Should we honor the Annunciation?

[Woody]

yes no

[LynnDel]

"The Annunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus, meaning "Savior". Many Christians observe this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, nine full months before Christmas."

Since the Annunciation is dated backwards from Christmas, and Christmas is a manufactured date, I would say, "No."

LD

[Naomi]

Only if we make it a National Holiday and I get an additional day off.

Just being silly .............. No, I don't think so

[Woody]

Quote:

Only if we make it a National Holiday and I get an additional day off.

Now that's a good idea. And may I suggest that we share gifts also?

[miz3]

Only if we make it a National Holiday and I get an additional day off.

Just being silly .............. No, I don't think so

With pay!

[Kevin H]

"The Annunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus, meaning "Savior". Many Christians observe this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, nine full months before Christmas."

Since the Annunciation is dated backwards from Christmas, and Christmas is a manufactured date, I would say, "No."

LD

LynnDel: Actually the feast of the Annunciation came first, the church started being celebrated it in the second century, 200 years before Constantine and when tradition says that we started to celebrate Dec. 25 as Christmas, and 100 years before Christians actually started celebrating December 25 as Christmas and is originally a intertestamental Jewish celebration of the conception of Isaac.

The Jews believed that Isaac was conserved on Passover, and that it was Passover when Abraham took Isaac to MT. Moriah. The early Christians were teaching that Isaac was a type of Christ, that the Annunciation took place on Passover just like Isaac's conception and that as on another Passover when Isaac was a young man Abraham took him to MT. Moriah, so Jesus as a young man was sacrificed on Passover. For a number of years the feast was held on when ever Passover was held, but in 135 AD the church started to distance themselves from Judaism and in that process one year they decided to stop using the Jewish Calendar and start using the Roman calendar. That year Passover fell on March 25 and they thereafter started to celebrate the feast of the Annunciation instead of on Passover as it started out, it became March 25.

Now we all know that December 25 was the birthday of Mithra and that after Constantine made Christianity the legal religion in the 4th centaury that Christians took Mithra's birthday, December 25 and made it Jesus' birthday to appeal to the pagans. However in recent decades there have been problems with this history that we all know...

They found that Christians started celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 in the third centaury, 100 years earlier than when we were supposed to start celebrating it. So now the history books are slowly changing to include this new evidence. Christians that wanted noting to do with paganism, hiding in the catacombs in the 3rd centaury were celebrating December 25 as Christmas. Since the Christians were keeping the feast of the Annunciation 100 years before these third century Christians started to see Jesus' birth on December 25, and since this a couple of hundred years after when the Jews were celebrating the conception of Isaac, scholars are saying that Christianity got December 25 from this Jewish holiday rather than Mithraism.

Now some scholars have said that actually we do not have records of the Mitherists having December 25 as the birth of Mithera until Constantine made Christianity a Christian religion. While they saw Mithra's birth from about the time of the winter solstice, they did not have a set day and while a lot of scholars don't make a mention about this, some are arguing that the Mitherites took December 25 from the Christians, rather than the Christians taking December 25 from the Mitherites.

Bible review had an article about this in the Nov-Dec issue of either 2001, 2002 or 2003, and 2 or 3 years ago Biblical Archaeological Review had an article about it. Others are starting to have it. I forgot with paper, but the Review or one of our Church's papers had an article in the past year or two and our colleges are starting to change the teaching to these new discoveries as well as slowly pastors are starting to preach this. The history channel has older programs with the traditional history as well as newer shows with this new evidence. I hope this helps

[Gibs]

One little leading away after another into deeper and deeper apostasy.

No way Hosea, on honoring any of their baloney.

Honor our Lord and our God and let all the rest lay down there in the ditch!

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[Stan]

Instead let's do the Christian thing and see how much we can alienate them. Right?

[Gibs]

Stan,

The Christian thing is to follow Christ and Him Only, none other will I serve. Too much has come in and made kosher and should have been stopped years ago. No one had the stamina to stand up and be counted for the right.

Well here is one who will and have for many years, we want this back on track, the true way of Christ and He only.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[Kevin H]

"The Annunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus, meaning "Savior". Many Christians observe this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, nine full months before Christmas."

Since the Annunciation is dated backwards from Christmas, and Christmas is a manufactured date, I would say, "No."

LD

We can still discuss this topic, however we need to keep the chronology correct. The feast of the Annunciation was started in the second centuary AD, first being celebrated on Passover, then when the Church changed to the Roman Calender on a year that Passover fell on March 25, they started to celebrate the feast every March 25.

