Beit Or Camp Out

Our entire (almost) fellowship went on a camping trip just before it got really hot in Texas. We had a great time! Lots of fun, food and fellowship. We had a wonderful Shabbat admiring God's creation up close, played in a nearby lake and the boys had fun telling scary stories around the campfire.

Happy Purim!

Last night we had a celebration of Purim.

Purim is an annual celebration of the events that happened to those that believe in God while in captivity by Persian Empire after the fall of Babylon.

The story is told in the Book of Esther.

While it is not one of the commanded holy days in the Bible, it is a day of celebration of one of God's miracles. It is also a celebration that our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Yeshua, a Jew, would have celebrated while He walked on this earth.

We broke bread together and shared some wonderful traditional desserts for Purim. John retold the story in the book of Esther. The children and some of the adults dressed-up as one of the characters in the story. During the retelling of the story, every time Haman's name was mentioned, we shook our noisemakers and yelled "Boo." Every time Mordecai was mentioned, we shook our noisemakers and yelled "Yeah."

It was a joyful celebration with wonderful food and wonderful fellowship.

We shared it with some old friends, met some new friends,

and we all learned more about the history of God's people.

Thank you to all who came! Thank you to the gifts and the givers!

Happy Purim!

Why My Christian Family Doesn't Observe Christmas

Christmas famously "comes but once a year." In fact, however, it comes twice. The Christmas of the Nativity, the manger and Christ child, the wise men and the star of Bethlehem, "Silent Night" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is one holiday. The Christmas of parties, Santa Claus, evergreens, presents, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" is quite another.
But because both celebrations fall on Dec. 25, the two are constantly confused. Religious Christians condemn taking "the Christ out of Christmas," while First Amendment absolutists see a threat to the separation of church and state in every poinsettia on public property and school dramatization of "A Christmas Carol."

A little history can clear things up.

The Christmas of parties and presents is far older than the Nativity. Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins to climb once more in the sky. In ancient Rome, this festival was called the Saturnalia and ran from Dec. 17 to Dec. 24. During that week, no work was done, and the time was spent in parties, games, gift giving and decorating the houses with evergreens. (Sound familiar?) It was, needless to say, a very popular holiday.

In its earliest days, Christianity did not celebrate the Nativity at all. Only two of the four Gospels even mention it. Instead, the Church calendar was centered on Easter, still by far the most important day in the Christian year. The Last Supper was a Seder, celebrating Passover, which falls on the day of the full moon in the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar. So in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea decided that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring. That's why Easter and its associated days, such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are "moveable feasts," moving about the calendar at the whim of the moon.
It is a mark of how late Christmas came to the Christian calendar that it is not a moveable feast, but a fixed one, determined by the solar calendar established by Julius Caesar and still in use today (although slightly tweaked in the 16th century).

By the time of the Council of Nicea, the Christian Church was making converts by the thousands and, in hopes of still more converts, in 354 Pope Liberius decided to add the Nativity to the church calendar. He also decided to celebrate it on Dec. 25. It was, frankly, a marketing ploy with a little political savvy thrown in.

History does not tell us exactly when in the year Christ was born, but according to the Gospel of St. Luke, "shepherds were abiding in the field and keeping watch over their flocks by night." This would imply a date in the spring or summer when the flocks were up in the hills and needed to be guarded. In winter they were kept safely in corrals.

So Dec. 25 must have been chosen for other reasons. It is hard to escape the idea that by making Christmas fall immediately after the Saturnalia, the Pope invited converts to still enjoy the fun and games of the ancient holiday and just call it Christmas. Also, Dec. 25 was the day of the sun god, Sol Invictus, associated with the emperor. By using that date, the church tied itself to the imperial system.

By the high Middle Ages, Christmas was a rowdy, bawdy time, often inside the church as well as outside it. In France, many parishes celebrated the Feast of the Ass, supposedly honoring the donkey that had brought Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys were brought into the church and the mass ended with priests and parishioners alike making donkey noises. In the so-called Feast of Fools, the lower clergy would elect a "bishop of fools" to temporarily run the diocese and make fun of church ceremonial and discipline. With this sort of thing going on inside the church to celebrate the Nativity, one can easily imagine the drunken and sexual revelries going on outside it to celebrate what was in all but name the Saturnalia.

