Worship with
Candles
The article came from:
'The Candle Wax' from Out of the Box Thoughts from Robin Guidicy
Note: in this review I quote historical data. For instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia does not claim any Biblical authority for candles or music but confesses that they lifted them from pagan cults to attact the pagans. The word "pagan" is used in that context. According to Webster's it simply means a rustic or THE OTHER. A non-Greek is a pagan to a Greek and therefore a non-Christian is a pagan to a Christian.
As the word "pagan" and the word "Christian" in the modern context are not much removed from one another, when we use the word it does not speak to you if you belong to The Pagan Church making you evil. And if we think of people being a "christian" it does not mean that they are a CHRISTIAN.
I was responding to an article which mentioned speaking in tongue's and Robin's charismatic style of song leading at Madison Church of Christ already plagued with "worship performers."
People with a secure relationship with Christ do not feel compelled to DO WORSHIP with symbols (idols) such as candles and music. The fact is that religious rituals are a dead give away that the "seeker" much like David had lost contact with God and was desperately seeking to find, arouse or awaken Him.
"The burning of candles is undoubtedly the result of fire worship that dates back to the beginning of time. It was found by early man that fire could drive away the feared beasts of prey, make his food taste good, and warm his body. Thus fire was found to be beneficial. Down through the ages man has discovered the mystical properties of candle burning, associated with various colors."
Cardinal Newman admits in his book that; the "temples, incense, oil lamps, votive offerings, holy water, Holidays, and seasons of devotion, processions, blessings of the fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure (of priests, munks and nuns), images, and statues... are all of PAGAN ORIGIN." -The Development of the Christian Religion Cardinal Newman p.359
The Catholic Encyclopedia also confesses that they got MUSIC from all common PAGAN CULTS.
The justification for getting "out of the box" and having a candlelight service knowing that it will offend many is that we need to rise out of:
Robin Guidicy: Muddling through this life, refusing to grow spiritually, rejecting positive experiences, using or not using the crutch of tradition, you are filled with ignorance or fear, are afraid of the unknown, the unchartered, or the unseen. You live on milk or are reactionary to inconsequential things. Your reaction proves that you are guilty.
We will show that those who depend on the Bible and all of church history know that candles are for giving light or superstitiously used as a small fire to conduct fire worship of the S.U.N. god or Satan.
Therefore, the new revelations intend to use liberties with the Bible and all that happened before them. Those of use labeled by the listed judgmental terms depend on the Bible and how candles were used. Therefore, not using candles as mediators of a religious "moving experience" is based on the rational (spiritual) while superstition is based on ignorance.
However, we are looking at two Words, two Lords and two radically different ways of worshiping a Spirit God. Our God is worshiped in the spirit or mind, theirs is worshiped in the experience sensed in the nerve endings of the carnal body.
From another site notes that:
"Worship should be the mountaintop experience of the week and should leave the worshiper hungering for more. The worshiper should leave each service closer to God, uplifted, fulfilled, inspired, motivated to seek a closer relationship with God and one another.
That's simply not what Jesus or Paul taught. Paul said that he both worshiped and prayed IN THE SPIRIT. That does not mean inside of a God person but in his own mind as He gave heed to the Words of Christ. Worship does not produce a charismatic EXPERIENCE. The "new style worship" seeks to bring the worshipers into the presence with music, performance talent and other idols. However, Paul warned:
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: Acts 17:27
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Acts 17:28
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and mans device. Acts 17:29
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Acts 17:30
"Worship" produces a "FALL ON YOUR FACE EXPERIENCE" in my Bible. In a spiritual sense that falling or bowing is to "giving heed to that which is written."
Church is from Ekklesia which was a court to hear testimony and reach decisions. When people "gathered" as church a form of the word "synagogue" was used. The synagogue was a school of the Bible and not a worship center calculated to stimulate the nerve endings to have an experience and leave you hungry.
I wrote to Robin Guidicy more than a year ago but I am still waiting for a response. I will quote Robin in part and you can read the rest if you have good eyes.
The Concerned Members at Madison Church of Christ in Nashville have noted the Heglian Dialectic as a way to first dissociate people by making them unhappy with the OLD so that they have instill a new VISION. While this may seen like a new process, it was well known by Satan in the garden of Eden and was well documented by Machiavelli and Hitler. It is not a sinister plot: it is also used by advertisers to get you to give away last year's automobile for the new and improved version.
The Y2K Syndrome. People were carefully conditioned to believe that TRUTH would fly away into a BLACK HOLE and do a time travel through a WORM HOLE. Therefore, "just now we don't know what truth is until we get the new message from God." Some believe that it will pop out of a "white hole." Because "white holes" in theory pop out in the past, it comes as no surprise that the new worship styles replacing the church as "school of the Bible" look amazingly like those in Babylon just after the flood.
