Combative Ministries Dreaming Of A Disputatious Christmas

An old adage warns that, the more you do for people, the more they you know what all over you.

Actor turned evangelist Kirk Cameron may be becoming personally acquainted with that classic truism.

Merging these divergent vocations, Cameron has produced a documentary examining the Christian origins or at least basis of Christmas.

Surprisingly, some of the harshest criticisms are not coming from the militant secularists or even outright atheists but rather from Cameron's fellow believers.

Cameron is coming under condemnation for including in his film a segment on Santa Claus being inspired by Bishop Nicholas of Myra.

It is from this figure that the legend of St. Nicholas is derived.

But instead of commending Cameron for highlighting little known facts of church history, according to ChristianNews.net, Mike Gerndon of Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries is peeved that Cameron kept his presentation on an ecumenical level and did not go all Jack Chick in exposing the jolly red elf's Roman Catholicism.

The evangelist is quoted as saying in an article posted 11/12/14. “The fact that the Roman Catholic Church made Nicholas a saint should be a red flag to anyone who knows only God can convert sinners to saints by the sovereign work of His Spirit.”

Does it really matter if Nicholas was Roman Catholic or not?

It's not like there were many other churches to pick from in his time if one wanted to express one's religious faith in terms of an orthodox Biblical theology.

However, for Gerndon, even getting his rear this high up on his shoulders is not enough.

His joy this time of year seems to be derived apparently by attempting to ruin every one else's holiday season.

Gerndon continued, “Born again Christians should not be joining Roman Catholics in any spiritual...activity. Paul called on us to remain separate from the unbeliever. When people say 'Merry Christmas'....They are mixing the holy name of Christ with a pagan holiday and a blasphemous representation of Christ on an altar.”

Like many other conceptual formulations, Christmas is imbued with the meaning that we put into it.

By saying “Thursday” or “Saturday”, are fundamental Evangelicals rendering homage to the pagan deities for which those particular days are named?

Scripture urges to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.

At no time is salvation dependent upon how vehemently one opposes those historic points and personalities where this particular understanding of the faith intersects with another with which it is at times at distinctive variance.

By Frederick Meekins

Are Stores Open Thanksgiving Deserving Of Wide Scale Divine Retribution?

Granted, retailers opening on Thanksgiving might not have been the most family-friendly or magnanimous gesture in relation to their employees. However, the response on the part of certain theologians and critics might have gone a bit overboard.

In particular, one such condemnation intoned that from this alteration in commercial operational policy that America is an evil nation worthy of God's judgment.

So because Walmart was either open on Thanksgiving or opened their doors later that evening, nuclear destruction and annihilation or something comparable should rain down across the nation. That is, of course, what is usually meant by the euphemism of “God's judgment”.

To justify this hardline response to opening stores on Thanksgiving beyond simply frowning upon the decision to actively wanting to see lives ruined because of it, Biblical prohibitions regarding the Sabbath are often invoked.

The intentions might possess a nobility in that these sentiments attempt to construe all of reality through the light of God's word and theology derived from it. However, in terms of religious jurisprudence, the position falls a bit short in terms of serving as a platform upon which one can stand to look righteous in calling for blatant ruination and upheaval.

God no doubt delights when His children offer up gratitude for what He has provided and is angered when this appreciation is not evident. However, it does not follow that one cannot express gratitude in a scheduled ritualized manner prior to engaging in orderly commerce later that same day.

One might even claim that God does not really care one way or another to a great degree about the statutory observance of Thanksgiving Day. It may come as a surprise, but there is nothing found within the pages of the canon of Scripture demanding the observance be commemorated a particular Thursday in November.

It must also be asked to what extent do those enforcing Thanksgiving Day under the Mosaic regulations upholding the Sabbath want these punishments and prohibitions enforced? From Exodus 20:9-11, it is learned that the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Jehovah is quite explicit about this.

In our system of chronometric tabulation, Saturday is the Sabbath. What the vast majority of Christians celebrate each Sunday (especially in the morning) is technically not the Sabbath but rather the Lord's Day to commemorate the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These have been conflated in the minds of many, especially those under the sway of a strict legalism. However, these days are not the same.

So are those demanding compulsory observance of the Sabbath willing to turn themselves over for execution should they find themselves violating the extensive prohibitions regulating the day? For according to Exodus 31:14, that is the stipulated punishment for those failing to observe the Sabbath of the seventh day if such a regulation still applies beyond Deuteronomical Israel.

When those attending compulsory Sabbath observations return home, do they intend to walk rather than operate a vehicle? For that is the extent to which the most observant Orthodox Jews adhere to the exactness of that divine decree. Senator Joseph Lieberman would not even place his own subway fair card into the electronic ticket-taker.