With the Reformation, Protestants tried to rid the church of practices unknown in its earliest days and get back to Christian roots. Most Protestant sects abolished priestly celibacy (and often the priesthood itself), the cult of the Virgin Mary, relics, confession and . . . Christmas.
In the English-speaking world, Christmas was abolished in Scotland in 1563 and in England after the Puritans took power in the 1640s. It returned with the Restoration in 1660, but the celebrations never regained their medieval and Elizabethan abandon.

There was still no Christmas in Puritan New England, where Dec. 25 was just another working day. In the South, where the Church of England predominated, Christmas was celebrated as in England. In the middle colonies, matters were mixed. In polyglot New York, the Dutch Reformed Church did not celebrate Christmas. The Anglicans and Catholics did.

It was New York and its early 19th century literary establishment that created the modern American form of the old Saturnalia. It was a much more family -- and especially child -- centered holiday than the community-wide celebrations of earlier times.

St. Nicolas is the patron saint of New York (the first church built in the city was named for him), and Washington Irving wrote in his "Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York" how Sinterklaes, soon anglicized to Santa Claus, rode through the sky in a horse and wagon and went down chimneys to deliver presents to children.

The writer George Pintard added the idea that only good children got presents, and a book dating to 1821 changed the horse and wagon to reindeer and sleigh. Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 made the number of reindeer eight and gave them their names. Moore's famous poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," is entirely secular. It is about "visions of sugar plums" with nary a wise man or a Christ child in sight. In 1828, the American Ambassador Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought the poinsettia back from Mexico. It became associated with Christmas because that's the time of year when it blooms.

In the 1840s, Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol," which does not even mention the religious holiday (the word church appears in the story just twice, in passing, the word Nativity never). Prince Albert introduced the German custom of the Christmas tree to the English-speaking world.

In the 1860s, the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast set the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. (The color red became standard only in the 20th century, thanks to Coca-Cola ads showing Santa Claus that way.)
Merchants began to emphasize Christmas, decorating stores and pushing the idea of Christmas presents for reasons having nothing whatever to do with religion, except, perhaps, the worship of mammon.

With the increased mobility provided by railroads and increasing immigration from Europe, people who celebrated Christmas began settling near those who did not. It was not long before the children of the latter began putting pressure on their parents to celebrate Christmas as well. "The O'Reilly kids down the street are getting presents, why aren't we?!" is not an argument parents have much defense against.

By the middle of the 19th century, most Protestant churches were, once again, celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday. The reason, again, had more to do with marketing than theology: They were afraid of losing congregants to other Christmas-celebrating denominations.
In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill making the secular Christmas a civil holiday because its celebration had become universal in this country. It is now celebrated in countries all over the world, including many where Christians are few, such as Japan.
So for those worried about the First Amendment, there's a very easy way to distinguish between the two Christmases. If it isn't mentioned in the Gospels of Luke and Mark, then it is not part of the Christian holiday. Or we could just change the name of the secular holiday back to what it was 2000 years ago.

Merry Saturnalia, everyone!

Reprinted from an article written by JOHN STEELE GORDON

Wall Street Journal

December 21, 2007; Page A19

Colossians 2:8

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Matthew 15:7-9

7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:

8 ‘ These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.

9 And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

Mark 7:6-8

6He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: " 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

7They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'

8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."

Isaiah 29:13

13 The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

More Information

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Festival of Lights

We will be celebrating for the first time this year the Festival of lights or the Festival of dedication, also known as Hanukkah. It is interesting to note that our Savior, Jesus, likely observed this date as it is mentioned as a point of reference in scripture (John 10:22-39). It would be much like you or I would use July 4^th as a point of reference when speaking of that time of year.

Hanukkah (sometimes spelled Chanukah), is observed for eight days, beginning on the evening of the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev. This year it starts at sundown, Tuesday, December 4th, and lasts for eight days thru Wednesday, December 12th. While it is not one of God’s commanded Holy Days (His Feasts) described in the bible (Leviticus 23; also read Matthew 5:18), it is a wonderful remembrance of a historical date that included miracles from God. It is a time of renewed dedication, faith, hope and spirituality. It's a time that says: "Never lose hope." Hanukkah commemorates the victory, through the miracles of God, of a small band of Maccabees over the pagan Syrian-Greeks who ruled over Israel.

