The Authority Of The Bible Is Above The Religious Leaders.

Apostle Dr. Gabriel Sanchez Velazquez preraching 

Throughout the centuries of Christianity a legacy has been sewn of great thinkers within the Christian churches. They have formed two very related fields of knowledge. The Patristics and the Patrology. One talks about the content of the writings of the great Christian thinkers, and the other of the lives and cultural context of the writers.

In some measure, it is regretful that a great section of evangelical pastors never take the trouble to learn about these writers, frequently they overlook that the GOD of the Bible is the God of history. You say: “Well I have this Bible in my hands and I am saved, the rest doesn’t interest me.”  Thank God that you have your Bible and you are saved, but have you asked how the Bible came about until our days? How can we observe the providence of God so that the Gospel would have reached us in this generation?

From there it is good to know the formation of Christian thinking. However, in my judgment and the judgment of many evangelical theologians, the Roman-Catholic hierarchy:

         1.  Studies more the Patristics and the Patrology than the Bible itself.

         2.  Gives more authority to the opinions of the past leaders than to the      Sacred Scriptures.

         3.  They keep and accept as dogmas the interpretations that these                        men made in the past, without taking the trouble to go to the                    original text of the Bible and seek the revelation of God to                            understand what God wants us to understand of the same text.

Therefore, here we need to find the right balance. We have the Bible on the right hand as supreme authority in issues of faith and practice, but we extend the left hand to inquire the opinion of our fathers of the faith. Just as I Thessalonians 5:21 establishes: “Test all things, hold fast what is good.”

I had the privilege of writing the first edition of this book in 1988, and when I was able to do the second edition of the same book in 1991, in Mexico there had already been published various controversial works related to the celebration of Christmas. Among those, due to the importance of its argument in favor of the Christmas celebration based on the practice of the great heroes of the faith, I make a direct reference to the one titled: An Answer to the Christmas Tree, by Ricardo Zepeda.

The mentioned book attacks the NEO-PENTACOSTAL CHURCHES ignoring that these are the churches that show more vitality in the evangelical church around the world. It is said in this book that the churches in restoration maintain a propaganda “pseudo-Christian” that after having turned upside down the faith of many evangelicals now we have put into question the validity of the celebration of Christmas.

It is interesting to see how this author defends the Christmas celebration. Let’s see some of his points of view:

         1.  Those groups (the churches in restoration) oppose the celebration                   of the birth of the Lord as an idolatrous event, only because it is                 celebrated on the date of the day of the sun that the Roman pagan               observed before the triumph of Christianity. 

This book would have us believe that the establishment of the Roman-Catholic religion in ancient Rome was the triumph of Christianity. If that is, then why is the author outside of the Catholic Religion? On the contrary we maintain that although the Vatican is in Rome, that land urgently needs the preaching of the gospel like any other part of the earth.

         2. This referenced work would have us believe that the authentic              Christians are those who faithfully follow the tradition of                              celebrating Christmas, but those of us who have left such an                          observance are not really Christians.  For the author, saying that on              the 25th of December: "That night the Savior was born" is a small                      lie without  importance.  And anyways it is a necessary lie in order                  to be Christians without any doubts.

Those of us with Christian maturity and revelation from the Holy Spirit have cast aside all vestiges of the Babylonian religion, we don't want to mix the message of he that has affirmed in John 14:6: "I AM THE TRUTH" with small lies.

         3.  That work says that since the tree that represented the Babylonian                god Tammuz, stopped being displayed about 1117 years ago (the                     book being referred to was written in 1990), now one can put a                    tree up in their house without any spiritual problem. 

That is to say, time has erased the idolatrous symbol.  But in the light of the Word of God we know that an idol is an idol. And the Christmas tree as was already explained in the previous chapter, is an idol that represents the Babylonian god Tammuz. Not all trees are idols, but particularly when one cuts down a pine tree and takes it to their house, and adorns it with spheres and lights during the Christmas season, it constitutes an idol. Have you read what I Corinthians 1:19-20 says: “What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.”

         4.  The same author cites Deuteronomy 16:21 that says: “You shall                      not plant for yourself any tree, as a wooden image, near the altar                      which you build for yourself to the Lord your God.”  And he argues     that TREES SHOULD NOT BE FOR IDOLS.

But this author doesn't understand that when someone repeats a thousand year old rite, like placing a Christmas tree in their house or church, they are spiritually binding themselves to the idols, that have a legal right over those who invoke or worship them. It is truly important that a recently converted Christian, in a conscious and voluntary way renounces the religious spirit and the idolatry, so that they are capable to worship in spirit and truth.

But now we arrive at the heart of the matter that justifies the title of this present chapter. In the same book, An Answer to the Christmas Tree, the author says:

         5. “We seriously take into account that Dr. Martin Luther in the days                  of Reformation in the XVI Century took a fir, and adorned it in a                  beautiful way and used it to celebrate Christmas.”

Martin Luther is a champion of the faith. God gave him Romans 1:17 where it says: “ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith'", the rhema word for his preaching. Martin Luther is undeniably one of the most important links in the process of restoring the Church. Today there is not an evangelical church in the world that doesn’t hoist the four principal cardinals of the Lutheran Reformation: Only faith, by grace, only the Bible, and the universal priesthood of the believers.

However, Martin Luther was far from knowing the glory of the Gospel, that by the mercy of God the most modest believer in the Christian churches knows today. Luther knew nothing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Luther didn’t know the importance of removing the religious images and the full-length robes of the church, Luther didn’t even arrive to the conviction of salvation as a present experience. Luther continued baptizing babies with a little water on the head, as Romanism practices it and as the same Lutheran church does to this day. Martin Luther reestablished the worship of the crucifix and the image of the Virgin Mary in Wittenberg, when his disciples guided by the Scriptures had arrived at the conviction to which John Calvin arrived to in Geneva, that all of this should be discarded.  And of course Luther continued celebrating Christmas adorning a fir tree.

From the previous information, nothing makes us conclude that all the Christians in the world have the moral duty to put a fir in our house during the Christmas season “because the great Martin Luther” did it that way with much devotion.

Yes we go back to our statements at the beginning of this chapter. History must be studied, the best that has arrived to us must be taken from the great thinkers of Christianity, but we never compromise our faithfulness to the Holy Scripture in favor of a custom, a human doctrine, any religious rite, or a theological current contrary to the revelation of the Bible. Judas 3 says, “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Do you want to please God? Make a determination to submit yourself to the revelation of the Scriptures above your denominational traditions. And God will honor you.