Personal Blog/Diary

Here I write about anything and everything.

Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday?

Some have charged in recent years that Easter and Christmas have been “stolen” from pagans and Christianized, or that they’re not really Christian holidays, or that we’re ignorant to speak of “the reason for the season” being Christ.

It has become yet another excuse for scoffers to poke fun at Christians and say their own religion (or lack of) is superior.  Or even for Christians themselves to scorn Christmas or Easter, refusing to celebrate them.

In truth, Christ is the reason for the season for Christians.  Whatever the reasons others celebrate them, wherever many of the customs come from (whether Christian or pagan), for centuries, Christians have celebrated the birth and death/resurrection of Christ on Christmas and Easter.

The entire year in the Orthodox Church is full of various feast and fast days based on the life and death of Christ; Christmas and Easter (Pascha) form a large part on which the chronology of the rest of the year is based.

The source of the idea of Christmas being a pagan holiday, and that everyone who celebrates it is offending God by worshipping Mithras, appears to go back to the Catholic vs. Protestant wars and conflicts several centuries ago.  This led to Puritans forbidding it and, for a time, England outlawing Christmas.

Such conflicts can hardly be expected to produce reliable facts about the Other.  And in recent times, these urban legends have turned up again with a new vengeance, in the Internet religious “wars” of Christians vs. atheists/Pagans, or some Christian sects vs. a supposedly pagan-infused Catholic Church (aka The Whore of Babylon).

But they are no more reliable than those stories of Wiccans worshipping Satan or Satanic Ritual Abuse.

And no, this idea of people scoffing at Christians and invalidating all our holidays as “fake,” “pagan” and “stolen” is not just some Christian persecution complex.  Someone who is NOT a Christian–who is, in fact, a Wiccan–addresses these very accusations with the truth about Christian holidays here, here and here.

Cassie Noble Beyer is not a Christian apologist, or defensive about Christianity, by any means.  She simply wants to debunk myths and encourage people of alternative religions to be kind and truthful rather than militant and offensive.  She writes,

Three times a year – Easter, Halloween, and Christmas – I find myself assaulted by claims of how Christian practices and beliefs were entirely cobbled together from pagan sources. There are filters I put on certain searches in order to limit my annoyance, but I still run into them.

First, they are generally written with a tone of superiority and contempt. They aren’t neutrally providing information but instead putting forth arguments meant to ridicule and demean. OK, Christianity isn’t your thing. Why try ruining it for those who believe?

Second, is the fact that most of the arguments you find out there are simply wrong. Not only are they factually wrong, but some don’t even make much sense if you think about them.

Third – and this is my favorite – at least half the time when I attempt to object, I am accused of being overly defensive about my faith by people who don’t know my faith, which becomes comical as Christianity isn’t my thing either.

People just presume, because heaven forbid someone would actually be interested in facts. I just don’t like people being mean-spirited about dumb things.

She also writes,

Bad history is bad.  It misdirects, misinforms, and makes its champions (and sometimes the community in which they are members) look ignorant and hateful.

Theologically, Wicca and Christianity are most certainly at odds, as previously discussed about Christian Wicca.  But that doesn’t mean Wiccans and Christians have to be at odds.  Nothing in either religion says members have to be awful to one another.

But a lot of Wiccans are former Christians, and Christianity is the majority religion in the US, so when a Wiccan is angry at a religion or religions in general, Christianity often bears the brunt of it.

Why?  Partially because of bad historyThe Christian Church gets blamed for all sorts of things that happened hundreds of years ago, didn’t happen at all, or happened in a context quite different from modern Western society.

Bad history matters.

(This, by the way, is also why I do not consider Wiccans to be Satan-worshippers, or Muslims to be warmongers.  I prefer to let members of a religion define themselves and their rites, because–after all these myths I’ve encountered about my own religion–I know what it feels like.)

She also writes,

Studying both history and religion, I cross paths with a fair number of people angry and jaded about both specific religions and religion in general, and they support their position with history.

Rather than simply being non-religious, these individuals are actively against it, calling it manipulative, fraudulent, and/or violent. Sometimes specific examples get conflated into tremendous generalized accusations.  Other times, the information is just wrong.

Christianity, being the majority religion in the U.S., bears the brunt of ill-informed objections.

It’s one thing to simply disbelieve in another religion’s teachings.  We all disbelieve in something, because our own beliefs are not compatible with every other belief.

But there’s a considerable number of erroneous facts commonly put forth to paint Christianity (and other religions) as not merely wrong but fraudulent, an actively constructed lie made for the benefit of a few.

So you see, Christians are not just imagining this.  Heck, I have actually encountered a man who not only got up on his soapbox haranguing against Christians every time I saw him, but who said he was on a campaign to stamp out Christianity.  Then, after all his moralizing, was put in jail for snapping dirty pictures of underage girls.

And no, we don’t have to just bend over and accept the accusations as true lest we be “overly defensive” and “resistant to facts.”  The supposed “facts” we’re countering are not actually “facts.”  How is it “too defensive” to counter myth with fact?

I have run into complaints about using Christian sources.  Christian sources generally seem to be the ones interested in debunking myths about their holidays.  But anyway, here you go, a Pagan source which says the same things as the Christian ones.  AND she has credentials as a professor of Humanities.

She also writes, referring to the use of December 25 and various customs which may have pagan roots themselves,

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, whenever that birth might have been. Having to choose a day, they decided to have it coincide with a known holiday rather than just throwing a dart at a calendar.

December 25 is not, however, the birth of either Horus or Mithras, which are common claims. Neither of them have a celebrated birthday.

…The Saturnalia was a period of time starting on December 17 and extending several days, although length varies throughout the Roman period. People connect it with Christmas for a couple big reasons.

The first is the giving of presents. Really, only one culture can decide giving presents is a nice thing to do, and then the practice is tainted for anyone else?

The second is the idea of role-reversals, where masters served a meal to slaves, commoners could speak out against betters, and so on. This became quite a medieval practice as well. …

Furthermore, how does that in any way invalidate the story of Christmas? Yes, it was probably borrowed from a pagan culture, but it doesn’t speak at all to the meaning of Christmas or any of the religious practices associated with it. People decided they liked continuing to have an excuse to misbehave.

…Besides all this, purpose is important. If you are celebrating the birth of Christ, then you’re celebrating the birth of Christ. Your celebration doesn’t magically redirect to some pagan god.

So, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what day you do it. Christians just standardized it by placing it on December 25.

Also, Collier’s Encyclopedia backs up the Catholic Encyclopedia, both of which have articles on Christmas.  Both give the dominant theory (which is not depicted as confirmed fact) that Christmas was given the December 25 date in the 4th century to go along with a pagan festival.

Collier’s gives potential pagan roots for many customsBut both also say that Christmas was already being celebrated in various places at various times long before this happened.

That is, and has always been, my basic point, ever since I first encountered the “haters” around 1996, and in the 20 years following. 

I knew for some time–including from a Christian newsletter from Focus on the Family–that Christmas and Easter included customs with possibly pagan sources.  This did not bother me.

But I also knew that Santa, while fiction (sorry to break it to you), was based on a real person, St. Nicholas, and that St. Nick originally had his own feast day separate from Christmas (still celebrated in many places).

He was not invented to baptize a pagan tradition, either, but already existed as a real person, no matter where all the Santa customs came from.  His feast day was set so long ago (sixth century) that both Western and Eastern churches celebrate it.

