Showing posts with label dead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dead. Show all posts

Thursday 17 October 2013

Halloween custom of the nations

Halloween is a custom of the nations.
God Himself calls such things abominations, practices that He hates. If we strip away its façade of revelry and feasting, it is idolatrous false worship, honouring spirit beings that are not God. In addition, God never tells us to celebrate this day or in any way to honour the spirits of the dead.
November-Coming-Fire
November-Coming-Fire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Notice that He warns us not to be "ensnared to follow" the practices of the nations. A snare is a trap designed to catch an unwary animal. The trap itself is hidden, but what is visible is a kind of lure, an attractive trick designed to fool the prey into entering the trap. Once it takes the bait, the gate comes down, a hook comes out, or a spring slams closed on a limb, and the prey is trapped.

God is alerting us to the fact that heathen or ungodly practices — customs, ways of worship, traditions, celebrations— usually have characteristics that appeal to our human nature. They are the lures. We can become caught up in them before we are aware of it. God advises us to watch out for the hidden dangers, the appealing entrapments, that are designed into these holidays.

Many cultures have a form of Halloween in their tradition. It seems that most of this world's peoples desire to celebrate the dead. The holidays or feasts may vary from place to place, falling on different days and following different customs. The common denominator is that they all honor or remember the dead or unseen spirits.

Mexico has its "Day of the Dead" in which participants give out candies in the shape of skeletons and visit graveyards to commune with the dead by leaving them food. In Japan, they honor their ancestors with various celebrations. Certain African tribes set aside days to honor the unseen spirits, warding off the evil ones and placating the good. German, Scandinavian, Spanish, Italian, and many other cultures have a Halloween-type holiday.

In English-speaking countries, Halloween derives primarily from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced "sow-in"). Samhain, held on the three days around November 1, was a kind of New Year's celebration and harvest festival all rolled up into one.
The Celts believed that these three days were special because of the transition from the old year to the new. They felt that during this time the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds relaxed or lifted, allowing spirits to cross over more easily. This idea, of course, terrifies superstitious people—that departed spirits could walk among us, especially those who died in the past year as it was thought these spirits desired to return to the mortal realm. For this reason, they believed they had to appease the spirits to make them go into the spirit world and stay there.
The Celts did this by putting out food and treats so that, when these spirits came floating by their houses, they would pass on. They thought that, if they did not appease the spirits, they would play tricks or put curses on them. Whole villages would unite to drive away the evil spirits, ensuring that the upcoming year would be good. Others among them would hold séances or conduct other kinds of divination by incantation, potion, or trance to contact dead ancestors in hope of receiving guidance and inspiration.

An interesting aspect of this transition time—the three days of Samhain—is that it was considered to be "no time," a time unto itself. Thus, it became a tradition that the order and the rules by which people lived were held in abeyance during them.
All laws went unenforced. The social order was turned upside-down—the fool became king, and the king became the fool. Men dressed as women and vice-versa. People took on different personas, dressing in disguise and acting the part. No work was done during this period of total abandon, for it was a time for revelry, drinking, eating, making and taking dares, and breaking the law. In a word, it was chaos.

Then Roman Catholicism arrived on the scene and "converted" the pagans. It also decreed a day to honor departed saints:
Halloween!!
Halloween!! (Photo credit: cafeconlecheporfavor)
May 13, All Saints' Day. The priests instructed the "converted" pagans to keep All Saints' Day, but they continued to celebrate Samhain because it was so much more fun than attending church to pray for the hallowed saints of yesteryear.
To keep them in the fold, in AD 835 Pope Gregory IV officially authorized moving All Saints' Day to November 1 to coincide with Samhain. He allowed the pagan "Christians" to keep their old customs as long as they put a gloss of Christianity on them. Thus, they kept Samhain in the name of Christ to honor the departed saints.

Like Samhain, All Saints' Day began the evening before, which was called All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Eve, or Halloween. Since then, Halloween has evolved into its present form, in which nothing remotely Christian remains. It is known for all its pre-Christian Celtic practices—particularly the recognition of the spirit world in the form of fairies, witches, ogres, goblins, demons, ghouls, vampires, etc.

Today, "trick-or-treating" is the most recognized of Halloween activities, and it is simply a form of extortion. Children, whether they know it or not, are acting as the spirits who will play a trick or put a curse on the one who does not pay up in food or treats. Divination and séances are also commonly held on October 31. Hooliganism — tricks resulting in vandalism —  often reaches its high point on Halloween. For many years, Detroit was the scene of "hell night," in which rampaging young people trashed large areas of the city, setting fires, smashing cars and windows, looting, and generally creating havoc.
The Celtic feast of Samhain still survives in Halloween. It has simply reverted to our ancestors' Celtic practice.

