Posted on 12/25/2012 1:13:09 PM PST by narses
See the World Religions and Theology section of our website for the article Bible Questions for the Church of Christ: www.faithfacts.org.
Would the church present a service relevant to any socially acknowledged reason? Say, a 9/11 memoriam? There’s nothing wrong with a sermon about Christ’s birth, and nothing wrong with timing it for when the world in general is trying to acknowledge it.
Indeed! It is a Catholic holiday ...
because the Pope took Saturn out of Saturnalia.
It’s not penance if you’re dieting ;-). Thank you for the prayer, I’m sure it helps!
Merry Christmas! We have all our children home (plus a guest-dog) and everyone is well. It’s a blessed time, really.
Thank you for the “instructions”, if that is what they are in post #1. One is fearful to write anything at all, as it may be construed by whoever to be “antagonistic”. Like the previous sentence, for example. I sign my name under post # 19, in any event.
I am at the same time envious of those homogeneous countries in South America or Europe where everyone or nearly everyone belongs to one church, and the hair splitting among the many Protestant sects we have here, some as old as a decade or less, others maybe a 100 years old or a little more (as compared to the history of the Catholic Church and Her theology), do not take place, if only because they are long considered irrelevant.
Merry Christmas!
Yes, Merry Christmas to you as well.
IIRC, the Pilgrims didn’t celebrate Christmas, either; they viewed it as a pagan celebration. Not big fans of the pope. Christmas was a “ChristMASS”.
Perfectly sound, scripturally based advice from the good Pastor of The Church Of Christ. You are free to disagree and to practice otherwise, as many do, myself included.
However, you will have a difficult time in criticizing him or anyone else who believes similarly, because what he wrote is not at all inaccurate. If you observe Christmas as a Christian holy day, understand that it has no scriptural basis. That matters much more so to some than to others.
The holiday has veered into excess and error in the modern era, I suspect most would agree. Is this a condemnation of the observation or the celebration of Christmas? More so to some than to others.
Return to Paul and Romans 14 as often as you need to do so, in order to become more understanding and charitable toward your fellow brothers and sisters who do not hold to identical practices and observations. Observing or celebrating this holiday or any other is not a core, salvific matter. Upon core, salvific matters all Christians should agree, and do.
This particular topic is one with which I've dealt all my life. My father's family did not celebrate Christmas while my mother's family celebrated it thoroughly, Advent candles, greenery everywhere, caroling and all. They even had "Old Christmas."
whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven?
whoever hears you, hears me
on earth as it is in heaven ...
Church has no authority to name holidays?
some are terminally unique.
Remember how Jesus felt about the Pharisees and legalism?
Please see: Holy Bible, for what the Church of Christ believes. If you want to be appeased like the world, and find those who want to believe in things that are not in God’s word then look elsewhere. If we are divisive or narrow minded then I suggest you do a study on how narrow minded our Lord Jesus was through the scriptures... your findings may astonish you!
We should be carrying out the great commission to go forth and spread the gospel everyday not just on a special man made holiday. It seems to me the Churches of Christ hate to give up what appears to be worldly good times. We are suppose to be different. And it is because of our differences we will be persecuted as Christ was. We were the created ones, we did not create God, so why do we feel the need to pick a day to celebrate His birthday when he did not tell us to do so?
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