FRANCE, EUROPE: DEPORT YOUR MUSLIMS AND REVITALIZE PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE

Charlie Hebdo.

I have nothing else to say.

"Rum Thing:" Christianity A Fairy Tale Come True?

It seems like only a few short years since the Biblical story of the birth of Jesus was treated respectfully by the general population, if not quite as true at least without challenging it. Now you find on many websites, except of course the Christian sites, it's treated as "The Christmas myth."

In those "olden times" you could ignore the Christian message if you wanted to, and emphasize the pagan aspects of the holiday, the Santa Claus myth, the Christmas tree, mistletoe and all that, but there was enough of a blending that if you believed the Biblical story you could also include the pagan elements as holiday color without taking them too seriously. The Christmas tree was included by Martin Luther in the celebration after all, and some Christian churches made a Christian symbol out of it too. Nativity scenes and Christmas cookies shaped like trees and Santas all came together in one merry mélange.

Or if the pagan aspects were objectionable to them, some Christians would stick entirely to the Christian meaning of the holiday. It couldn't have been the actual birth of Jesus but it's as good a time as any to celebrate it since the actual date isn't given in scripture anyway.

The last few years I've written posts critical of being too strict about the pagan aspects since nobody today celebrates them as such, they are just part of the festive atmosphere of the season. Nobody's heard of Saturnalia except a few owlish types, for instance, so there really isn't any danger of many if any actually celebrating it.

But this year I find my emphasis changing. Now the Christian meaning of Christmas is being more aggressively treated as a myth than I recall being the case before. There's also quite a bit of mockery out there. I was looking for nativity scenes at Google image and found I had to look very closely to be sure I wasn't getting something even possibly obscene. There have always been unbelievers of course but for the most part they've entered into the festivities with Christian family and friends without feeling the need to Grinch it up. I loved Christmas long before I was a Christian, and don't recall ever feeling "offended" by nativity scenes or any of the rest of it that now "offends" some people. But even this growing grinchiness about offense didn't become a generalized mythification of Christianity. And I don't know if I'm being hypersensitive this year or if I've really tuned into a point where the whole culture has stepped over a line, now treating the central holiday that celebrates the birth of the Savior of Mankind, the defining holiday of Christendom, as a myth, in a way that severs the church from the culture more definitively than ever before.

I doubt it's going to show up among the holiday crowds out shopping, it's just something I've encountered online so far. It just seems like there's a lot of it. Sites that display iconic Christmas decorations and images call it all a "myth." I found it jarring to be looking for such images and encountering that term. These are people who are celebrating this myth too. At least there's that, I suppose, they don't want to do away with it.

The Myth

What about it is a myth? Well, everything. The idea that angels exist is a myth. The idea that an angel told Mary she would give birth to a special child is a myth. The idea that a woman was made pregnant by God is a myth. The idea of a virgin birth is a myth. The idea of an angel's telling Zacharias of the pregnancy of his wife Elizabeth is a myth too. The idea of a special star that pointed to the birth of the Messiah is a myth. The angels who announced the birth to the shepherds is a myth. The whole thing is a myth, even the nonsupernatural parts. Was He born in a manger? "Oh probably not."

And think how foolish we all are who believe all this.

I remember when I first believed in it how astonishing it was. It really IS astonishing, you know. It's easy enough to see why modern man has such trouble with it. But when I believed I simply believed. I suddenly knew God was real and if God is real then all these things are also real. That's what we're supposed to do, you know, simply believe. Getting hung up on astonishing supernatural things is just a sign we're not believers, we're still worldly. If God be God what problem can there be with all these things?

Oh astonishing yes, especially for those of us who grew up in today's scientifically biased secular rationalist environment. The earth only 6000 years old? It made me laugh. I didn't doubt it, God is God, the Bible is His word, but it made me laugh out loud. Angels, oh lovely, I'm so glad there are really angels. That makes me very happy. And God Himself become a Man, what a wonderful thing to try to understand. It takes a while to understand it, you have to grow into it, hear a lot of sermons, do a lot of reading, but from the very beginning a believer is a believer, it's just that the new understanding you now inhabit is much too large for you at first.