What can Halloween hurt?

Romans 10:1-3:
Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
Is the deception so strong that they cannot see it? Interestingly, a commentator writes that "they being ignorant of" (verse 3) could be translated into "for they ignoring," which puts a different sense on Paul's thought. When one is ignorant, he just does not know. Perhaps knowledge was withheld from him. On the other hand, when one ignores knowledge, it is readily available, but he turns his back on it.
A self-deceived person is ignoring truth rather than ignorant of it, and if that indeed is Paul's emphasis, it makes this Halloween question much more serious. It means that people are accountable for what they are doing, and therefore, they will pay more for it than if they acted in ignorance.

Deuteronomy 12:29-32
"When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land.
Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.
Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it."
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Thursday 10 June 2010

Separation from God in death, the antithesis of life


"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

We know the passages that describe death in the Old Testament. It is sleep (Dan 12:2). It is total unconsciousness (Eccl 9:5). Death is the antithesis of life.
But there is something else of the greatest importance that was central to the thinking of faithful men like David and Hezekiah:
"My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O LORD — how long? Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?" (Psa 6:3-5).
"Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Psa 88:10-12).
"O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness" (Isa 38:16-19).
Death completely separates man from fellowship with God. For the faithful man or woman, this is the worst possible thing that could happen. Nothing is of greater consequence. Fellowship with God is the essence of life itself.
Life derives all its meaning from our relationship with God.
The faithful man or woman, for whom fellowship with God is life’s greatest joy, shrinks from anything that severs this holy relationship. Death is an enemy indeed.
No one knew this better than the Lord Jesus Christ. His life was fellowship with the Father in a degree that we can only try to contemplate. He walked with his Father every moment of every day. And His Father walked with him. It was an earnest of the eternal joy that God set before him.
Jesus knew, of course, that he must die to put away the sin of the world. He knew that the grave would not hold him; that he must rise to life again. But this did not diminish the full awfulness of death that loomed before his face.
His words as he entered Gethsemane were an echo of Psalm 6:
"Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ " (Matt 26:38,39).
May I suggest that the cup that Jesus prayed might pass from him was not just the cup of physical suffering? It was the bitter cup of death that would separate him from his Father and his God.
Where now would be his remembrance of God? Where now would be his life of praise? Could not God transfigure him, as He had once done on the holy mount, and give him immortality without the horror of even a moment’s separation between them?
Do not holy men and women think this way?
Then the ninth hour of the next day drew near: the hour of his death on the cross, the end. Jesus must have felt the last vestiges of life slipping from him:
"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ " (Matt 27:46).
Why have you abandoned me to this end? You are everything to me, even life itself!
Is it not possible that this cry of Jesus simply expressed the anguish of his soul as the darkness that had settled over the land turned into the reality of his death? Heaven must have cried, too. God derives no pleasure from the death of a sinner, let alone the death of the righteous man.
In Psalm 22, the opening words of which anticipated the anguish of Jesus’ soul, the immediate context is separation from God:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest" (vv 1,2).
In David’s case, the experience was some living death when he had sought but received no help from God; when he had prayed but gotten no answer. For Jesus, it was about to become the complete separation of death itself.
How thankful we can be that reassurance follows. God has saved the faithful before. He will do it again. He will yet be enthroned on the living praises of His people:
"Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame" (Psa 22:3-5).
God is now forever enthroned in the praises of the Son whom He delivered from the darkness of death. But for a little while their fellowship was severed. The separation of the Father and the Son by his death was a tragedy of the ages. It was not because of anything he had done. Our sins made it happen. Hear his cry from the cross and be ashamed. God forgive us!
Jim Harper (Meriden, CT)
The Christadelphian
TIDINGS
OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Wednesday 27 January 2010

We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace


"The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day
regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day."
- Charles Swindoll

There are eventually two types of people:
They that will say against God “Your will shall be done"
and they of which God says at the end time: “Your will shall happen”

All that die, to be for indefinitely dead, shall have chosen for it.
No soul which seriously and constantly desires entertainment, shall ever be missing the end.
They that search, will find. For them who ask and knock, doors shall go open.
For them eternal life lies in the distance.
- Marcus Ampe

"I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find me."
Proverbs 8:17

God, the father, teach me to go on the correct path
and to make the correct choices in my life.

Thursday 13 August 2009

Biblical Ambiguity on Death?

Biblical Ambiguity on Death?

The claim is made that on the fundamental issue as to what happens after death, the Bible is totally ambiguous.
...
The Bible is very plain in its statement that the “dead don’t know anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) and that all of us, good or bad, are on our way to the Bible hell, where “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom.” (Ecclesiastes 9:1-3,10)

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Where does Satan lives?

I would like to ask people who believe in the devil:

If Satan is a person and when there are angels who did not want to follow God, where do they stay?

