Christ the Only Bridge

The Only Bridge To Cross-Over

By Abraham Israel

All humans have been born with sin nature inside them because of our forefather Adam who knowingly sinned and transgressed against the only God given command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16-17; 3:6-7). Since that day the curse of sin has come in to our life to destroy us and make us to die apart from the God who has made us for Himself. Humankind has been suffering seperation from God and His blessings of divine fellowship with Him because of sin which is lawlessness against God's perfection. This break of fellowship with God's goodness is a curse that has come to all humans since the time sin came in to the world because of the trick of our enemy Satan and his demonic cohorts who have conspired this again humanity.

Death which is seperation from God and His goodness for sin have spread to all spheres of humanity that God destroyed one world 4500 years ago approximately because of it and now is ready to destroy our world because of the same sign of sin that is rising up like a Tsunami wave in our generation (Rom 5:12). The thinking of all people of Noah's generation were wicked and the same thing is happening in our generation through Satan holding the reigns of media and internet to corrupt the minds of all people in our generation (Gen 6:5; Matt 24:37-39).

But thank God something wonderful happened when we chose to believe and accept the Lord Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, as the Bible says, God made us all alive who were dead in tresspasses and sins before that time (Eph 2:1). How did God do this supernatural life-giving resuscitation spiritually? Apostle Paul who was divinely inspired to write one third of the whole New Testament says, God freed us from the power of sin by making His only begotten Son to become a curse for us to pay and appease His righteous indignation against sin which destroys all humans (Gal 3:13). Praise the Lord!

In other words, God built a bridge by making His Son become a human one among us, and then reach out to Him and remain the bridge between human and Himself through a righteous route where He justifies all those who approach Him through His foreordained system which He has set (1 Tim 2:5-6). God sees all those who come to Him through Jesus just as those who  have never sinned even once (Rom 5:1). Now we who have believed Jesus can walk by faith to God and commune with Him intimately and walk back safely by signing the name of Jesus at the end of our prayer, by whom we are sealed for eternity ahead. What a privilege! Thank you Jesus for your self-less sacrifice.

Now we have eternal life given to us by God as a gift forever. Certain people when they hear the word 'eternal life' they wrongly think that it means the life in heaven that will continue for us after our physical death and the eternal bliss thereafter. Wrong! Eternal life is the life of God received in our spirit through which we commune moment by moment with Him intimately and start to know Him more and more as days go by, which will continue in our life after our physical death (John 17:3). This life of heaven will make us live abundantly on earth for the glory of God and hereafter, now all we do is keep the word of God in Jesus name, thus live a life worthy of God and pleasing to Him for all His goodness showered upon us in His love towards us through Jesus Christ (John 17:4, 6).

Love God Heartily,
Live Thankfully,
Look Compassionately,
Enjoy Your Journey with God!

"Christ becomes our bridge if we choose to let Him live His life in us. We can reach God only through Christ, if there is any other way, surely God would have told us about it."

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Gifts and Calling of God

Does Gifts and Calling Change According to the God Given Burden?

Q : If a pastor gets up and tells his congregation that the Lord has lifted the burden of prayer off him for that body of believers then its time to go right? Romans 11:29 says the gifts and the calling are without repentence so, how can He lift a burden of prayer? Without a covering for our heads we are in trouble right? Because, everybody is not married and that's the only covering we have!! Will you expound on that please!!

A : God may use a minister of God for a particular congregation for a particular period of time to do a particular work. So the minister of God will have burden for the congregation specifically from God for that particular time until the work of God gets done through them. For example, God used Apostle Paul to lay the foundation in the Corinthian Church and then used Apollos the renouned Bible teacher to build them up in faith (1 Cor 3:6, 10; Acts 18:24-25). The grace of God towards that Corinthian Church or the burden of God towards them worked in Paul the apostle for the period of planting the seed of the word of God intially and then led by God he moved on and establised many other Churches in other areas where he has the burden to plant. The apostle Paul always led by the Spirit had burden for a period of time for a particular place and preached the gospel to them. Every time he moved on to other places after the burden got lifted up (Acts 11:26; 17:16-18; 18:5; 19:21-22). So a Pastor may have a bigger sphere of ministry where God wants to move him to apostolic and prophetic ministry of traveling, preaching and teaching the word of God to many different areas. It is possible for a man of God to have the burden lifted for a particular congregation which he has been ministering and go to other place.

