Why Celebrate Christmas?

Why do we celebrate Christmas? And why do we say, "Merry Christmas?" I know most people think of Santa Claus and reindeer and presents and parties and so on, but is there a deeper meaning to Christmas then all of this anxiety, and stress and pressure? Is there something significant about Christmas that can change a person's life in all of this?

I too have been through the Santa Claus and the reindeer and the presents and the parties and yes, the stress, and the anxiety and the pressures of Christmas myself, but then I found the true meaning of Christmas and my life has never been the same and never will be the same.

First, let me define the meaning of "Christmas" for you. Christ-mas means "Anointing-celebration." Christmas is a celebration of Jesus the Anointed One by God the Father and also celebration of His anointing brought to this earth to change mankind's lives like nothing since Creation. So what did Jesus' anointing bring into this earth for all of mankind? Once you find out what this anointing did for you, then you can unwrap the gifts the anointing delivered to you. Unwrapping the gifts is when the celebration begins and then the celebration will not be just one day out of the calendar year but every day for the rest of your life.

Let's begin our celebration of the Anointed One and His Anointing by reading this scripture that is familiar to a lot of people and hear what the angel's good news was all about.

Luke 2:1-14 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. 2(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. 8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men KJV

God the Father used the angels that night to declare the greatest good news since creation of God's family. The angel who spoke was the angel of our Lord. This is Jesus' own personal angel---the angel of the Lord. This angel was personally assigned to Jesus Himself. And the other angels with the angel of the Lord are described in The Amplified Bible as "an army of the troops of heaven (a heavenly knighthood)" (Luke 2:13)
God created these angels to come to earth to minister for mankind, but their assignment was interrupted when Satan rebelled against God and Adam made Satan his lord. So part of the joy of that first Christmas' celebration was the restoration of angel's earthly assignment as ministers of God to reborn men and women.
With joy they declared the birth of God's Savior for all mankind. He was in the earth and there was no way to get Him out until He made peace with God the Father through His crucifixion, facing hell for every person, being raised from the dead for the justification for every person and then being seated at the right hand of the Father having obtained complete victory for all of mankind. This peace they proclaimed was not about wars and rumors of wars on the earth but rather it was the end of the war between Heaven and earth, between God and sinful man. The sin war was over. Nothing could stop Him from opening the way for the Holy Ghost to come into the earth and dwell in and work through believers all over the earth and also allow the angels to come and minister to and for believers all over the earth. This is what the angels were rejoicing over that night.

Heaven was excited about a plan birthed before even Creation. The plan of all mankind's redemption had been born in the heart of God at that time. Before any man sinned he was already accepted in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:4-6 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. KJV

This is not predestination of some to heaven and some to hell but rather an offer that, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)

This was Good News of a birth that changed everything in the earth and everything forever.
The angels were also declaring with joy the end of Father God's broken heart. The Bible says He was "grieved at his heart" because His family He had created was dying and their every thought was twisted toward fear of their Loving Heavenly Father and separation from Him. The sin of man never changed God's heart about His creation. Deep pain came into Father God's heart when Adam sinned.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:4) When Jesus bore the grief and carried the sorrow, He was defeating grief, loss, and sorrow for us but just as importantly, Jesus was dealing with the grief and sorrow in Father God's heart as a result of sin separating Him from His family.

The angels were rejoicing over the restoration of the blessing of God given in the Garden to Adam and Eve and rejoicing that the blessing of God on Abraham had now come on all by Jesus, the Anointed One and His Anointing.

The angels were rejoicing over mankind's deliverance from sin; deliverance from eternal separation from God; deliverance from sickness and disease; deliverance from poverty, lack, debt; deliverance from sorrow, sadness, grief, loss, pain; and deliverance from all the curse that came upon mankind because of the sin of Adam.