Furthermore, do those deliberating to make such a chore of relaxation intend to only eat leftovers from the night before or unheated prepackaged foods? Because if the true believing Christian must abide by every Biblical decree in excruciating detail for fear of befalling God's indignation, the preparation of consumables is forbidden as well.

Those more interested in ruining everyone else's celebration rather than simply maximizing their own will respond that simply pointing out what is said plainly in certain passages of Scripture downplayed as a result of those advocating them not wanting a greater majority of Christians to grapple with what is being said actually obscures the greater truth of the principle that is being conveyed. Fair enough.

If not for the principles conveyed by God to the Hebrew forefathers of the need for rest and reflection, mankind might have never comprehended the need for a work environment beneficial for all sides of the economic transaction. Before this revelation, for the most part laborers were little more than fodder to be worked until they dropped and quickly discarded.

However, are those insisting up a slavish adherence to the letter of the law really getting that point across when their homiletical formulations cause the listeners to stop and wonder if what really gets the motors of these scriptural exegetes running is rather body counts, the destruction of property, and overall social upheaval. For are not these in some form or another what is meant by the phrase “God's judgment”?

In these times of widespread debauchery and systematic subversion of Western culture, one usually tries to distance oneself from feminist critiques and condemnation of traditional religion. However, if one desires to be an honest observer of the human condition, one is forced to admit that only a man sitting back with his feet propped up would construe Thanksgiving Day as a Sabbath free from labor.

On the classic sitcom “Home Improvement” starring Tim Allen, one of the wittiest lines ever uttered on the series was verbalized when his sidekick Al Borlin quipped that dinner does not make itself. The remark was very similar to an observation made by my own mother.

If a man fails to realize that Thanksgiving is not some magical occasion where one of the most delicious dinners of the year just sprouts fully formed on the table in a manner akin to manna from Heaven, it is most likely that a woman in either the form of a wife, mother or even unwed concubine has spent much of the day laboring away in preparation.

Interestingly, those often complaining the loudest about the growing irreverence with which the day is treated are not absent from the kitchen because they are given over to the higher spiritual pursuits such as prayer, Bible study, or theological contemplation. Instead, they are plopped in an easy chair or on the sofa watching the most typical of entertainments. And I am not talking about the Westminster Kennel Club but rather NFL football.

The conspicuously religious claim that they are opposed to retailers being opened on Thanksgiving because their delicate consciences are disturbed by something so crass and base as mere commerce being transacted on such a solemn occasion. Then why do they have their peepers glued to the boob tube?

It is quite instructive that this contempt for free market exchange is limited to when it is engaged in by the laboring and servile classes. For the last time I checked, it is doubtful that the players, assorted team personnel, or the media conglomerates were putting on a complimentary exhibition game.

No doubt, millions upon millions of dollars exchange hands to orchestrate whatever number of games take place on this particular day. I am not really aware of the exact number. I usually watch the dog show while eating canned pasta just so I can say I had spaghetti for Thanksgiving.

So why are those deciding to go shopping on Thanksgiving more worthy of having death and misery inflicted upon them more so than those instead either attending the football game or even watching the event on television? Confronted so boldly about what it is that they are advocating, those previously enunciating a desire to see God's wrath dispensed over something as commonplace as going to the mall might attempt to linguistically backpedal by claiming that, in their call for judgment, they did not mean to wish misery or death upon those participating in a disputed activity or behavior.

I've pretty much been in or around Christian circles my entire life even if I don't feel welcomed within them entirely. The phrase “God's judgment” rarely has connotation other than that of sorrow and lamentation unless in rare instances where one is referencing the rewards that will be bestowed upon the believer for the good deeds they did honoring to Christ.

Furthermore, in the vast majority of instances, it's not like those participating one way or the other were prevented from enjoying the primary festivities of the Thanksgiving celebration or were not duly compensated in some manner.

For example, though likely not a universal beneficence bestowed on all employees, most laboring to make the sales happen were probably paid some kind of overtime. If not, such personnel were probably not compelled to work beyond their normal allotment of hours for that particular week. As such, they were payed with their scheduled adjusted to be off at another time.

Of even less moral concern ought to be the ones deciding to participate in these sales events on the consumer side of the transaction. For example, many of these sales were designated to commence well after the customary dinner hour.

As such, by that point in the evening, most would have already cogitated upon whatever thoughts of gratitude would have otherwise fired within their respective synapses. Most are in a turkey-induced catatonia, bloated and passing intestinal gas as they glare in a stupor into the television.

