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New Testament to be celebrated by the Church in memory of His Passion on ... [any other day], but
on the fourteenth" (Equal. History, III, 25).

Bede thus reiterates what the Bible itself plainly tells us -- that Christ partook of the old
Passover and then substituted the New Testament symbols of the bread and wine on the 15th of the
first month.

The custom of keeping the New Testament Passover, after the example of Christ and John,
persisted among isolated groups for centuries. Bede tells us that some faithful were still keeping it
in Scotland in the 7th century! (II, 19.)

The Lord's Supper on Saturday!

Remember that up to this point the Churches of God universally understood that Jesus rose
on the third day -- on the first day of the week -- shortly after sunrise.

With the rejection of God's Sacred Calendar by many in the professing Christian world, the
many now began to do what seemed right to them. Not only did they begin to miscalculate the an-
nual occurrence of the Passover, but in the East they began to observe the Passover weekly on the
Roman day of Saturday, believe it or not! Here is the proof:

For over 200 years this custom was a universal practice of the Eastern churches. The
church historian Socrates wrote in his Ecclesiastical History, book V, chapter 22: "While there-
fore some in Asia Minor observed the day above-mentioned [he means that some continued to ob-
serve the Passover on the 15th of Nisan as the apostles did] others in the East kept this feast on the
Sabbath [Saturday on the Roman Calendar] indeed ...."

So universal was the custom of observing the "Lord's Supper" on Saturday that he contin-
ued to write: "For although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred myster-
ies on the sabbath [Saturday] of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on
account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this."

Did you catch the real significance of this quotation?

The Passover was transformed from an annual memorial in memory of the death of Christ
into a weekly memorial in honor of resurrection of the "hidden god" -- Saturn, from which Satur-
day derives its name. These weekly "passovers" were called the "sacred mysteries." A part of
those ancient mysteries was later the festival of Easter.

But Easter did not enter suddenly. It entered slowly, under the pretext of being a Christian
custom.

Many faithful were still observing the practices of the original true Church. Others began to
hold the "sacred mysteries" every Saturday to honor, as they thought, the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.

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