How Can So Many Be Deceived?

By Pastor Aubrey Duncan

Climate Crisis or Trojan Horse?

Recently, an article appeared in a Mexican online publication with the headline: Even on Sunday! What cars are resting today, February 25, due to an environmental contingency in CdMx? (Mexico City). The article went on to talk about a program that mandates drivers to restrict driving on Sundays to help combat climate change. Undoubtedly, this is yet another initiative to mitigate the climate change crisis around the world. Individual countries, the United Nations, NGOs, and private businesses, small and large, are all coalescing in a universal push to implement Sunday as a day of rest, ostensibly to save the planet.

I am reminded of the Greek mythology of the Trojan Horse. According to the Roman epic poet Virgil, the Trojans were defeated after the Greeks left behind a large wooden horse and pretended to sail for home. Unbeknownst to the Trojans, the wooden horse was filled with Greek warriors. They sacked Troy after the Trojans brought the horse inside the city walls.

The late Pope John Paul 11, in his encyclical Dies Domini (Holy Sunday), quotes a previous pontiff: “When, through the centuries, she has made laws concerning Sunday rest, the Church has had in mind above all the work of servants and workers, certainly not because this work was any less worthy when compared to the spiritual requirements of Sunday observance, but rather because it needed greater regulation to lighten its burden and thus enable everyone to keep the Lord’s Day holy. In this matter, my predecessor Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Rerum Novarum, spoke of Sunday rest as a worker’s right which the State must guarantee” (Pope John Paul 11, Dies Domini, Section 66).

As the prime mover for Sunday sacredness, the church of Rome throughout its history has advocated Sunday sacredness in place of the Creator’s Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week. Francis, the current pope, makes this point forcibly clear: “On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day that heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims “man’s eternal rest in God” (Laudato SI Sec. 237).

To the discerning eye, we are involved in a great controversy. It is a conflict that began in heaven and is raging on earth. John the Revelator tells us: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and His angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels … and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven, and the great dragon was cast out, and that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).

This contest is a fierce and determined battle over our souls, our minds, and our worship. It is a battle of cosmic proportions involving Christ and Satan. You and I are the pawns and prizes of this conflict. Depending on whose side one chooses, each will be either a pawn of Satan or a prize and jewel for Jesus Christ. There is no middle ground. For every true Bible doctrine given to us by God, the devil has a counterfeit. The seventh-day Sabbath is the truth. Sunday sacredness is the counterfeit.

The word of God does not in any way annul, abrogate, or otherwise disavow His Seventh-day Sabbath. God established the Sabbath day at creation and gave it to all mankind as a gift. The prophets preached it and reminded God’s people of its sacredness. Jesus lived it and taught His disciples to do likewise. The apostles remained faithful to the Sabbath throughout their ministries. God incorporated it into his holy moral code, the Ten Commandments. It is for the benefit of all mankind in all ages. The record reveals that it will remain throughout eternity.

But why do men claim that God’s Sabbath was not only changed, but that another day was substituted in its place? Where did that doctrine originate? The answers to these questions may surprise some or enlighten others, but they certainly cannot be refuted by any honest person.

The prophet Daniel, in his prophecy of the nations that would rule the world and have a significant impact on God’s plan of salvation for men’s souls, prophesied of the attempted change from God’s seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday: “And he (antichrist) will speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High and shall think to change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). The only one of God’s Ten Commandments that deals with time is the Sabbath commandment. (Exodus 20:8–11).

In Daniel’s time, pagan religions worshipped many so-called gods. There were gods for different seasons of the year. There were gods for the several elements of nature. Every aspect of their religion revolved around the worship of a specific god so-called for a specific purpose. All of those religions, of which the Babylonian mystery religion was the foundation, venerated the sun as their main god. Great significance was attached to the sun as a source of all life and the supreme power of the universe. The sun-worshippers, therefore, dedicated the first day of the week, today called Sunday, to the sun. It was worshipped as their chief god.

This practice was pervasive, so much so that God’s people, in apostasy, were engulfed by it. The prophet Ezekiel reports from Babylonian captivity: “Then said He unto me, hast thou seen this, O son of man? Turn thee yet again, and thou shall see greater abominations than these…and He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.” (Ezekiel 8:15-16) Shortly after this revelation to Ezekiel, God sent swift destruction upon those who followed that practice.

Sunday sacredness has always been a tradition of men and not a commandment of God. Our Creator God abhors it. Rather, He desires us to worship Him, the God who created the sun. Jesus asks, “Why call me Lord, Lord and do not the things which I say” (Luke 6:46).