Let's celebrate! Celebrate Jesus Christ the Anointed One and His Anointing; celebrate Jesus, our Savior, who saved us from the judgment of God, eternal Hell and from whatever else we need saved from; celebrate Jesus, our Deliver, Who has already delivered us from poverty, lack, and debt, all harm, satanic oppression and depression and from whatever we need delivered from; celebrate Jesus, our Healer, from all sickness and disease including cancer for He is the big "C" and not cancer because he defeated cancer and with His stripes we are healed and made whole now in our bodies and healed of all emotion, mental and physical pain and torment; celebrate Jesus, our High Priest before the Father receiving our tithes and offerings and making intercession for us; celebrate Jesus, who has conqueror death, Hell, and the grave for us.

"Merry Christmas", because Jesus in the book of Revelations comes again to earth not as a baby but as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and we will return with Him setting His Kingdom up on this earth forever. For the angel will declare again another Good News message: The seventh angel then blew [his] trumpet, and there were mighty voices in heaven, shouting, The dominion (kingdom, sovereignty, rule) of the world has now come into the possession and become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (the Messiah), and He shall reign forever and ever (for the eternities of the eternities)!AMP

"Merry Christmas!"

The True Heroes of 9-11-2001

Do you remember the firefighters, the policemen, the medical personnel, rescue workers, and all the common people who helped others on the attack sites during the actual disaster days, and those who helped to clean up in the aftermath of 9-11-01? Some of them accomplished some truly heroic tasks, and deserve to be called heroes!

These people did save some lives, helped multitudes of people on the attack sites, and accomplished the tremendous task of clearing all the dead bodies, rubble and debris from the destroyed buildings and aircrafts. They didn't concern themselves with their own comfort but unselfishly were more concerned about others - even to the point of losing their lives. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

There were 346 people who died that day. Bravestmemorial.com has compiled a list of the rescue personnel who died on September 11, 2001, and keeps memorial pages for all those who made the ultimate sacrifice. At Weshallneverforget.org you'll find a list and description of emergency personnel who perished on September 11, 2001.

Those involved in the clean-up worked sometimes in very unhealthy conditions breathing dust and smoke all day long. They went through the emotional turmoil of finding body parts, but also found wedding rings to give as a small memorial to the families of the deceased.

Firefighters don't feel like they are heroes

After the 9-11 attack firefighters across the country have heard themselves called heroes, but many are uncomfortable with that label. They feel they are working stiffs, a down-to-earth, modest lot, and that the words hero and heroism should be restricted to those whose names are etched on the wall in Memorial Park.
"I'm not a hero. I don't go to work to get a pat on the back. I don't feel like a hero. Most guys you talk to are uncomfortable with the term. We're just doing our jobs," says Kenny Haskell, whose two firefighter brothers died when the towers collapsed.

This picture from Stock Exchng is not from the 9-11 event, but is just showing a firefighter doing his job.
Kenny, also a firefighter, was off that day but rushed to the scene. He spent the next two months looking for his brothers' bodies, only one of which was recovered.

That is such a good attitude! A true hero is a person who does something for another person and risks their own life or makes a big sacrifice while doing so. We could say that true heroes are unselfish and prefer others, and have the courage to do something for them in difficult situations. But we don't perceive true heroism and pride going together.

According to Webster's Dictionary the English word hero comes originally from a word that means to watch over, protect. The firefighters who even at this very moment are fulfilling their task, are truly protecting and watching over all of our safety and wellbeing in dangerous situations. They deserve to be honored, whether they have lost their lives serving others, or are still alive. Firefighters are not concerned about fame and being called 'heroes' but want to stay meek with low profile. That shows that they are really concerned for others and are doing their job out of willingness to serve, not for the desire to be lifted up and be admired by other people.

