Sermon Tone Analysis

The Origin of Christmas

The message to Pergamos is spoken of as “Satan’s Throne”

During the Chaldean Hierarchy of the Priest-King, Attalus III, he fled from the Persians to Pergamos and when he settled there, Satan shifted his capital from Babylon to Pergamos.

At first he persecuted Christians with Antipas being one of the martyrs.

But he changed up his tactic and began exalting the Church and through Constantine, united the Church and State.

With this union it offered all kinds of wordiness to enter into the church and Constantine cared more about politics than he did religion

Because of this union, 2 false doctrines entered the church

Doctrine of Balaam

Found in Numbers 22-25

To summarize, Balaam suggested to King Balak that he invited the Israelites to the licentious/promiscuous feasts of “Baal-Peor” causing Israel to fall into a snare of idolatry.

Because of their sin, it kindled God’s anger towards them and He sent a plague that destroyed 42,000 of them

Doctrine of Nicolaitanes

A sect in the church trying to establish a “Priestly Order” they were trying to model the OT order of priests, Levites, and common people.

“Niko” to conquer,, to overthrow

“Laos” the people

The object was to establish a “Holy Order of Men” and place them over the common people and instead of calling them pastors, they referred to themselves as clergy, bishops, archbishops, cardinal, and popes.

The word “Pergamos” means “Marriage” and when the Church entered into a union with the State it was guilty of “Spiritual Fornication” or “Balaamism”

During this time, a sensuous form of worship was introduced, the preaching changed, and the great “Pagan Festivals” were adopted.

The Winter Solstice, the shortest day in the year, falls on Dec. 21st and it’s not until the 25th that the day begins to lengthen.

This day (the 25th) was regarded in the pagan world as the “birthday of the Sun-god (Mithra)” and was a high festival celebrated at Rome.

Because of this, it was found advisable to change the birthday of the Son of God, from April, to December 25th, because as He was the “Sun of Righteousness,” what more appropriate birthday could He have than the birthday of the pagan “sun-god”?

This church period was during the time of Constantine in A.D. 312 to A.D. 606, when Boniface III was crowned “Universal Bishop”

The Book of Revelation.

Clarence Larkin p. 22-23

Also in December, in which the darkest day of the year falls, the pagan cultures lit bonfires and candles to keep the darkness at bay.

The Romans also incorporated this tradition into their own celebrations.

As part of the solstice celebrations, the pagan cultures decorated their homes with greens in anticipation of the spring to come.

Evergreen trees remained green during the coldest and darkest days, so they were thought to hold special powers.

The Romans also decorated their temples with fir trees during Saturnalia and decorated them with bits of metal.

There are even records of the Greeks decorating trees in honor of their gods.

Interestingly, the first trees brought into the pagan homes were hung from the ceiling, upside down.

The tree tradition we are accustomed to today hails from Northern Europe, where Germanic pagan tribes decorated evergreen trees in worship of the god Woden with candles and dried fruit.

The tradition was incorporated into the Christian faith in Germany during the 1500’s.

They decorated trees in their homes with sweets, lights, and toys.

Christmas in early America was a mixed bag.

Many with Puritan beliefs banned Christmas because of its pagan origins and the raucous nature of the celebrations.

Other immigrants arriving from Europe continued with the customs of their homelands.

The Dutch brought Sinter Klaas with them to New York in the 1600’s.

The Germans brought their tree traditions in the 1700’s.

Each celebrated their own way within their own communities.

It wasn’t until the early 1800’s that the American Christmas began to take shape.

Washington Irving wrote a series of stories of a wealthy English landowner who invites his workers to have dinner with him.

Irving liked the idea of people of all backgrounds and social status coming together for a festive holiday.

So, he told a tale that reminisced about old Christmas traditions that had been lost but were restored by this wealthy landowner.

Through Irving’s story, the idea began to take hold in the hearts of the American public.

In 1822, Clement Clark Moore wrote An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas for his daughters.