The gifts and calling of a pastor does not change, but a pastor can have a dominant primary calling along with a secondary calling of an apostle later. So God who had given much burden to a particular pastor to raise the Church, may later lift the burden and make the pastor move and teach the word of God in others Churches. When God moves a pastor like that, He would have given time and expected the pastor to raise up elders and pass on his work to them. God will never move a person suddenly, but will move a person step by step so that the work of God will continue. The burden of God does not change the calling, instead it drives the calling to be fulfilled more and more in a variety of ways.  

The pastoral covering is for our spiritual growth. For a believing Sister, the covering is first her husband in her family and then together as a family they are covered by God through the spiritual guidance of the pastor or the minster of God who guides them. The real covering for the whole Body of Christ is Jesus Himself, under whose wings we take shelter. If a Sister stays alone without marriage, then she get the spiritual covering of the minister of God and her earthly father. When a person whom God has ordained to be guided by a particular minister of God does not submit to the pastor and then they try to drive their own life, the burden for such a person may get lifted up from the minister's heart because of lack of godly submission. The personal calling and gifts that God has pre-planned to give and use us for His glory never changes, but the burden in the heart of ministers will get lifted up if a individual believer do not really come under a spiritual covering that God has prepared for them.

Apostle Peter clearly said,"5 Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time" (1 Peter 5:5-6). Here the mighty hand of God is the five fold ministers of God who represent each finger of God on earth through the calling that God has given them. The pastor is the ring finger, the teacher is the small finger, the evangelist is the middle finger, the prophet is the index finger and the thumb is the apostle (Eph 4:11). These called gifts of Jesus to the Church become mature over a period of time under the guidance of others ministers and God, so that they become established as elders in the Church God raises through them. As we see, once the younger spiritually growing believer submit to the their God ordained elders and the elders submit to one another, God has promised to give a mighty grace which will exalt their life spiritually in the eyes of all men. When submission happens to a elder, a burden of God's heart for that growing young believer will be released by God in to the minister's heart, which will make them intercede to God for them. So truly a spiritual person will understand this divine order and be greatly blessed with a powerful covering of God and the favor of God which is a mighty exaltation that will come from God, through an empowered grace upon their lives. Thanks and Blessings.....

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Eternal Salvation

Stop Fearing and Start Serving God In Love

By Abraham Israel

One of the biggest discouragement that comes to a believers heart and makes him an ineffective testimony for Jesus is doubt and worries. Doubts are satanic weapons that makes a believer to destroy himself like the first Adam doubted the word of God and plunged the whole of humanity in to sin, suffering and death (Rom 5:12). The worst form of doubt is when a believer begins to doubt about his own salvation that he has received already, and becomes unsure of whether he is saved as God has already promised him (1 John 3:20-21). This comes because they are not grounded in the word of God which assures our heart of the permanency of salvation (Rom 5:10). A believer will start to doubt about his own salvation usually when they begin to fall in to besetting sins, fail to forgive and forget their own mistakes, forgive others of their tresspasses done against them, are ignorant of the words and promises of God to finally get discouraged and live a defeated lives. This doubt about salvation arises when a believer becomes too conscious of his own behaviour than his belief in the word of God and the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). One thing we must always remember from the day we are saved until the day we will die to appear before God, we are not saved by our good behaviour but by our belief that Jesus died by shedding his precious blood for us and have thus done something that we could not do for ourselves, to save us from sin and death (Eph 2:8-9).

Many of us start with grace but slip in to legalism like the Galatian believers who were rebuked strongly by Paul the apostle (Gal 3:1-3). God has saved us first of all through Jesus to help us receive the abundant life of heaven and live like Jesus did when He was on earth (John 10:10). We were never created to perform a function just like robots for God. God gave us free will to help us understand that he loves us unconditionally and so that we might choose to live for Him and love Him without any fear of punishment for our sins and shortcomings (1 John 4:17-19). Those who love God voluntarily and choose to live for Him out of that sincerity can only really bring joy in to the heart of God. There are two types of fear that makes people live for God, one is the fear that God might hurt them if they fail to obey Him and the other is that they might cause God's heart to become hurt. Only the second type of fear is what is healthy and godly. The true fear of God is not the one that comes because of the fear of punishment but that which comes out of a passion, respect and an awe for God's glory!