As immigrants from the Germanic and Nordic lands settled in the United States the image of St. Nicholas, or “Sinterklaas,” as he is known among the Dutch, slowly changed to that of “Santa Claus” with little tie to the spirituality of Christianity. —OrthodoxWiki

Note that German and Nordic lands weren’t Christianized until much later than his feast day was set.  See here and here.  So while the Santa customs of much later times may have been from pagan sources, the name “Santa Claus” is a corruption of “Sinterklaas,” which means “St. Nicholas.”  And St. Nicholas is not pagan at all.

This page gives an interesting history of Russian celebrations of St. Nicholas, and how they were banned and transformed into general “Grandfather Frost” customs during communism.

I also knew that December 25 was likely an erroneous date for Christ’s actual birth.

1996 is the first time I heard–from my ex-boyfriend Peter, once a Christian, who turned atheist then Pagan–that the roots of Christmas and Easter themselves were pagan.  That we stole the holidays.  That Santa was based on some pagan elf rather than St. Nicholas.  That paganism is the reason we celebrate.

No, the roots of Christmas and Easter are the birth and death of Christ!  If not for the birth and death of Christ, we would not celebrate the birth and death of Christ!  We would celebrate something else, or nothing at all.

I looked in my Collier’s Encyclopedia, which contradicted what he told me, saying that the celebration of Christmas already existed prior to setting the date with some pagan festival.  The date, really, is inconsequential.  (I forget what I said about Easter, and don’t want to go dig up the e-mails to find out.)

Then over the following years–on Internet forums, in real life, on Facebook, even from Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory (who was snipping about his mother’s Christian beliefs)–I heard/read that Christmas is really a pagan holiday and we Christians are idiots to think we’re celebrating the birth of Christ.  Or that Easter is really celebrating some spring fertility goddess.

And whether it was about Christmas/Easter or about Christianity in general, I’d hear the snips at every SCA event, and on SCA newsgroups.

One entire SCA event was ruined by a guy (mentioned above, the sex offender) who peppered my husband and me with all sorts of criticisms of how our religion is so fake and horrible.  He then turned around and tried to make our shire website into an anti-Christian diatribe.

The ridicule even where everyone was supposedly “chivalrous” was one of the main reasons why I stepped away from the SCA for many years.

Recently, someone even wrote a letter to the local newspaper saying that Christmas is really a pagan holiday–and that Christmas trees are forbidden in the Bible.  (The Bible says nothing about Christmas trees, which did not exist back then.)

I also encountered it around 1998 or 1999 when I was sent the Heirophant’s Questionnaire (more on this below).  Question #49 reads,

Why are so many Christian holidays on the same day as Pagan holidays?  Couldn’t the early Church fathers have converted pagans only by appealing to their reason and/or faith if Christianity really is the true religion?

So right there is solid evidence for you that people are using this to ridicule Christians, rather than simply presenting a history lesson.

But back to my sources:

Another of my sources is a biblical historian who gives his sources, on an award-winning website of biblical archaeology.  This website and its corresponding magazine are highly respected, not just by Christians but by a wide range of institutions or magazines/newspapers including Time, Harvard, the New York Times and the Smithsonian.  So hardly some hack on the Internet.

Also, one of my sources is William J. Tighe, an associate professor of history at Muhlenberg College, so hardly some hack on the Internet.  As he writes,

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival.

Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival.

So apparently the only ones making this into an “issue” for which to harass and mock Christians, are people with axes to grind against Christianity.  And there are plenty of them, and they are loud and obnoxious.

However, the basis for their harassment and mocking–which they consider to be the “facts” we Christians are “too defensive” about–is actually not true at all.  And Tighe has the credentials to say so.

The Santa Claus traditions have many pagan elements, but the original Santa was Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children.  He was a real person who lived in Asia Minor in the early days of the Church:

Saint Nicholas by Catherine Fournier

St. Nicholas: Discovering the truth about Santa Claus

Christmas was not “invented” to “Christianize” a pagan festival.  Only the date is potentially “pagan,” and even that is under some dispute. 

Christmas was apparently celebrated as far back as 200AD in Egypt (in SPRING), and at different times of the year, depending on how the local church calculated the birthdate of Christ.

The date was under dispute for some time, as church authorities tried to figure out what exact date Jesus was born.  It was celebrated in various parts of the world before the date of certain pagan feasts (December 25) was finally set for Christmas by Rome in the fourth century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has an exhaustive history of the celebrations, along with origins of some Christmas traditions, in Christmas.

But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.

Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance. –William J. Tighe, Calculating Christmas

 

The crucial thing is not, “Did the early Christians get the date of Christmas right?” It is, rather, “What mattered to them as they determined the date of Christmas?”

And when you look at that, you again immediately realize that what dominates their minds is not Diana, Isis, sun worship, or anything else in the pagan religious world. What interests them is, from our modern multicultural perspective, stunningly insular.

Their debates are consumed, not by longing for goddess worship, or pagan mythology, or a desire to import Isis and Diana into the Faith, but the exact details of the New Testament record of Jesus’ death, alloyed with a Jewish—-not pagan—-theory about when Jewish—-not pagan—-prophets die.

They don’t care a bit how pagan priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.

They care intensely about how Levitical priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. These Christians are completely riveted on Scripture and details of Jewish and Christian history and tradition.

They don’t give a hoot what sun worshipers, Osiris devotees, or Isis fans might think. –Mark Shea, Everybody knows that Christmas is really just a warmed-over Celebration of the Feast of the Sol Invictus: Guess what? Everybody’s wrong!

 

The present Feast, commemorating the Nativity in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, was established by the Church. Its origin goes back to the time of the Apostles.

In the Apostolic Constitutions (Section 3, 13) it says, “Brethren, observe the feastdays; and first of all the Birth of Christ, which you are to celebrate on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month.”

…In the second century St Clement of Alexandria also indicates that the day of the Nativity of Christ is December 25. In the third century St Hippolytus of Rome mentions the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, and appoints the Gospel readings for this day from the opening chapters of St Matthew.

…In 302, during the persecution of Christians by Maximian, 20,000 Christians of Nicomedia (December 28) were burned in church on the very Feast of the Nativity of Christ….

St John Chrysostom, in a sermon which he gave in the year 385, points out that the Feast of the Nativity of Christ is ancient, and indeed very ancient. –OCA website, The Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Though the pagan festivities may have served as a catalyst, the selection of this feast for this day was neither sudden nor arbitrary.

In fact, December 25th had already enjoyed preeminence among Christians as the birthday of Christ long before the papal decree. According to Pope Benedict XVI, the first person to clearly assign Christmas to its current feast day was St. Hippolytus of Rome.

…Thus, the common criticism of the celebration of Christmas on December 25 made by some Christian sects — i.e., that the date of Christmas is another trapping of paganism in which the Catholic Church has gone astray — is not based on fact.

The choice of December 25th as the liturgical feast for Christ’s birth is far more likely to have been an independent, patristic tradition of early Christianity.

The fact that it shares the same day as the birth of the sun god seems more based on the Roman calculation of the winter solstice.

The pagans observed the birth of their deity when the “great light” was at its lowest point of the year, calculated as December 25. –Hugh O’Donnell, The 25th of December Pagan Feast or Patristic Tradition?