It’s now famously known as The Night Before Christmas.

In it, the modern idea of Santa Claus as a jolly man flying through the sky on a sleigh took hold.

Later, in 1881, the artist Thomas Nast was hired to draw a depiction of Santa for a Coke-a-Cola advertisement.

He created a rotund Santa with a wife named Mrs.

Claus, surrounded by worker elves.

After this, the image of Santa as a cheerful, fat, white-bearded man in a red suit became embedded in American culture.

https://voiceandvisioninc.org/blog/entry/a-brief-history-of-christmas/#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20Christmas%20stem,of%20Mithra%2C%20their%20sun%20god.

Angels

Reference: The Unseen Realm.

Michael Heiser

God [elohim] stands in the divine council; in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment:

In verse 1, the word elohim clearly is seen twice in the first verse.

The first use of the word is singular, this is Yahweh speaking.

The second time you see it, it’s translated as plural.

Clearly it stating here that The God of the OT was part of an assembly - a pantheon - of other gods.

There’s 2 theories that could be presented here: It’s referring to the Trinity or a diving Jewish counsel

Neither of these theories can be correct because because if you keep reading the chapter, it goes on to say how the gods were being condemned because they were corrupt.

The Bible nowhere teaches that God appointed a council of Jewish elders to rule over the other nations and I can’t see how God would rebuke the rest of the Trinity for being corrupt

So how is this possible?

Well let’s ask another question.

What was there before God made the world?

Obviously God was there, but He also had company.

This can be found in

The “sons of God” were there when God was laying the foundations of the earth.

This word in Hebrew is beney elohim this is used to identify divine beings with higher-level responsibilities of jurisdiction.

The term angel is mal’ak in Hebrew and describes an important but still lesser task like delivering messages.

In the Hebrew Bible, the sons of God were not called angels.

Later, the Septuagint, the Greek translation, rendered beney elohim as angeloi (angels)

The word elohim simply establishes a place of residency aka refers to heavenly beings to simplify.

But our God is the only Yahweh elohim

Since elohim is so often translated God, we look at the Hebrew word the same way we look at capitalized G-o-d.

When we see the word God, we instinctively think of a divine being with a unique set of attributes—​omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereignty, and so on.

But this is not how a biblical writer thought about the term.

Biblical authors did not assign a specific set of attributes to the word elohim.

That is evident when we observe how they used the word.

The biblical writers refer to a half-dozen different entities with the word elohim.

By any religious accounting, the attributes of those entities are not equal.

• Yahweh, the God of Israel (thousands of times—e.g., Gen 2:4–5; Deut 4:35)

• The members of Yahweh’s council (Psa 82:1, 6)

• Gods and goddesses of other nations (Judg 11:24; 1 Kgs 11:33)

• Demons (Hebrew: shedim—Deut 32:17)

• The deceased Samuel (1 Sam 28:13)

• Angels or the Angel of Yahweh (Gen 35:7)

Biblical writers also assign unique qualities to Yahweh.

Yahweh is all-powerful (Jer 32:17, 27; Pss 72:18; 115:3), the sovereign king over the other elohim (Psa 95:3; Dan 4:35; 1 Kgs 22:19), the creator of the other members of his host-council (Psa 148:1–5; Neh 9:6; cf.

Job 38:7; Deut 4:19–20; 17:3; 29:25–26; 32:17; Jas 1:17) and the lone elohim who deserves worship from the other elohim (Psa 29:1).

In fact, Nehemiah 9:6 explicitly declares that Yahweh is unique—there is only one Yahweh (“You alone are Yahweh”).

The Role of Angels

Angels are there to guard and prepare the way for you

Acts 12:7-11, Acts 8:26

Angels are there to sometimes send us messages

Matt 28:5-7, Mark 16:5-7, Acts 1:10-11, Zech 1:12-21.

Angels are there to minister to us

Angels should never be worshipped