[BrotherLarry]

All of us want to enjoy the merriest season of the year. Just as God gave us His Son as the greatest Gift of all, remember that the devil will try to get you to copycat God and outdo everyone on gifts and parties. This does not please the Baby Jesus!


This year, instead of giving gifts amongst yourselves, why not send what you would have spent on foolish handwarmers and socks to the Landover Baptist Church in care of Ezekiel Flint? You KNOW where your money is going and how it is used when you give a special love gift to Pastor. I can just see the gleam in his eye when the funds start pouring in. Almost immediately, those offerings will start to be used in the way that our beloved pastor and advisor to the President sees best.


Aunt Edna and Uncle Bill have enough of those iridescent candy dishes. Grandmother doesn't really need a new comforter - she probably hasn't opened the one you gave her last year (or the year before). Who will join me in making this a Zeke Christmas? Please place your name below so that Pastor knows just how much you love him. Be generous! Someone should probably keep track of who doesn't give so we can shame them after the holiday - it's not being mean, it's just letting Zeke know where he stands with you.


If you want to list the amount of your gift, that's fine. A special word for Pastor would be nice, too.


I'll start: All my gift money is going to LBC this year. Pastor, I can't imagine this church without you and I can't imagine anyone else with the amount of kindness and dedication that you have. (Oh, by the way, this is the Horse Guy). We love you and pray that Jesus blesses you with even more of the things you deserve. Glory!

[Mary Etheldreda]

Amen, brother! Why, Mr. Etheldreda and I have recently added Pastor Zeke to our checking and savings account at Freehold Liberty Bank. It feels good knowing we can help the very moment the Good Lord places a need on the Dear Pastor. This way he doesn't have to wait for funds to come it, he has access to as many one-time emergency-love-gifts as he needs. Cookie in the office set the whole thing up. I think that's the best way to celebrate the Birth of Christ.

[Dana723]

My boys will be so thrilled to find that the money I was going to spend on them for all those electronic doodads will instead be going to Pastor Ezekiel's Jet Fund! I can't wait to tell them!

[Pastor Ezekiel]

Originally Posted by Mary Etheldreda

Amen, brother! Why, Mr. Etheldreda and I have recently added Pastor Zeke to our checking and savings account at Freehold Liberty Bank. It feels good knowing we can help the very moment the Good Lord places a need on the Dear Pastor. This way he doesn't have to wait for funds to come it, he has access to as many one-time emergency-love-gifts as he needs. Cookie in the office set the whole thing up. I think that's the best way to celebrate the Birth of Christ.

The need arose 5 minutes ago. I left some dough in the account for you to pay your tithes next Sunday. Please tell your hubby that he'll receive a deluxe portrait of Donny (the 'how to get Spiritually rich' variant) signed by the presidential autopen any day now.

[mrgrtt123]

It is almost the time of the year again wherein I will share my blessings.

[Dr. Anthony J. Toole]

Originally Posted by mrgrtt123

It is almost the time of the year again wherein I will share my blessings.

Is this some sick euphemism wherein you freely grant sexual access to strangers? Again? Sick.

[Johny Joe Hold]

A couple of days have passed since Christmas Day. I'd like to reflect on something I noticed and suggest a way to make coming Christmas Days better.

After church services and a wonderful Christmas meal, I drove around the cities surrounding Freehold. I wanted to see how many cars were parked at competitive churches and to just look around.

I was appalled at the crowded parking lots of Chinese restaurants. Why would anyone abandon the traditional food of Christmas, turkey and potatoes, for rice and bamboo?

Surely the tradition of turkey and potatoes to celebrate the birth of Jesus started right after the blessed event in Bethlehem. Chinese food is a foreign invention and has no place in Christmas.

[Roland]

Originally Posted by Johny Joe Hold

[...]

Surely the tradition of turkey and potatoes to celebrate the birth of Jesus started right after the blessed event in Bethlehem. Chinese food is a foreign invention and has no place in Christmas.

I did the potatoe part. Fried as you surely can appreciate. I diverted a bit there and made roast beef with a red wine reduction. like the French do. No Chinese food but good nonetheless.


As it was a Saturday I should be fine

[Joanna Lytton-Vasey]

On Saturdays I usually make a point of serving pork and/or shrimp with some sort of cream-based sauce. However, in the True Christian™ spirit of Christmas I compromised by cooking the turkeys with extra bacon.

[Roland]

Originally Posted by Joanna Lytton-Vasey

[...]with extra bacon.

Bacon makes everything better I have plenty of it so I can make my zuurkoolstamppot.


Potatoes, smashed, sauerkraut mashed in, half a stick of butter and then bacon fried to a crisp. And the fat of the bacon of-course. I love winter meals.

[MitzaLizalor]

1. "Some people" have very peculiar diets.

2. It's probably so they can worship one of these.

zuurkoolstamppot

I was appalled at the crowded parking lots of Chinese restaurants. Why would anyone abandon the traditional food of Christmas, turkey and potatoes, for rice and bamboo?

.

[Dennis Lukes]

Originally Posted by Johny Joe Hold

I was appalled at the crowded parking lots of Chinese restaurants. Why would anyone abandon the traditional food of Christmas, turkey and potatoes, for rice and bamboo?

