Is Hanukkah (Festival Of Lights) Of Biblical Origin?

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Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, is observed in honor of the rededication of the Temple by Judas Maccabaeus in the second century B.C. It is an eight-day festival in which candles are lit, one on the first evening, two on the second, and so on until eight are lit on the last evening, symbolizing that the light of faith is certain to grow. 

Jesus, a Jew by human birth, was present at the Festival of Dedication (John 10:22). We learn from Christ’s example that it is not wrong to acknowledge certain national holidays, as long as they are not derived from paganism and do not violate God’s law. Thanksgiving, an American holiday, is an example. 

Modern Hanukkah observances are similar to Christmas celebrations. Many Jews, especially in the United States and Canada, have adopted Christmas customs and attached them to the celebration of Hanukkah. 

The reference to God as the “Father of lights” (Jas. 1:17) has no connection with the observance of Hanukkah.

US Economy Passes Point Of No Return

Editors Note: This article is from TheTrumpet.com, a fantastic news site with a prophetic outlook. If you don’t see what this author talks about yet, then you really need to lift your head a little higher and have a peek at the current world scene. This is a fantastic read – bringing all the latest economic events together, cutting through the usual media spin and hype, and shouting out a clear warning of what is about to befall our nations and people.

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The Great American Spectacle

From: TheTrumpet.com

March 24, 2009 — Author: Robert Morley

ec.europa.eu/.../programmes/eu-usa/index_en.html

We are living through history in the making. Not the good kind of history. More like Nero-fiddling-while-Rome-burned history.

The kind of history we are seeing now is an empire in terminal and rapid decline. As the greatest single nation in history disintegrates, like Rome and hundreds of other empires before it, the public spectacles and orchestrated circuses for the masses keep getting bigger.

Public spectacle number one: Lies, lots of them.

“We’ll see the recession coming to an end probably this year,” predicted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on March 15. The recovery will begin in 2010 “and it will pick up steam over time,” he said.

President Obama confidently said, “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

But what else are they supposed to say?

That the Fed slashed interest rates to less than 2 percent in 2002, knowing it would create a massive bubble, but doing it anyway to make politicians happy? That the resulting pop and debt deflation is sucking the economy into a black hole? That the Fed’s proposed cure, the only one left in its arsenal—fiat money creation—will destroy the life savings of its responsible citizens, the people who tried to invest for their retirements?

Bloated government and unsustainable deficit spending has saddled the nation with gargantuan debts that will never be repaid. Social Security is a busted bank, robbed by politicians who spent the trust fund money. Medicare and Medicaid benefits will be slashed because politicians made unsustainable promises to buy votes. Taxes will probably be doubled—then tripled when foreign creditors cut America off. America soon won’t be able to provide the level of services that Americans have come to look upon as constitutional rights.

Is that what you say? That we are on our way to becoming a nation of beggars?

You won’t hear these words come out of any public officials—not because they are not true, but because the truth would cause panic among a populace that has been wooed to sleep by the sweet lullabies of politicians.

Public spectacle number two: Outrage, and lots of it.

President Obama is outraged. Ben Bernanke is outraged. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Chris Dodd are both outraged. Congress is outraged. Journalists are outraged. The Baltimore Sun reports: “A Financial Outrage.” The Washington Post: “Outrage Over AIG.” The Financial Times: “Summers ‘Outrage’ at AIG Bonuses.”

A recent Gallup poll found that almost 60 percent of Americans said they were personally “outraged.” America is outraged. Yes, politicians have stirred up a hornet’s nest of rage. But what is all the rage about?

Most recently, it is the fact that aig is paying $165 million in bonuses to its employees—after accepting taxpayer money to stay afloat because some of those employees got greedy and irresponsible. A little outrage goes a long way in distracting from the lies, and from the bigger issues.

That $165 million is only 0.09 percent of the $180 billion in taxpayer money that politicians forked over. And aig was contractually obligated to pay it. The government knew about the bonuses when it gave aig its first bailout; it could have legally stopped them then. It had the chance again after the second bailout. And the third, and the fourth. Now, all of a sudden, comes outrage! And don’t forget the multibillion-dollar bonuses over at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and other companies that have taken taxpayer money to stay afloat.

Flying beneath all the rage were three bombshell news items that should have ignited outrage, but were lost in the big media commotion over an amount of money equivalent to a rounding error in the recent pork-laden, self-interest spending fest also referred to as the federal budget.

Amid the hubbub, aig conveniently disclosed where all the taxpayer money it had received disappeared to. Surprise, surprise: aig turned out to be a front for funneling more taxpayer money into the big Wall Street and foreign banks in what essentially amounts to a second stealth backdoor bailout: $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs, $11.9 billion and $4.9 billion to France’s SocGen and bnp Paribas respectively, $11.8 billion to Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and $8.5 billion to Britain’s Barclays. And so on. Why are U.S. taxpayers bailing out foreign banks?

Also lost in the tumult was the fact that the national debt hit a record $11 trillion last week. It only took 5½ months for politicians to add $1 trillion to the debt—the fastest jump in U.S. history. It took all of America’s history until 1982 to run up the first trillion in debt. The next two trillions only took four years each. President Bush then added the most debt by a single president in the history of the nation: $4.9 trillion. If President Obama’s projections are correct, he will run up as much debt in four years as President Bush did in eight.

The current federal budget projects that the debt will soar to $16.2 trillion—100 percent of gross domestic product—by 2012. But it will probably be even higher, because as Bernanke indicated, the government is projecting the economy will be out of recession by next year.