When I first heard all the old familiar carols sung at my first Christmas in church I couldn't stop crying for recognition and joy. All those words I'd sung all those years by rote had become real. It reminds me now of mystery writer Dorothy Sayers writing about her discovering as a new believer herself that King Ahasuerus was real and all the Biblical events surrounding him were real. She knew her history but somehow had never put the Biblical figure together with the historical figure Xerxes. And C.S. Lewis too, a scholar of the literature of myths and legends himself, comes to realize that the God who died and rose again that is a theme in many of the mystery religions, actually happened in reality. It's hard to forget his phrase: "Rum thing." A friend remarks to him that "it seems it really might have happened once." Such recognitions are powerful.

The Christmas carols still make me cry sometimes, because they tell of an unbelievable mythical story that has become believable reality for me.

Angels we have heard on high... It came upon a midnight clear... O Little Town of Bethlehem... Joy to the World the Lord is Come... God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray...

I'd never actually thought about those words before. Now they shook me to the core. They still do.

It's real, but it's like a Fairy Tale that has turned out to be real, the most amazing thing. Or "Rum thing." It all occurred in historical time. The account of the birth of Jesus in Luke is full of historical markers, there is no doubting it all happened on this real Planet in real time. In fact a lot of the fairy tales echo elements of this True Story.

Because there is a way it is very much like a Fairy Tale. The true Prince whose rightful position has been usurped by the prince of the wicked spirits, has been tasked with saving the people of His Kingdom who were put under a spell by this wicked prince and are now held captive by him. The true Prince, the Son of the Great King, had to become a human being Himself in order to be our Savior and Mediator, then performed the self-sacrificing deed that was the only thing that could defeat the wicked prince and set us all free from captivity. He won Himself a Bride by doing this, His Church. The story is still in progress. Great things are prophesied to come before Satan, the wicked prince, is completely vanquished, and the true Prince, now both perfect God and perfect Man, can be united with His Bride and All Live Happily Ever After.

O join the happy throngs you silly people who refuse to believe this Fairy Tale that is realer than real.

Here comes Christmas.

Bird post link

I don't have anything to post right now so here's a link to this most recent post on my other blog, A Trio of Feathered Characters

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bad times are at the door but we still have much to be thankful for. I wish us all a blessed and joyful Thanksgiving Day full of genuine gratitude and love to our Father in Heaven who provides for us so abundantly in every way.

All three branches of the govt are rotten to the core

Headlines say House Republicans are looking for a way to stop Obama's Imperial Act of illegally using the Executive Order to protect millions of illegal aliens from deportation, which he is expected to do tonight.  His action is unconstitutional but Congress just tied their own hands as far as God's blessings on their endeavors go, by having an imam give a prayer for them.  Obama's plan is illegal, but Congress is not in any position to do much about it. 

The whole lot should be impeached, Obama, the entire Supreme Court and most of Congress.  Send them all packing, then demolish the Capitol building which is just a copy of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, including its pagan obelisk in the Washington Monument, and has portraits of a couple of Popes in it too  -- how on earth did they get away with that?  The Pope should feel quite at home when they welcome him next September.  Demolish the Supreme Court building too since it has icons of supposed legal minds on it that include the likes of Mohammed.  How did they get away with THAT? And all over Washington are images of pagan gods and goddesses. When did they sneak all that in?

The US has a powerful Christian history, but you wouldn't know it by these architectural symbols which reek of paganism and Romanism.  Perhaps what's going on inside them these days is simply fulfillment of their anti-Christian symbology. 

Yes, Church, we could still turn America around, Yes, but it would cost. And we need a George Whitefield. Or two or three.

A great exertion, a great commitment of time, by a great number of God's people, especially the pastors, really could very possibly turn this nation around even at this very very late hour. If we dropped everything else that could at all conceivably be dropped, and that's got to be a lot more than we think we can drop, did some fasting, did a lot of praying, and tried to coordinate our efforts with one another across the nation, surely we would be a formidable spiritual army. Surely.

We all see it don't we?  The dire need of it I mean.  I open the internet to all kinds of everyday trivia, how to roast the best Thanksgiving turkey, what's the best brand of makeup, where's the best place to retire, and the dissonance makes me a bit crazy.   Maybe it creates enough of an illusion of Normal Times to put a bunch of us to sleep?    I'd love to drift away on the illusion myself, I'm not looking forward to what's coming on this nation.

When God plans to bring Revival, they say, "He sets His people to praying," so if they don't feel the urge to pray then it must not be God's will.  So what do we do, have our perfect Thanksgiving turkey, lean back and watch the nation go down under His judgment?  I guess we could, you know, if that's His will.  But how can it be His will?  Really?