In case Devils were originally angels-with-angel-'bodies' but fell in the rebellion of the past (Genesis 6--the demon possessed Kings, and the violence in the earth)did They 'left their habitation' or 'abandoned  their sphere of authority' (in heaven, a la Jude/2Pet) and came to earth to possess human bodies--in a Satan-led power grab, perhaps to experience OUR kind of sensory 'escape'(?). This would entail that they gave up their 'angelic bodies' to indwell humans. But living in humans would mean that we do have a spirit living in us, or that a demon (as a sort of person) can live in us. The ring-leaders of the rebellion (except Satan) were cast into the abyss (Jude/2Pet again) But then would not all the other spirits lost their hosts /in the Flood/? In case there are still devils hovering around they became it after the flood.They were not consigned to the abyss /yet/ then--so they continue to needhosts (now that they cannot get their old 'angelic' bodies back). 



2 Peter 2: 4 Certainly if God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tar´ta·rus, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgement; 5 and he did not hold back from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a deluge upon a world of ungodly people;

When devils or evil spirits are  being fallen angels would they not be punished and being destroyed by God? The fallen angels or the angels that did not keep within their original authority and left their own habitation are kept in darkness. Is there not meant under the ground?

Jude: 6 And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.

Would this not mean that all those angels are like the dead people without life and without a conscious body, feeling nothing and being just like dead? Shall they not be saved up to appear at the end of times by the judgement day because God hold the wicked until the Day of Judgement?

2 Peter 2: 9 Jehovah knows how to deliver people of godly devotion out of trial, but to reserve unrighteous people for the day of judgement to be cut off, 10 especially, however, those who go on after flesh with the desire to defile [it] and who look down on lordship.



Thursday 27 November 2008

How are the dead?

Concerning the dead at the awakening on the day of judgement. “The dead shall be raised incorruptible” To be discussed in our Sunday service November the 30th.

Allon Maxwell wrote:
Hi Marcus,
I saw your post on the Christadelphian Facebook Site on this topic.

Do I assume from this that you believe that the (righteous) dead will rise immortal?

My own belief is that we will rise from the grave immortal.
Marcus Ampe wrote:

I think at the day of judgement we shall have to come in front of the chair of Christ to be judged. This would mean that still a lot could happen to the body in front of Christ. But been resurrected by God, who knows our state, we could already be given the 'body' of the group to which we shall belong to. As righteous receiving an incorruptible body and as cursed a body that can and shall die again. The approved of would perhaps not have mortality any more (or immortality), so those taken out of the grave to come in front of the judgement seat have undergone a transformation. Out from the ashes they shall receive a form that shall hold all the essences of the previous body and live. Their body shall not deteriorate or not been killed any more if they are accepted by God to live forever after.

It is true that there is also a solemn warning that fear of the judgement is something experienced by the wicked – NOT the righteous! So you could say that the righteous shall straightly become 'awake' directly in an incorruptible body and should not be afraid of what would come.
If the sins of the repentant are never to be mentioned ever again, how can it be possible that they must be put on public exhibition at the judgement, and be accounted for a second time? But perhaps there are sins been committed wherefore no repentance had been brought before dying. You also think that sins done after baptism when you feel guilty about them and repent, would not any more be accounted for. Would we not be reprimanded for it? I agree that we would not get a dead penalty for it, and that God shall forgive them. But shall He not do like a worldly father does and talk about what has gone wrong? Shall the forgiveness and cleansing not happen on the day of judgement? Christ is going to do the division and sending us to the right or the left side.
Is it not that those who thought they were doing right but did wrong or believed wrongly would be put in the right place at the day of judgement. For example when someone has lived according to his believes in his faith (catholic, protestant, etc.) or did not have the opportunity to learn God, but learns how it really is on the day of judgement, would he not be left the choice to choose right and be saved. Or would you think no Trinitarian would make a chance to be saved if there is no tri-une God, or the other way that non-Trinitarians would be damned when there is a bi- or a tri-une God? I take it that those who believe in Christ as the Saviour and live according the will of God make a change to live eternally, no matter which denomination they were in. (cfr Ezekiel 33:16)
Coming in front of the judgement throne the righteous can proof to the others that they kneel down and praise the right Lord. Showing the others how they should have behaved in front of Christ and onto God. To them it is not a judgement as such (sentence or conviction) that comes over them.
Because the verdict shall be 'not guilty' the righteous shall be free to live eternally in the form they shall have received by their awakening.
So you assumed rightly that I think that the righteous will rise immortal in a certain way because dead shall not come over them any more. (But not having the eternality of God who never can die, but if He would like to make an end to it all He can and could destroy us) (But we have the promise of eternal life) Therefore the word incorruptible is better.