We have added a "Comments" page. Sub pages will be added under the main comments page as we go along.

Continued from Netzarim History Part One,

 

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).

 

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 "worship Jesus" comment. “Jesus” used as quotation.

 

The Sabbath in China

In the last half of the fourth century, 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). Again, as Hellenism spread in the West, the “Way” spread in the East through the Netzarim.

 

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).

 

409 CE

The Vandals were 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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).

 

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.  

 

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. This early church that is referred to is clearly the Netzarim who thrived and spread the Word outside the domination of the Roman Empire in the West.

 

498 CE            

The Nestorians settle in Nisibis in Persia.

 

499 CE            

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.

 

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)

 

523 CE

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.

 

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.

 

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

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.

 

563 CE

The Sabbatarian Celtic Missionary Columba, established himself on the Island of Iona and began to convert the Picts.

 

565 CE            

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            

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            

Muhammad the founder of Islam was born. In 572 war between Persia and the Byzantines again broke out 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.

 

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 CE  - Demarcation - The Whore of Revelation

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"  thus establishing the world wide anti-Messiah apostacy. Netzarim, Jews and Sabatarian Commandment keeping Christians are then persecuted directly by the so-called Roman Catholic or Triune system. The year 590 CE plus 1260 years = 1850 CE, the end of the “Inquisitions” (Daniel 7:25), see 1850 CE in “Part Four”.

 

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 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.

 

During the 1260 years from 590 to 1850 (Daniel 7:25) 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.

 

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 at the pagan midwinter Christmas festival of 597. The Christians of Britain were, up until that time, predominantly if not exclusively all Sabbath-keeping, and kept the kosher food laws and the Kadosh (Sanctified). 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).

 

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, 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.

 

610 CE            

Muhammad begins preaching in Arabia.

 

741-775 CE

Constantine Capronymous, 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).

 

781 CE

The Sabbath experience in Asia was predominantly non-Trinitarian until the Jesuits began their missionary work. The Nestorians, and the African missionaries followed the early church [Netzarim] into Persia, India and then into China. Sabbath-keeping posed a serious threat to Buddhism and was outlawed by Buddhism. The Sabbath-keeping churches [Netzarim] 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 Netzarim system and, as elsewhere, the Sabbath was a sign of biblical literalism. In 781 it was already well established. In 781 the famous China Monument was inscribed in marble to tell of the growth of The Way 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 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 [Mashiyach and His Schlichim] (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).

 

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 [Sunday] 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)

 

970 CE

Second relocation of the Sabbatarian Paulicians into Thrace occurs under John Tsimiskes.

 

 

What They Said

Catholic

“If Protestants would follow the Bible, they would worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.”

Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal,

in a letter dated February 10, 1920.

 

 

Netzarim History Part Three