Therefore, as usual, there is a need to ridicule everything as "traditionalism" to condemn the "old" in order to make way for the "new revelation." But, before you do I would remind you that Joseph Campbell, in Myths to Live By, notes that as people loose faith in their old religion they begin to "crack away" and "revert to the archaic" systems of religion.
"Yet there is a great religious fervor and ferment evident among not only young people but old and middle-aged as well. The fervor, however, is in a mystical direction, and the teachers who seem to be saying most to many are those who have come to us
from a world that was formerly regarded as having left altogether behind in the great press forward of modern civilization,
representing only archaic, out-lived manners of thinking. We have gurus galore..."
"I find the end of the millennium personally upsetting to many people. Lately we've been getting lots of manuscripts on how to change your life in ways that haven't really been tried before..."
Of Baby boomers, one editor said, "Right around the turn of the millennium they'll be going through their midlife crisis, whether they like it or not.
This will prompt them to undertake some inner searching --not the least the search for spiritual guides (channelers or vintners) to lead them out of the wilderness of midlife." (Jeremiah, David, Invasion of Other Gods, p. 153).
After the Europeans upsed the old religious system of the Indians:
"Within the span of a decade the religion had become archaic; and it was then that the peyote cult, the mescal cult, came pouring in from Mexico (Aztec land), onto and across the plains, as a psychological rescue... they would gather in special lodges to pray, to chant, and to eat peyote buttons, each then experiencing visions, finding within themselves what had been lost from their society." (Joseph Campbell, p. 89)
"Now the first and most important effect of a living mythological symbol is to waken and give guidance to the energies of life. It is an energy-releasing and directing sign, which not only 'turns you on,' as they say today,
but turns you on in a certain direction,
making you function a certain way--
whichwill be one conducive to your participation
in the life and purposes of a functioning social group." (Campbell, p. 89)."when the symbols provided by the social group no longer work, and the symbols that do work are no longer of the group, the individual cracks away, becomes disassociated and disoriented, and we are confronted with what can only be named a pathology of the symbol." (Campbell, p. 89)
Fact: all of those WORSHIP RENEWAL rituals to replace the OLD, OUTDATED are just Satan recycling the most ancient forms of paganism. Festivals intend to take your mind of Lord Jesus Christ and to FORCE YOU TO CONFORM THROUGH BRAINWASHING!
Unfortunately the younger generation of men going through menopause believe that it is the standard which must be imposed upon everyone else.
Whether right or wrong for you, Candle Light services are the well-documented Archaic worship beginning in Babylonia and bestowed on Israel because of their musical idolatry at Mount Sinai. God "turned them over to worship the starry host."
If old churches of Christ are uniquely ignorant and fearful to engage in trying to worship a Spirit God by lighting up candles it may be because the pre baby boomers (infantile drummers) understood that the world's history associate candles and music with paganism.
The baby boomers have a right to go off and pay for a church in which they can drip candle wax on the carpet to their heart's content.
However, it is pretty weird that the totality of evidence is discounted as ignorance and the VISIONS OF THE NEW LIGHTS is held to be educated, brave and spiritual.
However, that is the meaning of postmodernism. Truth didn't exist until ME.
For instance, evidence IGNORED: In Jerusalem they used little babies as "wicks" to light up Molech so that he would give them a revelation through the cries which were interpreted by the priests. In Israel (Amos 5, 6, 8) it was Remphan or Chiun worshiped with music.
"From very early times the Romans had celebrated
their Saturnalia in honour of the old vegetation-god at that time
with a great display of presents, CANDLES, and dolls
(probably a reminiscence of an earlier sacrifice of children). From the reign of the Emperor Aurelian (270-6), who introduced a SOLARCULT (the S.U.N.
god) of a high ethical
character, December
25th was the
outstanding day of their calendar and was officially described as
"the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun." Joseph McCabe
Of the Saturnalia: Sir James George Frazer, in his classic study of magic and religion (The Golden Bough, McMillan, 1976), says this mock king was an allusion back to the idyllic days of the reign of Saturn and the slaves being given temporary freedom at this time hearkened back to these days when all were free and things were just (ibid., ix, p. 308 ff). Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian are recorded (by Franz Cumont) to have chosen a young and handsome man to resemble Saturn from among them by lot thirty days before the festival.
They dressed him in royal attire to resemble Saturn. He went about in public attended by a retinue of soldiers and indulged his passions no matter how base and shameful. At the end of thirty days, he then cut his own throat on the altar of the god he personated.
In the year 303, the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and to soil his last days by debauchery. He refused to give in to the intimidation of his commanding officer Bassus and was accordingly beheaded by the soldier John at Durostorum on Friday 20 November 303 being the twenty-fourth day of the Moon at the fourth hour (Frazer, ibid.).
