as the Book of Genesis reads: in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. It sounds nice and forward-pointing but Abraham is not really, at least not anymore on the front-page of the Good News newspaper of the institutionalized Christianity, though he should. Abraham's role was and is a central one to the whole mankind, he should be always commemorated like that in Christianity too.
If he should, why he is not? From a game-changer prophet Patriarch, Abraham became a nice family man with a couple of nice Sunday school stories. Why did his image become fainted within Christianity?
This question is similar to an other question, which became pivotal among other issues in the modernity. This question is that when it is the right time to tell our children and grandchildren that the Santa Claus does not exist?
As the Abraham story is changed, he became only a distant faith ancestor, so the Santa Claus story became almost unrecognizable comparing the original one. The particular truth we have to say that the Santa Claus does exist. And this is like a Christian obligation to tell our kids the truth, that the Santa Claus is real, or at least he was a real human person. His name was Nicholas, and eventually he became Saint Nicholas, or in a shortened German-ish version, Santa Claus.
He was a Christian bishop in a Greek Asian port city in the early third century. He and his legacy was kept in the people's memory, for millennia, because he became the walking example of the blessed magnanimity and benevolent generosity. He was born as a rich man's kid. But as a bishop he spent his inheritance to help the poor. Although the Bible recommends that there should be not needy among You, poverty still lingered around like almost for ever.
When in the Greek city of Myra occurred an outbreak of famine, from his own pocket Saint Nicholas bought two fully loaded ship with wheat to feed the hungry. An other time he Nicholas heard that a man had three daughters, but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried. In order to marry out at least the oldest one the man must have considered to sell his younger daughters into slavery. Hearing of the misery of the family Nicholas decided to help them, thus he went to the house under the cover of night and threw a purse filled with gold coins through the window opening into the house. The next two nights,he climbed up on the roof to the chimney, and he dropped the purses through it. That is when the chimneys and the rooftops started to be involved in the Santa story.
Beside the exemplary willingness to help the weak and poor he was also a miracle worker. Legend has it that once he even resurrected children from death. As a Catholic Saint, his day is celebrated on December 6, exactly on Saint Nicholas Day. In Europe kids put their shoes and boots in the windows on Santa Nicholas Eve. At the morning they find candy, chocolates, small gifts in their footwear. But Santa's day had had nothing to do with Christmas until the cult arrived to Hollywood.
It was not the Grinch who stole Christmas, but Hollywood did it.
Their first step was to stole the Christian Bishop memory of Saint Nicholas turning him into a North Pole long beard wizard,we call it Santa today. Their second step was to drop Jesus from the Christmas story and exchange it with the Hollywood Santa and the chimney and the reindeers, elves etc. Nothing wrong with a heartwarming fairy tale but they should not call it Christmas because it is about the Christ child.
To return to celebrate Christmas as such, our first step might be to tell our children that there was, or in a living tradition there is a real Santa Klaus, or a legacy of his, of a Christian bishop who lived an exemplary life, as all Christians should.
Back to Abraham who had the promise that in his descent all nations of the Earth will be blessed. To
Get that blessing there is a pronounced way as God said: I will bless who bless you, and I will course who course You. Beside this recommendation or rather commandment why we should bless Abraham's name? Why he should be a central figure of the humanity? Why must he be blessed by all, by all the nations.
His story starts before the flood. The flood came because the people were so wicked that they not only waged a permanent war of vengeance on each other but they also ate each other.
After the flood we would think that things should have gotten better because humanity had learned something. But it did not occur. They started to build pyramids, ziggurats, towers of defense in a case of a new flood. A tower in BABEL was built particularly against God as a tool to reach and besiege Heaven, to overthrow God's kingdom.
The king who build this tower was called Nimrod. Within his reign a child was born called Abraham.
According to the Bible there was ten generations from Noah to Abraham. But all these generations after the flood also kept provoking God, by idolatry, by burning their first born children, by heavy slavery, adultery, murders, wars. According to the tradition of the sages, God did not talk to anybody of these wicked ten generations after the flood, except Abraham. At the time of the flood, there was only one family, Noah’s who was worthy. At the time of Abraham, on the whole surface of the Earth there was only one but one man, who was righteous.
The book of Genesis in 14:13 calls his name Abram the Hebrew. Abram means the exalted father, Ha-ivri, in his case meant, he who is on the other side, as the whole world was on one side against God, while he was on the other side, on the side of the true God.
According to the tradition when Abraham was three years old, he went out of the cave he was hiding from the King Nimrod the great slayer, and he was observing the world, he wondered in his heart. Who created Heaven and Earth and me?