I went to Sermon Audio and clicked on "Sermons by Date" just to see what was being preached this month,   Some of the titles are obscure but most look like Preaching as Usual.  Probably many good sermons for the growth of Christians, certainly the necessary work of pastors, but forgive me if I say this is not the time for that, we have a nation to save.

I know most of us have given up.  We know the nation is already under judgment but we've given up.  I guess we're not feeling it enough yet, or maybe we just can't tolerate the news so we've gone into ostrich mode, or maybe we just don't know what to do.  Shouldn't the pastors be more like the Black-Robed Regiment these days, dedicated to preserving the nation against the tyrannical foe of freedom?  Any Christians can do something of course, like Christine Weick I mentioned in a recent post, but shouldn't it be the pastors leading us?  They put together a meeting in Houston to respond to the mayor's encroachment on their freedom in the pulpit, but it was just a few hours.  Maybe it had something to do with ushering this great conservative wave into Congress, but nothing much seems to have been happening since.  We've even had the abomination of a Muslim imam "praying" in Congress since then, and also in the National Cathedral.  Not a peep out of our leaders that I'm aware of, though the usual ministries took note of it.   They send out their usual scary news stories and warnings and exhortations, but otherwise not much seems to be happening.

Some are focusing this in a different direction.  No mention of the imam in Congress but we don't really have to get upset about the National Cathedral because after all the Episcopalian Church has been apostate for a long time already, nothing unusual about having an imam there.  The idea seems to be Therefore it's nothing to get all worked up about.  Well, OK, but that's the church where Presidents have their most high-profile religious events, such as  Bush's ecumenical prayer meeting for the nation after 9/11.  This is the church that has positioned itself to be representative of the nation, so anything that calls it down for its apostasy is a good thing.

We also shouldn't just be engaged in lamenting the darkness, this trend of thought goes, but in actively doing something, and the something we should actively be doing is taking the gospel to the Muslims.   I'm not sure why this is an either/or but it seems to be.  I can agree that among all the tasks I'd list for what the Church should be doing now that we're not doing anywhere near enough, taking the gospel to the Muslims should rank fairly high.  But I put saving the nation above that myself, because if we can't save the nation the Muslims are going to rule us.  And Revival would go a long way toward accomplishing both forms of salvation.

Seems to me the important thing to keep in mind is that all this is God's judgment on the nation, it's already here, the imam in our government buildings, so many Muslims in the nation too, and saving the nation means moving God to forgive and renew us.  Starting with the Church, where judgment begins.

Interestingly, just as a side note, Norway has been deporting its illegal aliens for a while now, which means Muslims, and their crime rate has been reduced by a third as a result.  France should do the same as Muslims are trashing the city of Marseilles.  This isn't the Christian solution of evangelizing them but I'm not sure there's anything wrong with deporting criminals from a Christian point of view either.  A safe society is the responsibility of government, and ours is rapidly losing all sense of that duty.  The original Christian colonies of America had strict laws against foreign or nonChristian intrusion and influence, and the Black Regiment of pastors preached for, and then fought for, freedom in the Revolutionary War, because political freedom is necessary for all the projects of Christianity from spreading the gospel to providing a Christian moral environment. 
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I often think it's too late, and I know others think the same, that all we can do now is prepare for the disaster, for the persecutions, for horrors upon horrors to come.

But you know what, it isn't too late.  It's only too late because we aren't going to do anything, not because it isn't possible to do something.  Again, are we or are we not "Terrible as an army with banners" as the Church is called in the Song of Songs?.  Right now we don't seem too terrible, but there's no reason we couldn't come to live up to our name.  Hooray for every Christian who is doing something already, but I think it's the pastors across the nation who need to be organizing this, leading this, preaching it, exhorting it.  It would take dedication, time, stripping our lives of everything else, some fasting, a lot of prayer, a lot of seeking the Lord for guidance and wisdom, a lot of coordination with the rest of the Church, a lot of prayer for each other, for all the pastors, a lot of denouncing the sins of the churches and separating from those who are in serious error, a lot of praying for cleansing of the Church, a lot of praying against the sins of the nation after the sins of the Church are dealt with.   

I Stand Sunday wasn't enough.  We need every Sunday, and really every day, dedicated to the work that's cut out for us. 

And we need a George Whitefield.