The debt numbers are getting so huge that China recently demanded that America guarantee it will not renege on its debts. On Saturday, President Obama was forced to issue the statement: “Not just the Chinese government, but every investor, can have absolute confidence in the soundness of investments in the United States.”

But perhaps the biggest news that got lost in the aig-bailout noise was the fact that the Federal Reserve announced that it was beginning to monetize the debt. This is huge, gigantic, almost-impossible-to-overstate news.

The Fed announced it would begin literally creating money out of thin air to purchase U.S. treasuries—$300 billion worth. It is an admission that things are so bad that the federal government might not be able to find enough foreign lenders to give it money. Therefore the Federal Reserve will just create it.

“It is a step in the dark,” says Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics. “We simply do not know how this will play out because there is no prior experience to use as a road map.”

Shepherdson is wrong. There are hundreds of precedents. History is littered with the wrecks of fiat paper money experiments. In 1716, the rogue John Law created the Banque Generale to buy up the debt of France. Four years later, the bank paper was worthless. John Law’s money-creating experiment became known as the Mississippi Bubble. But the livre is not alone. The Argentine peso, Russian ruble, French assignat and franc, German mark, U.S. continental and Zimbabwean dollar are just some of the more famous failed currencies.

“Bernanke has sent a giant sell signal to the rest of the world to sell their treasuries to the Fed,” confirms Peter Schiff, one of a handful of economists who predicted America’s current crisis. “This is going to be a currency crisis. That’s what is coming.”

When France went bankrupt following John Law’s fiat money experiment, Law commented: “Last year I was the richest individual who ever lived, today I have nothing, not even enough to keep alive.”

The only difference this time is that the Fed is creating fiat digital money as well as paper money.

Public spectacle number three: National naivety, and lots of it.

With catastrophe plainly staring it in the face, America plunges head first into the shallow waters. It’s as if the powers-that-be actually believe that borrowing and spending can get America out of a problem caused by too much borrowing and spending. It is as if they believe that creating money out of thin air can actually make people richer. And to top it off, it is as if they actually believe that no one else can see the public spectacle that America has become.

Unfortunately, the exhibitions and circuses are only beginning, because that’s what empires become when they are going down and politicians don’t want people to know it.

The Biblical History Of The Black Race

http://www.christianodyssey.com/bible/africans.html

The Bible shows that all races are descended from Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:20). God intended that there be different races to develop the differing climatic areas of the world (Acts 17:26). Accordingly, it appears that God placed within Eve’s ovaries the genetic material which would produce the various racial characteristics in humankind.

The different races we find on earth today were preserved through the Flood by the wives of Noah’s sons. Noah’s sons were white, as was the wife of Shem. The white race was continued through Shem and his wife, the black race through Ham’s wife, and the yellow race through Japheth’s wife. God tells us He separated the families of man and decreed the boundaries of their dwelling places (Deut. 32:8). He intended that there be different nationalities and races and caused this to occur.

Sometime after the Flood many black people migrated to Africa. There, sad to say, they have been divided and hindered by tribalism. As the centuries passed, they did not develop technologically in comparison with other cultures. And, in this evil world where the strong prey upon the weak, evil men bought or captured many blacks for use as slaves in the New World. Often these slave traders bought the slaves from black men who rounded up their enemies from other tribes for the purpose of selling them into slavery. So, there were evil men on both sides.

Racial prejudice does not exist just between blacks and whites. This evil is found wherever peoples of different races and cultures rub together in competition for jobs, property, and wealth. In the United States the whites had the power to oppress the blacks, so that is what happened. The blacks and browns are at each other’s throats in parts of Africa. In Indochina there have been endless struggles for domination by one people or another. And, of course, there was the red versus white battle in the conquest of this land. No group has been guiltless; racial hatred is universal in all races, societies, and cultures. It is a terrible compulsion put into human hearts by Satan the devil — the god of this world (II Cor. 4:4).

Concerning blacks in prophecy, the Bible primarily concerns the history and future of Israel.  He intended Israel to set an example for all the other nations and to teach them His way. Because other peoples are generally mentioned only as they come into contact with Israel, the Bible does not say much specifically about the black race. A Bible concordance and other study aids will help you find where these people are referred to in some of the prophecies.

All people will continue to partake of both the blessings and curses which God will send upon the descendants of Israel (not the modern country). The ultimate destiny of man — whether black, brown, white, red, or yellow — are to be resurrected into the family of God. So therefore the Bible is not a book by a white God for white people only.  There is no racial prejudice with God: “God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35). Those who will put aside racial and other hatreds now and seek God, letting His Spirit reform and develop godly character, will be made immortal when Christ comes. Then all men will be taught to live in peace (Isa. 2:2-4). There will be a new era of blessings for all people.

America Rejects Religion

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The last generation of Americans has done what no others before it has accomplished — reject God in record numbers. According to the recently published  “American Religious Identification Survey” (conducted between February and November of last year), the number of people professing Christianity in the United States has dropped 10 percent since 1990.

Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million “Nones.”

“Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God). The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million. Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death.”

In other words, real religion  is dying, replaced by a self serving generic form of evangelicalism. This shift away from a belief in God represents a dangerous trend in America. Shifting away from belief in God means shifting away from the foundational principles which make up a nation, leading to its ultimate collapse.

During his 1796 farewell address, George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” The second American president, John Adams, later said, “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”