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

PO Box 369,  WODEN  ACT 2606,  AUSTRALIA

E-mail: secretary@ccg.org

 

 

(Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2008, 2010, 2019, 2022 Christian Churches of God; ed. Wade Cox;

sub-editors Scott Rambo anor)

 

This paper may be freely copied and distributed provided it is copied in total with no alterations or deletions. The publisher’s name and address and the copyright notice must be included.  No charge may be levied on recipients of distributed copies.  Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles and reviews without breaching copyright.

 

This paper is available from the World Wide Web page:
http://www.logon.org and http://www.ccg.org

 


                                                 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.

 

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.

 

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).

 

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:

 

"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.

 

The Sabbath in America

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.

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.

 

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).

 

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.

 

Last Inquisition in the Papal States

 

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.

 

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.

 

Sabbath keeping was also alive and well at the time of the Taiping rebellion in 1850.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

The Sabbatarians under the Russians are sent to Siberia.

 

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.

 

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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1978 CE

Fortieth Jubilee since Messiah and the 120th Jubilee since the fall of Adam; and the expulsion begins.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

3000th anniversary of David’s entry to Jerusalem.

1997 CE

Church of God (Seventh Day) announces it is Binitarian and then Trinitarian in 1999.

 

(The Seventh Day Adventist movement was also predominantly and officially Unitarian until 1931 with the death of Uriah Smith and on to 1978).

 

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)

< http://english.ccg.org/weblibs/study-papers/P268.html>

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.

 

It is obvious from the foregoing history that the church has been systematically persecuted and destroyed and that the mainstream Christian system has become drunk on the blood of the saints and martyrs over the centuries as prophesied in Revelation. See the Commentary on Revelation (No. F066iv) dealing with the 5th Seal.

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