Reasons for Some Changes in Our Way of Life

We in the Mark Pitrone family have made a few changes in the way we do things. They will become glaringly apparent in the next few weeks and months, and I thought it would be a wise course of action to try to explain the reasons for these changes. I do not expect all of you to agree that these changes are in our best interests, but we believe that they are. I also understand that you may not like the changes we are making, but ,then, we have to live with ourselves before our Creator. First a few preliminaries, then the main body of the text before you.

We are, all of us, believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose name is YHWH, pronounced as nearly as I can tell Yahweh, and in his Son, whose name is Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel. Most, if not all, of you already knew that, so it should not be shocking to you. The names I just gave may be, however. I arrived at the realization that we had been calling our heavenly Father by a title, when he specifically said he wanted to be called by his name. And we were referring to his Son by a common name which is at best a translation or transliteration of his real name. Now, if I played a piece of music by Guiseppe Verde and you asked who the composer was, I would not tell you Joe Green. So why would I refer to the Saviour of the world by anything but his name, which is not Jesus, but Yeshua? He was and is a Jew, so his name must be Hebrew, not Greek or Latin or even English, right?

We are also believers in a doctrine called 'sola scriptura', or scripture only. What we mean by this is that we do not hold to traditions except as they agree with the clear teaching of scripture as given in the 'Old Testament' and the 'New Testament' of what is commonly called 'The Bible.' We believe that the evidence is overwhelming that Yahweh has given us everything we need to understand him and what he expects from us in his scriptures. When we do what he expects, he is pleased with us, and when we do what he forbids, he is displeased. We believe it is wiser to please the Creator and King of the Universe than to displease him, so we look into his scripture and try to do what is pleasing in his sight. If something is displeasing in his sight we ought not to do it, and in our study of scripture we have come to the realization that we have been doing what is displeasing in his sight and have purposed to stop it forthwith.

That said, on to the body of the text.

We have found that the church has for the last 1800 years, at least, been keeping traditions that are contrary to scripture and the nature of Yahweh as revealed therein. The church has kept these traditions pretty much in ignorance, not as a matter of willful disobedience or with malicious intent. We have been taught by our fathers, who were taught by their fathers, and so on for 1800 years. All those worthies who came before us are not lost and going to hell because they kept to the traditions, any more than you or we are. But when we became aware of these facts, wanting to be obedient to our Father in heaven regardless the cost in our lives and fortunes, we decided to follow after Yahweh and Yeshua as he's revealed himself to us by his Spirit.

One of these traditions, we have come to believe, is Christmas. There is much evidence to show that, not only was Yeshua not born in December, but that the very day we have until now celebrated as his birthday was actually the feast day of numerous pagan gods and a form of sun-worship. December 25th is the first day that is noticably longer after the winter solstice, and is therefore celebrated by the pagans as the re-birth day of the sun. The rituals of the pagans on this day were such atrocities and abominations before Yahweh as to make it unwise to share them in great detail here. Suffice it to say that the day of December 25th was frought with pagan sacrifices of everything from wood to the pagan's own children. One of the feasts was called 'Childmas', or child sacrifice. We could not and do not believe that Yahweh would want us to celebrate this day as the birthday of his Son, especially not as 'Christ-mas', or the offering of the child Yeshua as a sacrifice to the sun.

Evidence from scripture shows that Yeshua was born in the early fall of the year, not early winter. So if it were necessary to celebrate Yeshua's birthday, and there is no scriptural warrant for such celebration, it should be done around the time of the Feast of Tabernacles as it is given in Leviticus chapter 23. If you'd like an explanation as to how I arrived at this dating of Yeshua's birth just ask and I'll be happy to show it to you.

Another tradition we've kept until this year was Easter. Easter is another pagan festival, celebrating the fertility of the earth. In the pagan celebration an egg falls from the sky to the Euphrates river at sunrise and opens to reveal an egg-laying rabbit that gives blessings of fruitfulness to all its celebrants. This is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Passover or the resurrection of Yeshua, though the dates in the Hebrew and conventional calendars may coincide. It has everything to do with sun-worship.

Another tradition we've kept until this year was corporate worship, i.e.; going to church, on Sunday. Once again, it seemed that sun-worship had crept into the church's traditions. Yahweh had made the Sabbath - the 7th day of the week - as his day, a day set apart for rest from the labors of the week before and for our communion with him. There are numerous scripture commands to sabbath keeping, not one to 1st day keeping. Therefore we keep Sabbath, from sundown of the 6th day of the week through sundown of the Sabbath.

The reasons for all these things are more numerous than have been sited to this point. The most important of all reasons though is that we are commanded NOT to do as the pagans do, not to incorporate any of their ways into our ways. When the nation of Israel was divided after the death of Shlomo (Solomon), the 10 northern tribes kept the name of Yahweh in their worship, but associated it with man-made gods, golden calves like Aaron had made in the wilderness. It didn't please Yahweh anymore then than it had 500 years before. We believe that if we were to keep any of the above mentioned 'Christian' holidays we would be in the same kind of disfavor with Yahweh as Jeroboam and the 10 tribes were. They got carried away into captivity and slavery from which they have never yet emerged.

For these reasons we find it impossible to celebrate either Christmas or Easter from this day forward. This is not to say that you can't do as you see fit before God, or that we think that if you keep on following the traditions that you are lost and hell-bound. Indeed, it is only that we cannot in good conscience celebrate what we believe are pagan festivals. We judge only ourselves, as that is our place, and leave you to judge yourselves before Yahweh, as that is NOT our place, but yours and yours alone.

 

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