The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2021 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 101

Satan and the Sabbath

The Greek general, Antiochus Epiphanes, was encircled.

He who was called Epiphanes – “God Manifest,” or “God on display” – sheepishly stood and watched while a Roman drew a circle around him in the dirt!

Antiochus was in Alexandria, Egypt in 168 BCE, ready to conquer Egypt. The Roman Senate sent a decree telling him to stop. They wanted Egypt for themselves. A Roman emissary, Popillius, drew that circle around Antiochus and told him not to leave it until he gave an answer to Rome.

“Antiochus having read the decree, told Popillius he would consult with his friends about it, and speedily give him the answer they should advise; but Popillius, insisting on an immediate answer, forthwith drew a circle round him in the sand with the staff which he had in his hand, and required him to give his answer before he stirred out of that circle; at which strange and peremptory way of proceeding Antiochus being startled, after a little hesitation, yielded to it, and told the ambassador, that he would obey the command of the Senate.” Prideaux’s Connexion, part 2, book 3

After that, Antiochus got out of the circle and then got out of Egypt and instead attacked Judah and Jerusalem. That was okay with Rome.

Antiochus killed tens of thousands of Jews and forbid them to observe the Sabbath, among other things. He also set up a statue of Zeus and sacrificed a pig in the Temple.

In 135 CE, Roman emperor Hadrian did pretty much the same thing. After the Bar Kochba rebellion, Hadrian plowed Jerusalem, built a new Jerusalem with a different name, set up an idol of Jupiter, and forbid the observance of the Sabbath, among other things.

So using worldly rulers Antiochus and Hadrian that was Satan attacking the Sabbath.

Roman Christianity also attacked the Sabbath from early times, especially from the time of Constantine. This has resulted in a Christianity that believes that a Christian has to break the Ten Commandments to be saved. Anyone who seeks to obey the Commandments, as with the Sabbath, is said to be trying to earn his salvation and therefore doomed to hell.

As in this typical statement from one Christian church.

https://ibtministries.org/viewcourse.php?crid=108
Some today, like the Judaizers of Paul’s day, tell us we must keep the Law of Moses to be saved. Those who leave the Gospel of Christ for the Law have fallen from grace (Galatians 5:4; Hebrews 3:12). No one can be justified by keeping the Law or any part of it such as offering animal sacrifices, keeping Jewish feast days, burning incense, using instrumental music in worship, keeping the sabbath, etc. Salvation is in Jesus Christ for all upon one basis – obedience to the faith of Christ!

Notice several false premises there.

The first false premise:

Sabbath keeping Christians teach that “we must keep the Law of Moses to be saved.”

That’s totally false. Judaism teaches the law of Moses, and some Messianic Christians try to retain parts of the law of Moses, not with sacrifices but with circumcision and various adornments. Most Christian Sabbath keepers, though, focus on the law of God, which is the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments. They absolutely do not teach keeping the law of Moses. To whatever degree, they teach obeying the law of God.

The second false premise:

Since we can’t be justified by our own obedience to the Ten Commandments, we should break the Ten Commandments.

The statement that “No one can be justified by keeping the Law or any part of it…” is totally true. Yet mainstream Christianity reasons that since they can’t be justified by their own Commandment keeping, they shouldn’t obey the Commandments at all.

Paul wrote much about not being justified before God by our own obedience. We can only be justified by the sacrifice of Yeshua. But since we can’t be justified by our own disobedience to the law, does that mean we should purposely disobey the Commandments?

Paul faced that argument in his time, and he answered it in the strongest language.

Rom 3:28-31 (WEB)
28) We maintain therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
29) Or is God the God of Jews only? Isn’t he the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also,
30) since indeed there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith, and the uncircumcised through faith.
31) Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! No, we establish the law.

Churches say, as we quoted above, that the “faith of Christ” nullifies the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, Paul clearly says that faith establishes the law.

How does faith establish the law?

