Does anyone celebrate biblical holidays?

kvanlaan · #1 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 07:55 PM

Our family spends a lot of time on homeschooling websites and we're noticing that quite a few of these families celebrate biblical holidays such as Purim and other OT festivities.

Anyone out there do the same? Opinions in general?

Thanks!

Semper Fidelis · #2 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 08:04 PM

Oh, I thought you were talking about Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Sunday, and All Saints Day.

Never mind...

kvanlaan · #3 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 08:15 PM

Sorry, let me clarify - historical biblical holidays. Just wanted to know if anyone does this.

By the way, today (May 6) is the day to honor 'in a special way' the following 'saintly' folks:

Bl. Antony Middleton and Bl. Edward Jones (English and Welsh, priests, martyred [hanged] by Elizabethans in 1590)
St. Benedicta (Roman, nun, 6th century)
Bl. Bonizella Piccolomini (Italian, widow, served the poor, d. 1300)
St. Colman Mac Ui Cluasigh of Cork (Irish, professor, 7th century)
St. Edbert of Lindisfarne (English, Benedictine monk, bishop, d. 698)
St. Evodius of Antioch (Israelite, disciple of Jesus, bishop in Syria [succeeding St. Peter], martyred c. 69)
Sts. Heliodorus, Venustus, and 75 companions (African and Italian, martyred in 3rd century)
St. Justus (French, bishop)
St. Lucius of Cyrene (Syrian, teacher, bishop in North Africa, 1st century)
St. Petronax of Monte Cassino (Italian, Benedictine abbot, c. 747)
St. Protogenes of Carrhae (Syrian, bishop, 4th century)
Bl. Prudentia Castori (Italian, Augustinian abbess, d. 1492)
St. Theodotus of Cyrenia (Cypriot, bishop, c. 325)

You can add that to your list of things to do today...

Coram Deo · #4 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 08:45 PM

Yes, we celebrate 52 biblical Holy "i" Days a year..
They are called the Sabbath Days.....

Michael

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvanlaan

Our family spends a lot of time on homeschooling websites and we're noticing that quite a few of these families celebrate biblical holidays such as Purim and other OT festivities.

Anyone out there do the same? Opinions in general?

Thanks!

tcalbrecht · #5 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvanlaan

Our family spends a lot of time on homeschooling websites and we're noticing that quite a few of these families celebrate biblical holidays such as Purim and other OT festivities.

Anyone out there do the same? Opinions in general?

Thanks!

How would one do that, celebrate Passover, Tabernacles, or Purim?

The Westminster Confession teaches that the old covenant feast days were part of the ceremonial law given to Israel as a "church under age". As such they are inappropriate for God's people under the new covenant.

Christians celebrate the 52 "holy days" given perpetually as part of the abiding moral law.

MMasztal · #6 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 09:26 PM

The Westminster Confession teaches that the old covenant feast days were part of the ceremonial law given to Israel as a "church under age". As such they are inappropriate for God's people under the new covenant.

Lately, I've often wondered why we don't celebrate at least some of the Jewish holidays since as Christians we are grafted into the (Hebrew) olive tree.

I sure wouldn't consider the WCoF as the final arbitor on this issue.

kvanlaan · #7 (**permalink**) 05-06-2007, 02:37 AM

We've never gotten into it - we're just noticing that it is pretty de rigeur in some homeschooling family sites/blogs. Perhaps a more dispy habit? I just don't know...

Kevin · #8 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvanlaan

We've never gotten into it - we're just noticing that it is pretty de rigeur in some homeschooling family sites/blogs. Perhaps a more dispy habit? I just don't know...

The only people I know that do it in a big way (i.e. an obligation) are the Identity groups/British Israel. Some dispys do it as well.

I think to do it as a religious observation is an example of false worship, and forbidden. Remember that the people of God offered sacrifces in the "High Places" and every father could sacrifice PRIOR to the establishment of the priesthood and the building of the tabernacle. Yet to do so AFTER God established the new worship was called idolatry.

tcalbrecht · #9 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MMasztal

Quote:

The Westminster Confession teaches that the old covenant feast days were part of the ceremonial law given to Israel as a "church under age". As such they are inappropriate for God's people under the new covenant.

Lately, I've often wondered why we don't celebrate at least some of the Jewish holidays since as Christians we are grafted into the (Hebrew) olive tree.

I sure wouldn't consider the WCoF as the final arbitor on this issue.

I would contend that the root in Romans 11 is not Moses, it is Abraham. He is the father of all the faithful, including the gentile nations. The ceremonial law came by Moses and was only appropriate to the religious cultus of old Israel. All of the Levitical feast days were in one way or another tied to the animal sacrifices of the old covenant. The only legitimate transformation from old to new is seen in the Passover becoming the Lord’s Supper. That is the celebration of God’s people for the new covenant age. Coupled with the Sabbath, it is a universal “feast day” for all the Church.

