian. It was a shibboleth in the
church. People who said that when they died they went to heaven were Gnostic
impostors. |
156 CE |
Death at the stake of Polycarp bishop of Smyrna. |
161 CE |
4th imperial Roman persecution, under Marcus Aurelius. |
180 CE |
Theophilus of Antioch makes the first mention of a trias later incorrectly translated
into English as Trinity, and the insipient beginnings of the Binitarian
doctrine emerges for the first time in the history of the church (see Early
Theology of the Godhead (No. 127)). |
192 CE |
Bishop Victor of Rome forcibly brings in Easter over the Passover and
the Quartodeciman Disputes split the church. Polycrates disciple of Polycarp
stands against the heretical Roman Faction. Irenaeus bishop of Lyon tries to
intercede to no avail. See the paper: The Quartodeciman Disputes (No.277). |
193 CE |
5th imperial
Roman persecution, under Septimius Severus. |
195 CE |
Irenaeus expounds the
correct Unitarian doctrine of the Nature of God in Against Heresies. He states the goal of the elect is to become
elohim or theoi (in other words gods, cf. Zech. 12:8) according to the Bible
text (see the paper The Elect as Elohim (No. 001)). |
200 CE |
Sabbath observance widespread
and appears to have been opposed from Rome. It was kept in Egypt as the
Oxyrhynchus Papyrus (c. 200-250 CE) shows. |
|
Origen also enjoined
Sabbath-keeping. |
|
Similarly the Constitution of the Holy Apostles (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7, p. 413;
c. 3rd century) states: Thou shalt observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who
ceased from His work of creation, but ceased not from His work of providence:
it is a rest for meditation of the law, not for idleness of the hands. |
|
Vicious persecutions of
Coptic Christians in Egypt with thousands martyred. |
|
Tertullian says
the British Church has been long established at this time. |
220 CE |
The problems of Modalism
emerge in the discussions between the popes in Rome and Alexandria. A
distinction is attempted in the Trias
of The Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Here the influence of the Modalism
of Attis is seen in the Christian church from Rome. Christ is elevated to God
as a Modal structure for the first time. See the paper Early
Theology of the Godhead (No. 127). |
|
The Sabbath in India |
220 CE |
The introduction of
Sabbath-keeping to India caused a controversy in Buddhism in 220 CE.
According to Lloyd (The Creed of Half
Japan, p. 23) the Kushan Dynasty of North India called a council of
Buddhist priests at Vaisalia to bring uniformity among the Buddhist monks on
the observance of their weekly Sabbath. Some had been so impressed by the Old
Testament writings that they had begun to keep the Sabbath. |
235 CE |
6th imperial Roman
persecution, under Maximinus. |
249 CE |
7th imperial Roman
persecution, under military ruler Decius; systematic state attempt to destroy
Christianity. |
253 CE |
8th imperial Roman
persecution, under Valerian. |
270 CE |
9th imperial Roman
persecution, under Aurelian. |
300 CE |
By the fourth century, the priests of the pagan god Attis were
complaining that the Christian ministry at Rome had stolen all their
doctrines. |
303 CE |
10th and last imperial Roman persecution, under Diocletian;
destruction of all church buildings and scriptures ordered. Around 500,000
Christians executed in 10 years of systematic slaughter. |
|
The Sabbath in Spain
|
305 CE |
From canon 26 of the Council of Elvira (c. 305), it appears that the
church in Spain had kept the Sabbath. Rome had introduced the practice of
fasting on the Sabbath to counteract Sabbath-keeping. Pope Sylvester
(314-335) was the first to order the churches to fast on the Sabbath, and
Pope Innocent (402-417) made it a binding law in the churches that obeyed
him. |
|
Innocentius did ordain the Sabbath or Saturday to be always fasted on
(Peter Heylyn, History of the Sabbath,
Part 2, Ch. 2, London, 1636, p. 44). |
314 CE |
Edict of Toleration of Milan, the Emperor Constantine sought to use
Christianity for political purposes and initially supported the Roman
faction, which came to adopt the doctrines of Athanasius and, later, that of
the Cappadocians. The doctrinal position of the church had become blurred by
Gnostic factions, influenced by the mystery cults. Constantine supported the
Athanasian faction on the mistaken assumption that, because it was dominant
in Rome, it was the major sect, but the deposition of Arius in the packed
Synod of Alexandria led ultimately to war with his co-Emperor, Licinius, and
the troubles of 322-323 CE. |
|
Pope Sylvester (314-335) was the first to order the churches to fast
on the Sabbath. |
|
Rome attempts to counteract Sabbath keeping. |
318 CE |
Conference
of the Deposyni: In 318 Constantine had ordered the conference
between the bishop of Rome and the desposyni; the bishops were of the family
of Jesus Christ. |
|
The desposyni (meaning
literally in Greek ‘Belonging to the Lord’ as they were blood relatives of
Jesus Christ) asked Sylvester, who now had Roman patronage, to revoke his
confirmation of the authority of the Greek Christian bishops at Jerusalem, in
Antioch, in Ephesus, and in Alexandria, and to name desposynos bishops in
their stead. In addition, they asked that the practice of sending cash to
Jerusalem, as the mother church, be resumed. This practice is easily
recognizable as the tithe of the tithe system, which had been in force in the
church until Emperor Hadrian’s ban in 135 CE. These blood relatives of Christ
demanded the reintroduction of the Law, which included the Sabbath and the Holy
Day system of Feasts and New Moons of the Bible. Sylvester dismissed their
claims and said that from now on the mother church was in Rome and he
insisted they accept the Greek bishops to lead them. |
|
This was the last known
dialogue with the Sabbath-keeping church in the East led by the disciples who
were descended from blood relatives of Messiah. |
|
The bishop, or
pope, (all bishops of major sees were called pope initially when the term was
introduced from the cults) then with Roman contrivance, ordered that they be
exterminated and this campaign of extermination was undertaken against
Christ’s immediate family from 318 onwards. See the paper The
Virgin Mariam and the Family of
Jesus Christ (No. 232). |
322 CE |
The deposition of Arius in the packed Synod of Alexandria led
ultimately to war with Constantine’s co-Emperor, Licinius, and the troubles
of 322-323 CE. |
325 CE |
Council of Nicea convened. The Canons of the Council of Nicea have
been lost. It was later established that there were only 20, which commenced
the introduction of aberrations such as: domiciliary rules for the clergy
living with females, i.e. celibacy; the persecution by the imposition of
penance of Unitarians (incorrectly called Arians) and those who supported
Licinius; the establishment of the diocesan system and its controls on
priests and the prohibition of the clergy lending at interest; and the
introduction of standing prayers at Sunday worship and during the
"Paschal Season." The Paschal Season so-called was in fact the
forced introduction and harmonisation of Easter as practiced in the West from
Rome by the Attis system and by the Greeks in the East under the Adonis
system and in Egypt under the Osiris/Isis system. This festival was instead
of the Bible Passover). The Creed reconstructed from Constantinople itself,
introduces the concept of Binitarianism essential to the formulation of the
Trinity and introduces the aberration that Christ was the "only begotten
of the Father" and hence removes the promise of the elect as begotten
sons of God. Athanasius says (in Ad Afros) that there were 318 bishops
present. Arius was summoned to the Council often, which began possibly on 20
May 325 CE under the Athanasian Hosius of Cordova. Constantine joined the
Council on 14 June. To get agreement Constantine marched in a cohort of Roman
troops and arrested a number of bishops and exiled Arius, Theonas of
Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais to Illyrica. Arius' writings were then
burnt and all three were anathematised. The remainder agreed on the symbol of
the Creed on 19 June. The Council ended on 25 August with a 'party' hosted by
Constantine with presents to the bishops. |
|
Three months after the Council, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognius
of Nicea, who were forced to sign the Creed under duress, were exiled for
retracting and Theodotus of Laodicea, who also signed under duress and
retracted, recanted rather than join them. |
|
Persecution instituted by the imposition of penance of Unitarians
(incorrectly called Arians) and those who supported Licinius. |
328 CE |
Constantine realizing that the Athanasians were not the majority sect
and were a source of division and persecution in the Empire recalls the five
Unitarian leaders (it is suggested at the urging of Constantia, widow of
Licinius. However, it is more probable that she was merely a prominent
Unitarian of the Eusebian or Arian faction). The problem with the Unitarian
Christian system was that it followed the Bible tenets and was not concerned
with the control of nations. Each nation was separate and subject to its own
leaders and the religious system of that nation was between them and God. As
the nation obeyed God so it was blessed. The empire was concerned with world
domination and the converts to the church in Rome were also imbued with this
mentality. Thus they courted an organization that wanted world domination and
would tolerate no opposition to that model. As a result, the Roman Church
system adapted the pagan system of the sun cults and among the Aryans to
Christianity, such that no Bible believing person can follow both systems. |
|
The Sabbath in
Persia
|
335 CE |
The Sabbath-keeping churches in Persia underwent forty years of
persecution under Shapur II, from 335-375 specifically, because they were
Sabbath-keeping. |
|
“They despise our sun-god. Did not Zoroaster, the sainted founder of
our divine beliefs, institute Sunday one thousand years ago in honour of the
sun and supplant the Sabbath of the Old Testament. Yet these Christians have
divine services on Saturday” (O'Leary, The
Syriac Church and Fathers, pp. 83-84, requoted Truth Triumphant p. 170). |
|
This persecution was mirrored in the West by the Council of Laodicea
(c. 366). Hefele notes: |
|
Canon 16 - The Gospels along with other Scripture be read on the
Sabbath (cf. also canons 49 and 51, Bacchiocchi, fn. 15, p. 217). |
|
Canon 29 - Christians must
not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day honouring
rather the Lord's day by resting, if possible, as Christians. However if any
shall be found judaizing, let them be anathema for Christ (Mansi, II, pp.
569-570, see also Hefele Councils,
Vol. 2, b. 6) |
337 CE |
The Emperor Constantine was baptized a Unitarian by Eusebius on his
deathbed. |
339 CE |
Severe persecution of Christians in Persia, until 379; intermittent
vicious persecution by Sassanian rulers until the 640 conquest by Islam. |
345 CE |
Persecution in East Syria and Persia drives 400 Nestorians with a
bishop to settle in Malabar, India. |
351 CE |
The Unitarian Goths publish the Bible in the Gothic Language. |
|
The Jews Change
the Calendar
|
358 CE |
Jewish calendar is changed from the Temple period model by a
calculation system and delineated under Rabbi Hillel II ca. 358 CE (from
input by Babylonian rabbis of ca. 344 CE). The Waldensian and later the
Transylvanian Sabbatarians did not follow the Jewish calendar but worked on
the astronomical conjunction of the New Moon. See the paper: God's
Calendar (No. 156) and the foreword by Cox to R. Samuel Kohn, The Sabbatarians in Transylvania
(No. A_B2),
[1894], CCG Publishing, 1998. |
380 CE |
The Montanists in the second century started a cult of worship of the
Holy Spirit as they expected the Holy Spirit to come and take the place of
the sons and announce a more perfect gospel. This view was repressed but led
to the Fourth Council of Rome in 380 where Pope Damasus condemned whoever
denied that the Holy Spirit should be adored like the Father and the Son
(ibid., p. 711). Thus the next year (381) at the Council of Constantinople,
the Holy Spirit was added to the Godhead as the Trinity but not perhaps as
successfully as the Cappadocians would have liked. This forms the next great
distinction between the Churches of God and Trinitarianism. |
381 CE |
Council of Constantinople sees the formulation of the doctrine of the
trinity and the defining of the Holy Spirit as a third part of the Godhead,
furthering the Binitarian heresy emanating from the council of Nicaea.
