AS BEREANS DID: History/False History

Showing posts with label History/False History. Show all posts

Saturday, October 31, 2026

Halloween II - Samhain

Think you know where Halloween came from? Maybe you do. Or maybe you've just heard the same story repeated often enough that it sounds like history. Here are some quick facts and observations to separate the historical record from the Halloween mythology.

In the previous post, we discussed who the Celts are and what the history of Halloween is. This time, we focus on Samhain. We shouldn't have to, but apparently, because of misinformation, we must.

Please take this quote from the Smithsonian (of all places) as our introduction:

"Halloween’s origins go back 2,000 years, to the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which marked their new year, according to National Geographic. Ancient Irish and Scottish people believed the veil between the worlds of the dead and living grew thin each year on November 1, allowing demons to roam the earth again. Along with displaying offerings and lighting bonfires for spirits, the Celts dressed up as the dead, hoping to blend in with real demons and therefore skirt spiritual confrontation."
-Rose Eveleth, “The History of Trick-or-Treating Goes Back Centuries” Smithsonian Magazine, originally published: October 18, 2012 | updated: October 24, 2023.

The Smithsonian is THE name in history in the United States, they had more than one person working on the article, and not just that, but National Geographic gets some credit. How on earth can it possibly be so wrong??
Yet it is. Let us turn aside and see.

What I am going to attempt to do today is give you a very, very simplified version of a very, very complicated topic. Anyone who studies Samhain professionally would likely tell you today's article is over simplified. Well, that's what you get in one blog post with scholarly material written for a casual audience. But I don't want to dive into details here. I only want to give you the overview that you need so you can better understand Halloween.

SAMHAIN HISTORY

What was Samhain?

Samhain means "summer's end". It was the traditional last day of summer. The word is Irish. It might be better to think of it not as Celtic, since Celt is a very broad term, and instead think of it as Gaelic.
Besides the Gaels, no other Celtic group is known to have shared the concept of Samhain. This does not paint a picture of a day so widely popular that the Pope felt compelled to co-opt it.

We have no record from the Druids themselves. The oldest material on the Celts comes from the Greeks and Romans, but they do not mention Samhain. If the Druids marked the end of summer with a festival at all (and though it is reasonable, there is no solid evidence to prove they did) that doesn't establish that they called it Samhain, or observed it on October 31 or November 1.

The oldest material that mentions Samhain arrives several hundred years after the Druids disappear from the record. The word samhain (it was spelled in a few different ways, but it's all the same thing) appears in several old Irish texts. The only surviving copies of those texts are in manuscripts which date from the 1100s to the 1600s. But, scholars believe those manuscripts are copies of earlier material. Based on the language used, scholars estimate those texts to originally come from the 700s through the 1100s. Old, yes, but even that is solidly within the Christian era. (For more details on these texts, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

This dating causes scholars to debate whether that earliest material was preserved (yet heavily edited) by Christians or wholly created by Christians.

These oldest Irish texts can be divided into two categories: Irish non-fiction, and medieval Irish legends.

Legends
The medieval legends - where human armies battled fairies, a corpse asks for a drink, and a supernatural being puts people to sleep with music then burns their buildings - do treat Samhain like a holiday. Any claim of a pre-Christian Samhain holiday is based on legends. Not a single word of offerings or dressing up, etc. It used to be widely thought that the legends are traditions from ancient Druidic paganism that survived into the Christian era. With modern archaeology and textual criticism, many folklorists and historians are abandoning that position.
Narrative
The non-fiction (a dictionary, a martyrology, and a list of events) does not treat samhain as a holiday. It treats samhain as a timestamp; a way to point out that something happened at the end of summer. The non-fiction aren't about samhain, they only use that word. Like I said, as timestamp.

So, we really have two very different ways to understand Samhain: a "samhain" (lower-case s) time-stamp that means "the last day of summer" and falls on November 1 but has nothing to do with a festival, and a "Samhain" (upper-case S) holiday from medieval legends that may or may not have been real.
A real Samhain festival hinges on two things:
1) Do the legends contain truth here, or are they merely fairytales, and
2) Were the legends created from stories that survived from Druids, or were they invented by the Christians who wrote them.
We do not know for sure, but modern scholarship is moving in the direction of fairytales invented by Christians.

Why might Christians write such fairytales? One possible answer is because they wanted to explain and expand the history of Ireland. "Why is that building in ruins? Ah! Because of a great battle in ancient times between men and fairies."

So, we don't know if Samhain was a literal festival or not. But if it were, the strongest scholarly position is that Samhain was a seasonal festival in early medieval Ireland, associated with the end of the farming season and transition into winter, and marked by communal feasting and assemblies. In other words, something much like a harvest festival. How much of this reflects actual pre-Christian religious practice is uncertain.

When was Samhain?

The medieval Irish legends do not give a date for Samhain at all. The Irish non-fiction puts samhain on November 1, never October 31.

It is important to understand a few things.

No one knows for certain exactly when summer's end was to the Druids. Remember, the Irish non-fiction, where the November 1 date comes from, was written by Christians during the Christian era. Exactly when the Druids believed summer ended is anybody's guess, but it could not have been tied to November 1 originally because the Druids didn't have a November.
November is a Roman month. We don't know what calendar the Irish Druids used, but it is highly unlikely they used the calendar of their enemies. A Celtic calendar was found in France. It is a luni-solar calendar. But that could be specific to France. We have no such example from Ireland.
When the earliest material was being created by Irish Christians, around 700-800 AD or so, they were using the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar we use today. Our November 1 today is 4 days ahead of November 1 from 800 AD. What was November 1 then would be November 5 now.

How was Samhain observed?

If we pull from the legends again, it was a time of feasting, royal gatherings, acts of courage, and, of course, encounters with fairies. There you go. Not so much like Halloween after all.
Again, not a single word of ritualized begging or dressing up.

Most of what people claim about Samhain and its traditions doesn't come from the oldest sources. It comes from material written much later, beginning in the 1500s. That's a pretty important distinction. The writers of that time were trying to reconstruct an ancient past they no longer understood, and they were doing it before modern historical and archaeological methods had been established. The disciplines of history and archaeology wouldn't become systematic, evidence-driven fields until the 1800s. Much of what earlier writers presented as pre-Christian Celtic history was actually speculation and romanticized reconstruction, not established fact. Rigorous disciplines did not correct the issues at first. On the contrary, well-known scholars like John Rhys and James Frazer made it worse. The idea that Samhain was the feast of the dead comes from James Frazer, as does the claim that the Catholic Church coopted Samhain and labeled it All Hallows. Specialists today are still working correcting the many misconceptions about this. Many of those claims from the 1500s through the early-1900s have since been disproved, abandoned as implausible, and rejected by modern scholars. Yet, articles like the one from the Smithsonian are helping to keep that questionable information alive.

Samhain is currently a festival for Wiccans and neo-pagans. No denying that. Some people use that as evidence that Samhain is ancient (and Halloween, of course). But as I said in the last post, Druidism, and by extension Samhain, was recently reinvented. Most of these groups popped up in the 1700-1900s. That isn't evidence of ancient age at all. The Samhain they observe today bears little resemblance to the Samhain from the Irish legends. The same goes for Halloween. It was these groups who popularized many of the misconceptions about Halloween that this article was intended to clear up. (For more, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

I came across a woman on social media who was adamant that since Halloween is a high day for Satanists, it must not be touched by Christians. (Her real goal was to promote Old Covenant feasts.) I asked her, "If Satanists made the Feast of Tabernacles an annual high day, would she abandon it?" She adamantly rejected that notion. So, why should anyone else hold to a standard she herself doesn't stick to? In my experience, the people who fret most about pagan origins of holidays are far less concerned about paganism than they are about finding a wedge issue with which to promote their own system.

Did Irish Celts believe the dead walked the earth on Samhain?
Yes and no. Remember in the last post where we learned that Celts are a people group, and Celt is not the same thing as Druid? The Irish really did believe the dead walked among the living. It's true! ...But probably not the Druidic Irish, because it looks like this is a later development.
As I said, this claim comes from James Frazer. None of the oldest material supports this. The ancient Greek/Roman sources tell us the Druids believed in reincarnation. The medieval legends do not portray the dead returning to the earth. What they do portray is the human and fairy worlds coming close. The fairy world was a dangerous place but not a horrific place. Quite the opposite.