Over 2300 years ago in Judea (Israel) there lived many Hebrews. There also lived a very wicked man called King Antiochus IV. Antiochus ordered all the Jewish people to give up their God, religion, and customs and worship only the Greek Gods. By his orders Jewish temples were destroyed or used for his pagan purposes and those Jews who would not worship how he commanded were severely punished.

Some of the Jewish people chose to obey Antiochus, but others refused. Now one of these men who refused to worship the Greek gods was Judah Maccabee. Judah had four brothers and together they formed an army with as many as would join with them. Their goal was to defeat the Syrians that oppressed them so that the Jewish people could be free to worship, as they believed. They chose to call themselves Maccabees, which means hammer. The Maccabees and the Syrians fought for about three years until finally the Maccabees defeated the Syrians and reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem.

Their first priority was to clean and rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem to the service of God. So they washed and scrubbed the temple clean and removed the Greek symbols and idols from within the walls. Now they were ready to rededicate it unto God (165 BCE). Remember Chanukah/Hanukkah means "rededication". The only problem was that Judah and the Judean heroes could not find any blessed oil (olive oil) to light the lamps. They searched and searched. Finally, in one of the Temple chambers they discovered a very small cruse of oil.

According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the flames of the menorah burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned. For eight days they burned. (I bet you counted). Those eight miraculous days were chosen as the eternal symbol to commemorate the miracle of Chanukah - the eight day long Festival of Lights, where we light the Menorah each evening, publicizing the miracle God performed more than 2000 years ago.

There are many additional traditions with which many people are familiar with Hanukkah. Special blessings are prayed at the evening lighting of each candle. There is the dreidel game, which is a four-sided, spinning top with a Hebrew letter on each side. In Israel the letters mean "A Miracle Happened Here.” Traditionally, fried foods including latkes and sufganiyot (jelly donuts) are served representing the oil that burned in the menorah. And some have even incorporated gift giving on each of the eight days. However, none of the traditions have anything to do with what the historical date truly represents.

It is interesting to read about Yeshua (Jesus) being the "light of the world" understanding that his fire can never be quenched. Similarly, the Menorah was sustained throughout the entire dedication period with only enough oil for one day - the "Miracle" of the Feast of Dedication or Lights.

Wishing you a happy time of remembrance of our Savior’s and each of our ancestry.

A Good Time was had by all

Our family had a wonderful time celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. We saw some old friends and met some new ones. We had a bump in the trip when John's mom, Brenda, fell in the parking lot on the first day. While she did not break any bones (a miracle in itself), she was badly injured and had to be in a wheel chair for the entire trip. Thankfully, family was around to help her. I helped with the Junior Sabbath school where Micah attended, Caleb and Sarah attended their own classes, and John attended a few seminars in addition to all of us attending the sermons.

The guys went on a fishing trip. And Micah and Caleb were both able to go for the first time. While, they didn't catch any fish to keep, they had a great time being on the boat.

It is so beautiful at the ocean. I would live there if it weren't for hurricanes. You really do see the awesome beauty of God's creation. How the tide comes and goes, the incredible sunrises and sunsets, the smells, and the amazing animals.

And when you're laying on the sand, it really gives new and incredible meaning to the scripture in Genesis 22:17 "That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as

the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;." I hope you enjoyed these pictures.

Feast of Tabernacles 2007

What is this Holy Day, anyway, you may be asking. Many of you know that our family has celebrated this Feast, actually all of them described in Leviticus 23 and other places, for over 10 years now. We are currently in Florida, in our booth, celebrating the first day of this wonderful Feast. I asked my husband, John, if he would write a post about this awesome time of the year! Here it is.

Hello from Florida. I wish you were all here with us at this great time of the year. Where to begin? I must say that this is an exciting topic for me to discuss with folks. Over the last several years there has been a resurgence in interest in the Eternal's holy days (I use the words Eternal and God interchangeably). I even hear them discussed on TV by televangelists. There are three family pilgrimage feasts among God's holy days described in the Bible. The week of Passover, the Feast of Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles).

This time of year there are people assembled together all across the globe, coming together to rejoice and celebrate God's holy days.
In years past we have attended sites with anywhere between 200 to 1600 people. I estimate this year we will have more than 1000 at the site we chose.

