Worshipping on Sunday goes back at least two thousand years before Jesus Christ. Shortly after the flood in Noah's time, Nimrod and his mother-wife, Semiramis, founded the great pagan religions. Sun worship is related to fire worship. From the beginning at the Tower of Babel, sun worship spread throughout the ancient world.
On pages 226-227, Hislop states, "Nimrod is singled out by the voice of antiquity as commencing this fire-worship . . . . The sun, as the great source of light and heat, was worshipped under the name of Baal [another name for Nimrod] . . . . the sun, under that name [Baal] was worshipped in the earliest ages of the world . . . . The beginning, then, of sun- worship and of the worship of the host of the heaven, was a sin against the light -- a presumptuous, heaven-daring sin. As the sun in the heavens was the great object of worship, so fire was worshipped as its [the sun's] earthly representative . . . . Along with the sun, as the great fire-god, and, in due time, identified with him, was the serpent worshipped . . . the serpent is universally the symbol of the sun. In Egypt, one of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc with a serpent around it. The original reason of that identification seems just to have been that, as the sun was the great enlightener of the physical world, so the serpent was held to have been the great enlightener of the spiritual, by giving mankind the 'knowledge of good and evil' . . .."
Sun-worship was the dominant religion in all ancient civilizations, spreading from Mother Babylon to India, China, Africa, Greece, Rome, Mexico, South America, Egypt and Europe. Sun worship was a very prominent religion and Sunday was the main day of worship in the pagan Roman Empire by the time of Jesus Christ, just as it was in ancient pagan Babylon.
Hislop, page 238, "Now, if this worship of the sacred serpent of the Sun, the great fire-god, was so universal in Rome, what symbol could more graphically portray the idolatrous power of Pagan Imperial Rome than the 'Great Fiery Serpent'? No doubt it was to set forth this very thing that the Imperial standard itself -- the standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome, as Pontifex Maximus, Head of the great system of fire-worship and serpent-worship -- was a serpent elevated on a lofty pole, and so coloured, as to exhibit it as a recognised symbol of fire-worship."
Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus 40-50 years B.C. From that time until Emperor Justinian, the Roman Emperors were heads of the state religion of fire- serpent-sun worship. In the 6th Century A.D., Justinian submitted to the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Thereafter, the Popes became the Pontifex Maximus of the state religion of fire- serpent-sun worship.
Historically, pagan Babylon worshipped the sun as a deity, and pagan religions also worshipped the invincible sun. The pagan ideas crept into the early church and with the assistance of Constantine, his civil Sunday law transferred the Sabbath rest to the Sun Day, and filled the church with commonly used pagan images and symbols of the sun.
Many of the pagan sunburst images used by the church show up in various forms of church art. An artifact was unearthed in the holy of holies of the pagan temple in the Canaanite city of Hazor / Hatzor, in northern Israel, that dates to 1400 years before the time of Christ. It is described as follows:
"a basalt offering table, pillar-shaped, with a carved symbol of the storm god Baal on its side. That symbol was a circle with a cross in the center"
In a large number of the churches altars you can find the same general Babylonian sun symbol. Some have tapestry with a sunburst design nearly identical to the pagan sun-god symbol of Baal / Shamash. This tapestry is called the altar frontal, antipendium (antependium), or pallium altaris.
http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/verita.htm
"In Egypt, the disk of the Sun was represented in the temples, and the sovereign and his wife and children were represented as adoring it . . . . In the great temple of Babylon, the golden image of the Sun was exhibited for the worship of the Babylonians . . . . In the worship of Baal, as practised by the idolatrous Israelites in the days of their apostasy, the worship of the sun's image was equally observed; and it is striking to find that the image of the sun, which apostate Israel worshipped, was erected above the altar. When the good king Josiah set about the work of reformation, we read that his servants in carrying out the work, proceeded thus (2 Chron. xxxiv.4): 'And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence, and the images (margin, SUN-IMAGES) that were on high above them, he cut down.' . . .
Israel profaned the Sabbath and substituted Baal worship, which is sun worship:
"And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word."
These words were spoken by a rugged prophet of God as he stood on the top of Mount Carmel face to face with a people who claimed to be the chosen people of God, but a people who had turned from the worship of the true God to the worship of Baal, the Sun-god.
A chosen people who had followed the cloud by day and the fire by night through the wilderness experience and then encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai had heard God's voice in thunder-like tones proclaim His law of Ten Commandments. And even while Moses was receiving the law on tablets of stone they had turned to the sun worship of Egypt. Just so had Israel permitted the wicked Jezebel to again introduce sun worship.
The time had come for a test with this false religion. And on the top of Mt. Carmel they hear Elijah cry out, "How long halt ye between two opinions, you must decide between God and Baal."
The crowd looked over at Elijah, and they saw him standing there alone. Then they looked and saw hundreds of the priests of Baal, dressed in their rich, flowing robes, and they asked the question that has been asked ever since sin opened the gate to the road of the broad and easy way that many follow:" "Can Elijah be right and all these priests of Baal be wrong?" God showed that day what a abomination the false religion of sun worship was to him.
