The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is Christmas.

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The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.

 

For centuries, Christians and Christian apologists accepted December 25, Christmas, as the actual date on which Jesus of Nazareth was born, but those Christians who accepted the date did so in ignorance. The 1^st-Century Church never accepted December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth, nor even accepted that Jesus’ birth should be observed. Rather, observance of Jesus’ birth on December 25^th comes from the 4^th-Century although some so-called Christian theologians made the connection between the rebirth of the sun and Jesus’ birth early in the 2^nd-Century, but these theologians, recognized as genuine by the Catholic Churches, also taught disciples to break the commandments and cease Judaizing so they were heretics, servants of Satan disguised as servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:15). But their writings were valued by the State Church and thus preserved while the writings of those theologians who opposed sun worship were destroyed by the last Classical Church.

The Roman tetrarch Herod celebrated his birthday (Matt 14:6), but in Scripture the birthdates of the patriarchs, or of the prophets are not noted; so observation of any birthday is a questionable practice, neither prohibited nor enjoined. It was not, however, by the Logos’ entrance into this world as His only Son that disciples’ are saved, but by His death and resurrection as the reality of the two goats selected as Israel’s sin offering on Yom Kipporim, one goat to pay the price for Israel’s sins in this world and one to bear Israel’s sin in a far land (the heavenly realm).

· Salvation doesn’t come by Jesus’ birth but by His death and resurrection.

· Jesus’ birth, childhood, and maturity demonstrated that a person not born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) could live without sin.

· Except for Christ Jesus, the natural father of humankind is the first Adam—and because of Adam’s sin, all of his descendants have been born consigned to sin and death.

· The man Jesus of Nazareth was without sin, and death had no claim to His life.

· If Jesus, at Calvary, had not taken on the sins of Israel and by extension of the world (sins committed in this earthly realm), He would not have died.

Jesus’ physical birth does not form the shadow and copy of spiritual birth, but is a birth by water (the water of the womb), a necessary prerequisite to being born of spirit. Jesus’ baptism and receipt of the divine breath of God [pneuma Theou] to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15–17) forms the visible shadow and copy of every disciple invisibly being born of spirit through receiving the Holy Spirit. So while Jesus’ physical birth was necessary to the creation of an acceptable sacrifice that would cover the lawlessness of Israel, His receipt of the Father’s divine breath, followed by His earthly ministry, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection formed the shadow and copy of disciples being born again or born from above, then putting to death the old self or nature, and being resurrected as a new self dwelling in a tent of flesh as the resurrected Jonah was alive in the belly of the great fish before being spewed forth as a spokesman [logos] of God.

Embracing key concepts of Greek paganism prevented the early Church from understanding the plan of God, with the concept that did perhaps the most harm being the heresy that human beings are born with immortal souls. Human beings have no everlasting life dwelling within them until they receive a second birth via receipt of the divine breath of the Father (Rom 6:23). Until then, they are as beasts are (Eccl 3:18–20). They have a human nature that animates the flesh, with this nature received from God as a cat receives the nature of a cat from God—and this nature can be instantly taken from a person and the person can be given the nature of a beast as happened to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan chap 4), the human king of Babylon who served as the shadow and type of Satan, the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4) who will have his angelic nature taken from him and be given the nature of a man when he is cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10). This human nature is not an immortal soul, and it is always a serious doctrinal mistake for a person to think that the person’s human nature is a second life that has come from heaven.

A person is born with no life but that which came from Elohim [singular in usage] when Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam—and the first Adam and the first Eve were driven from the Garden of God before they could eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and live (Gen 3:22–24). The man Jesus had no life dwelling within Him except that received from His Father, the Logos, until He was born from above through receipt of the divine breath of the Father [pneuma Theou], with whom the Logos was in the beginning (John 1:1–2). Both the Logos and the Father [Theon] were present in the beginning; both were God [Theos]. But John linguistically separates the Logos from the Father [Theon] so that two entities, as if married with “two” forming “one,” form God, now a house akin to Israel rather than an individual.

