End of the christian era?

TownHall.com ^ | Wednesday, December 25, 2002 | by Pat Buchanan

[JohnHuang2]

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Quote of the Day by demosthenes by Jonathon Spectre

[RaceBannon]

THE FALSE GOD OF CHRISTMAS

Parents, often without even realizing it, have been teaching their children the following things about Santa Claus:
SANTA IS OMNISCIENT
He knows how children behave throughout the year. The familiar song says, "He knows if we've been good or bad." Also he knows exactly what children want for Christmas even if the child does not have an opportunity to tell him personally.

SANTA IS OMNIPOTENT
No storm is too great to hinder Santa from performing his annual miracle of delivering gifts throughout the world. He also defies the laws of nature by flying and by coming down the narrowest (and hottest!) of chimneys! Nor should we forget his amazing ability to produce millions of gifts throughout the year. Is anything too hard for Santa? With Santa all things are possible!

SANTA IS OMNIPRESENT
To visit every home in the world in one evening requires nothing less than omnipresence! Every child in the world can wake up in the morning and say, "Santa has been here! Santa was present in my home!" Prior to Christmas Santa also appears at hundreds of street corners and shopping centers throughout the country at the same time!

SANTA IS FAITHFUL
You can always count on Santa! Santa never fails and he never breaks his word. When Santa makes a promise he keeps it! When he promises a child a gift, that child will never be disappointed. Children are fully persuaded that what Santa has promised he is able also to perform. The child that believes in Santa will not be put to shame! Santa is totally dependable and trustworthy!

SANTA IS ETERNAL
Santa with his white beard and weather-beaten face is the very essence of eternity. Year after year goes by and Santa grows no older. Generations have come and gone but Santa is still here. His life is endless and Santa cannot die. To Santa belongs an unending life.

SANTA IS IMMUTABLE
Yesterday, today, forever Santa is the same! He never seems to change. He is always happy! He is always jolly. He is always kind to children. In a changing world you can always count on Santa being Santa!

SANTA IS LOVE
Santa loves all the boys and girls in the world. Santa is no respecter of persons. He loves them all--red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.

SANTA IS RIGHTEOUS
All that Santa does is right! He makes no mistakes. He does all things well. Every child's stocking contains exactly the right thing.

SANTA IS GOOD
Santa showers his blessings upon all. Every good and perfect gift comes from Santa. He is the supreme GIVER of Christmas. It is Santa who brings the best gift of all!

SANTA IS SOVEREIGN
On Christmas Eve Santa is in complete control of the situation. Circumstances do not phase him (such as storms, sizes of chimneys, red-hot fire places, etc.). He is the King of Christmas!

SANTA IS COMING
Santa is coming to town. You better be ready! You better watch out! You better be good! He's coming! Are you prepared when Santa comes to reward every boy or girl according to his work? Millions of boys and girls each year wait with eager expectancy for the glorious appearing of the great Santa god. What a blessed hope for countless numbers of children! His reward is with him! What a comforting hope the boys and girls have as they prepare for his coming! And during the night he may come at any time. Even so, come, Santa Claus!

SANTA IS WORSHIPPED
Santa is worshipped and loved by thousands of children the world around. Children love him so much that all through the year they seek to please him in such a way that when they see him they will not be ashamed. O come let us adore HIM!

[Parents, is this the god you want your children to know and love? Is it important to tell our children the truth even when they are very young? What have you taught your children about the TRUE GOD, and His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you taught them who the Great GIVER of Christmas is (John 3:16)? Do they know about the gift of God which is eternal life (Rom. 6:23)?]


The Middletown Bible Church
349 East Street
Middletown, CT 06457
(860) 346-0907 More articles under Christian Home and Family

[muawiyah]

There is no smooth continuity between the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th and 5th century and the spread of Christianity in Western Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries.

A small item called THE DARK AGES intrudes. For the most part we really don't know what was going on in that period. But whatever it was, we end up with a land dominated by monasteries filled with warrior monks!

The Arabs and their conquests under the black flag of Islam in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries look positively peaceful in contrast.

[ChiMark]

Let's go to the 19th century and let's see how Christianity shaped our government and spread freedom. The n head over to those Muslim countries and see the dispicable Dictators
chopping off hands and feet. There is no other religion that has liberated man from the shackles of bondage. Mohammed waged war 66 times in his life. And those tolerant Muslims have purged christians out of their countries namely the Sudan of recent memory. When it comes to understanding Christianity we can debate. Muslims kill.
The Pope can admit the Catholic church did wrong but I have yet to hear any Muslim sect decry 9/11. My identity in Christ is through faith not from flying a 767 into a building.

[muawiyah]

In the 19th century just about the only independent Moslem state in the world was the Ottoman Empire.

It's a stretch to turn the various Islamic Arab dictatorships into the successors of the Ottomans. They are more properly the successors to the English and French puppet states set up after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Other Islamic states such as Pakistan and Indonesia have as their immediate progenitors European colonial governments!

Now just exactly why did you want to leap ahead 800 years?

[virgil]

There is no smooth continuity between the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th and 5th century and the spread of Christianity in Western Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries

You might read the letters of St. Boniface,b 675. Boniface was no warrior. The spread of Christianity did not stop with the Roman Empire and suddenly start up again in the 10th century. It did not stop at all, neither did learning thanks to the monks.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[muawiyah]

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02656a.htm gives you a route to St. Bonifice as he is protrayed in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

No doubt he did massive missionary work on the East Bank of the Rhine, and brought many existing Christian, but Arien, churches into line with Rome's standards, but no one really knows when he was born, or where he was born, or what year it was when he died, or what year it really was when he did anything that he did!

