Kingdom Ready Blog

Something to consider as we approach the winter holiday season.

[thanks to Burnside Writers]

Every Halloween when I see all the faux tombstones in stores and yard scenes that have “R.I.P.” on them, it causes me to ponder the irony of them.

The dominant religion of the U.S. is Christianity.  And Christianity as we all know has the dominant belief that man is inherently immortal and goes off to either the good place (i.e. Heaven), or the bad place (i.e. Hell).

This weekend we have one of the biggest celebrated holidays of the year. Halloween is deeply routed in the american culture and has been for a very long time. Many fathers and mothers will dress their sons and daughters in costumes and go trick or treating with them while the other parent stays home to hand out candy to their neighbors children as they come to there door.

Before they know it, their children will not need them to help with the costumes nor need (or want) their supervision while they practice these Halloween traditions.

I thought I would do a 2-for-1 for this post.  The first is raising the question, who raised Jesus from the dead? This almost seems like a trick question.  I recently came across an article by this title on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals web site.  For those of us who believe that the Scriptures teach one God, the answer is quite simple.  It gets a little more complicated if you believe in the trinity. Here is an excerpt from that article:

In light of recent discussion on this blog on the Pagan Roots of Christmas, I thought this video was appropriate.

I believe Jesus was born in the late summer/fall.  Yet this is the time of the year that most folks talk about the birth of the Messiah, so I thought I would post this interesting article on Isaiah 9:6.  You can find it originally posted at “koinonia.”  The bold lettering is my doing.  I found these statements to be particularly insightful.

WHAT IS IN A NAME? (ISAIAH 9:6)

by John H. Walton

The Holiday season has snuck up on us again. A time of year when… well you know. This was a popular video last year that made the rounds in our circles and since we are creatures who tend to forget, I thought it might warrant re-viewing. It sums up the origins of many of the Christmas traditions as we know them now and exposes where we got them from. (note: the first two minutes of the video are an advertisement…feel free to fast forward)

Some questions we may ask ourselves after we watch are:
1. Should we “Christianize” a pagan Holiday?