The Political Significance of Christmas

by / on December 21, 2016 at 12:14 pm /

In their effort to make a point, those who discuss law and government and politics for a living often miss the most crucial – the most critical point of all. So, as we celebrate Christmas, this is a good time to take a deep breath and revisit first principles.

We should remember the political significance of Christmas. Now don’t get distracted by arguments that early Christians latched onto a pre-existing pagan holiday to establish the date of Christmas. That may be true, but it is a distraction from what’s truly important. The important thing is the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

The birth of the Savior is the most significant political event in human history. This bears repeating. The birth of Jesus Christ is the most significant political event in the history of the universe.

Why? Well simply put, it is because liberty does not and cannot exist absent the acknowledgement of the Almighty, Omniscient, Living and Everlasting God of the Bible whose Son is Jesus Christ — Who created the world, entered His own creation and sacrificed His life to cover our sins and make us presentable before the Throne of Grace.

For liberty to exist in the world this acknowledgement of Christ’s authority must exist in the hearts of the people and it must be the operating principle of civil government.

If it is, then peace on earth will prevail. But to the extent that the hearts of the people are distracted and the civil government forgets that it is a ministry of Jesus Christ, then injustice, chaos, corruption and tyranny will prevail.

Woodrow Wilcox

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And the hearts of the people are, indeed, distracted from this truth; and this is no accident. It is the result of purposeful manipulation of the culture by those who control the major means of communication. The primary tool of this manipulation is the mantra of “Separation of Church and State.”

Through the ceaseless repetition of this voodoo mantra, the culture has been conditioned to consider any public prayer, or any private prayer in a public place, or any acknowledgement of the Lord Jesus Christ, as an inappropriate encroachment of the Church. But this is a word trick and a mind trick. A prayer is not a church. An acknowledgement of God’s authority over civil government in the form of a prayer before a legislative session, or a court session is not a church. It is rather an expression of a political philosophy. And this particular political philosophy is the American political philosophy.

WoodrowWilcox.com

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It is contained in the Declaration of Independence which is the organic law of these united States.

Therefore, there is nothing wrong or illegal about such an expression. Indeed, the acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as the Source of Law and Government is the very first presupposition of American government. Far from violating any law, worship of or acknowledgement of the authority of the Savior of the World through Christmas Nativity displays, public prayer, Ten Commandment displays and all other forms of Christian witness are consistent with and supportive of the American View of Law and Liberty and are the essence of American government.

Publicly celebrating the blessed birth of the Savior of the World is patriotic in the purest sense and ultimately politically correct.

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Jake MacAulay serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Institute on the Constitution (IOTC), an educational outreach that presents the founders’ “American View” of law and government. The former co-host of the syndicated talk show, The Sons of Liberty, he is an ordained minister and has spoken to audiences nation-wide, and has established the American Club, a constitutional study group in public and private schools.
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  • Robo Rubio

    Justin Martyr (b. 100 CE, d. 165 CE) believed that the Old Testament Hebraic prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus. An argument leveled against him then was that religious figures/religions/Mystery Religions containing God-Men, virgin births, working of miracles and risings from the dead existed long before Jesus was born. Martyr took this charge seriously enough to retort that, essentially, “the devil” knew about the Old Testament Hebraic prophecies about the coming messiah and set out to construct religious figures/religions/Mystery Religions containing these elements to try and deceive people from believing in Jesus.

    A serious, fatal flaw in Martyr’s retort (that still opens up a huge can of worms even today) is that “the devil” would axiomatically be a being of limited knowledge, there were no Hebraic prophecies in the Old Testament of the messiah being visited by wise men (Matthew 2:1-2), of the messiah turning water into wine (John 2:1-9) and the messiah rising from the dead on the 3rd day exactly for “the devil” to toy with to set up false religious figures/religions/Mystery Religions to deceive people from believing in Jesus.

