God’s Law – Page 3 – ~Song of Mary~

The Christmas Tree: The Most Pagan Symbol of Christmas

Originally posted on October 7, 2013

I have some pagan friends–or at least the husband calls himself pagan, and he refuses to put up a Christmas tree because he wants to avoid celebrating anything related to Christianity or God.

The irony is that the Christmas tree is the most pagan of the symbols of Christmas.

I know that the Old Testament often refers to Asherah trees and pillars of wood being erected in the woods, or near an altar, to worship pagan gods and goddesses: ”Never set up for yourselves an Asherah of any wood beside an altar to Yahweh your God” ~Deuteronomy 16:21 But I had never realized that the decorating of trees was the same practice, just taken a step further until I read this recently in Jeremiah:

“Do not learn the way of the Gentiles (pagans);

Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,

For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.

For the customs of the peoples are futile (vanity);

For one cuts a tree from the forest,

The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.

They decorate it with silver and gold;

They fasten it with nails and hammers

So that it will not topple…

They must be carried,

Because they cannot go by themselves. ~Jeremiah 10:2-5

The history of the Christmas tree as we know it is a bit ambiguous, but seems to come on the scene somewhere around 15-1600 AD. My guess is the Gentiles who became believers in Christ, and wanted to celebrate Christmas, brought some of their pagan beliefs with them and morphed them into one practice: adorning a tree whilst worshiping the birth of Christ. I guess it seemed like a good idea to them.

Of course, this is prescribed against as completely heretical, because God seriously abhors the worshiping of any idols in any way, shape, or form, as was frequently done in ancient times with trees and pillars and graven images; it is His most serious sin besides blaspheming Him. To erect an adorned tree to celebrate the birth of God’s favorite Son is like worshiping God by sacrificing your son or daughter to Baal. It just should never be done.

God is Jealous for Woman~

Originally posted on October 7, 2013

God has given woman the special ability to have the blood of life flow through her body. God loves woman and looks upon her with specialness and favor because He knows she alone can carry and bear life unto earth, graced by Him.

God knows how lustful and greedy men can be, so he put it in Moses’ heart to write the Law (without really understanding it fully) in such a way as that woman will be set apart every month, in such a way as to make men avoid her. This provides woman a space from man and his lustly pursuits of her so that she might devote unrestrained attention to her LORD God, as He desires, having a special fondness for the female. Moses used ‘impure’ to describe her during this time: ”If a woman has a discharge of blood, she shall be set apart seven days during her impurity, and if any man lies with her, he shall be unclean.” ~Leviticus 15:19,24 This negative view of her monthly cycle is no surprise since women were rather oppressed and without many rights in ancient times.

I know God looks upon women as the holy beings He made us to be, giving us the ability to bleed to bring forth new life, as a constant renewal of man, because the life is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. ~Leviticus 17:11

He is so jealous for us, He has provided a way to get us all to Himself once a month.

You think of everything My Mighty Master~

Love,

~Mary

When We Make Men God

Originally posted on October 3, 3013

We lose our way~

My Shelter for the Feast of Tabernacles~

Originally posted on September 15, 2013

The Feast of Tabernacles [the most important of all the feasts God commands]

The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast if Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD. ~Leviticus 23:34
On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. You shall do customary work on it. ~Leviticus 23:35
You shall keep a feast to the LORD seven days. ~Numbers 29:12
The priest shall celebrate the eucharist daily for eight days, with the first day being most important, and so on; in addition to the regular daily eucharist. ~Numbers 29:13-39
On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, a solemn assembly, and you shall offer an offering to the LORD. it is a sacred assembly, and you shall do no customary work on it. Leviticus 23:36
And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit (foliage) of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. ~Leviticus 23:40
You shall dwell in booths for seven days, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. ~Leviticus 23:42-43
It shall be a statute forever in your generations. ~Leviticus 23:41

Occurring this year (2013) September 19th at twilight and ending September 27th at nightfall.