More on this:

“How December 25 Became Christmas” by Andrew McGowan

Christmas was never a pagan holiday by Marian T. Horvat, PhD

Christmas, Saturnalia, or Sol Invictus? by Jon Sorensen

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies by Pastor Joseph Abrahamson presents passages from credible sources from long before December 25 was fixed, showing that date was already considered his birthday.  However, his links are now dated, so instead use this for the passage by Clement of Alexandria and here for Hippolytus.

Even Pope Benedict weighed in on this:

“The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion.

However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception.” -Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal; Pope Benedict XVI; The Spirit of the Liturgy (pp. 105-107)

There are examples of pagan customs that were appropriated by Christians to articulate Christian truths for the purpose of evangelization. I don’t dispute this. The use of Greek philosophy in the early Church is a great example.

The reason I can accept this with confidence is because there are writings by the Church Fathers (both pro and con) that acknowledge that this was their intention.

You don’t get that with the dating of Christmas. No Church Father ever uses evangelizing pagans as a justification for accepting Dec 25th over Jan 6. It is always related to the Annunciation or the Crucifixion. –Jon Sorensen, Christmas, Saturnalia, or Sol Invictus?

Here are websites debunking the linking of Jesus with Mithras:

Mithra vs. Jesus by Tekton Apologetics

Was Jesus Christ just a Copycat Savior Myth?

Mithras by Mark McFall

The Myth of the Pagan Christmas; or, Why Stephen Fry was Wrong on Mythmas by Chris Jensen Romer

Here is a paper, refuting the supposed “pagan” roots of Christian beliefs and Christmas, which is well-cited with various sources.  (Alternate source if this no longer works: here, here and here.)

It’s why silly charges that “Christmas trees are pagan” and the like just won’t stick. We probably stole them from some pagans. But they’ve been decidedly Baptized. They’re specific enough to upset the ACLU. That’s good enough for me. I would be concerned if they had lost their offense.

Neither did we borrow the date for Christmas from the pagans (that’s a 19th century German myth). The use of December 25th for Christmas predates the feast for Sol Invictus, instituted by Marcus Aurelius, by some decades. So it’s not about the winter solstice (sorry again, pagans).

Neither is the Virgin Mary a thinly disguised version of some pagan Mother Goddess. She’s nothing like her. And if the art forms of such mother goddesses influenced later iconography, well so be it. We stole their art forms. Again, sorry about that.

…Beware instead the grinches that lurk everywhere looking for pagan practices, seeking to purify a holiday which puritan ancestors long ago sought to abolish. –Fr. Stephen Freeman, Why Pagans Aren’t Really Pagan

Now on to Easter:

It is claimed—and it is not widely known that there is no solid consensus on this—that the word “Easter” is derived from the name of a pagan fertility goddess, “Estre.”

Yet the Church, since ancient times, has referred to the celebration of the Resurrection as “Pascha,” the Greek/Hebrew for “Passover,” and not “Easter,” thereby emphasizing that the Resurrection is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Passover….

This celebration is not based on pagan rituals; it is based on that which is revealed to us in Scripture and celebrated by the Church since apostolic times in the Church’s Holy Tradition.

Perhaps the term “Easter” is based on pagan terminology—hence it is appropriate for us to use the proper term, “Pascha”—but the eternal victory of Our Savior that we celebrate and in which we participate is hardly based on paganism. —Is Easter a pagan feast?

Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Easter.

It is an ancient Orthodox Christian tradition to have red eggs at Pascha. Many people are surprised to find out that this tradition dates to the Apostolic era. The custom of presenting each other with a red egg at Pascha reflects an interchange between Mary Magdalene and Tiberius Caesar….

Mary [was afflicted with] seven demons: those of pride, envy, wrath, avarice, sloth, gluttony, and lust. Mary struggled against the fierce attacks of these demons, and never succumbed to them.

She was unable, by her own power, to totally cast them away from herself, and it was thus necessary for Jesus Himself to cast these demons out of her. Mary Magdalene is referred to in the New Testament as the “woman out of Whom Jesus cast the seven demons.”

Mary Magdalene was about six years younger than the Panagia, the Theotokos, and was well known to her. The Mother of God loved her like a sister, and it is thus not surprising that Mary of Magdala became one of her Son’s followers.

Apparently she was a woman of some means, and her family of some significance for she helped support the work of Jesus and His disciples, and later had access to Caesar in Rome.

…Mary Magdalene is painted in iconography holding the red egg once presented to Tiberius Caesar, which she used to explain the mystery of Christ rising from a sealed tomb.

…It had become customary in Orthodox Russia to not only dye eggs red, but also to decorate them in the “pysankyy” tradition. Wealthy people and the Tsar himself had elegant jeweled eggs produced to give as gifts. The Fabergé eggs are exactly this.

The “easter bunny” and his “eggs” are a secular version of this sacred tradition.

The western tradition of dying and decorating “easter eggs” developed after the Tsars sent Fabergé eggs to the monarchs in Britain, and such decorated eggs became fashionable among all classes of people in England. —The Tradition of the Red Pascha Egg

Here William J. Tighe presents the origins of the celebration of Easter.  You will see that Jewish, not pagan, practices figured into the dating of Easter.

This article shows that the Resurrection has been a centerpoint of the Church since the earliest days.

No one who has been through Orthodox Lent and Pascha, would think Easter is based on anything from paganism.  The whole focus of practice, fasting and celebration during that time (and any other time), is on the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ:

You reflect on and repent for your sins.  You are mystically present with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, during the Trial, and during the Crucifixion.

Services are full of the depths of sorrow for sin, Christ’s purpose on Earth, and hopeful teachings of what will happen to the souls of the dead.  Then you rejoice as Christ is resurrected.

There is nothing here about pagan goddesses or fuzzy bunnies.

Also, the dating of Easter/Pascha was originally based on the dating of the Jewish Passover.  You will note that while “Easter” is an English word, the rest of the world mostly uses names based off “Passover,” such as “Pascha” in Greek (see a list here):

The other difference in the determination of Easter between the Orthodox and other Christian Churches concerns the date of Passover.

Jews originally celebrated Passover on the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Christians, therefore, celebrated Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the other tragic events, which gave rise to the dispersal of the Jews, Passover sometimes preceded the vernal equinox. This was occasioned by the dependence of the dispersed Jews upon local pagan calendars for the calculation of Passover.

As a consequence, most Christians eventually ceased to regulate the observance of Easter by the Jewish Passover. Their purpose, of course, was to preserve the original practice of celebrating Easter following the vernal equinox. –Fr. Lewis J. Patsavos, PhD, The Calendar of the Orthodox Church

(Christians celebrated on a Sunday because Christ rose on a Sunday.)  Also see here.

The Orthodox date for Easter is based on a decree of the Council of Nicaea, Asia Minor, held in 325 A.D.  According to this decree, Easter must be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon of the vernal equinox but always after the Hebrew Passover to maintain the Biblical sequence of events of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The Orthodox Christian churches have adhered strictly to this formula. –GOARCH News Release, April 26, 2016, Orthodox Christians to Observe Pascha (Easter) May 1st

 

The Eastern Orthodox Church also applies the formula so that Easter always falls after Passover, since the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ took place after he entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.

In the Western Church, Easter sometimes precedes Passover by weeks. –Borgna Brunner, A Tale of Two Easters

 

Those Christians who originally converted from Judaism celebrated Easter in accordance with the Jewish calendar, on the same day that the feast of the Passover, ‘Pascha’, was celebrated, that day being the 14th of the lunar month of Nisan, regardless of the day of the week upon which it fell.

