ATTENDING
FUNERALS
AND WEDDINGS OF PAGANS
This article is based on a letter from a Bible believer in Ireland.
The Letter
Dear Steve
I
would appreciate your view on attending Roman Catholic Funerals!
As you must
be aware the Republic of Ireland is generally Roman Catholic
populated I was
saved by The Lord Jesus Christ in 1975 (I am know nearly
69 years old) I always
had difficulty about attending Roman Catholic funerals
(I never go to them)
But I always thought that if any of my immediate family
died (wife and five
children, now adults. All Roman Catholics-- lapsed).
So if one of the family died before me what would I do?
Sincerely Joseph L_____
My Answer:
Go to the funeral and do not participate in the genuflecting and formalities-- do not go to eat the sacred biscuit.
This may help:
2 Kings 5:18 In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing.
19 And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little way.
Read the whole chapter to get the context.
I went to a Jewish funeral for a lady who was devilish-- a Kabalist and worshipped in a Satanic ritual that terrified her husband. But, she was in a political club we attended for a while. I knew she would have very few people at her funeral, so my wife and I decided I should go to be considerate. When I got there, the Rabbi came up to me and said that he did not have enough pall bearers, would I help? I told him I would be happy to. He handed me gloves and a yarmulke which the Jews wear on their heads especially at religious events. I put them on knowing they meant nothing to me, and I helped. It was exceedingly sad. There was almost no one there, and the Rabbi, being Liberal, could give no hope for anything in the afterlife. I was glad I went for the family's sake.
To be there and to be considerate is grace, to participate in the blasphemies is heresy. Simply ask our Father in heaven to give you a sweet spirit. If the priest speaks to you, thank him for being thoughtful, and leave it at that. Perhaps you could tell the priest that your hope was refreshed as you realized that the hope of the Christian is only in Jesus Christ. What can he say? That is the official line, though the priest contradicts it with ceremony and false teaching.
God bless as you stay on the narrow way.
In
Christ
Jesus Steve Van Nattan
PS Take a Gospel tract and leave it in the book rack :-)
______________________________
We have a friend who asked to drop Christmas in her home. Her unsaved husband refused, but he was happy to drop the religious aspects so that his wife could leave Jesus out of the pagan day. My wife counseled her to submit to her husband and have a Christmas holiday without mixing Jesus up in it. The matter is only a thing of custom and vanity, and the lady was not blaspheming Christ in it.
A friend of my mother in law had to take her Catholic mother to Catholic Mass every Sunday. She was burdened that the Lord might be angry with her. My mother in law correctly showed her the experience of Naaman above. One more verse comes to mind where Paul had instructed the saints at Corinth to not be affected by the world in their personal lives. They had, it seems, gone to an extreme in obeying his teaching, and the Holy Ghost used that to give us help in how to deal with the walk of the saint IN the world while not being OF the world:
1 Corinthians 5:9 (KJV) I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
Eating with, and walking in the market place of work place, with sinners to be a caution, but "not altogether" avoiding these people, for then we have no witness to them of Jesus Christ. Holding the arm of the king in the house of Rimmon is not evil if I am not worshipping Rimmon, but eating and drinking with an alleged saint who is in fornication is OUT. I would rather sit and visit with a dead beat Freemason with a beer in his hand than to join Jack Hyles at a preacher's conference in Hawaii to which he went without his wife, but WITH his personal secretary.
Another issue is Christmas. If I believe it is pagan, and if I believe Jesus was born on about September 6, AND if the New Testament nowhere tells us to remember the birth of Jesus, then I would be compromising and helping the blasphemy if I participated in any way in a Christmas event in a local church. Whereas, I went to the private office party of an unsaved doctor friend whom I was seeking for Christ. If you do this, go early, and leave soon so you are not there to watch the others get soused.
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