Happy Valentine's Day! A look at Valentine's Day

[Amanah]

Just pointing out the miraculous is not necessarily good.

2 Thess 2:8-10

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Amanah

Just pointing out the miraculous is not necessarily good.

2 Thess 2:8-10

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

True, we know there are lying wonders and false miracles.

But... I'm talking about the real miracles mentioned in Scripture. For example, what was in Elisha's bones that brought a man back to life? What was in the aprons taken from Paul's body that healed the sick and delivered the demonized? What was that power? How did these objects get imbued with it? Can such a thing happen today? Are there spiritual principles in play that would allow for the deliberate use of such power in this manner? For example, an elder who feels led to pray over the Teddy Bear he plans on giving a sick grandchild, believing that the bear will carry the power of God to the child upon their receiving it? Or a wife who is fed up with her husband's drinking who prays over his pillow, believing that the power of God will rattle his cage to get his attention so that he might wake up and realize what his habit is doing to the family? Or what about elders gathered for prayer in the pastor's office, praying over cloths that they plan on taking to the sick and shut-ins, believing that the power of God will continue to work in ways unseen, that those shut-ins might be healed and/or delivered from any disease or spiritual oppression?

Or do such questions trouble us and frighten us? Or, do we believe that the days of that kind of power and those kinds of miracles are over?

Seriously. Without flippant dismissals, attacks on character, or individual intentions... What is the pneumatology behind these things in Scripture?

[Esaias]

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Esaias

[Evang.Benincasa]

Originally Posted by Aquila

No, I assure you that I'm not interested in Catholicism.

Greek Orthodox? I dig their beards. But funny hats aren't my style.

Ashy Wednesday? If I had a choice, I'd rather chill with a Rastafarian.

I know that probably over 50% of those who call themselves Apostolic are going to buy their love some Valentine's Day candies, dinner, and/or a gift. It's all over my Facebook. I also know a great deal of them will give their love a Valentine's Day card. Countless numbers of us have kids in schools that are exchanging "Valentine's". Yes, they are church going UPCI Apostolics. And we won't touch how even pastors are buying their wives "a little something" for Valentine's Day.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy that will board up my windows and ground my kids from going outside on these holidays and pretend that these holidays don't exist. Nor am I the kind of guy who will put on a tallit, march around dressed up like some ancient Hebrew, and blow a shofar while trying to celebrate some dusty old Jewish festival. I explain the origins of the traditions my kids might see and that many of us "Apostolics" even participate in. What's funny is... I know there are folks reading this thread who already bought their significant other some candies or something. And maybe they never had a clue about who Valentine even was. Maybe they never even thought of Googling it. But, now they know.

I never said we should venerate St. Valentine (who is most likely really a composite character of several different individuals). Nor did I encourage that someone track down some boring goofball with a collar and funny hat to participate in a liturgy. I did post something about the relics because when you see the tombs, bones, relics, etc. associated with the tradition, it brings a little reality regarding how old the traditions might be. So, those who profess it is nothing but a "Hallmark holiday" are just woefully ignorant of the history.

For me personally, this is just interesting historical banter and an FYI kind of thing. I don't see any spiritual significance in it at all.

In the immortal words of my mother; if 50% of XYZ jumped off a cliff would you follow them? The immortal words of Jesus, "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." I notice you didn't touch the portion of my post where Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy see the group of supposed "I want to be Biblical" or "Where's that in the Bible?" or "I am sola scriptura!" as the biggest bunch of posers who pick and choose as they claim being scripturally correct. Pastors buying their wives heart shaped box with assorted chocolates? A Roman priest once said this, "we may only have one pope, but it seems as you have many?" You claim sola scriptura? You run down holiness standards as if the ultraconservative is some primordial evolutionary down turn of a missing link? Yet, when it comes to these holidays and other such items baptized into Pentecost, it gets labeled harmless, non salvational trifles. Then all of a sudden we get hit with the bones of the prophet resurrecting a corpse, and Paul's tallit healing people? All to justify some decorated mummified foot?