However, the full doctrinal position was not agreed upon until the Council of
Chalcedon in 451 CE. This council saw the exit of the thirty-six semi-Arians,
Macedonians or Pneumatomachi. The council, after that exit, consisted of only
150 bishops. It was thus unrepresentative of much of Christianity at the
time. |
|
Ambrose of Milan, with Theodosius gains control of the Roman Church. |
|
The Athanasian/Arian disputes lead to bitter persecution. |
|
The doctrines attributed to so-called Arianism, namely of the
creation of the Holy Spirit by Christ, are not substantiated from any
writings of Arius or of the faction. |
|
See the paper: Socinianism, Arianism and
Unitarianism (No. 185)). |
|
There was no Trinitarian Emperor on the throne until 381, when the
Trinity was formulated at Constantinople under protection of Theodosius. They
had all been Unitarians until 381 with the exception of Julian the apostate. |
|
This Unitarian creed is based on the theology expressed in Psalm
45:6-7 and Hebrews 1:8-9. The early apologists such as Irenaeus at Lyons held
it in the second century. This theology was held by the Goths, Vandals,
Alans, Suevi, Heruli, Britons, Lombards, Germans, and all the northern tribes.
See the paper: The
Pre-Existence of Jesus Christ (No. 243) for the creed
of the Goths. It came from the teachings of theologians and disciples of the
apostles that were already centuries old before the Council of Nicea in 325
CE, where many of these bishops were present. The heresy of Binitarianism was
commenced from this Council. |
|
In 381 the Trinity was declared at Constantinople from the theology
of the Cappadocians Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus. The
destruction of the faith by the Greeks and Romans had begun to take effect.
Trinitarians incorrectly and dishonestly label the creed as Arianism, to give
the impression that their doctrine is older and this doctrine originated with
Arius in the fourth century. The Trinitarians then alternately label the
subordinationist Unitarian doctrine after Arius (Arianism) and then Eusebius
of Nicomedia (Eusebianism) and other bishops much senior to Arius (who was
not even present at Nicea, only being summoned there for advice on logic).
Trinitarians accuse Arians of
holding that the Spirit was a creation of the son, when in fact that is the
doctrine of Filioque advanced from
the Council of Toledo, by the Catholics themselves in the sixth century. Even
the Greeks rejected that view. People who label this view as Arian are either
being deliberately dishonest, or do not understand enough to know what they
are saying. |
382 CE |
In 382 Theodosius I had resettled the Visigoths in the empire but
they were still Unitarian. Allegedly it was the Emperors, especially Valens,
who converted the northern tribes to Unitarianism and not to Trinitarianism.
The Goths, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Heruli, were all Unitarian as were the
tribes of the Teutons and there were a number of bishops from the Unitarian
tribes at Nicea. The German Hermunduri remained Unitarian until the eighth
century. So also the Celtic bishops of Britain were Unitarian Sabbatarians. |
385 CE |
Banishment of some Sabbatarians from Britain to Ireland after the
execution of Priscillian. |
|
Celtic Sabbath-keeping
|
|
Henry Charles Lea, the foremost authority on the Papal Inquisitions,
records in the period of the commencement of persecution involving judicial
capital punishment for heresy that at the time of the execution of
Priscillian with six of his followers in 385 AD, "others were banished
to a barbarous island beyond Britain." (A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol.1, New York:
Harper & Brothers 1887, p.213.) What was this barbarous island? Most
likely, it would appear to be Ireland. Britain and Ireland were favourite
places for banishment and the marketing of slaves in those days. If indeed
many faithful "heretics" were banished to Ireland for centuries, it
could not but have had a profound effect on that island, which became a great
centre of light under Patrick (5th century), Columba (521-597), and
Columbanus (c. 540-615) as the darkness of papal tyranny descended over the
continent. Missionaries went forth from Ireland to Switzerland, Bohemia and
Kiev. Ireland was one of the most difficult areas for Rome to subjugate, and
this explains why such unending efforts have been made for over 1200 years to
completely subjugate this island of Ireland. (Taken from Cherith Chronicle, April-June 1998, pp. 46-47.) |
|
The Celtic Church, which occupied Ireland, Scotland and Britain, had
the Syriac (Byzantine) scriptures instead of the Latin vulgate of Rome. The
Celtic Church, with the Waldenses and the Eastern empire, kept the
seventh-day Sabbath. When Queen Margaret fled to Scotland with her father
Edward Atheling, a pretender to the English throne, she wrote "to her
English cousins expressing astonishment at the religious practices of the
Scots. Among the 'peculiarities' of the Scots was that “they work on Sunday,
but keep Saturday in a sabbatical manner.” To another correspondent she
complained, “They are accustomed also to neglect reverence for the Lord's
days (Sundays); and thus to continue upon them as upon other days all the
labours of earthly work.” |
|
"The observance of the Saturday Sabbath by most Scots went hand
in hand with their refusal to 'recognize the overlordship of the Pope in
matters spiritual'. Despite the best efforts of King Nectan centuries
earlier, Scottish Christianity was still of the 'Columban' or 'Celtic', not
the 'Roman', variety. |
|
"The most popular narrative history of Scotland--Scotland: A Concise History by P. Hume
Brown (Langsyne) -- confirms that at Margaret's accession, 'the people worked
on Sundays and observed Saturday as the Sabbath day'”. Peter Berresford Ellis
in Celtic lnheritance (Constable, 1992) page 45 writes: “When Rome began to
take a particular interest in the Celtic Church towards the end of the sixth
century AD there were several differences between them... The Celtic Sabbath
was celebrated on a Saturday.” Ellis' comment covers the Celtic Church in
Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Gaul, as well as Scotland. Romanism was,
apparently, coming into Scotland but had no strength north of the Forth. |
|
"This gave Queen Margaret her crusade (and her route to
canonization): 'Margaret did all she could to make the Scottish clergy do and
believe exactly what the Church of Rome commanded.' This involved the
enforcement of Sunday-keeping, a policy continued by her son, King David I.
Nevertheless, on the eve of the Reformation, there were still many
communities in the Scottish Highland loyal to the seventh-day Sabbath, as
opposed to 'the Papal Sunday'. |
|
"Two books published in 1963-- to commemorate Columba's landing
at Iona in 563-- concerned themselves with the 'Celtic distinctives' and
counted among them the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. Dr. W.D.
Simpson published The Historical St. Columba in Edinburgh. He confirms that
Columba and his companions kept 'the day of the Sabbath' and in case there
should be any doubt adds in a footnote 'Saturday, of course'... F.W. Fawcett
was commissioned to write his Columba--Pilgrim for Christ by the Lord Bishop
of Derry and Raphoe. His book was published in Londonderry and printed by the
Derry Standard in connection with the Irish commemoration of Columba's
mission. Fawcett outlines eight Celtic distinctives. Among these that the
Celts had a married priesthood and that they observed the seventh day as the
Sabbath." --David Marshall, The Celtic Connection, England: Stanborough
Press, 1994, pp.29, 30. |
|
"The reason why Pope Gregory I had perceived the Celtic Church
as such a major threat and why he and his successors expended such efforts in
destroying the distinctive 'Irish customs' became massively evident. |
|
"A.O. and M.O. Anderson, in the Introduction to their Adomnan's
Life of Columba (Thomas Nelson 1961), shed light, not only on Columba's
seventh-day Sabbath keeping practice, but on the gradual 'adjustment' of
manuscripts by generations of Roman copyists, in an attempt to provide an
impression that the Celtic saints held Sunday sacred. |
|
"Adomnan's use of sabbatum for Saturday, the seventh day of the
week, is clear indication from 'Columba's mouth' that 'Sabbath was not
Sunday.' Sunday, the first day of the week is 'Lord's day.' Adomnan's
attitude to Sunday is important, because he wrote at a time when there was
controversy over the question whether the ritual of the biblical Sabbath was
to be transferred to the Christians' Lord's-day.' (A.O. and M.O. Anderson
(eds) Adomnan's Life of Columba (Thomas Nelson's Medieval Texts, 1961), pages
25-26.) |
|
"The Old Testament required seventh-day Sabbath observance and,
reason Adomnan's editors, since the New Testament nowhere repealed the fourth
commandment, the seventh-day was observed by all early Christians. The
evidence they adduce suggests that no actual confusion between Sunday and
'the Sabbath' occurred until the early sixth century, and then in the
writings of the rather obscure Caesarius of ArIes. (ibid., page 26.) |
|
"'In England, the question of Sunday may have been among the
'other ecclesiastical matters' discussed by the Synod of Whitby in 664',
reason the Andersons, in addition to the date of Easter which could not have
caused such a rift. A weekly, not just a yearly observance separated the
Celts from the Romans. But the Romans had the task of writing the history of
the Church and of copying the writings of Church fathers. While those
injunctions not to add or take away from the words of the Book and, in the
main, to have done a conscientious job, the same scruples did not apply when
they copied out the writings of the Church fathers. As the centuries
progressed the writings of the Celtic saints, including Patrick were
'amended' to convey the impression that the saints held Sunday sacred,
whereas, in the earliest versions of their manuscripts, it is clear that they
observed the seventh-day Sabbath (ibid., pages 26-28). |
|
The Roman 'movement' to supersede the Celtic Sabbath with Sunday 'culminated
in the production of an (apocryphal) 'Letter of Jesus', or 'Letter of
Lord's-day', alleged to have been found on the altar of Peter in Rome; and is
said in the annals to have been brought to Ireland by a pilgrim (c. 886).
