Supercilious Bells

My mother's sister, next to her in age, Fannie, had married and lived in town. With my parent's grandparents, we visited her for a meal. She owned an electric refrigerator, my mother, grandmother, had never seen anything like that before. She actually made ice cream in her refrigerator. None of us had ever eaten ice cream except hand-churned. To this day, the food I love best on earth, ice cream, tells the whole story of just how much things have changed in one lifetime.

At this Christmas season, a friend went into a store and found nothing pertaining to Christ, except up on one back shelf, dusty, he finally located a Nativity set...Mary, Joseph, the Christ child, the wise men, the angels, the animals. 75 years ago, there were no artificial trees, no Christmas tree farms, if there were, we would not have money for such. I remember, as a young boy, roaming the woods with my ax to locate a Christmas tree, cedar, holly, pine, something with a decent shape or at least 3 sides with a good shape, the bad side turned to the wall. We would string popcorn, along with a few, tinsel decorations. Later, when electricity finally came into the community, my mother bought some electric lights, which were a curiosity in the community.

My father's sister was in college in Raleigh. Going there, to pick her up for Christmas holidays, I saw the first city decorations: wreathes on light poles, lights strung across streets. We noticed that some homes even had lighted candles in the windows, beautiful decorations on doors. The store windows in Raleigh were like a fairyland, we had only seen such beauty in the Sears and Roebuck Christmas catalog (As an antiquarian book collector, I have owned 250 of these catalogs, which I have sold all over the world...such memories).

Thank God, we are not stuck where we start. God had designed before the creation of the world, His intention for this country boy, to travel the planet, even at Christmas time. One newspaper wrote a long article about the various ways Christmas is celebrated around the world, as seen by me, in my world travels. Athens, Greece was by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen at Christmas. Only in Christian nations, do you have Christmas decorations, certainly none in Muslim or communist countries. Even in Israel, the land in which our savior was born, I saw one Christmas decoration, in a small store, just across the road from Absalom's tomb.

In this day of nauseating lights, bells, advertisements, which have leeched out everything pertaining to the true meaning of Christmas. When Christmas has become a nightmare shopping holiday, of spending and spreeing. It would do most people good to think of the true meaning of this holiday, proclaiming the greatest Event in the history of the world, and how it was celebrated as a holy day, by our ancestors. I am not one to justify in any way, the dishonesty involved in Christmas...Santa Claus, flying deer, elves, credit card excesses.

Having been in cold Bethlehem in Christmas eve, having studied of the likelihood of the time of the birth of Christ, we know that He was born 33 AD, probably in August. I have stood in the cave, over which is built the Church of the Nativity, I rejoiced in the historical splendor of it all. It is true, it happened, every historical event, date, points to the joy of it all.

I do not want to forget, the humbleness of the event, not just the poor shepherds on a hillside, but the way poverty-stricken people have found joy in the occasion. At that small country church in which I was reared (built in 1874), this was the only time of the year in which you saw smiles, heard laughter, from many of the poor people of that community. I do not believe a Christmas tree should be found in the sanctuary, but they did have one there, decorated, gifts under the tree for all the children in the community, for many of them, their only gift.

Even then God portrayed the inequities of life, even in the celebration of His birthday. I remember one wonderful lady, Ms. Peeden, one grandchild, she wanted him to have the nicest gift under the tree (he died recently, he was about my age). Once, she put a small car, one you could ride in. He would not let the other children ride in his car. Some of these poor children had never seen an orange...had to be taught how to eat it, but they went home from the church thrilled for the knowledge of having been given a gift, and food, from the generous people of the church. After all, this is, in essence, what it is all about. Beyond all comprehension, beyond all comparison, the message of the greatest gift known to man. God, giving everything for life, including redemption from sin through His only Son, a free gift, and our, in return, only giving back to Him, thankfulness for the gift of everything that is good in our lives.

If the supercilious bells, lights, often ridiculous tunes, indulgence by overeating, overspending, partying and spreeing have robbed you of the real meaning of Christmas, it is your fault. If, at this season, this marvelous season, when you look at the many lights, you do not see the light of the world. If when you look at the holly leaves and berries you do not see the precious drops of blood of Christ, the thorns which pierced His precious brow, you have missed the true meaning of Christmas.

Too Good to be True

On Christmas Day in 1974, having spent Christmas Eve at a hotel in Bethlehem, I went through a very small opening in the front door of the Church of the Nativity. The great doors to the church had been boarded up many years previously because the Muslim hoards, so despising the infidels, rode their horses into the cathedral, forever scarring the edifice built over the cave where our Blessed Lord was born. As I went down some steps to the small cave in the side of the hill and stood at the place where the greatest event in the history of the world had taken place, the onrushing thought came over me, which I now share with you, “IT IS JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.”

