Join Sharon Otts on The Sound of Faith for an enlightening episode that delves into the historical clash of Hanukkah and Christmas versus the dark figure of Krampus. This episode takes you through the miraculous events of the Dedication Festival, revealing how a small group of zealous Jewish warriors, the Maccabees, rose against the tide of Hellenistic culture to restore purity to the sacred temple. Sharon draws parallels between historical acts of faith and the challenges of maintaining gospel truth in today’s secular world, emphasizing the importance of spiritual vigilance.
Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Otts, and I’m glad you joined us today for this special holiday message, Hanukkah and Christmas vs. Krampus. That’s right, we all know about the miracle of Hanukkah and the incarnation of Christmas. But are you aware of the demonic darkness that is invading the sanctity of the gospel story, mocking the birth of Messiah with evil glee? This is the pagan god Krampus, and he could be coming to a town near you. He said, as long as I’m in the world, I’m the light of the world. I want you to consider this great contest of light and darkness and the context in which it took place. Jesus used this festival of lights to heal this blind man, bring him out of darkness and into light. And to declare to everyone that was buzzing and buzzing about this miracle, I am the light of the world. And when he said that, there was a menorah, a nine candlestick menorah, not the normal seven candlestick menorah that was always in the temple. but a special one that was only used for Hanukkah. It had nine lights. This manure that was at least five foot tall was standing there with nine blazing candles burning brightly when Jesus said, Ha Olam, I am the light. Of the world. So to better appreciate the impact that it would have had on those people, we have to look at this special celebration of Hanukkah. And you may know some of it, but some of you may not. First of all, we found out it takes place in winter and it lasts for eight days. It’s usually in December. It is not, it is not one of the feasts of the Lord that God gave to Moses to give to the children of Israel that they were to keep forever every year. It is not in the Bible. And the reason why it’s not in the Bible is because it occurred during the intertestamental period, the 400 years between Malachi in the Old Testament and Matthew in the New Testament. And how many know that during that time, the heavens were silent? There were no prophets receiving words from God. The heavens were silent. And this occurred during that time. The rebellion of Israel by this time when we get to Malachi, we know that both Israel and Judah had gone into captivity. There were no kings sitting on the throne. Amen? Because of their idolatry and their rebellion, God allowed them to go into captivity to the Assyrians and the Babylonians. About halfway between this period of 400 years, around 165 years into that period, Alexander the Great… Conquered the known world and he was a Greek and It began what is called? Hellenization Hellenization and don’t think of hell the place of fire and brimstone. It’s not what it means Helen is a Greek word And it included Greek culture, Greek mythology, Greek religion, Greek language, all things Greek. Because after all, he had conquered most of the world, especially east of the Mediterranean. He had conquered all that. And wherever he conquered, they brought in Greek culture, Greek language, Greek teachings, etc. Amen? Now, Alexander only lived to be 33 years old. He died young. And he died of diseases that were brought on from sexual diseases like syphilis. And he was a genius. And he was definitely a genius at warfare. But when he died, they split the kingdom up among four of his generals. And one of his generals, Seleucus… was given the portion of the kingdom that included the land of Israel. And so gradually, the people of Israel, the Jewish people, they began to speak Greek instead of Hebrew, and they gradually began to leave their covenant with God and began to embrace the pagan culture of the Greeks. and of the Grecian Empire. And when Seleucus first became the ruler over this part of the world, it wasn’t long after, I don’t know exactly how long after, that his son took over. And his son’s name was Antiochus. Now, Antiochus, when he became the ruler, he promised the Jewish people they did not have to hand over all of their religious observance to the Greeks and they would not be politically forced to embrace Hellenism and to adopt Greek religion or culture. But even though they were not being forced politically, a lot of the Jewish people just backslid. They just backslid and they began to embrace and assimilate into Greek religion and culture. When Antiochus III died, his son Antiochus IV took over. And unlike his father, he decided that he was going to force Hellenization on the Jewish people. So when he came into power, he threw out the Jewish high priest, whose name was Onias, And Onias was fighting hard against Hellenization. He was trying to keep the people true to God. He was loyal to God and the law of God. And he was fighting hard against this influx of this Greek religion. So Antiochus IV got rid of him, threw him out. And he put in his place a priest named Jason, and Jason was loyal to the