Reformed. Christianity. Evangelism. Modern Culture.
It’s coming to that time of the year and Christmas is in the air as they say. From movies to merchandising ads every one seems to have the same Christmas thought. Or do they? Say, your little ankle biters walk over to you and this year tell you they are not going to celebrate Christmas. What will you tell them are your reasons for celebrating or not? Here is a good link with resourceful answers…
The debate [reports Got Questions] about whether or not Christians should celebrate Christmas has been raging for centuries. There are equally sincere and committed Christians on both sides of the issue, each with multiple reasons why or why not Christmas should be celebrated in Christian homes. But what does the Bible say? Does the Bible give clear direction as to whether Christmas is a holiday to be celebrated by Christians?
First, let’s look at the reasons why some Christians do not celebrate Christmas. One argument against Christmas is that the traditions surrounding the holiday have origins in paganism.
At Christmas the time of the year when most people are setting up nativity scenes not many set up a bloodied cross or an empty tomb to celebrate the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ yet his birth goes hand in hand with his death. Only true Christians know the immense and infinite significance of Christ’s death…He came as a lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. He came to die!
Imagine Christ, the sin bearer, approaching that hour…the hour of his appointed death. Is that a “Christmasy” thought? You bet! It gets better when you understand the reason why his death was was necessary.
Horatius Bonar puts it this way…
The feelings of the trembling sinner, when awakened under the terrors of the divine law, and made alive to the hell of sin within him, may help to give us some faint idea of the way in which the burden of our sins pressed upon Christ. It is true He had no sin—not the shadow of sin upon Him, for He was the Holy One; yet He speaks always of our sins as if they were His own, as if He had committed them. He felt under them just as if they were His own. He was perfectly holy, yet so closely were our sins bound upon Him by God, that He felt the pressure just as if they were His own.
Being our substitute, God dealt with Him as such—as if the sins He bore had really been His, not ours. Being thus in the eye of the law identified with those whose sins He bore, He was made to feel what they would have been doomed to feel, had God left them to reap themselves the fruit of their own transgressions. This awful burden He bore alone. He had none to aid Him; none to relieve Him of any part of its overwhelming pressure. There was none that could assist Him. There was none to divide the burden with Him; nor to uphold Him under it. “My lovers and my friends stand aloof…and my kinsmen stand afar off.” They all forsook Him and fled. And, as He bare it alone, so He bare it fully. …Read More!
A slight hiccup of biblical proportions?
It’s that time of the year. Everybody seems to be carrying home a new “something”. Kept under wraps till that moment when they let it out. Brilliantly adorned decorations grace the lounges of homes and foyers of hotels and shopping parlours. In the midst of all the apparent hustle and bustle and glamorous festive mood it is an undeniable fact that we still live in a difficult and miserable world. However much we attempt to drown our sorrows with materialism we still lie naked and in need of the comfort and merciful kindness of God our our father. In the words of Martyn’s Lloyd Jones…
God’s Loving Kindness – We are living in a difficult and trying world, and we all, sooner or later, find ourselves in some kind of wilderness where nothing matters but this. When we are bereft of all things that we normally have and enjoy – health, strength, wealth, friends, entertainment – when we are suddenly laid down by some serious illness, those things are of no help or value to us. We are left alone, and nothing matters except our knowledge of God’s loving-kindness. So the most important thing is to know always that He is with us, that we have access to Him, and that we can enjoy His presence in the most humbling, the most difficult, the most trying circumstances. This is the essence of wisdom even from the standpoint of personal experience.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Seeking Certainty)
God be with you all during this Christmas season as we remember the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Quoting J.C Ryle on Matt 1:2-4
…it is not always those who have most religious privileges, who give Christ most honor. We might have thought that the Scribes and Pharisees would have been the first to hasten to Bethlehem, on the lightest rumor that the Savior was born. But it was not so. A few unknown strangers from a distant land were the first, except the shepherds mentioned by Luke, to rejoice at His birth. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” What a mournful picture this is of human nature! How often the same kind of thing may be seen among ourselves! How often the very people who live nearest to the means of grace are those who neglect them most!
HT Reformed Quotes.
A while ago a YouTube video featuring a well-known Nigerian preacher, David Oyedepo, slapping a congregant and calling her a witch may have been dismissed as a one off incident. However un beknownst to many it actually seemed to highlight a silently growing trend plus the power of some church leaders. In the clip below a teenage girl kneels before the pastor, and after saying she is a “witch for Jesus” he calls her a “foul devil”, slapping her violently across the face while the congregation cheers. In a later video (see video at end of article) , he can be seen boasting “I slapped a witch here last year.”
Recently in the UK a very disturbing trial came to an end. “Child witches” and exorcism was shown not to be a problem out there but rather under reported and very present even in the UK. In particular this trial shed light on the events surrounding the life of a young boy called Kristy….
When 15-year-old Kristy Bamu left his parents in Paris on 16 December 2010, he was looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays with his siblings, visiting their sister and her boyfriend in London.
On Christmas Day he was found by paramedics in the bathroom of an east London high-rise flat. His body had been mutilated, some teeth were missing and he was covered in deep cuts and bruising. In the last four days of his life he had suffered acts of unspeakable savagery, doled out by a man he called “uncle” and one of his own sisters.
Why? Because Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu, then both 28, were convinced the boy was a witch, possessed by spirits who wanted to bring evil into their home, the Old Bailey heard. On Thursday they were convicted of murder. They had earlier admitted actual bodily harm against Kristy’s sister Kelly and a younger sister, who cannot be named.
The judge, Mr Justice Paget, exempted the jury from jury service for the rest of their lives because of the “strain” of the trial, adding it was a case “every one of us will remember”. He said: “It has been a most remarkable case and at times a very harrowing case.” …Read More!
The birth of Christ found people pre occupied with menial pursuits. The first Christmas found the inn full. Probably all relatives of Joseph found they had no extra rooms in Bethlehem. Herod was busy planning a census. The shepherds were out in the fields. Mary being with child brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths. The first Christmas almost passed unnoticed until the angel of the Lord with a herald of other angels lit up the skies and announced, “ Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” But There’s more
The birth of Christ found people pre occupied with menial pursuits. The first Christmas found the inn full. Probably all relatives of Joseph found they had no extra rooms in Bethlehem. Herod was busy planning a census. The shepherds were out in the fields. Mary being with child brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths. The first Christmas almost passed unnoticed until the angel of the Lord with a herald of other angels lit up the skies and announced, “ Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” But There’s more
Twitter is overall probably best known for its celebrity users and you’ve-seen-me-on-MTVs who discuss and indulge other lesser mortals with gold dust bits of their lives down to the most trivial detail.
It’s a crisp wintry December morning, a few more days and it will be Christmas. Seven days to Christmas to be exact. As the snow falls and blankets the beautiful country side landscapes in Britain, The Daily Mail runs a heart rending story of a said to be distraught mother from Merritt Island, Florida who posted serial messages on Twitter as emergency medical teams tried to resuscitate her dying son. The 30 year old started by sending ‘tweets’ just 
minutes after her two-year-old was found floating face down in the family’s swimming pool. But There’s More
A Twisted Crown of Thorns ® 