On March 7, 321 A.D., the first National Sunday Law in history was issued. This was the first "blue law" to be issued by a civil government. Here is the text of this law by Constantine.

"Let all judges and townspeople and occupations of all trades rest on the venerable day of the Sun **; nevertheless, let those who are situated in the rural districts freely and with full liberty attend to the cultivation of the fields, because it so frequently happens that no other day may be so fitting for ploughing grains or trenching vineyards, lest at the time the advantage of the moment granted by the provision of heaven may be lost. Given on the Nones [seventh] of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls, each of them, for the second time."

** Note
This was Sunday. The day was called "the venerable day of the Sun" (venerabili die solis). That was the mystical name for the worship day of Mithra, the sun god.

Within a few years, five more Sunday laws were decreed by Constantine.

When Constantine was issuing these Sunday laws, was he a christian? In name, yes. But let his actions speak. In the same year, he made several decrees maintaining pagan practices. He consulted with heathen priests for guidance, who would then watch the flight of birds, or cut open animals, in order to know the advice to give.

The very next day after giving his Sunday Law quoted above, Constantine made another law for pagan soothsayers. When lightning should strike a public building, the heathen prophets were to be consulted as to its meaning.

It is a historical fact that when Constantine issued this first imperial Sunday edict of A.D. 351, enforcing the observance of Sunday by the people of the Roman Empire, he himself was still a worshiper of Sol Invictus, "the Invincible Sun" of Mithraism, as well as being the Pontifex Maximus, or supreme pagan pontiff (priest) of Roman heathen worship as the state religion. Both he and the "christian" leaders at Rome worked together to unite all into one church.

The objective of Constantine and high Christian Church officials was to bring peace through mutual compromise. This they did.

The Roman and Alexandrian christians were among those converted from heathenism. They began observing Sunday as a festival in honor of the resurrection about the end of the second century A.D. However, no ecclesiastical writer before Eusebius in the fourth century even suggested that either the messiah or His apostles instituted the observance of the first day of the week. Except the Roman and Alexandrian Christians, believers were observing the seventh-day sabbath at least until the middle of the fifth century.

"Although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this."

About 590, Pope Gregory, in a letter to the Roman people, denounced as the "prophets of Antichrist" those who maintained that "work ought not to be done on the seventh day".

In keeping Sunday, christians are simply following the practice of the Roman Catholic Church for 1800 years, a tradition, not a biblical precedent. The Catholics have no difficulty about the matter.

"We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."--Pope Leo XIII, in an Encyclical Letter, dated June 20, 1894.

For, "since we deny that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, we can fall back upon the constant practice and tradition of the Church."

And what of the "protest"ing children or the church mother. What is their excuse?

Protestants . . . accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change . . . But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope."

"There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament--absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week."

"Sunday stands, side by side, with Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whit-sunday, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, All Soul's Day, Christmas Day, and a host of other ecclesiastical feast days too numerous to mention. This array of Roman Catholic feasts and fast days are all man made. None of them bears the divine credentials of the Author of the Inspired Word."

The Final Word

Matthew 15:3

But he answered and said unto them, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?"

Exodus 20:8

Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.







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