Loved As a Child 

God is never delighted when some one restrains himself from doing bad things because of fear of punishment. A person can remain faithful to his wife to avoid getting HIV virus, still another person can give to God to gain his blessings from him, still more another person can avoid anger to make other people think that they are gentle person and finally a person can keep the commandments to gain eternal life. All these above reasons are good and selfish reasons enough for us to keep ourselves safe and comfortable, but they do not keep us in true holiness that comes from God. We may do these things thinking that we are godly person, but none of it can make us a ounce more godly because without love all we do is unacceptable to God (1 Cor 13:1-3).

It is like taking a pig chained with all the chains in the middle of the road with all the unclean stuffs lying on both sides. Just because the pig crosses the whole dirty place without eating or rolling itself in the smelly unclean stuffs, it cannot make the pig boast that it had achieved greatness and holiness. In the same way, when we live a holy life for selfish reasons, God will not be pleased with our so called spirituality. If we love God for no reason but for His unconditional love, God will be delighted with our lives (Psa 147:11). God is love and this is the reason when He saved us through Jesus, he did not want to make us His servants but His children (1 John 4:8; John 1:12).

Once we accept ourselves as a sinner and receive Jesus Christ in to our hearts as our Lord and Saviour, then God puts the seal of the Holy Spirit as a gurantee that we are saved until the day of rapture of all saints (Eph 1:13-14). Not even one apostle ever spoke or warned about God unsealing any believer based on their behaviour. We as sinners are saved eternally because in our best spiritual form we cannot keep ourselves to the perfect standard of God's holiness (Heb 5:9; Rom 3:23). We cannot boast even for an hour or more to keep ourselves in His perfection and restrain ourselves from sinful thoughts, motives, words and actions that defile us constantly without the help of God (Mark 7:20-23; 2 Cor 2:14).

As a sinner adopted to be a child of God, God knows the kind of inhibition we will have in calling God as our Father freely. Because we still live in the physical body of sin in which sin nature still operates to a lower or higher degree according to our spiritual maturity and will continue to do so until we die in someway or the other (Rom 8:16-17), God has sent "the Spirit of adoption" by whose help we start to cry out to God as "Abba, Father." (Rom 8:15). In other words, once we are adopted as God's sons in to His spiritual family, we are forever trasferred from "darkness to light", "Power of Satan to God" and we who were "dead in trespasses and sins" "He [has] made alive" to be "the light of the world" (Acts 26:18; Eph 2:1; Matt 5:14). This cements our relationship with God as the member of His spiritual family for eternity ahead.

Union is Being Born In To God's Family Forever 

So there are two aspects to our spiritual relationship with God. One is union with God which we attain the moment we become His child and the other is fellowship with God which needs to be maintained through living a life pleasing to Him. This union is a supernatural infusion in to God's kindom as His beloved children by His power. But the fellowship with God is a choice that we make each time we sin consciously, whether to confess and be cleaned by the blood of Jesus immediately for the relationship with God to continue in the same way as before, or to remain unconfessed and to keep ourselves severed from the consciousness of God's presence in our soul.

Just like a earthly Father who pities and forgives his children once they confess their faults to them, our Heavenly Father also forgives and forgets all our faults, weaknesses and sins once we choose to confess to Him with a penitent heart. Our God removes all our breaking of His law and throws away our sins as far east is from the west (Psa 103:13, 12). Why east from the west? Because east and west never meets. In other words, to a immeasurable distance he throws all our sin garbage once we confess it to Him and cleanses it completely (1 John 1:7, 9). A restoration of fellowship takes place once this confession of sins takes place. The consciousness of God's presence to our soul will be restored at the moment confession to God is done.

