W. Robert Godfrey

And the Tsars used Byzantine eagles as the signs of their empire.

And the word Tsar is derived from Caesar, Caesar, the ancient Roman title.

So there's a kind of Roman Empire that survives down until 1917.

And then...

In one of the curious and little reported elements of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler provided for the coronation garb of the Holy Roman Emperor to be taken from Vienna and brought to Nuremberg, where it was to be enshrined and to give some validity to the Third Reich, to the Third Empire.

There were still these remnants of Roman imperial dignity being claimed down until 1945.

That was the year I was born, and no, I won't go there, that I'm any continuation.

But it shows what a long shadow this ideal of a Roman Empire cast on the West, and the idea of being connected, of still having some connection with that great, noble, civilizing experiment.

That's what Rome said of itself.

Rome was eternal.

It seemed almost to manage it.

But Rome was civilizing.

Rome brought order to the barbarians.

And that was something of an ideal that still captured Christians and still, particularly in the Middle Ages, was a powerful ideal that continued to direct and attract the thought of Christian people.

Revelation, chapter 1, verse 10.

There we read that John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.

There are lots of days, but there's a special day that in a special way belongs to the Lord, just as the Lord's Supper in a special way belongs to the Lord.

If all days are alike, no one day can be a Lord's day.

What positively does the New Testament say that bears on the question of the day of Christian worship and the relationship of Sunday to the fourth commandment?

And obviously, if this were an easy issue, we wouldn't be having this discussion.