Martin Luther told this story about when he was young and made his pilgrimage to the Vatican in Rome. When he was returning back to Wittenberg he met a man who held a relic in a jeweled box. The man told the young Martin Luther for a small fee, he would show him the severed head of John the Baptist. Martin Luther surprised said it couldn't be, because he just saw it in the Roman city. The relic peddler exclaimed, yes, but that was John's head when he was old, this is his head when he was but a youth.

The bones, the mummified limbs of ancient holy men isn't the origin of Roman Christendom. Because like tithing, religious ministerial leadership, sermons by that leadership, and religious gatherings aren't limited to Christians and Hebrews, ancestor worship goes further back as well.

My children didn't go to public school, but they aren't boarded up in a dark house. While people believe homeschoolers are kept like Flowers in the Attic. My children were raised around a city filled with everyone and everything. Many things needed to be explained. Yet, instead of allowing them to practice certain traditions and the what not, they were taught just like Ramadan and the Hindu festival of lights, We didn't participate in what some Pentecostals and Christians so called Holidays. No one shed a tear, no one missed out on a Betsy Wetsy, or a Red Ryder BB gun.

Saint Patrick Day? Oh, corned beef and cabbage? How harmless can that be? Diwali is a holiday celebrated in India, which has the most amazing food. Yet, you don't practice it, and if your children met some young Indians and were informed of it, you wouldn't incorporate it into your form of Christianity. In other words you weren't raised with it around you. None of your friends told you about it, so you weren't missing anything as you grew up. Bro, you had Xmas eve, and Xmas day. While when I was a child we had those two, plus the Epiphany. Which went from Xmas eve, to January 6. It celebrated God incarnate in Christ, and the "three" kings. You weren't raised with these things so you didn't miss anything. Fish every Friday!!! I thought that was my mother's schedule, until I was older, I was taught why. Ohio? You probably had macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, the Western Latin Roman and Eastern Greek Roman churches just laugh. When they see those who claim sola scriptura who still keep and practice saint days and masses.

[Evang.Benincasa]

Originally Posted by Aquila

Or do such questions trouble us and frighten us? Or, do we believe that the days of that kind of power and those kinds of miracles are over?

Seriously. Without flippant dismissals, attacks on character, or individual intentions... What is the pneumatology behind these things in Scripture?

Bro, Jesus spit on his fingers, stuck them in a guys ears, and spit on the guys tongue in private Mark 7:33 it is scripture. You willing to give it a go? How about Joseph used a gazing bowl Genesis 44:5. Should we also employ scrying?

Did the apostles teach it? How did the apostles work in the book of acts? Did Paul teach on the use of withered mummified limbs? Yet, the greater question would be "when was the last time your shadow healed a cripple?"

What is behind Joseph's gazing bowl? Laban used divination Genesis 30:27. Yet, the prohibitions in Deuteronomy 18:10, and 1 Samuel 15:23 come way later. Genesis is the beginning showing with Abraham a pagan coming out from among his people to worship the One True Living God. The slow evolution from darkness to light as Jacob also comes out from his pagan relatives. Joseph being apart of a pagan system, reading dreams like any of the other Egyptian priests would do. Moses has an Egyptian name, and is told to use "Egyptian magic" to show pharoah the power of God. Because unlike the magicians, Moses' serpent overpowered their serpents. Questions deserve answers. But speeches on how these things are harmless and really have a Christian past, because we need to know, just seem odd. Especially when you never practiced them while being in the church.


No one has attacked your character, right? Our conversation here is pretty pleasant, correct?

[Esaias]

Salvation isn't a ticket to heaven, its a cleansing from sin. Paganism and idolatry and immorality are sin. Therefore salvation includes having those things removed from your life. Why then would such cleansed people want or even remotely be interested in maintaining commemorations of paganism, immorality, and idolatry?