It wasn’t by Jesus’ birth that salvation was extended to human beings, but by His death. Scripture is silent about the date of His birth, but focuses on the date of His death and resurrection. Disciples, following Scripture, will likewise focus of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Yet disciples live in a world that focuses on Jesus’ birth, and it is this focus upon Jesus’ birth that must be addressed.

The winter solstice backs up about a day every 900 years. The solstice now occurs on December 20^th or 21^st, but when Israel left Egypt (approximately 1450 BCE), the winter solstice would have occurred on or about December 25^th. The pagan Egyptian observance of the return of the “sun” would have taken place on December 25^th. And in the 17^th-Century CE, Sir Isaac Newton argued that December 25^th was selected as the date for Christmas because of traditional winter solstice celebrations.

In 1743, Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, argued Christmas or Christemasse [Middle English — Cristes mæsse in Old English, a phrase first recorded in 1038 CE, not earlier] was made to correspond with the Roman solar holiday “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti—the birthday of the unconquered sun,” which occurred on December 25^th, the day after the winter solstice when the first detectable lengthening of daylight hours could be seen two plus millennia ago. Jablonski argued that Christmas was therefore pagan and as such, observance of Christmas debased the Church.

Observing Christmas debased the Church? Does the Christian who argues for putting Christ back into Christmas argue for debasing the Church? No, he or she doesn’t. This Christian recognizes that the commercialization of Christmas comes from a contrary spirit, and this Christian wants the focus of Christmas to return to Jesus being born of Mary, but this Christian, by seeking to celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th, willingly participates in sun worship—

The infamous 4^th-Century CE theologian John Chrysostom, who had little or no spiritual understanding but was a tremendous orator, well schooled in rhetoric by the pagan scholar Libanius of Antioch—John Chrysostom said that they call it [December 25^th] the “birthday of the Unconquered.” Who indeed is so unconquered as our Lord. And before Chrysostom, Cyprian (dod 258 CE), also a classically educated scholar, allegedly said, “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born …Christ should be born.”

December 25^th as “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti” or the birthday of the unconquered sun permitted all solar deities to be worshipped on a single day, including the Syrian sun god, Elah-Gabal, the worship of whom the teenage Roman Emperor Elagabalus introduced to Rome during his reign from CE 218 to 222. Earlier and later, Rome worshiped Sol, the solar deity first identified as Sol Indiges and linked with Janus, co-founder of Rome, then worshiped as Sol Invictus under Emperor Aurelian, who assigned December 25^th as the birthday of Sol Invictus, the borrowed god Mithra, a soldier’s god from Persia. And in 313 CE, Roman Emperor Constantine declared December 25 to be the date of Jesus’ birth; then in 325 CE, Constantine introduced Christmas as an immovable feast on 25 December … the “Jesus” that is worshipped as an infant in the manger on Christmas is the same deity that Rome historically worshiped as the Invincible Sun even though the December 25^th date held no great significance in the Roman festive calendar until the 3^rd-Century CE. Jesus as an infant was comparable to the reborn sun after the winter solstice. But most importantly, the morphing of Sabbath observance into Sunday observance required that Jesus’ birth and the Invincible Sun’s birth coincide so that by transference, worshiping the Sun as god equates with worshiping Jesus as God. This transference further requires that Jesus be the Most High God; hence, Jesus and the Father must be one, not in unity but in numerology, the basis for Trinitarian theology.

Sunday worship by ”Christians” didn’t begin in the 3^rd and 4^th Centuries, for some Christians, operating within the “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thess 2:7), had begun to worship on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath while the Apostle Paul still lived. They were heretics then, in the 1^st-Century; Sunday worshiping Christians are heretics today, in the 21^st-Century. They are tares. And the fields of God being overgrown by tares don’t make the tares wheat.