By the Christian era, sun worship was practiced by the many false religions against which the apostles preached. The true gospel, as lived and taught by the early Christians, proved severely problematic to their imperial rulers, the Caesars of Rome, who were all sun worshippers. It admonished men and women to keep the Sabbath (the seventh day of the week) holy. The apostle Paul records that the true gospel, preached with such fervor and accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, had reached the house of the Caesars: “All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar’s household” (Philippians 4:22).

Ironically, the fires of persecution set ablaze against the Christians by the sun-worshipping, Sunday-keeping pagans served as the fuel that propelled the true gospel throughout the Roman Empire. Despite the relentless persecutions of Nero, Diocletian, and other Roman emperors, the pure, unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ continued to reach men’s hearts. The message of salvation through Jesus Christ alone turned many away from their pagan traditions, centered on sun worship, to a risen Savior and His charge to obey the laws of God. Penitent souls were pointed to a sin-pardoning, loving Savior who called them to his rest and to obey his commandments, the Sabbath commandment included.

And then came Constantine. As Roman emperor in the early 4th century, he recognized, quite unlike his predecessors, that persecution of the Christians was not helping at all to strengthen the empire. He realized that persecution of the growing Christian church was not the answer to the empire’s problems. He chose, therefore, to adopt the policy of ‘ If you can’t beat them, join them.’ Not unlike his contemporaries, Constantine was an avowed sun worshiper. He exalted and paid homage to the Persian sun deity, Mithra. Mithraism was but one of the many pagan religions practiced throughout the empire. Like all of those pagan religions, Mithraism was centered on sun worship and accorded the highest honors to the first day of the week, today called Sunday.

Constantine decreed that the first day of the week, Sunday, would become the official day of rest and worship throughout the empire: “On the venerable Day of the sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits: because it often happens that another Day is not so suitable for grain sowing or for vine planting: lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost” (Edict of Constantine, March 7th, 321 AD. Codex Justinianus lib. 3, tit. 12, 3). Please note that the Emperor’s decree had nothing pertaining to the Christian religion but was plainly ascribed to sun worship.

Creeping Compromise

Some Gentile Christians, in an effort to separate themselves from the Jews, whom they thought of as evil because of their (the Jews) crucifixion of Jesus Christ, also began to venerate the first day of the week. By doing so, they thought they were distinguishing themselves from the wicked Jews. They found great comfort in the idea that they were honoring Jesus by commemorating His resurrection. Historian E.M. Chalmers writes: “These Gentile Christians of Rome and Alexandria began calling the first day of the week the Lord’s Day. This was not difficult for the pagans of the Roman Empire who were steeped in sun worship to accept, because they (the pagans) referred to their sun god as their Lord” (How Sunday came into the Christian Church, page 3).

The Scripture does say that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week. (Matthew 28:1–6). However, there is no command in all of Scripture that enjoins men to keep Sunday holy, thus substituting it for God’s blessed Sabbath day. Such a practice is a tradition of men. God did not make the first day holy. Since the God of Creation is the only One who can make anything holy, Sunday can never be a holy day. The day God made holy is the seventh day, today called Saturday, not the first, which is called Sunday (Genesis 2:2, 3).

The practice of sun worship became more intensely enforced and was codified into the state religion at the Church Council of Laodicea in 364 AD. The legislation read: “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday (Sabbath), but shall work on that Day: but the Lord’s Day, they shall especially honour; and as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from  Christ.” Sunday sacredness was progressively strengthened by subsequent church councils in 538 AD, 578 AD, and onward.

Such were the effects of Constantine’s purported conversion to the Christian faith. It brought in the lies and deceit of the devil and mingled them with the truth and holiness of God. Historian William D. Kileen writes: “Rites and ceremonies, of which Paul nor Peter never heard, crept silently into use and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. Church officers for whom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles that to them would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention and to be named apostolic” (The Ancient Church, page 26).

Walter Woodburn Hyde, another renowned historian, writes of this apostasy: “Remains of the struggle between the religion of Christianity and the religion of Mithraism are found in two institutions adopted from its rival by Christianity in the fourth century, the two Mithraic sacred days: December 25 dies natalis solis” (birthday of the sun) as the birthday of Jesus; and Sunday, the venerable day of the sun, as Constantine called it in his edict of 321 AD” (Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, page 60).

Neither the God of creation and the Sabbath, nor any of his holy prophets, and most assuredly, not Jesus Christ, endorsed such a change from God’s seventh-day Sabbath to the first day of the week, Sunday. Augustus Neander, another church historian, educates us in his classic account of church history: “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals was always only a human ordinance and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday” (The History of the Christian Religion and the Church, page 186).