The Veil, Mended

Originally posted on September 11, 2013

Recently, a very astute and learned fellow and I discussed the bible, and I mentioned that I felt confession to a priest was one thing I think the Catholic church got right (along with some sacraments and rituals), but he countered with the popular protestant belief that when Christ died the veil was torn, making priests no longer a necessary bridge between God and man. That simply having the concept of Jesus in one’s heart and mind was enough to make one holy in God’s eyes. Current Christians, protestants and Catholics alike, have adopted the notion that there are two tiers: God and man. Priests have been relegated to ceremonial status, or are respected as teachers; but are not really considered to be any more holy than any other man.

However, there is a hierarchy of holiness, if you will, that does exist. As one transcends the ladder unto Heaven where God resides, he becomes more holy. As he becomes more holy, he obtains more Godliness. The highest man can go would be to be like Jesus, which is the goal of all good Christians. As one obtains more Godliness he also obtains more power, by the grace of God, in the forms of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. The primary purpose of a priest’s life is to serve the LORD. But priests also have the ability to minister to man on God’s behalf. Jesus gave priests the power in God’s name to go forth and forgive sins, exemplified at the last supper, especially in John 20:21-23:

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

So for man to think that it is enough to think he is sorry for a sin, or to feel sorry for a sin, and that Jesus’ perfect death erases any need for a priest, is not scriptural and is not serving him fully; he is not going to reap the reward that true repentance and confession and forgiveness from a priest would allow.

I found a Catholic commentary on this subject and wanted to share it as it describes the benefits of confessing to a priest:

“The Advantages [of Confessing to a Priest]~

Is the Catholic who confesses his sins to a priest any better off than the non-Catholic who confesses directly to God? Yes.

First, he seeks forgiveness the way Christ intended.

Second, by confessing to a priest, the Catholic learns a lesson in humility, which is avoided when one confesses only through private prayer.

Third, the Catholic receives sacramental graces the non-Catholic doesn’t get; through the sacrament of penance, sins are forgiven and graces are obtained.

Fourth, the Catholic is assured that his sins are forgiven; he does not have to rely on a subjective “feeling.”

Lastly, the Catholic can also obtain sound advice on avoiding sin in the future.

During his lifetime Christ sent out his followers to do his work. Just before he left this world, he gave the apostles special authority [The last supper washing of feet of the apostles and eating of the body and blood of Christ illustrates the ceremony of the consecration of priests in the Old Testament Torah] commissioning them to make God’s forgiveness present to all people, and the whole Christian world accepted this, until just a few centuries ago. If there is an “invention” here, it is not the sacrament of penance, but the notion that the sacramental forgiveness of sins is not to be found in the Bible or in early Christian history.” ~Taken from http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-forgiveness-of-sins

I’d like to add that Jesus himself stated he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He made a new covenant, yes, but he replaced the need for daily animal sacrifice, and instead of priests taking on the people’s iniquity, he took it on himself. The sacraments set forth by Moses were not abrogated by these things.

~Mary

Legalism versus Conceptualism

Originally posted on September 1, 2013

The way we believe as Christians currently is very conceptualistic, especially compared to the legalism of orthodox Judaism, as manifested in Jesus’ day, and before. The Old Testament Torah is rife with hundreds upon hundreds of commandments, statutes, ordinances, and judgments that the children of Israel had to follow according to Moses, and those who put the oral tradition to paper, beginning in King David’s time.

Every day, Priests of the house of Aaron, of the house of Levi, had to offer, morning and evening, a fresh, clean, animal for sacrifice to atone for the people’s sins. Not only could the common folk not come before the LORD, they could not even come near the tabernacle of meeting except to make their sin and peace offerings and tithes to the Priests and the Priests helpers. And even Aaron and his sons and descendants could only go behind the veil to minister before the mercy seat–the actual presence of God–once per year, on the Day of Atonement.

It was necessary for the Messiah to come and to deliver man out of that impossible state. Not only was it a blood bath daily, but the judgments handed out, even by Moses, were cruel, reminiscent of Hammurabi’s “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” law, carved into a code for the masses hundreds of years before.

So when Jesus came, and was accepted (eventually) as the perfect propitiation for our sins, and the sins of the whole world forever, what a relief it must have been!! As the perfect Lamb of God, it became no longer necessary to sacrifice innocent animals daily to make man worthy. Man was still unworthy, but Jesus made man new if man would only accept that Jesus was taking the place of the sacrificial beasts, and taking sin upon himself by dying willingly.