Before proceeding, it should be noted that pagan Greeks celebrated the birthday of Apollo, their sun-god, on December 25^th.

The first Sunday blue law was enacted by Constantine in March 321 CE. On the 7^th day of March, Crispus and Constantine, consuls each for the second time, declared, “On the venerable Day of the Sun let magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or for vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost” (from Codex Justinianus). So the hard link between Sunday observance and veneration of the Sun through celebration of its annual rebirth occurs during the reign of Emperor Constantine, who combined Mithraic worship of the sun and of lights with the distorted form of Christianity that was permitted to openly survive following Hadrian’s anti-Jewish decrees (ca 135 CE) … the extent of the anti-Semitic hatred embedded in the Greco-Roman world is difficult for a person not living in Nazi Germany or living under a fundamentalist Islamic government to imagine. It takes more energy to truly hate someone than most Americans are willing to invest in such a divisive practice. Yet following Japan’s surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans found themselves hating the Japanese, an emotion that required continual fanning to keep its flames alive until the war ended. So for most modern Americans and Western Europeans, the anti-Semitic hatred Greeks and Romans felt for natural Israelites and all things Jewish is an alien mindset. Only when a Sunday-observing Christian is confronted by the theological necessity for him or her to begin keeping the Sabbath does this culturally embedded anti-Semitism rear its ugly head—unless the person has truly been born of spirit. The person truly born of spirit will eagerly begin to keep the Sabbath:

· The person who has truly been born of spirit will want to keep the Sabbath for the person is no longer hostile to God (Rom 8:7).

· It is hostility to God that causes the Sunday-observing Christian to vehemently attack Sabbatarian disciples and the idea that they must keep the commandments by faith.

If Christmas is a pagan celebration first embraced by the late Classical Church, why is it so widely accepted by modern Christendom? Is it because of the phonetic association of the “Son” of the Most High with the “sun” that rises daily in the sky? In Renaissance England, one of the proofs that the English were of God and were a chosen people was the prophet Malachi writing, “But for you who fear my name [YHWH], the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” (4:2). Generations of Englishmen subscribed to some form of sun worship because the “sun” represented the “Son,” but any form of “sun-worship” is condemned by the Lord, especially through the prophet Ezekiel—

Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he [YHWH] said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these.”

And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them. (8:14–18)

The person who worships the sun has turned his or her back to the temple of God, and turning one’s back to the temple is not a small thing to the Lord but is cause for Him to exercise His wrath, not sparing nor having pity on those who have contempt for Him though they cry out with a loud voice.

The early Church did not celebrate Jesus’ birth until Telesphorus, the second bishop of Rome (125–136 CE) and no friend of Sabbatarian disciples, said that religious services should be held to celebrate the Nativity, but because no one knew for certain when Jesus was born, celebration of the Nativity was often held on Rosh Hashanah—for more than 200 years, Jesus’ birthday was observed on various dates. Even Emperor Constantine declaring in 313 CE that December 25^th was the birthday of Jesus; followed by Pope Julius I in 320 CE declaring December 25^th the official date of Jesus’ birth; followed by Constantine officially declaring December 25^th the immoveable birthday of Jesus was not enough to convince many Christians to celebrate a date they recognized as a pagan festival; hence Christmas failed to immediately gain universal acceptance, thereby causing Bishop Liberius of Rome in 354 CE to order Christians to celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th.

Decrees by Emperor Constantine and by two Bishops of Rome were not enough to sanitize or Christianize the pagan holiday celebrating the birth of the Invincible Sun: for many Christians, December 25^th remained a pagan holiday. And if Sir Isaac Newton and Paul Ernst Jablonski are correct; if December 25^th celebrates the “birth of the Invincible Sun,” then the person who observes Christmas worships the sun and has turned his or her back to the temple of God and has brought condemnation upon him or herself (the temple today is not a physical structure, but the Body of Christ).

