Gospel
How Adam and Eve Reflect the Kingdom of God
"For we are members of his Body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they TWO shall be ONE FLESH. This is a GREAT MYSTERY: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church" (Ephes. 5:30-32).
Overcome in Christ Daily
GOOD NEWS: Yeshua is able to break the bonds of sin and set free those who are slaves, saving us from both sin's eternal death penalty and delivering us from the sin. Some deny this POWER and only want the pardon but the Throne of Grace offers both.
Man Questions Whether We'll Be Angelic Or Divine
Even as we have been fully mortal and human like Adam, we shall be fully divine and holy Spirit like Christ the Second Adam, being born again into the literal Kingdom-Family of God. How Satan is insanely jealous of this fact!
Born Again and Heaven and Hell
Yeshua said that which is born of the flesh is flesh (like we are now in this life), but that which is born of the Spirit IS SPIRIT. He also said you can't even see or enter into that Kingdom of God unless you're born again...
Sneak Preview of the Kingdom of God
If I may, as God is my Witness and Judge, when I was only 17 years young, God UNEXPECTEDLY gave me a VISION while I was in prayer. I was within that vision as a glorified Spirit-Being, whiter than glistening snow and like a brilliant white cloud with the sun shining on it, appearing smooth, dressed in a white robe - even my hair was that brilliant white - holding a Book in my hands and teaching two flesh and blood mortals who were sitting on the ground, in an outdoor setting like a park or meadow.)
Born Again: The Kingdom of God!
GOD IS REPRODUCING HIMSELF! That's the glorious Good News that Jesus boldly proclaimed! The Gospel of the KINGDOM OF GOD announces the GOD KINGDOM: a Spirit-Born Kingdom of God-Beings! A Royal Family that we can enter (Rev. 3:21). A Divine Family that will administer God's Government throughout the universe and eternity (Isa. 9:7; Dan. 7:18).
A Higher Calling: Quest for the Kingdom of God
Jesus clearly said, "No man can come to Me, except the Father who has sent me draw him..."(John 6:44). Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Christian calling includes recognizing Jesus is the only way to the Father, learning all about Him as the Incarnate Word of God and walking in that light as a way of life, following Jesus by the lead of the Holy Spirit, the power and influence of God (Romans 8:14, 1 John 2:6).
Kingdom of God-Beings to Rule Earth from Jerusalem!
Yeshua has gone to Heaven and is preparing for the coming Kingdom of God, making room for us (converted Christians then transformed) in His Administration, preparing our positions and government seats in the Kingdom-Family of God, and will then return and receive us to Himself, sharing His glory and power and honor with us from Jerusalem, the seat of God's government, the Throne of David, the Throne of the LORD.
The Great Mideast Commission: Reaching the Cities of Judah
So there is a physical preparing, as well as a spiritual, in preparing the way for Messiah's Coming! Further, God says we are to SHOUT, with amplified power, to the CITIES OF JUDAH the glad message that the Messiah is soon coming" - Autobiography of Herbert W Armstrong, Volume II, pages 469-470
Gospel
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The DEAD faith of traditional "Christians"
James 2
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Those traditional "Christians" who have a dead faith and who lie and hypocritically say the law is done away, or any other such nonsense, are rebuked by the plain truth of the Bible:
1 John 2:4
4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
"The law is done away" - don't you believe it!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Those traditional "Christians" who have a dead faith and who lie and hypocritically say the law is done away, or any other such nonsense, are rebuked by the plain truth of the Bible:
1 John 2:4
4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
"The law is done away" - don't you believe it!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
"Christmas is about giving" - Says Who?
Who started that BIG LIE? Undoubtedly those with something to sell, the modern moneychangers! Look at the folks about you rushing like sheep to the slaughter, to the "sales" and such that they simply cannot afford. Going into debt certainly isn't biblical, so why not break free from the trance? The "Christmas" rush is a "drug" pushed by commercial pimps prostituting a supposedly Christian holiday for their ungodly profits! They hold hands around the cash register and sing, "What a friend we have in Jesus."
In all honesty, Christmas is about GETTING! The whole idea of giving gifts has gotten out of hand. First it's not Jesus' birthday. Second the wise men didn't exchange gifts with each other but gave their gifts fit for a King to the King of the Jews (two years old and living in a house at that time - which is why Herod slaughtered the children two years and under trying to abort the Messiah's ascension to David's Throne).
If Christmas is supposed to be about Christ (and some sincerely believe it is, still in denial that it's a pagan holiday God wants no part of), why let Santa steal the show? Why do folks pretend they care that Jesus was born when they deny His life the rest of the year? Why do folks get angry when you mention these facts and they're not even religious? The herd doesn't want their trance broken, so they'll go broke keeping alive pagan festivals and foolishness that will be the death of many. Too many prefer tradition over truth, grieved to say.
"Harmless" Christmas celebrations, abominations to God and rejected by Christ, are setting the stage for our worst nightmare: our family and friends are going to be shipped off like cattle, since our countries are prophesied to suffer national defeat and deportation due to such idolatrous ideas and tinsel traditions, as brought out in: Shape up or get shipped out!
WAKE UP: Christmas is an ABOMINATION. That's why I no longer celebrate Christmas, refusing to live a lie. The plain truth of the Bible and history has set me free from such traditional Babylonian bondage!
In all honesty, Christmas is about GETTING! The whole idea of giving gifts has gotten out of hand. First it's not Jesus' birthday. Second the wise men didn't exchange gifts with each other but gave their gifts fit for a King to the King of the Jews (two years old and living in a house at that time - which is why Herod slaughtered the children two years and under trying to abort the Messiah's ascension to David's Throne).
If Christmas is supposed to be about Christ (and some sincerely believe it is, still in denial that it's a pagan holiday God wants no part of), why let Santa steal the show? Why do folks pretend they care that Jesus was born when they deny His life the rest of the year? Why do folks get angry when you mention these facts and they're not even religious? The herd doesn't want their trance broken, so they'll go broke keeping alive pagan festivals and foolishness that will be the death of many. Too many prefer tradition over truth, grieved to say.
"Harmless" Christmas celebrations, abominations to God and rejected by Christ, are setting the stage for our worst nightmare: our family and friends are going to be shipped off like cattle, since our countries are prophesied to suffer national defeat and deportation due to such idolatrous ideas and tinsel traditions, as brought out in: Shape up or get shipped out!
WAKE UP: Christmas is an ABOMINATION. That's why I no longer celebrate Christmas, refusing to live a lie. The plain truth of the Bible and history has set me free from such traditional Babylonian bondage!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Blasting Roman Catholic Bull!
Re: Happy Hanukkah!
I do know the Bible and testify to its plain truth which is what Roman Catholic cultists hate. The Roman Catholic Cult depends on folks being kept in the dark to what the Word says, since its light exposes your evil, as C.H. Spurgeon wrote:
C.H. Spurgeon on Roman Catholicism
"Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho." Joshua 6:26
"Since he was cursed who rebuilt Jericho, much more the man who labours to restore Popery among us. In our fathers' days the gigantic walls of Popery fell by the power of their faith, the perseverance of their efforts, and the blast of their gospel trumpets; and now there are some who would rebuild that accursed system upon its old foundations. O Lord, be please to thwart their unrighteous endeavours, and pull down every stone which they build. It should be a serious business with us to be thoroughly purged of every error which may have a tendency to foster the spirit of Popery, and when we have made a clean sweep at home we should seek in every way to oppose its all too rapid spread abroad in the church and in the world. This last can be done in secret by fervent prayer, and in public by decided testimony. We must warn with judicious boldness those who are inclined towards the errors of Rome; we must instruct the young in gospel truth, and tell them of the black doings of Popery in the olden times. We must aid in spreading the light more thoroughly through the land, for priests, like owls, hate daylight. Are we doing all we can for Jesus and the gospel? If not, our negligence plays into the hands of priestcraft. What are we doing to spread the Bible, which is the Pope's bane and poison? Are we casting abroad good, sound gospel writings? Luther once said, 'The devil hates goose quills,' and doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit's blessing, have done his kingdom much damage. If the thousands who will read this short word this night will do all they can to hinder the rebuilding of his accursed Jericho, the Lord's glory shall speed among the sons of men. Reader, what can you do? What will you do?"
From "Evening By Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
Uhrichsville, Barbour and Company, 1991.
Yes, Yahshua cut through all the entangling human traditions to keep God's holy commandment. If Yahshua transgressed the holy commandment rather than merely BREAK WITH TRADITION, he would have been a sinner. Why are you accusing Yahshua of being a sinner? You're stuck in the muck of Babylon and condemn yourself with its religious bull that the Word of God slaughters.