"The Irish otherworld was no hell, either. In medieval tales, it is a sunny place in perpetual spring. Everyone who lives there is beautiful, powerful, immortal and blond. They have good teeth. The rivers flow with mead and wine, and food appears on command. No sexual act is a sin. The houses sparkle with gems and precious metals. Even the horses are perfect."
-Lisa Bitel, "The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween", on USC Dornsife, October 29, 2024.

It was Christians who clearly believed in an afterlife and a realm where the dead are. It was All Saints' Day that honored and brought the mind to the realm of the dead. "Memento mori." Taken together, this information strongly indicates this 'dead walk the earth' superstition developed from Irish Christians.

Was Samhain a demon lord?
No. I wanted to include a mention of this because it superbly illustrates the problem of bad source material and common knowledge. That claim originated with one Charles Vallancey, a self-taught authority in Irish history. Vallancey mythologized Samhain into a demon lord and paired him with Satan. His claims about Samhain were false, and even his contemporaries knew it. Later, James Bonwick borrowed and added to Vallancey's ideas with even more horrific etymology, which made it into publications from other authors, and eventually resources like the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition. Still more authors picked this up and put some lipstick on it, which was read by the likes of Herman Hoeh, and it all somehow made it into Chick Tracts, the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, and the movie Halloween II.
And, like many other claims about Samhain, it was never true to begin with. (For more, see "Samhain Lord of the Dead".)

CONCLUSION

What did we learn about Samhain? The real story is not at all what you've been told. If you go with the version found in non-fiction, then it was simply the last day of summer. If you go with the version in legends, then it was a time of fairies and kings. It was only after that when we start to see costumes, bonfires, and worlds of the dead. But then, after 1500, the back story was considerably altered (one might say, retconned).

To have any hope whatsoever of understanding the history of Samhain and Halloween, you absolutely must, at the very least, understand the timeline (the dates given here are very rough):

200 BC–400 AD: Druidism was practiced in the British Isles, and we know next to nothing about it.
400–700 AD: Christianity flourished among the Celts of the British Isles.
700-1000 AD: We get two versions of Samhain from this period: the non-fiction, where it's a timestamp, and the legends, where there be fairies.
1000–1500 AD: Christianity develops many traditions and customs, some of them bizarre to our modern minds, including getting dressed up and going door-to-door.
1500–1950 AD: Some individuals reconstruct Druidism into a new, highly romanticized version that never existed before. Some widely-recognized scholars appear and inadvertently make the problem worse. New religions emerge based largely on these reconstructions, popularizing them.
1950 AD–present: Scholars reverse course, stripping away much of the mystique surrounding this reinvented Druidism. The debate about the real Samhain continues.

Articles like the one from Smithsonian Magazine, citing National Geographic, which we saw at the start of this post, blend all these periods together and treat everything as if it were ancient and Druidic. It simply wasn't. They also seem to treat the word Celt as synonymous with pagan. It just isn't. This misshapen version is the one you see in popular knowledge.

Here's the thing ... I have given you links in this series so that you can chase down every claim I've made. I encourage you to follow those links and see for yourself. When you happen across some "helpful' peddler of paganism on the internet who is trying to convince you that all the elements of Halloween come from Samhain, and you are worshipping Satan because of it, you feel free to ask them if they can prove their claims - not from some magazine article, but from primary source documents or trusted secondary source material.

Next time, we will look into those modern Halloween traditions that we are told were born of pure evil. Were they?

Other posts in this series:
Halloween I, Halloween III

Here are some sources relevant to today's article.

Material on ABD:

Samhain Was Not On October 31
Samhain Lord of the Dead
The Plain Truth About Samhain
The Real History Of The Druids
Peddlers of Paganism

Material off ABD:

"Samhain and Halloween". God Cannot Be Contained blog.
https://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2024/10/samhain-and-halloween.html
Note: This is Lonnie's post which got me started reading about Halloween in the first place.

Sanas Carmaic (Cormac's Glossary): https://archive.org/details/cu31924071173474/page/n101/mode/2up. See p.102 of that link, under Gamuin. Note: items in parenthesis are not original.

Annála Uladh (Annals of Ulster): https://archive.org/stream/annalauladhannal01royauoft/annalauladhannal01royauoft_djvu.txt. See p.158 of that link. Note: English translations use "Samhain" or "Allhallowtide", but that is not in the oldest manuscripts.

Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer):
https://www.paddybrown.co.uk/pdfs/The_Wooing_of_Emer.pdf. See pp.7 & 13 of that link; "Samain".

Félire Óengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus):
https://archive.org/details/martyrologyofoen29oenguoft/page/232/mode/2up. See p.232 of that link.

Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders of Ireland):
https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/77/mode/1up?q=Sam.

Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera):
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Meyer-Echtra-Nerai.pdf. See pp. 4, 10, & 14 of that link. Note: This translation transliterates samuin as Halloween.

Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282

Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain", (Oxford University Press, 2001). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

Ronald Hutton, "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain", (Yale University Press, 2009). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

"Scribes and Kings: Religion, Politics and the Medieval Manuscripts of Ireland". On Mythical Ireland. https://mythicalireland.com/blogs/news/scribes-and-kings-religion-politics-and-the-medieval-manuscripts-of-ireland.
Note: This is a fine example of a reasoned attempt to identify the balance between old and new in the medieval Irish legends.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Saturday, October 24, 2026

Halloween I - Origins

I don't feel the need to post about Halloween every year. The day is simply a bridge too far for some people. Some love to hate Halloween, even if much of what they believe about it is based on misinformation and outright lies. I am personally not very fond of modern Halloween as it is lately. So why write about it? Because I love history and I want to know the truth about it. How can we say we love the truth if we won't look at the truth? And God is truth. So, I persist.

I just so happened to have some extra material on Halloween that I've been wanting to post somewhere. I thought an article hitting the highlights sounded like a better idea than digging into a single detail. So, today I offer you a rapid-fire bunch of interesting facts and observations. Any one paragraph should give you something good to consider.

At first, I had this all as one post. When I read through it, I thought it would be unlikely that anyone would read through it all, and if they did, they would never remember what was at the start of the article by the time they got to the end. So, I've decided to turn this into a series. It's easier to digest that way. I will put links at the end for more information.

Please take this quote from The Sun as our introduction:

"Trick or treating may seem like a modern event, but it can actually be traced back to Celtic Britain and Ireland in the 9th century. The night of October 31 was known as Samhain, a Pagan festival which was later combined with Christian celebrations and renamed All Saints’ Day by the Catholic church. At Samhain, our Pagan ancestors believed the souls of our dead came into our world – and were appeased by offerings of food and drink."
-Josie Griffiths and Jennifer Roback, “When Did Trick or Treating First Start, What Is the Meaning Behind the Phrase and How Does It Vary Around the World?” The Sun, October 31, 2021.

I bet most of the readers here are familiar with that kind of material.
There is so much to fix here. How can it be wrong if it's in the mainstream media?? (He said, knowingly.) As we've seen in my "Samhain Lord of the Dead" article and elsewhere, even the Encyclopedia Britannica can be wrong.

First, we have to know who we're dealing with.

THE CELTS

What is a Celt?
Celts are a people group, same as Romans or Anglo-Saxons or Danes. They lived in the British Isles, France, and across Europe into Turkey. The Galatians were Celts (yes, those Galatians). I am part Celt. But as the Roman Empire had many nations, there were many and diverse tribes who were considered to be Celts. In the British Isles alone there were at least 25 named tribal groups (Iceni, Brigantes, Silures, Trinovantes, Dumnonii, etc), and probably more when smaller groups and northern peoples are included. It was not one unified group.

Ronald Hutton has this to say:

"Since the beginning of the [21st] century, specialists in the Iron Age, especially in Britain, have generally stopped writing popular books on the ancient Celts, because many of them have lost faith in the concept of a unitary ethnic, linguistic, and cultural province inhabited by such people, and the term ‘Celtic’ itself had become controversial for ancient Europe..."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024 (see p.3 of that link).