All day he prayed to the Sun. But sunset came and he understood that the sun can not be the creator. All night he prayed to the moon and the stars, bu they disappeared at dawn, when the sun rose in the east. Then he said: neither the moon or the sun has the power, there must be a higher Lord over them, to whom I will pray only.
The whole world was engaged in idol worship, dark wizardry killing and revenge, except Abraham.
The tradition says that his own father did not teach him for the better, nor did he have a master to teach him. God taught him himself.
He had a family, father and two brothers but still he was all alone. His father had an idol shop, selling idol god statues and images. One day Abraham seized a stick, and smashed all the images in his father's store except the biggest one, he put the stick in the hand of the statue. When his father returned, he asked his son that who did this to the gods? Abraham answered that this big one statue here got angry and smashed all the others.
His father said: are you making sport of me? They can not do anything. Abraham answered : You said it with your own mouth that they are nothing. There is only one God, the king of the Universe, who has no image, for he is invisible to the eye.
His father was so aggravated that he took his son to the wicked king, Nimrod. The idol gods, the young Abraham destroyed, belonged to the imperial religion. Despising them was a crime against the empire, punishable by death. Regarding Nimrod the book of Genesis says that Cush begat Nimrod who was the first man of might on Earth.
This meant not only that he was a mighty king, but that he declared that the God of the Flood is an enemy of mankind, and the Seven Laws of Noah, the predecessor of the Ten Commandments must not be respected. He declared that not God but he himself, Nimrod is the source of all laws and legislation. Whosoever rebels against him, that must surely die.
Abraham was cast into a great fire on the order of King Nimrod. But the fire was not able to harm him. Just as the prophet Daniel and his company walked out of the oven unharmed. At the time of the tower of Babel, Nimrod was considered the King of the world, the single ruler of the united empire.
Only one man stood against him, Abraham, in the name of the only true God, the Creator Grandfather Spirit, in Heaven.
The Holy One said to Abraham: Get You out of the country. Go over there I send You. Whoever will bless You I bless him, whoever curse You, I will curse him.
In You and in your descendants all the nations of the Earth will be blessed.
All the nations, we on Earth must bless Abraham and his legacy. We must withstand all the wicked Empires and man made laws, but we have to stick strictly to the Laws of the Creator God, until the very end, where a descendant of Abraham, we believe, the returning Jesus, will come to Earth to destroy the might of all empires, to make peace, justice, equality and compassion rule the Earth. AMEN.
If he should, why he is not? From a game-changer prophet Patriarch, Abraham became a nice family man with a couple of nice Sunday school stories. Why did his image become fainted within Christianity?
This question is similar to an other question, which became pivotal among other issues in the modernity. This question is that when it is the right time to tell our children and grandchildren that the Santa Claus does not exist?
As the Abraham story is changed, he became only a distant faith ancestor, so the Santa Claus story became almost unrecognizable comparing the original one. The particular truth we have to say that the Santa Claus does exist. And this is like a Christian obligation to tell our kids the truth, that the Santa Claus is real, or at least he was a real human person. His name was Nicholas, and eventually he became Saint Nicholas, or in a shortened German-ish version, Santa Claus.
He was a Christian bishop in a Greek Asian port city in the early third century. He and his legacy was kept in the people's memory, for millennia, because he became the walking example of the blessed magnanimity and benevolent generosity. He was born as a rich man's kid. But as a bishop he spent his inheritance to help the poor. Although the Bible recommends that there should be not needy among You, poverty still lingered around like almost for ever.
When in the Greek city of Myra occurred an outbreak of famine, from his own pocket Saint Nicholas bought two fully loaded ship with wheat to feed the hungry. An other time he Nicholas heard that a man had three daughters, but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried. In order to marry out at least the oldest one the man must have considered to sell his younger daughters into slavery. Hearing of the misery of the family Nicholas decided to help them, thus he went to the house under the cover of night and threw a purse filled with gold coins through the window opening into the house. The next two nights,he climbed up on the roof to the chimney, and he dropped the purses through it. That is when the chimneys and the rooftops started to be involved in the Santa story.
Beside the exemplary willingness to help the weak and poor he was also a miracle worker. Legend has it that once he even resurrected children from death. As a Catholic Saint, his day is celebrated on December 6, exactly on Saint Nicholas Day. In Europe kids put their shoes and boots in the windows on Santa Nicholas Eve. At the morning they find candy, chocolates, small gifts in their footwear. But Santa's day had had nothing to do with Christmas until the cult arrived to Hollywood.
It was not the Grinch who stole Christmas, but Hollywood did it.