When Jesus said, "27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." (John 10:27-29), he was speaking about the believer's new life of God received in their spirit-man that can never be destroyed or altered. The children do not plan their birth, but instead the father of the family plans it and executes it. In the same way we did not get saved by our own choice but by the choice of our Father in Heaven (John 1:13). Before our Father in heaven planned us to be born in to His spiritual family, he fully knew well that we are weak and are susceptible to sin. But inspite of all our shortcomings and our tendency to hurt Him many times, He chose to love us. If we think we were saved by our love towards Him because He is good, we are in for a surprise. He loved us first when we were enemies in sin, then He gave us His nature to transform us from the inside out (1 John 4:19). We cannot do anything great for God because we have no goodness in us except that which He has given us. Only we do something great through God because we have become His children.

Many who think that by their strentgth they found God, soon find the perversion of evil that comes out of them constantly and end up becoming discouraged and even act hypocritically as a good person in order to maintain their so called reputation before people. We must understand that God did not send Jesus to make the bad people to become good, but to raise the dead people by infusing the life of God within them supernaturally. We cannot be better than what we are positionally already, in our relationship with our Daddy God. But out of our gratitude towards Daddy God for having made us to be His child, we can work with God by sacrificing our body as a living sacrifice and get transformed by renewing our mind constantly (Rom 12:1-2). A life of thankfullness for our salvation is the great offering we can offer to God for having sent His only begotten Son Jesus to die for us and as a result make us acceptable to Him as His beloved child of His love (Eph 1:6; Col 1:13; Rom 8:37). Our heavenly Father loved us in the same way He loved Jesus for the eternity past, He has also promised to love us for eternity future in the same way (John 17:23).

Love That Never Fails

The true love of our heavenly Father will never fail to forgive us. It is love that covers our sins and not just our repentance (Prov 10:12). We cannot lose our salvation because Jesus lost His sinless life for our sake so that Father God's Perfect requirement of His justice be fullfilled for our sake. If ever after believing the salvation of the Lord, we could lose our salvation because of our lack of righteous performance, it again becomes a work based salvation which cannot be called as something given to us as a gift because of the unconditional love of God. But as some people say, if our Heavenly Father changes His heart seeing our ungratefulness and sinful inclinations, and takes away our salvation away from us, first of all it means, it must have been a conditional covenant from God and that God Himself in His omniscience have failed to see that we are corrupted by sin nature until death and are worthless to ever live in His perfect righteousness. But not even in one place in the Bible, the apostles ever supported this kind of statement even with a sligtest hint. Instead again and again they said that we are not evaluated by God based on our behaviour but only based on our belief in the promises of God fullfilled through Jesus.

Paul the apostle wrote, "29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Rom 8:29-35). In the preceding verses, Paul clearly emphasizes that God did not make a mistake in selecting worthless sinners like us to be chosen to become in the perfect image of His Son Jesus Christ. God made all the saints to be saved by making their sins to be wiped off forever and thus were made clean as if they had never sinned at all through Jesus (Rom 5:9-10). Then God always gives His strength progressively to overcome our sin nature through strenthening the inner spirit-man with the might of Jesus Christ inorder to be glorified (Eph 3:16). We grow more and more in the love of God, and become grounded in the love of God through this life long process of being strengthened to overcome sin and weaknesses of the flesh. Just because we go through this painful process of transformation, should not make us think that we could lose our salvation. Through the times of transformation, we will feel the lose of God's Presence many times in our soul because of sin, unbelief, trials and intense tribulations. These are called by saints of the past ages as the dark nights of the soul, where the enemy of our soul will make us question our very salvation. This is the reason Paul asks the question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?". The answer is, no one on earth, in heaven or under the earth, can be able to seperate us from the love of God. Not even our failures, weaknesses and backslidings can seperate us from the love of Christ's unconditional love. The true love of our Father in heaven is expressed personally to us through Jesus, from the time we have received Him as our Lord and Saviour, we are forever sealed in His love unto eternal life through His Spirit (John 14:9-10; 2 Cor 1:22). It is God's desire that we grow in His love and feel secure in it (1 John 4:18).

If we are asked to do just one thing in Christian life, it should be forgetting of our own inadequacies of our life and be willing to run in the strength of the love of Christ which can never fail to empower us to fulfill the call of God that God has pre-planned for each one of us to fulfill (Phil 3:13-14; 2 Cor 5:14). May the love of God ground us deep and make us become rooted in His faithfullness so that we may stop to fear about losing our salvation and start to live for God the rest of our lives as a gratitude and thankfullness for all the things He has done for us. In Jesus name. Amen!