This took place 200 years before Constantine and the time where most of us understand when the church began to celebrate Dec. 25.

As mentioned above there have been discoveries made in the 20th centuary that is starting to trickle down from scholars to the layity which finds Christians keeping Dec. 25 100 years earlier than the tradition. However the feast of the Christian feast of the Annunciation is 100 years older than the earliest recogniziton of December 25. And the feast is actually older than that since it had been kept for a few hundred years by the Jews as the conseption of Isaac. The Christians applied this feast on the conseption if Isaac to the Annunciation of Jesus saying that Isaac was a type of Jesus.

It is an issue of which came first, and historians point out that the Feast of the Annunciation came first. It was not counting back 9 months from December 25. And with December 25 becoming seen as the birth of Jesus 100 years earlier than we had believed, the current evidence is that we got December 25 from adding 9 months to the feast of the Annunciation.

[Kevin H]

Gibs, how do you explain that the Biblical Feasts of the Land were the same feasts that the Canaanites kept hundreds of years before Abraham?

[Gibs]

Kevin, What I'm concerned with is the things and feasts the Lord has for us for the purpose of keeping us from falling away. Yes things are done so it looks good but is actually a leading away.

There is certain feast days of the Lord that have not met a consummation and I'm with EGW on the feast of tabernacles, the first day of it was probably the actual birth date of Jesus Christ and it was celebration of harvest but man has thanksgiving and then Christmas to replace it and the spirit is of a different sort in Christmas and thanksgiving. The booze bottle is brought out for the "spirit" of the holidays then but some with great piety place it as of the Lord and neither are.

EGW said we would do well to keep the feast of tabernacles and I say amen and amen.

It's getting as bad anymore as the Jews adding to the law and thinking they had done great good and it had better been left as God gave it, not adding to or taking away.

Man is adding to things aNd it is not good. It is weaving in the occult and apostate and I say steer clear of anything that God don't institute.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[LynnDel]

Thanks for the info, Kevin.

We can avoid celebrating religious holidays that are not instituted by God without alienating those who think the holidays they keep are Christian holidays. We just have to be careful, in any instance, of not judging those who do not have the same understanding we do, or who have not had the opportunity or impulse to study the issues.

LD

[Kevin H]

Good posts Gibs and LynnDel. Now I am NOT arguing for December 25 to actually be the birth of Jesus, it is just that as we discuss these topics we need to be fair to the evidence which means like Mrs. White said about updating the Great Controversy looking for better histories.

Like when you reasoned that the feast of the Annunciation started out with December 25 and counted back, when it was the feast of the Annuciation that came first

And also for a few hundred years histories have said that Christians started celebrating December 25 during the 4th century when Constantine made Christianity legal and that it was taken from Mithraism. We grew up with this. We heard it on TV and on the radio and in sermons and in books. I was shocked when I first read about this new evidence in Bible Review, yet it was convincing to me. And now we are starting to read other articles about this and it being mentioned in some newer shows on the history channel and in one of our journals and starting to get into sermons.

But it can be confusing since we were told one story for so many years to now get new evidence, especially for those who are uncomfortable with December 25, or those who are trying to see if the feast of Tabernacles could be the actual birth of Jesus. This new evidence is NOT to make people comfortable with December 25, nor does it make Jesus' birth December 25. It is just simply to be up to date on the evidence on how we got December 25, or in the case of this thread discussing how the Feast of the Annunciation was being celebrated on March 25 (April 6 in Greek churches) since the second century AD, 200 years before Constantine and 100 years before the earliest dates we now know about for the recognition of December 25.

Now we do need to find a ballance about the feasts of the land that I do not believe the church has found yet. Some want us to keep the feasts of the land just as we keep the Sabbath. Others tend to be very ignorant of the feasts of the land. Being aware of the feasts helps us to understand the references to the feasts in the Bible. There are portions of the gosple that people don't notice because of it's subtal references back to the feasts. We don't see the connection of the story of the raising of Lazarus to the holiday Hanukkah.

However, on the other hand, some want to push people to not recognize modern holidays and to continue to celebrate the feasts of the land. Until the discoveries of the new evidence for December 25, some use to point to the traditional view and say that December 25 was pagan and to thus celebrate the feasts of the land that God gave. However as we study the ancient Canaanite religion, we discover that the Canaanites celebrated the feast of unlevened bread, and the day of Atonement with the 2 goats one sacrificed to the god the other taken out into the wilderness if they were moble people or taken out into the wilderness and killed if they were a settled people. and the other feast days we read about in the Bible were the Canaanite holidays for worshiping say Baal long before Abraham was born (and yes, the Canaanites also had the Investigative Judgment, it was an aspect of their judical system).