This is quite identical to the AZTECS used by Rubel Shelly and Randy Harris as a PATTERN for church renewal.
The use of candles goes back to the ancient Aryan religion which used them at the Yule ceremony to ward of the gods of thunder, storm and tempest (Frazer, x, p. 264 (n. 4) and also p. 265). They were lit and tied to the sacred oak (ibid., ii, 327).
In some areas (Ruthenia and Europe generally) they were used by thieves and burglars to cause sleep (Frazer, i, pp. 148-149) and in this case they were made of human tallow (ibid., i, p. 236).
Parts of the human anatomy were also used as candles or human bones were filled with tallow made from the fat of hanged men (ibid., p. 149).
Sometimes, candles were made from the fingers of new born or, preferably as they saw it, unborn children. As late as the seventeenth century in Europe robbers used to murder pregnant women to extract such candles from their wombs (ibid.).
Candles were burnt to ward off witches. They entered Christianity through the Catholic or Orthodox Church (cf. Frazer, ibid., i, p. 13).
The ancient Aryan practice continued among the Germans of lighting new fire by means of a Bonfire at Easter and sending the sticks to each home to start the fires to ward off the gods of thunder, storm and tempest. The practice was introduced to Catholicism as the Easter candle.
This single giant candle was lit at Easter on Saturday night before the Easter Sunday and then all the candles of the church were lit from it. This continued for the year until next Easter when the single Easter candle was again lit.
We watched this last night from the "church of the nativity." The "birthplace" of Jesus is marked by a starburst as symbol of planetary worship. As predicted, fire fell from "heaven" and the priest lit all of the other candles. The people passed their hands through the candles and washed their faces as they held what looked like an orgy of riot.
The practice of lighting the candle appears to take place on the night before the day of the Sun as part of the ancient Sun worshipping system.
In the Temple, incense was burned. Candles were not burned other than as the Menorah.
This practice of burning lights as candles or tapers was similar to that of the Saturnalia. We know from the Book of Baruch 6:19 ff that the practice of lighting candles before idols overlaid with precious metals was Babylonian. The practice of lighting multiple candles probably entered Judaism through the Babylonian system. We will deal with it in more detail in the section on Easter.
The Menorah was seven branched and ordered by God for the Temple. In Solomon's Temple, there were ten tables of seven candles representing the Council of the Elohim of which the Sanhedrin was a copy. The nine branches are given mystical symbolism. There is no biblical authority for them.
Click to see the Serpent worship, Music, Candles and fire worship connection.
In honor of the Queen of Heaven's child who was killed by a boar, a system was set up where a child was sacrificed. This is one of the forms it took:
In advance of the festival, the trees of the groves were decorated with gold- and silver-dipped boar testicles, and gifts for the sun god were placed under them.
The way that the phallics were changed from a pole to a tree was that Semiramis, the night before this festival, had a log, called a yule, brought in and set up. During the night, she burned the yule,
and brought in a tree to show that the dead log had been brought to life by Tammuz's resurrection.
The babies that were conceived on Ishtar (Easter) day were born in time for this Child mas. They were dedicated by sprinkling water over them in the form of a T, for Tammuz, while the priests built up a big fire, over which was a chute. The live baby was placed in an iron case, which in turn was placed inside the chute. The baby was roasted over that fire, and at the other end of the chute, the priests would have a feast. [They were priests of Baal: Khana-Baal. Get it?}
As a side dish, eggs were dyed in the blood of the children who were not roasted.
Question: when you direct the children's attention away from Christ and toward pagan superstitions are we not sacrificing them?
Robin Guidicy's Theology: "It amazes me, how often we, as believers, muddle through this life, hardly taking the time to NAVIGATE the waters of spiritual growth. So much so, that when we have a positive spiritual EXPERIENCE it comes as a pleasant surprise.
The human spirit is to the human what the Mind of Christ is to the Holy Spirit God. Jesus said that worship is IN SPIRIT or in the mind as it is devoted to TRUTH: the Word of God is Spirit and Life (John 6:63). If you tickle the nerve endings by watching a candle you are giving heed to an idol which is required to ENHANCE the plan of Christ to speak through His Words to our spirit. The candle is aiding as "mediator" between man and God.
Spiritual (rational) growth comes from eating spiritual food: the Word of God. The "singing" cult the Musical Worship Leaders have silenced is really called speaking or teaching the Word. We know that because that is what Paul commanded, because OUR singing did not exist at that time and because the church was school of the Bible and not a pagan worship center. Remembering that Lynn Anderson (and lots of other people) is Navigating the Winds of Change. However, Paul showed us how to grow:
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive; Ephesians 4:14
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: Ep.4:15
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Eph 5:19
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Rom 15:4
Jesus identified the Jewish clergy as children playing and piping trying to get others to dance. If you are still not GROWING a candle won't do it: singing won't do it but:
WHEREFORE laying aside all malice, and all guile (a trick of the trade, decoy), and hypocrisies (acting), and envies, and all evil speakings, 1 Pet 2:1
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: 1Pe.2:2
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. 2Pe.3:18
Grace is not "unlimited forgiveness for unlimited sins" but it is Charisma which means POWER to conform to the WILL of Christ.
