Topic: Jesus Christ
Most today’s people believe that there is a Supreme Being who watches over us. Unfortunately, most of unbelievers, even some Christians, don’t believe in hell and Satan. Is there really placed called Hell? Like the other, there is a very few of Christians who believe that we are getting closer to the end of the world. Although there are many people who professed to be Christians, few of us acknowledge and understand the truth and revelation of the Word of God.
As Paul says in II Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Although the Bible is a Jewish and Christianity history book, it also teaches us about whom God is, how we need to live for Him, and shows us our mistakes and teaches us the right way of handing the situation.
In this last part of the series, we will learn about how the Christianity became a popular to the today’s world and religion than in the early church era. We will study what is the myth that today’s most Christian treasure and what is the truth from God’s view.
Before we go into study, I would like to say to you that this subject of teaching is not popular known topic to today’s churches. Since the one of the earliest popes adopted the Babylonian tradition of holidays and other ritual practices to the Roman Catholicism and added to the Christianity, many today’s churches accepted the Catholic ways to celebrate them as Christian holidays, such as Halloween, Saint’s Day, Christmas, and Easter. Although Christians have the right to create holidays as long as we’d get approval from God, it is abomination from God that we can mix holiday with Paganism.
Paul says in II Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” None! Zero! Our God is a jealous God. The first three of the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:7-11) tell us that we should give honor and praise God, who created the world and everything in the world. If we worship the other gods, our God would become jealous. Think about what if you find out your husband/wife cheats on you with the other guy/woman? Would this make you jealous? This is the same way about God. He loves us very much that He chooses His Son to be sacrificial offering to pay debts for our sin. If we worship the other gods, He would become sad, angry, and disappoint to see that His children would decide to change their identities.
Not only we will look to holidays to discover God’s truth, we also will look into today’s Christian teaching, media, entertainment, and music. We need to understand what’s going on the world, so that we may not be deceived from the devil’s trap. We also need this kind of teaching in our life: to prepare the Lord’s coming; to prepare to give out the answers from whatever people ask on End Time; and to prepare for the battle against Satan.
Before I came to realize that Christmas, Easter, and Halloween are Pagan holidays, I didn’t know the real meaning of holidays rather than they were Christian traditions. Within couple months after the 9/11 tragedy, one of my Christian elder brothers began to show me and explain to me about many Scriptures about the end time and how 9/11 tragedy effected to the preparation of the coming of Antichrist. In fact, my friend and I were terrified at Recreation Center of Woodrow Wilson Rehab Center to see that our country attacked by some religious leaders on that tragedy day.
One of the passages that my friends shared with me was Jeremiah 10, one of Babylonian holiday traditions that Israelites practiced as part of worshipping pagan gods. As my friend read this passage to me, he explained how Jeremiah 10:3-4 effect to one of our modern day’s holiday tradition, which I will explain it later. As I spent search God’s Word more with the help of my friend, I began to understand that we are getting closer to the end of our age.
In the message, which I’m going to share with you, it may surprise you or make disbelief on the subjects. If that happen, I recommend you to begin search the Scripture before you’d decide to ask me some of your questions or looking for other resources of information. God has the final authority over everything.
Let’s begin to discuss on Christmas and Jesus’ birth.
Many people believe that Christmas is a time for shopping, family and friends gathering, exchanging the gifts each other, and etc. If you are a Christian you may have learned that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. Well, this may surprise you that Christmas was not originated from Jesus Christ’s birth, but from the Pagan religion. Let’s look some points:
First, the word “Christmas” cannot be found in the Bible and in the Hebrew or Greek manuscript or picture of it from the Scripture. Many people, even bible scholars, believe that Christmas is coming from Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, which is incorrect. If we split the word “Christmas,” we will come with CHRIST-MAS or CHRIST’S MASS, which the Roman Catholic’s special mass performed in celebrating Christ’s birth. “In this mass, Jesus is considered both the priest and the victim, represented by the Catholic priest who offers Him as a sacrifice each time the mass is performed. In offering this "sacrifice," the priest believes he has the power to change the bread and the wine of the Communion into Jesus' literal flesh and blood, requiring the people to worship these elements as they do God Himself. This is obviously a denial of the gospel, and thereby, a false gospel (a re-doing of the sacrifice for sin—Heb. 9:12, 24-26; 10:10, 12, 14). Yet, many who cry out all year long against the blasphemous Roman Catholic system, at year-end embrace Rome 's most blasphemous abomination of them all—Christmas!” (See Should a Christian Celebrate Christmas?)