Their first step was to stole the Christian Bishop memory of Saint Nicholas turning him into a North Pole long beard wizard,we call it Santa today. Their second step was to drop Jesus from the Christmas story and exchange it with the Hollywood Santa and the chimney and the reindeers, elves etc. Nothing wrong with a heartwarming fairy tale but they should not call it Christmas because it is about the Christ child.
To return to celebrate Christmas as such, our first step might be to tell our children that there was, or in a living tradition there is a real Santa Klaus, or a legacy of his, of a Christian bishop who lived an exemplary life, as all Christians should.
Back to Abraham who had the promise that in his descent all nations of the Earth will be blessed. To
Get that blessing there is a pronounced way as God said: I will bless who bless you, and I will course who course You. Beside this recommendation or rather commandment why we should bless Abraham's name? Why he should be a central figure of the humanity? Why must he be blessed by all, by all the nations.
His story starts before the flood. The flood came because the people were so wicked that they not only waged a permanent war of vengeance on each other but they also ate each other.
After the flood we would think that things should have gotten better because humanity had learned something. But it did not occur. They started to build pyramids, ziggurats, towers of defense in a case of a new flood. A tower in BABEL was built particularly against God as a tool to reach and besiege Heaven, to overthrow God's kingdom.
The king who build this tower was called Nimrod. Within his reign a child was born called Abraham.
According to the Bible there was ten generations from Noah to Abraham. But all these generations after the flood also kept provoking God, by idolatry, by burning their first born children, by heavy slavery, adultery, murders, wars. According to the tradition of the sages, God did not talk to anybody of these wicked ten generations after the flood, except Abraham. At the time of the flood, there was only one family, Noah’s who was worthy. At the time of Abraham, on the whole surface of the Earth there was only one but one man, who was righteous.
The book of Genesis in 14:13 calls his name Abram the Hebrew. Abram means the exalted father, Ha-ivri, in his case meant, he who is on the other side, as the whole world was on one side against God, while he was on the other side, on the side of the true God.
According to the tradition when Abraham was three years old, he went out of the cave he was hiding from the King Nimrod the great slayer, and he was observing the world, he wondered in his heart. Who created Heaven and Earth and me?
All day he prayed to the Sun. But sunset came and he understood that the sun can not be the creator. All night he prayed to the moon and the stars, bu they disappeared at dawn, when the sun rose in the east. Then he said: neither the moon or the sun has the power, there must be a higher Lord over them, to whom I will pray only.
The whole world was engaged in idol worship, dark wizardry killing and revenge, except Abraham.
The tradition says that his own father did not teach him for the better, nor did he have a master to teach him. God taught him himself.
He had a family, father and two brothers but still he was all alone. His father had an idol shop, selling idol god statues and images. One day Abraham seized a stick, and smashed all the images in his father's store except the biggest one, he put the stick in the hand of the statue. When his father returned, he asked his son that who did this to the gods? Abraham answered that this big one statue here got angry and smashed all the others.
His father said: are you making sport of me? They can not do anything. Abraham answered : You said it with your own mouth that they are nothing. There is only one God, the king of the Universe, who has no image, for he is invisible to the eye.
His father was so aggravated that he took his son to the wicked king, Nimrod. The idol gods, the young Abraham destroyed, belonged to the imperial religion. Despising them was a crime against the empire, punishable by death. Regarding Nimrod the book of Genesis says that Cush begat Nimrod who was the first man of might on Earth.
This meant not only that he was a mighty king, but that he declared that the God of the Flood is an enemy of mankind, and the Seven Laws of Noah, the predecessor of the Ten Commandments must not be respected. He declared that not God but he himself, Nimrod is the source of all laws and legislation. Whosoever rebels against him, that must surely die.
Abraham was cast into a great fire on the order of King Nimrod. But the fire was not able to harm him. Just as the prophet Daniel and his company walked out of the oven unharmed. At the time of the tower of Babel, Nimrod was considered the King of the world, the single ruler of the united empire.
Only one man stood against him, Abraham, in the name of the only true God, the Creator Grandfather Spirit, in Heaven.
The Holy One said to Abraham: Get You out of the country. Go over there I send You. Whoever will bless You I bless him, whoever curse You, I will curse him.
In You and in your descendants all the nations of the Earth will be blessed.
All the nations, we on Earth must bless Abraham and his legacy. We must withstand all the wicked Empires and man made laws, but we have to stick strictly to the Laws of the Creator God, until the very end, where a descendant of Abraham, we believe, the returning Jesus, will come to Earth to destroy the might of all empires, to make peace, justice, equality and compassion rule the Earth. AMEN.