Jesus also preached a fresh message about God’s Love. God in the OT was harsh and a discerning taskmaster more than he was a loving forgiver. Oh, yes, he forgave the Hebrews much grumblings and times when they fell away from Him in the Wilderness, but God was definitely a harsh Elohim who could and would punish those for even questioning His rule; and He did it time and time again, as illustrated in the Old Testament.

It wasn’t that God became loving after Jesus, it is that when man first came to be monotheistic, it was in an atmosphere of polytheism where kings had godly attributes and could strike anyone down for anything; it was a harsh environment in which man lived. So, the early tradition of the patriarchs saw God as the the One True God and divine, but in a way that replaced the all powerful impulsive pagan gods, but still held the basic aire of awesomeness and fearfulness that man had regarding his god; a primitive superstition that it is hard for us to understand across the deserts of time. They were truly God-fearing.

Not many today would say they were God-fearing. We have watered God down so that He is not so miraculous and wonderful as he was in the ancient times of our religion. Men attributed almost everything to God’s signs and wonders in the early days of our faith, which is evident in the mythical stories of the Bible. But now we place God somewhere in the middle of that great continuum and give him attribution and glory when WE feel it’s due; He doesn’t smite people anymore, He doesn’t have the ability (according to many) to heal miraculously anymore, He just sort-of hangs out loving us and watching us go about our way, without intervening in too fearful or too wonderful a way.

What happened to evoke this change in our outlook about God? The are many reasons, but for now I want to focus on this part of it: I think it was in large part due to our taking God out of our daily reality and putting him out of graspable bounds, into an abstract world we rarely have to contemplate. The Hebrews had their tabernacle set in the midst of them. Their whole world revolved around worshiping God daily through the Priests, making offerings of restitution and peace to the Priests, confessing to the Priests, and asking the Priests for atonement with God and judgments for conflicts in daily life. Via blood sacrifice of animals and laws they could not overlook, like never eating blood, because the blood of an animal was too sacred for man to eat; and never eating fat because the fat was a sweet offering for the LORD; and laws like these, it was hard for man to escape his responsibility to God, and his role as congregant.

When Jesus came on the scene, he unbloodied the atonement ritual, which needed to happen. Blood sacrifice smacked of pagan roots, though it was a necessary bridge for man being humbled before the LORD because the life is in the blood. Ancient man revered this right of ceremony, and needed that to make atonement for their souls. But Jesus did not erase all the Law, as much as he refined it.

Later, men came to start regarding Jesus as God, and this was a cemented decree at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. If Jesus replaces God, then it follows that everything Jesus said could replace everything in the Old Testament. There is no surprise then that Christians rely too heavily on the New Testament, leaving the wisdom of the Old Testament to the dust of the ages. Many Christians today cite the Two Great Commandments as the only ones needing to be followed. They ignore the hundreds of other laws in the OT that God said, “This will be a statute for future generations, forever”!, and they allow any common folk to come directly before the LORD, no matter what sins they may have committed or whether they have sought proper restitution and forgiveness with a holy Priest. Unless they are Catholic, they don’t even confess their sins anymore, and it’s doubtful most Catholics even still do attend confession.

They took liberties with Christ’s mission, and made Christ a thought and an action in place of God, whereby all that is required now in the eyes of most Christian doctrine is that one believes in Christ as Messiah and falsely, Christ as God, and all will be well with that person spiritually. That one simply understands the concept of Christ for their life, and it will all be made right.

For nearly two millenium we have had man believing in the One True God. Man was God-fearing and God, through Moses, made a lot of laws (some not from Moses) to keep man obedient. Now for nearly two millenium we have man believing that the One True God is divided into three pieces and that just understanding that concept is enough to be obedient, that God is Loving.