So, there was no unified Celtic culture at all. This is important to know for the times when people say such and such was so popular among the Celts that the Pope felt he had to coopt it.

The word Celt is not synonymous with pagan or Druid any more than Italian is synonymous with Catholic. Saying a tradition is Celtic says nothing at all about whether or not it was pagan or Druidic or even religious at all.

What is a Druid?
Druids, real Druids, were (past tense) priests in pre-Christian Celtic paganism. We know almost nothing about what they genuinely looked like or what rituals they actually performed. Only two sources are believed to have been actual eye witnesses to Druids: Julius Caesar and Cicero. And we must take their accounts with a grain of salt.

Druids first appear in historical records in the second century BC, and they disappear from the record roughly around the 400s AD. In the first century, Rome tried to stamp out Druidism in Britain, claiming the Druids engaged in human sacrifice. (This is one example of why we need to take the Roman accounts with a grain of salt. We cannot be sure if this was accurate or just propaganda.) Druidism survived in Ireland and Scotland in part because Rome never fully conquered those areas. Christianity first arrived in the British Isles by 200 AD. Over the following centuries, Christianity spread throughout the British Isles. By the 6th century, Christianity was flourishing in the British Isles. No trace of the Druids remained. Medieval Christian writers reimagined them as wizards (think Merlin).

Aren't there Druids today? No. Not real Druids anyway. Starting in the 1500s, some people in the British Isles began to romanticize the Druids. A great deal of material was written about them which was, shall we say, less than accurate. A good amount of it was extrapolation, imagination, or outright fabrication. They created costumes, songs, holidays, traditions, etc etc. Later writers built upon and added to the claims of earlier writers, until all they had to do to appear legitimate was to quote one another. It turns out that Druids can be whatever you want them to be. Modern Druidism is a revival movement, not a demonstrably unbroken continuation of the ancient priesthood. Modern Druids draw on many sources, including this questionable material, along with later developments of their own. The same goes for Wicca and for Satanism. The founders of these groups relied heavily on that same material.

Modern scholars, such as Ronald Hutton for one example, are moving away from claims made from 1500s through the mid-1900s.

Now that you know what Celts and Druids are, let's move on to Halloween.

HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

What is Halloween anyway? Halloween is short for "All Hallows Eve" which is the evening before All Saints' Day. All Saints' Day was originally called All Hallows in English. All Saints' Day is on November 1st and honors all Christian dead in Heaven. All Saints' Day is the real holiday here, not Halloween. It was common for major feast days to have a vigil on the evening before; a vigil is intended to prepare the heart and mind to honor God on a feast day. All Hallows Eve is to All Hallows what Christmas Eve is to Christmas. The day after All Saints' Day is All Souls' Day. All Souls' Day honors all Christian dead who have not yet entered Heaven (remember, Catholics believe in Purgatory). Together, Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day make up Hallowtide or All Hallowtide. A "tide" is a festive period of time as opposed to a single day.

Here is a super-condensed timeline of how Halloween developed (according to the best evidence we have today):

Christians had been honoring martyrs ever since there were martyrs. It eventually became difficult to honor them all individually. There were multiple days to honor particularly popular martyrs, and multiple days to honor many martyrs grouped together.
In 609 AD, Pope Boniface IV created a memorial for the dioceses of Rome of all Rome's martyrs on May 13. One source claims Rome had a second day a week after Pentecost. Other areas had their own days.
In 735 AD (approximately), Pope Gregory III created a memorial for the diocese of Rome of all departed saints in Heaven on November 1, apparently as part of his dispute with the Byzantine Emperor.
In 835 AD, Pope Gregory IV expanded the all saints memorial to the whole church.
Late 800s AD, estimated date of the first recorded mention of samhain. (We will get more into this in the next post.)

You may have heard something like, "The Pope moved a feast to November 1 to coopt Samhain." Is that true? No.
Scholars debate whether Samhain was a festival at all in this time period, let alone a popular one. Pope Gregory III did not move the May 13 date to November 1. All Saints' Day was not intended to replace the May 13th memorial to all martyrs. The May 13th observance took centuries to end. Some sources say it was Pope Gregory IV who transferred the observance to November 1 to better facilitate the many pilgrims to Rome, but other sources say it was Pope Gregory VII who put a final end to the May 13 observance.

This claim about the Catholic Church co-opting Samhain was popularized by James Frazer, who built on ideas from writers such as John Rhys and Edward Tylor. His work helped make the claim widely accepted, and later writers continued spreading it. There is no primary source evidence for this claim. Not only is there no valid evidence in support, but there is legitimate evidence against it. Recent scholars have since moved away from the claims of these authors. This is what Ronald Hutton has to say about it:

"This leaves Frazer’s hypothesis concerning the origins of the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls. There was never any objective evidence for it: not a single medieval record of churchmen either attempting to suppress a pagan feast of the dead in northern Europe by instituting All Saints’ Day or attempting to replace one by instituting All Souls’ Day. Nevertheless, when Frazer proposed it, the intellectual climate was favourable, because towards the end of the nineteenth century a conviction had grown up among British scholars, based on a wide range of disparate pieces of evidence, that medieval Christianity had been merely an elite veneer covering a society in which most ordinary people remained at least partly pagan. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, that conviction disappeared."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", p.76.

You may have heard that Halloween was the Celtic new year, or a feast of the dead. That is also baseless. Hutton says this:

"On examination, the evidence for the New Year is all indirect, speculative, and inconclusive, even when items of it are included that escaped the notice of the original proposer of the concept. Evidence for the feast of the dead is pretty near non-existent. Neither idea has been conclusively disproved, and probably never will be: it is notoriously difficult to prove a negative in many areas of cultural history. Nevertheless, on the available evidence, it may be suggested that neither should find a place henceforth in publications on the Western European pre-Roman Iron Age, whether termed ‘Celtic’ or not, unless recognized as flimsy historical hypotheses, anchored in doubtful Victorian and Edwardian scholarship. Certainly, they should no longer be restated as proven fact."
-Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024 (see p.15 of that link).

To reiterate, these claims have practically no evidence to support them and they should not be passed off as facts.

You should understand something about Halloween - it wasn't originally a holiday in its own right. The records show the phrase "All Hallows Eve" being used as far back as the 1300s (which means it's older than that), but it was used in reference to All Hallows' Day because it was the vigil of that day, and only on the evening before that day. It wasn't until the mid-1500s that Halloween starts looking like its own holiday in its own right. It wasn't until the 1800s that it became a distinct social celebration in Scotland and Ireland; the area where our attention will focus in the next post. People tend to treat Halloween anachronistically, as if how things are today are how things always were for the past 2,000 years. That simply is not so.

Halloween was brought to the United States by immigrants. It changed over time, as most things do. Due to the influence of such things as Protestantism and the Industrial Revolution, to name but two, customs that were once spread over the entire Fall season began to coalesce into single holidays, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Really, it wasn't until the 1930s that Halloween began looking like we know it today (much the same as it was with Christmas, as we saw in the post "Christmas Eras Tour - Part IV"). We will see more of that in the third and final post in this series.

CONCLUSION

So, now you have a better understanding of the origins of Halloween. You can see for yourself that the things you have heard about Halloween are unfortunately incorrect.

Next time, we will dive deeper into Samhain. It is unfortunate that we must always investigate Samhain when we investigate Halloween, but such is the power of a lie told often enough.

Other posts in this series:
Halloween II, Halloween III

I promised some sources at the end of the article.

Material on ABD:

Samhain Was Not On October 31
Samhain Lord of the Dead
The Plain Truth About Samhain
The Real History Of The Druids
Review - Is the Occult Influencing Your Family
Peddlers of Paganism

Material off ABD:

Sanas Carmaic (Cormac's Glossary): https://archive.org/details/cu31924071173474/page/n101/mode/2up. See p.102 of that link, under Gamuin. Note: items in parenthesis are not original.

Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer):
https://www.paddybrown.co.uk/pdfs/The_Wooing_of_Emer.pdf. See pp.7 & 13 of that link; "Samain".