Sunday sacredness is the modern manifestation of sun worship. Attempting to keep Sunday holy is not worshipping God, but rather dishonoring Him. The fact that untold millions do it does not make it right. It is dishonoring God by worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. Despite proclamations to the contrary, honoring Sunday will not alleviate the climate crisis or save the planet.

God’s Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, today called Saturday (Exodus 20:8–11). Sunday is the first day. The historians continue to reveal the source of the attempted change: “Is it not strange that Sunday is about universally observed when the sacred writings do not endorse it? Satan, the great counterfeiter worked through the mystery of iniquity to introduce a counterfeit sabbath to take the place  of the true Sabbath. Sunday stands side by side with Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whitsunday, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, All Souls day (Halloween), Christmas day and a host of other ecclesiastical feast days too numerous to mention. This array of Roman Catholic feast and fast days are all man made. None of them bear the Divine credentials of the Author of the inspired Word” (Historian M. E. Walsh).

Again, we read, “Sun worship was the earliest idolatry: ” (Fausset Bible Dictionary, page 666) “Sun worship was one of the oldest of components of the Roman religion” (The Cult of Sol Invictus – The Invincible Sun, page 26, Gaston H. Halsberge).

As the pagan Roman Empire disintegrated, it gave way to the European ecclesiastical enterprise called the Roman Catholic Church. Imperial Rome, having lost its political and military strength, turned to the ever growing and influential church to provide the glue needed to hold the empire together. The church, steeped in paganism while professing to be Christian, willingly provided the cohesion for the empire. That cohesive glue was its pagan practices, baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. It is not the true religion of Christ, but paganism in the name of Christianity.

Popular but False

The practice of Sunday sacredness, which is in effect sun worship and rooted in paganism, grew to become the mark of authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The following statements are evidence of that fact. They are proof positive of the Roman Catholic Church’s attempted change of God’s holy Sabbath day from the seventh day of the week to the first. They illustrate the significance that the Roman Catholic Church attaches to its alleged change.

• “Sunday is a Catholic Institution, and its claims 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” (The Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August 1900).

• The church challenges the protestant world: “Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible”(The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893).

• “If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should 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, February 10, 1920).

• “We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday” (A Doctrinal Catechism, Peter Geiermann, CSSR, 1957 edition, page 50).

• “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’ (Dies Dominica) was  chosen, not from any directions 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 become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy” (Saint Catherine Catholic Sentinel, May 21, 1995).

Who attempted to change God’s Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day? It was not God, the Creator, who instituted it. Certainly not the prophets or apostles who preached and taught it. Most assuredly, it was not our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who lived it and left it to us as an example to follow. The facts are clear. The evidence is overwhelming and unambiguous. It is the Roman Catholic Church that boasts, as she claims this dishonor.

As humans, we are created to worship. Creator God has placed that need within us all. With regards to Sabbath versus Sunday, our worship will be given either to the God of creation or to a man who claims to be God and thus boasts of changing God’s law. Notwithstanding the vigorous attempt to call Sunday Sabbath the seventh day of the week and not the first, it remains the holy and blessed Sabbath day of the Creator.

God has bequeathed to humanity His blessed Sabbath day. It is an inestimable gift to the greatest of all His creations. Nowhere in God’s holy word does He give any man permission or authority to change His word. Neither is there any place in the sacred record where any special significance is attached to Sunday, the first day of the week. The Holy Bible, the only rule of faith and practice for the Christian, does not in any way sanction Sunday sacredness.

In talking about the COP28 Climate Conference recently held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis declared: “May COP28 represent a historic step forward in responding with wisdom and foresight to these clear and present threats to the universal common good,” the Pope said, reaffirming that “the future of us all depends on the present that we now choose.” But what is this common good the Church of Rome is pushing upon the world?

The Roman Catholic Catechism gives the answer: “In respecting religious liberty and the common good of all, Christians should seek recognition of Sundays and the Church’s holy days as legal holidays. They have to give everyone a public example of prayer, respect, and joy and defend their traditions as a precious contribution to the spiritual life of society. If a country’s legislation or other reasons require work on Sunday, the day should nevertheless be lived as the day of our deliverance, which lets us share in this “festal gathering,” this “assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” (R.C. Catechism, Section 2188).

Ellen G. White, a nineteenth-century Christian writer cited as one of the top ten Bible commentators by the Smithsonian Institution as one of the top ten Bible commentators, foretold: “The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon men, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not. While the observance of the false sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator” (Great Controversy, E.G. White, p. . 605).

Yes, indeed, we must all choose. Either to fall to the deception of the Trojan horse called climate crisis or to render obedience and worship to the God of creation who promises: “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 66:22–23). There is no middle ground.

About: Follow Pastor Aubrey Duncan at his Unfolding Prophecy Page.