Greek empire. So Jason had bribed the king to throw out Onias and put him in his place. Then after that occurred, Jason wrote a law, listen to this, and removed Judaism as the religion of Jerusalem. We’re talking about the one in the pulpit now. He removed Judaism as the law of the land, and he passed the law that virtually outlawed Judaism. Now that was just the beginning of the chaos. Because the betrayer became the betrayed. When you betray God, when you betray God’s people, watch out. Watch out. Because somebody’s going to betray you. Amen? So… What happened then is Antiochus then tossed Jason out of his position as high priest and put in another guy whose name was Manolois. And he proceeded to murder Onias, the first one that was the one that was true to God. He murdered him and he allowed his own brother to steal the holy items out of the temple. So when the good Jews rose up and arrested his brother for stealing the good things of God, the holy things out of the temple, Antiochus IV intervened and set him free in return for more bribes. He intervened and set him free and he continued to promote Hellenization. So wickedness, greed, jealousy, betrayals, murder, all of these things now have come upon the land. Because when you kick God out of his place, when you kick God out of his nation and out of his house, every evil thing is going to come in. You can’t kick him out of schools and be surprised when schools become places where you got murder and shooting. Amen? You can’t kick him out of your neighborhoods and kick God out of his place and then be surprised when it turns into a battleground of drugs and gangs and shootings and killings. When you no longer take your children to Sunday school. And teach them the ways of God. They don’t know. They don’t know. And they grow up in that culture. Amen. So all this is going on. In the meantime, Antiochus IV ends up in a war with Egypt. So he goes to Egypt to fight this war. While he’s fighting this war, he gets rumors coming back to him from Israel what occurred, that he had been killed. Jason, the previous high priest, led a revolt. See, the ruler was away. Jason, he was definitely ambitious. So he led a revolt. But Antiochus IV heard about the revolt, came back from Egypt, and he put it down by force. And then he decided, I am going to stop these Jews altogether. He prohibited them from praying in the temple. They could not keep the Sabbath day. He prohibited any male babies from being circumcised. And if women circumcised their babies, they killed the women and they hung the babies. They were not allowed to study the Torah. And any Jews that would refuse to eat pork were killed. But it’s going to get worse. He desecrated the holy temple. He went in and stole whatever was left of its gold and its silver. He erected a statue of the Greek god Zeus in the holy of holies. And the coup de grace. He sacrificed a pig on the holy altar and splattered its blood all over the walls of the temple. Shocking. Isn’t it shocking? Shocking and horrible as that was, many Jews had become so assimilated into the worldly culture, they did nothing. They had no outrage. And folks, I just see such a parallel, what’s happening in America today. Amen. You become so assimilated and so accustomed to your rights being taken away. And God kicked out of here and God kicked out of there until when this terrible desecration was committed, many of the Jews did absolutely nothing about it. There was no outcry. but God always has someone. It may be a remnant, it may be a small bunch, but God has someone. And there was a father whose name was Matthew, he was a priest, and his five sons, one is named that we know of named Judah, and they were zealous for the house of God, and they were not taking it anymore. They rose up and they revolted against the Greeks, And they led a guerrilla army. They just got men of Israel that were sick and tired of the devil coming in and taking away their religion and desecrating their temple. And they rose up. They were willing warriors. They were greatly outnumbered. But they resisted the Greeks. They were not intimidated. And let me tell you something, when God is for you, he is more than all that can come against you. They rose up in their own revolt against the Greeks. And they had a motto. Their motto was, who is like you, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like you, O Jehovah, among the mighty? And when you say that in Hebrew, which they would have, when you say it in Hebrew and you take the first letter of each word, it forms an acrostic. And that acrostic is spelled M-A-C-C-A-B-E-E, which we pronounce as Maccabee. How many have heard of the Maccabees? Well, that’s who they are. They’re the Maccabees. The name is derived from their motto, who is like you, O Lord, among the mighty. And so this group called the Maccabees, they rose up, they fought courageously, and they drove that evil paganistic desecrators out of the temple and clear out of Jerusalem. So they have evicted the devil. But they have a temple that is desecrated, that lies in ruins and it’s been desecrated in the worst kind of way. So now they have to begin the process to clean up, to repair, to restore, to cleanse so they can rededicate the temple back to God. But the lampstand, the seven candlestick menorah, the lampstand that would have been in the