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Christmas
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* Winter Warm-Up Baskets with Homemade Marshmallows and Hot Chocolate
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How to Handle Christmas Before it Handles You :)
Ahh, the Holidays gotta love it. Family, fun, presents, and food! I guess you probably knew where that was going... :) Yes, we can't escape it but we can handle it...this months tip will show you just how to do that. Many dread the holidays...
Inexpensive Christmas Gifts
Christmas is a time of joy, piece, and giving. It is also a time of being broke. Adults often think that the idea of making Christmas gifts is only for children who do not yet have their own money to buy gifts. However, with a little bit of...
Whatever Happened to Christmas?
Remember when no one started Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving?
Wisconsin author LeAnn R. Ralph remembers it very well.
"When I was growing up on our dairy farm forty years ago, the stores didn't put up Christmas displays until...
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Taking Jesus Out of Christmas
I am sure you have all heard by now how the secular forces in
our country are attacking the true meaning of Christmas. These
secular forces are trying to literally replace the term
"merry Christmas" with "happy holidays." They are
trying too re-name our traditional Christmas tree as the
"holiday tree." They are trying to take out the baby
Jesus, Mary and Joseph from the manger scenes.
President Bush himself has taken out the term "merry
Christmas" from his yearly standard Christmas card that he
sends out in an attempt to try and be politically correct. Many
of our major department and retail stores have also replaced the
term "merry Christmas" with "happy holidays" for
fear of offending the minority in our country if they are not
Christians.
In the last poll I saw taken, it has been estimated that 80-85%
of the people in our country still consider themselves to be
Christians. We are thus looking at 15-20% of our population
either being atheists, agnostics or of another faith and
religion.
In an effort to try and appease and not offend this small
minority, many in the political, academic and social fields are
literally trying to take out the true meaning of Christmas - the
celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And surprisingly, many liberal Christians are now in this
secular camp.
I have seen many of them on the local news and cable talk shows.
They are telling the rest of us conservative and traditional
minded Christians that we are getting too upset over nothing,
that we should be willing to completely separate Church from
state, that we are too thin skinned and that we need to go along
with this secular agenda and take our faith and belief right out
of any kind of public arena.
As a result of this dark side attack, many Christians have risen
up and have done battle with the secular forces trying to remove
Christianity from the public square. We have been successful in
some of the court battles along with some of the battles against
some of the schools who are also trying to remove every tenant
of Christianity in their teaching systems.
For those of you who don't know what the word "secular"
means, Webster's Dictionary describes it as follows:
"Worldly, profane, heathen. Relating to worldly things as
distinguished from things relating to church and religion; not
sacred or religious, temporal."
Another term that you will often hear is the phrase "secular
humanism." Webster's describes this term as follows:
"Humanism that systematically opposes the introduction of
religious ideas or standards into the functions of the state,
especially into public education. A system of doctrines and
practices that disregards or rejects any form of religious faith
and worship."
Remember this word. You will be seeing a lot more of this
demonic movement in the coming years.
Per the series of articles I have done on all the end time
events that will be occurring before Jesus returns to us for
His second coming, one of the heavier signs that will be
occurring will be the moral disintegration of many people from
all walks of life.
The Bible tells us that in the latter days many people will
become lovers of self, boasters, proud, blasphemers, unthankful,
unholy, slanderers, brutal, without self-control, headstrong and
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. The Bible also
tells us that some of these people will be falling for
"doctrines of demons."
There is no doubt in my mind that the secular agenda and their
basic philosophy is a demonic doctrine straight from the pit of
hell. Not only do they not believe in God - but they want to try
and take Him right out of any kind of pubic arena - even if they
are considered to be in the minority!
You thus have liberal judges, teachers, professors and
politicians who are doing everything they can to try and remove
God from all of the public areas of our life. They are doing
everything they can to try and remove the Bible
and the Ten Commandments from every major public area of our
lives.
Many of our school children have literally lost their faith in
God and Jesus by the time they graduate from some of these
liberal and secular colleges. If that child has not been raised
up with a good, solid Christian upbringing, he will become easy
prey for some of these demonic professors who are teaching them
that man does not need a God to answer too and that man and
science can eventually solve all the world's problems.
What you will find that is really funny in all of this is that
these secular forces are not attacking any of the other false
religious faiths and beliefs. They are not attacking any of
their holidays or trying to take out any of their system of
beliefs out of our public arenas.
