The Announcement of the First Christmas
(Message delivered by Pastor at the RELC Christmas Praise Service, Dec 21, 03)
Text: Gen.3:15
Dec 24 is Christmas Eve, the night our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, 2003 years ago. As for Singapore it has been celebrated since early November by the commercial world for the mighty dollar. To witness to the truth we should all the more celebrate Christmas and spread the good news like the shepherds that God has come to save a lost mankind.
Such wonderful news to a lost mankind God had given was at the very dawn of history. After Adam and Eve our first parents sinned and with sin came death, God announced the seed of the woman, the Virgin-born Son, not the seed of man, of a human father, would crush the head of serpent and it will bruise His heel. The Virginborn Son of Mary, Jesus, will destroy Satan and Satan will hurt Him for a time, but Jesus will triumph over him by rising from the dead.
It took over 3,000 years when the coming of the Virgin-born Son was announced again to King Ahaz, a wicked king of Israel, and after another 700 years before this Event, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.
Why should not God celebrate with such a mighty breakthrough of the angel and heavenly hosts praising the Lord God Father Almighty? It had taken God full 4,000 years to send His Son into this sinful world to save us. Now for the Church to celebrate today and Dec 24 is the very least. In some places in Indonesia the celebration in many forms takes a full month. Our singing of the old Christmas carols is the most powerful way. We should sing them with all our might.
Secondly, peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Christmas attracts even non Christians to come to church. On such a great and happy occasion, no matter how sinful you are, God makes a great amnesty offer to you. Humble yourself like the shepherds, bow down with gifts like the three wise men to worship Him, the Virgin-born Son of Mary will receive you. You who have come with your Christian loved ones. Accept Jesus as your Saviour and He will cleanse you from your sins and save you from hell to heaven. Go and bring your friends and you will further be blest. This is what peace on earth and goodwill toward men means. Amen.
HOW JESUS TAKETH PUNY MEN IN THEIR OWN CRAFTINESS
XXIV. “He that is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:36)
(Why I say Westcott and Hort taking out of the Bible the passage of the Woman taken in the Act of Adultery (Jn 7:53-8:11) is accursed)
The Bible Resolution
WHEREAS despite the fact that there are over 150 so-called “versions” of the Bible extant around the world today, there have been no new discoveries of ancient texts to legitimize this plethora of modern “versions” pouring off the presses and being sold as the “latest” Bible, and
WHEREAS a single exception to this has been the discovery of the now-famous Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940’s in caves on the Judean mountain range and contained in clay jars with the texts written on leather and papyrus, and
WHEREAS fragments of all the books of the Hebrew Bible (except Esther) confirm almost to the letter the accuracy of the Authorized King James Version of the Old Testament, and
WHEREAS most of the modern versions are based upon the discredited and perverted Westcott and Hort transcription and not on the Textus Receptus (The Received Text) attested to by scholars for over 300 years, from which the Authorized King James Version was translated by the greatest theologians and textual critics of 17th Century England, who were academic experts, indeed, in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, and
WHEREAS self-styled theologians who reject the inerrancy and inspiration of the Scriptures have gone so far as to make a looseleaf notebook and tear out those passages they do not accept, even organizing what they designate as “Jesus Seminars” across the United States in which they declare that Jesus never did and said the things recorded in the four Gospels; and that the Gospel of John is the worst and is 90 percent fiction, and the obedient secular press quotes them
from coast-to-coast, and
WHEREAS this same KING JAMES VERSION has been used around the world by an overwhelming majority of Christian Clergymen, Evangelists, Bible Teachers, Missionaries and Youth Leaders to bring millions of people to have a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ for more than three centuries,
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, that the International Council of Christian Churches, assembled in the historic English Reformed Church in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, observing its 50th Anniversary, August 11-15, 1998, urge all Bible-believing churches worldwide to use only the Authorized KING JAMES VERSION in their services and in their teaching ministry, and warn the followers of Christ against these innumerable “new” bibles which are not translations at all, but revisions conforming to the personal bias and views of those who have originated them and who are profiting by
commercial sales of such.
