Judgment from Yahweh during Chr-stmas Day?

[Oeste]

Hi @DNB, @Messianic Israelite

Thank you for the topic, reply and discussion.

Galatians 4:8-12
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and worthless principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11I fear for you, that my efforts for you may have been in vain. 12I beg you, brothers, become like me, for I became like you. You have done me no wrong.

Exactly DNB...
The Galatians were falling back into legalism and following the law of Moses placing themselves under the yoke of the law:

Gal 4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?​

Notice in verses 1-7 of this same chapter. Paul reminds the Galatians they no longer need to follow the Law to please God as they already had their freedom in Christ. In other words, they were no longer slaves, but heirs to the Law through Christ. No longer do they have to observe special days.

Colossians 2:16
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

Notice the different context here. We are no longer REQUIRED (enslaved) to keep special days as they were when under the Law. If Christians want to observe special days, fine. If we don't, that's okay too. No man should judge the other by what Sabbath Day, holy day, meat or beverage they drink as Christ has redeemed us.

Christians can celebrate Christmas but are not required to keep the holiday. As stated by scripture:

Gal 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.​

To further augment this, we can read Acts 15 which set the requirements for Gentiles:

24 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.​

Notice the apostles did not prohibit believing Gentiles from keeping or not keeping holidays.

One last thing, for those readers who believe the scope of comments in Galatians and Colossians only pertained to Jews:

There is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Christ. Accepting Christ means all under Christ enjoy the same freedoms and abstentions. This is plainly seen through the strong parallels between Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11:

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.​

and

Col 3:11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.​

In short, if Christian claimed that keeping a Christmas holiday was required to please God, then they have put on a new and unnecessary yolk, and I would agree with you. However, Christmas serves as a day of church, family, and communal gatherings where we give thanks, praise, and service in a manner that would be difficult without the holiday. As long as the day is "given to the Lord" there is no prohibition, but for those who wish to impart one, they may give abstinence from the holiday to the Lord as well. In the end both will stand, because Jesus will make them stand:

Romans 14: 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.​

So whether the believer partakes or abstains from a religious holiday, they remain within the body of Christ.

 

[paarsurrey]

Can I ask why you say the Israelite Messiah rather than the Jewish Messiah? I mean, it's a rather odd turn of phrase.

If there is no difference then why coin the term "Jewish" instead of the "Israelite", please, right?

Regards

 

[IndigoChild5559]

If there is no difference then why coin the term "Jewish" instead of the "Israelite", please, right?

Regards

You are correct that Hebrew and Israelite and Jew are all interchangeable. Nevertheless, certain turns of phrase are common and others are not. People usually refer to the Jewish messiah. So again, since your terminology is unusual, why do you say Israelite messiah?

 

[viole]

For the run up to Chr-stmas, I have been debating with various people regarding the pagan nature of Chr-stmas, how it isn’t Biblical and how Yahweh is deeply displeased with those who engage in it. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how some people on RF know about the Saturnalia, Bacchanalia and Paganalia that existed before the birth of the Messiah, yet were celebrated around December 25th with the same symbols and practices that are kept at Chr-stmas. Only someone with a very limited thinking process would think that these things are merely coincidence. But Chr-stmas is over, however, I wanted to mention the fact that deadly blizzards have been raging across the U.S.A and in Canada with a special concentration on Chr-stmas day. Perhaps you were one of the people that were affected by this. So I’m going to ask the question that people on RF seem to be avoiding. Is this judgment from Yahweh? I don’t think it is mere coincidence that on Chr-stmas day this should take place. Now I want to start by saying I’m not gloating that many people have died during Xmas. Let me say that whenever they are deaths involved, I’m not happy about it, regardless if people were engaging in sinful practices. My attitude echoes Yahweh in Ezekiel 33:11 “Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Yahweh, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ Proverbs 24 says:

“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth,
And let not thy heart be glad when he is overthrown;
18 Lest Yahweh see it, and it displease him,
And he turn away his wrath from him.”

The Buffalo storms have been classed as “a crisis of epic proportion” and “the worst of the worst” by the New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a native of Buffalo, where 2.4-metre (8-foot) snow drifts against front doors and power outages in freezing temperatures have created life-threatening conditions. More than 200,000 people across several eastern states woke up without power on Christmas morning, and many more had their holiday travel plans upended although the five-day-long storm featuring blizzard conditions and ferocious winds showed signs of easing. The two dozen weather-related deaths were confirmed across eight states, but some US media reported as many as 30 storm-linked fatalities, including four people in Colorado who likely died of exposure and at least seven in western New York.

In Canada, hundreds of thousands of people were left without power in Ontario and Quebec, many flights were canceled in major cities and train passenger service between Toronto and Ottawa was suspended.

Much of the US experienced some sort of winter weather during the large storm, which was generated by a bomb cyclone, a meteorological phenomenon when the atmospheric pressure quickly drops in a strong storm.

What does anger me is that people, I know, are blaming Yahweh for not allowing them to see their loved ones, or friends during this time. For ruining their Xmas, which according to the Chr-stian faith is the holiest day of the year, yet has no basis in the Bible. Yahshua was not even born on December 25, and further, Yahweh doesn’t command we remember his birth but his death at the Passover on the correct day set by the lunar calendar. I know some people are even blaming Yahweh because people have died, at least 60. Instead of blaming Yahweh, why don’t people start asking themselves the question, What am I doing wrong? **Mod Edit**

We had no problem whatsoever in Northern and Central Europe.

ciao

- viole