The Churches of Asia Minor followed this practice whilst the other Churches both in the East and in the West, always celebrated Easter on the Sunday following this date.

…By the third century AD, all the Churches had agreed upon celebrating Easter on the Sunday following 14th of Nisan. This date was determined in accordance with the Jewish calculation of Passover, on the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Following the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, however, the Jews of the Diaspora depended upon local pagan calendars for their calculations. The feast of Passover consequently sometimes preceded the vernal equinox and most Christians abandoned the practice of regulating the date of Easter through the date of Passover in order to avoid the inaccuracy occasioned by the dependence on these calendars.

…The issue was finally brought before the First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea in AD 325, which decreed that Easter must not be calculated according to Passover, but that it must be celebrated after the vernal equinox, specifically, on the Sunday following the first full moon occurring after the date of the vernal equinox.

Subsequently, the regulation concerning Passover was interpreted as requiring that Easter be celebrated after Passover. The Eastern Church then reverted to the original method for the determination of the date of Passover and consequently of Easter. —H.E. Metropolitan Makarios Tillyrides of Zimbabwe, When do Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter?

The dating of Easter has been subject to much debate down through the centuries, including some who used the Jewish Passover to date it, and some who decried this practice.

The Orthodox Church uses a different calendar (Julian) to date Easter, and must date it after Passover.  This is why the Western and Eastern churches do not always celebrate it on the same dates.

But you see that the equinox dating of Easter is to preserve the equinox dating of Passover, NOT to adopt pagan practices, as some have accused.

It seems that even the symbol of the Cross is not safe from revisionism.  A while back, probably around 1998 or 1999, I was confronted with an outrageously ignorant question, asking:

Does it bother you that the cross, supposedly a Christian symbol, was actually stolen from the Egyptians? Why or why not?

(The Egyptian cross, the ankh, was a male-female symbol similar in concept to the yin-yang. When the Christians stole the ankh from the Egyptians, they removed the female symbol, or yoni, leaving only the masculine symbol–a subtle way of reinforcing the idea that women are lesser beings).

You see, somebody on a Christian Usenet newsgroup–probably rec.music.christian–asked if anybody wanted to answer her questionnaire, saying that if they were answered to her satisfaction she would convert.  I volunteered, so she sent me a modified version of Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire.

(One question: “Why are you trying to convert me?”  Answer: “Because you asked.”  No, I was not an “Evangelical proselytizing zealot,” and never have been, but I’m always willing to answer questions from honest seekers.)

This questionnaire is obviously meant to be witty and a way to shoot down overzealous Evangelicals, supposedly well-researched etc.

But as you can see if you have any knowledge of Christian history and theology–and especially if you’ve been looking around the websites I reference here–that questionnaire is full of ludicrously funny questions, full of ignorance about Christianity.

I don’t know where the “research” was done, but it sure wasn’t in theology books or a Bible–probably, rather, various hate sites around the notoriously inaccurate Web.  (Here is one person’s answers to those questions, by a former atheist who turned Christian.)

I had no idea the questionnaire would be so huge (her version had about 150 questions).  And she did not mention that it wasn’t her own creation, but came off some website copyrighted 1997.

(I found it just now by accident.  When I first wrote this page, there was even a forum for people to answer the questions, at http://forum.cygnus-study.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3.)

Thinking she actually sat down and come up with all or most of the questions and was serious, I sighed and decided to plod through it, answering as best I could.

For question 121, after saying that whoever came up with that theory obviously knew nothing about history–the Cross came from the crucifixion, and the manner of the crucifixion from the Romans–I heard no more about such theories.

But now, in doing a little Web searching on the symbolism of the ankh, I’ve come across similar theories.  Apparently, now people are saying the Cross comes from the ankh.

This theory does not mention the anti-woman element, just that Coptic Christians thought it would be a good idea to incorporate the popular ankh into their symbolism, and the other patriarchates soon copied them.

So now there are people saying that, yet again, the Christians stole something from the pagans.

(Some people don’t care where the Cross symbol came from, while some hate anything Christian, and take any excuse to accuse the Church of stealing pagan holidays/symbols/deities and call Christians “ignorant” for calling these “stolen items” Christian.)

Now, as is clearly shown in the above links, we cannot trust the sources of these theories to tell us the true origins of Christmas and Easter.  So why should we trust them on this ankh theory?  Instead, here is an extensive article by the Catholic Encyclopedia on the origins of the Cross symbol.

Also, this article shows the true meaning of the Cross for the Church.

Yes, the Coptic Church seems to have based its cross on the ankh.  But that’s the Coptic Church, and there was nothing sexist about it.

There are many different Cross symbols, which seem to have developed on their own, and all go back to the Crucifixion–not to making a pagan symbol anti-woman.

Also see this article by W. Ward Gasque, which debunks the idea that Christianity basically stole from the Egyptians.

But just in case my research above is not enough to convince you, if you want to hear from an atheist–here ya go: Tim O’Neill’s History for Atheists website, an atheist writing for atheists, showing that the myths of Christmas/Easter being pagan are false.  See especially:
THE GREAT MYTHS 2: CHRISTMAS, MITHRAS AND PAGANISM
EASTER, ISHTAR, EOSTRE AND EGGS
Pagan Christmas (which also links to many other sources)

Probably originally posted around 2005/2006/2007, and updated and revised over the years since.

Index to my theology/church opinion pages:

Page 1:

Tithing
End Times and Christian Zionism
God’s Purpose/Supremacy of God Doctrine
Cat and Dog Theology
Raising One’s Hands in Worship
Christian Music
On the “still, small voice” and Charismatic sign gifts
On church buildings
The Message Bible
The Purpose-Driven Life
The Relevance Doctrine, i.e. Marketing Churches to Seekers
Republican Party
Abortion Protests
Creation
The idea that God has someone in mind for you
Literalism in Biblical interpretation
Miscellaneous

Page 2:

Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology,  Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it
More about Pat Robertson
Dr. Richard Eby and others who claim to have been to Heaven
Women in Marriage/the Church
Spiritual Abuse
Other Resources

Page 3:

Why do bad things happen?
Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts?  Or, how should we evangelize, then?
Angels: Is “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti a divine revelation or fiction?
Halloween: Not the Devil’s Holiday!
Hell and the Nature of God
Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday?
Is everybody going to Hell except Christians?
How could a loving God who prohibits murder, command the genocide of the Canaanite peoples?
What about predestination?
Musings on Sin, Salvation and Discipleship
An Ancient View which is in the Bible, yet new to the west–Uncreated Energies of God

Page 4:

Dialogues
The Didache
Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go?
Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?  (also in “Life” section, where it’s more likely to be updated)
Does the Pill cause abortions, or is that just another weird Internet or extremist right-wing rumor?
What about Missional Churches, Simple Churches, Fluid Churches, Organic Churches, House Churches or Neighborhood Churches?
Is Wine from the Devil–or a Gift from God?
What is Worship?
Evangelistic Trips to Already Christianized Countries
Fraternities, Sororities, Masonic Lodge
Was Cassie Bernall a Martyr?
Some Awesome Things heard in the Lamentations Service (Good Friday evening) during Holy Week

Conversion Story

Phariseeism in the Church

Why do bad things happen?