Your self composed, erotic praise songs are neither milk nor meat and therefore CANNOT produce spiritual growth while you are violating the Words of Christ.
Robin Guidicy: "Many times we use the crutch of tradition, but the root isn't tradition it is instead ignorance or fear. We are afraid of the unknown, the unchartered, or the unseen.
"We live on milk instead of meat, and our reactions to the smallest, most inconsequential things are reflective of that.
Now, we have used the old Heglian principle. Click to see how you must be convinced that YOUR OLD way is ignorant before WE can teach you the truth:
"Because all of this information is contingent upon a specific ideology,
"People might have a religious experience with such a higher power,
the public receives a socially-constructed common sense or group mind.
but one thing is discounted:
The importance of propositional truth. Or, to put it differently,
postmodern worshipers are like postmodern readers;
they are the source of truth, not the discoverers of truth.
"Of the several religious leaders we profile in The Death of Truth,
most explicitly say that personal experience is the key to understanding religion."Dissociation is the loss of conscious awareness of the real world. Specifically, postmodern religionists call for people
"Whether it's Joseph Campbell, John Bradshaw or Fredrick Turner, all agree that
to leave all rational thinking behind before ascending to the godhead.
Thus, they see one thing as the supreme barrier to deep religion: Reason, and its handmaiden, truth.
we must first take leave of our senses
before trying to know spiritual things. How similar they are to some calls within the evangelical church!The Postmodern Method: Religion Jim Leffel and Dennis McCallum, contributors
Music and candles as magic are after the traditions of men because Christ did not teach them:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Col. 2:8
However, Jesus established some traditionalism which has not happened:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. 2Th.3:6
Paul knew only Christ and Him crucified because the Corinthians were not yet ready for the MEAT OF THE WORD. They were still carnal and based on the background of Corinth they were plagued with looking for PHYSICAL proof that they were worshiping a Spirit God. As far as Paul and history knows they never moved far beyond the CANDLE-POWERED pagan worship.
Robin Guidicy: "We had a candlelight service Christmas Eve at our church, for the first time. In ANY other religion it would not matter, but for us, candles are a big issue. The rest of the world burns them you know, and we don't. In fact, I'm not really sure what we did before Edison invented the light bulb. Perhaps the moon was closer to the earth and provided the needed light.(ha)
Now, I can appreciate the power going out at minus 4 degrees for four hours: you turn on the 18th century oil running lamp and light the candles, turn on the battery radio and listen to 40s Grand Old Opry songs and listen to the same old Martha White Flour commercial. But (Scrooge always says but) that is for me and not for God.
When the power comes on I understand that the power of candles (legalism or traditionalism) does not measure up to Edison's bulb (Jesus as the Light)
WE burned kerosene because candles would be the most cost intensive, luxurious, candle-power resource: only rich people had candles where I grew up. Sure, people burn candles for some events but trying to worship a Holy Spirit God with fire worship is not post modern: maybe post flood. I don't believe that I have ever heard candles mentioned in the church of Christ except during weddings.
Joseph McCabe became a bitter Monk and therefore his writings are pretty harsh.
The choice of December 25th was obviously part of the general policy of disarming the pagans and Mithraists when their cults were suppressed, and it began, significantly, at Rome.
In pre-Christian times knowledge of astronomy and the calendar was so imperfect that the great nature-festivals, originally fixed at mid-winter, spring, mid-summer, and autumn, often got out of date,
but even in Roman days the birth of a solar or a vegetation-god, saving the world from the darkness, discomfort, and sterility of winter, was widely celebrated at the winter solstice (December 21st) or just after it, when the day began to lengthen again.
From very early times the Romans had celebrated their Saturnalia in honour of the old vegetation-god at that time with a great display of presents, CANDLES, and dolls (probably a reminiscence of an earlier sacrifice of children). From the reign of the Emperor Aurelian (270-6), who introduced a SOLAR CULT (the S.U.N. god) of a high ethical character, December 25th was the outstanding day of their calendar and was officially described as "the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun."
The coming of Mithraism from Persia confirmed the date. The Mithraic cave-temple was on the Vatican Hill, close to the Christian settlement, and the midnight celebration of the birth of the saviour-god,
--with blaze of candles and clouds of incense (as in the Catholic "midnight mass" to-day), would be familiar to every Christian.
Do candle users worship the sun? Probably not but the total evidence for using candles in worship deprives anyone from branding as ignorant and fearful those who do not worship with candles.