The Apostle Paul made a simple statement: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). Elsewhere he said, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Phil 3:17). The Apostle John wrote that “whoever says he [Jesus] abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). And in Scripture, there is no example of Jesus celebrating His birthday. There is not a definite date given for His birth; so to walk as Jesus walked would have the person ignoring Jesus’ birthday.

Fortunately, most “Christians” who observe Christmas do so from passive ignorance of the day’s origin. They do not deliberately seek to worship the sun. Rather, though appalled by the crass commercialism of the holiday, they nevertheless participate in the gift-giving. They seek to worship the Father and His firstborn Son, but sun-worship from ignorance is still sun worship. And it is here where this Sabbath reading will begin; for scripturally, Christmas cannot be the birthday of Christ Jesus—and celebration of Christmas is never truly done in ignorance.

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The person conducting the Sabbath service should read or assign to be read Luke chapter 1 through chapter 2, verse 38; followed by Matthew chapter 1 through chapter 2, verse 18.

Commentary: Luke records that in the days of Jesus’ birth, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (2:1–2) — a better translation might be, when Quirinius is governing in Syria, rather than was governor.

Scholars have contended that Luke is wrong in his account of Jesus’ birth, for Quirinius was governor of Syria when a census was taken in 6/7 CE, ten years after Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. The Jewish historian Josephus recorded that after the exile of Herod Archelaus, successor to Herod the Great, Quirinius [sometimes translated as Cyrenius] became governor of Syria and Coponius was assigned as first governor or perfect of the newly created Judea Province. These governors were charged with conducting a tax census for the emperor—and later theologians have contended that this was the census about which Luke wrote.

An earlier census was conducted; however, the Roman historian Tertullian recorded that Sentius Saturninus was governor of Syria from 9/8 to 6/5 BCE during this first census, not Quirinius.

But recently, evidence has disclosed that Quirinius was in Syria during the first Roman census. Between 5 and 3 BCE, he led a campaign against the Homonadenses, peoples located in the mountains of Galatia and Cilicia. He won by starving defenders within strongholds, a process that takes time but doesn’t require his presence at the front. For his victory he was awarded a triumph.

So Quirinius was governing in Syria although he was not the governor at the time of the first census … Quirinius was a known political figure in Roman politics. His name is mentioned in Res Gestae [The Deeds of Augustus] by Augustus naming him as consul as early as 12 BCE. The Roman historian Tacitus mentioned that Quirinius was appointed by Augustus to be an advisor to his young son Caius Caesar in Armenia before the census of 6 CE (Caius was sent to administer Syria in 1 CE and was wounded in nearby Armenia in 3 CE). Apparently, Augustus wanted someone who was experienced in previously administering the region to advise his son. When Josephus mentioned that Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 CE, he wrote that Quirinius, a Roman senator who had gone through other magistracies, and had passed through them all until he had become consul, was appointed governor of Syria by Caesar and was given the task of assessing property there and in Judea.

Luke doesn’t write that Quirinius was governor of Syria when Jesus was born; rather, he writes,

(this) (census) (first) (was) [taken] (is governing) (the Syria) (Quirinius). (2:2)

Although the assumption can be made that if Quirinius is governing in Syria he is the governor of Syria, that assumption is in conflict with other scriptural passages and must either be false or Scripture is false—and Scripture is not wrong. Only the readings of Scripture by men (and women) are wrong or inadequate. Therefore, in some capacity Quirinius was governing in Syria at the time of the first census, and he can be placed in the region at the time of the first census, which apparently took three or more years to complete, with “the more years” occurring in the region of Judea.

If God, Father and Son, intended that Jesus’ birthday be celebrated, God would not have obscured either the day or the year when Jesus’ birth occurred—and Luke’s account seems to be a deliberate attempt to obscure the year. By Luke’s reference to Quirinius governing in Syria, Luke confused scholars for centuries. For in Luke’s account is the rebuttal to traditional nativity scenes: shepherds were in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks on the night Jesus was born (2:8).