Rom 6
1) What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2) May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
3) Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Yeshua were baptized into his death?
4) We were buried therefore with him through baptism to death, that just like Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

The faith of Christ is accepting the sacrifice and death of the perfectly obedient Messiah. Then by His spirit we strive to live an obedient life, following the example of Yeshua, obeying the Commandments. Thus we establish the law.

Rom 6:12-15 (WEB)
12) Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13) Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14) For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
15) What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be!

What is sin?

Romish Christianity cannot define sin. They say sin is missing the mark. What mark? Without the Ten Commandments, you ain’t got no mark.

As the early English translations so clearly put it, “sin is the transgression of the law,” 1 John 3:4. Without that definition, sin is not definable. Sin is breaking the Ten Commandments. And Paul said that breaking the Commandments is not to have dominion over us.

Gracism teaches that because Christians are under grace, they are free to disobey God’s Commandments. That means they are free to sin. But Paul said the opposite – Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be!

We receive God’s favor, commonly translated as grace, only because our sins have been forgiven. Our sins – Commandment breaking – had cut us off from God. Should we have our sins forgiven just so we can continue sinning? No. That’s not God’s plan. That’s Satan’s deception.

Why was Yeshua justified before God the Father in the first place?

He was justified by His perfect obedience to the Ten Commandments. He didn’t sin.

Why are we not of ourselves justified before God?

Because we have disobeyed the Ten Commandments. We have all sinned.

Rom 3:23 (WEB)
23) for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;

Yet the common Christian belief is that since we cannot be justified because of our disobedience to God’s Commandments, we should keep breaking them. They say that salvation is in Christ, then they refuse to follow His example of obeying the Commandments. They claim to follow Paul but are doing the opposite of what Paul taught.

Rom 6
1) What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2) May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?

We cannot be justified by our own obedience because none have been obedient. We can be made just before God only by Christ who was the only one who was obedient. With His help, we strive to follow His example of obeying the Ten Commandments. We do not want to follow the example of Satan, the great Commandment breaker.

The third false premise:

Since the Ten Commandments were included in the law of Moses, and since the law of Moses is ended, everything that was in the law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, is ended.

The law of Moses included the Ten Commandments. It also included reminders not to break the Commandments, reminders such as sacrifices, circumcision, and fringes. The law of Moses also included statutes based on the Commandments for the nation of Israel at that time.

Deut 30:15-16 (WEB)
15) Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil;
16) in that I command you this day to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that Yahweh your God may bless you in the land where you go in to possess it.

The Law of Moses was based on obeying the Ten Commandments. So what was the problem with it?

The people didn’t obey. Old Covenant Israel broke the Commandments.

After Judah returned from their Babylonian captivity, Nehemiah said this in a prayer.

Neh 9:13-17 (WEB)
13) “You came down also on Mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments,
14) and made known to them your holy Sabbath, and commanded them commandments, and statutes, and a law, by Moses your servant,
15) and gave them bread from the sky for their hunger, and brought forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and commanded them that they should go in to possess the land which you had sworn to give them.
16) “But they and our fathers dealt proudly and hardened their neck, didn’t listen to your commandments,
17) and refused to obey, neither were they mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and didn’t forsake them.

26) “Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against you, and cast your law behind their back, and killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies.

29) and testified against them, that you might bring them again to your law. Yet they dealt proudly, and didn’t listen to your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances, (which if a man does, he shall live in them), turned their backs, stiffened their neck, and would not hear.

33) However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly;
34) neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them.

Over and over in that prayer, Nehemiah admitted the sins of his people. Judah broke the Ten Commandments. That was the problem with the Old Covenant. So what needed to be changed?

The Ten Commandments or breaking the Ten Commandments?

Breaking the Commandments needed to be changed.

Did everything in the law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, end with the New Covenant?

No. The two great commandments that Christ cited in Matthew 22 were from the law of Moses.

Deut 6 (WEB)
4) Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one:
5) and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Lev 19 (WEB)
18) “‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh.

The two great commandments did not end. They are the basis for a Christian life. Yet they were in the law of Moses.

Look at several more Old Covenant examples that have to be included in the New Covenant.

Exod 22 (WEB)
22) “You shall not take advantage of any widow or fatherless child.

Can a follower of Christ take advantage of a widow or orphan? No? Then that’s in the New Covenant.

Lev 18:21-23 (WEB)
21) “‘You shall not give any of your children to sacrifice to Molech; neither shall you profane the name of your God: I am Yahweh.
22) “‘You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is detestable.
23) “‘You shall not lie with any animal to defile yourself with it; neither shall any woman give herself to an animal, to lie down with it: it is a perversion.

All those principles and more in the law of Moses also apply in the New Covenant. The premise that everything in the law of Moses is ended is enormously false. Such a belief ultimately does away with Yahweh God Himself, because after all, He was the other party in the Old Covenant.

Third false premise –

Modern Christianity equates the Ten Commandments, such as the Sabbath, with reminders and statutes pointing to the Ten Commandments, such as sacrifices, circumcision, and physical adornments.

Christianity throws out the baby with the bath water. Reminders and statutes that pointed to the Commandments were ended because they did not lead to obeying the Commandments. Common Christian theology throws out those futile reminders to obey the Commandments and then throws out the Commandments with them.

That kinda misses the point.

Circumcision and sacrifices were ended precisely because they did not lead to obeying the Ten Commandments. Circumcision was changed from fleshly to spiritual circumcision of the heart. Why do followers of Yeshua need to be circumcised in the heart? So they will obey the Ten Commandments.

Rom 2:26-29 (American KJV)
26) Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?
27) And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfill the law, judge you, who by the letter and circumcision do transgress the law?
28) For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29) But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

So followers of Yeshua need to be circumcised spiritually so they will obey the Ten Commandments in the law.

When Christians say we don’t have to obey the Commandments, and then go around breaking them, they’re right back where Old Covenant Israel was. Ah, but Christians say that God restated nine of the Ten Commandments in the New Testament.

If the Ten Commandments were so bad that they had to be destroyed, why would God want to restate them?

What an absurd teaching – that the Ten Commandments were so evil that the Son of God destroyed them all. Then He restated nine of them. Was He confused?

What’s going on here?

This is just, self-willed, self-deceiving hearts not wanting to obey what Yahweh wrote and spoke. Instead they want to pick and choose what they will obey. This is the real theological problem and it’s not theology at all. It’s human nature.

The human heart – all of us – naturally want to live contrary to the law of the Twelve Commandments, the two great commandments and the Ten Commandments. We want to be like the world, accepted by the world, part of the world. But we don’t want to admit that to ourselves, so we find ways to religiously disobey.

So all those are multiple false premises in that common church position of spurning God’s Commandments. Yet the reality is so simple. Follow Christ who obeyed the Ten Commandments. Don’t follow Satan who broke them.

The law of God is the red light of life. It tells us when to stop. It doesn’t give us the power to stop sinning. It just tells us what sin is. “By the law is the knowledge of sin,” Romans 3:20, AKJV.

And all of this about not wanting to obey the Ten Commandments applies particularly to the Sabbath Commandment.

America today is increasingly a lawless society, and this includes people literally running red lights in traffic. Some just don’t want to be bothered with having to stop at red lights. This is also increasingly true for people with God’s red light, the Ten Commandments. People don’t want to be bothered with having to stop, especially with the Sabbath, where the point of the Commandment is to –

Stop.

Stop doing what you do on the other six common days. Just rest and delight in your Creator.

Satan, using Antiochus and Hadrian, attacked the Sabbath by forbidding it. The Roman Church repeatedly attacked the Sabbath, calling it Jewish. The Sabbath has been attacked all over the world and all down through the ages. Therefore we will assume that in the end time, Satan will continue attacking the Sabbath and those attacks will increase.