Its like a woman, married, then widowed. She marries another man, but keeps all the photos of her dead husband on the wall, wears her original ring, celebrates her dead husband's birthday, her original anniversary, etc. When asked why she does such things, she replies "Oh, its just fond memories. My current husband has no problem with it."

Any normal person would say her current husband is essentially some kind of cuckold.

News flash: Jesus isn't some hippie beta cuck soyboy who doesn't mind His bride flirting with her old lovers. He's the alpha (and omega) male Conquistador who literally exterminates entire nations that look awry at His woman. And if she's unfaithful He doesn't have a problem ordering her to be burnt to death.

He loves His bride, so much He died for her. But His name is Jealous, and the fire of the anger of His jealousy burns to the lowest hell.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Evang.Benincasa

In the immortal words of my mother; if 50% of XYZ jumped off a cliff would you follow them? The immortal words of Jesus, "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." I notice you didn't touch the portion of my post where Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy see the group of supposed "I want to be Biblical" or "Where's that in the Bible?" or "I am sola scriptura!" as the biggest bunch of posers who pick and choose as they claim being scripturally correct. Pastors buying their wives heart shaped box with assorted chocolates? A Roman priest once said this, "we may only have one pope, but it seems as you have many?" You claim sola scriptura? You run down holiness standards as if the ultraconservative is some primordial evolutionary down turn of a missing link? Yet, when it comes to these holidays and other such items baptized into Pentecost, it gets labeled harmless, non salvational trifles. Then all of a sudden we get hit with the bones of the prophet resurrecting a corpse, and Paul's tallit healing people? All to justify some decorated mummified foot?

Martin Luther told this story about when he was young and made his pilgrimage to the Vatican in Rome. When he was returning back to Wittenberg he met a man who held a relic in a jeweled box. The man told the young Martin Luther for a small fee, he would show him the severed head of John the Baptist. Martin Luther surprised said it couldn't be, because he just saw it in the Roman city. The relic peddler exclaimed, yes, but that was John's head when he was old, this is his head when he was but a youth.

The bones, the mummified limbs of ancient holy men isn't the origin of Roman Christendom. Because like tithing, religious ministerial leadership, sermons by that leadership, and religious gatherings aren't limited to Christians and Hebrews, ancestor worship goes further back as well.

My children didn't go to public school, but they aren't boarded up in a dark house. While people believe homeschoolers are kept like Flowers in the Attic. My children were raised around a city filled with everyone and everything. Many things needed to be explained. Yet, instead of allowing them to practice certain traditions and the what not, they were taught just like Ramadan and the Hindu festival of lights, We didn't participate in what some Pentecostals and Christians so called Holidays. No one shed a tear, no one missed out on a Betsy Wetsy, or a Red Ryder BB gun.

Saint Patrick Day? Oh, corned beef and cabbage? How harmless can that be? Diwali is a holiday celebrated in India, which has the most amazing food. Yet, you don't practice it, and if your children met some young Indians and were informed of it, you wouldn't incorporate it into your form of Christianity. In other words you weren't raised with it around you. None of your friends told you about it, so you weren't missing anything as you grew up. Bro, you had Xmas eve, and Xmas day. While when I was a child we had those two, plus the Epiphany. Which went from Xmas eve, to January 6. It celebrated God incarnate in Christ, and the "three" kings. You weren't raised with these things so you didn't miss anything. Fish every Friday!!! I thought that was my mother's schedule, until I was older, I was taught why. Ohio? You probably had macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, the Western Latin Roman and Eastern Greek Roman churches just laugh. When they see those who claim sola scriptura who still keep and practice saint days and masses.

Hmmm...