Most Christians today do not realize how far north and how high Jerusalem is: the city sits at 31°47'N latitude. Its elevation is between 2400 and 2500 feet. The latitude and elevation of Huntsville, Alabama, is 34⁰7'N and 604 feet. The latitude and elevation of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is 35⁰67'N and 6996 feet. Jerusalem doesn’t lie near the equator, which runs through Kenya. It isn’t at sea level. It lies far enough north and is high enough that it can have winter weather, and does have winter rain storms of enough severity that sheep were brought in from pastures before December 25^th.

Ezra records, “Then all of the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain” (10:9).

Winter rains were heavy enough and cold enough that sheep were given shelter. They would have been in the manger on December 25^th, not out in the fields. So Jesus birth would have occurred before the heavy winter rains began.

In figuring the course of the priesthood and of the difference between when Elizabeth conceived and when Mary conceived, Jesus would have been born during the fall feast, and if E.W. Bullinger is correct in his appendix to his commentary, Jesus was born on the first high day of Sukkot. So it was logical for the portion of the early Church that celebrated Jesus’ birth to do so at the fall feast season. And it is more logical not to celebrate a day obscured in mystery — Jesus’ conception would have occurred on or near Hanukkah, with the festival of lights representing the shadow and type of Jesus as the light of this world entering His creation as His only Son.

What can be said for certain is that because of the heavy winter rains in the Judean hill country, shepherds were not with their flocks in the fields on or near December 25^th.

Luke also records that Jesus was presented at the temple when He was circumcised on the eighth day. No magi visited Mary, Joseph, and Jesus prior to Jesus being presented at the temple and the offering required to redeem Him made. In fact, Matthew records that the magi “going into the house … saw the child with Mary his mother” (2:11).

The magi didn’t visit Jesus in the manger, nor for some months afterwards. The reason Herod ordered all of the male children two years old or under in Bethlehem and in the region around Bethlehem to be killed was because Jesus was not an infant when the magi visited Him. He was a child possibly a year and a half old. So those “Christians” who today place nativity scenes in their yards haven’t gotten their story straight, but merge scriptural passages into a jolly celebration of the rebirth of the sun.

December 25^th is the day upon which humankind celebrates the rebirth of the sun; it is a celebration of the winter solstice. And it is important to humankind that all peoples keep the holiday. It is not, however, a holiday that honors either the Father or the Son … how does Santa Claus with his flying sleigh and reindeer honor Christ Jesus? They do not. Yet there is a connection between a flying sleigh and Apollo, the sun-god who flies across the sky. And there is a connection between Christmas lights and Mithras and the Eleusinian Mysteries, initiation ceremonies for the cult of Demeter and Persephone. The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs of believers were kept secret as initiation into these mysteries would allegedly unite the believer with the gods, giving to the believer divine power and rewards in the afterlife.

Nothing has been kept more of a secret from “Christians” than the origins of Christmas.

Assigning December 25^th as the birthday of Jesus was necessary if Sunday observance was to replace Sabbath observance within the Christian Church—so a Sabbatarian disciple has no business participating in Christmas celebrations. Yet because there is not a clear “thus-says-the-Lord” command not to observe Christmas, some Sabbatarian disciples will play hopscotch with the holiday, having one foot in this world and one foot out, going to Christmas dinners to keep peace within families, even putting up a few lights as an appeasement to not-born-of-spirit family members. These disciples need to understand that if a winter festival of lights is to be observed, the festival should be Hanukkah, which Jesus celebrated (John 10:22–41).

To walk as Jesus walked a disciple will not keep Christmas. Observance of Hanukkah will be discussed in next Sabbath’s reading, for the practices of rabbinical Judaism are without scriptural support although observation of the Feast of Dedication has support.

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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.

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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

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