How Chanukah Saved Christmas!

*** This just in… As we prepared to send this encouraging note, we received  news of the Australian massacre of Jewish celebrants murdered for keeping the Feast of Dedication on a beach. 

CHURCH, WAKE UP! 

This is the progressive unleashing of the Anti-Christ spirit and the question arises: Will you compromise and collaborate with that darkness or STAND? Will you be the “good Germans” of the 1930’s or will you be Oskar Schindler, Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer?  His-Story awaits your answer…

It’s December, and two holidays are on display. Christmas, commemorating
the birth of Yeshua Ha Mashiach [Jesus the Christ, the anointed One] and
Hanukkah [Dedication] celebrating the miracle that took place circa 160 B.C.
in Jerusalem’s Temple at the time of the Maccabees.

Christmas as a holiday does not appear in the New Testament because the
holiday itself was introduced in the 4 th century A.D. Chanukah is not
mentioned in the Hebrew Bible because the events that took place happened
after the Hebrew Bible was completed. Ironically this “Festival of Lights”, or
“Feast of Dedication” is not found in the Hebrew Bible, but it is found in the
New Testament! In John 10:22 we are told that Jesus went up to Jerusalem
and “at that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem.”

The dedication commemorates the cleansing of the Jewish Temple after the
Seleucid-Greco empire nearly eradicated all practice and presence of Jews in
Jerusalem. The empire suppressed all facets of Hebrew life, burning sacred
scrolls, forbidding circumcision, and outlawing normative religious practice,
punishable by death, and finally dedicating the Temple to Zeus and sacrificing
a pig on it. It was the first fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy: “The abomination
that makes desolate”. The coming Anti-Christ will desecrate the next temple
when he enters it and declares himself to be God… another abomination that
makes desolate.

BUT GOD! A remnant from a priestly family rose up and miraculously
defeated the great empire… the Temple was cleansed and rededicated to the
One True God. If they had not, the Jewish people would have been wiped out,
cutting off the lineage of Messiah Yeshua.

No Jews…no Joseph, Mary and Jesus!
That’s how Chanukah saved Christmas.
So, Happy Chanukah AND Merry Christmas!