Interestingly, if we are raising the opposition to the opening of retailers on Thanksgiving to the level of Biblical law worthy of incurring divine retribution for violating, it must be pointed out that the commencement of these sales technically aren't even occurring on Thanksgiving. In the context of Hebrew culture and religious jurisprudence, the rendering of the day is not determined from midnight to midnight as occurs in the contemporary system. The day is instead rendered from sundown to sundown.

If one wants to be a stickler to Biblical detail, it must be noted that many of these Thanksgiving sales often commence well after dark. Therefore, under Sabbath prohibitions, it is no more immoral to shop from the disputed 8 to 11:59 PM than it would be during the 8 to 11:59 AM period Black Friday morning.

Those wanting to impose the Old Testament as binding civil legislation insist such must be done because God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So if Americans deserve nuclear annihilation, plague, or whatever manifestation of the Apocalypse tickles your particular eschatological fancy for simply going to the store on Thanksgiving, should our nation also be destroyed for altering the method of rendering the days in compliance with the interpretative principle just enunciated?

It can indeed be upsetting to see what one perceives as our culture moving away from Godly foundations. However, enunciating a desire to see lives ruined and destroyed for such is probably a greater violation of explicit Biblical imperatives (such as the careful invocation of judgment) than the modification of a practice that (though commendable and worthy of continuation) is more of an interpretive application of the divine imperatives to begin with.

By Frederick Meekins

Church History Sermon Fails To Consider Profound Lesson

In a sermon on the importance of church history, it was argued that the church rather than the biological family was the primary social and psychological relationship in the life of the believer.

That might provide a degree of comfort if one's biological family is urging one to engage in blatantly anti-Biblical behavior.

However, such a grandiose sentiment itself needs to be circumscribed by carefully delineated boundaries.

You will always have a higher priority to those through whom you came into the world.

There is something downright shameful regarding some of these missionaries that will willingly die on behalf of the Pygmies in the African bush but hardly give a second thought to their aging parents here in America.

In classical Christian thought, this is the idea of subsidiarity, that your most profound obligations are to those closest to you.

Secondly, by insisting that a more profound loyalty is owed to one's church family than one's biological family can expose the gullible to a shocking litany of potential abuse on the part of church leaders.

For Jim Jones will live in infamy for conditioning numerous followers to place obedience to church structure over the well being of spouses and children, with the coercion and manipulation he subjected them to in the isolation of the jungle ending with hundreds dead.

It is a shame that a sermon purporting to admonish the need for the Christian to heed the lessons of history failed to take into account one of the twentieth century's most profound.

By Frederick Meekins

ABOUT MY NEW BOOK “OBAMA IN THE SKY WITH DEMOCRATS”

By David Lawrence,Ph.D

I blog for Tea Party Nation,  American Thinker, Daily Caller, World Net Daily, Intellectual Conservative and Eagle Rising. 

Lately I have written political poems. Most poets are liberal but I am a conservative poet.  I am trying to tell our side of the story.  I am well-published and have published several books which can be found on Amazon:com.

The Editor-in-Chief of Eagle Rising, Onan J. Coca, loved them so much that he just published my book on Amazon:  OBAMA IN THE SKY WITH DEMOCRATS.

I have excerpted some quotes from my book, “Obama in the Sky with Democrats.”

1

I think of ISIS cutting the heads off of children….

If you can’t hate your enemy you can’t love yourself.

And in a loveless world heads roll like religious bowling balls.

2

The Koran reads like Reservoir Dogs.

It is the religion of death,

A pulp fiction of blood.

Where oh where has Tarantino gone?

Into a celluloid film of Muslim beheadings.

 3

Obama is playing God again,

Picking the dead instead of jellybeans from a Presidential jar.

4

I understand the inconvenience of children, of life,

                                Of the world, of religion.

I do not understand kicking up your heels in a ho down of death,

Dancing to abortion’s music.

 5

Al Gore is crawling across the Arctic on his knees,

Worried that he will fall through the ice,

Crack a bone,

Lose his Nobel Prize to someone with a graduate degree

In climatology.

6

Obama, your icon is Pinocchio.  You can’t get out of the way of your own nose.

7

I wish I had Obama’s good posture. 

He has put too much unnecessary weight on my shoulders.

8

Forgiveness is a fault that leads to redundant terror.

You dance in your self-approbation like a mirror that has fallen in love with itself.

Church's Opposition To Holidays Borders On The Cultic

In the equivalent of the self-denunciation that occurs in a variety of cults and Vietcong prisoner of war camps, the congregation of Grace Fellowship Church in Davenport, Iowa celebrate assorted holidays by not only being harangued by their pastor as to what wretched Christians they are if they are caught participating in these festivities but they are also expected to confess to one another just how much they despise these occasions as evidenced by a number of sermons posted at SermonAudio.com..