Félire Óengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus):
https://archive.org/details/martyrologyofoen29oenguoft/page/232/mode/2up. See p.232 of that link.

Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders of Ireland):
https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/77/mode/1up?q=Sam.

Bede's "De Temporum Ratione" (The Reckoning of Time):
https://old.katab.asia/special/De_temporum_ratione.pdf. See pp.53-54 of that link for "Winterfylleth".

Nathan J. Harris, "Debunking Samhain: Undoing the Misinformation of Wicca", PDF file, Academia.edu, accessed 11-4-2025, https://www.academia.edu/144624704/Debunking_Samhain_Undoing_the_Misinformation_of_Wicca.

Ronald Hutton, "The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead", 2024.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282

Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain", (Oxford University Press, 2001). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

Ronald Hutton, "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain", (Yale University Press, 2009). Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

"Scribes and Kings: Religion, Politics and the Medieval Manuscripts of Ireland". On Mythical Ireland. https://mythicalireland.com/blogs/news/scribes-and-kings-religion-politics-and-the-medieval-manuscripts-of-ireland. Note: This is a fine example of a reasoned attempt to identify the balance between old and new in the medieval Irish legends.

Catholic Encyclopedia. “Irish Literature”. NewAdvent.org, accessed 11-8-2025. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08116a.htm

"Internet Medieval Sourcebook". Fordham University.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook1g.asp. Note: Tons of old works here from Celtic regions.

"The Truth About Halloween". Eternal COG.
https://www.eternalcog.org/media/The-Truth-about-Halloween.pdf. Note: This is a fantastic example both of what to do and not to do in a study. Good: cite lots of sources. Bad: Treat any and all sources as authoritative. People, please mind your sources! Quality over quantity.

Lisa Morton, "Trick or Treat: A history of Halloween". Internet Archive .
https://archive.org/details/trickortreathist0000mort/ Note: I found this after doing this post. It has a ton of info on customs, but does at times draw on some bad sources. Overall, an interesting read.

"Halloween’s True Origins: A Christian Vigil, Not a Pagan Remnant" on Theology In Five.
https://johndaniels.substack.com/p/halloweens-true-origins-a-christian

"Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2020/11/masking-and-mumming-for-the-holidays-thanksgiving-style/

"Unmasking a Thanksgiving Tradition Through Photos and Newspapers" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2015/11/unmasking-a-thanksgiving-tradition-through-photos-and-newspapers/

"The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween" on USC Dornsife.
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/ancient-irish-get-too-much-credit-for-halloween/

"Trick or Treat" on Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles 3rd Edition
https://dchp.arts.ubc.ca/entries/trick%20or%20treat

"The Jack-o-Lantern Story: Uncut and Uncensored" on lesleybannatyne.com.
https://lesleybannatyne.com/JOL.html

"Why the True Origins of Halloween Aren’t Actually Pagan" on BK's Substack.
https://bkapologist.substack.com/p/why-the-true-origins-of-halloween

Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "fantasticals".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+fantasticals

Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "ragamuffins".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+ragamuffin

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Acts 17:11

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Saturday, September 5, 2026

The Sabbatarian Inner Conflict

Sabbatarianism may seem like it has the answers and "just makes sense," but when we zoom out we see there is more conflict than coherence.

I feel the need to rant today, because sometimes doing this gets to you.

I was once an Armstrongist. I know how the system works. I lived it for 30 years. I studied it. I preached it. I haven't stopped studying it.
To us, the Armstrongist view was truth. Period. We didn't need to prove it because we were right by default. It started out that way. It had to be. We had our very own Apostle, the first to preach the Gospel in 1,900 years, and he said anything else was pagan and might cost us our place in the Kingdom. That alone is enough to make the quality of evidence take a back seat because so long as it agrees with the system then it's truth. The number one concern is getting a certain result. We Armstrongists were so focused on trying to make the evidence fit the narrative one bit at a time that we didn't realize the issues we were causing. We would say anything we thought we had to in one place to support one thing, without a thought in the world of what we had just caused in another place with another thing.

Today, I would like to zoom out and go over some examples of these unintended consequences and the conflict that is caused by not thoroughly investigating our own doctrines. I want to approach this as if the starting point was never proved to begin with, and so the evidence should matter. This is a post about evidence.

LAW FOR ALL

Let's start with the claim that the law was given to the world. That is something we force into the biblical narrative, not something we receive out of it. The law as written, I mean. We went over that recently in "Editing the Commandments" and again in "Denying Babel, Erasing Israel". The law and the prophets were written quite specifically for the covenant people Israel (DEU. 5:3; JER. 31:31; HEB. 8:7-8; ROM.9:3-5). Gentiles were strangers to the Old Covenant and its terms (EPH. 2:11-12).

The law was for Israel, Israel was for the Messiah, and the Messiah is for the world.

This claim of 'the law is for everyone' is an Adventist claim from the mid-1800s. It started in response to pushback stating 'the Sabbath is Jewish'. But 'the Sabbath is for everyone' and 'the entire law is for everyone' are two different magnitudes of claims.
Sabbatarianism started with the realization that the Sabbath day is Saturday, not Sunday. OK, fine. That's actually correct. Sunday is the Lord's Day not the Sabbath day, regardless of what some modern Christians might think. But early Sabbatarians were challenged on why we need to keep a Jewish day. That forced their hand, and they turned to the Ten Commandments for justification. "The Ten are moral." But why just those laws? And so it became any "moral law". But by what authority do we keep only some of the law and not others? And so it became all laws. "The law is eternal and perfect and binding on everyone; always have been and always will be." All of this was in place by the end of the 1800s. That is still the claim to this day, but that goes too far, and it gets pared back down again to moral laws plus tithes and meats laws, and maybe a few more depending on which group you're with.
A little law always leads to more.

Everything we claimed turns out to be after the fact scrambles to justify ourselves. We had to innovate to prove we had been right this whole time.

That the law was for Israel was an essential idea underlying the debate of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. The debate within the Council affirms, and James some years later reaffirms in Acts 21, that the law was not for the Gentiles, and this affects everything Sabbatarianism holds dear.
Therefore, the Armstrongist explanation requires that the Pharisees were not arguing what they said they were arguing, and the Apostles did not decide what they said they decided.

But now we've created the need for workarounds, like the idea that we can get some of the law by avoiding circumcision, and the end result is a law buffet where no two Sabbatarian groups can seem agree what should be on their plate. Other Sabbatarian groups, like the Hebrew Roots, take this even farther and they claim the Gentiles were attending synagogue with Jews ...where they would learn straight from non-believing Pharisees every single thing they just got done claiming the Apostles were against barely 5 verses earlier. And now we have to rewrite history as well because this is not what we see in the history books.

No one seems to notice that we argued for the whole law, only to turn right around and throw that out the window because we only want some of the law.
No one seems to notice that we argued that 'the law is perfect' only to turn right around and change the law so we could keep it.
No one seems to notice that we argued strongly against man-made traditions, only to make a man-made tradition the very centerpiece of our identity (I refer to going to church on Saturday).
We literally argued two completely incompatible things at the same time. These three are not by any means the only examples I can give. We will see more as we go.

Do you see the conflict?

MORALITY

The Sabbath day is the trunk of this tree. But if you think about it, the Sabbath is just a means to an end. It is a means to please (some people think it's not please but manipulate) God. If you want to dig to the root of this tree, the nagging, biting, unresolved issue here is ultimately one of the nature of righteousness. At the end of the day, Sabbatarians are just normal people who want to please God, and they feel the law can tell them how to do that.

Sabbatarianism starts from the conclusion that righteousness and sin are revealed to us through law. Without law, morality stops making sense in a Sabbatarian system. Without law, why did the angels fall? Without law, what did the world do so wrong as to be flooded and disinherited? Without law, what did Abel and Noah and Abraham obey? Without law, what is hedonism and why shouldn't we do whatever comes to mind? Without law, why shouldn't you commit adultery?

But not just "law" -- the Old Covenant law.
Sabbatarianism believes the Old Covenant law is the only law, and that law is the primary means all mankind was given to know good and evil. (Pun intended.) Everything else is considered to flow from this. So, we believed the Old Covenant law was there from creation but was forgotten and then merely reiterated to Israel, and they will be with us forever.