Second, Jesus didn’t come to the earth during the winter season. If we read about the angels’ announcement to the shepherds about Jesus (Luke 2:8-14), shepherds couldn’t watch the sheep outside if it was in the winter season. Catholic Pope selected December 25 as Jesus’ birthday, because this day of the month was the celebration of Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. “In order to make Christianity palatable to the heathen, the Roman Church simply took Saturnalia, adopted it into Christianity, and then eventually many of the associated pagan symbols, forms, customs, and traditions were reinterpreted (i.e., "Christianized") in ways "acceptable" to Christian faith and practice. (In fact, in 375 A.D., the Church of Rome under Pope Julius I merely announced that the birth date of Christ had been "discovered" to be December 25th, and was accepted as such by the "faithful." The festival of Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithras could now be celebrated as the birthday of Christ!) The pagans flocked into the Catholic places of worship, because they were still able to worship their old gods, but merely under different names. It mattered not to them whether they worshiped the Egyptian goddess mother and her child under the old names (Isis and Horus), or under the names of the "Virgin Mary" and the "Christ-child." Either way, it was the same old idol-religion (cf. 1 Thes. 1:8-10; 5:22 -- Paul says to turn from idols, not rename them and Christianize them). Roman Catholicism's Christmas Day is nothing but "baptized" paganism, having come along much too late to be part of "the faith once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3).” (See Should a Christian Celebrate Christmas?)
According to Lee Strobe, a Christian author of Case of Christmas, after his research on the virgin birth of Jesus, he believes that Christ was born between April 20 and May in between 6 and 3 B.C. This also can approve by Luke’s account, which I gave this above.
Lastly, Christmas tree and decoration have nothing to do with Jesus’ birth. Jesus didn’t die on the tree, but on the Cross that was made of a tree. When I read Jeremiah 10:3-4, I was first surprised about how Israelites worshipped the tree with the decoration on it, which it was the same method that we are doing over 1500 years. Having a Christmas tree in our houses is represented the nature of god that the Israelites practiced to avoid God the Almighty.
Also, we need to understand about Jesus’ earthly life and ministry is His death and resurrection, which we recognize it as Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. We most misinterpret His final week of ministry over 1500 years due to Roman Catholic converted to Christianity as they still carried the pagan belief system.
In KJV, the word “Easter” refers to Passover and it only mentions once in entire books of KJV Bible, which is in Acts 12:4. Otherwise, the word “Easter” in pagan term was from Eostare, pagan goddess. (See Should Christians Observe Easter)
Most of us believe that His final week of ministry began on Sunday, the week of Good Friday, which is March/April. If we read all the four Gospels, especially in the Gospel of John, there is no verse that Jesus didn’t enter Jerusalem for Passover Feast on the first day of the week, Sunday. Yes, Jesus started to go to Jerusalem six days before the Passover Feast (John 12:1), but it wasn’t on Sunday.
According to Jewish calendar, the Passover Feast was held on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan (March/April) (see Exodus 12), which was probably on Wednesday (before the actual Sabbath began). If this is case, Jesus went to Jerusalem on the week of next Wednesday.
I believe this because if Jesus died on Friday evening (6:01 PM), this would mean that He broke the Sabbath tradition, because Sabbath is actually began on Friday at 6:01 PM and ended on Saturday at 6:00 PM. We must remember that Jesus’ death represents the Passover the Lamb and Jews cannot sacrifice anything on Sabbath day until the day is over.
Also, Jesus must meet the requirement of sacrifice the Passover the lamb. If He went to His grave on Friday at 6:01 PM and resurrected on Sunday at 6:00 AM, that meant that He was in the heart of the earth (not in hell) for 1 ½ day. Remember that Jesus said He will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights (see Matthew 12:39-41), that is full 72 hours (24-hour a day x 3 days). If Jesus went to His grave on Thursday at 6:01 PM and resurrected on Saturday at 6:00 PM, this meant that He met the requirement of Passover Lamb.
Although Christmas and Easter have many ritual practices that are nowhere we can find in the Bible, these are few errors that we still value to try to honor God in the Church. Even though we cannot recognize whether the ritual comes from God or the other religious system, God is still giving some times to us to repent from our errors.