Here is an excellent article on this subject, with several contributors: Why do the Righteous Suffer?–Sermons from Presbyterian (USA) Pastors

Also see question 14 from the Presbyterian Study Catechism of 1998.

Since I converted to Orthodoxy after writing this webpage, now for an Orthodox point of view:

Why Does Evil Exist? by a guy named Jeremiah who includes a pic from Boondock Saints on his blog post.  😀

Talking to Children when bad things happen by Rev. Deacon Nicholas Jannakos

Greek Orthodox Church of America’s brochure, Why do bad things happen to good people?

Written between probably 2005 and 2006

Index to my theology/church opinion pages:

Page 1:

Tithing
End Times and Christian Zionism
God’s Purpose/Supremacy of God Doctrine
Cat and Dog Theology
Raising One’s Hands in Worship
Christian Music
On the “still, small voice” and Charismatic sign gifts
On church buildings
The Message Bible
The Purpose-Driven Life
The Relevance Doctrine, i.e. Marketing Churches to Seekers
Republican Party
Abortion Protests
Creation
The idea that God has someone in mind for you
Literalism in Biblical interpretation
Miscellaneous

Page 2:

Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology,  Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it
More about Pat Robertson
Dr. Richard Eby and others who claim to have been to Heaven
Women in Marriage/the Church
Spiritual Abuse
Other Resources

Page 3:

Why do bad things happen?
Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts?  Or, how should we evangelize, then?
Angels: Is “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti a divine revelation or fiction?
Halloween: Not the Devil’s Holiday!
Hell and the Nature of God 
Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday?
Is everybody going to Hell except Christians?
How could a loving God who prohibits murder, command the genocide of the Canaanite peoples?
What about predestination?
Musings on Sin, Salvation and Discipleship
An Ancient View which is in the Bible, yet new to the west–Uncreated Energies of God

Page 4:

Dialogues
The Didache
Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go?
Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?  (also in “Life” section, where it’s more likely to be updated)
Does the Pill cause abortions, or is that just another weird Internet or extremist right-wing rumor?
What about Missional Churches, Simple Churches, Fluid Churches, Organic Churches, House Churches or Neighborhood Churches?
Is Wine from the Devil–or a Gift from God?
What is Worship?
Evangelistic Trips to Already Christianized Countries
Fraternities, Sororities, Masonic Lodge
Was Cassie Bernall a Martyr?
Some Awesome Things heard in the Lamentations Service (Good Friday evening) during Holy Week

Conversion Story

Phariseeism in the Church

On Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology, Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it

These doctrines suffer from the serious error of thinking God is there to make you rich and/or to make all your dreams come true.

God never promised he would provide us with a spouse, a fancy house, a wonderful career, perfect health, or even children.  God never promised he would take away all our suffering, hard times, or poverty.

He did promise to keep us fed and clothed and to be with us as someone who can empathize.  Suffering, hard times and poverty are seen as leading us to salvation.

“Name it and claim it” sounds like demanding God do something for you, rather than “humbly bringing all your requests to him.”  Who are we to demand God give us anything?

Word-Faith Theology

Word-Faith Movement

Also see here, where I go into more detail on the subject.

Written around 2005

Index to my theology/church opinion pages:

Page 1:

Tithing
End Times and Christian Zionism
God’s Purpose/Supremacy of God Doctrine
Cat and Dog Theology
Raising One’s Hands in Worship
Christian Music
On the “still, small voice” and Charismatic sign gifts
On church buildings
The Message Bible
The Purpose-Driven Life
The Relevance Doctrine, i.e. Marketing Churches to Seekers
Republican Party
Abortion Protests
Creation
The idea that God has someone in mind for you
Literalism in Biblical interpretation
Miscellaneous

Page 2:

Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology, Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it
More about Pat Robertson
Dr. Richard Eby and others who claim to have been to Heaven
Women in Marriage/the Church
Spiritual Abuse
Other Resources

Page 3:

Why do bad things happen?
Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts?  Or, how should we evangelize, then?
Angels: Is “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti a divine revelation or fiction?
Halloween: Not the Devil’s Holiday!
Hell and the Nature of God
Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday?
Is everybody going to Hell except Christians?
How could a loving God who prohibits murder, command the genocide of the Canaanite peoples?
What about predestination?
Musings on Sin, Salvation and Discipleship
An Ancient View which is in the Bible, yet new to the west–Uncreated Energies of God

Page 4:

Dialogues
The Didache
Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go?
Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?  (also in “Life” section, where it’s more likely to be updated)
Does the Pill cause abortions, or is that just another weird Internet or extremist right-wing rumor?
What about Missional Churches, Simple Churches, Fluid Churches, Organic Churches, House Churches or Neighborhood Churches?
Is Wine from the Devil–or a Gift from God?
What is Worship?
Evangelistic Trips to Already Christianized Countries
Fraternities, Sororities, Masonic Lodge
Was Cassie Bernall a Martyr?
Some Awesome Things heard in the Lamentations Service (Good Friday evening) during Holy Week

Conversion Story

Phariseeism in the Church

Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts? Or, how *should* we evangelize, then?

An amusing and scathing take on the value of criticism in the church–as opposed to saying, “You shouldn’t criticize praise music/popular writers/mega-churches/people doing the Lord’s work”: “Talk Hard” by the late Internet Monk

Moving New Religions from the Fringes to Mainstream shows that we must critique these things, since many trends damaging to the witness of the Church have been allowed to go on, unchecked.

For example, says the writer, Philip Johnson,

Laity and pastors alike seem to be enamoured with Christian fiction, particularly novels that cast new religions and alternate spiritualities in the role of an identifiable social and spiritual enemy.

This observation is supported by the massive sales for Frank Peretti’s novels This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, and the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

He refers to the plots of such works as propaganda, morality tales, McCarthyism.  He says that depicting new religions as “the source of Antichristic power” leads readers to not respect the followers of those religions, which damages our witness to them.

He also is disturbed that the attitudes of readers toward these religions are being “powerfully influenced by pop novels.”

This page also addresses courses you find in evangelical churches these days on how to evangelize, discipleship, etc.

For example, he complains that many of these courses have apparently not been “road-tested” with non-Christians who are not influenced by churches.  The courses give answers to questions that are important to Christians, but often have little in common with questions people are actually asking.

He also says that Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life program is a product of “Southern California Christian culture,” and does not work so well in other cultures.

I know what he means, because I have experienced a few of these courses.  For example, one course gave a lot of pat answers to a list of stock questions a non-Christian might ask, but these answers may not always work in the real world.

One stock question was, “But what about people who sincerely believe in their religion?”  The pat answer was, “You can be sincere, but sincerely wrong.”

This might work on some people.  But there are many people in this day of cynicism and alternative religions who would say to that, “Well, how do you know that you’re not sincerely wrong?”

Or, “That’s arrogant!”

Or, “My religion calls that attitude, morally reprehensible.”

Or, “I’m a Pagan, and you’re focusing on the path rather than the ultimate goal of religion.  The kind of person your religion makes you, is more important than which religion.”

The problem is getting into a logical argument over religion, which cannot be proved scientifically.  If you want an effective witness, then your life must be your most important tool.  Show that Christianity is different; don’t just use theological arguments, because a determined person can always find some way to disagree with them.

Here’s a more useful tool for witnessing to Pagans: “How to Share the Gospel with Pagans,” written by a Pagan.

