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The celebration of a day of Thanksgiving, in the United States, or a day specifically set aside to thank the Lord God for all of the great deliverances and blessings bestowed upon us, can be traced back to both the English separatists of Plymouth rock (or the pilgrims) in 1621, and independently to the puritans of the Massachusetts bay colony in 1630. In both instances, the shared, public sincere, heartfelt observance of giving thanks unto God for his great mercies, blessings and deliverances – for His word, His judgments, His law – glorified His holy name by signifying His sovereignty – His omnipotence and omniscience – that those people could not have done those things for themselves – that God, as the Maker Of All Things Both Seen And Unseen, controls all happenings in the world, from the tenderest blades of grass growing in an endless meadow, to the count and functioning of the corpuscles inside your body. These people thanked God, openly, with one voice, that he had not sent them strong delusions that they would believe a lie, but that he had caused their hearts to have a reverent fear of his holy name. They thanked Him that He is The Potter, and that they (or we) are but the clay.
Similar days of Thanksgiving were called for over the years – the continental-confederation congress – which was the legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789 – appointed several such Thanksgiving days each year, with the first national day of Thanksgiving being proclaimed as December 18, 1777, with Samuel Adams creating the first proclamation draft. It read, in part: for as much as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of: it is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these united states to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise: that at one time and with one voice, the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that, together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; further days of Thanksgiving were proclaimed by our government – the continental congress penning this proclamation on November 5, 1782: it being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up their supplications to almighty God, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner, to give him praise for his goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of his providence in their behalf; therefore, the united states in congress assembled, do hereby recommend it to the inhabitants of these states in general, to observe and request the several states to interpose their authority, in appointing and commanding the observation of Thursday the twenty-eighth day of November next as a day of solemn Thanksgiving to God for all his mercies; and they do further recommend to all ranks to testify their gratitude to God for his goodness by a cheerful obedience to his laws and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.
Finally, in 1863, during the American civil war, President Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November of that year. The proclamation, read in part: the year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God…no human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have suffered in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged. From 1863 forward, Thanksgiving has been observed nationally in the United States – it is proclaimed as a holiday – or ‘holy’ day.
You see, this is a nation that was not only founded upon true Christian virtue, but was a nation that knew the necessity and importance of giving Almighty God the thanks and praise for all things – knowing that he could just as easily destroy a people, and it was only by his benevolent, omnipotent hand that they had breath of life in their nostrils.
But ‘holy’ day, or a specific time set aside to thank and praise God, has become in the world’s lexicon ‘holiday’ – or a self-serving ‘vacation’ from our commitments. A time to thanks God and specifically humble ourselves to him has become a time of selfish fulfillment. English-speaking Europeans actually use the word holiday the way we use the word vacation – an escape from the pressures of life – a time of relaxation and enjoyment. Sure, people still say that they are thankful or grateful – but to whom? And for what? When people say they are thankful today, what they mean is – I like what I got – I like what I get to do – I like what or who I am. In the main, what people in this nation claim the most thanksgiving for is ‘their freedom’. Their freedom to do whatever their dark hearts crave. Their freedom from moral constraint. But there is no sincere thanksgiving unto God. It is in principle impossible – words and definitions get in the way. If you generally live your life in a manner inconsistent with the moral law of God almighty, how is it even possible, in principle, to thank him for it? Consider the following insincere, diabolical offerings of thanksgiving unto God.
Dear God – I just wanted to take a minute thank you for Benjamin. He completes me. I know that even though you have proscribed homosexuality in your holy law, and you even affixed the death penalty for it, I feel thankful every time he packs my fudge. Amen.
Dear God – I give thanks unto you for our family – and for our church – and we ask blessings upon both. And we ask that you bless this meal that we are about to eat – and we thank thee for blessing us by bringing father O’Diddle over to share this bountiful meal and hang out with our sons for a while. Amen.
Dear God – I just wanted to take minute to thank you for helping me to divorce my first wife – she was getting kinda boring to me – so I sloughed her off and I’m thankful to be rid of that woman. I’m also thankful for the adulterous relationship that I’m in now, seeing as though she can never really be my wife. The idea of being able to just discard a woman when you get bored with her or whenever you get a hankerin to start sniffin around another woman – well I’m just so thankful for that. Amen
Dear God – I’m thankful for my crop-headed, woman preacher. I can really relate to her sappy, worldly way of explaining how God loves everybody, no matter what kind of a vile, impenitent sinner they are. When she wrests the scripture to her own, and my, destruction, she does so in a way that makes me feel like we’re both popping gum and gossiping down at the hair salon. Amen.
Dear God – as all Americans – I’m most thankful for our freedom – our freedom to : let fags and dykes have a governmentally-recognized and advocated marriage, in blatant defiance of thy commandments, I’m thankful for our freedom to rip these little babies from the wombs of our fellow citizens whenever, through casual fornication or adultery, the baby is kind of a hassle, I’m thankful that our government uses millions of our tax dollars to subsidize abortions for others worldwide, I’m thankful for our freedom to divorce and remarry as many times as we want, being driven all along by our lusts and our fickle, disloyal nature – and failing to recognize the significance of the marriage covenant as a type of Christ and his bride, the church, and I’m thankful for our freedom to break the moral compasses of our children, by failing to raise them by a godly standard, and for our freedom, once they’ve been raised, to then hand them m-16 rifles and send them off to fight bloody wars that we have no business fighting and we can never really win. And finally, God, I’m thankful for all the manifest ways that we are able to whitewash our lives of sin and shame into looking like wholesome, meaningful and morally upstanding lives. Amen
You can’t live lives that are consistently at odds with God’s law – in your behavior, and the behaviors that you teach and advocate others to live by, and have a shred of sincere thanksgiving unto God. Unless you have a sincere, heartfelt fear of God before your eyes, living in full recognition and reliance upon his sovereignty and mercy, then it’s logically and in principle impossible to be thankful to God for anything. And therefore, Thanksgiving is perhaps the phoniest of all holidays. God hates your phony thanksgiving so much, that he has promised to literally smear the excrement that comes out of you after your Thanksgiving feast upon the faces of your phony preachers, and finally, send both them and you to Hell. Consider the scripture:
“And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.” (Malachi 2:1-4)
God hates your Thanksgiving. Amen