"If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly." — Martin Luther

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Israel or the Church?

Are There One or Two God Instituted Faiths On Earth?

Q: Yisrael never tried to keep Torah (Divine Instructions) in order to be 'saved'. That is pure christian theology. The nation of Yisrael was chosen by God to be His People. The Torah was given to teach them how God's nation is supposed to live. Exo 4:22-23 and Hosea 11:1,4,8 show how Yisrael was already God's son before Messiah came.

Did Paul teach that believers in Messiah are separate from Yisrael and so there are two faiths? Read carefully Romans 11:16-24. The wild olive branch (non-Jewish believers) grafted into Yisrael, not becoming a "spiritual" Israel. The grafted-in branch is to partake from the Olive Tree and its sap, not make up its own tree.

A : The first point which you said that the law was not given in order to be saved is true, provided the one who does the law try their best to keep the law first until they find themselves as hopeless sinners who need the salvation of God through Jesus (Rom 2:13; Matt 19:16-22). The law was given to make people knowledgeable of sin and to keep them from transgression until Jesus comes (Rom 3:20; Gal 3:19). The law was not given for people to receive the life of God, but Jesus came to give grace and truth through which we receive the life of God within us (Gal 3:21-22; John 1:17; 10:10). Keeping the law and believing in the grace cannot go together, they are situated and set in the opposite direction of each other (Rom 11:6). For those who work to live the life of righteousness and try to justify themselves based on it will later find, that all that they did for God has created a debt on the part of God's side to pay them to evaluate their works. But any man's work when evaluated by God is said to be equal to filthy rags of no value spiritually (Isa 64:6). To a holy God, either the righteousness that He expects for man should be either 100% or is considered as equal to nothing at all (1 Peter 1:16). God is perfect and He expects us to be perfect even without single sin in the whole of our life (James 2:10). In other words, we cannot be 20, 40, 60, 80 or even 99 percentage righteous and expect God to qualify us with a pass mark to enter heaven. We have to be 100% righteous to enter heaven. So Jesus as a sinless substitute whose score of 100% righteousness is substituted for us, we enter heaven because of asking Jesus' score to be consiered as our score to qualify us to heaven (Matt 3:15; 2 Cor 5:12). Hence this dangerous false religious attitude to work our own righteous score for qualifying to enter heaven only leads people to hell as God is not a debtor to any man (Rom 4:6). The Law [i.e. Torah] was given for the people of God to learn the ways of God to live, but learning the ways of God and living according to the commandments of God is not an option but a mandatory command. If any will try to keep it they will be blessed or else they will be cursed (Deut 28). God claiming Israel as His son means God has the rights over them because of His covenant made with their fathers are binding upon them and also because He redeemed them from the slavery of Egypt (Exo 3:13-17; 4:22-23; Hos 11:1, 4, 8). Just living in the land of Israel inside the nation did not qualify them to be sons of God, but those who kept the law got justified (Gen 17:7-13; Rom 2:13). The bottom line is, God saved these Israelites based on their faith and all others who claimed themselves as God's children just because they were born as physical descendents were rejected by Jesus Himself as wicked through their own faithless actions (John 8:37-44).