Only, that is not what the Bible says.

So, everything is made to fit this ...even if we have to rewrite history, use Strong's concordance to edit the meanings of words, completely ignore context, make baseless assertions, claim two incompatible things at the same time, or quote demonstrably problematic translations of the Bible to achieve this goal (I refer to the KJV rendering of I John 3:4). The facts must be made to fit the narrative; anything else is pagan.

Anything that uses the techniques I just listed will inevitably end up causing more problems than it solves. For example, Romans 5:13-14 makes absolutely no sense:

(ROM. 5:13-14) 13 For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

Sabbatarianism has no clean answer for how sin can exist apart from law, and how there can be a time in the world before law, especially a time lasting from Adam to Moses. This cannot be accepted because it is a fundamental incompatibility. So it is denied. Perhaps by saying God created the Sabbath on day 7 (read "The Sabbath Rest of Genesis 2"), or Abraham kept the law (read "Genesis 26:5 - Did Abraham Keep the Law?").

But if not from law, then where else might righteousness originate? Answer: Directly from God's nature! The righteousness God desires does not come from the law, it comes from Himself. Directly. We go over this in "The Road to Sabbatarianism - part III".

If good and evil come directly from God's nature and our relationship to God or lack thereof, then there is no problem here. God is righteousness (and love, and truth, and wisdom, etc). God does not need a law to be righteous. Sin is anything not in alignment with God's nature. No law necessary.

The law had a different function altogether. Not to create "sin" or "righteousness" - because both exist apart from law (for more see "The Road to Sabbatarianism - part III") - but to make sin inescapably obvious and to add concrete penalties for sin -- and thereby to guide Israel away from the Gentiles' idolatry until Messiah came. Law is merely one way to express this. Hence the ceremonial laws which taught Israel about God's holiness. But if those ceremonial laws are no longer necessary, this must mean we can learn about God's holiness another way, or that we can learn it from laws that do not apply to us.

But now we have the Christ event.
Sin is anything that is not in line with God's nature and you know you are out of line? (Let that humble you.) There's good news. With Jesus, there is no condemnation. When we become one with Jesus by faith, His success is credited to us. Since He is the perfect law-keeper who fulfilled all the whole law, we have fulfilled the law in Him. The righteousness God desires is His own righteousness, in us, undeserved, which is credited to us by faith alone, due to our oneness with Him. Faith, expressed in acts of love. Righteousness is a covenant word. Righteousness is not about law-keeping, but about relationship. An active relationship with God, expressed in following the Holy Spirit into acts of love for God's images. And if you read what Bill has been writing lately about a good heart versus a bad one, you will see a lot more than what I can fit here.

That simply isn't how it works in Sabbatarianism, though. It needs a Sabbath day and it relies on the law to justify the day. We were taught good and evil do require laws, and those things I've said above are lies. We were told Jesus only came so we could be forgiven. We used terms like "greasy grace." We were told Jesus would never change "His Father's laws" (except the ones we changed). We were told God wants us to struggle and to 'qualify'. We were told that to be loving to those in the world is to actively fight against God - even to the point where voting is banned. We were told the New Covenant is basically a continuation of the Old.

Do you see the conflict?

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE RESULTS

Sabbatarianism relies on a series of proofs, some stronger and some hastily constructed. While defending the system, once we felt we had achieved our goal we would rarely think deeply beyond it. "It makes sense," we would say. There we would stop. We would rarely think about the things we just did to achieve our desired conclusions. Were they valid or reasonable or thorough? Doesn't matter. We would rarely continue on and think things all the way through to the logical conclusions of what we've just claimed. And we would ignore what kind of mess we've made elsewhere. One might say, emotional satisfaction trumped intellectual honesty.

This post might sound like a bunch of criticisms (it is a rant after all) but that is not really my intent. This post is about evidence and standards and methodology. It's about staying through to the logical conclusion and considering the consequences. If I claim X, then what are all of the things X leads to? What about Y?
I will give you an example of unintended consequences.

Does, "Every time I see the word 'commandment' in the New Testament, it means the Ten Commandments," really make sense? Sabbatarians use this thinking to support the Sabbath, citing verses like John 14:15:

(JON. 14:15) If you love Me, keep My commandments.

So, Jesus is advocating the Ten Commandments and we should all observe the Sabbath day. Right?
Then explain Hebrews 7:18, or Romans 7:10, or Ephesians 2:15.
If "commandments" means "Ten Commandments" then the Ten are annulled. That's what it says! Saying "commandment" means "Ten Commandments" might get us what we want in a soundbite proof-text of John 14:15, but that exact same standard in other verses blows our own goal out of the water. We cannot say it only means the Ten Commandments when it gets us what we want, but turn right around and deny this very same thing when it does not get us what we want. If you are going to set a standard than follow the standard.
But when I point this out, what is the usual response? "God's law is eternal!" "God's law is not a burden!" Not, "Huh. I didn't realize I had built my case on a double-standard. Perhaps I should think about this."

Do you see the conflict?

Sabbatarianism makes little edits as it goes along, all the while claiming it is not editing anything. The New Covenant must become a simple continuation of the Old ... only with more people and less laws. The claim is the New Covenant did nothing to change God's eternal and perfect law ...except discard 97% of it, rewrite what's left so it is not only for Israel anymore, completely change the priesthood, all new promises, and make it much harder. Other than those fundamental changes, nothing changed in any way. (Yes, that was sarcasm there.)

Therefore, it is necessary for Sabbatarianism to believe two opposing and utterly incompatible things at the same time:

1) That the law is eternal and universal and perfect and cannot be changed,
and
2) That the New Covenant ejected most of the law and fundamentally changed the rest.

This struggle - we must keep the eternal and perfect law, but to keep the law we must change the law - directly affects even the very Ten Commandments themselves; the most central and sacrosanct and perfect and eternal and unchanging and universal laws of them all. They are the very foundation of the Old Covenant. The Ten were written for Israel alone. So, those details are conveniently edited out of the perfect and unchanging law. That is what precisely what we reviewed in "Editing the Commandments".

No one seems to notice that there is no way to escape the law being changed. If it started out at creation applying to all people, then it was changed later when it was rewritten to be for Israel. That's a change! If the ceremonial and national laws were added for Israel, that's a change! If they were later removed for Christians, that's a change! If it was once "letter of the law," then it was changed to now be "spirit of the law". That's a change!
We believed "the law changed not because God changes not" -and- that the law keeps getting changed.
The very 'straw that broke the camel's back' that finally caused me to leave Armstrongism is when a friend of mine said to me, "Mr. Armstrong changed the law out of necessity." My friend did not think through what he was saying in the moment.

Do you see the conflict?

And what about Gentile inclusion? Some Sabbatarians, most notably Adventists, claim God is not calling the world at this time; He is only calling certain people. Armstrongists, a branch of Adventism, say God is only calling people who are secretly Israelites. I refer to British-Israelism/Anglo-Israelism. So, does the law apply to everyone, or must you be secretly an Israelite for it to apply? And if you're an Israelite, then how can it be that circumcision doesn't apply to you? If you really are an Israelite, as you claim, then avoiding circumcision does not exempt you from the law, it gets you exiled from Israel. That's the law! You are beholden to the whole law no matter what you do. No law buffet for you.

Now, at the exact same time, according to Armstrong, the law is being purposefully hidden from most people by God because they don't love the law. But we also claimed people need the Holy Spirit or it is literally impossible for them to comprehend that they need the law. They cannot understand that they need to keep the law in the first place unless God reveals it to them, but He is hiding it from them because they do not understand that they need to keep the law. And so He calls secret Israelites to keep it, and the rest await a terrible punishment for not doing what they literally could not do.

Do you see the conflict?

Circling back again to where we began, the belief that sin and righteousness come from laws rather than the nature of a perfectly righteous God and our faithful relationship with Him, is at the heart of all of this, and it introduces a whole series of dilemmas to contend with. Sabbatarianism is locked into a dance between law and grace, New and Old, covenant and terms, changing and unchanging, perfect and flawed, binding and deprecated, spirit and letter, goal and end, moral and ceremonial, Jew and Gentile, literal and figurative, scripture and literature, history and conspiracy, Greek and English, lie and true, etc etc etc. On and on and on.