Remember the Sabbath
Which day is the Christian Sabbath?
"And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day....Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all the work He had created and made" (Gen. 2:2- 3).
Yahshua kept the seventh day Sabbath, just like Peter, James and John and every other true follower - unlike the accursed Roman Catholics who prefer their idolatrous traditions like SUNday and other pagan holidays.
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
If anybody is honestly interested in knowing whether or not this or that doctrine is actually biblical or merely traditional, all they have to do is objectively search the Scriptures like the noble Bereans did in Acts 17:11, after hearing Paul out, to see whether what he taught was true...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin You don't know your bible. |
C.H. Spurgeon on Roman Catholicism
"Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho." Joshua 6:26
"Since he was cursed who rebuilt Jericho, much more the man who labours to restore Popery among us. In our fathers' days the gigantic walls of Popery fell by the power of their faith, the perseverance of their efforts, and the blast of their gospel trumpets; and now there are some who would rebuild that accursed system upon its old foundations. O Lord, be please to thwart their unrighteous endeavours, and pull down every stone which they build. It should be a serious business with us to be thoroughly purged of every error which may have a tendency to foster the spirit of Popery, and when we have made a clean sweep at home we should seek in every way to oppose its all too rapid spread abroad in the church and in the world. This last can be done in secret by fervent prayer, and in public by decided testimony. We must warn with judicious boldness those who are inclined towards the errors of Rome; we must instruct the young in gospel truth, and tell them of the black doings of Popery in the olden times. We must aid in spreading the light more thoroughly through the land, for priests, like owls, hate daylight. Are we doing all we can for Jesus and the gospel? If not, our negligence plays into the hands of priestcraft. What are we doing to spread the Bible, which is the Pope's bane and poison? Are we casting abroad good, sound gospel writings? Luther once said, 'The devil hates goose quills,' and doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit's blessing, have done his kingdom much damage. If the thousands who will read this short word this night will do all they can to hinder the rebuilding of his accursed Jericho, the Lord's glory shall speed among the sons of men. Reader, what can you do? What will you do?"
From "Evening By Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
Uhrichsville, Barbour and Company, 1991.
Quote:
| Jesus continually did work on the Sabbath day. from harvesting grain to healing the sick. |
Remember the Sabbath
Which day is the Christian Sabbath?
"And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day....Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all the work He had created and made" (Gen. 2:2- 3).
Yahshua kept the seventh day Sabbath, just like Peter, James and John and every other true follower - unlike the accursed Roman Catholics who prefer their idolatrous traditions like SUNday and other pagan holidays.
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
If anybody is honestly interested in knowing whether or not this or that doctrine is actually biblical or merely traditional, all they have to do is objectively search the Scriptures like the noble Bereans did in Acts 17:11, after hearing Paul out, to see whether what he taught was true...
__________________
www.DavidBenAriel.org
www.DavidBenAriel.org
Maccabees versus Hellenists
Even though it's not politically correct, and goes against our democratic grain, and could result in a backlash - Hanukkah represents those who are willing, if and when necessary, to risk the wrath of others to insure the triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness, and right over wrong.
In this particular case, the light of what's good and right was the brilliant example of those faithful few Jews who held their head high (sick and tired of being beaten down) and publicly chose to reject alien ideas and destroy imposed idols.
The Maccabees weren't overly concerned with a suicidal fear of world opinion, but mightily expressed their faith in God. They didn't flirt with "foreign affairs," or engage in self-destructive interfaith orgies. They kept the faith and cleansed the Temple Mount of its spiritual filth.
World Jewry continues to celebrate Hanukkah to this day, but in the spirit of hypocrisy! We're more like the cowering Hellenists who assimilated, rather than the courageous Maccabees who fought to remain true to themselves!
Thank Heavens, there are a growing number in Israel who want to see Jerusalem restored as our spiritual center, and our lives rededicated to biblical ideals, not humanist ideas.
Pray for Jerusalem's peace and the rekindling of Israel's light!
Where's the Temple on the Temple Mount?
In this particular case, the light of what's good and right was the brilliant example of those faithful few Jews who held their head high (sick and tired of being beaten down) and publicly chose to reject alien ideas and destroy imposed idols.
The Maccabees weren't overly concerned with a suicidal fear of world opinion, but mightily expressed their faith in God. They didn't flirt with "foreign affairs," or engage in self-destructive interfaith orgies. They kept the faith and cleansed the Temple Mount of its spiritual filth.
World Jewry continues to celebrate Hanukkah to this day, but in the spirit of hypocrisy! We're more like the cowering Hellenists who assimilated, rather than the courageous Maccabees who fought to remain true to themselves!
Thank Heavens, there are a growing number in Israel who want to see Jerusalem restored as our spiritual center, and our lives rededicated to biblical ideals, not humanist ideas.
Pray for Jerusalem's peace and the rekindling of Israel's light!
Where's the Temple on the Temple Mount?
Biblical Festivals in the New Testament
Biblical Festivals in the New Testament
1. Passover
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:5
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 26:2, 17-19
Mark 14:12-16
Luke 2:41-42; 22:1, 7-20
John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 13:1-30
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
2. Feast of Unleavened Bread
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:6-8
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 26:17
Mark 14:12
Luke 2:41-42, 22:1,7
Acts 20:6
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
3. Feast of Pentecost
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:15-22
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Acts 2:1-21; 20:16
1 Corinthians 16:8
4. Feast of Trumpets*
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:23-25
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 24:30-31
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
Revelation 11:15
5. Day of Atonement
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:26-32
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Acts 27:9
6. Feast of Tabernacles
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:33-43
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
John 7:1-2, 8, 10, 14
Acts 18:21
7. Last Great Day
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:36
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
John 7:37-38
*Although the Feast of Trumpets is not mentioned by name in the New Testament, the theme of the day—the sounding of trumpets announcing Jesus Christ's return—is mentioned by several New Testament authors as noted in the references.
- excerpt from God's Holy Day Plan
1. Passover
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:5
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 26:2, 17-19
Mark 14:12-16
Luke 2:41-42; 22:1, 7-20
John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 13:1-30
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
2. Feast of Unleavened Bread
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:6-8
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 26:17
Mark 14:12
Luke 2:41-42, 22:1,7
Acts 20:6
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
3. Feast of Pentecost
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:15-22
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Acts 2:1-21; 20:16
1 Corinthians 16:8
4. Feast of Trumpets*
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:23-25
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Matthew 24:30-31
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
Revelation 11:15
5. Day of Atonement
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:26-32
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
Acts 27:9
6. Feast of Tabernacles
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:33-43
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
John 7:1-2, 8, 10, 14
Acts 18:21
7. Last Great Day
Commanded in Old Testament:
Leviticus 23:36
Observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Church in the New Testament:
John 7:37-38
*Although the Feast of Trumpets is not mentioned by name in the New Testament, the theme of the day—the sounding of trumpets announcing Jesus Christ's return—is mentioned by several New Testament authors as noted in the references.
- excerpt from God's Holy Day Plan
Hanukkah Hypocrisy!
World Jewry and Israelis especially should be ashamed of themselves! The very fact that the Temple Mount remains without a Temple stands as an indictment against Judaism. God hates hypocrisy. I'm sure it stinks to high Heaven when folks celebrate Hanukkah by eating sufganiot rather than liberating the Temple Mount and demanding their leaders DO SOMETHING.
Jews Must Demand Rights to Temple Mount
Restore Israeli Sovereignty Over Temple Mount
A House of Prayer For All Peoples?
Jews Must Demand Rights to Temple Mount
Restore Israeli Sovereignty Over Temple Mount
A House of Prayer For All Peoples?
__________________
www.DavidBenAriel.org
www.DavidBenAriel.org
Friday, December 11, 2009
Happy Hanukkah!
This Sabbath evening begins the Festival of Lights (Jesus kept it - the Feast of the Dedication - John 10:22) and is a perfect time to remember the Temple Mount and how it will again soon graciously host a House of Prayer for All Peoples.
Taking a stand for the Temple Mount!
Taking a stand for the Temple Mount!
How December 25 Became Christmas
How December 25 Became Christmas
by Andrew McGowan
On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday?
The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.
The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.1 As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.
This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.
Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival...”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century C.E., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.”
Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century C.E. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century C.E., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James. These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth.
Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]...And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”
Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.
The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”
In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.
In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?
There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).
The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.
Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.
It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea. They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.
More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan.
There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.
Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E.
This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.
The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have know it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.
There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years. But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth.
Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.
This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.
Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th. 12
In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world 13 Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.
Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).
Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.
The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born...and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.) 14 Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later. 15
In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too. 16
Notes
1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.
2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000),
pp. 291–347.
3. The Philocalian Calendar.
Andrew McGowan
Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999).
by Andrew McGowan
On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday?
The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.
The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.1 As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.
This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.
Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival...”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century C.E., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.”
Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century C.E. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century C.E., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James. These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth.
Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]...And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”
Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.
The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”
In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.
In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?
There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).
The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.
Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.
It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea. They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.
More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan.
There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.
Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E.
This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.
The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have know it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.
There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years. But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth.
Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.
This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.
Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th. 12
In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world 13 Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.
Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).
Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.
The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born...and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.) 14 Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later. 15
In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too. 16
Notes
1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.
2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000),
pp. 291–347.
3. The Philocalian Calendar.
4. Scholars of liturgical history in the English-speaking world are particularly skeptical of the “solstice” connection; see Susan K. Roll, “The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 273–290, especially pp. 289–290.
5. A gloss on a manuscript of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Talley, Origins, pp. 101–102.
6. Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.
7. For example, Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem.
8. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5th ed. (Paris: Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), pp. 275–279; and Talley, Origins.
9. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8.
10. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, pp. 86, 90–91.
11. De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri iesu christi et iohannis baptistae.
12. Augustine, Sermon 202.
13. Epiphanius is quoted in Talley, Origins, p. 98.
14. b. Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a.
15. Talley, Origins, pp. 81–82.
16. On the two theories as false alternatives, see Roll, “Origins of Christmas.”
b. See the following BR articles: David R. Cartlidge, “The Christian Apocrypha: Preserved in Art,” BR 13:03; Ronald F. Hock, “The Favored One,” BR 17:03; and Charles W. Hedrick, “The 34 Gospels,” BR 18:03.
c. For more on dating the year of Jesus’ birth, see Leonara Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,&rd; AO 03:01.
d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages.
e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.”
d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages.
e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.”
Andrew McGowan
Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999).
Shameful Noahides
Josias commented on Noahide nonsense -
Noahides do not only live moral lives, but also keep kosher and do what they are told in the Bible, unlike Christians who pray to a man who told them that "laws are for the lawless" which is first of all a logical loop, and secondly if people were to lead immoral Christian lives as long as they pray to be saved, I do not think the Creator would like that very much.
************
Noahides are in no man's land, fail to keep the biblical Sabbath and festivals in spirit and in truth (and some religious Jews speak against any "Gentile" keeping them), and feel smug about it - some even going all the way to Jerusalem to get some mortal men's approval!
Christians don't pray to a man, and no wonder you fail to recognize Yahshua as the Son of Man if you're as careless with the Word as you are with what Shaul/Paul said:
1 Timothy 1
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
Yahshua upheld the Law and the Prophets and made them even more binding, magnifying their meaning as prophesied, including the spirit or intent as well as the letter of the law:
Matthew 5:
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Those traditional "Christians" who lie and hypocritically say the law is done away, or any other such nonsense, are rebuked by the plain truth of the Bible:
1 John 2:4
4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
"The law is done away" - don't you believe it!
We're to love and obey God, enabling the Holy Spirit to write the law upon the tablets of our hearts and minds, while trusting in the Passover Lamb's blood to keep us covered, the Suffering Servant who offered atonement on our behalf, since no man can save himself by his "good works." Our righteousness is of Him, as Isaiah foretold:
Isaiah 45:24-30
24 He shall say,
‘ Surely in the LORD I have righteousness and strength.
To Him [Yahshua] men shall come,
And all shall be ashamed
Who are incensed against Him [Yahshua].
25 In the LORD all the descendants of Israel
Shall be justified [covered by the Blood], and shall glory [in His righteousness, not self-righteousness].’
May God grant you repentance that you may be ashamed that you were misled to oppose Yahshua and go and sin no more, receiving the pardon and the power to overcome daily.
Noahides do not only live moral lives, but also keep kosher and do what they are told in the Bible, unlike Christians who pray to a man who told them that "laws are for the lawless" which is first of all a logical loop, and secondly if people were to lead immoral Christian lives as long as they pray to be saved, I do not think the Creator would like that very much.
************
Noahides are in no man's land, fail to keep the biblical Sabbath and festivals in spirit and in truth (and some religious Jews speak against any "Gentile" keeping them), and feel smug about it - some even going all the way to Jerusalem to get some mortal men's approval!
Christians don't pray to a man, and no wonder you fail to recognize Yahshua as the Son of Man if you're as careless with the Word as you are with what Shaul/Paul said:
1 Timothy 1
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
Yahshua upheld the Law and the Prophets and made them even more binding, magnifying their meaning as prophesied, including the spirit or intent as well as the letter of the law:
Matthew 5:
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Those traditional "Christians" who lie and hypocritically say the law is done away, or any other such nonsense, are rebuked by the plain truth of the Bible:
1 John 2:4
4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
"The law is done away" - don't you believe it!
We're to love and obey God, enabling the Holy Spirit to write the law upon the tablets of our hearts and minds, while trusting in the Passover Lamb's blood to keep us covered, the Suffering Servant who offered atonement on our behalf, since no man can save himself by his "good works." Our righteousness is of Him, as Isaiah foretold:
Isaiah 45:24-30
24 He shall say,
‘ Surely in the LORD I have righteousness and strength.
To Him [Yahshua] men shall come,
And all shall be ashamed
Who are incensed against Him [Yahshua].
25 In the LORD all the descendants of Israel
Shall be justified [covered by the Blood], and shall glory [in His righteousness, not self-righteousness].’
May God grant you repentance that you may be ashamed that you were misled to oppose Yahshua and go and sin no more, receiving the pardon and the power to overcome daily.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Precious symbol of Hanukkah
Latkes and Lights
They'd left everything behind escaping the Nazis, including their precious symbol of Hanukkah.
By Gina Klonoff, Las Vegas, Nevada
read more
************
The Menorah represents the Third Temple that Jews should be motivated, energized, to build. Thankfully, the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute work toward this holy goal and project - they don't just eat latkes, they serve as lights.
They'd left everything behind escaping the Nazis, including their precious symbol of Hanukkah.
By Gina Klonoff, Las Vegas, Nevada
read more
************
The Menorah represents the Third Temple that Jews should be motivated, energized, to build. Thankfully, the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute work toward this holy goal and project - they don't just eat latkes, they serve as lights.
Quirky Jews?
Re: I'm not a terrorist
David, are the Temple Mount Faithful the same group Armstrong described as quirky Jews who wanted to rebuild the temple, or was he talking about some other group?
RayMerk1
************
I do remember something about some group of Jews who allegedly came to Mr. Armstrong by night for support and he felt it was political and didn't help. It's sad how some are so far removed from the Promised Land of Israel and fail to remember the Law of Moses - which includes God's command for Israel to build the Temple.
God commands Israel to build Temple
The Temple Mount Faithful is not a terrorist organization! (Although Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry strongly insinuate it is, to their shame)
Gerald Flurry has gone mad over his music hall!
How should Christians view efforts to build the Temple?
David, are the Temple Mount Faithful the same group Armstrong described as quirky Jews who wanted to rebuild the temple, or was he talking about some other group?
RayMerk1
************
I do remember something about some group of Jews who allegedly came to Mr. Armstrong by night for support and he felt it was political and didn't help. It's sad how some are so far removed from the Promised Land of Israel and fail to remember the Law of Moses - which includes God's command for Israel to build the Temple.
God commands Israel to build Temple
The Temple Mount Faithful is not a terrorist organization! (Although Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry strongly insinuate it is, to their shame)
Gerald Flurry has gone mad over his music hall!
How should Christians view efforts to build the Temple?
Rome to return Jewish Temple treasures?
Israel won't surrender Christian sites to Vatican
Foreign Ministry delegation departs for Vatican, says won't let Catholics take control of Last Supper, other holy sites more»
************
Don't believe a word of it!
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
-Otto von Bismarck
Warning Jews about the pope's plans for Jerusalem: Rome's dream will become Jerusalem's NIGHTMARE!
Articles and video warning Jews about the pope:
Pope's Evil Eye on Jerusalem! (You Tube video)
The Vatican plot against Jerusalem exposed!
Israel must reject Vatican overtures for peace or lose Jerusalem!
Christian-Zionist Response to Shimon Peres' AIPAC speech
The Vatican Must Return the Temple Treasures
Will the pope act like Belshazzar or Cyrus?
