Nearly a billion Christian people have been taught the popular idea known as "the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary," a doctrine taught nowhere in the Bible. Sincere but mistaken "Fathers" in early church history thought they could make converts faster from the pagan masses in the Roman Empire if they could adapt the popular pagan beliefs into "Christian" thinking. This was one of them.
The wildly popular winter solstice festival of December 25 became "sanctified" as "Christmas," despite the illogical, irrational denial of Christ's birth being when there were "shepherds abiding in the field [camping, sleeping on the ground], keeping watch over their flocks by night" (Luke 2:8).
The pagan idea of a natural immortality of the human soul was welcomed into the early church despite the obvious contradiction of the great fundamental truth that "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3), which He could not have done if the soul is naturally immortal.
The idea that the mother of Jesus was given the grand exemption of being conceived "immaculate," that is, did not receive the DNA that every human being has received genetically from the head of the human race, this the Roman church welcomed. They refused to believe that she had the normal nature or "flesh" of the fallen Adam, but decreed for her the supernatural gift of a nonexistent sinless flesh or nature. In so doing, they excused her from the battles with temptation to sin that all the rest of us have.
But why take such pains to create this minor non-biblical exemption?
The real purpose: to "create" a "christ" who likewise was exempt from inheriting our DNA from Adam; "he" too as the son of this re-invented "Mary" must be "conceived immaculate." This plastic "savior" looks beautiful in stained glass cathedral windows, but has no heart relationship with human beings, never having been tempted as they are.
Another pagan festival adopted is the spring holiday of Easter. The divinely appointed memorial of Christ's resurrection is not the observance of any day, but it's baptism by being "buried" in the water (Rom. 6:3-5), not "sprinkled"--which again defies logic. Jesus warned that any idea not from the Bible, although taught by any church, is doomed (Matt. 15:9-13).
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 11, 2006.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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