No doubt there will be one or two raised eyebrows as to why an article on Christmas should be appearing in the January edition of this magazine. And well you may ask!

The reason is very simple. Some of the most respected ministries that I know have started apologising for the pagan origins of Christmas whilst continuing to hold on to their belovèd tradition. They know in their heart of hearts that it is wrong, their consciences have been pricked, but they're just too scared to make the break because of the cost in the terms of their following. I know, because we've already been there before.

RBC Ministries, which we have recommended now for nearly two decades, in a recent edition of its Our Daily Bread magazine (December-January 2000-2001), wrote:

"It's true that the Bible does not tell us to celebrate Jesus' birthday. We don't even know the exact date, and much about the season has a pagan background. But that doesn't make it wrong to celebrate if Christ is kept uppermost in our lives. We don't think of mistletoe, holly, and evergreens as being pagan any more than we associate Sunday and Monday with the worship of the sun and moon gods after which these days are named. Just because unbelievers abuse Christmastime doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the holiday" (December 16).

The arguments presented in the continuing obervation of Christmas by Christian traditionalists are, to say the least, pitifully weak. We are reassured that imitating pagan customs is all right simply because we continue to name the days of the week after pagan deities. However, there is a major difference between naming the passage of time and actually indulging in pagan ceremonial practices that are speficially banned in the Bible.

I know a number of good Christian people who were given pagan first names by their unbelieving parents but who have since received Messiah. Though bearing a pagan name is regrettable, it cannot be compared to a Christian attending the Munich Beer Festival and making Christ the centre of his thoughts and celebration! You cannot associate an orgy of drunkenness with Christ!

At Christmas, Christians re-enact old pagan traditions associated with celebrating the false resurrection of the antichrist Nimrod (who was married incestuously with his mother Semiramis) by erecting Christmas trees, decorating them with baubles representing old Chaldean and Egyptian fertility rites, and (in many countries) dancing around the Christmas tree. They use mistletoe as a pretext to forcing sexual advances on unwilling victims, and so on. Toning such traditions down makes not the slightest bit of difference if Yahweh has already forbidden them! And no matter how much you try to make Christ the centre of Christmas celebration, it's whole spirit is already contaminated by the selfish expectation of presents and bad economic stewardship as families regularly bankrupt themselves. I have yet to meet a Christian family who has made of Christmas something purely Christ-centred. It simply cannot be done. And what, above all, most clearly identifies in my mind Christmas as something essentially satannnic is the spirit of condemnation that those of us who do not celebrate this pagan feast must annually endure.

Even sadder for us to read this year was the slushy nonsense and historical inaccuracies in what is otherwise Scandinavia's best Christian periodical, Troens Gode Strid in their Christmas issue (No.4, December 200) which included as its leading article an announement that in the year 336 the Church moved Yah'shua's (Jesus') birthday from 6 January to 25 December. This, the editors declare, was an act of genius because 25 December was the darkest night in the year as well as being the pagans' winter feast of the sun. It was, they proudly announce, a brilliant piece of symbolism by the Christians to present the Light of the world on the darkest day of the year and to outcompete the pagans!

By the same logic we could argue that putting Christ's birthday during the Munich Oktoberfest would be an act of genius to compete with the hedonistic Germans by saying that they should get drunk on Christ for this is not only one of Bavaria's darkest and most depraved traditions but one that most of the world has heard about!

The editors have done a dishonest job. We all know why Christians transferred Messiah's birthday to 25 December. It was, quite simply, to make Christianity more attractive to the pagans by watering it down even more. The Church - which was then Catholic - had already done a good job in that respect and was in an advanced state of apostacy. By transferring Christ's birth to a pagan feast they were indulging in a practice repeatedly forbidden in the Bible, namely, syncretism with pagan religion. This apostate Church run by a nominally Christian emperor who was, in truth, a sun worshipper to his dying day, was not the New Testament Messianic Community (Church). Not even remotely. It had already prostituted itself in order to escape persecution by changing the Sabbath, abolishing Yahweh's biblical festivals, and by swamping the Church with pagan neo-Platonic philosophy. What is there that is even remotely noble or Yahweh-honouring in any of that?

That Christmas was transferred from 6 January to 25 December is a correct but entirely irrelevant observation. 6 January was the day that the Eastern Orthodox and Armenian Churches celebrated Christmas - and still does so today. But 6 January was also chosen because it also was a pagan festival! 25 December and 6 January have nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Christ but everything to so with the antichrist cult that is now becoming the dominant neo-pagan world religion.

Yahweh has commanded the Sabbath to be observed on the seventh luni-solar day as well as Seven Annual Festivals for ever. These commemorations have never been abrogated by the Scriptures. It was the whore Church that disobeyed the eternal mitzvah (commandment) and it is the whore Church's traditions that the vast bulk of Christendom celebrates today.

But there is a spiritual awakening. Christians around the whole world from every denomination are beginning to question these long-cherished and -honoured traditions and are dusting their Bibles off to find out exactly what our Heavenly Father has commanded. And they are feeling a sense of betrayal and defilement. They want to obey the mitzvot (commandments). They want to please Yahweh. They want to do it RIGHT.