This thought because, in my opinion, belief in Christ takes a supernatural thought process, and most people, even those who are church-going pretenders, just do not have the mental capacity to comprehend it. It is almost beyond the comprehension of the average mind that the very majestic God of Glory, the one who threw the millions of stars into space (Genesis 1:16), the one who can hold the oceans of the Earth in His very hands, on whose hands the names of those He has chosen to believe in Him are written, the One who can measure the height of the Himalayas with His fingers, Who can put His toes into the Marianas Trench of the Pacific, Who has designed every snowflake that has ever fallen, designed every life that has ever lived, even to the sound of the voice, even to the iridial flex in the iris of every human eye (Psalm 1:39), the God of Glory who numbers every hair on your head, who knows your every thought, who keeps perfect score of every plus and every minus in your existence, who selected a 14 year-old girl to bear His only Son, putting on a tent of human flesh to dwell among us and give us a perfect example of living, to atone for all the sins and diseases of mankind on a cruel cross, total redemption for the world of sin, despair, depression and disease, who rose from the dead (the second greatest event in the history of the world), went back to the Father and will come again for His own...for which His own patiently awaits (Revelation 22:20).

When I have heard the atheist college professor ridicule Christian faith, I think of the mosquito on the railroad track shouting at the approaching locomotive, “I don't believe in you!” When I have heard the “Doubting Thomas” preachers and television evangelists barking out pre-contrived sociables, a prosperity gospel, a feel good-be good, everything is love, “there are many paths to the same destination”, theology (mostly towards the selling of books or the asking for “ministry” help), I think of the difference between the external and the internal convictions of belief. Those who think that faith is expressed only in magnificent buildings with beautiful interiors contrasted with beautiful compassionate, convicted and convinced lives.

In my lifetime, I have seen the world of science opened up through the discovery of DNA in 1953, “supposed” travel to the moon, a takeover of the media by the state, and the despising of Christianity on every level. I have seen a watered down gospel preached, pedophile priests, gay preachers, homosexual bishops playing church by many denominations, taking sin's ruin and Christ redemption, the blood atonement, the spirituality of the Trinity, hundreds of new denominations hatched in order to put forth some new dogma or doctrine.

About 200 yards down the road from the country church where I was raised (church built in 1874 by the great grandparents of both my mother and father), Mrs. Eliza lived. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, you would see her walking down the road to the church in her Sunday dress and her Sunday hat. I don't believe she ever had anything to say inside the church other than greeting everyone, but she was always there moving her lips in prayer as the preacher preached and the people sang.

Her husband's funeral was the first funeral I can remember as a small child. It was all so strange to me; an open grave, a gray coffin, wreaths of flowers. Mrs. Eliza's daughter was my mother's best friend. Long after he had died, long after my mother's friend had died, she told my mother just how mean her husband had been to her. At that time in the life of this state, a man's property went to his children. At best, the widow usually got a child's share. So, all the property went to her surviving children but they did allow her to stay in the family house. She survived on a few dollars a month (this was before the time of social security or government help of any kind) derived from selling chickens and the gifts of friends. She told my mother, “what I go through on this earth is nothing, I just want to see the face of my Blessed Savior.” Her faith was real, an attitude impossible with men, too good to be true.

When God created man, He breathed into him a living soul. In the Original Sin involving free will, you do not have to train a child to be evil, it comes very naturally. Psychologists have tried to renounce the truths of the Bible by saying that all people are good, but nature and history tells us otherwise. You see, we believe in life after death, we believe in Heaven and Hell. There is more in the Bible (Answer Book) about Hell than Heaven. We know that no sin will enter Heaven, Christ is the propitiation for every sin. Through His cleansing we start living the eternal life before our clinical death. This is real Christianity. The truth that God forgives sin through the blessed atonement of His only begotten Son, born in a lowly place, prophesied 700 years before birth (Isaiah 53), fulfilling every prophecy and promise made by the Creator of the Universe (John 1) to His creation, you and I. As believers we are called, we are elected, we are conformed, we are justified, we are glorified (Romans 8:28-33).

It is just too good to be true, that in Him we have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). It is just too good to be true that unlike the unbelievers, deceived by Satan, the “religions” of the world, depending on idols and other man-made fakery, we have within our very being the Holy Spirit of the One Who created us, Who created everything around us, Who offered His only begotten Son for our priceless redemption as a joint-heir in life now and in eternity. The puny, midget mind of man just cannot understand or comprehend the goodness and greatness of God. “Rejoice in the Lord always: [and] again I say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). It is a gift! “To know him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering” (Philippians 3:10).