Upon this basis laws were promulgated, imposing heavy penalties for those
that violated on Sunday certain regulations derived from Jewish prohibitions
for Sabbath... There is in fact no historical evidence that Ninian, or
Patrick, or Columba, or any of their contemporaries in Ireland, kept Sunday
as a Sabbath.' (ibid., p. 28). |
|
"The seventh-day Sabbath, enjoined by the fourth of the ten
commandments, had been observed by Jesus and nowhere in Scripture had its
sacredness been diminished or transferred to another day.... |
|
An "early version of The Rule of Columba is reproduced in
Columba—Pilgrim for Christ by [Clergyman] F.W. Fawcett, MA. [Clergyman]
Fawcett is a Church of Ireland clergyman. He was commissioned by the Lord
Bishop of Derry and Raphoe to produce this book as part of the celebrations
in 1963 of the departure of Columba for Iona in AD 563." --Marshall, The
Celtic Connection, 46. |
|
The fifth rule of the Celtic Church listed in The Rule of Columba is "The Seventh Day was observed as the
Sabbath". |
392 CE |
Theodosius the Great
(392-395) reunited the empire, but it was divided again by his successors
Honorius and Arcadius in 395. |
396 CE |
Visigoths under Alaric
invade Greece. In obedience to biblical law, he destroys pagan statues there
and hence he is held to have plundered
Athens and then the Balkans in 398. In 401 they invaded Italy continuing
until 403. |
400 CE |
Socrates
the Historian says: |
|
For although almost all
Churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries [assumed by
Catholics to be the Eucharist or Lord's Supper so-called] on the Sabbath of
every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and Rome, on account of some
ancient tradition, refuse to do this (Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, Bk 5, Ch. 22, p. 289). |
|
The Sabbath in Africa |
|
Augustine of Hippo, a
devout Sunday-keeper, attested that the Sabbath was observed in the greater
part of the Christian world (Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), First Series, Vol. 1, pp. 353-354) and
deplored the fact that in two neighboring Churches in Africa, one observed
the seventh day Sabbath, while another fasted on it (Peter Heylyn, op. cit.,
p. 416). |
|
See
the paper: General
Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122)). |
|
The Churches generally held
the Sabbath for some time. |
|
The ancient Christians
were very careful in the observation of Saturday, or the seventh day ... It
is plain that all the Oriental churches, and the greatest part of the world,
observed the Sabbath as a festival ... Athanasius likewise tells us that they
held religious assemblies on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with
Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, Epiphanius says the
same (Antiquities of the Christian
Church, Vol. II, Bk. Xx, Ch. 3, Sec 1, 66. 1137,1136). Athanasius was a
Binitarian heretic hence the comment: "worship Jesus". |
|
The Sabbath in China |
|
In the last half of the
fourth century, in 370, the bishop of the Sabbath-keeping Abyssinian Church,
Museus, visited China. Ambrose of Milan stated that Museus had traveled
almost everywhere in the country of the Seres' (China) (Ambrose, De Moribus, Brachman-orium Opera
Omnia, 1132, found in Migne, Patriologia
Latina, Vol. 17, pp. 1131-1132). Mingana holds that the Abyssinian Museus
traveled to Arabia, Persia, India and China in 370 (see also fn. 27 to Truth Triumphant, p. 308). |
|
The Sabbath Churches were
established in Persia and the Tigris-Euphrates basin. They kept the Sabbath
and paid tithes to their Churches (Realencyclopæie
fur Protestantishe und Kirche, art. ‘Nestorianer’; see also Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. 2, p.
409). |
|
The St. Thomas Christians
of India were never in communion with Rome. |
|
They were Sabbath-keepers,
as were those who broke off communion with Rome after the Council of
Chalcedon, namely the Abyssinian, the Jacobites, the Maronites, and the
Armenians and the Kurds, who kept the food laws and denied confession and
purgatory (Schaff-Herzog, The New
Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge, art. ‘Nestorians’ and ‘Nestorianer’). |
402 CE |
Pope Innocent (402-417)
made fasting on the Sabbath a binding law in the Churches that obeyed him. |
|
“Innocentius did ordaine
the Saturday or Sabbath to be always fasted” (Peter Heylyn, History of the Sabbath, Part 2, Ch. 2,
London, 1636, p. 44). |
406 CE |
Gunderic becomes king of
Vandals. |
|
Burgundian kingdom of
Worms was founded. |
|
These Teutonic tribes were
all Unitarians |
409 CE |
The Vandals were
Unitarians and hence iconoclastic and they despised the icons and idols of
the fully emerged system in Rome and the syncretic adoption of the earlier
pagan rites and statues. These they destroyed initially in Gaul in 409-411
and on arrival in Spain, in Africa and again in Rome. They were branded as
pagan barbarians and from this we derive the word vandalism, but in fact they
were iconoclasts who despised the idolatry of the syncretics. They would have
destroyed Rome because of what they perceived as idolatry, but relented at
the request of Leo on 2 June 455. |
|
Dr. Peter Heylyn (History of the Sabbath, London 1636,
Part 2, para. 5, pp. 73-74) notes that Milan was Sabbath-keeping from ancient
times following the eastern practices. |
416 CE |
The Vandals had occupied
Spain, and Spain was Unitarian. The Visigoths conquered the Vandal kingdom in
Spain in 416. Thus all the areas of the north and west were Unitarian. Italy
was allegedly Trinitarian, but more often subject to the Unitarians. In 418
the Franks settled in parts of Gaul. In the same year Theodoric I became king
of the Visigoths. By 425 these so-called barbarians, who were actually
Unitarian, for the most part had settled in the Roman provinces. The Vandals
were in southern Spain, the Huns were in Pannonia, the Ostrogoths (and
subsequently the Heruli) were in Dalmatia and the Visigoths and Suevi were in
northern Portugal and Spain. The European Huns remained there in Pannonia
until ca. 470 when they withdrew from Europe. |
417 CE |
Milan, (historically
Sabbath-keeping) ceases to be the centre of resolution of dispute when Pope
Zosimus makes Patrocoles, bishop of Arles, his vicar or delegate in Gaul. |
425 CE |
In 425 Valentinian III
became Western Roman Emperor under the guardianship of his mother Galla
Placidia. Gaiseric (428-477) became king of the Vandals in that year. |
|
In 429 the Picts and Scots
were expelled from southern England by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. (The
Scots did not enter Scotland until 501 CE.)
In 457, at the battle of Crayford, the Jutes under Hengest defeated
the Britons and occupied Kent where they remain. In the year 429 Aetius chief
minister of Valentinian III became virtual ruler of the Western Roman Empire
(429-454). In the same year Gaiseric founded the Vandal kingdom of North
Africa. In 443 he took the last Roman possession in North Africa and Africa
was under Unitarian domination again. |
433 CE |
Attila (d. 453) became
ruler of the Huns. In 436 the last Roman troops left Britain. In the same
year the Huns destroyed the Burgundian kingdom of Worms. The Burgundians were
part of this major thrust into Europe that was made by the Anglo-Saxons and
Lombards and the other tribes seemingly of the Parthian horde. |
443 CE |
The Alemanni Germans
(German Swiss) settled in Alsace. |
|
In 453 Attila of the Huns
died and Theodoric II (453-466) became king of the Visigoths, until he was
murdered by his brother Eric (466-484), who succeeded him. This event was
followed by the sack of Rome in 455 by the Vandals. The fact of the matter
was that the Vandals were Unitarians. They destroyed the pagan idols given
so-called Christian names considering them an abomination and breach of the
second commandment. The term Vandalism
comes from this act. The destruction was in fact the biblical exercise of
power in destruction of heathen idols. |
451 CE |
The full doctrinal
position holding the Holy Spirit to be an equal part of the Godhead was not
agreed upon until the Council of Chalcedon. The role and function of the sons
of God as messengers and ministering spirits was reduced to the point that
their existence had become trivialized and the word angel ceased to be a descriptive function of a son of God in
execution of the plan of God. It had become an entity in its own right, which
achieved an inferior existence to the perceived role of Messiah and the
elect. This view served to elevate the Christology and remove Christ from the
creation at all levels in accordance with Trinitarian dogma. This view was
not the view of the early Church and the term angel was simply seen as a function of the sons of God. |
471 CE |
Theodoric the Great became
king of the Ostrogoths from 471-526. |
|
The Eastern Roman Emperors over that time were Theodosius II (d. 450), Marcian 450-457), Leo I (457-474). In 457 Childeric I (457-481) became king of the Salien Franks. In 460 the Franks captured Cologne. The Vandals also destroyed the Roman fleet of Cartagena in the same year. |
|
The conflicts throughout
Europe were basically over which tribe was to be entrenched in what fertile
sector of Europe. Whilst they were Unitarians they were also governed by
uncommitted avaricious men and that was their undoing. |
|
The last Western Roman
Emperors over that period from 461 were Severus (461-465); Athemius (to 467);
Alybrius (to 473); Glycerius (to 474); Julius Nepos (to 475); and Romulus
Augustulus (to 476). The Western Empire came to an end with the weakness of
its rulers. The German Odoacer (433-493) captured and executed Orestes at
Placentia and then executed his son Romulus Augustulus and was proclaimed
king of Italy. |
|
Thus the Western Roman
Empire was brought to a close, with no established Catholic Church and no
clear policy over Europe. |
474 CE |
Suppression
of the Eastern Sects |
|
In 474 Zeno became Eastern Roman Emperor
(474-491). The Trinitarian schools were more extensively developed in the
Eastern empire from this time, with the Neo-Platonist model being established
by Proclus becoming head of the Platonic academy in Athens in 476. The
Trinitarian system had been formalized with the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
The Egyptian Coptic Divisions date from this time. In 483 Pope Simplicius was
succeeded by Felix III (-492). In 484 his excommunication of Patriarch
Acacius of Constantinople led to the first schism of the Western and Eastern
Trinitarian churches (484-519). |
476 CE |
Gaiseric king of the
Vandals sold eastern Sicily to Theodoric king of the Visigoths. The
Unitarians under Hunneric king of the Vandals began to take measures against
the Catholics, where they had been exemplary in their tolerance until now,
with the obvious exception of idolatry. The Unitarian/Trinitarian disputes
now began to introduce persecution. The Trinitarian or Catholic/Orthodox
faction had in the main been weak and the Unitarians had sway. This was to
change with the support of the Salien Franks. |
481 CE |
The revolt of Vahan
Mamikonian took place from 481-484 and this success secured religious and
political freedom for Armenia. This freedom also appears instrumental in
helping the Sabbath-keeping church become established with the Paulicians in
the Taurus Mountains. The Paulicians were still to be found in the East in
the nineteenth century. This group was still operational in the twentieth
century. Their descendants, numbering a million or more, were exterminated in
the area of Armenia after the First World War. There were perhaps between a
million and two million Sabbatarians exterminated after the outlawing of
Bektashi Islam after 1927. This process of extermination continued up on
through the Holocaust in Europe and on to 1953 and the death of Stalin. |
|
Childeric I died and was succeeded by his son Clovis (d. 511) who became the founder of the Merovingian power. In 484 Hunneric king of the Vandals was succeeded by his nephew Gunthamund (d. 496). In 486 Clovis defeated Syagrius the last Roman governor of Gaul. Rome no longer had power in Gaul. |
487 CE |
At this time also (487-493)
the Unitarian Ostrogoths began their conquest of Italy. Theodoric defeated
the German Odoacer on the Isonzo River and again near Verona (489). |
489 CE |
In 489 the Eastern Emperor
Zeno destroyed the Nestorian Christian school at Edessa and built the church
of St. Symeon Stylites around his pillar. In 491 the Armenian Church severed
connection with Byzantium and Rome and in 498 the Nestorians settled in
Nisibis in Persia. The church that settled from Jerusalem in Armenia was not
Trinitarian Diphysite and it was Sabbath-keeping. It also was the repository,
at Edessa, of the Aramaic texts and the Peshitta version of the Bible, until
it was suppressed. The Sabbath was spread as far away as China by the early
church from the East. See the paper: General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). |
492 CE |
The popes at this time,
from the death of Felix III, were Gelasius (492-496); and Anastasius II (to
498) and Symmachus (to 514). Gelasius introduced the Gelasian Missal, Book of prayers, chants and instructions for the
celebration of the Mass. |
493 CE |
Odoacer capitulated to the
Ostrogoths and was murdered by Theodoric who then founded the Ostrogothic
kingdom of Italy and married a sister of Clovis. The Ostrogoths occupied
Malta from 494-534. In 500 Thrasamund married Theodoric’s sister and was
given western Sicily as a dowry. |
498 CE |
The Nestorians settle in
Nisibis in Persia. |
499 CE |
In 499 the synod of Rome
issued a decree on papal elections and, in 500, incense was introduced into
the Trinitarian church services for the first time in any Christian church. |
500 CE |
German Marcomanni in
Bohemia invaded Bavaria and, on their departure, the Czechs settled in
Bohemia. |
510 CE |
Provence, the
south-eastern part of France, went to the Italian Ostrogoths until 563. These
facts explain why the Sabbatati were all over southern France, northern
Spain, and northern Italy. Christianity observed the Sabbath up until the
fifth century and at the time of Jerome (ca. 420) the devoutest Christian did ordinary work on Sunday (Dr. White
bishop of Ely, Treatise of the Sabbath
Day, p. 219; cf. Augustine of Hippo, NPNF
First Series, Vol. 1, pp. 353-354 and also the paper General
Distribution of Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122), p. 2). |
511 CE |
In 511 Clovis, king of the
Franks, died and his kingdom was divided among his four sons Theodoric I (d.