In an anti-Halloween sermon, the pastor remarked that any parents that have taught their children about Santa Claus are guilty of having lied. He then remarked how delighted he was of his son for having responded to an inquiry that Santa Claus was a wicked elf from the north. So the moral of that story must be that falsehoods are acceptable then they advance the family theological agendas and pecularitiies.

In a sermon condemning Halloween and nearly all other holidays, the pastor suggested that if you enjoy the accouterments of a particular celebration, you can partake of it at another time of year. As an example, he suggested saving your marshmallow peeps until May or June.

But if you are required to live your life in such a controlled and contrived manner, aren't you still living still beholden to that particular holiday? And more importantly, isn't such an individual still seeking the approval of man rather than God?

In an anti-Halloween sermon, the pastor made the argument that Trick Or Treating was wrong because the custom encourages children to dress up as something they are not and to hoard something that “appeals to the flesh” (that being candy). So in the case of this preacher, it would not be a sin for him to dress as a donkey because he's certainly a dumb you know what.

In a sermon on Halloween, it was claimed that the customs of Halloween are designed to take children away from God at an early age. Couldn't something similar be said about legalistic churches and Christian schools pushing children away from God with too many nitpicky and asinine rules?

The pastor devoted a portion of his assorted tirades exposing that Frosty the Snowman was based on a lie. Who over the age of six believes he is real? Even the History Channel hasn't stooped that low yet. By singing about Frosty, you are no more worshiping Frosty than you would be worshiping Calijah The Wooden Indian or worshiping The Gambler by singing those classic songs.

Particularly unsettling and disturbing were the verbal confessions members of the congregation were expected to engage in order to receive approval and affirmation from the pastors and elders.

One gentleman confided how much he had wanted to celebrate Christmas the previous year but instead submitted himself to the eldership of the church. Buddy, the elders might have say as to whether or not the church building is decorated for Christmas. However, they don't have any say whatsoever as to what you do in your home.

In being prodded further by the leadership as to why he no longer celebrated Christmas, this individual responded because the authority in his life had instructed him as such. At no time did he clarify whether or not by that he meant the Holy Spirit or rather merely those holding position at church. If you are going to relent to pastoral control over your life to such an extent, please for the sake of your family, decide for yourself now if you are going to let the pastor sleep with your wife and molest your kids when he comes asking or drink the sour Kool Aid when he orders it.

Another seeking approval during this protocultic ritual admitted in her confession to tossing out a Fischer Price Nativity set because of the adoration her granddaughter exhibited towards the Baby Jesus figurine. The grandmother reflected, and rightfully so to a certain extent, that often we prefer the adorable Baby Jesus that is not a depiction of the Christ of wrath and judgment.

But shouldn't we be cautious about tossing out the messianic baby with the baptismal water? Isn't there a profound and beautiful truth in God in Christ condescending to our level by becoming one of us?

There are indeed both gentle and wrathful sides to God. And in the spirit of the Book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time and purpose to contemplate each of these under Heaven.

Would it be better to deny this obviously spiritually sensitive and receptive child the tender side of Jesus and instead replace Him only with the hard-edged disciplinarian Jesus that the most thoroughgoing Fundamentalists seem to have a preference for? About the only thing the child is going to retain of this entire encounter is that granny tossed out such a beloved toy or decoration. Her family will no doubt sit around twiddling their thumbs years down the road baffled as to why the child is no longer close to God.

A pastor opposed to the celebration of Christmas remarked that no one that has considered the material he has made available regarding the subject and prayed seriously about the topic has told him that despite these that they will continue celebrating the holiday. The statement was made to promulgate the impression that there is little chance for the true believer to come to any conclusion other than that of this particular pastor.

However, there are at least two other alternatives.

Firstly, the individual believer could have been convicted by the Holy Spirit that there is something more profoundly wrong in that particular congregation than the celebrating of Christmas. Concluding such, they retreat hastily from that particular assembly and flee to another house of worship.

Secondly, they might have considered what the pastor had to say, came to a different conclusion, and felt their was no need to inform the pastor of the decision. Especially in light of those matters where the individual is granted some measure of personalized conviction, it is not really the preacher's business what goes on in your home. If this brand of theology and ecclesiology makes such a fuss over Roman Catholic confession, they can't really then invoke some kind of expectation that you are obligated to blab about everything you do.

In these churches where the congregations don't celebrate Christmas, is it out of a desire to please God or have they been so brainwashed by the pastor that they are afraid of ticking him off?

A pastor can repent of celebrating Christmas as much as he likes. However, it is really not his place to homiletically manipulate and coerce you into doing so.

By Frederick Meekins