The inner conflict isn't just here and there every once in a while; it's the whole thing.
And all this time all we needed to accept is that Christ is sufficient.

CONCLUSION

There is a peculiar thing that happens when a doctrine starts in the wrong place: it ends in the wrong place, and everything afterward has to be adjusted to protect it.

A word doesn't fit? Use a concordance to redefine it.
A verse doesn't quite fit? Call it a "difficult scripture" and explain it differently.
A chapter doesn't quite fit? Isolate a verse.
An entire book doesn't quite fit? Pull out a few individual proof-texts.
The Jerusalem Council doesn't fit? Change what the Council was actually deciding.
The New Covenant doesn't fit? Make it a mere continuation of the Old Covenant, where the parts you need will continue on while the rest falls away.
A language doesn't fit? Treat it like it was originally written in English.
History doesn't fit? Say it was corrupted and change it to how it should have been.
Other systems don't fit? Write them all off as pagans.

Eventually, we can make almost anything fit. But there is a problem with that approach:
At some point, the sheer number of adjustments becomes evidence that the problem isn't with the words, the verses, the chapters, the books, the councils, or the history.

Sabbatarianism is swimming in a pool of inner conflict. How many contradictions and conflicts and fallacies and bandaged cracks must we endure before we say, "STOP! This is evidence that something is fundamentally very wrong. I need to go back and rethink my most basic starting point. I need to see what happens if I change the equation."
I suggest you start with: What if righteousness and sin do not require a written law?

I know how it feels to face this daunting task. I went through it myself. It is more than just daunting; it's terrifying. And to be fair, all systems have caused certain problems while trying to answer other problems. This is the human condition. This is not a perfect world that we live in. I am not saying Sabbatarianism is very wrong but Mainstream Christianity is very right ...or that I have it so right.

All I am claiming about myself is: I was once an Armstrongist Sabbatarian ...until I couldn't be anymore. Because I asked what if.

As Bereans Did has several articles intended to help people see that there are other things to consider here, other ways to look at verses, other critical facts that have been left out of the Sabbatarian equation.

Common Legalist Arguments - Part VIII
The Road to Sabbatarianism - Part I
If You Love Me Keep My Commandments
What Does The New Testament Teach About Law and Grace?
Sunday, or Herbert Armstrong?
The Sabbath Rest of Hebrews 4
What Did Jesus Say In Relation To The Sabbath?
The Covenant and The Testimony

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Acts 17:11

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Saturday, July 25, 2026

What About the Gentiles? - Part II

Some say the Covenants and the Savior were for Israel only. This series explores one of the Bible's biggest themes: how God called Israel to reclaim all people through Jesus Christ. Along the way, we'll ask what that means for the covenants, the law, the Gentiles, and Israel itself.

I've seen it thrown at Christians many times in the past, by a very small but vocal minority, that the Biblical covenants were made with Israel only. The conclusion we are supposed to reach form this is: therefore Gentiles are rejected unless they become Jews first in order to become Christians. (Or, to be more precise, unless they become like the people who are making these kinds of accusations.) And so we end up hearing questions like, "Is Jesus the Messiah of the Gentiles?" and "Are the Gentiles even called?"

In the last post, we went over the backstory to see why the world needed reclamation in the first place. We found the Bible story is all one big loop. And it turns out, we owe quite a bit of thanks to God for what He accomplished through Israel to bring Jesus Christ to us, and through Jesus to draw us back to Him. He wanted it so badly that He was willing to die for it.
In this post, we are going to look at the Bible verses throughout the Old Testament and the New which predict the reclamation of the Gentiles.

The challenge we set for ourselves is, we have to do this post without relying on Paul. And so we shall.

The next section is going to be verse-heavy. I am going to try to make this as easy for everyone as possible. I will put a few lists of verses for you to check out later on. Don't feel obligated to read these now (unless you really want to). This is a handy place to keep these for when you're ready. After that, I have chosen a few select verses which really emphasize the points we are trying to get at.

FOUNDATIONS

Let's get started with the Old Testament first.

OLD TESTAMENT

Here are two lists of verses about the inclusion of the Gentiles:

Universal worship for the nations:
GEN. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14.
PSA. 22:27-28; 67:2-7; 72:17; 86:9; 96:3, 7-10; 98:2-3; 102:15; 117:1.
ISA. 2:2-4; 11:10; 25:6-8; 40:5, 22; 42:1-4; 45:22-23; 49:6; 52:10; 60:1-3; 62:2; 66:18-19.
JER. 4:2; 16:19; 3:17.
DAN. 7:14.
MIC. 4:1-3.
HAB. 2:14.
ZEP. 2:11; 3:9-10.
ZEC. 8:20-23; 9:9-10; 14:16.
HOS. 2:23
MAL. 1:11.

Inclusion of Gentiles into redemption:
GEN. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14.
DEU. 32:43.
ISA. 11:10-12; 19:23-25; 42:6; 49:6; 56:3-8; 66:19-21.
JER. 12:14-17.
AMO. 9:11-12.
ZEC. 2:11.
ZEP. 3:9-10.

And now, I have chosen some interesting selections for you.

(GEN. 12:3b) [speaking of Abraham] And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

(GEN. 22:18) [speaking of Abraham] In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.

(PSA. 67:1-7) 1 God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us, Selah. 2 That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. 3 Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You. 4 Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, and govern the nations on earth. Selah. 5 Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You. 6 Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us. 7 God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.

(ISA. 19:23-25) 23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. 24 In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing in the midst of the land, 25 whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

(ISA. 42:1,6) [speaking of Jesus (MAT. 12:17; LUK. 2:32)] 1 “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; ... 6 He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles.

(AMO. 9:11-12) 11 “On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; 12 that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name,” says the Lord who does this thing.

(ZEC. 2:10-11) 10 “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,” says the Lord. 11 “Many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and they shall become My people. And I will dwell in your midst. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you.

(ZEP. 3:9) “For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord.

This is perhaps my favorite selection of all:

(ISA. 49:6) [speaking of the Jesus and the Apostles (ACT. 13:47)] Indeed He says, ‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.’

Does that sound to you like the Gentiles are not saved? Doesn't sound like that to me.
The prooftexts from the first post were not by any means the only material we have on this subject. Reading the Bible did get us a bigger picture after all. The reclamation and salvation of the Gentiles was prophesied in the Old Testament. They were to become His people and be called by His name. It was to happen through the Messiah. The prophets and writers expected it. They waited and hoped for it.
What are people going to do now, rip out Isaiah, Zechariah, the Psalms, and Abraham from their Bibles?

Now, let's look at this from the New Testament.

NEW TESTAMENT

Here is a list of verses about the inclusion of the Gentiles:

MAT. 5:14-16; 8:11–12; 12:18–21; 21:43; 26:28; 28:19.
MAR. 11:17; 14:24.
LUK. 2:32; 3:6; 24:47.
JON. 1:29; 3:16-17; 4:42; 8:12; 95; 10:16; 12:32.
ACT. 1:8; 10–11 (all); 15 (all); 21:25; 28:28.
I PET. 2:9–10.
REV. 5:9; 7:9; 14:16; 15:4; 22:2.

And now, I have chosen some interesting selections for you.

(MAT. 2:28) For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

(MAT. 28:19) [Jesus giving commission to the Apostles] Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

(LUK. 2:29-32) [Simeon speaking about Jesus] 29 “Now, Lord, You are letting Your bond-servant depart in peace, according to Your word; 30 for my eyes have seen Your salvation, 31 which You have prepared in the presence of all the peoples: 32 A light for revelation for the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.”

(LUK. 24:45-47) [Jesus, after His resurrection, to the Apostles] 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

(ACT. 10:34-35, 42-45) [Peter to Cornelius] 34 Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, 35 but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him. ... 42 And He ordered us to preach to the people, and to testify solemnly that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify of Him, that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” 44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. 45 All the Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had also been poured out on the Gentiles.

