"Thus says the LORD: 'Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’"
Jeremiah 6:16
We are very far removed from our ancient past. That much we can all agree on. So far removed that all of us do and say things all the time, the origins of which we are completely disconnected from. An easy example of this are the days of the week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday etc....we probably learned in school at some point that these names were derived in many languages from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic Astrology (horoscope astrology), which were in turn named after contemporary deities, officiated by the Roman Empire, who got them from the mystery religions of old. We don’t think anymore of Thursday as Thor’s day, Zeus or Jupiter’s day; yet the origin remains.
In the Bible, the most accurate and ancient history book our world has been given, God defined a week as seven days. He called them: the first day, the second day, the third day and so forth. Several times throughout the ancient world, civilizations attempted to change the 7 day week to an 8 day week or a 10 day week. Every attempt failed. I’m not entirely sure why, but my guess would be, because God created a seven day week and a seven day week it is.
One of the many things we have lost over the centuries is the reality that God has a calendar. It’s not a Babylonian calendar or a Jewish calendar, a Greco-Roman calendar or a Neo-pagan calendar - it’s God’s calendar. Just like He spoke the world into existence, the laws of nature, physics, biology and every other study of creation that exists, He also gave us very specific instructions regarding every manner of earthly thing pertaining to life: marriage, sexuality, parenting, farming, animal husbandry, health & wellness, days for feasting, days for fasting and everything else in between. Much of this wisdom has been lost over time or regarded as “Jewish stuff” by the Christian world. I believe this grieves the heart of God, because He has made it abundantly clear to us that in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, woman or man, rich or poor - we are all one in Christ Jesus, adopted children of God; His Bride. (Galatians 3:28)
As Christians, we believe in the Immutability of God. Meaning that God does not and cannot change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. This means that what God loves He will always love and what hates He will always hate. God will always love the sinner; always. Just as He will always hate sin; always. When God made a covenant with Abraham, it was, in my opinion, the most significant event to date in human history. The Creator, God of all gods, the beginning and the end, the great I AM - entered into a covenant with a people descended from one man. Promising to be their God, if they would commit to being His people, He promised protection, provision, land, and life in abundance. There was just one requirement: “I AM Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.” Genesis 17:1
That word ‘tamim’ or ‘blameless’ in Hebrew means: without blemish, complete, full, perfect, sincerely, sound, without spot, undefiled, full of integrity. The measuring rod of this fullness, completeness, soundness and lack of spot or defilement is God's perfect instruction and ways. The promises given to Abraham, and again to Isaac and again to Jacob and again to Moses are astounding. They are beautiful, meaningful and I don’t know a person on earth who could read them and not want them spoken over themselves by their god. My point in bringing all this up in reference to God’s calendar, is that today, we have a very distinct worldview with its own set of traditions and practices that we inherited from the generations that came before us. Our calendar is a Greco-Roman calendar and our traditions and practices stem from ancient times, having been morphed and altered through centuries of separation.
We have lost the ancient paths God gave to our Fathers and Mothers in the Faith, and we haven’t even known it. I wrote last week about how the Lord began a deep work in my life a few years ago, removing things that either didn’t please Him or that weren’t bearing fruit. I shared how Halloween was one of those things He cut off at the root. While I do not judge anyone who does not share in this conviction, I cannot see this as anything other than a black and white issue to those of us professing Christ. The spiritual realm is quite literally black and white: good and evil. God is not grey. Participation in Halloween, however seemingly innocent, is participation with and endorsement of what God wants His people to remain distinctly separate from.
God tells us in Jeremiah 10, “Not to learn the way of the Gentiles...for the customs of the peoples are futile.” In Paul”s letter to the believers in Ephesus, the location of the highly famed Temple of Artemis (or the moon goddess, Diana), he urged them to “walk in love,” (Eph 5:2) reminding them that they too were once in darkness, but now, children of light. (Eph 5:8) He encouraged them to find out what was acceptable to the Lord (5:10) “And to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.” (Eph 5:11) Diana was worshiped as the moon goddess and Mother of all living things, both man and nature. Every year in Ephesus, a festival was held in her honor to celebrate her birthday in which the whole city participated in drunkenness and immorality. Like the Israelites had done before them, the Ephesians also had turned their backs on the Lord to stubbornly practice these customs and follow this false goddess down a path of destruction. Paul urged them to have nothing to do with this dark holiday.
While Halloween does not claim to be the birthday of any pagan goddess, it is a day associated as early as the 4th century and perhaps even earlier with witchcraft, idolatry, and all kinds of evil. While I agree that Christians should always be engaging in meaningful conversations with the world around them, looking for opportunities to bring the light of Christ into the darkness, I firmly believe Jesus would not be participating in this holiday which is so clearly a big deal on the Devil’s calendar.
Anton LaVey (the Founder of the Church of Satan) is quoted as saying: “I’m glad that Christian parents let their children worship the Devil at least one night of the year.” The fact is, thanks to technology, we all have so much information at our fingertips. A simple search into the history of this day will reveal that Halloween is a really big deal to Wiccans, Satanists and Neo-pagans all over the world - because they know the spiritual significance of this day and its impact on the spirit realm. The Satanic Bible ranks Halloween as one of the two most important festivals on the Satanic calendar. The demonic principalities and rulers of darkness Paul tells us we are warring against in Ephesians 6, do not care who we are or what our intentions are. Participation is participation and according to Scripture, we are explicitly instructed to stay away from even the appearance of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:22)
The reason I’m speaking out about this now, is that I feel a fire shut up in my bones if I do not. I hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit calling us to Return, but it's not just me He's calling, it's His Bride. God is and always has been calling us back to the ancient paths, where Israel (that’s us too!) is called out from the nations to be a set apart people, holy unto the Lord.
I began this post talking about God’s calendar. I remember the day I learned God even had a calendar! I was so sad. I felt gypped, to be honest. There’s this thing in me that hungers for truth and authenticity and all the REAL of God. I want everything He has to offer. I want to say yes to it all. When He says He has pleasures at His right hand forevermore, I want those pleasures. When He says that He came to give me abundant life, I want that abundant life. When He says that whoever drinks from this well will never be thirsty again, I will do anything to get that water into my body. David penned my heart exactly when he wrote, “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” Psalm 84:2
If God has a calendar, I want in.
I don’t want the world anymore. I’m done being lied to, being cheated, being let down. I don’t want its traditions or its holidays or its good time or its advice. I want the living God. I want the stream that makes glad the city of our God. I want truth in my inward parts. I want every day to find its purpose and meaning and fulfillment and pleasure in what Psalm 119 describes as the delight of walking in God’s ways. I want to be able to declare with confidence and gut-searching honesty:
“Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my mediation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep Your word. I have not departed from Your judgments, for You Yourself have taught me. How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”
Psalm 119:97-104
My prayer is that these musings would awaken your spirit to search-hungry for the living God. That amidst all the things swirling around rude & rough in our world right now, you would be encouraged, revived and swept away again - IN LOVE with your Maker. My prayer is for the end-time Bride to awake from her slumber and years of veering off the ancient paths of righteousness; to dust off her Bible and once again eat the scroll. That we would reject hip sounding Christian sound bites and return to the meaty & mature nourishment of knowing our Bibles inside and out. The world does not need another Christian sound bite - it needs Christ imitators, set on fire with Truth, proclaiming the freedom of the cross. In my next post, I’ll be going more in depth into God’s beautiful, wonderful, so meaningful calendar, and what Paul was really talking about in Romans 14.
My big love and hugs and God’s peace to all of you,
Natalie
Comments