Jesus is not redeeming pagan traditions for His glory

But now, after you have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Galatians 4:9-11

Some will think we are saying we should rename Easter as Passover or some other name which does not have demonic origins. We don’t have to rename things, just ignore.

Jesus is not redeeming pagan things or any tradition which does not have its source and origin in Him. We should just ignore what is not of Jesus, let people know the truth, but not crusading against tradition, and get on with following Jesus. I praise God for people who actually care, which is becoming rare.

People talk about the “holy days” on the “Christian Calendar”. What calendar? Where did that come from? We celebrate Jesus rose from the dead on this day! Who told you to? Not God.

So here we touch on that attitude: Like, who cares that the Holy Spirit never led us to do it, we are going to do it anyway! That’s how the dead traditions were birthed in the first place, by that same arrogance. We will define Christianity, Jesus, not you, not Paul, but us! Get out of the way!

And that’s where that version of Christianity has brought Christianity to today, to a place where they might as well slap Jesus in the face and say, we’re gonna do it anyway! But this perverse attitude will only be short-lived.

And those who have become wealthy merchandising the Gospel can only enjoy it for a brief season before the wrath of a Holy God is poured out on them and the whole earth.

In a very subtle way “holy days” gradually chip away at the foundation of the Gospel, undermining the glorious reality of the New Covenant and the Kingdom of Christ. To observe days, Paul says, reveals a spiritual poverty – “weak and beggarly“: a blindness to seeing Jesus as He really is, and knowing and living in His resurrection life.

Death of Self or Enthronement of Self?

I very rarely see Christian TV. It’s only when I’m visiting someone and their TV is on. But when I do see the money preachers it always strikes me how different their message, life and example is to that of the Apostles, and the Lord Jesus, of course. We could summarize it like this, the early church emphasized the death of self, and the end-time apostate church emphasizes the enthronement of self. Before it was all about Jesus, now it’s all about YOU, and then what Jesus can do for you. What is the next step down in this devolution of Christianity? Will people carry a mirror around and kiss themselves in that mirror, and say I love you! to themselves?

How did the early church celebrate Easter?

Oh, they didn’t? You mean they missed out? What was wrong with them?

Someone approaches Paul the Apostle and says, Hey Paul, I’ve got a great idea, let’s create a Christian festival at the time of Passover so we Christians will not miss out, and we’ll name this festival after a demon from ancient Babylon, and that will give it a more widespread appeal among the pagans, but anyway, who cares it’s named after a demon, and this way everyone can celebrate, cos the Communion Table is too narrow, too exclusive, ya know?

N Korea a very serious situation

It’s time to be sober minded and seek the LORD like never before.

Pray for others

The particular strength and grace you are experiencing today in Christ may be due to God answering the prayers of someone who loves you and who is praying for you. Makes you want to pray for others, yes?

(Rom. 15:30, 2 Cor. 1:11, Phil. 1:19, Phm. 1:22)

Blessings of keeping the lines open

Keeping the lines of communication open between the people of God has many blessings and the Divine approval rests upon such love, and one of these blessings is that honest communication tends to prevent misunderstandings arising, for once they take root they can be hard to resolve.

Communication leads to disclosure and therefore only by communication can we really know a person. Similarly, we know God according to the means He has communicated and disclosed to us about Himself: His Word, His Son, His Cross and His creation, and His Spirit testifies of Jesus His Son and convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, and therefore man has no excuse not to know God or to misunderstand God.

Limited communication is limited disclosure and this can lead to misunderstanding. Limited disclosure can sometimes give ground to treating a person in a prejudicial way. Then you find out they are not as you thought they were at all. Communication can dispel doubts which may spring up in peoples minds.

I’d rather have Jesus

The only honor you can bring to the King

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any strength, but faith working through love. Galatians 5:6

We could say it’s the highest honor we can give the King, but it’s more than that, it’s the only honor we can bring Him, and that is our faith working thru love: only this is acceptable to Him as worship and honor.

And how wonderfully liberating it is to know this! It means that wherever we are and whatever our circumstance we can bring to the King all the glory and honor due Him, and the only glory He will accept, and that is our faith in Him bcos we love Him, and He receives it as worship: He receives our love and trust. This is the highest and the only honor we can bring the King, bcos believing Him is actually the outcome of the reception of the glory of His Cross: His accomplished and finished work of redemption on the Cross: so we accept and receive His glory and love and simply return it back to the source and the giver of it, the Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ the Righteous. If we had not received glory we could never give it.

The honor and glory of this King is that He has redeemed a people by His own Blood and they love Him by faith even though they can’t see Him yet with their natural eyes:

Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory… 1 Peter 1:8

Not seeing Him with our natural eyes and yet we have joy unspeakable and full of glory.

In the natural we can sometimes think we have to do some great service to give Him glory, when in reality all there is is faith working thru love. This is the only glory befitting the King; the only glory He wants is that you love and trust Him, for when men and women do that they declare the glory and honor of the King Eternal.

Apart from faith working thru love there is no glory. So we examine our life accordingly: does my life purely consist of faith working thru love? Do I rejoice in Him anyway, simply bcos I love Him?

