Christianity is being in fellowship with Christ, as a follower of Christ.
The first thing in our religion should be to know and understand Jesus Christ. Who is he? He asked that very question to his disciples. In Mathew 16:13-20, it reads: Now when Jesus Christ came into the district of Ceasare’a Phillipi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”.
And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church, and the power of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Paganism is the hallowed belief in other revered objects or worship of personalities as gods besides the Creator, the Almighty God. It also encompasses the worship of multiple gods, each of them denoting a particular significance to the worshipper.
In our Christianity we thus also have a clique of worshippers who have exalted “the son of the living God” to be the ‘God of creation’. I know this particular section of our Christianity will try to castigate me for trying to downplay their view of Christ, but the simple truth is that the Lord our God is one.
The most common theory is that because Christ was born of God, he is thus God. They twist some verses of the Bible to vehemently support this theory.
Jesus Christ himself emphasized on the oneness of God, the Father. In Mark 12:29, he taught; “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”. He was aligning himself with the Almighty God who spoke as written in the fifth book of Moses. In Deuteronomy 6:4, Moses taught the people as spoken by the Lord; “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord…” God also spoke to his humble servant, Isaiah, to teach the people of this fact.
In Isaiah 43:10, He spoke to Isaiah; “You are my witness, my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me”. I pray that my fellow Christians who subscribe to the notion that Christ is also God would take heed of these words.
Then came Roman Emperor Constantine, who initiated the worship of Jesus Christ as God. He is the original author of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity which brought in the as 3-in-1 Godhead, i.e. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. This doctrine has its roots rooted in the Roman pagan worship of multiple gods. Anything they deemed important in their lives was upgraded to a god, or the thing of importance was allocated a god of its own.
Let us remember that they gave themselves gods of many backgrounds to honour the many things they cherished; like the sun, the moon, the planets etc. Let us also not forget that the days of the weeks and months that we treat with affection today were all named after some of the pagan gods.
Thus, when Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity, his first act was to outlaw the Lumi-Solar calendar used for generations by followers of God, marrying some aspects of Christianity with pagan festivals and renaming the days and months of His new Julian calendar in honour of some of the Roman pagan gods. In 321AD, at the Council of Nicaca, he decreed a law that made it illegal to use the Biblical Lumi-Solar calendar. This is the backbone of the calendar we Christians also use today.
As a consequence of the change to the pagan calendar, a ‘war of the Sabbath’ has erupted amongst some of our Christian denominations as to which of the days should be treated as being the Sabbath. If we go back to our scriptures, we will find that God did not name the Sabbath by the names of the days of any particular calendar, but named the Sabbath by the number of days worked from the first work day. Some nations of our world have different work patterns and different calendars.
The Sabbath day should be measured by the days worked from day one and not by the seventh day of any particular calendar week. Doing so would be a miscarriage to the specifics of our Bible. God worked for six days straight and rested on the seventh day. That should still be the formula for working out our Sabbath day, as a measure. Anything aside from that is of our own creation.
Jesus Christ should symbolise the sacrificial lamb for us Christians in the sense that he died for the atonement of our sins. In other words, he is the Redeemer who saved us from the consequences of human sins. The Passover was instituted by God in remembrance to when He instructed the people of Israel to sacrifice a lamb in every household on the night prior to their freedom from Egyptian bondage, representing the freedom from the consequences of the sins of their forefathers.
Our Christianity now prefers to honour pagan-instituted festivals like Easter, in reference to a pagan Roman goddess named Esther. The same goes for the Christmas festives which also has pagan origins. Can’t we find scripture-related festives in line with the Lord our God’s-given instructions? Some of these are inscribed in the Bible.
Among many others is our violations of the second commandment which reads (Exodus 20:4-6); “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow to them or serve them…” Is it proper to make ‘graven’ images of the cross or of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross and then to bow down to worship such items in honour of Christ?
We also have molten or graven images of Mother Mary amongst our mindset, which we likewise bow down to worship or carry such around our necks. Are we not in total violation of the second commandment in perpetuation of some pagan religions that practiced such a kind of idol worship?
- Prosper Tingini is the Scribe of the Children of God Missionary Assembly — God’s messengers. Contact details: Mobile and whatsapp: 0771 260 195. Email address: ptingini@gmail.com