Early this morning on good ‘ole Facebook, I came across a bunch of posts blasting the idea of Ash Wednesday. I decided to write a blog on this subject, and I’ll be darned if I can find any samples now. But I will fire away on my thoughts and keep looking for examples.
“Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and marks the first day of Lent: the seven weeks of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving before the arrival of Easter.”
This is another religious lie of the Roman Catholic Church to enslave people to works righteousness rather than the freedom of biblical grace and mercy of the gospel! Ephesians 2:8-9
First, why is it OK for Protestants to celebrate Christmas and Easter and then dis the folks that they stole the holidays from to start with? Ash Wednesday is just as much part of the Church calendar as Christmas and Easter.
Folks, it’s a much better argument that Jesus was born in September, on or about the Day of Atonement, than anything that places his real date of birth near December 25th. I have a video by some Protestants arguing vigorously that Jesus was born on the traditional date of Christmas (12/25) but really their evidence is thin.
Easter, in the spring, is a much better and firmer argument but the date of Easter is rarely near the Passover, at least in current reckoning. Since at least three different calendars were used, I can understand the confusion. (oh, the calendars are Julian, Gregorian, Jewish)
Just so you know, the Church calendar was created many centuries ago and goes beyond the year 8,000. They have much more faith in the providence of God and our mission as Christians than the current crop of believers today with their any minute Rapture.
The presumption, by the posters that I saw who were attacking Ash Wednesday, is that they have everything right and those following the Church calendar, especially Roman Catholics, are heretics, syncretizes, or out right pagans. Their basic argument was that Lent and Ash Wednesday are not in the Bible.
Mark 7:9 “He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.”
On Photo: The Catholic Ash Wednesday ceremony is pure witchcraft” Andre Salloum
Hey, Protestants! The following are not in the Bible either:
Grape Juice For Communion.
Anything Less Than Weekly Communion.
Baby Dedication.
Baptism By Immersion.
Age Of Accountability.
The Rapture.
Walking an isle or the “Sinner’s Prayer”
But most of you practice these things as if they were found in the KJV.
Why is it wrong to commemorate the 40 days that Jesus suffered in the wilderness as a preparation for celebrating his passion and death? Nobody says you have to do it, but what about Christian liberty? Why is it wrong for believers to reflect a little on what it cost God to come as a man to save you from your sins? Oh, for you that don’t know, Sundays are exempted from the 40-day calculation, since it is a day of worship.
Back in December, I went to church with my parents. I attended their once Baptist and now nondenominational church. The pastor bragged about how he didn’t follow the traditions of men but only the Scriptures. Meanwhile, everything in the bulletin or their service was a tradition of men. They were dispensational/premillennial in their eschatology. A Tradition of man unknown to the church until the 1830’s. They had a Baptist during the service. It was by immersion. Not in the Bible. It was a “believer’s baptism”. Again, this is not the biblical norm, the exception was the Ethiopian eunuch, typically, the practice was that whole families baptized on the basis of the father, who was head of the household, professing faith. In such cases, children, spouses, and servants were all baptized because of the man’s profession of faith. Then there was an assortment of ministries which were unknown until the time of Chrles Wesley. Oh, to this pastor, the world belongs to Satan until some future time. God was only the savior of your soul; the rest was not God’s concern. Again, not in the Bible. Lastly, they sang zero hymns from or based on the book of Psalms. God gave us a song book but we never use it.
So yeh, mister Protestant, tell me how that whole thing is going for you? I have my disagreements with Rome too but most of the Protestant folks out there are theologically no better. They just like their heresies better than those of the other guys.
Oh, just so you know, using either geography or raw numbers, more Christians celebrate Lent than don’t. The Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox, and some Protestants including Anglican, Lutherans, celebrate Lent. That leaves Christians in and around the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations as the outliers.
Folks, this is a stupid thing to argue about. Why must we unchurch everyone else to advance our ideas? It gets old really fast. If you have the time to beat up on your fellow Christians then it means you aren’t facing the right way to fight the enemy, just sayin’.