Organized religion created a counterfeit holiday called Lent which includes the following:
Mardi
Gras with parades and costumed parties.
Mardi Gras, (French: Fat Tuesday) festive day celebrated in France and some U.S. cities on Shrove Tuesday
(the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday), which marks the close of the
pre-Lenten season. The French name Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, from
the custom of using all the fats in the home before Lent in preparation
for fasting and abstinence.
The word Shrove:
The name comes from the old word 'shriving', which means to listen to someone's sins and forgive them.
In Anglo-Saxon England, Christians would go to church on Shrove Tuesday
to confess their sins and clean their soul. In other words, they would
be 'shriven'.
The
first day of Lent is Ash Wednesday. On this special day of reflection,
Catholics wear a marking of the cross in ash on their foreheads. The ashes symbolize our mortality – “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But you might be wondering, where do the ashes for Ash Wednesday come from? The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations.
It is believed the Catholic Church started Lent in the 8th century.
Lent is 40 days before Easter. It's a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It's a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord's Resurrection at Easter.
Sounds very Christian, so, what's the problem? Lent has no basis in Scripture... purely man-made tradition, a counterfeit to draw attention away from God's Holy Days.
Renew Your Strength is not a "know-it-all" type ministry. The purpose of Renew Your Strength Bible Study Group is to get people to think about what they believe and why they believe it, not debate who's right or wrong.
Over the years, as Renew Your Strength has continued to
grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have
recognized that some of the things we once held as true, in fact, are
not; and therefore we will not “cast in stone” a statement of our
beliefs. We reserve the right to be wrong and to repent of such error
when we discover it.
To
learn the revealed truth of God we must know and understand the true
meaning of the words God inspired to be written. Use Strong's
Concordance to check the original word before it was translated. Do your own research, make up your own mind, rely on the Holy Spirit to guide you.