Will Rome learn from history and receive instruction from the Bible or harden their hearts and be destroyed like pharaoh and Babylon?
Foreign Ministry delegation departs for Vatican, says won't let Catholics take control of Last Supper, other holy sites more»
************
Don't believe a word of it!
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
-Otto von Bismarck
Warning Jews about the pope's plans for Jerusalem: Rome's dream will become Jerusalem's NIGHTMARE!
Articles and video warning Jews about the pope:
Pope's Evil Eye on Jerusalem! (You Tube video)
The Vatican plot against Jerusalem exposed!
Israel must reject Vatican overtures for peace or lose Jerusalem!
Christian-Zionist Response to Shimon Peres' AIPAC speech
The Vatican Must Return the Temple Treasures
Will the pope act like Belshazzar or Cyrus?
Will Rome learn from history and receive instruction from the Bible or harden their hearts and be destroyed like pharaoh and Babylon?
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Tiger Woods, Christmas and Adultery
Tiger Woods & the high cost of adultery
IT has come to light in recent weeks that one of the most recognizable people on the planet, golf phenomenon Tiger Woods, has had numerous extra-marital affairs. Woods, since he came on to the golf scene in his teens has always maintained a squeaky clean image of wholesomeness. He has surrounded himself with the best handlers who always positioned Woods as the epitome of excellence on and off the golf course. Five years ago he married a former Swedish model, Elin Nordegren and the couple have a daughter and son together. They have always been promoted as the ideal family.
Read more
************
Most folks don't know what they have until it's gone, whether it's family, friends, health, marriage, or whatever good thing you can think of and the devastating sin of adultery often blows it all away.
As a "recovering homosexual" (who wishes to God I could have been straight with a beloved wife and children, as mentioned within God and the Gays), it angers me how those who are blessed to have a heterosexual drive often fail to remain faithful to their spouse and betray their family and hurt themselves and everybody around them.
There is forgiveness, not to be taken lightly since it comes at such a high price - the death of the pure Passover Lamb of God (not unclean Easter rabbit) - but forgiveness doesn't mean the offended partner must remain married to one who has selfishly broken their vows and destroyed trust. I'm sure all these issues will be addressed but would hope at least a few would consider the spiritual applications of the holy commandment against adultery.
It's past time we recognize how those who engage in pagan practices, who indulge in baptized paganism, who wallow in the mire of whitewashed heathen customs pretending to be Christian (like the Roman Catholic holidays of Christmas and Easter) are guilty of spiritual adultery.
Like the deceitfulness of "cheating," too many professing Christians remain in denial of their sins of spiritual adultery and will suffer severe consequences for such dishonesty. We're to confess and forsake our sins, to FORSAKE BABYLON - not stay stuck in the muck of traditional bondage, so help us God!
Christmas is adultery!
"Christians" in denial
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
IT has come to light in recent weeks that one of the most recognizable people on the planet, golf phenomenon Tiger Woods, has had numerous extra-marital affairs. Woods, since he came on to the golf scene in his teens has always maintained a squeaky clean image of wholesomeness. He has surrounded himself with the best handlers who always positioned Woods as the epitome of excellence on and off the golf course. Five years ago he married a former Swedish model, Elin Nordegren and the couple have a daughter and son together. They have always been promoted as the ideal family.
Read more
************
Most folks don't know what they have until it's gone, whether it's family, friends, health, marriage, or whatever good thing you can think of and the devastating sin of adultery often blows it all away.
As a "recovering homosexual" (who wishes to God I could have been straight with a beloved wife and children, as mentioned within God and the Gays), it angers me how those who are blessed to have a heterosexual drive often fail to remain faithful to their spouse and betray their family and hurt themselves and everybody around them.
There is forgiveness, not to be taken lightly since it comes at such a high price - the death of the pure Passover Lamb of God (not unclean Easter rabbit) - but forgiveness doesn't mean the offended partner must remain married to one who has selfishly broken their vows and destroyed trust. I'm sure all these issues will be addressed but would hope at least a few would consider the spiritual applications of the holy commandment against adultery.
It's past time we recognize how those who engage in pagan practices, who indulge in baptized paganism, who wallow in the mire of whitewashed heathen customs pretending to be Christian (like the Roman Catholic holidays of Christmas and Easter) are guilty of spiritual adultery.
Like the deceitfulness of "cheating," too many professing Christians remain in denial of their sins of spiritual adultery and will suffer severe consequences for such dishonesty. We're to confess and forsake our sins, to FORSAKE BABYLON - not stay stuck in the muck of traditional bondage, so help us God!
Christmas is adultery!
"Christians" in denial
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Taking a stand for Jerusalem's Temple Mount!
On many political and religious forums I post and participate on (just google David Ben-Ariel and see for yourself!), there are a rotten few, stooges, who foolishly aid and abet the Nazi-Muslim occupation of Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount, and the Bolsheviks who enable them to flout Israeli law against religious discrimination daily as they trample the rights of Christians and Jews in Jerusalem. They are disinformation queens that I dethrone. This is typical of their hateful modus operandi:
And you're still a terrorist, an international criminal
Exhibit A of the old "shoot the messenger" syndrome! A terrorist? What a drama queen! The plain truth continues to terrorize those living a lie, who always make wild accusations, hysterical charges, never offering any documentation to back up what they say (because they don't have any whatsoever), shamefully engaging in disinformation, but always presenting me with an opportunity to shed light on the subject, exposing their darkness and desperation:
and banned for life from ever entering Israel again as long as you live
O ye of little faith! What proof do you have for such hysterical charges? For such wild accusations? NONE! We see right through you and your world of darkness. Won't you let the truth set you free? My unjust deportation from Israel was due to highlighting the plight of the Temple Mount suffering under Nazi Muslim occupation in an article published in Jerusalem (and now read around the world), even though the Israeli authorities lied and said it was about an "expired visa." Regardless, the Israeli authorities informed Senator Mike DeWine (R - Ohio) that I would be "eligible" to return in 2005 on a tourist visa. So much for your hateful nonsense!
Israel sets date for 2005
Due to personal business, family, friends and extensive travels in the United States of America the Beautiful, I haven't returned to Israel yet to visit the 8 kibbutzim I've served on as a volunteer (due to my God-given love of the Jews), to visit the grave of my holocaust-survivor/kibbutz mother Miriam Weiss, to see the Holy Land of Israel God knows I love so much, and especially the most holy site on Earth: the Temple Mount. In God's good time I shall return, as we're assured by the words of the Prophet: Zion shall be redeemed with justice.
Thank you for being a useful idiot and providing me this opportunity to again set the record straight. I know you've proven you don't care to be "confused" with the facts, but honest and objective folks will see what you refuse to see, blinded by your murderous and unwarranted hatred of those who love God, the Bible and Israel. Shame on you!
Still At Large!
Exposing the German-Vatican Plot to Occupy Jerusalem
Blow up the mosques or an expired visa?
And you're still a terrorist, an international criminal
Exhibit A of the old "shoot the messenger" syndrome! A terrorist? What a drama queen! The plain truth continues to terrorize those living a lie, who always make wild accusations, hysterical charges, never offering any documentation to back up what they say (because they don't have any whatsoever), shamefully engaging in disinformation, but always presenting me with an opportunity to shed light on the subject, exposing their darkness and desperation:
and banned for life from ever entering Israel again as long as you live
O ye of little faith! What proof do you have for such hysterical charges? For such wild accusations? NONE! We see right through you and your world of darkness. Won't you let the truth set you free? My unjust deportation from Israel was due to highlighting the plight of the Temple Mount suffering under Nazi Muslim occupation in an article published in Jerusalem (and now read around the world), even though the Israeli authorities lied and said it was about an "expired visa." Regardless, the Israeli authorities informed Senator Mike DeWine (R - Ohio) that I would be "eligible" to return in 2005 on a tourist visa. So much for your hateful nonsense!
Israel sets date for 2005
Due to personal business, family, friends and extensive travels in the United States of America the Beautiful, I haven't returned to Israel yet to visit the 8 kibbutzim I've served on as a volunteer (due to my God-given love of the Jews), to visit the grave of my holocaust-survivor/kibbutz mother Miriam Weiss, to see the Holy Land of Israel God knows I love so much, and especially the most holy site on Earth: the Temple Mount. In God's good time I shall return, as we're assured by the words of the Prophet: Zion shall be redeemed with justice.