The reason for that is that all of these other false religions
and beliefs are not considered a threat to them and their
beliefs. Christianity is the only faith and religion that will
draw a major battle line in the sand and call out things the way
they really are. Christianity is the only faith that will call
man as he really is - a sinner in need of a Savior.
Secularists don't want to be told that they are all sinners.
They don't want to be told that they need God's grace and mercy
through the death of Jesus
Christ in order to receive redemption
and a pardon for their sinful states and natures.
They don't want to be told what they can and cannot do. They
want total freedom of expression and they don't want to have to
answer to a real live living God for the moral decisions they
want to make with their lives. In other words, they do not want
any moral absolutes dictating how they should live in this
life.
This is why you are seeing such a fierce and relentless attack
on Christianity in every area that they think they can get away
with. With us now approaching what I believe are the latter
years as told to us in the Bible, I am afraid that not only is
the secular movement not going to be going away, but it will be
getting stronger in the coming years, eventually leading up to a
real live antichrist who will literally be ruling this entire
world for the last 7 years on this earth.
If a real live antichrist is really coming to rule this entire
world, then you can bet that an antichrist spirit will start to
invade the entire world to help prepare and set up for his
coming. And that is exactly what you are starting to see more
of. That is why some of these secular movements are getting much
more bold and much more aggressive with some of the things they
are now doing.
You now have an atheist who is trying to take out the term
"in God we trust" off our national currency. This man has
now filed the appropriate actions with the supreme court in an
attempt to try and do this. Many secular teachers are trying to
keep our children from reading and bringing their Bibles into
the schools. They are also trying to stop any type of prayer
groups from forming inside the schools.
The battle lines are now really being drawn between God's people
and the rest of the unbelieving world. Now, more than ever, God
will be looking for anointed soldiers to do battle against some
of this demonic secular activity that has now launched a full
scale attack against Christianity.
We have good solid Christian men and women in the field of
politics, the court systems, the teaching professions and the
media. Some of these men and women have been instrumental in
getting a lot of this secular activity either defeated or at
least stalled to some degree.
But the battle is now on and it will only be intensifying in the
coming years. This latest attack against Christmas is just
another torpedo shot that we are going to have to deal with.
With this secular force being more in the minority rather than
the majority in this country, this means that we can win some of
these battles if there is enough of a public outcry from the
believing majority. You can write, email or call your local
senators, congressmen, school officials and local stores and
chains to voice your opinions on all of these hot issues.
Look how far the homosexual movement has been able to advance
its cause and movement with all of their protests and public
outcries. They have literally been able to get their entire
movement accepted by many in our country as normal acceptable
behavior. The squeaky wheel still gets the grease - and we can
all do the same with some of the secular demonic activity that
has now invaded us right in the heart of where we all live and
work at.
To those Christians who consider themselves liberal and who are
siding with some of these secular agendas in trying to remove
Jesus and everything that He stands for not only out of
Christmas, but out of the rest of the public areas of our lives
as well - I will give you with two bone chilling verses from our
Bible that perfectly describes what is going on with all of
this.
Our Bible tells us that we have to be representatives and
ambassadors for Jesus, that we are to carry His light and
testimony and we are not to be ashamed to testify on His behalf
to the rest of the world.
President Bush had a major window to do all of this by keeping
the merry Christmas in his Christmas card, but he buckled under
the secular and political pressure to try and be politically
correct. As a result, he lost a golden opportunity to show the
rest of the world how strong his faith really was in his Lord
and Savior. That is why the Bible tells us that our faith will
be considered "dead" without any good works to back it
up.
As I stated at the top of this article, now, more than ever, God
is drawing a major battle line in the sand. He is asking each
and every Christian to take a stand and decide which side of the
line they are going to stand on.
You can either choose to totally dedicate and commit your life
and your way of living to God and Jesus, or you can choose to
take a stand with the world in general and walk and live with
how they want you to live in this life. That is why the Lord has
told us in His Word that we will literally become His enemy if
we choose the world and the ways of the world over Him and how
He wants us to live in this life.
For a complete copy of this article and what those two bone
chilling verses from Scripture are, you can click on this link
and it will bring you right into the full article.
About the author:
To find what those two bone chilling verses from Scripture are
and for a complete copy of Taking Jesus out of Chrismas.
Article written by Michael Bradley of Bible Knowledge
Ministries. Their website is a resource of Bible commentary,
knowledge, articles, and teaching.
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