The Feast Week

After some days of busy preparation the Feast of Unleavened Bread is now upon us, dear sisters, and I hope you had a blessed and tasty Passover meal last night.

Now let me say a few things about feasts.

I know that many Christians know that what they usually celebrate - Christmas, Easter, probably Pentecost - are not biblical feasts, but feasts that were introduced by historical Christianity. We know that Jesus was not born towards the end of December for even in Israel the shepherds are not out there at night in the middle of the winter. There is no such thing as Easter in the bible, but peoples have worshiped the sun and fertility goddesses for a long time, and all the symbolism - including sunrise services and eggs, right down to the name of the feast - points not to any biblical feast, but to the pagan origins of Easter. Yes, Pentecost is mentioned in the bible as the occasion on which the Holy Spirit comes down on the disciples, and time-wise it coincides with the biblical Feast of Weeks (50 days after Passover), but there is no biblical indication that Pentecost should be celebrated.

In short, what Christianity does is ignore the biblical feasts, probably for fear of appearing Jewish in some form or fashion, and celebrate their own feasts instead. Jesus is clear about this attitude. He condemns it, saying:

"And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! " (Mar 7:6-9)

But many Christians seem to be very fearful of giving up their traditional feasts, even if they know that it is not right to cling to them. Especially when it comes to Christmas, they feel as though something very precious and special is taken from them and their life is the poorer for it. They do not want to lose the "magic" of Christmas, so to speak.

Well, you know what ? If we celebrated the Hebrew feasts as they are appointed by Yahweh, they would be as precious to us as Christmas and Easter are to people nowadays, they would hold as much festival atmosphere, and what is more, they would add to our life what Yahweh meant to be added to our life by those feasts. If you look at traditional Christianity's feasts closely, there is not much Christian about them anymore anyway. The important bits are gifts, Easter egg hunts and the like, not what is actually commemorated according to the churches...

To cut a long story short: You don't really have all that much to lose if you give up your pagan (i.e., historical Christian) feasts and celebrate the Hebrew feasts instead, but you have much, much to gain.

Opposition

Let me say a word or two about where the opposition to biblical polygyny comes from.

It might or might not surprise you, but I have never met anyone quite as rabidly opposed polygyny as so-called "good Christians". To the majority of modern day Christianity, polygyny is simply wrong, and they are as ashamed of the biblical accounts of polygyny as they are of the mentioning of slaves or concubines. Not understanding any of the three mentioned examples because they approach polygyny, slavery and concubienage with modern day definitions and the attitude historical Christianity has towards these issues, they feel comfortable judging Abraham, King David and others for "sins" God never judged them for, and have no problem relying on the majority agument ("if more people thought like you do, you would be more convincing", "after all, we all know polygyny is wrong", and similar phrases) instead of relying on Scripture to shape their theology.

The more ecclectic the Christans we talked to were, the less issues they seemed to have with polygyny, not for biblical, but for humanistic reasons. Since they did not rely on the Scriptures as their only standard, they felt comfortable not to condemn polygamy because they themselves did not want to be condemned for, for example, blending their traditional pagan believes with Christianity. So the further away people we met were from God's word, the easier it was for them to accept polygyny.

For us, this basically means that real brethren are few and far between. So if you are inclined towards believing God and relying on His word for all of life, and openly advocate biblical plural marriage, brace yourself for opposition from the Christian community, but rest assured, they only have so many arguments from the bible that they use out of context or have to reinterpret in order to make the Scriptures say what they wish it to say. God will not be mocked, though, and whoever is ashamed of God's word, of him God will be ashamed too.