400 CE
Socrates "the Historian" says:
For although almost all Churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries [assumed by Catholics to be the Eucharist or Lord's Supper so-called] on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this.
~ Socrates Ecclesiastical History, Bk 5, Ch. 22, p. 289).
The Sabbath in Africa
Augustine of Hippo, a devout Sunday keeper, attested that the Sabbath was observed in the greater part of the Christian world (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), First Series, Vol. 1, pp. 353-354) and deplored the fact that in two neighboring Churches in Africa, one observed the seventh day Sabbath, while another fasted on it (Peter Heylyn, op. cit., p. 416).
The ancient Christians were very careful in the observation of Saturday, or the seventh day ... It is plain that all the Oriental churches, and the greatest part of the world, observed the Sabbath as a festival ... Athanasius likewise tells us that they held religious assemblies on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, Epiphanius says the same (Antiquities of the Christian Church, Vol. II, Bk. Xx, Ch. 3, Sec 1, 66. 1137,1136). Athanasius was a Binitarian heretic hence the "worship Jesus" comment. "Jesus" used as quotation.
The Sabbath in China
In the last half of the fourth century, the bishop of the Sabbath-keeping Abyssinian Church, Museus, visited China. Ambrose of Milan stated that Museus had traveled almost everywhere in the country of the Seres' (China) (Ambrose, De Moribus, Brachman-orium Opera Omnia, 1132, found in Migne, Patriologia Latina, Vol. 17, pp. 1131-1132). Mingana holds that the Abyssinian Museus traveled to Arabia, Persia, India and China in 370 (see also fn. 27 to Truth Triumphant, p. 308). Again, as Hellenism spread in the West, the "Way" spread in the East through the Netzarim.
The Sabbath Churches were established in Persia and the Tigris-Euphrates basin. They kept the Sabbath and paid tithes to their Churches (Realencyclopæie fur Protestantishe und Kirche, art. Nestorianer; see also Yule The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. 2, p. 409).
The St. Thomas Christians of India were never in communion with Rome.
They were Sabbath-keepers, as were those who broke off communion with Rome after the Council of Chalcedon, namely the Abyssinian, the Jacobites, the Maronites, and the Armenians and the Kurds, who kept the food laws and denied confession and purgatory (Schaff-Herzog The New Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge, art. Nestorians and Nestorianer).
402 CE
Pope Innocent (402-417) made fasting on the Sabbath a binding law in the Churches that obeyed him.
"Innocentius did ordaine the Saturday or Sabbath to be always fasted" (Peter Heylyn History of the Sabbath, Part 2, Ch. 2, London, 1636, p. 44).
409 CE
Vandals = destroyers of pagan Roman statues, hence , we get "Vandalism". Think about how your mind has been shaped and molded by the lords of this world.
The Vandals were iconoclastic and they despised the icons and idols of the fully emerged system in Rome and the syncretic adoption of the earlier pagan rites and statues. These they destroyed initially in Gaul in 409-411 and on arrival in Spain, in Africa and again in Rome. They were branded as pagan barbarians and from this we derive the word vandalism, but in fact they were iconoclasts who despised the idolatry of the syncretics. They would have destroyed Rome because of what they perceived as idolatry, but relented at the request of Leo on 2 June 455.
Dr. Peter Heylyn (History of the Sabbath, London 1636, Part 2, para. 5, pp. 73-74) notes that Milan was Sabbath-keeping from ancient times following the eastern practices.
417 CE
Milan, (historically Sabbath-keeping) ceases to be the centre of resolution of dispute when Pope Zosimus makes Patrocoles, bishop of Arles, his vicar or delegate in Gaul.
443 CE
The Alemanni Germans (German Swiss) settled in Alsace.
Attila of the Huns died and Theodoric II (453-466) became king of the Visigoths, until he was murdered by his brother Eric (466-484), who succeeded him. This event was followed by the sack of Rome in 455 by the Vandals. The fact of the matter was that the Vandals were Unitarians. They destroyed the pagan idols given so-called Christian names considering them an abomination and breach of the second commandment. The term Vandalism comes from this act. The destruction was in fact the biblical exercise of power in destruction of heathen idols.
474 CE
Suppression of the Eastern Sects
Zeno becames Eastern Roman Emperor (474-491). The Trinitarian schools were more extensively developed in the Eastern empire from this time, with the Neo-Platonist model being established, by Proclus becoming head of the Platonic academy in Athens in 476. The Trinitarian system had been formalized with the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Egyptian Coptic Divisions date from this time. In 483 Pope Simplicius was succeeded by Felix III (-492). In 484 his excommunication of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople led to the first schism of the Western and Eastern Trinitarian churches (484-519).
481 CE
The revolt of Vahan Mamikonian took place from 481-484 and this success secured religious and political freedom for Armenia. This freedom also appears instrumental in helping the Sabbath-keeping church become established with the Paulicians in the Taurus Mountains. The Paulicians were still to be found in the east in the nineteenth century. This group was still operational in the twentieth century. Their descendants, numbering a million or more, were exterminated in the area of Armenia after the First World War. There were perhaps between a million and two million Sabbatarians exterminated after the outlawing of Bektashi Islam after 1927. This process of extermination continued up on through the Holocaust in Europe and on to 1953 and the death of Stalin.
489 CE
The Eastern Emperor Zeno destroyed the Nestorian Christian school at Edessa and built the church of St. Symeon Stylites around his pillar. In 491 the Armenian Church severed connection with Byzantium and Rome and in 498 the Nestorians settled in Nisibis in Persia. The church that settled from Jerusalem in Armenia was not Trinitarian Diphysite and it was Sabbath-keeping. It also was the repository, at Edessa, of the Aramaic texts and the Peshitta version of the Bible, until it was suppressed. The Sabbath was spread as far away as China by the early church from the east. This early church that is referred to is clearly the Netzarim who thrived and spread the Word outside the domination of the Roman Empire in the West.
498 CE
The Nestorians settle in Nisibis in Persia.
499 CE
The synod of Rome issued a decree on papal elections and, in 500, incense was introduced into the Trinitarian church services for the first time in any Christian church.
510 CE
Provence, the south-eastern part of France, went to the Italian Ostrogoths until 563. These facts explain why the Sabbatati were all over southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy. Christianity observed the Sabbath up until the fifth century and at the time of Jerome (ca. 420) the devoutest Christian did ordinary work on Sunday (Dr. White bishop of Ely, Treatise of the Sabbath Day, p. 219; cf. Augustine of Hippo NPNF First Series, Vol. 1, pp. 353-354)
523 CE
Massacre of Arab Christians in Najran and Himyar (Arabia) by Jewish Arab king.
527 CE
Justinian I became Byzantine Emperor (to 565) and a series of reverses and fluctuations were to occur for the Goths and Vandals and hence the Unitarian church over the period up until 590. It is the most important turn of European history that the Franks became Trinitarians, as this fact helped to establish the Catholic Church in Europe. Without the Franks they would have been nothing.
529 CE
Justinian closed the 1,000-year old Greek school of philosophy at Athens. This action was allegedly directed at Paganism, but it forced the syncretisation of the Neo-Platonists and effectively forced the professors to go to Persia and Syria where, from the next year onwards under Chosroes I (531-579), Persia reached new heights of learning. This was to move the centre of learning to what was to become the Islamic world, when it formed in the next century in reaction to the Trinitarian advances of Constantinople.