DON’T use Chick Tracts.  The ignorance and paranoia in these tracts is appalling, as is the intolerance (see how Roman Catholics are treated).

They seem to have gotten their information about witches, Satanists, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.–

–from 700 Club episodes, Bob Larson, medieval propaganda, and various other questionable sources–

–rather than asking real, honest-to-goodness Wiccans etc.

If any of that depraved stuff described in the tracts does happen, it’s probably done by serial killers and rebellious teenagers who want to shock their parents.

It is not the practice of actual Wiccans to drink blood, sacrifice animals or babies, pledge allegiance to Satan, or any of that stuff.  For the truth, go here and here.

Also, some of the other tracts are, frankly, appalling: In the “Happy Halloween” tract, a child gets hit by a car and goes to Hell.  The tract about gays portrays ridiculous, stereotypical caricatures, and celebrates a child’s use of the word “queer.”  Various tracts about Roman Catholics say that they are going to Hell, too.

Any D&D gamer can tell you that “Dark Dungeons” has nothing to do with actual Dungeons and Dragons games.  They are not a “gateway drug” into real witchcraft.

How can you make an honest convert through fear and misinformation?

I was shocked one day to discover that we had one of these tracts in our house, the “Who, Me?” tract.  It seemed innocent enough, but its identity as a Chick Tract makes it worthy of Gehenna (the burning trash heap).  It was given to us by an evangelical minister as a tool.  I can only hope he was not aware of the more ridiculous Chick Tracts.

The Religious Tolerance site also has articles on practically any other religion you might think of, such as Satanism.  Articles on Satanic Ritual Abuse are here.  You can research the truth so that you can witness with knowledge and respect, such as the Apostle Paul did.

Evangelicals have gotten a bad name among the followers of alternative religions because many have tried to convert without knowledge or respect, trying to scare with Hell rather than appealing to one’s desire to connect with deity.  This hinders the work of Christ.

Here is an Orthodox perspective on the absolute necessity of religious tolerance, despite our belief that Orthodoxy is true.  The reason: We must not bring injustice on others.

My own feelings: We must be tolerant of and respect other people and their religious beliefs.  Tolerance does not mean that you must adopt other beliefs or say that they are correct.  It just means respecting that other people have the right to think differently than you, even if you believe they’re wrong.

Written between probably 2005 and 2006

Index to my theology/church opinion pages:

Page 1:

Tithing
End Times and Christian Zionism
God’s Purpose/Supremacy of God Doctrine
Cat and Dog Theology
Raising One’s Hands in Worship
Christian Music
On the “still, small voice” and Charismatic sign gifts
On church buildings
The Message Bible
The Purpose-Driven Life
The Relevance Doctrine, i.e. Marketing Churches to Seekers
Republican Party
Abortion Protests
Creation
The idea that God has someone in mind for you
Literalism in Biblical interpretation
Miscellaneous

Page 2:

Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology,  Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it
More about Pat Robertson
Dr. Richard Eby and others who claim to have been to Heaven
Women in Marriage/the Church
Spiritual Abuse
Other Resources

Page 3:

Why do bad things happen?
Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts?  Or, how should we evangelize, then?
Angels: Is “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti a divine revelation or fiction?
Halloween: Not the Devil’s Holiday!
Hell and the Nature of God
Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday?
Is everybody going to Hell except Christians?
How could a loving God who prohibits murder, command the genocide of the Canaanite peoples?
What about predestination?
Musings on Sin, Salvation and Discipleship
An Ancient View which is in the Bible, yet new to the west–Uncreated Energies of God

Page 4:

Dialogues
The Didache
Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go?
Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?  (also in “Life” section, where it’s more likely to be updated)
Does the Pill cause abortions, or is that just another weird Internet or extremist right-wing rumor?
What about Missional Churches, Simple Churches, Fluid Churches, Organic Churches, House Churches or Neighborhood Churches?
Is Wine from the Devil–or a Gift from God?
What is Worship?
Evangelistic Trips to Already Christianized Countries
Fraternities, Sororities, Masonic Lodge
Was Cassie Bernall a Martyr?
Some Awesome Things heard in the Lamentations Service (Good Friday evening) during Holy Week

Conversion Story

Phariseeism in the Church

On Pat Robertson

(I also write extensively about Pat here, regarding Charismatic sign-gifts and their legitimacy.)

I believe that, mixed in with the true things he says, that he also says many false things, and sometimes even dangerous ones spiritually or politically.

In addition to what I wrote on page 1, here are more of my reasons why Pat Robertson should be dismissed as a charlatan and a liar both about politics and spiritual things, and why The 700 Club should be treated as a whacked-out religious far-right propaganda machine rather than a good, Christian show:

I watched The 700 Club from 1987 or 1988 until maybe 1993, plus occasionally around 1985 or 1986 when I was 12.  That would be my late teens until my very early 20s.  I heard many things that later turned out to be wrong.

  1. For example, Dungeons and Dragons is not a Satanic game that will possess you with demons and make you want to become a Satan worshipper.
  2. The existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse is highly questionable, though the occasional psycho may imitate it.
  3. We did not get the whole story on various news stories about liberal vs. conservative issues.  They were more heavily biased on the conservative side than even the “liberal media” supposedly was on the liberal side.  (They were like Fox News is today.)
  4. God has not been taken out of the schools with some sort of Nazi vigor, and personal prayer is not forbidden.  Christian students are not being persecuted left and right by school systems.  (It may happen, but probably not that often.)  My high school allowed us to post Campus Life announcements and have a prayer group in a classroom after school.
  5. Operation Rescue is not necessarily doing the right thing with their “civil disobedience.”
  6. Liberals and Democrats are not the servants of the Evil One.
  7. Feminists did not cause the downfall of civilization.
  8. The government persecution of Christians in the USA is greatly overrated, and we do not need new laws to fight it (or to take rights from other groups).
  9. Celebrating Halloween does not mean you are corrupting children or worshipping Satan.
  10. Creationism has no business in a science classroom, unless you’re also going to include the creation stories of every other religion.

Pat Robertson would go off by himself every year to pray and fast and get prophecies from God about the coming year.  On the show, the co-host would read over his predictions from the last year and say how they all came true.  Then Pat would give his predictions for the coming year.

I believed in this for some time because I would write them down and they all seemed to come true.  I taped the show, so I got his words exactly.

Of course, I have a copy of Pat’s Perspective from March-April 1992.  It’s especially amusing how he congratulated himself on the first page for telling Perspective readers in advance about all the things that would happen during the war.

He may have been right about that, but more often than not, this copy of the Perspective is filled with things that turned out to be wrong.

For example, by now we’re supposed to be under New Age leadership in the New World Order and facing devastating consequences for our Christian freedom.  We all know that hasn’t happened.

Also, George H.W. Bush ran for re-election with his sitting VP, Dan Quayle, not with Colin Powell.

Starting at the end of the Gulf War, Pat said God told him that Bush would ride the euphoria of a successful war all the way into re-election in 1992.  He kept saying this, so there was no mistaking what he said.

He also blamed liberals and Democrats for society’s ills and for leading America down a path of unrighteousness.

So I supported Bush and, even when I thought maybe Clinton had a better position on some issue, I’d think, “What’s the point of supporting Clinton when Bush is going to win?”