Thank you for being a useful idiot and providing me this opportunity to again set the record straight. I know you've proven you don't care to be "confused" with the facts, but honest and objective folks will see what you refuse to see, blinded by your murderous and unwarranted hatred of those who love God, the Bible and Israel. Shame on you!
Still At Large!
Exposing the German-Vatican Plot to Occupy Jerusalem
Blow up the mosques or an expired visa?
A Few Improvements On Xmas
A Few Improvements On Xmas
First of all, Xmas has Christ's name on it. So, the premise is, that it is Christ's birthday, so the premise is, that since it is Christ's birthday, this is where the idea of giving presents on Xmas comes from; so, in order to really honor Christ, the presents should be given to Christ, not others, like just give the money that we would have used for presents for our children and others, who probably don't really need them, to the poor or to our favorite charity. This would honor Christ more than giving the presents to each other.
Next, we should get rid of Santa Claus, because if it is Christ's birthday why have Santa Claus around, because most of us know without a doubt, that our children are more interested in Santa, and can tell us more about Santa, elves, reindeer, Xmas trees with presents under them, than they can Christ.
It would be like throwing a birthday party for our child, but honoring our next door neighbor's child. If we don't believe this, just ask a child about what Xmas means, and what it means to them.
Next, we should get rid of the pagan fertility symbols, and other symbols, like holly, mistletoe, Xmas trees, bulbs on trees. Also we should get rid of the drunken parties and revelry, which lead up to our making resolutions at new years, like "My head hurts so bad, I'll never do it again, and other promises that we don't keep.
We should quit taking beautiful trees, which are cut from our forests, by the multiple tens of millions for use as Xmas trees. Also, every year, many homes have burned down, and people have been killed from the trees catching on fire; and it was worse when people used to have candles on the trees.
We should not just get a sentimental feeling in our hearts, that we are going to do a few good deeds around Xmas, or visit family or friends once a year; we should rather do this all year, and make a habit out of doing good all of the time.
We shouldn't condemn " Xmas grinches", who won't "Shell out" on Xmas, because maybe they work hard for their money, and maybe they give to "United Fund" or other charities and maybe they are cheerful givers. Maybe they don't want to be programmed into the syndrome, that they have to give something at Xmas.
We should beware of "Charities" who make a big deal out of feeding winos and bums at Xmas, especially when the news media is there, because, if we really look into it further, we will find out that the "Charities" take care of themselves first.
We should instruct our children, that it is much more blessed to "Give" to others, rather than laying half-awake the night before Xmas, wondering what they are "gonna get". We should beware of Xmas music, though it is beautiful, and emphasizes the time of the birth of Christ, it neglects most of the other scriptures, including the time of Christ's most important sacrifice and brutal death and also the things that He accomplished during the remainder of His perfect life on the Earth.
We should beware of the "Wonderful" world of Disney, who put much emphasis on Xmas, Santa, elves, witches, sorcerers, fairy godmothers, headless horsemen, demons, halowe'en, Xmas grinches, magic, never-never land, Easter bunnies, ad-nauseum; and almost nothing about true values, or the things having to do with what the Son of God really taught.
They indoctrinate children from the time they can walk. If we do not take part in these things, then maybe we can put more honor upon Jesus, and if we remove these things mentioned above, having to do with the remnants of paganism then we won't really need to even keep Xmas at all, because there will be nothing left of Xmas, and no reason to even observe it.
Better yet, lets just all be Xmas grinches and throw the gaudy pagan day away, and quit playing the sentimental phonies that Xmas forces us to be. Hoooraaay for Scrooge
JHH - Albuquerque, NM
First of all, Xmas has Christ's name on it. So, the premise is, that it is Christ's birthday, so the premise is, that since it is Christ's birthday, this is where the idea of giving presents on Xmas comes from; so, in order to really honor Christ, the presents should be given to Christ, not others, like just give the money that we would have used for presents for our children and others, who probably don't really need them, to the poor or to our favorite charity. This would honor Christ more than giving the presents to each other.
Next, we should get rid of Santa Claus, because if it is Christ's birthday why have Santa Claus around, because most of us know without a doubt, that our children are more interested in Santa, and can tell us more about Santa, elves, reindeer, Xmas trees with presents under them, than they can Christ.
It would be like throwing a birthday party for our child, but honoring our next door neighbor's child. If we don't believe this, just ask a child about what Xmas means, and what it means to them.
Next, we should get rid of the pagan fertility symbols, and other symbols, like holly, mistletoe, Xmas trees, bulbs on trees. Also we should get rid of the drunken parties and revelry, which lead up to our making resolutions at new years, like "My head hurts so bad, I'll never do it again, and other promises that we don't keep.
We should quit taking beautiful trees, which are cut from our forests, by the multiple tens of millions for use as Xmas trees. Also, every year, many homes have burned down, and people have been killed from the trees catching on fire; and it was worse when people used to have candles on the trees.
We should not just get a sentimental feeling in our hearts, that we are going to do a few good deeds around Xmas, or visit family or friends once a year; we should rather do this all year, and make a habit out of doing good all of the time.
We shouldn't condemn " Xmas grinches", who won't "Shell out" on Xmas, because maybe they work hard for their money, and maybe they give to "United Fund" or other charities and maybe they are cheerful givers. Maybe they don't want to be programmed into the syndrome, that they have to give something at Xmas.
We should beware of "Charities" who make a big deal out of feeding winos and bums at Xmas, especially when the news media is there, because, if we really look into it further, we will find out that the "Charities" take care of themselves first.
We should instruct our children, that it is much more blessed to "Give" to others, rather than laying half-awake the night before Xmas, wondering what they are "gonna get". We should beware of Xmas music, though it is beautiful, and emphasizes the time of the birth of Christ, it neglects most of the other scriptures, including the time of Christ's most important sacrifice and brutal death and also the things that He accomplished during the remainder of His perfect life on the Earth.
We should beware of the "Wonderful" world of Disney, who put much emphasis on Xmas, Santa, elves, witches, sorcerers, fairy godmothers, headless horsemen, demons, halowe'en, Xmas grinches, magic, never-never land, Easter bunnies, ad-nauseum; and almost nothing about true values, or the things having to do with what the Son of God really taught.
They indoctrinate children from the time they can walk. If we do not take part in these things, then maybe we can put more honor upon Jesus, and if we remove these things mentioned above, having to do with the remnants of paganism then we won't really need to even keep Xmas at all, because there will be nothing left of Xmas, and no reason to even observe it.
Better yet, lets just all be Xmas grinches and throw the gaudy pagan day away, and quit playing the sentimental phonies that Xmas forces us to be. Hoooraaay for Scrooge
JHH - Albuquerque, NM
Monday, December 07, 2009
"Christians" in denial
Yahshua condemns those who prefer their religious traditions over the holy commandments of God. Like a traditional "Christian" Pharisee, you refuse to see how the PRINCIPLES of Jeremiah against literal and spiritual idolatry apply to your TRADTIONAL Churchianity. Yahshua condemns your unclean kind for choosing your idolatrous traditions over the holy commandments of God.
Mark 7
"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.' 8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
9And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!... 13Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
Pagan Christmas, pagan Easter, pagan SUNday, all are idolatrous traditions that counterfeit Christians, apostate Christians, reprobate Christians, stuck in the muck of Babylon, entangled in the bondage of their religious lies, keep instead of the holy commandments and example of Yahshua in refusing to mix and match, adulterate the truth of God with pagan error, deceitfully whitewashing pagan holidays and trying to pass them off to the world as "Christian."
God isn't fooled by whitewashed paganism, paganism in Christian wrapping, and neither are those who are honest with themselves, the Bible and history. Won't you let the plain truth set you free from your traditional bondage? Won't you stop misrepresenting Christ and Christianity with your traditional religious lies and blatant dishonesty that folks clearly see through and are disgusted by such deceitfulness? The pagans are more honest than your unclean Christians who remain in denial! Shame.
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Mark 7
"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.' 8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
9And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!... 13Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
Pagan Christmas, pagan Easter, pagan SUNday, all are idolatrous traditions that counterfeit Christians, apostate Christians, reprobate Christians, stuck in the muck of Babylon, entangled in the bondage of their religious lies, keep instead of the holy commandments and example of Yahshua in refusing to mix and match, adulterate the truth of God with pagan error, deceitfully whitewashing pagan holidays and trying to pass them off to the world as "Christian."
God isn't fooled by whitewashed paganism, paganism in Christian wrapping, and neither are those who are honest with themselves, the Bible and history. Won't you let the plain truth set you free from your traditional bondage? Won't you stop misrepresenting Christ and Christianity with your traditional religious lies and blatant dishonesty that folks clearly see through and are disgusted by such deceitfulness? The pagans are more honest than your unclean Christians who remain in denial! Shame.