Hey, don't forget about the 4th of July, Veteran's Day, and Memorial Day. For one of the most prolific false religions in America today is the worship of the fascist nation state. The the citizen sacrificing their children on the altars of the modern Molech of a blind patriotism through the unholy sacrament of war, conducted by the high priests of the Pentagon, at the behest of the emperor who is so safely enshrined on Pennsylvania Ave. But, for the sake of keeping the people in a state of heightened anxiety and division, the oracles of Wall Street have marketed two denominations of this false religion. The first denomination waves their flags proudly, guns loaded on their sides, with a bible in the other hand, and a mouth full of bacon, their Make America Great Again hats, with bills flipped high, hiding their shaved heads, as they target any who might disagree with the anathema of "unAmerican!"...The second piously sings the stilted high praises of a secularism whose altars are decked with chalices overflowing with the blood of the unborn and the rancid wedding cake of sodomites for a most unholy Eucharist. Both strategically designed to advance an antichrist agenda by playing all Americans against their best interests to defeat the exaggerated stereotype of the other, for the sake of a blessed corporatism.

And then there's Thanksgiving, a holiday in which we gluttonously gorge ourselves with the bounty of a land that we stole from an indigenous people, while mercilessly conducting a systematic genocide through war, blankets laced with smallpox, and rape.

My point?

Anyone can exaggerate the evils of a topic to avoid actual dialogue. Lol

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Evang.Benincasa

Bro, Jesus spit on his fingers, stuck them in a guys ears, and spit on the guys tongue in private Mark 7:33 it is scripture. You willing to give it a go? How about Joseph used a gazing bowl Genesis 44:5. Should we also employ scrying?

Did the apostles teach it? How did the apostles work in the book of acts? Did Paul teach on the use of withered mummified limbs? Yet, the greater question would be "when was the last time your shadow healed a cripple?"

What is behind Joseph's gazing bowl? Laban used divination Genesis 30:27. Yet, the prohibitions in Deuteronomy 18:10, and 1 Samuel 15:23 come way later. Genesis is the beginning showing with Abraham a pagan coming out from among his people to worship the One True Living God. The slow evolution from darkness to light as Jacob also comes out from his pagan relatives. Joseph being apart of a pagan system, reading dreams like any of the other Egyptian priests would do. Moses has an Egyptian name, and is told to use "Egyptian magic" to show pharoah the power of God. Because unlike the magicians, Moses' serpent overpowered their serpents. Questions deserve answers. But speeches on how these things are harmless and really have a Christian past, because we need to know, just seem odd. Especially when you never practiced them while being in the church.


No one has attacked your character, right? Our conversation here is pretty pleasant, correct?

So far, no one has attacked my character. And the conversation is pleasant.

I see the points regarding scrying etc.

But they are unrelated to the power that was in Elisha's bones, the virtue (or power) that departed from Christ as a desperate woman touched his garments, and the handkerchiefs that were made from Paul's aprons that delivered the sick and demonized.

Or are you implying that this power present in these instances is the same behind scrying and Egyptian magic? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Esaias

Salvation isn't a ticket to heaven, its a cleansing from sin. Paganism and idolatry and immorality are sin. Therefore salvation includes having those things removed from your life. Why then would such cleansed people want or even remotely be interested in maintaining commemorations of paganism, immorality, and idolatry?

Its like a woman, married, then widowed. She marries another man, but keeps all the photos of her dead husband on the wall, wears her original ring, celebrates her dead husband's birthday, her original anniversary, etc. When asked why she does such things, she replies "Oh, its just fond memories. My current husband has no problem with it."

Any normal person would say her current husband is essentially some kind of cuckold.

News flash: Jesus isn't some hippie beta cuck soyboy who doesn't mind His bride flirting with her old lovers. He's the alpha (and omega) male Conquistador who literally exterminates entire nations that look awry at His woman. And if she's unfaithful He doesn't have a problem ordering her to be burnt to death.

He loves His bride, so much He died for her. But His name is Jealous, and the fire of the anger of His jealousy burns to the lowest hell.