534); Chlodomer (d. 524); Childebert I (d. 558) and Chlothar (d. 561) and
they established courts at Soissons, Paris, Metz, and Orleans respectively.
At this time also the convent at St Césaire at Arles was established.
Monasticism was also to play a part in the Trinitarian expansions. |
523 CE |
In 523 Thrasamund king of
the Vandals died and was succeeded by Hilderic (to 530). In 524 Sigismund was
killed by Chlodomer son of Clovis I. The Ostrogoths erected the so-called
Arian Baptistery now known as the Baptistery of S Maria in Cosmedin, Ravenna
in 525. However, in 526 Theodoric the Great died and was buried at Ravenna.
His daughter Amalaswintha became regent of Italy (to 534). |
|
Massacre of Arab
Christians in Najran and Himyar (Arabia) by Jewish Arab king. |
527 CE |
In 527 Justinian I became
Byzantine Emperor (to 565) and a series of reverses and fluctuations were to
occur for the Goths and Vandals and hence the Unitarian church over the
period up until 590. It is the most important turn of European history that
the Franks became Trinitarians, as this fact helped to establish the Catholic
Church in Europe. Without the Franks they would have been nothing. We will
see this move now inexorably forward until the declaration of the Holy Roman
Empire from 590 CE and this empire was to last 1260 years until it was
controlled in 1850 and the pope virtually imprisoned from 1870. |
|
|
|
Final Wars to the rise of
Islam and the Holy Roman Empire |
529 CE |
In 529 Justinian closed
the 1,000-year old Greek school of philosophy at Athens. This action was
allegedly directed at Paganism, but it forced the syncretisation of the
Neo-Platonists and effectively forced the professors to go to Persia and
Syria where, from the next year onwards under Chosroes I (531-579), Persia
reached new heights of learning. This was to move the centre of learning to
what was to become the Islamic world, when it formed in the next century in
reaction to the Trinitarian advances of Constantinople. |
532 CE |
In 532 the Franks
overthrew the kingdom of Burgundy, which had covered areas of France,
Switzerland and Austria. Also the general Belisarius saved Justinian’s throne
by putting down the Nika revolt in Constantinople. He was recalled the
previous year after he had been dismissed for his defeat by the Persians.
Constantinople was then rebuilt. In 533 Belisarius overthrew the Vandal
kingdom and made North Africa a Byzantine Province. In 534 Toledo became the
capital of the Unitarian Visigothic kingdom in Spain (to 711). In 535
Belisarius occupied the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and remained until 540.
This action allowed Provence to go from the Ostrogoths to the kingdom of the
Franks and Naples became part of the Byzantine Empire. |
539 CE |
From 539 to 562 the
Byzantine Empire was at war with Persia. The war enabled Totila of the
Ostrogoths to end Byzantine rule in Italy in 540 and become king in 541 on
the death of his uncle Hildebad (to 552). In 546 Totila entered Rome (leaving
again in 547). In that year Adouin the Lombard founded the new Lombard
dynasty and extended his reign beyond the Save River. |
543 CE |
In 543 the writings of
Origen were condemned by edict of Justinian. Even though Origen had
quasi-Gnostic tendencies, his writings and Hexapla were also important. This
act was part of the consolidation of the anti-Sabbatarian Trinitarian dogmas
in the East. The Empress Theodora died in 548. |
550 CE |
In 550 Totila re-conquered
Rome and the Unitarians were back in power. In the same year the westward
migration of the Turkish Avars began and the Slav tribes settled in
Mecklenburg. |
|
The Poles settled in western Galicia, and
the Ukrainians settled in eastern Galicia. In the same year also, the Welsh
were fully converted to Christianity by David and Sabbath-keeping became
entrenched in Wales, where it was not to be fully expelled until the eleventh
century. Married clergy continued until the twelfth century there. Columban
the Irish missionary in France and Italy (550-615) also dates from this year.
Bells were used in churches in France for the first time from this year also
marking the syncretic Trinitarian influence through the Franks. |
551 CE |
In 551 the Ostrogoth navy
was defeated by the Byzantines. Totila king of the Ostrogoths was killed the
following year by the Byzantines under the eunuch Narses (c. 478-c. 573) at
the battle of Taginae. In 553 Narses then annexed Naples and Rome for
Byzantine and he was appointed Exarch of Italy, becoming the highest military
and civil authority. The throne of archbishop Maximian was also established
at Ravenna in this year. |
558 CE |
In 558 Clothar I son of
Clovis reunited the kingdom of the Franks which lasted until 561 when it was
again divided under his sons Charibert, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilperic. |
563 CE |
In 563 the Sabbatarian
Celtic Missionary Columba, established himself on the Island of Iona and
began to convert the Picts. |
565 CE |
In 565 Justinian I died
and was succeeded by his nephew Justin II (d. 578). The Lombards then drove
the Byzantines from northern Italy to the south, but left them in Ravenna.
Audoin was succeeded by his son Alboin who, helped by the Avars, destroyed
the Gothic kingdom of the Gepidae on the lower Vistula and in 568 founded a
Lombard kingdom in northern and central Italy. |
567 CE |
In 567 Leovigild king of
the Visigoths (to 586) drove the Byzantines from Western Spain and conquered
all Spain in 585. The Frankish kingdom was also partitioned in to Austrasia
consisting of Lorraine, Belgium and the right bank of the Rhine and Neustria
(France) and Burgundy. |
570 CE |
In 570 The
Prophet Qasim ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul Muttalib of Quresh at Becca/Petra
(incorrectly named Muhammad), the founder of Islam, was born. In 572 war
between Persia and the Byzantines broke out again and was continued under
Chosroes II after his ascension in 590 to 628, and Islam was established by
632. By 632 the political divisions that will ultimately lead to WWIII were
established. |
573 CE |
In 573 Clothar’s sons
Chilperic and Sigebert went to war. |
589 CE |
The Council of Toledo is held. The Spirit is declared to be a
progression from the Father and the Son (Filioque: Roman Catholic). Thus,
Trinitarians hold the position contrary to scripture that the Son is a generation
of the Father, yet there was no point at which the Son did not exist. The
same is held to be true for the Holy Spirit.
|
|
The council also prohibits Jews from purchasing Christian slaves and
enacted that any Jew circumcising such a slave on the basis of Genesis 17:12f.
should forfeit him. |
|
Unitarian Visigoths in Spain converted to Catholicism, declared state
religion at Toledo. 590-1850: The
1260 years of the Church in the Wilderness |
590 CE |
In 590 Authari, king of the Lombards, was succeeded by Agilulf (d.
615) and pope Pelagius II was succeeded by pope Gregory I called the Great.
He declared the Holy Roman Empire. Unitarianism is then persecuted by the
so-called Roman Catholic or Triune system. |
591 CE |
In 591 Columbanus (b. 543) arrived in Brittany from Ireland. |
597 CE |
Gregory sent Augustine as missionary to England in 597 who baptized
Ethelbert at Kent and commenced the Catholic system in Britain. |
|
The Church began to be persecuted and it came to be largely outside
of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was outside the reach of the Orthodox church
until the progressive conversion of the Unitarians or so-called “Arians,”
which lasted up until the eighth century and also from the establishment of
the Holy Roman Empire in 590. The persecutions of the faith lasted over a
period of time, which encompassed the power and rule of the Holy Roman Empire
from 590 to 1850. See the paper: General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). |
|
During
the 1260 years from 590 to 1850 the Roman Catholic Church has built its
theology on false premises based on Greek Philosophy and pagan systems of
worship. Their adoption of the pagan calendar threw Trinitarianism into
conflict with every tribe and people that had, or read, or studied the Bible
and the Law of God. As a result, in order to preserve its authority, it
introduced national and international systems of persecution and repression,
which were to result in the extermination of millions of peaceful law-abiding
citizens over the continent of Europe and in Asia Minor (and later in the
Americas). Its incursions into the Middle East in the so-called Crusades saw
it inflame the hatred of Islam to the extent that it has now polarized over
half the world. The twentieth century has seen this war advanced against a
peaceful law abiding citizenry of Europe, with the deliberate mass
extermination and genocide of the Jewish and Sabbath-keeping Christian people
of Europe. This matter is further examined at www.holocaustrevealed.org. |
|
The Sabbath in Britain
|
597 CE |
Catholicism was
not established in Britain until the conversion of the Angles by Augustine of
Canterbury. Ethelbert king of Kent was converted to Catholicism at Pentecost
597 (according to Butler, Lives of the
Saints, ed. Walsh, concise edn., p. 158) and many (some 10,000) subjects
were baptised (sprinkled) at the pagan midwinter Christmas fire festival of
597. The Christians of Britain were, up until that time, predominantly, if
not exclusively, all Sabbath-keeping Subordinationist Unitarians, who kept
the food laws and the Holy Days. They were not dominated by Rome until the Synod
of Whitby in 664 at Hilda's Abbey, where they submitted under duress. |
|
Columba of Iona kept the
Sabbath and foretold his death on the Sabbath, Saturday 9 June 597 (Butler, Lives of the Saints, Vol. 1, art. ‘St.