So I wore the button and followed the Republican party line.  I proudly stated who I was voting for, and expected all those misguided Clinton-supporters surrounding me to be sorely disappointed when the election finally came around.  They said Clinton would win and how they did not like Bush; I secretly laughed.

When polls showed Clinton in the lead, I knew the polls were wrong and could not change what God proclaimed.  When Bush won, I would hold my head high because I voted for the winner.

Well, we all know what happened in 1992.  I watched the election returns in disbelief as Clinton decisively defeated Bush.

I watched The 700 Club every night afterwards for Pat’s explanation.  Ben Kinchlow finally brought it up one day.

He said this guy came up to him with tears running down his face and said, “What happened?”  Pat’s response: “I guess I missed it.

Now there is a philosophy out there that these days, prophets can occasionally be wrong.  Pat and such writers as Jack Deere hold to this philosophy, that sometimes prophets think they hear God but it’s really themselves, and that prophets should never say, “thus says the Lord.”

But where does the Bible say things have changed?  It clearly states that if a prophet is ever wrong, that is a false prophet and not from God.  And the biblical prophets surely must have known how to tell the difference between themselves and God’s voice, because they repeatedly said, “thus says the Lord.”

Benny Hinn is in this same category.  He once came on The 700 Club and said he’d been taken into a trance by God, who took his spirit over various parts of the earth and showed him things that would happen in the 1990s.

In naïve gullibility, I wrote these things down exactly.  I’m not sure where that paper is now, but I remember that few, if any, of those things came true.

  1. I remember him saying that two of God’s “great giants” would die in the 90s.  I thought this meant Billy Graham (or even Pat Robertson).
  2. I remember there was supposed to be a wondrous revival in which people would be in the parking lot on their way into church, and get healed.
  3. One of the prophecies I remember distinctly: “Castro’s Cuba will fall in the 90s.”  Well, that never happened.
  4. I remember a prophecy in the early 90s that there would be an economic collapse and only the givers in the church would survive.  Was that Benny Hinn?  There are accounts of him saying such things in 1999, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he said it on The 700 Club in the early 90s as well.  Or it could have been Pat Robertson, giving one of his own yearly prophecies.

So Benny Hinn is also a false prophet who, like Pat Robertson, has lots of followers and tons of money coming in.  And if they’re false prophets, then their faith healing, “words of knowledge”/prophecies, and religious teachings are also suspect.

Benny Hinn–False Prophet Extroardinaire by Jackie Alnor

Questions for Benny Hinn by Bill Alnor

This website lists many prophecies for the 90s, several of which sound like the ones on my missing paper.  (Also note that God destroying the homosexual community with fire in the mid-90s is greeted with a round of applause.)  He says that Fidel Castro will die in the 90s.  Um, no.: Benny Hinn Prophesies for the Mid-90s

A simple Google search on “Benny Hinn prophecy 90s Castro” reveals many more websites exposing Benny Hinn’s false prophecies.

On faith healers in general, naming several well-known ones: The Hurt of Healing

Check out this video exposing fake evangelists: Marjoe Gortner Exposes Fake Preachers  It’s about an “evangelist” who conned congregations for years, explaining how he did it.

I’ve found references to these allegations against Pat Robertson in various news sources: Pat Robertson’s Right-Wing Gold Mine by Bill Sizemore, Pat Robertson’s Gold by Colbert I. King

Wikipedia has three good articles on Pat Robertson, collecting various facts and references together in one place so you can research them further: The 700 Club, Pat Robertson, Pat Robertson Controversies

ABC exposé on Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing during the Katrina disaster: Some Question Robertson’s Katrina Charity

Also read Pat Robertson’s Katrina Cash by Max Blumenthal

Quoted from Deception in the Church:

Gerry Straub, a former associate of Pat Robertson and his television producer, pointed out that in his book Salvation for Sale the astonishing fact that God seemed able to time miracles to conform with standard television format.

God would stop speaking to Pat and stop healing exactly in time with the theme music. He described his former employer’s “Word of Knowledge” performance:

“There was nothing ‘mystical’ to understand; it was simply ‘statistical’. Robertson’s little faith-healing procedure is a charade — he simply ‘calls out’ an illness and predicts its cure, and with millions of viewers the statistical probabilities are that someone will have the disease named and that they they will naturally recover. People put their faith in the belief that God speaks to Pat.” (James Randi, The Faith Healers, 1989, p.201)

(Gerry) Straub relates a nonmiracle he witnessed while still a believer in the ministry he worked for. He describes Robertson, at the close of a ‘700 Club’ videotaping, shaking hands with members of the studio audience:

“He stopped when he reached a man sitting in a wheelchair … Pat … laid hands on him as everyone prayed for healing … at Pat’s urging the man stood up. The people cheered as the man took a couple of very shaky, small steps.

“While everyone applauded God, I feared the man might fall. The next day we showed the nation the miracle (on the ‘700 Club’ broadcast). I simply wanted to know if the old man in the wheelchair was permanently healed by God or if he temporarily thought that he was healed.

“A few weeks later I had an assistant track down the man’s family in order to see if the cure had lasted. He had died 10 days after his visit to [the Christian Broadcasting Netwark]. We reported his ‘healing’ but not his death.” (James Randi, The Faith Healers, 1989, p.201)

“(Gerry) Staub sums up his experience with faith-healing in the Robertson ministry with these words:

“During my two and a half years at [Christian Broadcasting Network], I never saw one clear-cut, ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’ type of healing; however, I did see a tremendous amount of faith in healing — cleverly created, I believe, by Pat Robertson …

“The prophet-turned-healer could have been described as prophet-turned-fake for the sake of profit.” (James Randi, The Faith Healers, 1989, p.202)

For many years, Pat Robertson’s book Answers to 200 of Life’s Most Probing Questions had an honored place on my bookshelf.  But on the night of June 14, 2005, I flipped through it and realized that it is full of errors, particularly prosperity theology.

There is the error of seeing spirits/demons in everything, even things that are easily explained by human nature.

And don’t forget his teachings that you can get words of wisdom/knowledge (prophecies) in your everyday life by following these simple steps.

Apparently these teachings come out of the charismatic traditions.  The last two teachings in particular, on demons and prophecies, really screwed me up in college.  Freshman and sophomore years would have gone a lot easier if I hadn’t seen demons in everything and followed words of wisdom that were not real.

Yet I did as Pat said when I got the “words,” and even tested them!  Despite what some people might have thought, I was not going off the deep end; I was just misguided by a popular show and charismatic teachings.

By some accounts, The 700 Club is the “most respected” Christian TV show!  And, after feeling like it was just me, I have since discovered that all sorts of people have done the same things I have, getting words about whom they’ll marry (and getting it wrong), seeing demons and spiritual warfare in everything, etc.

I’m told that young people are especially susceptible to these things, wanting to be special, feeling passionate about God, wanting to know God’s will as they make big decisions about careers and spouses, and wanting to see the supernatural in their lives.

This is a real-life demonstration for you of the harm that such teachings can cause.  I shudder to think now of how this affected me in college and the actions I took because of it.  I would have let go of my ex much sooner if I could’ve simply listened to friends who said he has either changed a lot, or he only pretended to be what you wanted.

If not for the deception of the “words,” I could’ve seen he was not right for me, and God did not “choose” him for me.  Instead, I fought my “unbelief” and strove to “lean on the promise” even when I fell out of love and wanted to move on.

