Subject:
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Re: Problems with Christianity
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 15 Dec 2000 22:28:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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434 times
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SRC wrote:
> 2. Christ's significance isn't limited to just what He said and did.
> You speak of Him in the past tense - it's not what He did - it's who He IS.
> Christmas and Easter are celebrations of the three most significant events
> in history - Christ's birth
http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/Xmas_ch1.htm
Excerpt:
How then did we receive our holidays (holy days) with their customs and
traditions _ Christmas as well as Easter, Halloween, and Mardi Gras? Each of
them has come to us from ancient
Babylon, through Rome, through the Roman Catholic church.
It was for this very reason that in Calvin's Geneva you could have been fined
or imprisoned for celebrating Christmas. It was at the request of the
Westminster Assembly that the English
Parliament in 1644 passed an act forbidding the observance of Christmas,
calling it a heathen holiday. In an appendix to their "Directory for the Public
Worship of God" the Westminster
divines said: "There is no day commanded in scripture to be kept holy under the
gospel but the Lord's day, which is the Christian Sabbath. Festival days,
vulgarly called 'Holy-days', having no
warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued." (See also, James
Bannerman, The Church of Christ, Vol. i, pages 406-420).
When the Puritans came to America they passed similar laws. The early New
Englanders worked steadily through December 25, 1620, in studied neglect of the
day. About 40 years later
the General Court of Massachusetts decreed punishment for those who kept the
season: "...anyone who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting,
or any other way, any such
days as Christmas Day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings."
It was not until the 19th century that Christmas had any religious significance
in Protestant churches. Even as late as 1900, Christmas services were not held
in Southern Presbyterian
churches. The pcus General Assembly of 1899 delcared: "There is no warrant in
Scripture for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holydays, rather the
contrary (see Gal. 4:9-11; Col.
2:16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed
faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the
gospel of Jesus Christ."
John Knox and his colleagues included the following statement in their First
Book of Discipline (1560):
We affirm that "all Scripture inspired of God is profitable to instruct,
to reprove, and to exhort." In which Books of Old and New Testaments we affirm
that all things necessary
for the instruction of the Kirk, and to make the man of God perfect, are
contained and sufficiently expressed.
By contrary Doctrine, we understand whatsoever men, by Laws, Councils, or
Constitutions have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the expressed
commandment of
God's word: such as be vows of chastity, foreswearing of marriage, binding
of men and women to several and disguised apparels, to the superstitious
observation of fasting days,
difference of meat for conscience sake, prayer for the dead; and keeping
of holy days of certain Saints commanded by men, such as be all those that the
Papists have invented,
as the Feasts (as they term them) of Apostles, Martyrs, Virgins, of
Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, and other fond feasts of our
Lady. Which things, because in
God's scriptures they neither have commandment nor assurance, we judge
them utterly to be abolished from this Realm; affirming further, that the
obstinate maintainers and
teachers of such abominations ought not to escape the punishment of the
Civil Magistrate.
What then is the history of Christmas? It came into the Church centuries after
the New Testament, was discarded at the Reformation, and has only in this
century crept back into the
Protestant Church. What I'm saying, then, is that the real Christmas has always
been pagan, and to make it a Christian celebration is to try to add Christ or
biblical elements to an essentially
pagan holiday.
--
| Tom Stangl, Technical Support Netscape Communications Corp
| Please do not associate my personal views with my employer
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Problems with Christianity
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| (...) <snipped long references about history of Christmas> My point was that Christ's significance is not limited to what He said and did 2000 years ago, but also who He IS - today - present tense - as in alive and risen from the dead. The history (...) (24 years ago, 16-Dec-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Problems with Christianity
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| (...) That's good - many just blindly proceed along the path to destruction. Christ Himself said "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate (...) (24 years ago, 15-Dec-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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