Columba’, p. 762). Butler says in his footnote that the practice of calling
the Lord's day the Sabbath did not commence until a thousand years later
(Adamnan, Life of Columba, Dublin,
1857, p. 230. This was also commented on by W.T. Skene in his work Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, 1874,
p. 96). (See the paper General
Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122).) |
600 CE |
Gregory commenced the
program for the peaceful conversion of the Jews. He then introduced picture
books to replace the Bible for the illiterate. The Gothic Bible dates from
ca. 351. The Bible was devalued, finally being effectively removed from the
general public by Rome until after the dispersal of the Holy Roman Empire in
1850. |
603 CE |
Lombards
converted to Roman Catholicism. Trinitarian Christianity penetrated the
Russian people at the end of the tenth century from the Greek Orthodox
structure at Constantinople. It may well be that this was entirely a
political decision in view of the fact that the Khazars in the south and
through the Ukraine into Europe were all Sabbath-keeping Unitarians, both Jew
and Christian. So also were the Bulgars who came in at the same time as the
Huns in the tenth century. So also were the Paulicians relocated in Thrace
under Constantine Capronymous in the eighth century and later by John
Tsimiskes in the tenth century (see the paper General
Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122)). |
609 CE |
The Roman Pantheon was
consecrated as the church of S. Maria Rotunda. |
610 CE |
The prophet
Qasim with the council of the Muhammad begins
preaching in Arabia. |
|
See the paper Christ
and the Koran (No. 163) and Commentary
on the Koran Q001, Q001B and Q001D. |
613 CE |
The First Hejira under Jafir
to Aksom, Abyssinia |
622 CE |
The Hejira. Flight of the
prophet and the church from Becca to Medina. |
741-775 CE |
Constantine Capronymous,
Unitarian Emperor of the East, invites the Paulicians to settle in Thrace. |
745 CE |
Council of Liftinae in
Belgium in 745 in its third allocution warns against the keeping of the
Sabbath and refers to the Council of Laodicea (ca. 366). |
|
The Sabbath in Asia |
781 CE |
The Sabbath experience in
Asia was predominantly non-Trinitarian until the Jesuits began their
missionary work. The Nestorians, and the African missionaries (see the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122)) followed the early
church into Persia, India and then into China. Unitarian Sabbath-keeping
posed a serious threat to Buddhism and was outlawed by Buddhism. The
Sabbath-keeping churches in Asia were also, as a rule, non-Trinitarian. They
kept the food laws and also denied confession and purgatory. The divisions of
these churches followed, in the main, from the Councils of Constantinople and
Chalcedon. |
|
The Chinese had long experienced the
Christian system and, as elsewhere, the Sabbath was a sign of biblical
literalism. In 781 it was already well established (see the paper General
Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122)). |
|
In 781 the famous China
Monument was inscribed in marble to tell of the growth of Christianity in
China at that time. The inscription of 763 words was unearthed near the city
of Changan in 1625 and allegedly now stands in the Forest of Tablets at Changan. The extract from the tablet states: |
|
“On the seventh day we
offer sacrifices, after having purified our hearts, and received absolution
for our sins. This religion, so perfect and so excellent, is difficult to
name, but it enlightens darkness by its brilliant precepts” (M. l'Abbe Hue, Christianity in China, Vol. I, Ch. 2,
pp. 48-49). |
|
The Jacobites were noted
as Sabbath-keepers in 1625 in India (Pilgrimmes,
Pt. 2, p. 1269). |
|
The Abyssinian Church
remained Sabbath-keeping and in Ethiopia the Jesuits tried to get the
Abyssinians to accept Roman Catholicism. The Abyssinian legate at the court
of Lisbon denied they kept Sabbath in imitation of the Jews, but rather in
obedience to Christ and the Apostles (Geddes, Church History of Ethiopia, pp. 87-88). The Jesuits influenced King
Zadenghel to propose to submit to the Papacy in 1604, and prohibiting Sabbath
worship under severe penalty (Geddes, ibid., p. 311 and also Gibbons, Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ch. 47). |
|
The Sabbath in Italy |
791 CE |
Allegedly, Ambrose of
Milan kept Sabbath in Milan and Sunday in Rome, hence giving rise to the
saying when in Rome do as Rome does
(Heylyn, op. cit., 1612). Heylyn identifies the Church at Milan from the
fourth century as the centre of Sabbath-keeping in the West (ibid., part 2,
para 5, pp. 73-74). It is thus not surprising that the Sabbatati had their
school there, as recorded under the Vallenses at the time that Peter Waldo
joined them. The Sabbath had been observed in Italy for centuries and the
Council of Friaul (c. 791) spoke against its observance by the peasants at
canon 13. "We command all Christians to observe the Lord's day to be
held not in honour of the past Sabbath, but on account of that holy night of
the first of the week called the Lord's day. When speaking of that Sabbath which the Jews observe, the last day of the week and which
our peasants observe ... " (Mansi, 13, 851). |
800 CE |
The Huns appear to have
moved into the steppes, becoming allies of the Khazars, and remained there
until they occupied Pannonia again after 800, with the now officially Jewish,
Khazar support. The possibility cannot be dismissed that the Sabbatarians in
Transylvania actually came in as part of the horde of the Huns from Khazaria
and Levedia and had been part of the Eastern church established from the
beginning by the apostles through the Parthian empire (cf. Grun, The Timetable of History, 3rd
ed., Touchstone, 1991, p. 30) (cf. also the foreword by Cox to R. Samuel
Kohn, The
Sabbatarians in Transylvania (No. A_B2), [1894], CCG Publishing, 1998). |
800-900 CE |
The Paulicians were
defeated under Chrysocheir at Tephrike but revived under Smbat in Armenia at
Thondrak and hence termed Thondrakians. Some are called Athingani in Phrygia
and were referred to as Melchizedekites by Timotheus of Constantinople (Reception of Heretics) and also
Selikians. |
|
Nicephorus (802-811)
employed the Paulicians in the protection of the empire on its eastern
frontier. |
|
The Emperors Michael and
Leo V ruthlessly persecuted the Paulicians but they were too warlike and well
organised to be dragooned into orthodoxy. Theodora (842-857) exposed them to
even more violent persecution. |
|
The Athingani were in
intimate relationship with Emperor Michael II (821-829). |
970 CE |
Second relocation of the
Sabbatarian Paulicians into Thrace occurs under John Tsimiskes. |
1012 CE |
Persecution of “heretics”
begins in Germany |
1064 CE |
Sabbath becomes a bitter
dispute in the split of 1064 between western and eastern Churches. |
1095 CE |
Christians banned from
Jerusalem. |
1096 CE |
First Crusade under Pope
Urban II. |
1123 CE |
First Lateran Council in
Rome forbids priests to marry. Celibates take over the Roman Church, which
rapidly degenerates morally. |
1139 CE |
Malachy O'Morgair
archbishop of Armagh (resigned 1138) goes to pope Innocent in Rome and
petitions for palliums for the sees of Armagh and Cashel. He was appointed
legate for Ireland. He writes the List of the Popes until the time of the end
of the Roman Church. He returns via Clairvaux under Bernard. There he obtains
five monks under Christian, an Irishman, and returns to Ireland and founds
the Abbey of Mellifont in 1142. See also The Last Pope
(No.288). |
1147 CE |
Second Crusade. |
1159 CE |
The British born Pope
Adrian IV (Nicholas Brekespear) on his visit to Beneventum is persuaded by
John of Salisbury to hand over Ireland to England under
Henry II. The real purpose is to wipe out the Quartodecimans still operating
in Ireland from Cashel. Only priests from Armagh are endorsed by Rome.
Ireland is subjected to incredible barbarism from this point onwards. The
popes for four centuries claimed the overlordship of Ireland based on
Adrian's Donation. The basis of the handover of what was Hibernia to England
was done on the claim of Constantine's establishment of the Roman Catholic
Church: |
|
"At my solicitation
he gave and granted Hibernia to Henry II, the illustrious king of England, to
hold by hereditary right, as his letter [which is extant] to this day
testifies. For all islands of ancient right, according to the Donation of
Constantine, are said to belong to the Roman Church, which he founded.” |
1160 CE |
Peter Waldo becomes head
of the Waldensians at Lyons. Trinitarian historians mistakenly claim the
beginnings of the Waldensians with Peter Waldo in an effort to minimize their
beliefs and teachings; however, he was just following a long history of
Unitarian Subordinationist Christians dating from their conversion by
Polycarp and his bishops from Smyrna from 120 CE. The practice of identifying
leaders of the church over time as founders of separate churches is a common
Trinitarian tactic aimed at obscuring its continuity. |
1179 CE |
Waldensian Barbes interviewed by English monks prior
to the Third Lateran Council and condemned at the Council. The original
Sabbatarian Waldensian system was condemned as heresy. |
|
Third Lateran Council. The Waldensians are
condemned and the Inquisition becomes established from following councils.
The Albigensian Crusades are commenced. Sabbatarians are delivered up to be
burnt in large numbers from this time onwards. The Trinitarian Protestants
were also involved in the persecution of the church from the Reformation. |
1180 CE |
Waldensians
(anti-Trinitarians right up until the Reformation) were condemned with and
under the general description Arianism
in 1180 in the treatise by Bernard of Fontcaude (Adversus Vallenses et Arianos). See the paper The Role
of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God
(No. 170). |
|
|
1184 CE |
A sentence of excommunication
by the Council of Verona cleared the
remaining followers of Waldo out of Lyons and drove them to Provence,
Dauphine, and the valleys of Piedmont, Lombardy, and some even to Germany. So
numerous had they become that Innocent III sent his best legates to suppress
them in the years 1198, 1201, and 1203. |
1189 CE |
Third Crusade. |
1190 CE |
Council of Genoa orders
Waldensians to be delivered up in chains to be burnt. Bernard of Fontcaude
writes Liber Contra Vallenses. |
1190-2 CE |
Sabbatarians persecuted in
England and the Publiani or Pauliani were burnt at Oxford. |
1192 CE |
Bishop Otto of Toul
ordered all Waldenses to be delivered up in chains to the Episcopal tribunal. |
1202 CE |
Fourth Crusade. |
1206 CE |
Genghis Khan rules the
Mongols. |
1208 CE |
Albigensian crusade
begins, lasting until 1244 and is the subject of the most ruthless
suppression. 20,000 Albigensians massacred as heretics at papal order. |
1210 CE |
Emperor Otho ordered the
archbishop of Turin to drive the Waldenses out of his diocese, and in 1220
the Statutes of Pignerol forbade the inhabitants to harbour them. Some fled
to Picardy, and Philip Augustus drove them on to Flanders. Some came to
Mayence and Bingen, where 50 were burnt in 1232 (Adeney, ibid.). (See the
paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122).) |
1212 CE |
Children’s Crusade: few of
the 50,000 French and German children return. Most died or became slaves in
North Africa. |
1221 CE |
Fifth Crusade. |
1228 CE |
Sixth Crusade. |
1229 CE |
The Inquisition in
Toulouse, France forbids laymen to read the Bible. |
|
The Council of Toulouse
published canons against the Sabbatati. |
|
Canon 3 - The lords of the
different districts shall have the villas, houses and woods diligently
searched, and the hiding- places of the heretics destroyed. |
|
Canon 14 - Lay members are
not allowed to possess the books of either the Old or the New Testaments
(Hefele 5, 931,962). |
|
The Inquisitions Begin |
1231 CE |
Pope Gregory IX designs
the Inquisition in an attempt to deal with those labeled “heretics”. |
|
We know from the evidence
of the Inquisitions what the doctrines of the Church were at the various
stages of its distribution. |
|
The Albigensian Crusades |
|
Albigensian Crusades of
the thirteenth century consist of groups that were without doubt
Sabbath-keepers. See the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). The desire of the Roman Catholic Church to disguise this fact
has led to some extraordinary claims regarding the linguistic derivation of
the name Sabbatati. However, we
also know that they were Unitarians. |
|
The entire Albigensian crusade was leveled
against both elements by Rome in the thirteenth century. The Albigensians had
protection in the south of France under Raymond Count of Toulouse. The
Vallenses or Sabbatati were the greater and more widespread, and extended
into Spain. We can reconstruct the doctrines of the Vallenses from the
Spanish branch of the Sabbatati because of the intense persecution they
suffered. |
1237 CE |
Pope Gregory IX sends a
bull to the archbishop of Tarragona, which results in fifteen Waldensians, so
called heretics by the Roman Church, being burnt; King Ferdinand himself
casting wood on the fire. In the course of time these Spanish Waldensians are
exterminated. |
1249 CE |
Seventh Crusade led by
King Louis IX of France. |
1270 CE |
Eighth Crusade. |
1310 CE |
The Bohemian Sabbatarians
numbered one-fourth of the population of Bohemia who also abounded in
Austria, Lombardy, Bohemia, North Germany, Thuringia, Brabdenburg and
Moravia. |
1315 CE |
Unitarians in Austria
martyred and the Inquisitor of Krems denounces 36 localities, burning 130
martyrs. The bishop of Neumeister was burnt as one of these heretics in Vienna.