The mid 700s were THE DARK AGES, and the problem was threefold - first, virtually everyone was illiterate; secondly, there was virtually nothing to write anything on even if you were literate, and thirdly, all Hell was about to break loose as the Angles and Saxons invaded England driving the Britons to Brittany and Carvajal.

I think the Mongols were ready for another foray into the West, and the Middle East. Other things were going to happen that would drive Christian fortunes into the gutter for a while, with an advance here and there into the Levant, and finally a great flowering of monasteries with their own private armies of warrior-monks.

Bonifice didn't need to be a warrior, and he lived 4 and a half centuries BEFORE the period I pointed to.

[Gil4]

The Pope can admit the Catholic church did wrong

The pope can admit that people within the church do wrong; I'd be interested in hearing about an instance where he admitted that the church itself had ever failed on a matter related to faith and morals.

[lonestar]

Personally, I don't think Santa Claus is the root of the world's problems. When I stopped believing in Santa I didn't stop believing in God.

I consider a belief in Santa Claus a by-product of the innocence of children. Long may it live!

[Jim Noble]

All true.

And when we tell them it's not true, we are telling them not to believe anything they can't touch. Bad news all around.

[eleni121]

In 1492, all Western Europe was Christian and responsive to Rome

Yeah Pat..to hell with Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Holy Land...suffering the brutality of the Ottoman Turk Muslim yoke to this day all under the respectable guise of a "secular" Muslim state. What a laugh..

[DWSUWF]

"...The armies of Islam were only stopped at Tours in France in 732 by Charles Martel, the Hammer of the Franks, in one of the decisive battles of history. ... Europe was saved for Christianity. Islam retreated back over the mountains into Spain, where it retained a foothold until Isabella drove the Moors out in the year she sent an Italian navigator named Columbus to find the western sea route to the Indies..."

Mohammed's boys talk a line of trash that can be condensed to: 'Once moslem, always moslem'.

But it sounds to me like the Europeans (of days gone by, at least) spanked their sunburned asses and sent them back home.

Now, 1000 or so years after the Europeans kicked their butts and turned their mosques into honest whore-houses, allah's punks are back.

Today's euro-wieners had better suck it up if they want to avoid the fate of goats and young boys in desert lands...

[quietolong]

Gosh there Jarhead isn’t that being a little hard on Santa ? We also pray to Mary Is she a false God too ? What about all the other Angels & Saints? I think Santa Gets his “ POWERS “ from God. And I don’t know anyone that teaches that Santa Is a God.

Teach kid about God & the Bible. let them have the fun with Santa. They will figure it out. And if they want to question things. Well that’s good too. Maybe there would be less Jimmy Jones’s, Heavengates, Waco’s.......

[RaceBannon]

I was just making a point about how we place cultural myths as important, instead of placing the facts of God and His Son as factual. Kids can still have fun celebrating Jesus Birthday as much as they can celebrating Santa.

But, it did point out just how high the powers of Santa really are. The belief in Santa does teach all these things the paper said.

[RaceBannon]

There is no smooth continuity between the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th and 5th century and the spread of Christianity in Western Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries.

The Wide-Spreading of Bible Based Christianity ended about 250 AD, then didnt really start again until the 1600's.

A small item called THE DARK AGES intrudes. For the most part we really don't know what was going on in that period. But whatever it was, we end up with a land dominated by monasteries filled with warrior monks!

The Dark Ages were when the state churches denied the Bible to people. When the Printing Press was invented, and the Word Of God was put in printed form, in a common language for all the people to read for themselves, the Dark Ages ended, and the general time of this was the Reformation.

But, I do not believe the Monks were the warriors, those were the peasants that were ordered to fight, Monks just stayed indoors mostly.

The Arabs and their conquests under the black flag of Islam in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries look positively peaceful in contrast.

Slaughtering Christians and Jews in Ancient Palistine was peaceful? Institution of the dhimmitude is peaceful? Forced conversions under the threat of the sword was peace?

[muawiyah]

During the Dark Ages there were no real states in Western Europe. It was a very tough time. Things improved when there were enough people and a decent enough economy for townlife to resume.

That's when we start talking about the Middle Ages, and then the Renaissance in the 1400s. The invention of paper in the Far East made the printing press possible (and that, too, was invented in the Far East as was gunpowder and the cannon).

Western Europeans clasped all these marvelous new inventions to their collective breasts and stepped out to conquer the world.

[Campion]

The Wide-Spreading of Bible Based Christianity ended about 250 AD, then didnt really start again until the 1600's.

I hope the Holy Spirit enjoyed his 1350-year vacation. Where did He spend it? The Greek Isles? Majorca?

Maybe he was "otherwise occupied" in the New World refereeing the ongoing tiff betwixt the Lamanites and the Nephites (the good guys eventually lost!), and the Book of Mormon has it right.

Or, more possibly, the Christian church of the New Testament just kept on growing and spreading, and the Holy Spirit never took any time off at all.

[virgil]

, but no one really knows when he was born, or where he was born, or what year it was when he died, or what year it really was when he did anything that he did!

Boniface received letters from Pope Gregory II and Charles Martel himself as well as several friends. These people date their letters. We know the general time frame that he lived. I don't think the so-called "dark ages" were all that dark. Literacy is only one part of culture.

[muawiyah]

The Dark Ages in Western Europe were "darker" than you imagine.