West Port Experiment

Cancelled services this ‘Christmas’ should be more than enough proof. Proof that Christmas observance and faithfulness to the pure worship of the one true and living God are mutually exclusive. That Christmas will, at least in part, be the death of us. And that, barring an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a massive reformational purge of all the inventions of men in the worship of God, the West will soon be a paganized, secular wasteland.

Christmas and Christianity have admittedly coexisted for the better part of Christendom, except of course for the great Puritanic ‘pause’ from the 16th to the 18th centuries in much of English-speaking Protestantism. But how can what is fundamentally “not of heaven, but of men” (Luke 20:4), of unarguably ancient heathen and syncretistic Roman Catholic origin, ever live in peace with the Gospel of God? “And what concord [alliance] hath Christ with Belial? . . . And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols” (2 Cor. 6:15-16)?

Those of you, dear brethren, who adhere to reformational religion, New and Old Calvinists alike, who still retain Christmas, how can you not see that these twins in the womb are of two very contrary kinds? That they may seem in many ways to look alike, but are of very different parentage? That one, while masquerading as an angel of light, is but of the flesh and fundamentally hostile to the spiritual seed? That the historic coexistence of the two has be on account not of special, but of common, restraining grace? Let’s not forget that Satanic policy has two faces, one that smiles and one that bares its teeth. But is it not becoming painfully clear this Sunday, this December 25, 2022, that the Old Serpent is making a bold and open advance on what our fathers deemed “the bulwark of practical religion,” the “Lord’s day,” the Christian Sabbath? No doubt, he disarms the undiscerning with his yuletide tinsel and bells-a-jingling. But he lusts for the prey, the outward, institutional heart of Christianity. The day that our Lord set aside from creation re-consecrated on the first day of the week. “This is the day the LORD hath made” (Psalm 118:24). And it is the day to hallow his courts (Psalm 84, 122).

Tragically, I fear that many evangelicals are too far gone to heed the warning. At best, this call for the canceling of Christmas is backwards and bizarre. We should be putting Christ back into Christmas, not jumping ship! To such as are determined to keep Christmas at all costs, nevermind the Fourth Commandment or imperatives in Hebrews 10, I fear the words Rev. 22:11 are apropos: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.”

But I beg the remnant who have ears to hear! The Puritans were right after all. Worship is not a free-for-all. And open the door a crack to the inventions of men, and men will smuggle in their golden calves and Asherah poles. A little syncretism is still syncretism, just as a little cancer is cancer. And if left untreated, if the “high places are not taken down,” the roots of the flesh will inevitably yield the works of the flesh, not he fruit of the Spirit.

So why do you hold on to Christmas? Is it because God instituted it? Is it because He told you it pleased Him? Or is it in the end because it pleases you? And if it is because it pleases you, are you so sure that you someday just might find it pleasing you or your children to skip church to keep Christmas? If you claim to embrace the regulative principle of worship—what God commands in worship is to be done, and what He has not commandment is not to be done (Deut. 12:28-32)—then beware lest you eventually come under your Lord’s censure: “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition” (Mark 7:9).