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Christmas is for the children?
Pagan Holidays
Pagan holidays that God hates aren't "for the children!" How can they be? When you go through the terrible HOLOCAUST that's coming (because of our idolatry and immorality), you'll understand we've SACRIFICED OUR CHILDREN in its flames!
If we're going to be saved out of "Jacob's trouble," we've got to think like God does and see things His way (Isa. 59:7-9). Mankind had better stop arguing with God! It's going to get us deported and killed! We need to hate the lies of Easter, Sunday, Christmas, and all the other religious bull we've heard and fallen for! We need to stay out of those corner bars (with crosses and steeples) that put us in a Biblical blackout! That hard liquor makes us forget what God says we're supposed to do, or gets us to the numb point where we don't even care!
- Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall - Chapter 7 - "Elijah's Key Role"
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christmas is adultery!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Pagan holidays that God hates aren't "for the children!" How can they be? When you go through the terrible HOLOCAUST that's coming (because of our idolatry and immorality), you'll understand we've SACRIFICED OUR CHILDREN in its flames!
If we're going to be saved out of "Jacob's trouble," we've got to think like God does and see things His way (Isa. 59:7-9). Mankind had better stop arguing with God! It's going to get us deported and killed! We need to hate the lies of Easter, Sunday, Christmas, and all the other religious bull we've heard and fallen for! We need to stay out of those corner bars (with crosses and steeples) that put us in a Biblical blackout! That hard liquor makes us forget what God says we're supposed to do, or gets us to the numb point where we don't even care!
- Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall - Chapter 7 - "Elijah's Key Role"
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christmas is adultery!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Don't sacrifice your children for pagan holidays!
Pagan Holidays
Pagan holidays that God hates aren't "for the children!" How can they be? When you go through the terrible HOLOCAUST that's coming (because of our idolatry and immorality), you'll understand we've SACRIFICED OUR CHILDREN in its flames!
If we're going to be saved out of "Jacob's trouble," we've got to think like God does and see things His way (Isa. 59:7-9). Mankind had better stop arguing with God! It's going to get us deported and killed! We need to hate the lies of Easter, Sunday, Christmas, and all the other religious bull we've heard and fallen for! We need to stay out of those corner bars (with crosses and steeples) that put us in a Biblical blackout! That hard liquor makes us forget what God says we're supposed to do, or gets us to the numb point where we don't even care!
- Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall - Chapter 7 - "Elijah's Key Role"
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christmas is adultery!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Pagan holidays that God hates aren't "for the children!" How can they be? When you go through the terrible HOLOCAUST that's coming (because of our idolatry and immorality), you'll understand we've SACRIFICED OUR CHILDREN in its flames!
If we're going to be saved out of "Jacob's trouble," we've got to think like God does and see things His way (Isa. 59:7-9). Mankind had better stop arguing with God! It's going to get us deported and killed! We need to hate the lies of Easter, Sunday, Christmas, and all the other religious bull we've heard and fallen for! We need to stay out of those corner bars (with crosses and steeples) that put us in a Biblical blackout! That hard liquor makes us forget what God says we're supposed to do, or gets us to the numb point where we don't even care!
- Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall - Chapter 7 - "Elijah's Key Role"
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christmas is adultery!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Christmas is adultery!
Some professing Christians need to stop trying to be more righteous than God and the early Church of God (1 John 2:4; Titus 1:16). No matter what excuse they throw up for the PAGAN festival of Saturnalia/"mass of Christ", it remains a PAGAN festival in God's sight (and in the eyes of those who love God's Word more than idolatrous ideas and tinsel traditions).
Deuteronomy 12
30 take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you [for their wrong religious practices and behavior], and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.' 31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods...
32 Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.
Jude 1:3
I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints [in Jerusalem, not Rome].
Jeremiah 6:16
"Thus saith Yahweh, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk there in, and ye shall find rest to your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein."
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“ I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
17 Therefore
"Come out from among them
And be separate, say the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you."
18 "I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty."
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Christmas is adultery
God hates it when folks mix some biblical truth with pagan error. It's SPIRITUAL ADULTERY. They adulterate, they pollute, the truth by mixing it with condemned paganism. Spiritually, they're whoring around with false gods and flirting with foreign religions.
Why not keep it simple and love and obey God and do as He says, rather than pagan Rome's thing? Forsake Babylon or suffer the consequences.
Why not keep it simple and love and obey God and do as He says, rather than pagan Rome's thing? Forsake Babylon or suffer the consequences.
Deuteronomy 12
30 take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you [for their wrong religious practices and behavior], and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.' 31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods...
32 Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.
Jeremiah 10
2 Thus says the LORD: Do not learn the way of the Gentiles...
I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints [in Jerusalem, not Rome].
Jeremiah 6:16
"Thus saith Yahweh, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk there in, and ye shall find rest to your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein."
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“ I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
17 Therefore
"Come out from among them
And be separate, say the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you."
18 "I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty."
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
Christmas is adultery
Sunday, December 06, 2009
First Dec. 25 Xmas held at Pagan Shrine
By ARIEL DAVID
Associated Press Writer
ROME (AP) -- The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 was invented, was built on an old pagan shrine as part of an effort to supposedly spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.
Italian archaeologists last month unveiled an underground grotto that they believe ancient Romans revered as the place where a wolf nursed Rome's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.
A few feet above the grotto, or "Lupercale," the Emperor Constantine built the Basilica of St. Anastasia, where some believe Christmas was first celebrated on Dec. 25.
Constantine made Christianity a lawful religion in 313. He played a key role in unifying the Roman Pagan beliefs and practices with those of the early followers of Jesus.
In 325, he convened the Council of Nicaea, which fixed the dates of important old world Roman festivals. It opted to mark Christmas, then celebrated at varying dates, on Dec. 25 to be unified with the Roman
Solstice Saturna festival celebrating the birth of the sun god, Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at Rome's La Sapienza University, told reporters Friday.
The Basilica of St. Anastasia was built as soon as a year after the Nicaean Council. It probably was where Christmas was first marked on Dec. 25, part of broader efforts to unify pagan practices and holidays
with Christian celebrations in the early days of the new religion, Carandini said.
"The church was built to supposedly Christianize these pagan places of worship," he said. "It was normal to put a church at these pagan places.
Rome's archaeological superintendent Angelo Bottini, who did not take part in Carandini's research, said that hypothesis was "evocative and coherent" and "helps us understand the mechanisms of the passage of
joining paganism to Christianity."
Bottini and Carandini both said future digs could bolster the link between the pagan shrine and the church if structures belonging to the "Lupercale" are found directly below the basilica.
The Basilica St. Anastasia was the first church to rise not on the ancient city's outskirts, but on the Palatine Hill, the palatial center of power and religion in imperial Rome, Carandini said. Though little known today, at the time of Constantine it was one of the most important basilicas for Catholics in Rome, he said.
The "Lupercale" shrine - named after the "lupa," Latin for she-wolf - is 52 feet below ground. So far, archaeologists have only been able to see it by inserting probes and cameras that have revealed a vaulted ceiling decorated with colored marble and a white imperial eagle.
Though some experts have expressed doubts that the pagan grotto is in fact the mythological nursery of Romulus and Remus, most archaeologists believe the shrine fits the descriptions found in ancient texts, and plans are being drawn up to excavate the structure further.
Associated Press Writer
ROME (AP) -- The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 was invented, was built on an old pagan shrine as part of an effort to supposedly spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.
Italian archaeologists last month unveiled an underground grotto that they believe ancient Romans revered as the place where a wolf nursed Rome's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.
A few feet above the grotto, or "Lupercale," the Emperor Constantine built the Basilica of St. Anastasia, where some believe Christmas was first celebrated on Dec. 25.
Constantine made Christianity a lawful religion in 313. He played a key role in unifying the Roman Pagan beliefs and practices with those of the early followers of Jesus.
In 325, he convened the Council of Nicaea, which fixed the dates of important old world Roman festivals. It opted to mark Christmas, then celebrated at varying dates, on Dec. 25 to be unified with the Roman
Solstice Saturna festival celebrating the birth of the sun god, Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at Rome's La Sapienza University, told reporters Friday.
The Basilica of St. Anastasia was built as soon as a year after the Nicaean Council. It probably was where Christmas was first marked on Dec. 25, part of broader efforts to unify pagan practices and holidays
with Christian celebrations in the early days of the new religion, Carandini said.