He is said to have declared that there were some 80,000 Waldensians in the
duchy of Austria. |
1348 CE |
Flagelants
(religious
fanatics that beat themselves with whips etc.) blame Jews (for Black Death
plague) and burn Jews throughout numerous cities in Europe. Sabbatarians are
condemned as Jews from this time on in Europe by all Trinitarian factions. |
1349 CE |
Persecution of Jews breaks
out in Germany. |
1351 CE |
1347-1351 CE 75 million Europeans have died from
Black Death (Bubonic plague?) |
1415 CE |
Bohemian reformer Jan Hus
is burned at the stake for heresy. |
|
The Orthodox Persecutions
of the Sabbatarians and Others |
1441-1905 CE |
The Orthodox Church in
Russia and its adjacent areas ruthlessly persecuted religious dissent and attempted
to exterminate all Sabbatarians within their sphere of influence (see above link for an informative
look at the history of Monasteries as
Prisons, the Inmates Incarcerated there,
Religious Dissenters and Sectarians, Political Activists and Criminals, the
Intolerance of Imperial Russia, and the Struggle for Orthodox Supremacy) book
by Daniel H. Shubin. |
|
The period covered begins 1441with arrival of Isidore, the metropolitan of Moscow, to the Moscow Chudov (Miracles) Monastery for incarceration. Russian Monasteries were used by the Orthodox Russian Church for the incarceration of religious dissenters and sectarians, political activists and criminals. |
|
From this time until the edict of religious
toleration of Tsar Nicholas II in 1905 CE., when the final inmates were released
from the Suzdal Spasso-Evfimiev Monastery, many Sabbath-keeping Christians
saw the last days of their lives in the dungeons of these monastery prisons. Many Sabbath-keeping
Christian women were also imprisoned in Orthodox convents. |
|
The Sabbath in
Northern Europe |
1436 CE |
Sabbatarianism had been persecuted in Norway, from at least the
Church Council in Bergen, 22 August 1435 and the conference in Oslo in
1436. People in different places of the kingdom had commenced to keep the
Sabbath-day holy and the archbishop forbade it on the grounds that: |
|
It is strictly forbidden - it is stated - in the Church-Law, for
anyone to keep or to adopt holy days, outside of those that the pope,
archbishop, or bishops appoint (R. Keyser, The History of the Norwegian Church under Catholicism, Vol II,
Oslo, 1858, p. 488). |
|
Again we see the day of rest commanded by God superceded by the day
of rest commanded by man. |
|
Also at the Catholic
Provincial Council of Bergen 1435, it was said: |
|
We are informed that some people in different districts of the
kingdom have adopted and observed Saturday-keeping. |
|
It is severely forbidden - in holy church canon- [for] one and all to
observe days excepting those that the holy Pope, archbishop, or the bishops
command. Saturday-keeping must under no circumstances be permitted hereafter
further that the church canon commands. Therefore we counsel all the friends
of God throughout all Norway who want to be obedient towards the holy church
to let this evil of Saturday-keeping alone; and the rest we forbid under
penalty of severe church punishment to keep Saturday holy (Dip. Norveg, 7,
397). |
|
The Church Conference at Oslo in 1436 stated: |
|
It is forbidden under the same penalty to keep Saturday holy by
refraining from labour (History of the
Norwegian Church etc., p. 401). |
1458 CE |
Frederic Reiser, after 25 years among the Waldensians of Bohemia and
Austria, was burnt at Strassburg. |
|
There are thus at least four groups over some eight countries, some
of which were integrated with Protestants. There were Subordinationists, or
Unitarians, in Austria in the thirteenth century and (see 1315 CE above) the
Inquisitor of Krems denounced 36 localities in 1315, burning 130 martyrs. |
|
The Spanish Inquisition |
1478 CE |
Pope Sixtus IV begins the
Spanish Inquisition and it continues until suppressed by decree in 1834 CE. |
1488 CE |
The Vaudois Christians
inhabiting the Cottian and Dauphinese Alps are slaughtered. Altogether there
perished more than 3,000 Vaudois, including the entire population of Val Loyse,
after taking refuge from the advancing army in a cave. The Lord of La Palu
had his men set fire to huge piles of wood thereby suffocating the valley
inhabitants inside the cave. There were found in it 400 infants suffocated in
their cradles or in the arms of their dead mothers. |
|
The Sabbath in Moscow |
1503 CE |
Council, Moscow, 1503:
"The accused (Sabbath-keepers) were summoned; they openly acknowledged
the new (sic) faith, and defended the same. The most prominent of
them,...were condemned to death, and burned publicly in cages, at Moscow, Dec
17.1503-" H. Sternberfi, Geschichte
der Juden. |
1507 CE |
Church begins selling
indulgences to pay for St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. |
1517 CE |
Martin Luther allegedly
begins the "Reformation" in Europe. |
1519 CE |
The Edict of the Faith issued at Valencia by Andres de Palacio,
Inquisitor to Valencia, and has been published by Roth. It can be seen from
that Edict that there were a general series of facts and superstitions listed
which identified three groups of people. The first was the Christians who
held to the so-called Judaising tendencies. The second group was the Jews
themselves and the third group was the Muslims. It is obvious from the Edict
that the doctrines had penetrated the Roman Catholic Church itself as the words
spoken over the Eucharist were specifically identified as an indicator of the
alleged heresy in the Edict. Also the Cross, or the Sign of the Cross, was
not used by the Sabbatati. From an examination of the Edict it seems that the
group denied the Soul and the doctrines of Heaven and Hell. They observed the
Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday doing no labour on the Sabbath.
They celebrated the feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover with bitter herbs.
They fasted on Atonement (Roth, pp. 77ff.). |
|
The general views and
observance of the Jews were included in the list as shown in the Edict so
that the systems were run together making it difficult to identify exactly
the distinctions between them. They kept the food laws and also buried their
dead according to the Jewish custom.
Much of the Edict includes superstitions attributed to the sects (e.g. p.
78). They denied Mariolatry and this was grouped with the Judaic denial of
the Messiah. |
|
The doctrine of
Transubstantiation was denied, as was the Catholic form of the doctrine of
Omnipresence, which was Platonic Animism (p. 78). The priests seemed to be
involved and were identified from the consecration. The Christians seemed to
dress as Jews adhering to the laws governing fabrics (p. 79). They met in
house churches and read Bibles out of the vernacular. The property of the
heretics was confiscated and this no doubt helped the zeal of the
Inquisitors. |
|
Marranos or New Christians could not be accepted as witnesses in any proceedings. The withholding of the names of witnesses was introduced in the thirteenth century ostensibly to protect the weak against the powerful accused but this became the norm and none could find out the names of their accusers. (Roth correctly points out that even up to 1836 in England accused felons could not have counsel or see copies of the depositions made against them.) The times themselves were barbaric and the Inquisition was the worst of the barbarism. |
|
Eastern European Sabbatati
|
|
We know precisely what the
doctrines of the Hungarian and Transylvanian churches were from the fifteenth
to the nineteenth century. The record was preserved by Dr Samuel Kohn, Chief
Rabbi of Budapest, Hungary in DIE
SABBATHARIER IN SIEBENBURGEN Ihre Geschicte, Literatur, und Dogmatik,
Budapest, Verlag von Singer & Wolfer, 1894, Leipzig, Verlag von Franz
Wagner. These points are listed in the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122) at pp. 22ff.). The
entire structure is listed in the book translated from German: The Sabbatarians in Transylvania, by
Samuel Kohn, ed. W. Cox, CCG Publishing,
USA 1998 (see The
Sabbatarians in Transylvania (No. A_B2). |
|
We know for certain that this branch of the
Vallenses or Sabbatati was Unitarian for Frances David or Davidis died in
prison in 1579. Kohn says they restored the original and true Christianity
(Kohn, p. 8). The Unitarian church split into Sunday and Sabbath worshippers
in 1579. The Sabbath branch under Eossi was the more faithful to the truth. |
|
They practiced adult
baptism. They kept the Sabbaths and Holy Days, including Passover, Unleavened
Bread, Pentecost, Atonement, Tabernacles and the Last Great Day and, most importantly,
the New Moons. Trumpets is not listed separately in the hymnal and appears to
have been celebrated with the hymns of the New Moon. |
|
Their doctrines
encompassed the physical Millennium of 1,000 years at the beginning of which
Christ will return and regather Judah and Israel. |
|
They used God’s calendar
based on the New Moons. |
|
They taught two
resurrections, one to eternal life at Christ’s coming and another to judgment
at the end of the Millennium. |
|
They taught salvation by grace but that the laws still needed to be
kept. |
|
They held that God calls people and that the world in general is
blinded. |
|
Their doctrine of Christ was absolutely subordinationist Unitarian. |
|
(See the paper General
Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122), p. 22ff.) |
|
It can thus be seen that the early Sabbath Church was Unitarian,
keeping the Old Testament laws. The Sabbath was simply a facet of their
belief system, which pointed to the worship of the One True God. They were
persecuted in East Europe for their Unitarianism more than their
Sabbath-keeping (Francis Davidis chose to remain in prison, where he died,
rather than compromise the Unitarian faith, even though Socinus, himself a
Unitarian, tried to persuade him to modify his rigid Unitarianism to save his
life). They were denied the status of a church when even the Jews were
accorded that status. They were denied access to the printing press and thus
made their sermons out by hand in chain letter style. The Inquisition was
ruthless in its suppression of this system and, in the West, Sabbath-keeping
alone was enough to have them executed. |
1544 CE |
The Church Conference at Oslo reissues the warning of 1436. |
|
It is forbidden under the same penalty to keep Saturday holy by
refraining from labour (History of the
Norwegian Church etc., p. 401). |
|
Some of you, contrary to the warning, keep Saturday. You ought to be
severely punished. Whoever shall be found keeping Saturday, must pay a fine
of ten marks (History of King Christian
the Third, Niels Krag and S. Stephanius). |
|
Thus it is evident, that Sabbath-keeping had become entrenched in
Norway, over the period of at least one hundred years. |
|
Sabbatarianism and at least the understanding of the seventh day Sabbath
were also extant in Norway from the reformation, according to comments made
in notations or translations: for example see Documents and Studies
Concerning the History of the Lutheran Catechism in the Nordish Churches,
Christiania, 1893; and also Theological
Periodicals for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Norway, Vol. 1, Oslo,
p. 184. Sabbath-keeping spread also into Sweden and was suppressed
continuously. |
|
This zeal for Saturday-keeping continued for a long time: even little
things which might strengthen the practice of keeping Saturday were punished
(Bishop Anjou, Svenska Kirkans Historis,
(after) Motet i Upsala). |
|
The practice extended into Finland and King Gustavus Vasa I of Sweden
wrote to the people of Finland. |
|
Some time ago we heard that some people in Finland had fallen into a
great error and observed the seventh day, called Saturday (State Library at
Helsingfors, Reichsregister, Vom. J., 1554, Teil B.B. leaf 1120, pp.
175-180a). |
|
Sabbath-keeping Churches, however, remained extant in Sweden up until
current times. |
|
We will now endeavour to show that the sanctification of the Sabbath
has its foundation and its origin in a law which God at creation itself
established for the whole world, and as a consequence thereof is binding on
all men in all ages (Evangelisten
(The Evangelist), Stockholm, May 30 to August 15, 1863: organ of the Swedish
Baptist Church). |
1555 CE |
Many Protestants (and
Sabbath-keepers) are burned in England. |
1562 CE |
Lelius Socinius lived
mainly at Zurich but was the mainstay of the party, which met at Cracow. He
died in 1562 and the anti-Trinitarians suffered disruption from this point.