    And yet long before Jesus was born, adherents to Mithraism taught that Mithras was visited by wise men, adherents to the cult of Dionysus taught that Dionysus could turn water into wine, and adherents to the cult of Attis taught that Attis died, was laid in a tomb and rose on the 3rd day exactly.

    The cult of Attis seems to be the most colorful of the Mystery Religions, and has some rather outlandish tales about him and his mother. Some of his followers (depending upon the location of the cult then) taught that Attis died of crucifixion, while others taught that he died of self-emasculation. But before Jesus came along, a central belief was still that he died, was placed in a tomb and raised on the 3rd day.

    And somehow all these tales (and there are others too) about Jesus made their way into the New Testament even though there were no Hebraic prophecies in the Old Testament about them for “the devil” to toy with…

    • A. Castellitto

      From Got ???s

      Question: “Is Jesus a myth? Is Jesus just a copy of the pagan gods of other ancient religions?”

      Answer: There are a number of people claiming that the accounts of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are simply myths borrowed from pagan folklore, such as the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Mithras. The claim is that these myths are essentially the same story as the New Testament’s narrative of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code, “Nothing in Christianity is original.”

      To discover the truth about the claim that the Gospel writers borrowed from mythology, it is important to (1) unearth the history behind the assertions, (2) examine the actual portrayals of the false gods being compared to Christ, (3) expose any logical fallacies being made, and (4) look at why the New Testament Gospels are trustworthy depictions of the true and historical Jesus Christ.

      The claim that Jesus was a myth or an exaggeration originated in the writings of liberal German theologians in the nineteenth century. They essentially said that Jesus was nothing more than a copy of popular dying-and-rising fertility gods in various places—Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor, and Horus in Egypt. Of note is the fact that none of the books containing these theories were taken seriously by the academics of the day. The assertion that Jesus was a recycled Tammuz, for example, was investigated by contemporary scholars and determined to be completely baseless. It has only been recently that these assertions have been resurrected, primarily due to the rise of the Internet and the mass distribution of information from unaccountable sources.

      This leads us to the next area of investigation—do the mythological gods of antiquity really mirror the person of Jesus Christ? As an example, the Zeitgeist movie makes these claims about the Egyptian god Horus:

      • He was born on December 25 of a virgin: Isis Mary
      • A star in the East proclaimed his arrival
      • Three kings came to adore the newborn “savior”
      • He became a child prodigy teacher at age 12
      • At age 30 he was “baptized” and began a “ministry”
      • Horus had twelve “disciples”
      • Horus was betrayed
      • He was crucified
      • He was buried for three days
      • He was resurrected after three days

      However, when the actual writings about Horus are competently examined, this is what we find:

      • Horus was born to Isis; there is no mention in history of her being called “Mary.” Moreover, “Mary” is our Anglicized form of her real name, Miryam or Miriam. “Mary” was not even used in the original texts of Scripture.
      • Isis was not a virgin; she was the widow of Osiris and conceived Horus with Osiris.
      • Horus was born during month of Khoiak (Oct/Nov), not December 25. Further, there is no mention in the Bible as to Christ’s actual birth date.
      • There is no record of three kings visiting Horus at his birth. The Bible never states the actual number of magi that came to see Christ.
      • Horus is not a “savior” in any way; he did not die for anyone.
      • There are no accounts of Horus being a teacher at the age of 12.
      • Horus was not “baptized.” The only account of Horus that involves water is one story where Horus is torn to pieces, with Isis requesting the crocodile god to fish him out of the water.
      • Horus did not have a “ministry.”
      • Horus did not have 12 disciples. According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four demigods that followed him, and there are some indications of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him.
      • There is no account of Horus being betrayed by a friend.
      • Horus did not die by crucifixion. There are various accounts of Horus’ death, but none of them involve crucifixion.
      • There is no account of Horus being buried for three days.
      • Horus was not resurrected. There is no account of Horus coming out of the grave with the body he went in with. Some accounts have Horus/Osiris being brought back to life by Isis and then becoming the lord of the underworld.