Now, let’s go forward with this subject and discuss about teachings on the Media. By now, Christianity is on the third place of the four greatest world religions: Roman Catholicism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Notice, I put Roman Catholicism as individual religious group and not in Christianity and put in the number one on the top four. Why? If you understand Catholicism, you will find there are many misconceptions on Christianity that we cannot find in the Holy Bible, such as Prayer of Rosary and Jesus hang and naked on the cross at the front of church sanctuary. Most today’s Christian holidays arrived from Roman Catholicism. Also, many people already accepted and followed Roman Catholicism as Christianity.
There are some Christian churches still carried teachings from Roman Catholicism. For example, Bruce Wilkson, a Christian author of The Prayer of Jabez. His teaching on prayer is the similar method that Roman Catholicism used: repeating same prayer for thirty straight days. It’s great that we repeat our prayer to God in different ways each day, but we should not limit our prayer into a month long and repeat same words of prayer to get our blessings from Him.
If we read Matthew 6:9-13 on Disciples’ Prayer (not the Lord’s Prayer), Jesus didn’t say that we need to repeat the words of prayer, but in this manner (Matthew 6:9 NKJV) or approach: 1) give honor and praise to God, 2) pray for other and ourselves, and 3) give honor and praise to God.
Most today’s churches teach on the subject of Christian living, such as family, marriage, finance, and gaining more blessings from God. Please don’t misunderstand and think that I am against on this subject. Even though we need to study about Christian living, there are a lot preachers who teaching on this for ourselves only. That’s self-fish.
To get better understand on Christian living, we must interpret the Scripture word for word in the Bible. We don’t need to add another word or another version of the Bible to make ourselves understand. No! There are about more than 200 new Bible versions in a year in the alone, but we may use certain Bible versions for our own understanding or belief or other reason. (I am currently used the both KJV and NKJV (similar to KJV), because they came from the original Hebrew and Greek manuscript, which was ancient, to get better understanding God’s Word. Others, such as NIV, NCV, and NLT, are from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, but the scribe scholars may use the latest manuscript or plain English dictionary, which it may not agree with the original meaning.) Also, we need to apply on the teaching of Christian living from God’s point of view, not from ours. That is why some churches decide to not to do the TV or radio evangelism. If the church may decide to do on TV or radio evangelism outreach, their goals may change—more focus on money to keep the business running and less on the reaching for the lost souls to Jesus Christ.
Lastly, Christian entertainment and music industries.
By now, there are millions of Christian music, TV shows, movies, and games for Christians to entertain. Some are good and some are bad. We see that many secular singers/artists are converted into Christianity and appear on the Christian channels, such as Mr. T, Tia and Tamara Mowry, M.C. Hammer, and many others. Even we see that many Christian movies are appearing on the public theaters, such as The Passion (February 2004), The Gospel (Fall 2005), and The Chronicles of Narnia (December 2005); and as a result they made some millions of dollars in profit.
Why?
They often mix Christian entertainment with their own works or other resources to go with the Bible. For example, The Chronicles of Narnia—that is based on Fall of Man (Genesis 3) and the gift of salvation from Jesus Christ. This movie was based on books by C.S. Lewis and it was made for whole family. Even C.S. was a pastor, his books are secular view. In the movie, there is twisted view of Fall of Man and the gift of salvation and it contains some witchcraft. Many people like the movies that are Christians, because the movies speak their language of words and appearances and less from God’s perspective. This is the same way about Christian music—mixed with worldly tune or beats.
There is not much of time left before God would judge the world. As we see on the media, there are a lot of bad news on the TV, radio, and newspaper. But God is holding up to bring down judgment on earth until every person would repent their sins and join with Him forever. It is up to make that decision.
Are you saved? Are your love ones and friends saved in the grace of God through Jesus Christ? The purpose of this study is to help you to become closer relationship with Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (John 14:1-3.)
If you are lukewarm in your relationship with Jesus Christ and want to know Him as your personal Savior and Lord of your life, please consider asking Him to forgive your sins and invite Him into your life. Paul says, "That if you confess with your mouth, `Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believed and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." (Romans 10:9-10.) If you have done in your private room or workplace, then you need to tell to your friends or love ones about what you have done, so they may rejoice with you and want to have that relationship with Christ in their own life. There are many occults in the world, which do not know the love of God and His great plan for those who believe in Him. As it is written in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