In 1570 the Socinians separated and, influenced by John Sigismund, they
established at Racow. |
1566 CE |
Francis Davidis allegedly
founds the Unitarian Church in Transylvania. However the Waldesian system was
entrenched in the East for centuries before. |
1572 CE |
St. Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre: many Huguenots in France are killed. |
1574 CE |
Catechism of the
Unitarians issued in Poland. |
1579 CE |
In 1579 Faustus came to
Poland with his uncle's papers. He found the sect divided and was at first
refused admission because he would not submit to a second baptism. His first
baptism must therefore have been as an adult. In 1574 the Socinians had issued
a Catechism of the Unitarians. The
nature and perfections of the Godhead were described but the document was
silent on the divine attributes, which were regarded as mysterious (by the
Catholics). Christ was held to be the promised man and the mediator of
creation. It is at this time we see the establishment of what is in fact
radical Unitarianism or the denial of the pre-existence of Christ. |
|
Faustus Socinius united
the factions under himself from 1579. He had been invited to Siebenburg (or
Siebenburgen) to counteract the anti-Trinitarian stand of Francis David (or
Davidis) (1510-1579). David died at Deva Castle where he had been imprisoned
for his views on the nature of Christ. The Church at Siebenburg after the
death of Francis David was headed by Andreas Eossi and this was the Church in
East Europe of which the members were the descendants of the Waldensians. We
know without doubt that they were Unitarian (often termed Arians by the
Catholics). They kept the Sabbath, Holy Days and New Moons and they were the
true Church of God in Europe, being what we would call the Thyatiran era (See
the papers: General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No.
122) and The Role of the Fourth
Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170).) |
|
David had refused to accept the peculiarly
Socinian tenet that Christ, though not God, was to be adored. The Church of
God in Europe had never accepted that Christ was the object of worship or
adoration. The rejection of worship of Christ was the consistent view of the
Church of God over the centuries, including the Waldensians of which the
church at Siebenburg was a part. David was imprisoned for this view and died
in prison. Hugh Pope also notes that Budnaeus was degraded for holding the
same view as David and was excommunicated in 1584. These two were thus
converted to the faith from so-called Orthodoxy. |
|
The Socinians at this time
suppressed the old catechism and issued a new one entitled the Catechism of Racow, which although
drawn up by Faustus Socinius was not published until 1605, the year after his
death. It was first published in Polish and then in Latin in 1609. |
|
The Socinians flourished.
They established colleges, held synods, and owned printing presses from which
they produced large amounts of literature. This literature was collected by
Sandius under the title Bibliotheca
Antitrinitarianorum. Faustus' works are collected in the work Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. |
|
The Church of God at
Siebenburg, on the other hand, was denied the status of a church and denied a
printing press. Eossi wrote his work out by hand and it was copied by
assistants. |
1579 CE |
Unitarian church splits
into two parts after the death of Davidis; Sunday and Sabbath-keepers.
Andreas Eossi accepted the Unitarian faith in 1567. Not satisfied that the
Unitarians were teaching all the biblical truths, he set out to study the
Bible thoroughly. He enjoined the following doctrines upon his followers: |
|
1.The Passover, Days of
Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, [Trumpets omitted in error?] Day of Atonement,
Feast of Tabernacles, the Last Great Day. |
|
Note:
the
Feast of Trumpets was not listed in the Old
Sabbath Songbook under its own feast. On pages 62-67 of Kohn’s book
(published 1894) it is said of the hymnal that: The hymnal was written in
Hungarian by [Andreas] Eossi, Enok Alvinczi and Johannes Bokenyi. Thomas
Pankotai & Simon Pechi. ... It consisted of 102 Hymns: 44 for the
Sabbath, 5 for the New Moon, 11 for Passover and Unleavened Bread, 6 for the
Feast of Weeks, 6 for Tabernacles, 3 for New Year, 1 for Atonement, 26 for
everyday purposes. See the The
Sabbatarians in Transylvania (No. A_B2) and The New
Moons of Israel (No. 132). |
|
2.The Ten Commandments. |
|
3.The Health Laws (no
eating of blood, pig, strangled animals). |
|
4.The Millennium to last
1000 years, & at the beginning of which Christ will return and regather
Judah and Israel. |
|
5.The use of God's sacred
calendar. |
|
6.Two different
resurrections: one to eternal life at Christ's coming; the other to judgement
at the end of 1000 years. |
|
7.Saved by grace, but laws
still need to be kept. |
|
8.It is God who calls people
into His truth. The world in general is blinded. |
|
9 Christ was the greatest of the prophets,
the most holy of all people, the "crucified Lord", "the
Supreme Head and King of the real believers, the dearly beloved and holy Son
of God." |
|
The Growth of Unitarianism |
1600 CE |
With the Reformation,
Unitarianism began to grow and was not confined entirely to Sabbath-keepers.
In other words, not all Unitarians were true members of the Churches of God
just as not all Sabbath-keepers were true members. |
|
The term Unitarianism is an English word which
stems from the Latin unitarius and
it was first used of a legalized religion in 1600 (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (ERE), art. ‘Unitarianism’, Vol. 12, p. 519). It is specifically
founded on the conception of the single personality of the Deity in contrast
to the orthodox doctrine of His triune nature. |
1604 CE |
In Ethiopia,
1604 AD, the Jesuits influenced King Zadenghel to propose to submit to the
Papacy "Prohibiting all his
subjects, upon severe penalties, to observe Saturday any longer."-
Geddes’ Church History of Eithiopia, page 311 and also in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter
47. |
1608 CE |
The Pilgrim Fathers, who
were Sabbatarian Unitarians of the Brownist movement, flee from persecution
in England to Amsterdam Holland, later to Leyden and stayed there for almost
12 years (see The Dutch
Connection of the Pilgrim Fathers (No. 264)). |
1620 CE |
Mayflower
lands at Plymouth Rock, New England.
Pilgrim Fathers go ashore. They are persecuted by the later Trinitarian
arrivals in America. Within twenty years they have to flee and form a new
colony at Rhode Island. They are subsequently persecuted ruthlessly in the US
under the later Blue Laws. |
1618 CE |
30 Years’ War commences
with the Defenestration of Prague. |
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The Sabbath in England |
1618 CE |
In 1618, a violent
controversy broke out among English theologians as to whether the Sabbath of
the fourth commandment was in force and, secondly, on what ground the first
day of the week was entitled to be observed, as the Sabbath (Haydn's
Dictionary of Dates, art. ‘Sabbatarians’, p. 602). Mrs Traske, a teacher,
was imprisoned in 1618 for fifteen or sixteen years, at Maiden Lane, a prison
for those in disagreement with the Church of England. She had refused to
teach on the Sabbath and would teach for only five days a week |
1628 CE |
Despite English attempts
to stop him Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, took the
French-Protestant stronghold La Rochelle and destroyed the power of the
Huguenots. |
1633 CE |
The Catholic church forces
Galileo to say the sun revolves around the earth (World History Encyclopedia, Millennium Edition, p. 235). |
1638 CE |
In 1638 the Catholics insisted that the Socinians be banished. |
1642 CE |
Civil War began between King and Parliament. From this time onwards,
the religious divisions saw the emergence of Unitarian theology in people
such as Milton, Isaac Newton and others. Cromwell became the symbol of those
opposed to Catholic domination and persecution. In 1645 it was declared a
capital offence to be Sabbatarian or Unitarian. |
1647 CE |
Charles I queried the Parliamentary Commissioners and asserted that
Sunday-worship proceeds directly from the authority of the Church. |
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For it will not be found in Scripture where Saturday is no longer to
be kept, or turned into the Sunday wherefore it must be the Church's
authority that changed the one and instituted the other (R. Cox, Sabbath Laws, p. 333). |
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The assumption here is that to reject the papacy necessarily involves
the changes that rest entirely on the Councils of the Church for authority,
such as Sunday-worship. The logic places Protestantism on a dangerous
footing. Milton identified this logic and said: |
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"It will surely be far safer to observe the seventh, according
to express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture
to adopt the first" (Sab. Lit.
2, 46-54). |
1648 CE |
Treaty of Westphalia
brings an end to the 30 Years’ War. |
1661 CE |
Sabbath-keeping Unitarians
became more highly visible in England in the seventeenth century. |
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The Sabbath in America
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1664 CE |
Sabbath-keeping incurred an almost enforced migration to America.
According to Jas. Bailey, Stephen Mumford, the first Sabbath-keeper in
America came from London in 1664 (J. Bailey, History of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, pp.
237-238). We know this to be untrue as the Pilgrim Fathers were
Sabbath-keepers and thus the founders of the American colonies were Sabbatarian
Brownists. In 1671 the Seventh Day
Baptists had broken from the Baptist Church in order to keep Sabbath (see
Bailey, History, pp. 9-10).
However, the Pilgrim Fathers were from a Sabbath-keeping tradition (cf. the
paper The Dutch
Connection of the Pilgrim Fathers (No. 264)). See also
the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). |
1671 CE |
Stephen Mumford (or Momford) organises the
Seventh Day Baptists in Rhode Island.
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1686 CE |
In 1686, the year after
the Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV sent a letter to his cousin, Victor Amadeus II
duke of Savoy, requesting that he persecute the Waldensians, as he was
persecuting the Huguenots, as they were taking refuge among the Waldensians.
When the persecution commenced, the Swiss Protestants at Basle intervened,
offering the Waldensians exile in Switzerland. The Swiss envoys managed, with great
difficulty, to persuade the Waldensians to accept this exile. On 9 April 1686
the duke signed a decree permitting the exile. However, in spite of this,
some who had accepted exile were seized and imprisoned. The Waldensians
resisted after this breach of the terms. War commenced and by the end of the
year, 9,000 were killed and 12,000 were taken prisoner, many of whom died in
the Piedmont dungeons. There were some 200 left in the mountains and they
conducted such persistent guerilla warfare that they finally obtained the
release of all the surviving prisoners and their safe conduct to Switzerland.
3000 survivors were released in 1687. They set off across the Alps for Geneva
(an average twelve-day journey), and many perished in the snow. This was done
despite the Swiss protest, and children under twelve were detained to be
educated as Roman Catholics. They were dispersed as far as Brabdenburg,
Prussia, Wurtemberg and the Palatinate, to prevent their attempts to return. |
1716 CE |
Chinese Emperor bans
teaching of Christianity. |
1738 CE |
Sabbath-keepers led by
Count Zinzendorf in Moravia. They moved to the USA in 1741. |
1789 CE |
The suppression of
Sabbatarianism continues in the area of Romania, Czecho-Slovakia and the
Balkans and the Edict of Toleration by Joseph II did not apply to the
Sabbatarians, some of whom lost all their possessions. |
1808 CE |
Napoleon abolishes the
Inquisition in Italy and Spain. |
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Roth records the opening
of the Office in Lisbon before it was made into the Opera House. The accounts
from eyewitnesses (printed in the Annual
Register of 1821) show beyond doubt, that there were human remains found
in the dungeons, which were in use (from an inscription on a dungeon wall) as
late as 1809. These included monks whose garments were found among the human
and other remains lying in the tiers of dungeons and among the evidence of
murder both old and recent, committed there (Roth, pp. 84-85). |
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Intervals of three to four years between
arrest and sentence were commonplace and in one recorded case fourteen years
elapsed. Pregnant women were dragged to the stake and the abuse of prisoners,
or perhaps interaction with them, prompted Cardinal Ximenes in 1512 to
threaten with death any official found carrying on intrigues with their
prisoners. The expense of the imprisonment was borne by the accused no matter
how long. One example of expenses incurred in the four-year incarceration of
a nun in Sicily, acquitted and released in 1703, was still being paid off by
her heirs as late as 1872 (Roth, p. 87). Normally, the assets were
confiscated at the time of arrest. |
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Last Inquisition in the
Papal States |
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See
link: The
Inquisitions of the Papal States |
1823-1846 CE |
The Last Inquisition took place in the years 1823-1846.
