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UNDERSTANDING TRUE  BIBLE  FELLOWSHIP  and  FAITH,  part 10 quotes

1)    Understanding True Bible Faith



6th Pillar – the Third Angel's Message


The Mark of the Beast

     As Roman Catholicism is the Beast, then what is the Mark of this Beast?  Since we learned that God’s chosen worship day of the seventh-day Sabbath contains the seal or mark of God, and is the distinguishing sign between God and all His people, then this same principle would be true for the Mark of the Beast!  Therefore the Mark of the Beast must be the particular worship day which Catholicism has chosen and commanded to keep holy, and this day would then be the distinguishing sign between that church and all her followers!  And what day of the week has the Catholic Church commanded to keep holy?
     "Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. 'The day of the Lord' was chosen, not from any direction noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church's sense of its own power....People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically...keep Saturday holy." St. Catherine Church Sentinel, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995.


     "Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days." John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, 1936 edition, vol. 1, p. 51.


     "The Catholic church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday....The Protestant World at its birth found the Christian Sabbath too strongly entrenched to run counter to its existence; it was therefore placed under the necessity of acquiescing in the arrangement, thus implying the (Catholic) Church's right to change the day, for over three hundred years. The Christian Sabbath is therefore to this day, the acknowledged offspring of the Catholic Church as spouse of the Holy Ghost, without a word of remonstrance from the Protestant World." James Cardinal Gibbons in the Catholic Mirror, September 23, 1893.


     "Question - Which is the Sabbath day?
     "Answer - Saturday is the Sabbath day.
     "Question - Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
     "Answer - We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church...transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday." Peter Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, p. 50, 3rd edition, 1957.





2)     On whose power or authority was God's Sabbath of the fourth commandment changed from Saturday to Sunday?  Roman Catholicism proudly declares:
     "The authority of the church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the Church had changed...the Sabbath into Sunday, not by command of Christ, but by its own authority." Canon and Tradition, p. 263.


     "Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments? I answer yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did the Church change the seventh day - Saturday - for Sunday, the first day? I answer yes. Did Christ change the day'? I answer no!"
     "Faithfully yours, J. Card. Gibbons." James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, Md. (1877-1921), in a signed letter.


     "From this we may understand how great is the authority of the church in interpreting or explaining to us the commandments of God - an authority which is acknowledged by the universal practice of the whole Christian world, even of those sects which profess to take the holy Scriptures as their sole rule of faith, since they observe as the day of rest not the seventh day of the week demanded by the Bible, but the first day. Which we know is to be kept holy, only from the tradition and teaching of the Catholic church." Henry Gibson, Catechism Made Easy, # 2, 9th edition, vol. 1, p. 341-342.


     "For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible." Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947, p. 9, article "To Tell You the Truth."


     "Written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, this Divine code (ten commandments) was received from the Almighty by Moses amid the thunders of Mount Sinai...Christ resumed these Commandments in the double precept of charity--love of God and of the neighbour; He proclaimed them as binding under the New Law in Matthew 19 and in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5)....The (Catholic) Church, on the other hand, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week, to the first, made the Third Commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's Day." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, "The Ten Commandments", 1908 edition by Robert Appleton Company; and 1999 On-line edition by Kevin Knight, URL: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04153a.htm), Imprimatur, John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.


     "...Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; -she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day of the week, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority." Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism On the Obedience Due to the Church, 3rd edition, Chapter 2, p. 174 (Imprimatur, John Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New York).





3)    Sunday is purely and only a worship day created by the Roman Catholic Church, and not God!  The Catholic Church is not afraid to admit this!
     "Is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify." James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (1917 edition), p. 72-73 (16th Edition, p 111; 88th Edition, p. 89).


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


     "The Sunday...is purely a creation of the Catholic Church." American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1883.


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


     "Sunday is a Catholic institution and its claim to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles....From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first." Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August, 1990.





4)    As the Catholic Church has sought to change the timing and law of God's Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, then this action reveals the mark of authoritative power the Catholic Church claims is her right to exercise in religious matters.  And, in fact, the Catholic church agrees with this!
     "Sunday is our mark of authority...the church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact." Catholic Record of London, Ontario, Canada, September 1, 1923.


     "Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change (from Saturday Sabbath to Sunday worship) was her act....And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical authority in religious things." H.F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons.





5)    If any follower of God knowingly continues to worship on Sunday – the first day, while they know that the Bible Sabbath of the Lord is on Saturday – the seventh day, they thereby show that they are willing to follow the commandments of men instead of the commandments of God.  They thereby prove that they are willing to love and obey a lie of man, instead of obeying and loving the truth of God!  This means that they are in grave danger of being forsaken by God and then overwhelming deceived to their eternal loss!
     “...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved...God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.





6)    Why will someone be lost if they choose to follow the command to worship God on Sunday when they know that Saturday is God's true Sabbath?  Because they are following a commandment of the Roman Catholic church, and thus are showing their religious love and devotion to the Pope and not to God!  They are following the word of men founded in tradition, and not following the word of God founded in the Scriptures!  And believe it or not, Rome clearly understands this fact!
     "Sunday is founded, not of scripture, but on tradition, and is distinctly a Catholic institution. As there is no scripture for the transfer of the day of rest from the last to the first day of the week, Protestants ought to keep their Sabbath on Saturday and thus leave Catholics in full possession of Sunday." Catholic Record, September 17, 1893.


     "Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:
     "1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man.
     "2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws....
     "It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible." Peter R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Magazine, USA (1975),Chicago, Illinois, "Under the blessing of the Pope Pius XI"


     "The arguments...are firmly grounded on the word of God, and having been closely studied with the Bible in hand, leave no escape for the conscientious Protestant except the abandonment of Sunday worship and the return to Saturday, commanded by their teacher, the Bible, or, unwilling to abandon the tradition of the Catholic Church, which enjoins the keeping of Sunday, and which they have accepted in direct opposition to their teacher, the Bible, consistently accept her (the Catholic Church) in all her teachings. Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicism and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible." James Cardinal Gibbons, in Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893.





7)    What are God's followers to do in regards to this great controversy between the worship days of Saturday versus Sunday:
     "We ought to obey God rather than men." Acts 5:29.


     “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” John 14:15.


     "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Revelation 22:14-15.


     "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.