Sunday, December 26, 2010

Happy Birthday, Saturn!

UPDATE 12/12/2016

Christmas is as much a cultural holiday as it is an ecclesiastical holy day. Christian tradition is intertwined with Western history. As a Christian, if you feel bad about celebrating a "holy day" not found in the Bible, then don't celebrate it. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with those who do wish to celebrate it; it is not sinful to do so, unless you are actually celebrating Saturnalia or teaching other Christians that doing so is prescribed in the Scriptures!

Jim Brown is no longer a favorite. He makes far too many exegetical errors, such as illegitimate totality transfer (see here). His love of the Word is unquestioned, but he needs to see how limited his self-directed learning has been and how out of date his scholarship is. Heck, he's still using Strong's and the KJV.



I suppose, due primarily to their comfortable, culturally Christian environment, there must still be a great many believers out there who are unaware of the pagan origins of Xmas, but it's hard for me to imagine the greatest number of them would find that fact difficult to swallow. Yes, naturally, there’d be those poorly educated souls who found the very suggestion to be damnable blasphemy, but could theirs really represent anything like a majority reaction? Because from what I’ve observed, most of us, upon hearing about Constantine and the sun-worshippers, the Yule log and Moloch, etc., just shrug our shoulders and say, in effect, “Yeah, sounds about right, but Christ redeemed my pagan origins, he can do it for Hercules’ birthday, too!”

All of which is my way of introducing one of my favourite preachers: Jim Brown of Grace and Truth Ministries. Jim is one of the most anti-Xmas preachers I’ve ever come across—and one of the shoutiest! Sometime during his past 50 years of studying the Bible, he became convinced that American Christians celebrating Christmas is exactly the same as the ancient Israelites worshipping “Baal and the Grove” and, just like the Israelites, America was about to feel the sting of the Master's bullwhip. Naturally, he can back up his theory from Scripture. In fact, he has built a truly awe-inspiring edifice of doctrine on this matter, a towering stronghold from which he launches his terrifying apologetic blitzkrieg.

I first encountered Jim while surfing Youtube for videos on Textual Criticism and saw this. I was absolutely dumb-struck by his down-home-church-basement, Angry Answer Man services. He’s like a combination of Julius Sumner Millar and someone out of Searching for the Wrong-Eyed-Jesus.

Here, give a listen to Jim on "Christ-Mass":



I admit to agreeing with Jim about 85% of the time (his classes on Predestination and Baptism are excellent), but I'm not that concerned about Xmas.


Yet



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