It was not on the same scale as the previous Inquisitions simply because this
was limited to the Papal States and the population itself limited the
carnage. However, the brutality of it and the fear it engendered in the
populace was to bring the Holy Roman Empire to an end. |
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The European Inquisitions
began in the south of France in the thirteenth century and ended in the Papal
States in 1846. Between 1823 and 1846, 200,000 people in the Papal States
alone were sentenced to death, life imprisonment, exile or the galleys, with
another 1.5 million placed under surveillance (see Malachi Martin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church,
p. 254 and the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122), p. 29
for quotes). Roth quotes the despair of the individuals from the outset in
the thirteenth century in the south of France. |
1850 CE |
1260 years or time, times
and half a time from the Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire under Gregory
1. The Inquisitions are finally controlled. The Revolutions in Europe in 1848
bring an end to the tyranny. The later people voted to join the Italian
Republic and the Holy Roman Empire came to an end. |
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Sabbath keeping was also
alive and well at the time of the Taiping rebellion in 1850. |
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See
the paper General Distribution of the
Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). |
1894 CE |
The Sultan, Abdul Hamid,
first put forth an official governmental policy of genocide against the
Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894. Systematic massacres took place in
1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the
province. |
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YThe Great Holocaust of the
Twentieth Century See link: Badges of
the Holocaust |
1901 CE |
The Australian
Constitution declares religious freedom. "The Commonwealth shall not
make any law for the establishment of any religion." |
1905 CE |
Edict of Toleration of
Czar Nicholas ends the centuries old Russian Orthodox Persecutions commenced
in 1441. The growing dissent is leading towards the Revolution, which is not
far off, commencing 12 years later in 1917. |
1909 CE |
Turkish government troops
kill over 20,000 Christian Armenians in the town of Adana alone. |
1914CE |
WWI -wars of the end
begin. |
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See the paper The Fall of Egypt The Prophecy
of Pharaoh's Broken Arms (No. 036). |
1915 CE |
Next step of Armenian
Genocide begins on 24 April 1915 with the mass arrest, and ultimate murder,
of religious, political and intellectual leaders in Constantinople and
elsewhere in the empire. Then in every Armenian community a carefully planned
Genocide unfolded: Arrest of clergy and other prominent persons, disarmament
of the population and Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army,
segregation and public execution of leaders and able-bodied men, and the
deportation of the remaining Armenian women, children and elderly to the
deserts. The Genocide started from the border districts and seacoasts, and
worked inland to the most remote hamlets. Over 1.5 million Armenian
Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed in this
step of the genocide. |
1916 CE |
The Seven times or 2520 years of the Babylonian system from
605 BCE in the prophets Ezekiel (No. 036 and
036_2)
and Daniel (F027iv
and F027xiii)
reaches fruition with the slaughters on the Somme. The planned peace
agreement between UK and Germany for 1916 is shelved on the approach of the
European Jews who guarantee they will obtain US assistance if the British
Empire continues WWI and declares the Jewish Homeland. UK agrees and
Australia recaptures Beersheba and Jerusalem in accordance with the
prophecies of Habakkuk (F021H) and
Haggai (F021J)
with the Australian Light Horse, and then all Palestine in 1917. The Balfour
Declaration is issued declaring the Jewish Homeland, and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble begins. It is
in two arms of forty years and carries on to 1996-7 with the end of the Time of the Gentiles. The times of the
Holocaust go over eighty years from 1941-1945 in the First Holocaust to
2021-2025 in the Second Holocaust from the Wars of the Fifth and Sixth
Trumpets and the Empire of the Ten Toes of Daniel (F027ii). |
1917 CE |
Russian Revolution begins.
The Russian Orthodox now persecuted as they persecuted dissent before them. |
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Balfour Declaration:
Britain backs homeland for Jews in Palestine. |
1920 CE |
Joan of Arc is canonized
(declared to be a saint). |
1922 CE |
On 9 September 1922, the
Turks enter Smyrna; and after systematically murdering the Armenians in their
own homes, the forces of Ataturk turn on the Greeks whose numbers had swelled
with the addition of refugees who had fled their villages in Turkey's
interior to upwards of 400,000 men, women and children. The conquering Turks
went from house to house, looting, pillaging, raping and murdering the
population. Finally, when the wind had turned so that it was blowing toward
the sea so that the small Turkish quarter at the rear of the city was not in
danger, Turkish forces, led by their officers, poured kerosene on the
buildings and homes of the Greek and Armenian sectors and set them afire.
Thus, any remaining live inhabitants of the city were flushed out to be
caught between a wall of fire and the sea. The pier of Smyrna became a scene
of final desperation as the approaching flames forced many thousands to jump
to their death or to be consumed by fire. |
1924 CE |
1260 years or a time,
times and half a time since the establishment of Catholic Trinitarian hegemony
over the British or English-speaking peoples at the Synod of Whitby. |
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Armenian Holocaust
involves 1 million or more killed. |
1927 CE |
The Paulicians were still
to be found in the East in the nineteenth century. This group was still
operational in the twentieth century. Their descendants and the Christians of
Armenia numbering a million or more were exterminated in the area of Armenia
after the First World War to 1924. There were perhaps between one million and
two million Sabbatarians exterminated or who simply “disappeared” after the
outlawing of Bektashi Islam after 1927. This process of extermination
continued up through the Holocaust in Europe and on to 1953 and the death of
Stalin. |
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Outlawing of the Bektashi
Order in 1927 when the Turkish State passes legislation prohibiting the
Bektashi order of Sufi Islam. Some 5 million people simply disappear at this
time and well over a million Sabbatarian Christians are among them. |
1932 CE |
The Ukrainian Persecutions
begin under Stalin and 12 million are killed. |
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The Sabbatarians under the
Russians are sent to Siberia. |
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Handover of the first Camp
to the Lutheran Diaconate at Hamburg in December 1932 by the SA. See the
link: Holocaust
Timeline. |
1933 CE |
Adolf Hitler appointed
Chancellor of Germany. The first official Nazi concentration camp opens in
Dachau. |
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See the link: Camp
List |
1936 CE |
Rome-Berlin Axis formed by Hitler and Mussolini. |
1938 CE |
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). |
1939 CE |
WWII declared by the UK and British
Commonwealth against Germany and Italy and then later Japan who entered on
the Axis side. |
1941 CE |
Pearl Harbor attack - America declares war on Japan and Germany. |
1944-5 CE |
Hitler commits
suicide, WWII ends. See Timetable of the Holocaust 1933-1945: Holocaust
Timeline. |
1947 CE |
The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered in caves at Qumran, Jordan. |
1953 CE |
Joseph Stalin dies. He and the system he set up kills 65 million in the Gulags of the
Soviets. |
1967 CE |
2300 evenings and mornings of Daniel chapter 8 (F027viii)
completed and Jerusalem unified and restored to Judah. |
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6666666666The Last Days 6666666666 |
1978 CE |
Fortieth Jubilee since Messiah and the 120th Jubilee since
the fall of Adam; and the expulsion begins. |
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SDAs officially become Trinitarian after their penetration and
undermining from the death of Uriah Smith and activities from 1931. |
1990-2001CE |
Ongoing war of extinction
of Karen in Burma because of their ancient-claimed links to the lost ten
tribes. |
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War of extermination of
the Kurds continues systematically. |
1994 CE |
On 7 April 1994, the then Hutu President, Juvenal Habariymana, was
killed when his plane was shot down. It has never been determined who was
responsible for the act but it is widely believed to have been the work of
Hutu extremists opposed to sharing power with the RPF. On the same day in
Kigali, a rump Hutu extremist government was proclaimed, and the elimination
of Tutsis and Hutu moderates began on a massive scale. While the exact
numbers will never be known, it is estimated that around 800,000 people were
killed in a period of about 100 days. The UN withdrew all but 270 of its
troops. Those that stayed had no mandate to intervene in the killings. The
scale and speed of the action has lead to a strong belief that the killings
were highly organized and politically motivated, and that the death of the
president was simply the justification for the killings to begin. The UN had
been informed some months earlier that large-scale killings were planned but
did not take any firm action on the advice.
The Tutsi's that were killed were thought by the mainstream Christian
missionaries to be the possible descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel,
and also descended from the Unitarian Ethiopian Coptic Church dating back to
the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch by Philip c.31-34 CE. See link: Africa |
1995 CE |
Worldwide Church of God
announces Trinitarianism after penetration. |
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See
the paper Binitarianism and Trinitarianism
(No. 076). |
1996 CE |
End of the Times of the
Gentiles. 2000 years or 40 jubilees from the birth of Messiah. |
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3000th
anniversary of David’s entry to Jerusalem. |
1997 CE |
Church of God (Seventh
Day) announces it is Binitarian and then Trinitarian in 1999. |
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(The Seventh Day Adventist
movement was also predominantly and officially Unitarian until 1931 with the
death of Uriah Smith and on to 1978). |
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Theology of the
Churches of God was overcome by Binitarians/Ditheism and Trinitarian heresy
almost in total. Daniel’s prophecy almost complete in the overcoming of the
saints by Satan. CCG stands alone with the original doctrines of the faith. See the paper The
Unitarian/Trinitarian Wars (No. 268) |
1987-2027 |
Measuring of the Temple declared. |
1997-2027 CE |
Thirty Years of the end. See the paper The Last Thirty Years: the
Final Struggle (No. 219). |
1997-2028 CE |
Princes, Priests and
Prophets removed. See the paper Measuring the Temple
(No. 137). See
also the sequence of the wars in the series P141C, D, E, E_2, F, G, H and i. |
2028 The Millennium Begins
The Jubilee occurs in the years 24 and 74 BCE and 27 and 77 CE in each century. The next jubilee, the fortieth jubilee since the ministry of Messiah and the forty-ninth jubilee since the reconstruction of the Temple and the restoration of the Law under Ezra and Nehemiah, is in the sacred year 2027/8. The year 2028 will start the Jubilee of Jubilees and the new millennial reign of Messiah as 1/50 (See the papers: Reading the Law with Ezra and Nehemiah (No. 250); The Meaning of Ezekiel's Vision (No. 108); Timing of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection (No. 159); and Outline Timetable of the Age (No. 272).)
God’s Calendar has stood perfectly with His plan performed in accordance with that calendar for millennia. It is perfectly in accord with His law. By accepting correction we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Mat. 6:33) and also eternal life by knowing the Only True God and Christ whom He has sent (Jn. 17:3). It is the desire of the Christian Churches of God that God’s people hold fast to the instruction given by the Father, to Christ for the Church as proven by the scriptures (IThes. 5:21), thus seeking complete restoration.
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