Why I Can Cheerfully Say To You, "Merry Christmas"

Seems that every year, I hear the same diatribes. "Christmas is pagan", "God never commanded us to celebrate the birth of Christ". On and on.

It's frustrating because you really want to give these people the benefit of the doubt that they simply want to honor God. Maybe some of it is done out of a pride trip. Don't know. Not my business to judge motive.

Furthermore, I'm not one to get involved in debates. I used to but hung that tendency up a number of years ago when I discovered that such discussions rarely get anywhere.

So, in the interest of helping some of you who might a) appreciate some information on the various arguments and why they fail, or, b) wish to use such information to persuade someone, I provide the following excerpt and link to a good article I recently found:

"Let me be clear. I'm not angry with people who don't celebrate Christmas. Individuals and churches have the liberty to celebrate or not. What is troubling is to hear those of us within the Reformed church that do commemorate the incarnation of the Son of God at Christmas labeled as compromisers, crypto-Romanists, idolaters, second-commandment breakers, and worse. Beyond that, the anti-Christmas rhetoric is inflammatory, but the reasons offered are pitiful..."

And, oh... Merry Christmas, and Praise God for sending our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Sez It All!

Yes! He Is!

هو الرب يسوع المسيح للجميع!

What I'm Listening To...

It's been a long year. Much going on. Some medical things, some not. Not working as much as I'd like but God is faithful.

Speaking of faithful, I'm reading of God's faithfulness in an area that I didn't see coming. Specifically, I'm studying a little about the faithfulness of God as it relates to Israel.

I'm a futurist. I always have been. Just reading the Scriptures leads me that way. I've never seen any reason, excuse or whatever to agree with replacement theology (the Church is the new Israel) and the more I hear people argue for it, the more convinced I am that I'll never be able to agree with it.

There are a couple sources that I'm looking at. The first one is John MacArthur's work on "Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist" I'm currently going through the audio files and it is helping to organize many things that I previously understood. The second one I've yet to receive but it is Barry Horner's book "Future Israel". I've heard this is a masterful work. When it gets here I'll do a book report on it right here!

Thanks for your continued interest in my blog. It's been a very slow year and there are a number of reasons for that.

May the Lord bless you all!