"The church was built to supposedly Christianize these pagan places of worship," he said. "It was normal to put a church at these pagan places.
Rome's archaeological superintendent Angelo Bottini, who did not take part in Carandini's research, said that hypothesis was "evocative and coherent" and "helps us understand the mechanisms of the passage of
joining paganism to Christianity."
Bottini and Carandini both said future digs could bolster the link between the pagan shrine and the church if structures belonging to the "Lupercale" are found directly below the basilica.
The Basilica St. Anastasia was the first church to rise not on the ancient city's outskirts, but on the Palatine Hill, the palatial center of power and religion in imperial Rome, Carandini said. Though little known today, at the time of Constantine it was one of the most important basilicas for Catholics in Rome, he said.
The "Lupercale" shrine - named after the "lupa," Latin for she-wolf - is 52 feet below ground. So far, archaeologists have only been able to see it by inserting probes and cameras that have revealed a vaulted ceiling decorated with colored marble and a white imperial eagle.
Though some experts have expressed doubts that the pagan grotto is in fact the mythological nursery of Romulus and Remus, most archaeologists believe the shrine fits the descriptions found in ancient texts, and plans are being drawn up to excavate the structure further.
Jeremiah 10 condemns Christmas trees!
Jeremiah 10
1 Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel.
2 Thus says the LORD:
“ Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
4 They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
5 They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”
6 Inasmuch as there is none like You, O LORD
(You are great, and Your name is great in might),
7 Who would not fear You, O King of the nations?
For this is Your rightful due.
For among all the wise men of the nations,
And in all their kingdoms,
There is none like You.
8 But they are altogether dull-hearted and foolish;
A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine.
9 Silver is beaten into plates;
It is brought from Tarshish,
And gold from Uphaz,
The work of the craftsman
And of the hands of the metalsmith;
Blue and purple are their clothing;
They are all the work of skillful men.
10 But the LORD is the true God;
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
At His wrath the earth will tremble,
And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation.
Jeremiah 10 condemns idolatry, both in the letter and in the spirit, whether a physical idol or an idolatrous tradition based upon HEATHEN CUSTOMS like the "Christmas tree" that history clearly exposes as pagan in origin. Those who adorn their Christmas trees and remain in denial about its pagan origin, who play deaf, dumb and blind to the facts, who attempt to dismiss or downplay how it's a heathen custom, are living a lie and shamefully reject the clear commandments of God that speak against such spiritual adultery, mixing and matching pagan error with biblical truth, and will suffer the consequences for being so dishonest and deceitful.
Pagan holidays like Christmas and pagan customs like Christmas trees are both abominations to God. True Christians shun both, we avoid them like the plague, because we love God more than idolatrous traditions of apostate men!
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
1 Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel.
2 Thus says the LORD:
“ Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
4 They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
5 They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”
6 Inasmuch as there is none like You, O LORD
(You are great, and Your name is great in might),
7 Who would not fear You, O King of the nations?
For this is Your rightful due.
For among all the wise men of the nations,
And in all their kingdoms,
There is none like You.
8 But they are altogether dull-hearted and foolish;
A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine.
9 Silver is beaten into plates;
It is brought from Tarshish,
And gold from Uphaz,
The work of the craftsman
And of the hands of the metalsmith;
Blue and purple are their clothing;
They are all the work of skillful men.
10 But the LORD is the true God;
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
At His wrath the earth will tremble,
And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation.
Jeremiah 10 condemns idolatry, both in the letter and in the spirit, whether a physical idol or an idolatrous tradition based upon HEATHEN CUSTOMS like the "Christmas tree" that history clearly exposes as pagan in origin. Those who adorn their Christmas trees and remain in denial about its pagan origin, who play deaf, dumb and blind to the facts, who attempt to dismiss or downplay how it's a heathen custom, are living a lie and shamefully reject the clear commandments of God that speak against such spiritual adultery, mixing and matching pagan error with biblical truth, and will suffer the consequences for being so dishonest and deceitful.
Pagan holidays like Christmas and pagan customs like Christmas trees are both abominations to God. True Christians shun both, we avoid them like the plague, because we love God more than idolatrous traditions of apostate men!
Why I No Longer Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is About Giving -- Says Who?
C.H. Spurgeon on Christmas and Roman Catholicism
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
The Plain Truth about Christmas
"The law is done away" - don't you believe it!
"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill [magnify, expand and expound upon]. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:17–20).
The damnable religious lie that the "law is done away" is an accursed replacement theology to substitute pagan holidays and SUNday for the holy Sabbath and biblical festivals (1 John 2:4). Such Gentilized Christians misled by Romanizers, know the Law and the Prophets condemn such baptized paganism, such whitewashed slop, such Babylonian muck.
If there were no law, then there is no sin, for "sin is the transgression of the law!" (1 John 3:4). Satan's rebellious children deny the need of a Savior from sin (Titus 1:16). They fail to confess and forsake their sins, to receive the pardon and the power to overcome in Christ daily, but prove how they're enslaved to idolatrous traditions by blathering they're "free" to break the holy commandments! (Jeremiah 7:7-11).
The treacherous religious lie that the "law is done away" is spewed by dishonest and deceitful "Christians" who remain unrepentant in their sins and will die in them if they continue to fail to FORSAKE BABYLON. Those who are truly Christian, hear and heed Christ's command to come out of such religious confusion! The rest stay put, proud and stubborn, and will suffer the consequences for it, as they've been warned.
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
The damnable religious lie that the "law is done away" is an accursed replacement theology to substitute pagan holidays and SUNday for the holy Sabbath and biblical festivals (1 John 2:4). Such Gentilized Christians misled by Romanizers, know the Law and the Prophets condemn such baptized paganism, such whitewashed slop, such Babylonian muck.
If there were no law, then there is no sin, for "sin is the transgression of the law!" (1 John 3:4). Satan's rebellious children deny the need of a Savior from sin (Titus 1:16). They fail to confess and forsake their sins, to receive the pardon and the power to overcome in Christ daily, but prove how they're enslaved to idolatrous traditions by blathering they're "free" to break the holy commandments! (Jeremiah 7:7-11).
The treacherous religious lie that the "law is done away" is spewed by dishonest and deceitful "Christians" who remain unrepentant in their sins and will die in them if they continue to fail to FORSAKE BABYLON. Those who are truly Christian, hear and heed Christ's command to come out of such religious confusion! The rest stay put, proud and stubborn, and will suffer the consequences for it, as they've been warned.
Christian Reprobates?
A Nation of Drunks and Whores
Apostate Christians
Is the Plain Truth Too Strong?
Do You Prefer TRADITION Over Truth?
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Germany makes pagan Sunday official
Court enforces day of rest, bans Sunday shopping
The Babylonian Mystery religion of Roman Catholicism again seeks to enforce the Mark of the Beast, SUNday worship, starting in Germany, naturally, since they've historically collaborated with Germany to forge the unholy Roman Empire of the German Nation and intend on perverting the European Union into its final revival. Herbert W. Armstrong was right about Germany's Fourth Reich and the RCC!
Croatia bows before Rome every Sunday
The Babylonian Mystery religion of Roman Catholicism again seeks to enforce the Mark of the Beast, SUNday worship, starting in Germany, naturally, since they've historically collaborated with Germany to forge the unholy Roman Empire of the German Nation and intend on perverting the European Union into its final revival. Herbert W. Armstrong was right about Germany's Fourth Reich and the RCC!
Croatia bows before Rome every Sunday
The Cult of Roman Catholicism
Re: Needed: a "Build the Land of Israel Fund"
To: WarrenTear (#28)
Christian Europe
Whenever those steeped in the Babylonian Mystery religion of Roman Catholicism blather about "Christian Europe," they're talking about CATHOLIC Europe. As both the Bible and history testify, the Roman Catholic Cult is anathema to true Christianity, biblical Christianity. The bloody RCC works to destroy the light of true Christianity, the Sabbath-keeping Church of God, for exposing their darkness with the plain truth of the holy Scriptures, especially whenever Roman Catholic puppets are in power. The European stage is set, as prophesied, as Herbert W. Armstrong warned, for the final revival of the unholy Roman Empire whose days are numbered.
Pope seeks privileged status for the RCC in Europe
The Lisbon Treaty forges an empire, an emperor and an anvil
for war!
The Rape of Europe: "No Means No!"