      When compared side by side, Jesus and Horus bear little, if any, resemblance to one another.

      Jesus is also compared to Mithras by those claiming that Jesus Christ is a myth. All the above descriptions of Horus are applied to Mithras (e.g., born of a virgin, being crucified, rising in three days, etc.). But what does the Mithras myth actually say?

      • He was born out of a solid rock, not from any woman.
      • He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithras killed the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.
      • Mithras’s birth was celebrated on December 25, along with winter solstice.
      • There is no mention of his being a great teacher.
      • There is no mention of Mithras having 12 disciples. The idea that Mithras had 12 disciples may have come from a mural in which Mithras is surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
      • Mithras had no bodily resurrection. Rather, when Mithras completed his earthly mission, he was taken to paradise in a chariot, alive and well. The early Christian writer Tertullian did write about Mithraic cultists re-enacting resurrection scenes, but this occurred well after New Testament times, so if any copycatting was done, it was Mithraism copying Christianity.

      More examples can be given of Krishna, Attis, Dionysus, and other mythological gods, but the result is the same. In the end, the historical Jesus portrayed in the Bible is unique. The alleged similarities of Jesus’ story to pagan myths are greatly exaggerated. Further, while tales of Horus, Mithras, and others pre-date Christianity, there is very little historical record of the pre-Christian beliefs of those religions. The vast majority of the earliest writings of these religions date from the third and fourth centuries A.D. To assume that the pre-Christian beliefs of these religions (of which there is no record) were identical to their post-Christian beliefs is naive. It is more logical to attribute any similarities between these religions and Christianity to the religions’ copying Christian teaching about Jesus.

      This leads us to the next area to examine: the logical fallacies committed by those claiming that Christianity borrowed from pagan mystery religions. We’ll consider two fallacies in particular: the fallacy of the false cause and the terminological fallacy.

      If one thing precedes another, some conclude that the first thing must have caused the second. This is the fallacy of the false cause. A rooster may crow before the sunrise every morning, but that does not mean the rooster causes the sun to rise. Even if pre-Christian accounts of mythological gods closely resembled Christ (and they do not), it does not mean they caused the Gospel writers to invent a false Jesus. Making such a claim is akin to saying the TV series Star Trek caused the NASA Space Shuttle program.

      The terminological fallacy occurs when words are redefined to prove a point. For example, the Zeitgeist movie says that Horus “began his ministry,” but the word ministry is being redefined. Horus had no actual “ministry”—nothing like that of Christ’s ministry. Those claiming a link between Mithras and Jesus talk about the “baptism” that initiated prospects into the Mithras cult, but what was it actually? Mithraic priests would place initiates into a pit, suspend a bull over the pit, and slit the bull’s stomach, covering the initiates in blood and gore. Such a practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to Christian baptism—a person going under water (symbolizing the death of Christ) and then coming back out of the water (symbolizing Christ’s resurrection). But advocates of a mythological Jesus deceptively use the same term, “baptism,” to describe both rites in hopes of linking the two.

      This brings us to the subject of the truthfulness of the New Testament. No other work of antiquity has more evidence to its historical veracity than the New Testament. The New Testament has more writers (nine), better writers, and earlier writers than any other existing document from that era. Further, history testifies that these writers went to their deaths claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead. While some may die for a lie they think is true, no person dies for a lie he knows to be false. Think about it—if you were threatened with crucifixion, as tradition says happened to the apostle Peter, and all you had to do to save your life was renounce a lie you had knowingly told, what would you do?

      In addition, history has shown that it takes at least two generations to pass before myth can enter a historical account. That’s because, as long as there are eyewitnesses to an event, errors can be refuted and mythical embellishments can be exposed. All the Gospels of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, with some of Paul’s Epistles being written as early as A.D. 50. Paul directly appeals to contemporary eyewitnesses to verify his testimony (1 Corinthians 15:6).