(I JON. 4: 14) And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

(REV. 5:9) And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

(REV. 21:24-26) 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; 26 and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it;

The New Testament did not invent this. What was predicted in the Old is fulfilled in the New. At the exact same time as God set His mind to reject the Gentiles and build Israel, God planned and promised salvation, forgiveness, justice, and regathering for all the peoples of the earth, both Jew and Gentile. That promise has been fulfilled. By Sabbaths and meats? No. In the person of Jesus Christ by faith. Before He died, while it was yet in the Old Covenant period, He told His Apostles to go to the Jews only. After His death and the coming of the New Covenant, the orders He gave them were very different. He sent the Apostles to spread the good news to the ends of the earth - starting at Jerusalem. Because it was time. "To the Jew first, and then to the Gentile." And even to us. As Jesus said, "for many."

CIRCLING BACK

Everything in these two posts tell the same story. What was predicted in Eden has come to pass. What was broken at Babel is now healed. The Gentiles who were disinherited are now reclaimed. He who was not our God is again our God. We who were not His people are again His people. Jesus is the Savior of all mankind, everyone who believes in Him, to the glory of God the Father, so the entire earth can be filled with the knowledge of God (HAB. 2:14).

How can anyone look at this and still wonder if the Gentiles are included in the New Covenant? Because the Jesus never says the exact phrase "The New Covenant hereby includes the Gentiles"?? Did Jesus not say His blood is the New Covenant, shed for many for the remission of sins? Did Jesus Himself not say that He has cleansed the Gentiles? And did Peter not say the Gentiles who believe in Him have remission of sins? How can that happen without His blood, which is the blood of the New Covenant? It is a miserable, desperate argument to dismiss a thing only because it isn't worded a certain way.

But this is where the Gentile needs an extra helping of humility and thankfulness. God was not required do any of this. We certainly did not get here on our own. Thank God we were reclaimed from that hopeless condition ...by the Messiah who came through Israel from Abraham. Glad you are saved by faith in the Messiah? Consider thanking a Jew for Israel's part in the coming of the Messiah.

PAUL

Notice something. We have now gone from Abraham, through Moses, the Psalms, Isaiah, Amos, Zechariah, the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation... without needing Paul.

Only after establishing all of this would we need to mention Paul. Paul didn't invent the inclusion of the Gentiles. He plainly says as much (GAL. 3:8). Notice that the narrative about Cornelius, the first Gentile to receive the Holy Spirit, technically begins in the same chapter of Acts where Saul is converted (ACT. 9). You can't blame that on Paul! By now, we've long since demonstrated the point: Paul did not invent Gentile inclusion. All he did was read his scriptures. He is one witness among many to a plan that runs from Eden to the New Jerusalem.

I ask, do some people reject Paul because he preached something contrary to the Bible, or does the Bible itself teach something contrary to these people's own narrative and agenda? Hopefully you can plainly see the answer for yourself. So, which should we reject?

(II PET. 3:16) as also in all [Paul's] epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

Now, let's include Paul into the mix --

In Jesus, the blessings promised to and through Abraham have come. Abraham is the father of us all (ROM. 4:13-16), spiritually speaking, through our joining to Jesus (GAL.3:14), the rightful heir of the promises and the one through whom all the promises come. Gentiles are no longer required to join the physical nation of Israel in order to join the covenant. Instead, we all - Jew and Gentile - join Jesus, the true Israel of God. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches (JON. 15:5; ROM. 11:17-24). Gentiles are grafted into this "olive tree", as Paul metaphorically puts it. The two peoples are made one (EPH. 2:14-18). In Him, we are no longer what we were, but a new creation (GAL. 6:15; II COR. 5:17; REV. 21:5). We are born again (JON. 3: 3-8; I PET. 1:22-23; II COR. 5:16-17; TIT. 3:5).

Remember this from the last post? All mankind → Abraham → Isaac. Abraham → Messiah → All mankind.
Now, read Galatians 3:7-9.

It all fits together.

CONCLUSION

What have we seen about Jesus saving the Gentiles?

The Old Testament promises it (the list of prophetic passages).
Jesus announces it and commands it (the Gospels).
Luke records it happening (Acts, especially Cornelius and the Jerusalem Council).
Peter and John affirm it (1 Peter 2; I John 4).
Revelation shows its consummation (especially the vision of every nation worshiping God).
Paul preaches it (reframing everything in the light of Christ).

Were the Covenants (plural) made with Israel? Yes.
Is Jesus the Savior of the Gentiles? Yes.
Is the New Covenant extended to the Gentiles? Yes.
Do we need Paul to demonstrate this? No.

I put six verses in the first post to build the case against Gentile inclusion. There is so much more to this than just, "Here is a verse about the Covenants being made with Israel, so how can the Gentiles be saved?" For the people who say the Gentiles are not reclaimed, or that Jesus is not the Savior of the Gentiles, I say try reading the whole Bible. It explains everything.

Does any of this mean Israel is now rejected the way the Gentiles once were? No!! Israel is not at all rejected. The two have been made one. Of course we still need Israel. Israel is not abandoned now that the Gentiles are reclaimed. Israel was the first one invited into the New Covenant. Gentile inclusion does not lessen what was done through Israel, it fills it up. And, by the way, believing Jews don't need to stop being who they are in order to join.

But that is for another article.

I leave you with a prayer, dear reader and beloved by God. I pray the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ looks on you with mercy and love and opens your heart to the wonderful story of salvation, which is for all peoples, and was thousands of years in the making. And that in this salvation, achieved and secured by Jesus Christ for all of us who believe, you find true rest.

(PSA. 40:9-10) 9 I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly; indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O Lord, You Yourself know. 10 I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great assembly.

To help you move forward, I suggest these articles:
Once And Future Kingdom - Part I
Once And Future Kingdom - Part II
Just What Do You Mean 'Gospel'?
What Is The Gospel?
'Born Again' and the Kingdom of God
Gennao: Just What Does It Mean?
Two Trees - Two Covenants
My Opinion Is God's Truth

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Acts 17:11

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Saturday, July 18, 2026

What About the Gentiles? - Part I

Some say the Covenants and the Savior were for Israel only. This series explores one of the Bible's biggest themes: how God called Israel to reclaim all people through Jesus Christ. Along the way, we'll ask what that means for the Covenants, the law, the Gentiles, and Israel itself.

BIG ideas to discuss. Guessing this will have to be a two-parter. I wonder if I can even do this topic justice, and if not then why bother? But I think I have to at least try to write about this. I've touched on this topic in the past but never really went into any depth on it. Time to weigh in, it seems. I go where the Spirit leads. Now, on to the set up!

I've seen it thrown at Christians many times in the past, by a very small but vocal minority, that the Biblical covenants were made with Israel only. The conclusion we are supposed to reach form this is: therefore Gentiles are rejected unless they become Jews first in order to become Christians.
(Or, to be more precise, unless they become like the people who are making these kinds of accusations.) And so we end up hearing questions like, "Is Jesus the Messiah of the Gentiles?" and "Are the Gentiles even called?"

I strongly disagree with these people.
...mostly.

It should be obvious that this entire "Jesus isn't the Messiah of the Gentiles" line is patently ridiculous on its face from a reading of the Bible, or church history with its 2,000 years of miracles and faith. But apparently a person can believe anything if they want it badly enough.

Looks like our work is cut out for us. In this series, we go through the Bible.
Let's start where they get it right. The two great covenants were made with Israel. It's true!

PLURAL

Here are some fundamental verses which we cannot simply ignore. This calls for humility on the part of the Gentiles. Swallow your pride with me, and read on.

(JER. 31: 31) Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah...

Notice with whom God intended to make the Covenant. The author of Hebrews does not modify it.

(HEB. 8: 7-8) 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah...

Paul confirms the covenants were made with Israel. Gentiles aren't mentioned.

(ROM. 9: 3-5) For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants [plural], the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

Notice, "the covenants" is plural. The covenants are Israel's. Contrast that with the Gentiles.

(EPH. 2: 11-12) 11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— 12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants [plural] of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Again, covenants is plural. Strangers to the covenants.

Now, of course the New Covenant was going to be made with Israel because it replaces the Old Covenant. But there's more.