house of God had to be cleansed and dedicated and it had to be relit. The problem was they couldn’t just use any old olive oil. See, they couldn’t just go down to Giant and buy a bottle of olive oil off the shelf. They had a special holy anointed oil that they had to use. It was forbidden to use any other oil but the one according to the recipe that God had gave them. And not only that, if we read that we find out that it says in the book of Exodus that the lamp was never, ever to go out. Amen? It was never to go out. They had to get that menorah relit. But the problem was they only had a little bit of oil. Enough oil to last one day. And the process of rededication and sanctification was an eight-day process. But they only had enough oil for one day. So what were they going to do? What could they do? Even having oil was not the problem. It wasn’t a lack of oil. It was a lack of the kind of oil, the holy oil, that they had to process in order to light the lamp. So they knew that they only had enough for one day, and yet they needed to do this process for eight days. What were they going to do? Well, they just stepped out on faith and lit the lamp. They said, we’ll use what we got. This is all we have. We’ll light the lamp. And you see, when you believe God and when you step out on faith, amen, when you do whatever your hands find to do, whatever you can do, what is in your hand, you give it to God and say, God, this is all that we have. But by faith, we’re going to light that lamp. Amen? And they did. They lit that lamp. And on day two, it was still burning. And three, it was still burning. On the fourth day and the fifth day, my God, the sixth day, the seventh day, the eighth day, it burned for eight full days. Because in the face of evil, in the face of wickedness and ungodliness, they had courage to revolt against the enemy and they had faith to believe God to restore, to restore what the devil had taken. Amen. And this is why the Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah. Rededication of the temple. Amen. And so what they do now is during Hanukkah, they have a nine candle menorah. You say, well, it was eight days. Why you got nine? Because the middle candle is the servant candle. And they use that candle to light the others. On day one, they light one. On day two, they light two, and then three, and then four, until the eighth day, all eight are lit. And I love that that middle candle is the servant candle because God said through his prophet Isaiah, my servant shall be a light, a light unto the Gentiles. Amen? Again, we see how that Jesus, when he said in this Hanukkah festival, I am the light of the world, he was just hitting them on so many levels. Now, the rabbis claim that during that time when the temple still existed, that during Hanukkah, when that nine candle menorah was lit, that it was so bright that you could see it from a great distance throughout Jerusalem. And to think that Jesus used this occasion to declare, I am the light of the world. They were just saying to him, we read it. And earlier in the chapter, they said, who are you? Tell us who you are. Who are you? Again and again, they asked him in the book of John, who are you? And Jesus waits until Hanukkah, the festival of lights, and say, I’ll tell you who I am. I’m the light of the world. I am the true light that lights every man that comes into the world. I didn’t come to light a candle. I didn’t come to light a menorah. I came to be the light. Amen. What a truly eye-opening word of the Lord. Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus. The miracle of Hanukkah is a warning to all Christians what can happen if we allow political liberalism and evangelistic inclusivism put out the light of gospel truth. It is also an inspiration to rally us to stand against the infiltration of godlessness and paganism in America. When you take a stand for God, he will stand with you and for you. The Maccabees’ cry was, Who is like you, O Lord, among the mighty? And God intervened to chase the enemy out of Jerusalem. The incarnation of the Son of God is why we celebrate Christmas. It’s not just a particular day on the calendar, but the miracle of redemption when the Word of God became flesh and dwelt amongst us. But not only has this holiday been secularized by the world, snuffing out every inference of Jesus Christ, it is now becoming demonized by a new generation of atheistic scorners who have defiled Christmas into a Halloween theme, even changing lyrics of holy carols into profane mockery. And their God is a two-horned half-goat demon named Krampus, meaning Claus, A sinister alter ego of Santa Claus, he is neither jolly nor nice, but evil. And it is dubbed fun, family fun. But make no mistake, it glorifies Satan and advances his agenda. To order Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus, send a minimum love gift of $10. Request SK203 to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or shop at our e-store at soundoffaith.org. But to order Hanukkah and Christmas vs. Krampus, send your love gift of $10 or more to P.O. Box 1744 Baltimore, Maryland 21203 and request offer SK203. And if you appreciate this ministry and the messages we air, please tuck in an extra year-end gift to help us maintain Sound of Faith Radio. Thank you. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