One of my favorite sets of passage about this time of year is located in the book of John the seventh chapter. In this chapter we have Jesus at the Temple of God during the Feast of Tabernacles. In verse 37 we read:

John 7:37-38 37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

What is so exciting about this verse is that Jesus is declaring the fact openly that he is the Messiah. A simple reading of the text here does not do justice to the culmination of events here and how all faces in the Temple on this day would have turned to Him in amazement. Basically what is happening here is the water pouring ceremony (hence his reference to living water as opposed to the literal water that they were using in the Temple ritual). This was a very boisterous time in the temple. The singing of the Levites and dancing made for a very great spectacle. There were also candelabras of immense size that would have been burning. For greater detail on what was occurring in the temple on this day I will include the following excerpt from Alfred Edersheim's The Temple:
"We can now in some measure realise the event recorded in #Joh 7:37. The festivities of the Week of Tabernacles were drawing to a close. ‘It was the last day, that great day of the feast.’ It obtained this name, although it was not one of ‘holy convocation,’ partly because it closed the feast, and partly from the circumstances which procured it in Rabbinical writings the designations of ‘Day of the Great Hosannah,’ on account of the sevenfold circuit of the altar with ‘Hosannah’; and ‘Day of Willows,’ and ‘Day of Beating the Branches,’ because all the leaves were shaken off the willow boughs, and the palm branches beaten in pieces by the side of the altar. It was on that day, after the priest had returned from Siloam with his golden pitcher, and for the last time poured its contents to the base of the altar; after the ‘Hallel’ had been sung to the sound of the flute, the people responding and worshipping as the priests three times drew the threefold blasts from their silver trumpets—just when the interest of the people had been raised to its highest pitch, that, from amidst the mass of worshippers, who were waving towards the altar quite a forest of leafy branches as the last words of #Ps 118 were chanted—a voice was raised which resounded through the temple, startled the multitude, and carried fear and hatred to the hearts of their leaders. It was Jesus, who ‘stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.’ Then by faith in Him should each one truly become like the Pool of Siloam, and from his inmost being ‘rivers of living waters flow’ (#Joh 7:38). ‘This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive.’ Thus the significance of the rite, in which they had just taken part, was not only fully explained, but the mode of its fulfilment pointed out. The effect was instantaneous. It could not but be, that in that vast assembly, so suddenly roused by being brought face to face with Him in whom every type and prophecy is fulfilled, there would be many who, ‘when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet. Others said, This is the Christ.’ Even the Temple-guard, whose duty it would have been in such circumstances to arrest one who had so interrupted the services of the day, and presented himself to the people in such a light, owned the spell of His words, and dared not to lay hands on Him. ‘Never man spake like this man,’ was the only account they could give of their unusual weakness, in answer to the reproaches of the chief priests and Pharisees."
Here is an artist's rendering of this ceremony from the Temple Institute. Click on it to enlarge.


Basically, we have Jesus vociferously crying aloud, the statements of John 7:37. The whole temple ritual would have been interrupted and silenced. All eyes turned to Him and heard Him declare His reign and His gift. How powerful is this imagery?

Quite exciting!! Let's celebrate this Feast with this excitement!!

September is Here!

It's hard to believe it is already September. The Fall Feast days are upon us! This final month of the civil calendar, Elul, which is a traditional intensification of a period of repentance begun in Av (the 11th month) and continues through Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). We should approach Yom Kippur with a lot of forethought.

And, boy, do I have a lot for which to reflect and be repentant. It's been a trying several months with John continuing to seek work since the middle of March, selling our home in Tennessee which as I type this we have a contract on it, and moving back to Texas. I have felt very weak at times and while my heart knows that God IS taking care of us and will continue to take care of us, I have had a hard time convincing my head! It's been an amazing learning experience, that, admittedly, I have not always been grateful for, but one that continues as I write this. I haven't always understood God's timing, but I will always trust that timing and pray for continued strength and continued mercy as I learn to put all of my trust in Him and none of my trust in this world.

I am grateful, thankful and humbled by the continued blessings that are bestowed on me even as I fail to trust and serve God in the way that I should. The mercy of God's grace for me is so "Awe"some!!! Praise be to our Heavenly Father for not treating us the way we deserve to be treated.

And praise be to God for His MERCY endures FOREVER!