FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
THE PROPHESIED ‘FALLING AWAY’ OF THE CHURCH AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
“The terrible nature of these sensual gratifications of this pagan festivals, in which the leaders of the Church now allowed to members to indulge, a person can hardly imagine TILL the sickening facts are spread before one’s eyes by Livy in (Hist. lib. xxxix, chap. 9-17). The learned Englishman, F.A.S, in his ‘Second Annals,’ Vol. 3, on the ‘Gentile Nations,’ pp. 487-489, says that this ‘most revolting and abandoned villainy’ was so general, that when the Roman Senate has to proceed against its worst features, ‘Rome was almost deserted, so many persons, feeling themselves implicated in the proceedings, sought safety in flight.’
“[Edwarson writes]: ‘A church that will take in members, WITHOUT CONVERSION, and then allow them to CONTINUE in the most putrid corruption, must have LOST all respect for MORALITY (not to say CHRISTIANITY), and cannot be in possession of divine power of the Gospel: which CHANGES the hearts and lives of people.(Rom. 1:16; 2 Cor. 5:17.)
“The apostle Paul had foretold this ‘falling away’ of the Church. (Acts 20: 28-30; 2 Thess. 2:1-7.) And it was during this fallen condition that the Church CHANGED its weekly rest day from the Sabbath to the Sunday.
“Dr. N. Summerbell says: ‘The Roman Church had totally apostatized….It reversed the Fourth Commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God’s word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday.’- ‘The Christian Church,’ p. 415. Cincinnati: 1873. (From “Facts of Faith, C. Edwardson, pp. 104, 105.
Only “truth as it is in Jesus” can truly “set us free” from the power is sin and the darkness of error and ignorance: this is the true liberty and victory in Christ abiding in the soul!
Bless all, NMF