That city of Antioch was a center of the church’s assemblage out of Jerusalem; and, as the Elect met on the Sabbath for worship, they were hooted, and groaned at, and stoned, and called, as “a sect everywhere spoken against” (Acts xxviii. 22); and derided as followers of a new leader of a new religion, a fanatic multitude of Jews and Pagans, ignorant of ‘the Elohim of Israel,” as at this day. The word, Christianity, is never, as we said mentioned in the Bible, and that of Christian only three times. First in Antioch, as we said, A.D.41, after Christ had, nine years before, gone to glory. Secondly, by the ignorant, and lustful, and bloodthirsty Herod Agrippa, twenty years afterwards, A.D. 62---Herod the son of Esau, the hereditary enemy of Christ and His people, and who, ignorant of his guilty nature, said to Paul, “Almost thou persuades me to become a Christian” (Acts xxvi. 28); Herod who based his religion on his own debased carnal will as to whether he would be persuaded or not to change his soul, to know and love Elohim! That ignorance of Herod Agrippa and of the Pharisees of Antioch, Peter takes up to comfort the elect as “Partakers of the sufferings of Christ” in being called “Christians” (I Peter iv. 12-14); and not to mind the nickname which dishonored the Father, and the Holy Ghost whom He had exalted in the first chapter; but to delight in their own proper name--:”Elect” (chap. i. 1-3). The nickname, “Christian,” also dishonored Christ Himself as severing Him from the Trinity with whom he is joined throughout the Bible, and as though He had come in His own name—“Christ,” to set up a new sect, and call it after His own name—Christian, Christianity: the very thing Christ abjured in His conflict with the Jews—“I am come in the name of My Father, and ye receive me not” (John v). If Christ had called His disciples after His own name, Christians, and set up a church, and called it “Christianity,” then it would destroy the names of the church which the Holy Ghost had given it for four thousand years up to Christ’s coming; and He would, indeed, be the founder and leader of a new sect, with new ordinances and rites, as they falsely assert; but a rebel against Elohim, His Father, as well as being guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, who has quickened and given its names to the church.
The origin of the offensive nickname was, therefore in Esau’s progeny, Herod Agrippa; and the rowdt Jews at Antioch; and the devil took advantage of it, and thence raised the “heresy” that Christ founded a new religion, and “instituted” new ordinances, and rites, and sacraments or signs, because He explained to His twelve disciples, being Jews, that the Jewish Passover, its bread and its wine, till He came were types of His one Passover for His elect (I Cor. V.), and told them to carry it on as it had been from Moses:- the Jewish feast of Passover, its bread and its wine, till he came (till I come”), as He said, to destroy Jerusalem, the only “place” appointed for feasts of sight and sense (Deut. xvi.)—“No more at Jerusalem, nor yet in this mountain” (John iv.22); which thing He did forty years after (Matt. Xvi. 21; John xxi. 22; and I Cor. Xi. 19-28), and burned the city of the murderers, and left not one stone upon another, as related (Matt. Xxi. 33-41). Then “the letter” (Acts xv, xxi) was sent out to “the saints” as to ordinances—“As touching THE GENTILES WHICH BELIEVE WE HAVE WRITTEN AND CONCLUDED THAT THEY OBSERVE NO SUCH THING” (Acts xxi. 25), because Christ had nailed them to His cross (Eph. Ii, 15; Col. Ii. 14, etc.) The observance of ordinances, therefore, of a worldly sanctuary, its tables, and alters, and bread and wine, and official priests, their dresses—and paraphernalia, “victuals, shekels, and apparel” in their reformed and unreformed man-millinery, their “Lords suppers” and “Masses,” square and round bits of baker’s bread, makes up the name Christian, Christianity, as they carry it on in brick and stone buildings, in which Elohim declares He does not dwell—“Elohim that made the world….dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped by men’s hands” (Acts vii. 48; Acts xvii. 24). And, as Satan put out of sight the precious name “saints” to put in its stead the meaningless name, Christian, he drags forward and fills the face of the world with buildings of stone and brick, churches and cathedrals, musical and sensuous delights; so he puts out of sight, tramples underfoot the saints, the temples of the Holy Ghost”; and over whom, as he guards us from their sacrilege—“if any man pollute the temple of Elohim, him will Elohim destroy” (I Cor. Vi.)—What agreement hath the temple of Elohim with idols, For ye are the temple of the living Elohim” (2 Cor. Vi. 16)—“saints.” And not only do they rob us of our names, saints and temples of Elohim; but they actually and more impiously, these wicked Christians, christen their b rick and mortar synagogues of Satan, and give them the names of Popish dead saints---Cyprian, Dominic, and Frances, and Bridget, but mix up with them some of Elohim’s saints gone to glory—Jude, and James, and Paul, and Peter; and more wicked still, “All Saints,”—when it is “All devils” in their doctrine, and play acting, and lives: Wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, neither bound up, nor mollified with ointment. The whole head sick, and the whole heart faint, as was the Jewish carcass in its day, so in ours, the carcass dressed for the shambles—“Christianity,” as delineated throughout our book of Revelation, - “And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass and stone, and of wood; which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither they repented of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Rev/ ix. 20,21); as emphasized by Christ Himself—“Where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered together” to devour it (Matt xxiv. 28; Rev. xi 8) “The supper of the eternal justice of the great Elohim” (Rev. xix.).