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Who Was St. Patrick?
Posted : 11 Apr, 2010 10:25 AM
�And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.� (2 Timothy 4:4)
Did you know that Saint Patrick's name at birth was Maewyn Succat? He was born somewhere near the end of the fourth century and took on the name Patrick or Patricus, after he became a priest, much later in his life. At the age of sixteen Maewyn Succat was kidnapped from his native land of Britain, by a band pirates, and sold into slavery in Ireland. Maewyn worked as a shepherd and turned to religion for solace. After six long years of slavery he escaped to the northern coast of Gaul.
March 17 is widely celebrated as St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick according to the Roman Catholics, is the patron saint of Ireland, the Emerald Island. And so it is, green has come to be associated with St. Patrick. Many adults use this occasion to engage in reveling and drinking, green beer and whiskey being the accepted way to celebrate Irish history.
The Truth of history however is not well known. St. Patrick was not Irish, but a Scottish missionary to Ireland instead. He was not a Sunday keeping Roman Catholic Trinitarian, but a Sabbath-keeper who was opposed to the Trinity concept. Seventh Day Baptists have long been aware of the facts concerning St. Patrick. The book, Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America (1910), reports that the Christianity in Ireland was founded soon after the death of Christ by disciples of the Asian Churches. Columba's planting of a Sabbath-keeping community in the island of Iona was the result of Patrick's ministry. Celtic Ireland was unattached to Rome until no earlier than 1155. Some Irish Sabbath-keepers remained until the nineteenth century.
At the time of his capture, Succat was unconvinced about following Jesus. By the age of 15, the troubled boy was given to the earthly pleasures of lust, hate, and deceit, and he ignored the teachings of his father, a respected church leader. Succat believed this selfish incredulity doomed him, albeit temporarily: �It was according to our deserts, because we drew back from God and kept not His precepts.�
But during his six years of harsh captivity, wearing rags for clothing and with minimal shelter from pounding rains and frigid nights, he soon gave his life to God. During long evenings of endless hunger and immense suffering, he would hear the voice of his mother and father urging him to follow Jesus. Finally, he began to listen rather than just hear them. And at last, he realized there was something more to life than just himself.
Two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only universally accepted details of his life. When he was about 16 he was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the Church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he worked.
"The place of his birth was Bonnaven, which lay between the Scottish towns Dumbarton and Glasgow, and was then reckoned to the province of Britain. This village, in memory of Patricius, received the name of Kil-Patrick or Kirk-Patrick. His father, a deacon in the village church, gave him a careful education." (Dr. August Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, Vol. II, p.122. Boston: 1855).
"Patrick himself writes in his Confession: 'I, Patrick, ...had Calpornius for my father, a deacon, a son of the late Potitus, the presbyter, who dwelt in the village of Banavan....I was captured. I was almost sixteen years of age...and taken to Ireland in captivity with many thousand men.'" (William Cathcart, D. D., The Ancient British and Irish Churches, p.127).
"Patrick, a son of a Christian family in southern Scotland, was carried off to Ireland by pirates about 376 A. D. Here, in slavery, he gave his heart to God and, after six years of servitude, escaped, returning to his home in Scotland. But he could not forget the spiritual need of these poor heathen, and after ten years he returned to Ireland as a missionary of the Celtic church." (ibid, p. 70).
According to the Seventh-day Adventist historian, Leslie Hardinge, in his book "The Celtic Church in Britain", Patrick (ca. 387-463) evangelized Ireland, and founded over 300 churches and baptized over 120,000 converts. However, Christianity existed in Ireland long before Patrick's time. Many Celtic believers in Ireland were Arians (anti-Trinitarian). They kept the Sabbath from sundown to sundown. They were known to be Quartodecimans, observers of the annual Christian Passover once a year, on the fourteenth day of the first month in the spring. They also eschewed unclean meats. Their ministry had to be recognized, even by outsiders, to be honest and above reproach, and celibacy was not practiced until later times. Celtic services included reciting the Decalogue.
Against the grain of the day�s religious teachings, the Celtic Church not only kept the Sabbath as holy, they followed God�s health laws and practiced baptism by immersion. They believed God�s Law was paramount, and they would only give their allegiance to Christ. In short, they believed there was no difference between obeying the Law and ultimate morality�faithfully obeying God�s Word was the ultimate sign of their love and devotion.
Patrick was arrested several times, but escaped each time. He traveled throughout Ireland, establishing monasteries and setting up schools and churches to aid in converting the Irish country to Christianity. Legend has it that Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.
Wherever Patrick went, he left an old Celtic law book, Liber ex Lege Moisi (Book of the Law of Moses), as well as other books of the Gospel. The Liber begins with the Decalogue, and continues with selections from the Torah. Citing Exodus 23:1-19, Part 4 of the Liber emphasizes that the Sabbath is to be kept, along with three annual feasts. Part 5 notes that according to Exodus 31:13, the Sabbath is a sign of God's people. Patrick practiced laying on of hands after baptism so the person would receive the Holy Spirit. While "St. Patrick" is revered as a Roman Catholic saint, his writings appear to place him squarely in the Sabbath-keeping Messianic tradition.
"Palladius was sent by Celestinus, the Roman pontiff, to the Scots [Irish] that believed in Christ." (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, p.22) But "he left because he did not receive respect in Ireland" (William Cathcart, D. D., The Ancient British and Irish Churches, p.72).
"He (Patrick) never mentions either Rome or the pope or hints that he was in any way connected with the ecclesiastical capital of Italy. He recognizes no other authority but that of the word of God. ...When Palladius arrived in the country, it was not to be expected that he would receive a very hearty welcome from the Irish apostle. If he was sent by [pope] Celestine to the native Christians to be their primate or archbishop, no wonder that stout-hearted Patrick refused to bow his neck to any such yoke of bondage." (Dr. Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vol.1, pp.12-15)
"Patrick rejected the union of church and state. More than one hundred years had passed since the first world council at Nicaea had united the church with the empire. Patrick rejected this model. He followed the lesson taught in John's Gospel when Christ refused to be made a king. Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world' (John 18:36). Not only the Irish apostle but his famous successors, Columba in Scotland, and Columbanus on the Continent, ignored the supremacy of the papal pontiff. They never would have agreed to making the pope a king." (Truth Triumphant, pp.85,86)
"It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labor. They obeyed the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week." (James C. Moffatt, D. D.,The Church in Scotland, Philadelphia: 1882, p.140)
"In this latter instance they seemed to have followed a custom of which we find traces in the early monastic church of Ireland by which they held Saturday to be the Sabbath on which they rested from all their labours." (W.T. Skene, Adamnan Life of St. Columba, 1874, p.96)
"The Roman Catholics have proudly and exclusively claimed St. Patrick, and most Protestants have ignorantly or indifferently allowed their claim...But he was no Romanist. His life and evangelical Church of the 5th century ought to be better known." (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. VII, p.776; article: Patrick, St.)
Green is the color of the Irish; green is also the color of the Sabbath. Green invokes feelings of abundant crops and peace, which the Sabbath day pictures and exemplifies. Historically, Irish Celtic Sabbath-keepers have played a major role in the preservation of the practice of Sabbath-keeping in continental Europe and beyond. Celtic Irish missionaries evangelized Europe during the Dark Ages.
So, the next time someone asks you on St. Patrick's Day if you are wearing green, tell them, "Yes! I keep the seventh day Sabbath, just like Patrick of Ireland did!" Let us continue to wear the green.
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