(First written and printed April 1990)
The ancient idolatry of Babylon has been the root of nearly every heathen religion. Biblical Christians shudder to realize that many of Babylon's vile teachings and practices have been retained by Roman Catholicism in its counterfeit form of Christianity which has permeated so many apostate churches in these days.
Rome borrowed the 40 days called "Lent" from the worshippers of the Babylonian queen of heaven.
Lent begins on what through pagan tradition has come to be known as "Ash Wednesday," six-and-a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40 day fast (Sundays excluded) in imitation of Christ's fasting in the wilderness. In actuality, during the fast those who call themselves "Christian" are supposed to refrain from alcohol, tobacco, meat, pleasant foods, fleshly gratification etc., etc During World War II in the West, Catholics liberalized their fast to a bit lesser degree.
However, there seemed to be a feeling that the old man of sin, the carnal flesh, Just couldn't. be totally denied its pleasures, whims and wants for such along time so the - French invented the Mardi Gras, :a time of dancing, reveling and drunken debauchery so as to give the devil all the sinful pleasure he wanted in one grand whoopee, flesh-pleasing affair, thus making it easier-for him to be a good boy for the next 40 days. Maybe I have put it bluntly but that is what it all adds up to in essence.
When the festivities, are over, the Lenten season is in. At first in the U.S. this mad - thing was celebrated in the French quarters of New Orleans, La ,only Now it has spread throughout much of the world, Rio de Janeiro probably being the worst of all As far away as India, in the newspapers and on their TV appeared semi-nude women atop the shoulders of whirling male dancers, the music was described as having "strong sexual content.!'
I was in Trinidad, West Indies, once in meetings at this time of the year. Only a block from where I was staying was a Roman Catholic Church. Strange, frenzied music was blaring, drums beating, beer and wine flowed like water, the streets were filled with revelers and beer bottles. It was the night before Lent would begin so every body had to give the devil full sway for he would have to be more contained for the next 40 days.
Next morning, those who were sober enough to make the journey, crawled on their hands and knees to the top of a nearby hill where they prayed before a crucifix.,
This year in Galveston, Texas, an estimated crowd of 400,000 people jammed the city of 65,000 residents to carry on a Texas-style Mardi Gras Probably none of them took time, nor did they care, where the origin of such celebration originated. I wonder if anybody even asked themselves, "Is this the way to celebrate the Season that commemorates the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ?"
These celebrations are often demonic. One man describing the one in Trinidad told me that people get what he called "the jumps," that they become seized with fits of jumping and seem unable to stop He told me that his wife did not come home the first night of carnival and when he found her, she was laying in a ditch, semi conscious, totally exhausted from jumping
Paul prescribed a cure for such blasphemy and nonsense. Hear him as he says: "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings (to make merry, to be noisily festive; boisterous festivity; noisy merrymaking - New World Dictionary) and such like:"of the which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven." Gal. 5:16-21
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