Celebrating holy days given by Moses would be no more appropriate than keeping dietary and clothing laws in the new covenant.

Scripture is our final arbiter, and we find no instructions in the new covenant for keeping old covenant “holy days” in an unbloody fashion. Some Christians have adopted the approach of the apostate rabbis who constructed the Talmudic law in order to make provision for keeping the feast days without the temple and sacrifices

So the bottom line is, “keeping Jewish holidays” in the Church cannot be done without the need to construct a Christian version of the Talmud. And that would be most inappropriate for the Church to attempt.

tcalbrecht · #10 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 09:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin

The only people I know that do it in a big way (i.e. an obligation) are the Identity groups/British Israel. Some dispys do it as well.

I think to do it as a religious observation is an example of false worship, and forbidden. Remember that the people of God offered sacrifces in the "High Places" and every father could sacrifice PRIOR to the establishment of the priesthood and the building of the tabernacle. Yet to do so AFTER God established the new worship was called idolatry.

It's also quite common among the "Hebrew Christian" and "Messianic Jewish" movements. I suspect some folks not part of either movement have adopted it as part of the "back to our Jewish roots" approach to Christianity.

But I think it is actually a fundamental denial of historic Christianity, and much like the Latter Days Saints and other restorationists who view “authentic” Christianity as dying out in the 1st century only to be “rediscovered” by the modern movement.

VirginiaHuguenot · #11 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 09:57 AM

John Evans on Rom. 14.5:

Quote:

(2.) Concerning days, Rom 14:5. Those who thought themselves still under some kind of obligation to the ceremonial law esteemed one day above another—kept up a respect to the times of the passover, Pentecost, new moons, and feasts of tabernacles; thought those days better than other days, and solemnized them accordingly with particular observances, binding themselves to some religious rest and exercise on those days. Those who knew that all these things were abolished and done away by Christ's coming esteemed every day alike. We must understand it with an exception of the Lord's day, which all Christians unanimously observed; but they made no account, took no notice, of those antiquated festivals of the Jews. Here the apostle speaks of the distinction of meats and days as a thing indifferent, when it went no further than the opinion and practice of some particular persons, who had been trained up all their days to such observances, and therefore were the more excusable if they with difficulty parted with them. But in the epistle to the Galatians, where he deals with those that were originally Gentiles, but were influenced by some judaizing teachers, not only to believe such a distinction and to practise accordingly, but to lay a stress upon it as necessary to salvation, and to make the observance of the Jewish festivals public and congregational, here the case was altered, and it is charged upon them as the frustrating of the design of the gospel, falling from grace, Gal 4:9-11. The Romans did it out of weakness, the Galatians did it out of wilfulness and wickedness; and therefore the apostle handles them thus differently. This epistle is supposed to have been written some time before that to the Galatians. The apostle seems willing to let the ceremonial law wither by degrees, and to let it have an honourable burial; now these weak Romans seem to be only following it weeping to its grave, but those Galatians were raking it out of its ashes.

kvanlaan · #12 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 10:11 AM

Thanks for that, Andrew. Very enlightening.

(I do now believe that you have every quote on the planet in a searchable database.)

Quote:

But I think it is actually a fundamental denial of historic Christianity, and much like the Latter Days Saints and other restorationists who view “authentic” Christianity as dying out in the 1st century only to be “rediscovered” by the modern movement.

Yep, this is part of what creeps me out about it. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but that is, I am sure, a part of the not-quite-right feeling.

Kevin · #13 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tcalbrecht

It's also quite common among the "Hebrew Christian" and "Messianic Jewish" movements. I suspect some folks not part of either movement have adopted it as part of the "back to our Jewish roots" approach to Christianity.

But I think it is actually a fundamental denial of historic Christianity, and much like the Latter Days Saints and other restorationists who view “authentic” Christianity as dying out in the 1st century only to be “rediscovered” by the modern movement.

Good save Tom! I forgot all about the Messianic Christians (sic).

tcalbrecht · #14 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin

Good save Tom! I forgot all about the Messianic Christians (sic).

Most Messianics are (semi-) dispensational with "the Church" really being the Jewish church with gentiles grafted in and expected to keep the old covenant law, including the seventh day Sabbath, out of love for Christ, of course in an unbloody manner.

Some go so far as to suggest that gentiles ought to voluntarily undergo circumcision as an appropriate sign of inclusion in the essentially Jewish church. The reasoning behind this is that since Jews were both circumcised and baptized, so gentiles ought to do the same.

There are some Messianics who teach that while physical circumcision has been temporarily suspended in this age, that when Jesus returns to set up His millennial kingdom He will personally physically circumcise all who enter into it. Thus the kingdom will be populated only with true physical (circumcised) Israel.