Welsh Christians honour blood of the martyrs
By Charles Gardner, Special to ASSIST News Service
BANGOR-ON-DEE, WALES (ANS – April 27, 2017) – A group of British Christians have recently honoured the memory of 1,200 believers who paid with their lives for refusing to stop celebrating the Passover.
A special Passover celebration was held at Bangor-on-Dee in North Wales earlier this month as a memorial to all who have died in obedience to the Lord and as a sign that there are still those who refuse to bow the knee to any other god.
The event was organised by the Father’s House congregation at Shotton, Deeside.
Like their Jewish forbears of the early church, Christians in the British Isles continued to celebrate the biblical feasts until bishops from Rome – under orders from the emperors of the time – demanded they switch the Sabbath to Sunday and Passover to Easter, both in honour of pagan gods.
Christians under the influence of St Patrick and St Columba had long continued the tradition of marking the appointed feasts as outlined in Leviticus chapter 23, all of which point to Yeshua (Jesus, the Messiah), especially in the case of Passover which was clearly seen as fulfilled by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, who plainly stated that he had not come to abolish the Law (Old Testament commands) but to fulfil it (Matthew 5.17).
But from 644 AD onwards, after the Christian community established by St Columba on the Scottish island of Iona were duped into changing the days and names of the feasts, a new era had begun apparently designed to distance Christianity from its Hebraic roots.
And in 722 Rome tried to enforce this new practice on believers in Wales, but were met with stiff resistance as the Welsh Christians refused to comply. This led to the slaughter of 1,200 believers in one day at the village of Bangor on the banks of the River Dee.
Father’s House leader Mike Fryer said the enforced changes were “rooted in the anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism of the newly-appointed bishops of the Empire, put in place by the emperors themselves”.
It had started in 321 with Constantine ordering worship of the ‘Unconquerable Sun’ on Sunday and exchanging Passover for celebration of the fertility goddess Oestre.
But the unadulterated message of the gospel survived this spiritual onslaught and spread to faithful believers elsewhere including the British Isles, where they discreetly continued to keep the feasts for the next 500 years.
“Every credible historian and theologian accepts there was a strong anti-Semitic motive behind these mass murders and it is agreed that these motives were also the seeds of both the Inquisitions and the Holocaust,” said Mike. “Indeed Christendom has been anti-Semitic throughout its history.
“I have been teaching this aspect of the history of the early church in the British Isles for 15 years and our congregation has been celebrating Shabbat, Passover and all the biblical feasts.”
He said he had been inspired by the example of King Hezekiah who, by restoring true worship and the keeping of Passover, brought great blessing on Israel.
And he added: “We had a wonderful time at the celebration with maximum attendance and sadly having to refuse others who wanted to come because we were booked out.”
If you wish to know more, email fathershousecongregation@gmail.com
About the writer: Charles Gardner is a veteran Cape Town-born British journalist working on plans to launch a new UK national newspaper reporting and interpreting the news from a biblical perspective. With his South African forebears having had close links with the legendary devotional writer Andrew Murray, Charles is similarly determined to make an impact for Christ with his pen and has worked in the newspaper industry for more than 40 years. Part-Jewish, he is married to Linda, who takes the Christian message around many schools in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster. Charles is also author of Israel the Chosen (Amazon) and Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com. He has four children and nine grandchildren, and can be reached by phone on +44 (0) 1302 832987, or by e-mail at chazgardner@btinternet.com.
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