The fact is that there is One True God. He is to be feared and to be as friend. He has laid out many laws for us to follow in every realm of our lives–spiritual, personal, familial, relational, financial, and societal, which can keep us obedient and successful. We need those laws to be tangible and in our daily lives just as we need to understand they are sometimes intangible. Jesus is not the answer. God is the answer! Jesus is a new bridge to God. We cannot replace God with Jesus. We cannot replace Priests with people. We cannot replace daily worship to God merely with mindfulness of Jesus.

It takes love for God, faith (holding fast to Him at all times), and obedience (to walk in His ways), to come into the realm of God. That is the holy trinity.

Love,

~Mary

Is it God or is it Hammurabi?

Originally posted on August 22, 2013

The Old Testament Law concerning violence:

“But if any lasting harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” ~Exodus 21:23-24

Is a paraphrase of Hammurabi’s Code written in or around 1750 B.C.:

“If a man has knocked out the eye of a patrician, his eye shall be knocked out. If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal, his tooth shall be knocked out.”

We know Abraham, the father of Judaism, came from Ur in Mesopotamia on or around 1800 B.C. The influence of the land of the Babylonians extended far, and would have likely influenced Abraham and the Patriarchs, either before he ventured westward, or after. Polytheism eventually gave way to monotheism in Babylon (1500 B.C.) and Egypt (1400 B.C.) for a time, and this was after the Code of Hammurabi was written because when Hammurabi’s law was circumscribed (!) at the top of the stele, which was erected (!) around 1750 B.C.,

Hammurabi refers to his ‘God’ but the relief depicts him standing before the sun god Shamash, god of law and justice, who extends a rod and ring to Hammurabi, as a symbol of his royal authority; and not his later favored god, Marduk, the ‘solar calf’, whom would come to replace all other gods of Babylon in a streak of monotheism, by mid-century:

“Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak…”

The Patriarchs of Judaism were undoubtedly influenced in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and/or Canaan by the rise (and fall) of monotheism. But what are we to do about the source of the Law? Can the oldest epic material in the Torah be the Word of God, but also have been predated by a polytheistic ruler? Did the Patriarchs adopt it, along with other traditions and weave it into their own epic story, attributing it to their one and only God?? Did the ancient Hebrews come up with the law first, as an oral tradition, to be quickly followed by Hammurabi stealing it and engraving it on his stele 750 years before the Israelites could even start recording their story?

All important questions to be answered.

Love,

~Mary

God is Tolerant

Originally posted on August 18, 2013

I am sitting in a booth at the annual fair today for the birth center of which I am a participant. The booth next to me is for Falun Dafa, a Chinese philosophy that involves Godless peace and exercises (like tai chi).

I just heard a man say he was attracted to it because he was raised as a Christian but he wanted something ‘more tolerant.’

More tolerant than God?

The thing is, that God is sovereign and makes the rules. We follow them and He graces us with abundance. There is no negotiating–God simply knows what is best for us and gives us His Laws and commandments to follow. God has a plan for each of our lives and we can choose to follow it completely, not at all, or anything in between. He gives us the free will to do this! What is not tolerant about that??

I guess he is talking about Christians who do not validate people’s choices in their own life, but judge them according to God’s Law and Word. Thing is, as believers, we are commanded to rebuke our brethren when we see them committing sin, and are in a special role whereby we can educate people and point them in the right direction. However, as Jesus taught, we become hypocrites when we go beyond that and judge each other, and allow our notions to put distance between us and our neighbor, whom we should always love, no matter what. One of the Great Commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t say to love them with conditions. Unless someone harms others, they should not be judged, and only then by the proper adjudicator or Priest. And God, as we know, is the Ultimate Judge, and is perfectly capable and able to punish and reward His flock.

If God allows them to choose their path, who are we to judge them? I made all kinds of Godless choices and I have reaped the consequences of them. No one rebuked me at the time, but even if they had, it is doubtful I would have listened. It is only by the grace of God that I can hear Him now. Once you are born again (and I literally was–I underwent a psychophysiological rebirth)–you want to share the Good news with everyone!

Personally, I believe if our choices do not line up with God’s Law and divine will for us, we are not going to live up to our fullest potential. But that is also our choice! We have a gracious God that allows us much wiggle room (as long as we do not break the greatest commandments), even when He knows we are hurting ourselves. That is what I call tolerant.

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