Subtle additions and changes

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. Genesis 3:1

The shift to Friday as the day which Jesus was crucified was a very subtle and deft move by satan so that people still feel “religious” but in fact they are mocking the Word of God which says Jesus would rise again after three days and nights and then records He rose early on the first day (Sunday). So He did not die on Friday.

Instead of out-rightly opposing the Gospel, satan with subtlety introduced things which cause people to doubt the truth of God’s Word.

And more to the point, why was the religious festival of Easter created in the first place? Who’s idea was that? It wasn’t God’s idea. The Lord Jesus commanded us to remember His death often with the Lord’s Supper. The origins of Easter is something like this: The apostate church wanted a Christian equivalent of the Jewish Passover, not realizing that the Lord’s Supper is actually the continuation and fulfillment of the Passover Feast in the New Covenant.

So the real issue is not over Thursday or Friday but over WHY Christians create a religion which Jesus NEVER told them to?

Why God hates sin

God is love. His glory is His love. He hated sin so much He was willing to crucify His own Son, and the Son was willing to be crucified, in order to destroy and remove this cursed thing called sin once and for all, for all eternity.

He hates sin bcos His love is so wonderful and unsearchable and sin is the enemy of His love.

God is not being selfish when He desires that all men know His love and live in his love, bcos we benefit from His love infinitely more than He does from being worshiped (bcos He doesn’t need to be worshiped or loved).

The command to worship, obey and believe God is simply an invitation into His eternal love.

He made us for fellowship and therefore it is right that He hate anything that breaks that fellowship.

If anyone wants to contribute on this subject please do in Comments.

The worst thing that could ever happen to you

What is the worst thing that could ever happen to you? Sin.
What is the most dangerous thing on the planet? Sin.
What is the most destructive power in this world? Sin.
What is your greatest enemy? Sin.

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him… Rom. 6:6-8

At the Cross your old man was crucified and died with Christ so that the power of sin was destroyed. He that is dead is freed from sin. Sin’s power has been destroyed bcos your old man has died with Christ. If your old man is dead then he can no longer come under the power of sin again.

How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer in it? Rom. 6:2

Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 6:11

Real life lessons

One thing I feel the Lord is teaching me is that every difficult Christian we have contact with is actually a blessing in disguise, sent from God to help us learn to be conformed to Christ in real life, and not just theory.

Amazing Love

…In vain the first born seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine… It means that by death on the Cross Jesus plunged to measure the deepest depths of the immense and infinite ocean of God’s love.

Who was the greatest worshiper?

Who was the greatest worshiper? Jesus of Nazareth. And who comes after that? Paul, John, Peter, countless martyrs and faithful unknown saints… These are the great worshipers from whom we need to learn what worship is.

Grief over the loss of idols

When we try and dialogue honestly with professing Christians in these days of the great falling away we often encounter unexpected hostility, even in their reactions to us simply quoting the Bible.

What this often is is an inner conflict: a grief over the loss of a much loved idol and maybe not wanting to let go.

If we have given our hearts to idols it will hurt to have them taken away. We will defend that idol to the end. We will be hyper-sensitive to anyone touching that idol.

But when we realize we have trusted so much in men and what they say and the institutions they build, it hurts, it’s painful to come to terms with that fact: it can be gut-wrenching.

The old man may put up one last fight, kicking out his final death throes before he dies and finds his rest in Christ alone.

What God has cleansed

But the voice answered me again from heaven, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common’. Now this was done three times… Acts 11:9-10a

Common: profane, defiled, polluted, unclean.

You must not call unclean that which God has washed clean by the Blood of His Son.

An agenda in the colleges

Why does God hate sin?

I asked this on FB to encourage thinking deeply about God.

The other question (which helps answer this question) is why does God command and require men to worship Him?

Any thoughts?

Don’t allow anyone to call you pastor or reverend

But do not you be called Rabbi, for One is your Leader, the Christ, and you are all brothers. And call no one your father on earth, for One is your Father, the One in Heaven. Neither be called leaders, for One is your Leader, the Christ. But the greater of you shall be your servant. And whoever will exalt himself shall be humbled, and whoever will humble himself shall be exalted. Matt. 23:8-12

What if a Pastor reads this and says, OK, OK, then don’t call me Rabbi or Leader or Father or Master or Teacher, just call me Pastor or Reverend!

I think Jesus would take that as ridicule – making a joke of what He commanded.

Also in vs. 12, self exaltation is mentioned within the context of the use of titles, meaning that the use of titles is self exaltation, and that’s one reason Jesus forbids it.

And many would say, Self exaltation, what’s wrong with that?

The Antichrist

Little children, it is the last time: and as you have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; by which we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. 1 John 2:18-19

The greatest coup the devil could ever pull off would be to so possess a man with demonic power to the point that the whole world thinks that man is Jesus. If he could fool the world into thinking that man is Jesus then that would be his greatest achievement.

I’m not saying definitely that the Antichrist will claim to be Jesus but it could happen.

John says there were antichrists back then, but The Antichrist was yet to come. We should assume then that the antichrists, plural, of whom John is referring to are of the same nature as The Antichrist: that is, they splintered off from the true Church, they went out from us and became a false church, false Christians, and therefore we could assume that The Antichrist will simply be a false Christian coming in the same spirit as the antichrists of the first century. He may even claim to be Jesus.