My father writes a newsletter every year and this year it was actually finished before Christmas! See below….

–

Pastor Ralph A. Smith
Mitaka Evangelical Church
Tokyo, Japan
[Download PDF version]

CHURCH FUTURE

Government Recognition

Please continue to pray for our church to be recognized by the Japanese government. At this point, our biggest obstacle is a lack of sufficient funds to buy land (1/12 of an acre, more or less) and a building (seating for 150-250). We hope, with your prayers and God’s special grace and provision, to be able to raise enough (about one million US dollars) within the next two years to get started.

Shakespeare Lecture Project

This is a project to help us raise funds for our building. The first course of ten lectures, now undergoing revision and being re-recorded, offers a general discussion of Scripture references in Shakespeare’s plays, followed by specific treatment of the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Henry V, and Romeo and Juliet. There will also be a manual to go along with the lectures. The whole process is rather time-consuming. Pray that God would graciously assist me in this project and that it may bring blessing to those who study the course, as well as help to our ministry here.

GOD’S SPECIAL GRACE

Salvation of the Elderly

At the Presbytery Meeting for the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) in Oregon City, Oregon, last October (12-14), I had the opportunity to give public thanksgiving to God for His goodness to our church in saving elderly parents of our members. The very next week (17-19), while I was in Moscow, Idaho, attending the Christ Church Ministerial Conference, I received news of two more baptisms. One of our elders, Mr. Sakai, baptized his elderly mother, Mitsuko (84), who was dying of cancer, and, beside her hospital bed, his 30-year old daughter, Mika, who was influenced by her grandmother’s faith.
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“God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.”

From babysitting using this stupid movie.

Some sheep are so stingy, selfish, and stupid while some goats are so noble, generous, and talented.

Some sheep are loving and obedient and they lose arms and legs and hide and home while some goats are evil and murderous and torture other sheep and goats and get away with everything.

The worst thing is to see them writhing in pain, whether they are sheep or goats.

God makes no sense to me. But I’m glad, because if He did, He wouldn’t be worth understanding.

$100 laptop, Pirate Bay, Lost, a 93-year-old telegraph operator beats a 13-year-old text messager, and more interesting stuff, too.

Last night, my grandmother lost consciousness, came to and went into convulsions, then lost consciousness again. While Mama was calling an ambulance, I held her and called her name, fearing the whole time she had died. She regained consciousness in the hospital last night had a battery of tests today. It seems she was tired from all the celebrations recently, dehydrated, and had had wine for lunch at the church Christmas feast, all of that overwhelming her. She’s fine now and will be coming home tomorrow. Praise God.

There have been two sudden departures to heaven among friends’ families this week. Next time you pray, please pray the families will be comforted. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

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A very close friend of mine, 3 months pregnant, has been bleeding heavily the last 3 days and will go to the hospital tomorrow to confirm whether or not she’s had a miscarriage. She’s a lovely, quiet woman who was expecting her last baby. Please, please beg God to allow the baby to live and grow up in this cheerful, loving, staunchly Christian home.

See Berek’s blog also.

Update: My friend’s baby is in heaven now with my baby brother or sister I never met.

With the outpouring of Christmas love for the last week or more, I’ve been getting pictures of my friends’ babies pouring into my inbox. It makes me really happy to see such beautiful creatures. Last night, my friend lost her baby and it hurts.

Especially after Thailand, I wonder, why does God take away babies from good, godly, loving families and give babies to families who sell them into prostitution?

Julian and Japanese Calendars
I’m distressed about all kinds of things all the time, so I know my distress isn’t a big deal. But at the moment, I am distressed about the new year.

The new year is coming. But what new year? Why does it start on January 1st? What does January mean? Why are we using a modified Julian calendar (aka Gregorian calendar) anyway? If Michael Grant, a great fan of Cleopatra, is correct, Julius Caesar has Cleopatra’s astronomers to thank for his calendar (more book info here), so let’s call it the Cleopatran calendar. I’d like that. She was horrendously evil and God killed her for it, but other than that, I rather like her. :p

Our lives are governed by the calendar. My watch and schedule book determine where I scurry around from day to day, but instead of following a church calendar, I follow two ancient pagan calendars, Japanese and Julian.