To: WarrenTear (#28)
Christian Europe
Whenever those steeped in the Babylonian Mystery religion of Roman Catholicism blather about "Christian Europe," they're talking about CATHOLIC Europe. As both the Bible and history testify, the Roman Catholic Cult is anathema to true Christianity, biblical Christianity. The bloody RCC works to destroy the light of true Christianity, the Sabbath-keeping Church of God, for exposing their darkness with the plain truth of the holy Scriptures, especially whenever Roman Catholic puppets are in power. The European stage is set, as prophesied, as Herbert W. Armstrong warned, for the final revival of the unholy Roman Empire whose days are numbered.
Pope seeks privileged status for the RCC in Europe
The Lisbon Treaty forges an empire, an emperor and an anvil
for war!
The Rape of Europe: "No Means No!"
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Cursed for Christmas?
Will God Curse Our Countries for Christmas?
"You don't celebrate Christmas?" Well, not any more.
1 Peter 4:3-5
For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. 4 In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
I realize that those who are still drunk on the wine of the Babylonian Mystery religion (incorporated into the Roman Catholic Cult as brought out in The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop) don't appreciate or comprehend those who are now SOBER and happy to be free from idolatrous traditions for the plain truth of the Bible and history.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God rejoices in the knowledge and glorious plan of salvation for all mankind that the biblical festivals, the holy days that our Great Creator God has ordained portray - no longer falling for the hollow days of pagan Rome, pimped by Roman wolves in sheep's clothing, false father figures.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God celebrate that soon everybody will join us in celebrating God's holy days, the "Jewish holidays" in spirit and in truth, and will trash their former tinsel traditions. We are pioneers of the Wonderful World Tomorrow!
Jeremiah 16:19
O LORD, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction, The Gentiles shall come to You From the ends of the earth and say, "Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things."
It is sad when folks continue to fall for all the RELIGIOUS BULL Rome has dumped on the world and pretend they're worshipping Christ who hates such PAGAN ABOMINATIONS. Why remain in denial?
God is truth and despises such religious lies as Christmas and Easter. They're PAGAN to the core and God's People avoid them like the plague, happy with the biblical festivals God has given us to celebrate.
Yeshua, the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, will return and reign supreme from Jerusalem and teach the Torah, slaughtering the papal bull by the sword of the truth.
Isaiah 2:2-3
2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the [Temple] mountain of the LORD’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.
”For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [not Rome].
Yeshua will establish the law of God as the law of the land, the law of all the Earth! That holy law reveals the seven biblical festivals of the LORD that Yeshua will faithfully teach and command all nations to observe or else - not just the Jewish people and British-Israelites.
Yes, too many people have inherited religious lies, and have passed down traditional error from generation to generation; worthless celebrations that God hates and rejects as unclean and polluted.
It bears repeating, since our proud and stubborn peoples have thick skulls that need the truth knocked into them, driving home this biblical message: Christmas and Easter are PAGAN -- those who say otherwise are liars, dishonest with themselves and others, worshipping God in vain (Titus 1:16, 1 John 2:4).
I believe many PROFESSING Christians are actually familiar with the Scriptures that condemn futile attempts to modify pagan holidays and tailor heathen customs to serve the true God (Deut. 12:30-32, Jer. 10:2-3), but they conveniently ignore them or reject them by woeful neglect when such Scriptures step on their traditional toes and make them uncomfortable, demanding change (isn't that what true conversion is all about?), requiring them to learn to love God's truth more than their TRADITIONS (Mark 7:7).
Abominable Christians, those who have the perverted religious preference of tradition over truth, are just like every other sinner unwilling to confess and forsake their sins and seek to whitewash or justify them.
The difference is such professing Christians often pretend to be better or more righteous than those physical idolaters and immoral folks (who also refuse to repent) while they engage in spiritual idolatry (putting tradition over truth) and spiritual immorality (whoring around with other gods and foreign ways) bringing divine judgment upon our nations.
May the servants of God, who know and believe the Bible and its principles and prophecies about blessings for national obedience and curses for national disobedience (Dan. 9:11), plea for diehard Catholics and Protestants to REPENT!
May we take the Word of God seriously and turn from the pagan holidays that God hates so much He let ancient Israel and Judah suffer destruction, defeat and deportation for such "harmless" celebrations and blind observations.
Will we insist on losing our national sovereignty too, brought to our knees to learn to see things God's way or will we repent and spare ourselves, our family and friends, from suffering the dreadful Time of Jacob's Trouble, the Great Tribulation?
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. [No mixing and matching of pagan error with biblical truth]
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? [No diluting, adulterating and polluting of God's truth with pagan blends]Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
"I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people."
17 Therefore
"Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord. [Don't stay stuck in the rut of tradition, but let the plain truth set you free!]
Do not touch what is unclean,
And [then] I will receive you.
18 [on these conditions] I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty."
"You don't celebrate Christmas?" Well, not any more.
1 Peter 4:3-5
For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. 4 In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
I realize that those who are still drunk on the wine of the Babylonian Mystery religion (incorporated into the Roman Catholic Cult as brought out in The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop) don't appreciate or comprehend those who are now SOBER and happy to be free from idolatrous traditions for the plain truth of the Bible and history.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God rejoices in the knowledge and glorious plan of salvation for all mankind that the biblical festivals, the holy days that our Great Creator God has ordained portray - no longer falling for the hollow days of pagan Rome, pimped by Roman wolves in sheep's clothing, false father figures.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God celebrate that soon everybody will join us in celebrating God's holy days, the "Jewish holidays" in spirit and in truth, and will trash their former tinsel traditions. We are pioneers of the Wonderful World Tomorrow!
Jeremiah 16:19
O LORD, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction, The Gentiles shall come to You From the ends of the earth and say, "Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things."
It is sad when folks continue to fall for all the RELIGIOUS BULL Rome has dumped on the world and pretend they're worshipping Christ who hates such PAGAN ABOMINATIONS. Why remain in denial?
God is truth and despises such religious lies as Christmas and Easter. They're PAGAN to the core and God's People avoid them like the plague, happy with the biblical festivals God has given us to celebrate.
Yeshua, the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, will return and reign supreme from Jerusalem and teach the Torah, slaughtering the papal bull by the sword of the truth.
Isaiah 2:2-3
2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the [Temple] mountain of the LORD’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.
”For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [not Rome].
Yeshua will establish the law of God as the law of the land, the law of all the Earth! That holy law reveals the seven biblical festivals of the LORD that Yeshua will faithfully teach and command all nations to observe or else - not just the Jewish people and British-Israelites.
Yes, too many people have inherited religious lies, and have passed down traditional error from generation to generation; worthless celebrations that God hates and rejects as unclean and polluted.
It bears repeating, since our proud and stubborn peoples have thick skulls that need the truth knocked into them, driving home this biblical message: Christmas and Easter are PAGAN -- those who say otherwise are liars, dishonest with themselves and others, worshipping God in vain (Titus 1:16, 1 John 2:4).
I believe many PROFESSING Christians are actually familiar with the Scriptures that condemn futile attempts to modify pagan holidays and tailor heathen customs to serve the true God (Deut. 12:30-32, Jer. 10:2-3), but they conveniently ignore them or reject them by woeful neglect when such Scriptures step on their traditional toes and make them uncomfortable, demanding change (isn't that what true conversion is all about?), requiring them to learn to love God's truth more than their TRADITIONS (Mark 7:7).
Abominable Christians, those who have the perverted religious preference of tradition over truth, are just like every other sinner unwilling to confess and forsake their sins and seek to whitewash or justify them.
The difference is such professing Christians often pretend to be better or more righteous than those physical idolaters and immoral folks (who also refuse to repent) while they engage in spiritual idolatry (putting tradition over truth) and spiritual immorality (whoring around with other gods and foreign ways) bringing divine judgment upon our nations.
May the servants of God, who know and believe the Bible and its principles and prophecies about blessings for national obedience and curses for national disobedience (Dan. 9:11), plea for diehard Catholics and Protestants to REPENT!
May we take the Word of God seriously and turn from the pagan holidays that God hates so much He let ancient Israel and Judah suffer destruction, defeat and deportation for such "harmless" celebrations and blind observations.
Will we insist on losing our national sovereignty too, brought to our knees to learn to see things God's way or will we repent and spare ourselves, our family and friends, from suffering the dreadful Time of Jacob's Trouble, the Great Tribulation?
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. [No mixing and matching of pagan error with biblical truth]
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? [No diluting, adulterating and polluting of God's truth with pagan blends]Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
"I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people."
17 Therefore
"Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord. [Don't stay stuck in the rut of tradition, but let the plain truth set you free!]
Do not touch what is unclean,
And [then] I will receive you.
18 [on these conditions] I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty."
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