The moment the nation of Israel rejected their Messiah Jesus, the kingdom of God was taken away from them and was given to the the Church which was to come (Matt 21:43). Jesus Himself has told that the kingdom of God will return to them as a nation only when they accept Jesus as their Messiah at His Second Coming (Matt 23:38-39). So the Church is God's plan foreordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20; Matt 16:18-19), to spread His spiritual kingdom in all the world (Matt 28:18-20). The Church did not replace the nation of Israel spiritually, but Israel as a nation was rejected until Second Coming of Messiah temporarily because of their rejection of the true Messiah Jesus who was sent by God and Church as a spiritual nation was put in to effective spiritual rulership of God through out the entire earth (Gal 6:15-16). We see Paul saying to the Jewish people as a nation, that the Church as a wild olive tree was grafted in to cultivated olive tree of God's kingdom covenant and promises (Eph 2:11-12), as Israel as a nation was taken out of it temporarily until the Second Coming time in which they will again be grafted in to the cultivated olive tree of God's renewed covenant and promises with them through the Messiah Jesus (Rom 11:24-27). God did this intentionally so that the Gentile Church would benefit and multiply spiritually like the stars in the sky through His mercies for the days the nation of Israel enjoyed His promises to Abraham to multiply them like the sand of the seashore physically (Gen 13:16; 15:5), so that there can be an equality for both the Jews and Gentiles (Rom 11:28, 30-33). Now the Church consist of both Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Jesus Christ, there is no difference because Christ is all in all (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). Church is beyond race, religion, color, education, economic status and national boundary. It is a spiritual nation that is set supernaturally in all nations by the power of the Holy Spirit. At the time of Second Coming of Jesus, the whole of the nation of Israel will be saved spiritually in a day and will be grafted in to the cultivated olive tree of the millenium covenantal promise of God which will be based on the New Covenant of the Church (Heb 8:7-13). So there are no two faiths now, but only one faith of the New Covenant. But as the time of the Second Coming is at hand, God is preparing a glorious Church and slowly opening the eyes of the Jewish brethren to accept Jesus as their Messiah. The Church will be raptured after the mid-point of the abomination of desolation and will rule the earth with Jesus from the New Jerusalem, whereas the nation of Israel which will be revived by the Lord and will become a blessing to the whole world as Jesus Himself will reside and rule along with the Church! In that day ten Gentile men will grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man seeking the blessing of the Messiah of Israel (Zech 8:23). In time of the Millenial rule of the Messiah, Israel as a nation will again become both physical and spiritual blessing to the whole world. Praise the Lord!

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Christmas and Paganism

More On, "What is the Origin of Christmas?"

Q: You're quoting out of context; Paul wasn't discussing between pagan holidays and God's appointed Holy Days.

What is the substance of Christmas? A lie, which says that Messiah was born in the cold month of Dec (or Jan). And this custom is held as sacred by many christians. A lie is still a lie, whatever its package/wrapping.

A : Holy Days were for the Jews and not for the Christians. We are beyond the Jewish ritual keeping, we live by the Spirit of God. These rituals were done in a physical temple during the Old Testament time, now we have become the temple of God in which God does all things spiritually for His glory (2 Cor 6:16; Php 2:13). We do not sacrifice bulls and goats on the altar today just because God has said in the Old Testament (Lev 1-9). All these were shadows and was literally fulfilled in Christ Jesus (Heb 8:4-5). We now only do a spiritual sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise through Jesus Christ and thus glorify God for His glorious name (Heb 13:15). What ever physical in the Old Testament time has now become spiritual in Christ Jesus. You check the Bible and see whether I quote within context or out of context. 

Blessings...

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Christmas and Paganism

What is the Origin of Christmas?

Q: I'm surprised that you don't know that Christmas originated NOT from the New Testament or true apostolic tradition. An honest research into church history would reveal that the church began to celebrate christmas HUNDREDS of years after the death of the apostles, and its customs: christmas tree, mistletoe, was taken over from European pagan winter celebration. The account of Messiah's birth show that He wasn't born in December, a cold month in Israel. A big Lie propagated as fact.

A : I know it has a pagan origin to it, but I am helping people to live by the higher standard of the New Testament which says, "16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. 18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God. 20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— 21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” 22 which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh." (Col 2:16-23). This shows that keeping the law by our human strength cannot help us live an overcoming life over our indwelling sinful nature (Rom 7:11-13, 19). All the Christmas rituals are man made, so who cares whether it is pagan in its origin or not, we are celebrating and rejoicing on Christmas day as a sign of our gratefulness for our salvation. All days and the festivals are good if it is done by faith. If someone has no faith in celebrating it, it is better not to celebrate it in doubt and sin (Rom 14:20). We do all the Christmas programs to remember what Christ has done for us sacrificially by becoming a man to live one among us and die as a sinless man for us (1 Tim 2:5-6). It is not wrong for a person to celebrate a good cause on any day because of thankfulness. So whether we celebrate Christmas or not, it is with what heart we approach that day that matters and brings glory to God (1 Cor 10:31). Praise the Lord!

Blessings...

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