      The New Testament attests to the fact that, in the first century, Jesus was not mistaken for any other god. When Paul preached in Athens, the elite thinkers of that city said, “‘He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,’—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean’” (Acts 17:18–20, NASB). Clearly, if Paul were simply rehashing stories of other gods, the Athenians would not have referred to his doctrine as a “new” and “strange” teaching. If dying-and-rising gods were plentiful in the first century, why, when the apostle Paul preached Jesus rising from the dead, did the Epicureans and Stoics not remark, “Ah, just like Horus and Mithras”?

      In conclusion, the claim that Jesus is a copy of mythological gods originated with authors whose works have been discounted by academia, contain logical fallacies, and cannot compare to the New Testament Gospels, which have withstood nearly 2,000 years of intense scrutiny. The alleged parallels between Jesus and other gods disappear when the original myths are examined. The Jesus-is-a-myth theory relies on selective descriptions, redefined words, and false assumptions.

      Jesus Christ is unique in history, with His voice rising above all false gods’ as He asks the question that ultimately determines a person’s eternal destiny: “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

      • DCM7

        Thanks for posting that. No one who’s made any honest examination of the “Jesus is just a copy of the pagan gods” claim could possibly take it seriously at all. As shown by the information you post — and much more information that’s readily available out there — that claim is nonsense of the highest order.

        • A. Castellitto

          Your welcome, and J. Machen, who was the founder of the denomination I attend, OPC, and fought against the liberalization of the Presbyterian church, expounds on where Justin Martyr erred & was misinterpreted as well as what he truly believed in his excellent commentary/apologetic, The Virgin Birth of Christ by J Gresham Machen available free online

    • A. Castellitto

      Isaiah 53English Standard Version (ESV)

      53 Who has believed what he has heard from us?[a]
      And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
      2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
      and like a root out of dry ground;
      he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
      and no beauty that we should desire him.
      3 He was despised and rejected[b] by men,
      a man of sorrows[c] and acquainted with[d] grief;[e]
      and as one from whom men hide their faces[f]
      he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
      4 Surely he has borne our griefs
      and carried our sorrows;
      yet we esteemed him stricken,
      smitten by God, and afflicted.
      5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
      he was crushed for our iniquities;
      upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
      and with his wounds we are healed.
      6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
      we have turned—every one—to his own way;
      and the Lord has laid on him
      the iniquity of us all.
      7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
      yet he opened not his mouth;
      like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
      and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
      so he opened not his mouth.
      8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
      and as for his generation, who considered
      that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
      stricken for the transgression of my people?
      9 And they made his grave with the wicked
      and with a rich man in his death,
      although he had done no violence,
      and there was no deceit in his mouth.
      10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
      he has put him to grief;[g]
      when his soul makes[h] an offering for guilt,
      he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
      the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
      11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see[i] and be satisfied;
      by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
      make many to be accounted righteous,
      and he shall bear their iniquities.
      12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,[j]
      and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,[k]
      because he poured out his soul to death
      and was numbered with the transgressors;
      yet he bore the sin of many,
      and makes intercession for the transgressors.

    • A. Castellitto

      Most comprehensive book on the subject is probably The Virgin Birth of Christ by J Gresham Machen

  • retiredday

    I find it curious that the point of this article was ignored by Robo Rubio who chose instead to inject doubt about the reality of Jesus based on lies and unscholarly speculations about myths. Such doubts are fed by ignorance. Man, Myth, Messiah by Rice Broocks examines the secular, historical evidence for the life of Jesus, and makes clear that he is no myth. And it was for freedom that he has set us free. Not just in the moral sense that we are free from sin, but in the political sense that we are free to express ourselves in truth and love.

    But there are fools, thinking they are wise, who seek to protect their so-called “free-thinking” by suppressing the truth — telling Christians their faith has no place in politics or public settings. Separation of Church and State is supposed to mean that government should be kept out of the church. All authority belongs to Jesus Christ. The government shall be upon his shoulders. No human government has the authority to exclude his testimony from the political process.