John Pike

Read Time: 13 mins

I become alarmed when I talk to my cousins in Christianity.

As a Messianic follower of Yeshua the Messiah, as found in the Good News writings of Matthew, Mark Luke, John, and Acts, I find an alarming lack of knowledge in Christians about what these New Covenant writers teach and instruct us to follow. I also notice an even deeper and more concerning and troubling lack of knowledge and understanding of what Yeshua (Jesus), the Living Word, taught and lived. There is an appalling disconnect with what Christianity teaches, believes and follows, and what Yeshua and the apostles taught and followed from Genesis to Revelation.

When talking to my friends about keeping the Sabbath – as commanded by the God of all creation, who has never rescinded that command, the command which Yeshua spent hours defending the truth of and keeping it Himself – I find they have never studied the topic, searched the Scriptures about it, and know nothing about its purpose and meanings but just accept what their Christian Church says and does. (Read my article “The Message of the Sabbath.”) There is no understanding of when Sunday worship started, who started it, and for what purpose. The Roman Catholic Church changed Sabbath worship, as commanded by God, to Sunday worship, as commanded by the Pope and Emperor Constantine in the 4^th Century.

 

The Source of Sunday Worship

 

I will list below just a very few statements of what the Catholic Church itself says about Sunday worship:

“Nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday.  We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the seventh day of the week, Saturday.  Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] Church outside the Bible.” (Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947)

"If we would consult the Bible only, without Tradition, we ought, for instance, still to keep holy the Saturday with the Jews, instead of Sunday..." (Deharbe's Catechism, translated by Rev. John Fander, published by Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss, 53 Park Place, New York, Sixth American Edition, Copyright 1912, 1919, 1924, page 81)

"Sunday...It is the law of the Catholic Church alone..." (American Sentinel, June 1893)

“From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, as the Lord’s day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it as tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it.  Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.” (D.B. Ray, The Papal Controversy, 1892, p.179)

"The church...took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday.... The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom.... And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday." (Dr. William L. Gildea, The Catholic World, March, 1894)                

"They [the Protestants] deem it their duty to keep the Sunday holy. Why? Because the Catholic Church tells them to do so. They have no other reason. ...The observance of Sunday thus comes to be an ecclesiastical law entirely distinct from the Divine law of Sabbath observance. …The author of the Sunday Law...is the Catholic Church." (Walter Drum, Catholic priest, Ecclesiastical Review, February, 1914)

"The authority of the church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the Church had changed the Sabbath into Sunday, not by command of Christ, but by its own authority." (Canon and Tradition, p. 263)

"The Roman Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days.” (Vincent Jo Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast day Occupations, Catholic University Press, 1943, p. 2)

"Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:

1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man.

2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws.”

 

These are just a few of hundreds over the years. All of Christianity has added a multitude of traditions and doctrines not found in the Word of God, mostly out of Catholicism.

The Torah (meaning teachings of God, called the Law by Christianity), are the unalterable, unchangeable commands of God. Disobeying anything written in the Torah, the Tanak (called the Old Testament by Christianity, called the Scriptures by Yeshua and the apostles) is forbidden. Luke 24:47

 

The Feasts of Y’Hovah

 

Y’Hovah, the Name of God, (Translated as LORD by Christianity), has listed and mandated a calendar of Scriptural Feasts. These are set out for us in Leviticus 23:1-3.

"Y'Hovah spoke to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘These are Y’Hovah’s appointed times which you must proclaim as holy assemblies – my appointed times: “‘Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy assembly. You must not do any work; it is a Sabbath to Y’Hovah in all the places where you live."

 

The Festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread

 

 “‘These are Y’Hovah’s appointed times, holy assemblies, which you must proclaim at their appointed time. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, is a Passover offering to Y’Hovah. Then on the fifteenth day of the same month will be the Feast of Unleavened Bread to Y’Hovah; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day there will be a holy assembly for you; you must not do any regular work.” Lev 23:4-7

Read through the whole chapter.