Samuele Bacchiocchi, in his book, From Sabbath to Sunday, pages 242-246, gives evidence that the planetary week was in popular existence in Rome before the time of Christ. "Various Sun-cults were predominant in ancient Rome by the early part of the second century [A.D.]. That these attracted the imagination and interest of Christian converts from paganism, we found evidenced by the development of the theme of Christ-the-Sun, and by the adoption of the eastward orientation for prayer [true Christians are inclined to pray to the north, where God's throne is located, Psalms 48:2] and of the date of the 25th of December . . . . The valorization of the day of the Sun over that of Saturn, as a result of the diffusion of the Sun-cults, possibly oriented Christians (who desired to differentiate themselves from the Sabbath of the Jews) toward such a day. This choice however, it must be stated again, was notmotivated by their desire to venerate the Sun-god on his day, but rather by the fact that its symbology could fittingly commemorate two important events of the history of salvation -- creation and resurrection: 'it is on this day that the Light of the World has appeared and on this day that the Sun of Justice has risen.' Moreover, the day of the Sun enabled Christians to explain also the Biblical mysteries to the pagan world by means of an effective symbology that was very familiar to them." (pages 268-269).
"The early Christians had at first adopted the seven-day week with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D., this began to give way to the planetary week. The use of planetary names [Monday, etc.] attests to the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by the converts from paganism" (Webster's Rest Days, page 252).
"[Roman Emperor] Constantine's famous edict (321 A.D.) definitely enrolled Sunday among the holidays of the Roman State religion. The change from Saturn's day [Saturday, the Sabbath] to Sunday must have further commended the planetary week in Christian circles, where the Lord's Day . . . beginning the week, had long been observed as the day on which Christ, the Son of Righteousness [supposedly] rose from the dead. Thus a pagan institution [Sunday observance] was engrafted upon Christianity" (Ibid., p. 222). This edict commanded that "On the venerable day of the sun let all magistrates and people . . . rest" (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, article "Sunday Legislation").
Emperor Constantine was a pagan sun worshiper who saw that religion could be a unifying factor in his kingdom. "Constantine . . . persevered till he was near 40 years of age in the practice of the established religion [of pagan sun worship]. But the devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun . . . the sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine," (Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, pages 636-638). Even after Constantine's supposed "conversion," he continued his devotion to the Sun. His enforcement of Sunday worship, under the guise of Christianity, continued to brand followers of the state catholic religion with the mark of pagan sun worship.
"The SABBATH -- which word means 'REST' -- depicts the kind of eternal REST from sin which God has in mind for man. (Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course, Lesson 30, page 5).
But ironically, Satan by deluding man into keeping the fiery pagan day of the Sun -- SUNDAY -- causes man to commemorate something else than what God set forth.......
On pages 226-227, Hislop states, "Nimrod is singled out by the voice of antiquity as commencing this fire-worship . . . . The sun, as the great source of light and heat, was worshipped under the name of Baal [another name for Nimrod] . . . . the sun, under that name [Baal] was worshipped in the earliest ages of the world . . . . The beginning, then, of sun- worship and of the worship of the host of the heaven, was a sin against the light -- a presumptuous, heaven-daring sin. As the sun in the heavens was the great object of worship, so fire was worshipped as its [the sun's] earthly representative . . . . Along with the sun, as the great fire-god, and, in due time, identified with him, was the serpent worshipped . . . the serpent is universally the symbol of the sun. In Egypt, one of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc with a serpent around it. The original reason of that identification seems just to have been that, as the sun was the great enlightener of the physical world, so the serpent was held to have been the great enlightener of the spiritual, by giving mankind the 'knowledge of good and evil' . . .."
Sun-worship was the dominant religion in all ancient civilizations, spreading from Mother Babylon to India, China, Africa, Greece, Rome, Mexico, South America, Egypt and Europe. Sun worship was a very prominent religion and Sunday was the main day of worship in the pagan Roman Empire by the time of Jesus Christ, just as it was in ancient pagan Babylon.
Hislop, page 238, "Now, if this worship of the sacred serpent of the Sun, the great fire-god, was so universal in Rome, what symbol could more graphically portray the idolatrous power of Pagan Imperial Rome than the 'Great Fiery Serpent'? No doubt it was to set forth this very thing that the Imperial standard itself -- the standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome, as Pontifex Maximus, Head of the great system of fire-worship and serpent-worship -- was a serpent elevated on a lofty pole, and so coloured, as to exhibit it as a recognised symbol of fire-worship."
Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus 40-50 years B.C. From that time until Emperor Justinian, the Roman Emperors were heads of the state religion of fire- serpent-sun worship. In the 6th Century A.D., Justinian submitted to the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Thereafter, the Popes became the Pontifex Maximus of the state religion of fire- serpent-sun worship.
Historically, pagan Babylon worshipped the sun as a deity, and pagan religions also worshipped the invincible sun. The pagan ideas crept into the early church and with the assistance of Constantine, his civil Sunday law transferred the Sabbath rest to the Sun Day, and filled the church with commonly used pagan images and symbols of the sun.