Troens Gode Strid made a veiled attack on Bible-believing Christians and Messianics by feeling pity for us because of how "lonely" we must be at Christmastime. How wrong they are! For one thing, we live with clear consciences that we have broken out of the Babylonian world system, that we are obeying Yahweh (which Yah'shua/Jesus said was a sign of loving Him), that we are being good stewards of our financial resources, and that we are not imitating the ways of the heathen which He says "are vain".

Yah'shua (Jesus) was not, in any case, born on mid-winter's day but in the spring, the time of the year when nature springs into new life, just as Christ is new life for us. (Many messianics argue for an autumn birth during the Feast of Tabernacles). The symbolism is all wrong celebrating the Saviour's birth at the darkest time of the year and at a time when satanists perform some of their worst deeds...and they are celebrating Christmas (Yule) too. Oh yes, they use the same pagan symbols in their homes just as the atheistic communists do, and just as many other religions do. I remember as a boy growing up in the Far East wondering why Chineses Buddhists and Indian Hindus celebrated Christmas! Christmas is, in truth, the perfect eceumenical celebration for the emerging One World Pagan religion. And I prophesy that Christmas, or 'Yule' as it will probably be called (just as it still is in Scandinavia), will be the central unifying festival for all the world religions.

The heathen will stay away from Yahweh's Qaodosh (Holy, Set-Apart) Festivals because the latter moedim (appointments) are full of the Ruach (Spirit) whereas Christmas is not.

I am sometimes asked about the freedom Paul gives us to celebrate holy days as and when we want to because the argument is often advanced that we are free to celebrate Messiah's birth on 25 December if we want to. Let us, for the sake or agument, sat that we are: how many Christians do you know who celebrate His birth on that date who separate themselves from all the pagan traditions? How many of them do you know who have no Christmas true, no presents, or all the other trappings of the antichrist festival? I've never met one and I don't expect I ever will. So why can't Christians face the emet (truth)? The answer is two fold:

(1) They love their traditions more than Elohim (God)! That is the first brutal truth; and

(2) They are afraid of what both believers and unbelievers alike will say. That is the second brutal truth.

Tradition and fear are the only reasons they are clinging on to their beloved Feast of Nimrod's fake resurrection. There are no other reasons. I know for a fact that if RBC and Troens Gode Strid ever came out against Christmas that their ministries would collapse! I guarantee that they would have to start their ministries all over again. They would have to make a big sacrifice for the emet (truth), just as we have. But what they don't realise, or perhaps don't want to realise, is that they are trapped in the world system. They're prisoners, and some of their more enlightened editors know it! And so what do they do? They come up with rationalisations like: "What about all the good that we are doing?" (And they are - absolutely - I admire both ministries tremendously). "How will we be able to reach these people in the future?" And so they find ways to compromise.

I have walked that path and it's a dead end. Those you thought were good Christians suddenly mutate into unrecognisable people. Challenge a pagan idol and I guarantee the following reaction: condescension, rage, or accusation! Frankly, I want no fellowship with such a spirit and can truthfully say that I am free of that whole hedonistic nonsense.

If you, the reader, still celebrate Christmas, then you know what I am saying is the emet (truth), and more so if you are acquainted with the historical and biblical facts. There is simply no escape. Today I am challenging you to make the final break from the World System and to come into the full freedom of Messiah. I'll make no pretense to you, though - it will cost you dearly. You will pay a price, but you will enjoy the peace of Christ like never before when you've done it. And know that you'll be joining a Christian/Messianic army whose ranks are swelling every day who have declared their independence from Babylon and their full allegiance to the Elohim (God) of the Bible. Be courageous!

It is not, however, enough to discard pagan traditions without doing what Yahweh wants you to do. Millennia ago, Yahweh gave His people seven annual feasts which were to be celebrated by them for ever. These are Passover (Pesach), Unleavened Bread (Chag haMatzah), Firstfruits (Yom haBikkurim), Weeks/Pentecost (Shavu'ot), Trumpets (Yom Teruah), Atonements (Yom haKippurim) and Tabernacles (Sukkot) - and to these must be added the weekly Sabbath and New Moons (Rosh Chodesh). All these feasts have, of course, been modified under the New Covenant, since Messiah has now fulfilled the types of many of them, though some remain unfulfilled. Two other later traditions, Hanukkah (Dedication) and Purim (Lots) are additional festivals invented by Talmudists.

Yahweh is at this very time separating the wheat from the tares - nominal symbolic Christians/Messianics from real ones - and challenging the real ones to abandon paganised Christianity return to His New Covenant Torah. The alternative is judgment.

"For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold" (Jer.10:3-4, KJV).

"'You have let go of the mitzvot (commands) of Elohim (God) and are holding on to the traditions of men.' And He said to them: 'You have a fine way of setting aside the mitzvot (commands) of Elohim (God) in order to observe your own traditions!'" (Mk.7:8-9, NIV).

"This is ahavah (love) for Elohim (God): to obey His mitzvot (commands). And his mitzvot (commands) are not burdensome, for everyone born of Elohim (God) overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our emunah (faith)" (1 Jn.4:3-4, NIV).

This page was created on 26 January 2001 Last updated on 9 December 2017

Endnotes Copyright © 1987-2017 NCAY - All Rights Reserved