JESUS' MISSION

Let us not overlook what Jesus said about His own mission:

(MAT. 15:14) But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

That whole interaction there is quite telling. Easy to misunderstand, but telling.
The same thing happens when Jesus sent out the twelve on their first missionary journey:

(MAT. 10:5-6) 5 These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. 6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Not sent to Gentiles. Ouch.

By now I bet you're wondering what are the implications for the Gentiles? The verses above build a terrible case for us Gentiles. Let's not fool ourselves.

CONVENIENCE

Do we Gentiles have no place in the New Covenant? Are we without a Savior? Are we hopelessly and eternally lost?

No!

We are included. We are saved. We are reclaimed.

Didn't I just built up a case that the Gentiles are not included? Yes. But those verses are not the whole Bible. All I've given you so far are one-sided proof-texts. In the Protestant Bible, which is smaller than others, there are 66 books by 40 authors. I bet we can find more on this subject if we actually look.

I bet there are some who are already guessing I am about to rely entirely on Paul. There are some who reject Paul and call him a false Apostle because he says things they don't like ...until he starts saying things they do like. No, I am not at all basing this only on Paul. Not even close. And this very thing, dear reader, is what this post is really about:

Gentiles are reclaimed and we don't need Paul to demonstrate it.

That doesn't mean I will avoid citing Paul, though. I am not ashamed of Paul at all. I accept Paul. The other Apostles accepted Paul. The early church accepted Paul. I see no reason at all to avoid Paul. I think calling Paul a false Apostle is merely an act of convenience rather than a solid position. It's an attempt to eliminate the biggest rival. I won't go along with it.
That said, I am not going to rely on Paul in this post.

Even worse are the "Red Letter Christians"; the ones who only accept the parts of the New Testament that are direct quotes of Jesus (except for the Sheet Vision, the calling of Saul, quotes in Revelation, etc etc). So, we can agree enough with the Apostles to believe they followed and accurately quoted Jesus, but we think they are unreliable about everything else? <sarcasm>Makes perfect sense.</sarcasm>

I couldn't disagree more with a theology that rests on 'if I can't get my way, then I will rip content from the New Testament until it no longer says what I don't like.'

To start building a case, I think we must see how the Gentiles got into this mess in the first place. Understanding the start of the story is necessary if you want to understand the finish.

THREE STRIKES

How did the Gentiles come to this low state to begin with? Cut off from the Living God. Disinherited. Hopeless. Cursed.

I went over this already in "Once and Future King - Part I" and "Once and Future King - Part II". So, I will summarize. This is critical to the whole idea. Please, don't take this lightly.

All mankind rejected God three times: 1) the Garden of Eden, 2) the Great Flood, and 3) the Tower of Babel. Bear in mind there were no "Jews" or "Gentiles" yet. All peoples bear some responsibility for what happened then. At that point, God let us have it our way. We did not want God as our God? So be it. We can have our lesser spirit beings and our wood and stone idols, and our knowledge of good and evil, and everything that comes with it, including disinheritance from God. So, God chose to do what He did several times in the Old Testament: He started again through one person. Immediately after Babel begins the story of Abraham.

Abraham was called for several reasons: 1) to be the progenitor of God's chosen people, Israel, 2) to provide a way for the coming of the Messiah, 3) to initiate the eventual reclamation of the nations, and 4) because of 1-3, to bring blessings to all people.
Yes, reclamation and blessing. Read the commission God gave to Abram:

(GEN. 12:3) I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

All the families. In order for all families to be blessed, all families have to participate. That means the nations would be reclaimed. That means Gentiles.

Think about that. So here God is, separating Abraham so He can create Israel as His called and chosen inheritance in the whole world, because the world rejected Him, but before He even gets through the initial conversation, He is talking about the reclamation of the nations. Undoing that rejection was part of the rejection.
I mean, seriously ... that's amazing!

The Old Covenant had certain terms (laws) that were intended to keep Israel distinct from the Gentiles, and to keep Israel from following the Gentiles down the path toward idolatry and disinheritance. It's not that Gentiles weren't allowed near Israel, but the repeated warning was about the Gentiles' idolatry. Don't do what the Gentiles do and you won't get what the Gentiles got.
...but they did.

Once Messiah comes - more specifically, once Messiah dies - the goal is reached, the reason for Abraham being called out and Israel separated is fulfilled, the wound that happened at Babel is healed, the rejection is undone, and the distinctions made within the law between Israel and Gentile are no longer necessary (GAL. 3:19-24).

Remember those verses above where Jesus' mission was to Israel only? Well, yeah. None of those goals were reached yet. What time was it? The Old Covenant didn't end when He was born, it ended when He died. Of course His ministry before He died was to Israel only. It was the Old Covenant period!
A large part of what He came to do was to personally represent all Israel, as the True Israel, and fulfill Israel's end of the covenant because the Israelites wouldn't do it on their own. They wouldn't keep their end of the bargain, so God kept it for them. He is the law-keeper. He is the Covenant-keeper. Once it was fulfilled, then the Old Covenant could end. Was He supposed to confirm a New Covenant that wasn't even inaugurated yet?

He fulfilled it all. He died. The Old Covenant dissolved. In comes the New Covenant.

...but it wasn't revealed that the Gentiles were part of the plan for several more years. That means the New Covenant was ratified with Israel, precisely as scripture says. And that means Israel continues to have a special place in the New Covenant. The question becomes ... what do you mean by "Israel"?

ABRAHAM AND ISAAC

Before we finish off, consider the puzzle that is Abraham.

Abraham was not an Israelite. Israel was Abraham's grandson. How can Abraham be a descendant of his own grandson? Yet he was not exactly a Gentile, either. Abraham was a special case. Called out of the nations, but never called a Gentile. He is a special hybrid. Like Noah, Abraham had one foot on either side. No other person can quite be said to have these qualities, not even Isaac.
Have you ever wondered why it is Abraham and then Isaac and then Israel? Why is Isaac in the middle like that?
Isaac has the very special role to play in that he mirrors where the Messiah comes in. He was the beloved son, the son of promise, born miraculously, symbolically sacrificed, through whom the promises and inheritance flowed. Abraham → Isaac. Abraham → Messiah.

To put that another way: All mankind → Abraham → Isaac. Abraham → Messiah → All mankind.

It all fits together. It's all a circle. The end is pictured in the beginning.

Do you see how this is all a loop? The rejection at Babel and the healing at Calvary are connected. All people had a hand in rejecting God at the start, and all people had a hand in rejecting the Messiah at the finish. The finish loses context without the beginning. The finish corrects and heals the beginning. And now you understand why the Messiah is not for Israel only. The healing was not all about Israel alone. All peoples had a hand in causing the problem in the first place, so the solution is also about all peoples.

CONCLUSION

To recap -
It wasn't just the Gentiles who rejected God, it was all peoples. As a result, God called out one man, Abraham, in order to build Israel, His special covenant people. Israel was built specifically in order to bring about the Messiah. The Messiah is the means to heal the rejection that led to the calling of Abraham. It all comes around. If you know the overarching story in the Bible, then you know the Gentiles are going to be reclaimed.

(JON. 12:32) And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.

To think the Messiah came for Israel alone is to completely misunderstand the entire Bible.

People tend to think Jesus Christ came to save them from their personal sins. Sure. He did. But there's a whole lot more to it than just that. He came to save you from a much larger issue. Great and awesome is our God!

All of that was buildup, backstory if you will, a setting of the stage to what I really wanted to get into. In the next post, we are going to see how the reclamation of the Gentiles was predicted in multiple verses throughout the Old Testament and the New. No Paul necessary.

To help you move forward, I suggest these articles:
Common Legalist Arguments - Part VII
E Pluribus Unum
'Born Again' and the Kingdom of God
Gennao: Just What Does It Mean?
Two Trees - Two Covenants

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Acts 17:11

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ABD Pages

Saturday, October 31, 2026

Halloween II - Samhain

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Halloween I - Origins

Saturday, September 5, 2026

The Sabbatarian Inner Conflict

Saturday, July 25, 2026

What About the Gentiles? - Part II

Saturday, July 18, 2026

What About the Gentiles? - Part I