Friday, December 27, 2013

Pagan origin of Christmas , nobody should judge you.

The pagan Origins of Christmas, should any Christian be bordered.

   When was Jesus born?
A.    Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.
B.     The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth.  The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus.  This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C.     The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery.  His calculation went as follows:
a.       In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]).  Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome’s reign, etc.
b.     Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c.       Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign
.d.      If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).
e.       Augustus took power in 727 AUC.  Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f.        However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.D.     Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1.  The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.”E.      The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28.  Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18.  Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE. II.     How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?A.    Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25.  During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.  The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.”  Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week.  At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B.    The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time.  In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
C.    In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]
D.    The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.
E.      Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.”  The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
F.      The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who  first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3]  Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4]  However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians
.G.    Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city.  An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators.  They ran… amidRome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]
H.     As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”[6]  On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country.  In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.  Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed. III.     The Origins of Christmas Customs
A.     The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.
B.     The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna.  Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.
C.     The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January).  Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace.  The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).
D.     The Origin of Santa Clausa.       
Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra.  He died in 345 CE on December 6th.  He was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b.      Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament.  The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil” who sentenced Jesus to death
.c.       In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy.  There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts.  The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult.  Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
d.      The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans.  These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw.  Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn.  When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
e.       In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.
f.        In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History.  The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.
g.       Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, readKnickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…”  Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.
h.       The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus.  From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly.  Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock.  Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world.  All Santa was missing was his red outfit
.i.         In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa.  Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face.  The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red.  And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol. IV.   The Christmas Challenge·       Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly.  For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.·       Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.·        Christmas can't be substantiated with scripture therefore it isn't a Christian doctrine of faith .  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.
Should we celebrate Christmas
Against the backdrop of its pagan origin just as the modern day calender is of pagan origin , it is imperative that we understand that based on scriptures human traditions are not expected to override biblical doctrines especially when it against the principles of salvation by grace through faith. Therefore , emphasis is on the meaning of an event  not the date. The modern Christian today with this  understanding buys a property that has hitherto been used as a shrine or brothel and he changes the name , not the property into a Church. We have been given dominion over all creation even dates and cultures , and mandated to do all things to the glory of God. All things are yours the bible declares , the world can't tell me how to use my property. It is what I call the 25th of December that matters not what historical paganistic concepts declare."So let no one exult proudly concerning men [boasting of having this or that man as a leader], for all things are yours, Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas (Peter), or the universe or life or death, or the immediate and threatening present or the [subsequent and uncertain] future—all are yours, AMP:And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.1 Corinthians 3.21-23
Ownership
Psalm 24 says the earth belongs to God and john 1. 12 God's licence of ownership has been given to anyone who receives Jesus as lord. We are told in John 1 by Him all things are made including the dates and material from where idols or gods are made.
The will of God is that Christmas be celebrated everyday however on the 25th of December we give it a global status against the backdrop of the increasing number of those who would wish Christianity and all that symbolises salvation is annihilated.
The law of liberty in Christ under the dispensation of grace.
"All things are legitimate [permissible—and we are free to do anything we please], but not all things are helpful (expedient, profitable, and wholesome). All things are legitimate, but not all things are constructive [to character] and edifying [to spiritual life]." 1 corinthians 10.23
"Therefore let no one sit in judgment on you in matters of food and drink, or with regard to a feast day or a New Moon or a Sabbath. Such [things] are only the shadow of things that are to come, and they have only a symbolic value. But the reality (the substance, the solid fact of what is foreshadowed, the body of it) belongs to Christ. Let no one defraud you by acting as an umpire and declaring you unworthy and disqualifying you for the prize, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions [he claims] he has seen, vainly puffed up by his sensuous notions and inflated by his unspiritual thoughts and fleshly conceit, "And not holding fast to the Head, from Whom the entire body, supplied and knit together by means of its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. Colossians 2. 16-18
under the dispensation of grace no man has the authority to judge your decision to wether celebrate Christmas or not .

Credits to Lawrence Skelemes

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

FAITH TO DO THE EXTRAORDINARY

FAITH FOR EXTRAORDINARY LIVING .

John 20:25 "The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."

Like Thomas most people would only believe only when they have evidence . Our five senses were given to us by God to aid in our interaction with earthly life. However , if we do not reprogram our way of thinking to acknowledge the limits of our five senses, they will keep us from believing. Faith can perceive things that the senses cannot (Heb. 11:1). For instance, someone could be in love with you without you knowing it.

There are two kinds of faith , the first , human  and the second  supernatural or God-kind of faith. Human faith is based on physical things that we can see, taste, hear, smell, or feel. God's kind of faith believes independently of physical circumstances. To receive God's gift of salvation, we have to use the supernatural, God-kind of faith which isn't limited by our five senses but yet logical. This is because, to be saved, we must believe for things that we can't see or feel. We haven't seen God or the devil. We haven't seen Heaven or Hell. Yet we have to believe that these things exist. Human faith can't believe what it can't see, that's why there is so much disaster in the world claiming the lives of people who were warned through dreams and visions but the never believed it and paid dearly for it.