As you read the Good News (Gospels) writings of the apostles and Acts, you will find not only Yeshua keeping these Feasts but also the apostles, and the Assemblies they raised up were taught to do the same. The nation of Israel was raised up to be a witness and a light to the world of what their God required of all mankind. Zechariah and Elijah the prophets, along with others, spoke of these Feasts and Sabbaths and New Moons being kept by the whole world in the coming Millennial Kingdom.  Isaiah 42:1-6, Isaiah 49:1-6; Zechariah 14:16; Isaiah 2:1-5, Isaiah 66:23

All that the millions of Christians know is that Sunday is required of them by the Church. All that the Christians know is keeping Easter and celebrating Christmas. Multitudes celebrate Resurrection Sunday, Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Trinity Sunday, Saint Valentines Day and a host of others. There is not one command in Scripture to celebrate even one of these things, not even Yeshua’s birthday, which is not given in Scripture. December the 25^th is based on a pagan god. His resurrection was on Saturday, not Sunday, another date for the pagan worship of the Sun god.

Everything we need to celebrate and are commanded to celebrate are all in the seven Festival dates of the Torah commands. Passover and Unleavened Bread in the first calendar month celebrates Yeshua’s first coming as Saviour, His sinless life, His death and resurrection. Then Pentecost is the celebration of the outpouring of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) and His coming to write the Torah commands on our hearts and minds. God knew we would stop reading them, so now they are written into our inner man.  No longer on tablets of stone, but the fleshy tablets of our conscience and spirit. Ruach is also the One who imparts the power to flow in His gifts and fruit. He, Y’Hovah Ruach, enables the natural man to flow in the supernatural. Then we have the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month. This celebrates and teaches us about the second coming of Yeshua at the last trumpet, and about the Millennial Kingdom reign of one thousand years. It also incorporates the Eighth Day celebration of the second resurrection and the Great White Throne Judgement on all who have not been part of the first resurrection.

But Christianity knows nothing of these things, or the wrath and fury of the fire of Y’Hovah’s judgements coming upon the whole world because they have rejected His Words and His commands. Judgement begins with the House of God. Yeshua declared through the voice of the apostle John, “Come out of her, My people, lest you take part in her sins and receive her plagues!” Revelation 18:1-6.  This is about the woman who rides the beast, called Babylon. An epithet for Rome. This is about the false prophet and the beast which will control the world politically and spiritually. This is the rise to power of the end-time Roman Catholic Church and the end-time political power that comes out of Europe, or the EU. They will be the one world government in control of all the world until Yeshua comes to destroy it.

But the tragedy is that all of Christendom, Protestantism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are the children, or daughters, of Rome. They follow and obey their pagan customs and traditions, with the changes they have made to God’s Word. Our Heavenly Father has made the call “Come out of her My people”, because you are partakers of her sins, and you will become part of her plagues and judgements described in Revelation.

In Revelation 14:9-12 we are told that those who are immune and protected from the great tribulation judgements are “those believers who persevere and keep (or obey) the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.”

Any other lifestyle, worship system, religious tradition or false doctrine is called idolatry.  Anything we do on His Sabbath, or anything we change from His traditions and Festival celebrations to ours is idolatrous. God calls idolatry ‘spiritual adultery’, punishable by death and exclusion from His Kingdom and from being part of His Millennial reign as His Bride. Paul says in Ephesians 5:5 “Know for certain that no immoral, indecent, or greedy person – who is really an idol worshipper at heart – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Messiah and God.” (TLV)  Again, in Galatians 5:16-23.

Those who keep the Torah live in freedom, and have come out from under Torah's judgements and death sentence. If we don’t keep Torah and walk in God’s love we will not inherit the Kingdom. 1 Corinthians 6:5-11.  Keeping the commandments is defined as love for God. Not keeping the commandments is defined as sin. 1 John 2:3-6, 1 John 3:4.

Samuel said in 1 Samuel 15:22-23: "Does Y’Hovah take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifice as much as in obeying Y’Hovah? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and defiance is like wickedness and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of Y’Hovah, He has rejected you as king."

What about the words of Yeshua to those who followed Him but are doing things their own way?

Matthew 5:17-20: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter^, will pass from the law until everything takes place. So anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!"