Some have responded to these discoveries saying that the feasts must have come from Noah and got corrupted. However the problem with this theory (and yes we do see much truth from Noah that was still reflected in the ancient myths) is that these feasts were limited to a small geography of land, and that it was based on the agracultural cycles of that piece of land. God could have delivered the Hebrews on another night of the year, but they were eating the lamb and unlevened bread the same night that in the Baal Temples in Jericho and other Canaanite cities were eating lamb and unlevened bread. God used what was already there. Times of the years that the Hebrew farmers needed to be aware of for their planting cultivating and harvesting, to teach lessons.

For those of us who no longer live on that piece of land and who does not have the emotional connection that some people might have, the feasts would not have the same impact on us and thus did not have the same roots in Christianity as it had in Judaism.

The feasts of the land teach us that God is universal and personal. That God cared about the heathens and that he did not want his people to be snobbish towards them, and God worked with his people and the culture that they were going to settle in, yet not allowing his people to just do all the garbage and unhealthy things that the Canaanites were doing during those holidays.

[Kevin H]

I've been wanting to edit my above post into two since it is long and I see that it contains two different discussions, but the edit button is not showing up

It let's me edit this one but not the one above that I just posted.

[Gail]

I've been wanting to edit my above post into two since it is long and I see that it contains two different discussions, but the edit button is not showing up

It let's me edit this one but not the one above that I just posted.

No problem, Kevin. There is a time limit on editing.

[Gibs]

Gail.

Why is the time limit so short? We should have something like 4 or 5 hours. Sometimes you catch a sentence that comes out others interpret different than what you mean for it and one wants to change the wording so there is not understanding you did not have in mind.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[Gail]

Gibs, there were problems having it as long as it was... Sometimes the thread was manipulated to the point of not making sense after being replied to. There are times when it becomes important to go back and see exactly what was said.

If something is really not right, it's easy to clarify yourself in a further post. :)

[skyblue888]

Gail, did u do that?

As far as I am concerned, and I am sure I am not alone to feel that way, it was perfect the way it was. Why not ask us how we feel about something like that before imposing it on us?

Aren't we all in this together?

And what about the ability to delete?

I am telling you Gail, the ability to delete and to edit the way it was was what made this forum pleasant. Now it has been taken away from us just like that, out of the blue, at someone's whim.

Not fair.

my 2 cents

sky

[LynnDel]

Not to get off topic or anything (ahem), but isn't there a good middle ground - somewhere between ten minutes and six hours? Sometimes I am appalled at seeing what I wrote, an hour or two later, because only then do you see that what you were thinking didn't actually get through your fingers to the post you were writing.

Correcting it with a later post helps in some instances, but how many of those who read what you originally wrote and got a wrong impression are going to continue reading the thread and have their impression corrected? Probably too small a percentage, I'm guessing.

LD

[Naomi]

I do understand what you are saying LynnDel, my fingers & thoughts don't always communicate well. Middle ground would be good.

[olger]

As a writer, I like the ability to edit. 10 minutes ain't near enough, brethren.

[Tom Wetmore]

Part of the problem with lengthening the edit time at all is that this is a dynamic communication environment with multiple participants, unlike writing an article or book by oneself. Even with 10 minutes, in that time while you go back to edit, you may get 2 or 3 replies to the original post that you have now changed. Also, with unlimited time to edit after being misunderstood, going back to edit to correct substance creates all manner of havoc to the sense and flow of the conversation. And that is compounded further with everyone doing it on top of each other's editing. And the ability to deleting one's own posts with no time limit - wait until someone really gets upset about something and creates major havoc by deleting all of their posts... Seems I have heard of that happening before...

Here is a suggestion. Take the time to proofread and edit a post several times before hitting that "Submit" button. Use the "Preview Post" to see how it looks (helpful for spotting UBBCode mistakes).

Take your time and get it just right before posting. And it has the added benefit of an opportunity to omit that inappropriate comment or snarky bite at someone else. We all post things we wish we could take back later. It'll ease the burden of moderating if people self-edit.

And if there is an obvious typo or embarrassing mistake, you can alway ask a moderator to do it for you any time. (Sometimes we may catch those and correct them anyway...)

[Kevin H]

I had hopes to continue the discussion, not change the direction of the discussion, but yes a middle ground would be nice...

[Woody]

Perhaps you guys could start your own thread on this topic. I don't see the connection to my topic of Annunciation.