The French Revolution - 1648

The French RevolutionThe French Revolution began in 1789 with the meeting of the States General in May. On July 14 of that same year, the Bastille was stormed: in October, Louis XVI and the Royal Family were removed from Versailles to Paris. The King attempted, unsuccessfully, to flee Paris for Varennes in June 1791. A Legislative Assembly sat from October 1791 until September 1792, when, in the face of the advance of the allied armies of Austria, Holland, Prussia, and Sardinia, it was replaced by the National Convention, which proclaimed the Republic. The King was brought to trial in December of 1792, and executed on January 21, 1793. In January of 1793 the revolutionary government declared war on Britain, a war for world dominion which had been carried on, with short intermissions, since the beginning of the reign of William and Mary, and which would continue for another twenty-two years.

The Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal were instituted immediately after the execution of the King. The Reign of Terror, during which the ruling faction ruthlessly exterminated all potential enemies, of whatever sex, age, or condition, began in September of 1793 and lasted until the fall of Robespierre on July 27, 1794: during the last six weeks of the Terror alone (the period known as the "Red Terror") nearly fourteen hundred people were guillotined in Paris alone. The Convention was replaced in October of 1795 with the Directory, which was replaced in turn, in 1799, by the Consulate. Napoleon Buonaparte became Emperor in May of 1804.

The French Revolution was not only a crucial event considered in the context of Western history, but was also, perhaps the single most crucial influence on British intellectual, philosophical, and political life in the nineteenth century. In its early stages it portrayed itself as a triumph of the forces of reason over those of superstition and privilege, and as such it was welcomed not only by English radicals like Thomas Paine and William Godwin and William Blake, who, characteristically, saw it as a symbolic act which presaged the return of humanity to the state of perfection from which it had fallen away — but by many liberals as well, and by some who saw it, with its declared emphasis on "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," as being analgous to the Glorious Revolution of 1688: as it descended into the madness of the Reign of Terror, however, many who had initially greeted it with enthusiasm — Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example, who came to regard their early support as, in Coleridge's words, a "sqeaking baby trumpet of sedition" — had second thoughts.

The old regime in England, on the other hand, had from the first allied itself closely with Locke and Newton, those great advocates of reason and order, and Edmund Burke could denounce the Revolution in 1790 in his great Reflections on the Revolution in France, elegantly bound copies of which George III, who was not renowned for his intellect, gave to all his friends, saying that it was a book "which every gentleman ought to read." Burke maintained that the radicals who had begun the Revolution by releasing the enormous pent-up quasi-religious energies of the common people of France were interested first in the conquest of their own country and then in the conquest of Europe and of the the rest of the world, which would be "liberated" whether it wished to be or not. Tom Paine's great response to Burke's work,The Rights of Man, appeared in 1791, and the debate between conservatives and radicals raged on for many years, and certainly influenced, directly or indirectly, the thought and the work of every major English author for the remainder of the century and beyond.

Westphalia Peace Treaty is it still relevant in contemporary World Politics? - History

The 1648 Westphalia Peace only succeeded because of an economic policy of protection and directed public credit—dirigism—aimed to create sovereign nation-states, and designed by France's Cardinal Jules Mazarin and his great protégé Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert's dirigist policy of fair trade was the most effective weapon against the liberal free trade policy of central banking maritime powers of the British and Dutch oligarchies.

Similarly, it is only with a return to the Peace of Westphalia's principle of "forgiving the sins of the past," and of mutually beneficial economic development (see Treaty principles, the "benefit of the other''), that the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be solved on the basis of two mutually-recognized sovereign states.

In the Peace of Westphalia, Mazarin's and Colbert's common-good principle of the "Advantage of the other" triumphed over the imperial designs of both France's Louis XIV himself, and the Venetian-controlled Hapsburg Empire. In the 18th Century, the same principle brought the posthumous victory of Gottfrield Leibniz over John Locke in shaping the American republic's founding documents, the victory of "the pursuit of happiness" and the principle of the general welfare, over Locke's "life, liberty, and property."

Today, that principle has created the Eurasian Land-Bridge policy, as designed by U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche, and as expressed in the economic development policies of China and some other Asian powers. This aims at "transport corridors of development," spanning Eurasia from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bering Straits, and from the North Sea to the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia.