If you thought this post was a comparison between Christianity and Catholicism, I am sorry. It is not. The reason for this post is to show the influence that Catholicism had — and has — on what we practice as Christianity today, as I have observed on the road Yahweh has sent me on. I keep meeting people, followers, who insist time after time that what they are doing is right. It seems strange to me that what was right and true for the Messiah is no longer right. Strange times we live in. What happened to the faith and the good news that was once Christianity?

Where do I start? The Messiah was born, lived, and died a Jew. So why do we practice a religion that has done everything possible to distance itself from Judaism — separation from what the Messiah was, to become what we are today? I know many of you do not believe what I am saying. Look at the facts:

  1. We celebrate holidays that are not found in the Word.
  2. We go to church on the first day of the week, not the seventh.
  3. We have renamed — and in one case erased — the most important names in the Word.
  4. We have rewritten verses in the Word.

These are just a few of the things Yahweh has shown me on this road, and I am sure they are only the beginning. One clarification before I go on: I am not a scholar of theology. I am a follower of Yahshua Messiah, nothing more. So here goes.

The so-called Christian holidays

I have looked in several versions of the Word, and I have yet to find one scripture authorizing a follower of the Messiah to celebrate any of them. But when I researched the origins of these holidays, I was astonished. They all have pagan roots — yes, Christmas and Easter included. So why do we celebrate pagan holidays? There are scriptures that prohibit these very practices, yet churches and Christians alike celebrate them. Preachers teach them. The Messiah did NOT. So why do His followers? It should make you wonder who is leading us, and who we are following.

The first day of the week?

Sunday is the first day of the week, not the last. If you do not believe me, look at your calendar — what day sits on the left? Sunday. The sanctified day was described in Genesis:

"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." (Genesis 2:2-3)

Now — I have to correct something I wrote years ago. I once said Constantine designated Sunday as the day of worship, and even called him pope. That was wrong, and I will not repeat it. Constantine was never pope — he was the Roman emperor, and he was not even baptized until he was dying. Here is what is actually true, and it is bad enough without exaggeration.

Christians were already gathering on Sunday more than a century before Constantine. Justin Martyr, writing around 155 AD — over 150 years before Constantine — described it plainly: "on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place," for reading, teaching, prayer, and the breaking of bread. He said they did it because it was the day of creation and the day the Messiah rose. So no — Constantine did not invent Sunday worship.

What Constantine did do was imperialize it. In 321 AD he made Sunday an official civil day of rest across the empire, and at Nicaea in 325 he set the church's calendar by imperial decree. He took a practice of the church and made it the law of Rome — and in the centuries that followed, Rome made Sunday observance a mark of its authority, while the seventh-day Sabbath commanded in Genesis was pushed aside. That is the real story, and it needs no embellishment.

Now, the verses people quote for Sunday. Let us look at them honestly.

Revelation 1:10 — "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." Was John talking about Sunday, or about the Day of the Lord — the day of judgment he spends the whole book describing? Scholars disagree, and the text does not settle it. A verse this ambiguous cannot carry the weight of moving God's sanctified day.

Acts 20:7 — "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them." Read the whole passage. This was an evening farewell meeting — Paul was leaving the next morning — and by Jewish reckoning the evening of the first day was Saturday night. One farewell gathering is not a weekly institution.

1 Corinthians 16:2 — "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store." Lay by him — at home. This was private saving for the Jerusalem collection, not a Sunday offering plate. It proves the first day was a convenient day to set money aside. Nothing more.

So here is where it stands: the early church did gather on the first day, and no verse forbids it. But no verse commands the change either. Genesis 2:3 says God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Find me the verse that un-blesses it. I will wait.

The names

Let us talk about what happened to the names — and here I need to be precise, because precision matters when you are handling Yahweh's Word.

Every language transliterates names. That is normal. Yeshua becomes Iēsous in Greek becomes Jesus in English, the same way Moshe becomes Moses. Transliteration is not the crime. So I will not make the old argument about the letter J as if it proves something by itself — it proves too much, since Mariam and Yosef are English renderings too.

The crime is replacement and erasure. And the biggest one is this: the Father's name — YHWH, Yahweh — appears nearly 6,800 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Open almost any English Bible and count how many times you see it. Nearly zero. It was replaced with "LORD" in small capitals, as if the name did not matter. But Joel 2:32 says "whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered" — and Paul quotes it in Romans 10:13. Whose name? The name that was removed. You cannot call on a name you were never told.

And the Messiah's mother: her name was not the Roman-sounding "Mary." It was Miryam — Hebrew — which came into English through the Greek Maria. Small thing? Maybe. But it is one more step in the same direction: away from the Hebrew roots, toward Rome.

Rewritten verses

I suppose the makers of the modern Bibles we use today forgot the warning near the end of the Book:

"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Revelation 22:19)

That verse is clear: do not mess with Yahweh's Word. When verses are changed or rewritten, the meaning changes. Some versions add words "to make it easier to understand." Really? The Word survived shepherds, fishermen, and persecution. It does not need to be dumbed down — it needs to be read, in full, as written. Check everything against your own Bible. That is all I have ever asked.