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I saw a couple billboards this week, both within a few miles of each other in Ohio, that left me feeling very sad and very disgusted. I wish I could have snapped pictures, but alas, I’m just not that quick so I will have to describe them for you.
The first one I saw simply had these words on it:
The True Sabbath is Saturday. The Anti-Christ Changed It
This one is just a sad, poor representation of the church. The true church has never changed the Sabbath. If anything, we do not observe the Sabbath in a “biblical manner.” Correct, the Sabbath was on Saturday. But we do not celebrate the Sabbath necessarily. Instead what we celebrate by worshipping on Sunday is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without it, even Sabbath observance would mean nothing to us, for we would be doomed. I could go into more discussion, but I do not want to make this post long.
Here is the second, far more disturbing billboard. On one side there was a depiction of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The words next to it read;
This is My Time
I had to do a double-take to make sure I read it right. I am certain it was referring to the Christmas season given the colors of the billboard and the timing. I am also sure the billboard’s message is grossly wrong. It seems to imply that the Christmas holiday is about Mary, her great faith and experience in bearing the Christ-child. I am confident though, if we were able to ask Mary, her response would be far more focused on Christ. The birth of Jesus is about Him. It is about the fact that the God of the universe miraculously humbled himself and took on the form of a baby. I am sure Mary would not want any of the attention placed on her. It was not “her time” but “His time” that really held any importance.
Sure when we celebrate Christmas we do tend to let it be about gifts, Santa, food, and family gatherings. In this sense we do tend to fail if we do not make it about that baby born in Bethlehem so many years ago. But I am also sure that we would fail if we made it about the mother of that baby born. It is Christ’s Time. Not Mary’s.
3 comments:
Quick note about the "Mary" billboards. I was able to record the website the billboards have listed and checked it out. It is advertisement for an organization following supposed apparitions of Mary. Typical of Marian theology, placing her higher than Christ, and thus anything she says trumps even the whole of Scripture.
If we study history , we'll see the pagan worship to the God Sun, (Sun-Day) that kind of worship was every sunday so Constantine when de Roman made the sunday worship a law , so centuries after he died a Pope called Sundays a celebration to Christ resurrection and that's what people believes in our days, investigate about blue laws and the sunday laws of Constantine, thanks.
Thanks for your comment Anon.
I am aware of Constantine's making Sunday the official day of worship. There are many holidays that have been "Christianized" as well as other church traditions, and I honestly have no problem with it. Christmas for example is a common illustration of taking a pagan holiday and making it about Christ. We really do not have the exact date of Jesus' birth, but chose to celebrate it on that day because it redirected people's cultic holidays and pointed them to Christ, and I could go on.
But the choice to worship on Sunday goes long before Constantine. Even in the 1st Century AD (or CE depending on your preference) the churches typically met on Sunday because it is the day Jesus rose from the grave. Many of the church fathers attest to having met regularly on Sundays for worship to celebrate the resurrection. Granted, Easter Sunday is the proper, annual celebration of the resurrection, believers still chose to meet weekly on Sundays to celebrate the it. That, over time, morphed into the organized worship services we see today.
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