Fresh from the infernal rites of Hannukah, Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve to commemorate the murder of Jesus. It's not that they particularly love Chinese food, only that Chinese food and the Chinese are the option most offensive and objectionable to Christian sensibilities. Everything they do is about us. It's like they're obsessed or something. Damn Jews!

[handmaiden]

That is why I would never dream of eating Chinese food on Christmas. It would be terrible to be mistaken for a Jew.

[Johny Joe Hold]

Originally Posted by handmaiden

That is why I would never dream of eating Chinese food on Christmas. It would be terrible to be mistaken for a Jew.

I suppose those Jews in the Chinese restaurants on Christmas Day think they can celebrate victory. Wrong about that. I wonder if there has ever been or will ever be a Jew that makes it into heaven. They lost. We won.

[MitzaLizalor]

The Bible records the following trans-generational invocation, responding to a challenge from the Roman authority.

Originally Posted by Pontius Pilate¹

What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?

Originally Posted by The Jews²

Let him be crucified.

Originally Posted by Pontius Pilate

Why, what evil hath he done?

Originally Posted by The Jews

LET HIM BE CRUCIFIED!

Originally Posted by Pontius Pilate

I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

Originally Posted by The Jews

His blood be on us, and on our children.

Matthew 27:22-25

There have been a number of attempts to deal with this over the centuries, all having difficulties. Firstly, for those saying this conversation never took place, there is a certain precedence of improbability. According to this world view, less likely details are more readily dismissed than commonplace events. We know very well how rabble rousers can get a multitude to do or say just about anything, therefore extreme remarks from a mob in the heat of the moment are not only unsurprising: they are expected. And still within this world view, a total eclipse of the sun lasting three hours³ is a very unlikely event. But however unlikely, they could still point to someone like Velikovsky⁴ for an explanation.

By seeking naturalistic explanations for the implausible (many would say impossible) to bolster up their belief system, they are saying in effect that the more likely any element of the story may be the less likely it is to be true. A mob baying for blood? No way. A three hour eclipse covering everywhere from Alaska⁵ to New Zealand? No problem. If the Scriptural record is unreliable, why follow any part of it? They just want to have their cake and eat it.

Satan has been very busy this season, encouraging Christians to stop doing things that have been foundational for centuries, to take up positions condemned explicitly for millennia—never rescinded by God—and still to call themselves Christians. If the message of Salvation is so disagreeable to them, its costs and its consequences, surely they'd be better not tying themselves up in knots and making their own world view a more broadly accepted reality? Otherwise they'll be explaining away parts of The Bible they don't like until there's nothing left at all. But at least we understand what's going on in Chinese restaurants.

I John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

1. Matthew 27:1-2
2. The chief priests, the elders and the multitude more generally – Matthew 27:20
3. Matthew 27:45
4. This sort of thing

5. Luke 23:44

[Dennis Lukes]

Originally Posted by Johny Joe Hold

I wonder if there has ever been or will ever be a Jew that makes it into heaven.

No. Of course not. John 14:6 makes it clear that only by accepting Jesus can you get into Heaven. But Judaism is predicated on, its very essence IS, the REJECTION of Jesus as the Messiah. You strip away the Talmud, the latkas, the Federal Reserve, cultural Marxism, and those little skull caps, and what you have left is hatred of Jesus. It's the spine of Judaism, its shriveled black heart. Being a Jew and going to Heaven are mutually exclusive.

[Unfalsifiable]

This is what you get when you start conflating Jesus and China:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan


50 million people died.

[MitzaLizalor]

It's appalling. Jesus is God and all He wants to do is love us. Christians understand the consequences of handing Him the mitten and return His love – after all, He suffered so much – but wicked people seem to think that means running around murdering everyone in sight. Unless they agree to agree with wicked people.

The Bible explains what to do with miscreants and which laws should be obeyed. China on the other hand came up with more draconian sanctions. In this case

• poisoned
• buried without a coffin
• exhumed
• beheaded
• torched
• buried (again)
• exhumed (again)
• cremated
• ashes blasted out of a cannon

which seems a bit obsessive. Hell could almost take lessons, except for the fact of any learning curve running in the opposite direction: heathen belief systems are a foretaste of the ultimate degradation. Christians also get a foretaste of life with no idols, no connubial bliss and no death.

Luke 20:34-36 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in arriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

It's why Christmas exists in the first place.

[Dennis Lukes]

Originally Posted by Unfalsifiable

This is what you get when you start conflating Jesus and China:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan


50 million people died.

"Bloodiest civil war in world history" quoth Wikipedia. The Chinese can't blow their nose without killing thousands of their own people in the process. Asians are what the biologists refer to as "r-selected" in terms of reproduction, like fish or insects. Nobody has ever claimed that Yellow Lives Matter.

[WWJDnow]

Originally Posted by handmaiden

That is why I would never dream of eating Chinese food on Christmas. It would be terrible to be mistaken for a Jew.

If you think it's bad in rural Iowa, imagine all of the Jewish hostility to Christians I have to face every day in New York City!

I don't eat at Chinese restaurants. You can never tell what they're putting in your food. Heck, you can never tell what those Orientals are thinking at all. I only eat wholesome American meals like grilled bacon-wrapped beef.