"In early ages, mankind, forgetting the true Creator of the heavens and the earth “and all that in them is,” and being possessed, as all men are, with that inherent instinct which goes seeking after an object or being to worship, began to look about for such an object or being. Their choice rested on the biggest and brightest thing their eyes could see. They chose the sun as god. With its brightness and welcome warmth, it caused earthly life to bud, blossom, and bring forth; surely it must be the true god and the author of man’s being. Thus we find in history sun god’s a-plenty. They are pictured on temples and monuments of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Ra, Isis, Osiris, Baal, Mithras, Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter all are heathen gods of the sun. Even in the Bible, sun worship is mentioned.
The pagans had “gods many and lords many.” Besides the sun, they worshiped the moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. And they bestowed upon the days of the week the names of their gods. The sun, whence come the first day of the week was given over to this first and foremost of all gods, and called the sun’s day, or Sunday. The moon took second place and also the second day; hence Monday. Saturn held Saturday, the last day. So from antiquity, Sunday has been held as a day of worship.
Paganism was worshiping the sun on Sunday when Christ came. When the gospel from Judea came to our own ancestors in Europe, it found them paying homage to the sun on the first day of the week. As the Spirit of God, manifested in Christ, began to work upon the hearts of men, many left the worship of Apollo, the sun god, and joined the Christians.
Here is warning of apostasy. Paul saw it working in the church. A “falling away” was to come “first”. A “mystery of lawlessness,” or a spirit of making void the law of God, was already at work. A “man of sin” was to be revealed sitting right in the church, “setting himself forth as God.”
Soon after Paul was put to death, there swept over the church, in the midst of its prosperity, a sharp rivalry among the bishops of the leading churches as to whom should be the greatest. They became thirsty for more power. They did almost anything to inflate their membership, increase their bishoprics, and add to their power. They lowered standards of truth to raise membership. Multitudes joined the church. .... She traded her “gold tried in the fire” for the tinsel of popularity. Paganism stalked into the church without a changed heart or life. Scarcely a century after his death, Paul’s prophecy was meeting its fulfillment. There was a “falling away” from purity, and an induction of pagan principles and philosophies into the church.
Constantine ...More than half the people worshiped on Sunday—pagans. The others observed the Sabbath—professed Christians. He conceived the idea of cementing the two factions. Though professing Christianity, he did not want to conflict with the prejudices of his pagan subjects. Artfully balancing himself between the two, he allayed the “fears of his subjects by publishing in the same year two edicts, the first of which enjoined the solemn observance of Sunday, and the second directed the regular consultation of the aruspices” —a pagan practice. (Gibbon’s Decline and all of the
The church followed the leadership of Constantine, and in the year 364, at the council of Laodicea, passed a law requiring that Christians must “not Judaize by resting on Saturday.” Eusebius, a noted bishop of the church, states, “All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s day.” Here, then, it is plain that a human hand, and not a divine, changed the Sabbath. Eusebius says, “We have transferred.”
Finally the Sabbath was crushed, and Sunday, the pagan holiday, was instituted." 7