I don’t think we need to consult God on everything from breakfast to whether or not to accept a date to what career to choose.  I don’t believe he is into micromanaging our lives; he has enough to do already.  Instead, we should read the Bible and learn how to make these decisions ourselves in keeping with God’s principles.

In 200 Questions, Pat gave some reasons why someone would pray for healing and not get it:

  • We do not “exercise true spiritual discernment” (for the cause of an illness),
  • “[o]ur access to power is clouded by sin and unbelief, or earthly cares,”
  • “many people have been taught that God does not heal today,”
  • some people enjoy being sick (“an excuse not to face up to life”), they don’t want to be healed,
  • “unconfessed sin,”
  • demons are causing the sickness and need to be cast out,
  • they are not receptive or do not appreciate the promises and the truth of God (p.238-239).

Basically, it all comes down to you.  It apparently has nothing to do with God healing through medicine, God’s will, or natural forces.  It ignores the fact that many devout Christians suffer from chronic illness, arthritis, even a disability.

But in the book of Job we are taught not to call sickness or calamity a punishment for sin.  So if we are not healed, how does it follow that our sin is the reason?  How about an easier answer: It’s because the faith healer is a charlatan!

In 200 Questions, there is a lot of stuff about moneymaking: If you invest this much for so long, you can end up with $50 million.  Why does financial advice belong in a religious book?

Another page says you can do “anticipatory tithing”: “Consider the income that you anticipate receiving, and tithe as if you already had it” (p. 146).

There’s that old prosperity doctrine again!  Tithing is supposed to be an offering, not an “investment” with expectation of returns!  And how about this:

Thinking about [tithing] causes me to speculate on an ideal taxation system.  It would be wonderful if 10 percent of everyone’s income would go toward religious instruction, teaching, and worship so that the whole population could be instructed in the Word of God.

Then, a second 10 percent could go for welfare, roads, harbors, various social projects, old age relief, and any other social needs.

Then, another 5 percent or so could be spent on personal vacations.  Not vacations that were orgies of lust and personal pleasure, but vacations where people rested, worshiped and enjoyed God, thanking Him for what He had done.

This would be a time when people could go to pleasant places and eat good food.  They could relax, praise the Lord, and acknowledge that He is in their midst.

This plan would require 25 percent of our national income.  I believe that if we adopted the first 10 percent for religious training, our needs for welfare would be reduced dramatically as people began to look after their own elderly and their own sick, thereby reducing the burden on government (p. 145-146).

I’m not making this up.  It’s right there in the book.  It’s wrong on SO many levels.

Even your vacation plans have to be religious under this government taxation system?

Somehow I don’t think Congress and the many Americans of other faiths (and no faith) would go for that system!  I wouldn’t because I have a bad feeling about what Pat means by “instructed in the Word of God.”

I don’t want to live in any sort of theocracy–fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Christian, fundamentalist anything.

(Though Pat speaks of a future “theocracy” under the reign of Christ on Earth, I lean more toward the interpretation that Christ’s reign is a spiritual one, not a political one.  It is not limited by time or earthly systems; it does not have to wait for the “Millennium,” and does not have to end after 1000 years.  I believe we are already in the Millennium.)

And maybe you don’t have even that 5% for personal vacations because you have a tiny income that hasn’t been properly “blessed.”

And maybe there are people who don’t “look after their own elderly and their own sick” because they can’t, not because they’re degenerates who don’t take responsibility.  Sometimes getting a nurse is the responsible thing to do, because you’re already stretched to the limit by holding down a job and raising a family–or you’re sick yourself.

And 25% is pretty high; isn’t that more like the level of taxation that the wealthy get?

Don’t forget that after all those taxes, tithing 10 percent is an “irreducible minimum” (term used p. 146).  There’s 35% of your income gone right there, no deductions, no progressive taxation levels.

If you made only $20,000 a year, you’d have $13,000 left to live on.  And you’d be living in a theocracy based on a faith you may not even share.

Yeah, sure even a blind squirrel can find a nut sometimes.  Sometimes Pat says things that are actually true.

But considering what Pat Robertson says about such things as prosperity theology–

and the way he makes the Republican Party sound like God’s Own Party and the Democrat Party sound like moral degenerates–

I would trust nothing that comes out of his mouth unless I can back it up in Scripture.  That includes his teachings on words of knowledge/wisdom.

It’s scary to think of the influence this guy has, and the influence he once had on me.  It took many years of progressively discovering the truth, to break out of his programming.

I have read webpages which charge Pat Robertson with not being a Christian.  I will not go that far.

But I am convinced that The 700 Club is not just an innocent TV program giving God’s perspective and teaching God’s truth.

I believe it is being used not only to spread false doctrines that twist God’s word, whether out of Pat’s design or ignorance, but also to form a far-right political army to push its own agenda on the rest of the country.

I believe Pat is being treated as a prophet so that this “army” will not only listen to him, but send him money.

I believe that these things are poisoning the Evangelical church.

This columnist expresses what Pat Robertson-type teachings are doing to the Evangelical church, though he does not name Pat (who is probably not the only one teaching them): A Too-Thin Slice of “Moral Values” by Ed Scholl

More: Pat Robertson and the 700 Club by Fred M. Fariss

 

Written mid-2005

Index to my theology/church opinion pages:

Page 1:

Tithing 
End Times and Christian Zionism 
God’s Purpose/Supremacy of God Doctrine 
Cat and Dog Theology 
Raising One’s Hands in Worship 
Christian Music 
On the “still, small voice” and Charismatic sign gifts
On church buildings 
The Message Bible 
The Purpose-Driven Life 
The Relevance Doctrine, i.e. Marketing Churches to Seekers 
Republican Party 
Abortion Protests 
Creation 
The idea that God has someone in mind for you 
Literalism in Biblical interpretation
Miscellaneous 

Page 2:

Name it and Claim It Doctrine, Prosperity Doctrine, Faith-Formula Theology, Word-Faith Theology,  Positive Confession Theology, Health and Wealth Gospel, and whatever else they call it
More about Pat Robertson
Dr. Richard Eby and others who claim to have been to Heaven
Women in Marriage/the Church
Spiritual Abuse 
Other Resources 

Page 3:

Why do bad things happen?
Should we criticize our brethren’s artistic or evangelistic attempts?  Or, how should we evangelize, then?
Angels: Is “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti a divine revelation or fiction?
Halloween: Not the Devil’s Holiday!
Hell and the Nature of God 
Is Christmas/Easter a Pagan Holiday? 
Is everybody going to Hell except Christians?
How could a loving God who prohibits murder, command the genocide of the Canaanite peoples? 
What about predestination?
Musings on Sin, Salvation and Discipleship 
An Ancient View which is in the Bible, yet new to the west–Uncreated Energies of God

Page 4:

Dialogues
The Didache 
Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go? 
Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?  (also in “Life” section, where it’s more likely to be updated) 
Does the Pill cause abortions, or is that just another weird Internet or extremist right-wing rumor?
What about Missional Churches, Simple Churches, Fluid Churches, Organic Churches, House Churches or Neighborhood Churches?
Is Wine from the Devil–or a Gift from God?
What is Worship? 
Evangelistic Trips to Already Christianized Countries
Fraternities, Sororities, Masonic Lodge 
Was Cassie Bernall a Martyr?
Some Awesome Things heard in the Lamentations Service (Good Friday evening) during Holy Week

Conversion Story

Phariseeism in the Church

 

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