CHRISTMAS AND THE MEMORY HOLE

CHRISTMAS IN RUSSIA

 Less than a century ago, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin outlawed Christmas. Russians could be sent to Gulag in Siberia for erecting an illegal Christmas tree. The celebration has never been the same in Russia since.

CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY

During the Nazi regime, they sought to eliminate Christmas. Among the most important part of the elimination was the celebration of the winter solstice. The Nazis attempted to move the date of Christmas to the solstice instead and mounted large performances and community bonfires that supposedly drew on pre-Christian celebrations. They also tried to redefine St. Nicholas as Wotan, the ancient Germanic deity.

As the years went on, Nazi attempts to take over Christmas intensified. The Nazis rewrote the lyrics of “Silent Night” to remove all attempts to religion or Christ. They distributed Advent Calendars for kids filled with propaganda and militaristic imagery. They even tried to rewrite Handel's Messiah. Mothers were encouraged to bake swastika-shaped cookies. Even the familiar star that topped millions of Christmas trees was replaced by a sunburst that looked less like the Star of David.

 CHRISTMAS IN CHINA

Christmas in Mainland China is not a public holiday and is not related to religion at all. It’s more of a novelty day like Valentine’s Day, rather than a religious celebration.  

Christmas is celebrated in North Korea, but not with the same fanfare as in other countries. North Korean celebrations don’t look anything like the Christmas we know in the West. Christmas is seen as an exotic foreign holiday in this country. There are no Christmas trees, no decorations, and no traditional activities like carol singing. Instead, North Koreans celebrate the day by going to outdoor performances or gathering for family dinners.

CHRISTMAS IN NORTH KOREA

In recent years, there has been some change in the way Christmas is celebrated in North Korea. Some people have started to put up decorations, such as pine trees and lights, in their homes and on the streets. It’s not uncommon to see Christmas trees in the capital city of Pyongyang, although the decoration is still very limited.

Christmas is not an officially recognized holiday in North Korea, so there are no national celebrations. However, some religious communities, such as Catholics and Protestants, are allowed to celebrate Christmas in a limited way. There are churches in Pyongyang, and priests and imams can visit them on Christmas Day.

But these celebrations are more muted than in other countries. Church services are limited to under two hours and worshipers are forbidden from singing Christmas carols or speaking out against the North Korean government. They are also forbidden from taking photos or making videos inside of churches. 

CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA

At the lighting of the national Christmas tree by the President and his wife, it was the continuation of a 100-year old tradition. During the President's remarks, he stated the theme at the White House of this year's "Holiday," was,  “Magic, Wonder, and Joy.” 

You can read the rest of his remarks by going to White House.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/11/30/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-national-christmas-tree-lighting-2/. When you get there I challenge you to find the words, "Jesus," "Christ," "manger," Bethlehem," "angels," "shepherds," "Joseph," or "Wise Men." Those words and the story in which they appear have been put down George Orwell's Memory Hole at the White House.

In a school district in Pennsylvania,  "A memo initially sent to drivers at Wallingford-Swarthmore School District demanded they remove any decorations associated with the holiday, citing a need for 'inclusivity.'

“If you have decorated your bus with anything specific to the Christmas Holiday or any other decorations relating to a specific religion, please remove them immediately,” a copy of the memo obtained by Crisis in the Classroom (CITC) reads. “'In addition, employees are instructed not to wear clothing related to Christmas or any other religious holiday.”

We see the result of all of the above in the following poll: 

"A Lifeway Research study finds 9 in 10 U.S. adults say they celebrate Christmas, including many non-Christians. Overall, 91% of Americans celebrate the Christmas holiday, unchanged from2  010.”

"Yet only 22% indicate they could “accurately tell the Christmas story found in the Bible from memory. A plurality of U.S. adults (31%) say they could tell the story but may miss some details or get others wrong. Another quarter (25%) could only give a quick overview and 17% say they couldn’t tell any of it.

“Almost half of Americans do not think they could share the Christmas story somewhat accurately from memory,” asserts Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “Of all the Christmas programs churches offer in December, possibly the most important is simply reading the biblical account of the Christmas story itself.” 

The summation of the saga is this: a dictatorship will not and cannot tolerate an authority higher than itself. The Incarnation must be Memory Holed.

 

 

 

 

HATERED OF THE JEWS IN THE CHURCH TODAY

 There is and should be a deep concern on the part of American Christians for our nation in view of the virulent 4,000 year-old hatred of Jews exploding in our country today. This spiritual aberration is a cancer in the college campuses such as the Ivy League schools along with MIT et al. We see frenetic demonstrations, endless mindless chants ("From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free."). We saw students in a high school in San Francisco rampaging through the halls yelling and chanting antisemitic slogans, the same students who probably can't even spell Palestine. 

True to form, the United Nations has once again placarded its long-lasting hatred of Israel: "The United States was looking increasingly isolated on the world stage on Tuesday after a resounding vote at the UN general assembly calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

"Cheers and clapping echoed around the general assembly chamber in New York as the emergency vote was announced. A thumping 153 member states out of the 193 total membership backed the resolution, with only 10 including the US, Israel, and Austria voting against, and 23 – including the UK and Germany – abstaining." (from a news report)

"Cease fire" means, "Israel, stop fighting and let them kill you." The 153 countries were opposing a nation the size of New Jersey. They gang up and condemn Israel day after day, year after year.

