All over Vanderbijlpark there are posters equating the Pope with the Antichrist ("666"). It’s the usual suspects: the Seventh-Day Adventists - A fundamentalist church started recently in America. Annoying as this can be we must remember the words of the first Pope - St Peter

"Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence."  (1 Peter 3:15).

The Signs of the Times, they are a-changing - but not in Vanderbijlpark!

In the September 1997 issue of the magazine Signs of the Times, there is an article entitled "John Paul’s Global Vision."

The magazine is well named because it is indeed a sign of the times when this South African Seventh-day Adventist publication presents an assessment of the pope which is fair and respectful.

The finely illustrated article is subtitled "The growing strength of Catholicism," and its author, Samuele Bacchiocchi, believes that the new friendliness between Protestants and Catholics is due to Pope John Paul’s openness and tolerance to non-Catholics, his strong stand for certain fundamental doctrines of biblical faith, and his advocacy of social justice, especially in respect of the poor and downtrodden. (Southern Cross 7/9/97)

Some religious organizations (Seventh-Day Adventists, Seventh-Day Baptists, and certain others) claim that Christians must not worship on Sunday but on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. They claim that, at some unnamed time after the apostolic age, the Church "changed" the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.

However, passages from Scripture such as Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, Colossians 2:16-17, and Revelation 1:10 indicate that, even during New Testament times, the Sabbath is no longer binding and that Christians are to worship on the Lord’s day, Sunday, instead.

The early Church Fathers compared the observance of the Sabbath to the observance of the rite of circumcision, and from that they demonstrated that if the apostles abolished circumcision (Galatians 5:1-6), so also the observance of the Sabbath must have been abolished. The following quotations show that the first Christians understood this principle and gathered for worship on Sunday. (For more info see www.catholicanswers.com)

"But every Lord’s day ... gather yourselves together and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned." (Didache 14 [A.D.70])

"THERE ARE NOT A HUNDRED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD THAT HATE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, BUT THERE ARE THOUSANDS WHO HATE WHAT THEY MISTAKENLY BELIEVE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TO BE."

Bishop Fulton Sheen of New York