Posted on 12/21/2002 11:21:49 AM PST by DouglasKC
Christmas is full of paganism, is of pagan origins, is a time where more lies are told to congregations and children than any other time, and is a time where suicide (due to spiritual darkness) peaks annually.
Would you please show me where God sanctioned any birthday celebration for Christ?
If your son's birthday were to be randomly celebrated, would you want it celebrated on a feast honoring your arch enemy?
Usually the people that get most upset about anyone exposing the lies of Christmas are those who feel guilty but refuse to acknowledge the truth and make changes, those that prefer tradition over truth.
Pretty much the whole book.
Apparently you're not familiar with it, but if you were to read it with an open heart and mind, you would find that Paul rebukes those Christians who once had the freedom of the Spirit, but who are now reverting back to legalism as a way to maintain favor with God.
Galatians 3:24-25 -- The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Thanks Mike, I've read the book many times. What you need to understand is that "I'm" not reverting back to anything. I'm letting Christ live in and through me. The result of this gives the appearance that "I" am conforming to God's laws. I certainly couldn't do it on my own. That is freedom of the spirit. I no longer have to strive to please God. I can let Christ live in and through me to fulfill the requirements of the law.
Galatians 3:24-25 -- The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
That is exactly right. By the acceptance of Christ, the law is written into our hearts by presence of Christ living in and through us.
Jer 31:33 but this shall be the covenant that I will cut with the house of Israel: After those days, says Jehovah, I will put My Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
This is the new covenant.
Which apparently inlcudes discouraging others from celebrating the birth of Christ just as the angels and the wise men did -- through songs of praise, celebration, and gift-giving. That's some freedom that you and 2sheep have.
You can claim to be against hypocricy all you want. You're the guy who rants on like some sort of super-Christian, when you're actually just a legalist. If an earlier post is to be believed, you even follow the OT dietary laws, which makes you a legalist in the fullest and worst sense, a Judaizer. Go read Paul. And I mean read Paul, not flip through looking for condemnations of unrighteousness to tack on at the end of a declaration that something is unrighteous, to fool the simple into thinking you have Biblical justification for calling it unrighteous. Read Paul, read Hebrews. Let it tell you what to believe.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
IDOLATRY...
I'm an atheist and I understand what you say very clearly. I have also heard Roy Masters express a similar view on the subject...
I am an atheist. I see the current tradition of Christmas as idolatry. I won't give you a Scriptural justification, but refer you to two Christian philosophers that will...
First, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in 1668:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness(Hobbes was an expert in both Latin and Greek and was fluent in them at an early age.)Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
Where Hobbes talks about "phantastical inhabitants of the brain," we can look at pathos in the same way. Similarly, the characters in drama or fiction are phantasms.
Pathos is very much along the same lines of the despair Søren Kierkegaard describes all throughout The Sickness Unto Death, and the following excerpt is related to Hobbes’ previously mentioned description of fantasy or ‘image of the fantastical’:
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization…The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself.
I'm not discouraging anything. I'm sharing information. You are free to respond or not to.
I don't care what you do in your celebration of idolatrous vanities, but I won't let you dodge the issue with ad hominems or invalid arguments in propositional and/or categorical logic...
See # 130, where Hobbes talks about "phantastical inhabitants of the brain," we can look at pathos in the same way. Similarly, the characters in drama or fiction are phantasms.
Pathos is very much along the same lines of the despair Søren Kierkegaard describes all throughout The Sickness Unto Death, and the following excerpt is related to Hobbes’ previously mentioned description of fantasy or ‘image of the fantastical’:
>The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization…The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself.
I am an atheist. I see the pagan observation of Plato and his Cave Allegory at work here. I have also read the pagan works of Aristotle and their scholarly interpretations - - Ethereal Explorations. Care to challenge my knowledge, sir?
Huh? You have a very novel interpretation of things that is outside of anything I am aware of. You also have a huge internal flaw of logic and a serious clash with Paul's writings but I'm too tired of pointing out the obvious.
Maybe you, 2sheep, and DouglasKC could start a church. Of course you would all be exommunicating one another within a week.
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