Why?

Because the Sabbath is a memorial to Yahweh the Creator. Satan hates the Creator, even though Satan is part of that creation. Thus Satan hates the seventh day Sabbath.

The Sabbath is extremely important –

Important to Yahweh, as the memorial of the Creator and a sign of His people, a sign that endures through the ages;

Important to Satan, as the memorial of Yahweh, to be destroyed along with the rest of God’s Commandments.

And at the last time, the focus on the Sabbath will increase between Yahweh and Satan.

The end time world ruler is known as the “lawless one.”

2Thess 2:7-8 (WEB)
7) For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way.
8) Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth, and destroy by the manifestation of his coming;

The lawless one will not obey the Sabbath law. The Sabbath is a signature sign of obedient Christians and we will not expect the lawless one to obey it. Constantine sought to unify his empire by banning the Sabbath. The Roman Church followed that up by doing the same thing, for centuries. Today the mainstream Christian church, all over the world, despises the Sabbath. So, just as has been done down through the centuries, in the last century, we expect the lawless one to do the same and attack the Sabbath.

But how?

This lawless one apparently will sit in the Temple rebuilt by Jews, who are very assiduous about their “Sabbath keeping,” according to their own hundreds of rabbi rules, which is not really Sabbath keeping at all. Perhaps Satan will do as with Antiochus and Hadrian, and the lawless and the worldwide global church will kick the Jews out of the temple they built, will ban the Sabbaths and Feasts as before, and will declare a new worldwide religion based on “love,” where every day is a sabbath.

Or perhaps the Jews will accept all other religious beliefs, including those of the five brimstoned cities of the Jordan plain, as long as the worldwide government allows the Jews to practice their man-made rabbi religion. In the end time worldwide religion that they will all be part of, the theme is worldwide unity, and we see this developing today. Constantine’s goal of total unity in politics and religion will almost come to pass. Jews at that time can say that anti-Sabbath people are okay and anti-Sabbath people can say that Jews are okay, and they will all be following the same accepted overall religion of ‘unity in the empire’ and tolerance. This will be the end time version of the old Roman religion, where all religions are included, all are accepted and none are allowed out. Christians who reject the Gaymorrah religion would be persecuted both by the Roman religion and by Judaism, as happened in history.

And that is what seems most likely, based on past history.

But the end time is a time of the greatest deception ever, by the great deceiver who deceives the whole world. It may be that the scenarios just described are a bit too easy to figure out. How can Satan deceive the people who are least likely to be deceived, those who know about Antiochus and Hadrian and the lawless worldwide church?

How can Satan deceive those people?

Talk of a new temple today brings the Feasts and Sabbath to the center of world attention. The purpose of the Feasts and Sabbath is to worship Yahweh God Almighty.

To worship any other god on the seventh day Sabbath is not observing Yahweh’s Sabbath.

The Sabbath was set apart by the Creator to remember the Creator. To worship another god on the Sabbath is to break the Sabbath – even if it’s called “observing the seventh day Sabbath.”

The most important temple times are the Sabbath and Feasts. If the lawless one sits in the temple of God, as God, does that mean some type of false Sabbath and Feast observance directed to that lawless one, who sits in the temple of God, as God? That would be not to worship Yahweh but to worship Satan, yet on Yahweh’s holy days. Would almost all people be deceived by that, even the most elect, thinking they’re worshiping Yahweh on His holy days in His Temple, but instead worshiping Satan?

So the lawless one may kick the Jews out of their temple and persecute them. The lawless one may join the Jews in their temple, in a worldwide tolerance religion. The lawless one who claims to be god may be worshipped as Yahweh God, on the seventh day Sabbath. However it develops, we can be sure that this end time religion will seem divine, even to many of those who should know better.

Matt 24:23-24 (ISV)
23) “At that time, if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’, don’t believe it,
24) because false messiahs and false prophets will appear and display great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.