Many of the pagan sunburst images used by the church show up in various forms of church art. An artifact was unearthed in the holy of holies of the pagan temple in the Canaanite city of Hazor / Hatzor, in northern Israel, that dates to 1400 years before the time of Christ. It is described as follows:
"a basalt offering table, pillar-shaped, with a carved symbol of the storm god Baal on its side. That symbol was a circle with a cross in the center"
In a large number of the churches altars you can find the same general Babylonian sun symbol. Some have tapestry with a sunburst design nearly identical to the pagan sun-god symbol of Baal / Shamash. This tapestry is called the altar frontal, antipendium (antependium), or pallium altaris.
http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/verita.htm
"In Egypt, the disk of the Sun was represented in the temples, and the sovereign and his wife and children were represented as adoring it . . . . In the great temple of Babylon, the golden image of the Sun was exhibited for the worship of the Babylonians . . . . In the worship of Baal, as practised by the idolatrous Israelites in the days of their apostasy, the worship of the sun's image was equally observed; and it is striking to find that the image of the sun, which apostate Israel worshipped, was erected above the altar. When the good king Josiah set about the work of reformation, we read that his servants in carrying out the work, proceeded thus (2 Chron. xxxiv.4): 'And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence, and the images (margin, SUN-IMAGES) that were on high above them, he cut down.' . . .
Israel profaned the Sabbath and substituted Baal worship, which is sun worship:
"And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word."
These words were spoken by a rugged prophet of God as he stood on the top of Mount Carmel face to face with a people who claimed to be the chosen people of God, but a people who had turned from the worship of the true God to the worship of Baal, the Sun-god.
A chosen people who had followed the cloud by day and the fire by night through the wilderness experience and then encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai had heard God's voice in thunder-like tones proclaim His law of Ten Commandments. And even while Moses was receiving the law on tablets of stone they had turned to the sun worship of Egypt. Just so had Israel permitted the wicked Jezebel to again introduce sun worship.
The time had come for a test with this false religion. And on the top of Mt. Carmel they hear Elijah cry out, "How long halt ye between two opinions, you must decide between God and Baal."
The crowd looked over at Elijah, and they saw him standing there alone. Then they looked and saw hundreds of the priests of Baal, dressed in their rich, flowing robes, and they asked the question that has been asked ever since sin opened the gate to the road of the broad and easy way that many follow:" "Can Elijah be right and all these priests of Baal be wrong?" God showed that day what a abomination the false religion of sun worship was to him.
Samuele Bacchiocchi, in his book, From Sabbath to Sunday, pages 242-246, gives evidence that the planetary week was in popular existence in Rome before the time of Christ. "Various Sun-cults were predominant in ancient Rome by the early part of the second century [A.D.]. That these attracted the imagination and interest of Christian converts from paganism, we found evidenced by the development of the theme of Christ-the-Sun, and by the adoption of the eastward orientation for prayer [true Christians are inclined to pray to the north, where God's throne is located, Psalms 48:2] and of the date of the 25th of December . . . . The valorization of the day of the Sun over that of Saturn, as a result of the diffusion of the Sun-cults, possibly oriented Christians (who desired to differentiate themselves from the Sabbath of the Jews) toward such a day. This choice however, it must be stated again, was notmotivated by their desire to venerate the Sun-god on his day, but rather by the fact that its symbology could fittingly commemorate two important events of the history of salvation -- creation and resurrection: 'it is on this day that the Light of the World has appeared and on this day that the Sun of Justice has risen.' Moreover, the day of the Sun enabled Christians to explain also the Biblical mysteries to the pagan world by means of an effective symbology that was very familiar to them." (pages 268-269).
"The early Christians had at first adopted the seven-day week with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D., this began to give way to the planetary week. The use of planetary names [Monday, etc.] attests to the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by the converts from paganism" (Webster's Rest Days, page 252).
"[Roman Emperor] Constantine's famous edict (321 A.D.) definitely enrolled Sunday among the holidays of the Roman State religion. The change from Saturn's day [Saturday, the Sabbath] to Sunday must have further commended the planetary week in Christian circles, where the Lord's Day . . . beginning the week, had long been observed as the day on which Christ, the Son of Righteousness [supposedly] rose from the dead. Thus a pagan institution [Sunday observance] was engrafted upon Christianity" (Ibid., p. 222). This edict commanded that "On the venerable day of the sun let all magistrates and people . . . rest" (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, article "Sunday Legislation").
Emperor Constantine was a pagan sun worshiper who saw that religion could be a unifying factor in his kingdom. "Constantine . . . persevered till he was near 40 years of age in the practice of the established religion [of pagan sun worship]. But the devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun . . . the sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine," (Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, pages 636-638). Even after Constantine's supposed "conversion," he continued his devotion to the Sun. His enforcement of Sunday worship, under the guise of Christianity, continued to brand followers of the state catholic religion with the mark of pagan sun worship.
"The SABBATH -- which word means 'REST' -- depicts the kind of eternal REST from sin which God has in mind for man. (Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course, Lesson 30, page 5).
But ironically, Satan by deluding man into keeping the fiery pagan day of the Sun -- SUNDAY -- causes man to commemorate something else than what God set forth.......
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