BUT WAIT!

Antisemitism is in American churches too. These churches promote antisemitism by teaching something called "Replacement Theology." This theology infects seminaries, scholars, books and journals. If you are in a church and you've heard from your Sunday school teacher or your pastor that God is finished with the Jewish people and that the church is now the “new Israel," if you have heard , "The covenants God made with Israel (the Abrahamic, the Palestinian,, the Davidic, and the New Covenants) are no longer valid," then you're sitting in and supporting an antisemitic church that has robbed Israel of her God-given promises.

Adherents of replacement theology believe the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, and God does not have specific future plans for the nation of Israel. So, the prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Promised Land are “spiritualized” or “allegorized” into promises of God’s blessing for the church.

HOW IN THE WORLD?

How could the early leaders of the church read the promises that God had made to Israel and justify this replacement? They found that they could do so only by spiritualizing the promises, that is, deliteralizing them. This method of interpretation allowed them to replace Israel as the beneficiary of God’s unfulfilled promises. The words of these early Christian leaders reveal their theology of replacement.

Here is a sample of writings from the first 300 years of the church. The Epistle of Barnabas, written around A.D. 100, states that the Jews have no further claim to God’s promises:

Take heed now to yourselves, and not to be like some, adding largely to your sins, and saying, “The covenant is both theirs and ours.” But they thus finally lost it.

Irenaeus, writing around A.D. 180, said, “They who boast themselves as being the house of Jacob and the people of Israel, are disinherited from the grace of God.”

Origen, the most prolific writer of the early church (c. A.D. 250), grounded his Replacement Theology in allegorical interpretation. For instance, when explaining that Jesus was sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” he argued that the lost sheep are not Jews, who are “carnal” Israel, but Christians, who are “heavenly” Israel.

John Chrysostom preached the same message in the capital city of the Roman Empire in A.D. 387:

It is because you killed Christ….It is because you shed the precious blood, that there is now no restoration, no mercy any more and no defense…. You have committed the ultimate transgression. This is why you are being punished worse now than in the past….If this were not the case God would not have turned his back on you so completely.

 

John Calvin,  a follower of Augustine and a leading figure of the Reformation, viewed the Old and New Testaments as continuous, with the Church inheriting the promises made to Israel. Luther was so done with the Jews that his 80+ page rant against them was quoted favorably by Hitler and his propaganda master, Goebbels. Luther infected Germany with Jew-hatred.and later came the Holocaust in his native land.

When you hear your pastor or Sunday school teacher tell you that God is through with the Jews, it's time to go and take your wallet with you. Period. Why? Because to stay involves complicity with those who are gouging God's eye: Zechariah 2:8: "For the Lord of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple (lit. "pupil") of His eye.

The covenant God made with Abraham began in Genesis 12:1-3, it's concluding words are still in effect, "Those who curse you, I must curse." Be careful America, you are treading on the thinnest of ice. 

 

 

THE FUNERAL OF MRS. JIMMY CARTER

 Funeral services for former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died at the age of 96 on Nov. 19, continued Tuesday, Nov. 28 in Atlanta, Ga. A tribute service at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University took place from 1:30-3 p.m.

An interesting historical footnote arose when it was revealed that all of the living First Ladies were invited and in attendance. As would unfortunately naturally follow was a report and in one case, a critique of what the ladies were wearing. The critique, as would be expected, was written about former First Lady Mrs. Donald Trump who was called out for wearing a light gray coat. (It seems out of place to obsess over one's sartorial choice rather than the life of the deceased but that's the name of the game in the jungle that is politics.)

Various family members eulogized their mother, their grandmother as did various friends and a former employee who became a fast and loyal friend of Mrs. Carter. They praised her tireless work for various causes and the energy she brought to her husband's political campaigns as well as the crushing heartache she and the family felt when her husband went down to defeat in his quest for a second term. 

Music was in abundance at the service but there was one piece of music that should never have been at the service nor at any meeting of the church. How it got into the proceedings should be an insult to Christians everywhere but it seemed to be accepted as normal and A-OK with the congregation and the hosting church. 

It's a song by John Lennon, he of the Beatles fame of decades long ago. The lyrics speak for themselves: 

Imagine there's no Heaven

It's easy if you try

No Hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today
Ah, ah, ah-ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Yoo-hoo, ooh-ooh

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
Yoo-hoo, ooh-ooh

 

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.

It's a song that denies heaven and hell; a song of globalism; a song of communism (no private property) and a song of irrational idealism in a fallen world that will never be able to get back to Eden apart from the 2nd Advent of Christ.

Who chose that song? I don't know. Who approved of that song's being sung in that church? I don't know. But you and I do know that it's a song that conveys humanism in ever note. "Imagine" is a foolish song devoid of wisdom and cannot help but be such because "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The author had no fear of the Lord which, by definition is a positive response to God and His Word.