Man is so incapable of believing  the gospel on his own. To receive God's gift of salvation, we have to receive the supernatural, God-kind of faith first. Where does this faith come from and how do we get it?

Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." God's Word contains His faith. As we hear the Word of God about salvation, We receive God's faith so that we can believe the good news of our salvation. We actually use God's faith to get saved.

This God-kind of faith doesn't leave us after our born-again experience.

God's faith becomes a fruit of the Spirit which is in our hearts. We never lose this supernatural faith , we grow in it as we daily learn how to use it. The more you expose you expose yourself to the teaching of God's word the more you grow in faith. Receive grace as you read this now for an extraordinary breakthrough in Jesus name.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Sunday, December 8, 2013

YOU ARE TOO LOADED TO BE FRUSTRATED

Priceless Jewel of God ,You have been equipped and empowered with everything you need. You aren't meant to struggle through life in order to achieve anything. Our heavenly Father has deposited  in you the strength ,creativity and ideas you need to attain the highest level of success . You have been annointed for excellence. You are fully loaded. Reject depression , think success always. God loves you. "The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need." Psalm 23.1 Bible

Saturday, December 7, 2013

SATAN ISN'T AS POWERFUL AS YOU THINK HE IS .

SATAN IS ONLY AS POWERFUL AS YOU MAKE HIM .
Matthew 27:4 "Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? ....
False Religion thrives on flattery of it's victim and the magnification of the perceived enemy above the capacity of the victim thus creating room for exploitation. The devil's crowd may flatter as long as they can use you, but you can be assured that when there is no longer anything in it for them, they will forsake you just as the chief priests did Judas. Many persons have spent their time and money building religious edifices only to be dumped.
  Satan is the father of deception, often presenting himself as being concerned for our welfare as he did to Eve in the garden of Eden. A trade mark of false religion is the over emphasis on personal welfare ,thus neglecting reconciliation, social justice and the protection of the environment.
  Our victory over the enemy is dependent on how conversant we are with his strategies . Our lord Jesus Christ  stripped Satan of all his authority (Mt. 28:18). The power that Satan uses against us now, is deception. Those who ascribe other powers to him have already fallen prey to one of his lies. The devil deceives us and uses our own power and authority against us. The thing that makes deception so deadly is that those who are deceived don't know it. Once they realize they are deceived, they aren't deceived any and are made free.

The best defense against the devil is to be God conscious through worship and meditation on biblical materials . It is in our power to choose who's presence we desire to be influenced by , God or Satan. We are never far away from God's precence , its not something we go in to and come out of , He is forever with us. "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there" (Ps. 139:8). Anytime Satan's oppression is present, God's presence is there too (Heb. 13:5). It's just a matter of where our focus is. Focusing on your problem is a trick of the devil to make us look hopeless , put your attention on God and watch that situation dissolve in Jesus name.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

REJOICE ,YOUR SIN PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN PERMANENTLY TAKEN CARE OF

YOUR SIN PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN TAKEN CARE OF .

Luke 23:18 "And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:"
This is a true example of the meaning of substitutionary sacrifice , where one person takes the place of a condemned fellow even if they did not ask for it. This is what it means to be born again. A new opportunity at life eternally free from guilt and condemnation because someone else took all our guilt and condemnation on the cross of Calvary about 2013 years ago.
Jesus suffered the death that Barabbas should have experienced, and Barabbas went free without asking for it.
Likewise, we were all guilty (Rom. 3:23) and condemned to death (Rom. 6:23), yet Jesus suffered our punishment so that we may go free (2 Cor. 5:21). Just as Barabbas had nothing to do with this substitution, so "God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

Barabbas however had a responsibility after he no longer pronounced not guilty by law . He had to choose whether or not to accept this new start and remain free, or go back to his old ways and come under the judgment of the law again. Likewise, we have all been freed through the substitutionary death of Jesus, but we have to choose whether to accept our freedom by putting faith in Jesus or to reject it, by denying Him.

Our eternal freedom from the guilt of sin and resurrection to a Christlike life, is already a reality in our spirits but will only become a physical and emotional reality when we know and irrevocably accept it. In the same way that Jesus died for the sake of our sins once and for all, and death no longer has dominion over Him, the person who recognizes their freedom from sin through Christ's crucifixion , will not allow sin to rule over him anymore , failure to recognize this leads to a child of God struggling with the filth of sin. As you read this now, receive grace to live a life of honour and excellence as you exercise your dominion over sin in Jesus name.