*Emeth groans in frustration and dreams of a day when society is centered on the liturgical year … like maybe 5000 years from now when postmils have reproduced enough to take over the planet and there has been enough cumulative generational sanctification that they actually learned to agree on things, like a calendar system.*

Practical Applications

- Working 6 days a week and resting 1 day (c.f. The Fourth Commandment).
- Instead of taking Saturdays off, establishing holy feast days (aka “holidays”). God provided at least as many days off if not more in the Mosaic calendar. (You can go count all the special holidays in the OT, hehe. And btw, I’m not saying we should going back to the Mosaic calendar, but that it provides good precedent.)
- Establishing fast days also.
- Maybe properly reinstating sabbatical years and the year of Jubilee. Roman Catholic popes do this … kinda sorta.

Here’s a little something about the Puritans, Reformed Christians, and the calendar. Scroll down to see The Puritans: Strengths and Weaknesses by Richard Bledsoe.

Religion and Naming
Calendars are ruled by religion and the symbolic power in the giving of new names can be seen in history. New eras and regimes come with new calendars. There is overwhelming symbolism inherent in the usage of personal names (the significance of names is too great to expand on in this post but you can hunt down more info starting here), which can be seen in the Old Testament when people’s names are changed or when different names are used for them depending on the context they are mentioned (e.g. Jacob to Israel, or the various names for Christ) or in ancient Japan, when bushi would change names at least once in their lives, if not more. Every time a Japanese emperor dies, the Japanese start counting the years from 1. Next year will be the 18th year of the emperor Heisei. Whenever I have to sign forms in Japanese, I cross out the word “Heisei” and replace it with the Year of Our Lord, A.D. Like in ancient Rome, the emperor’s birthday is a holiday.

Even The French revolutionaries came up with their own calendar. Why didn’t Gregory at least change the months from the names of idols (whom I believe could very well be real-life demons) to the names of the Apostles or something? Our calendar is a litany of the personal names of pagans or demons.

Months of the Year
January - named for Janus, the god of doors and gateways in Roman mythology.
February - named for the Roman god Februus, the god of purification.
March - named after Martius, the Roman god of war and was considered a lucky time to begin a war.
April - The derivation of the name is uncertain. Since all the Roman months were named in honour of divinities, and as April was sacred to Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her Greek name Aphrodite, or from the Etruscan name Apru.
May - may have been named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May.
June - named after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and equivalent to the Greek goddess Hera.
July - named for the month Julius Caesar was born.
August - named in honor of Augustus Caesar. It has 31 days because Augustus wanted as many days as Julius Caesar’s July. Augustus placed the month where it is because that is when Cleopatra died.
September - name comes from the Latin septem, for “seven”. September was the seventh month of the Roman calendar until 153 BC.
October - from the Latin octo for “eight”.
November - from the Latin novem for “nine”.
December - from the Latin decem for “ten”.

Days of the Week
Sunday - from Sunna, or Sunne the Germanic sun goddess.
Monday - from Mani (Old English Mona), the Germanic Moon god.
Tuesday - from the Nordic god Tyr, god of war.
Wednesday - from the Old English Wodnesdæg meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden, god of both wisdom and war.
Thursday - from the Old English Þunresdæg, meaning the day of Þunor, commonly known in Modern English as Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
Friday - from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the day of Frige, the Norse god of beauty. Frige replaced the Roman god of beauty, Venus, as the namesake of the fifth day of the week after the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain.
Saturday - named after the Roman god of time Saturn and the only day of the week to retain its Roman origin in English.

Days of the Week in Chinese and Japanese
In Chinese, every day of the week is a day of worship, starting with Sunday, literally “Worship Day.” The rest are numbered from Monday (Worship Day One) to Saturday (Worship Day Six). My first language (chronologically) being Chinese, I still think of the days of the week in Chinese, and prefer it to English.

In Japanese, Sunday and Monday are literally exactly the same as in English: Sun Day and Moon Day. Tuesday to Saturday are Fire Day, Water Day, Wood Day, Metal Day, Earth Day.

This site explains more about the days of the week in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

The Zodiac
Mustn’t forget the zodiac either. I remember my dad telling us years ago about a different zodiac system he read about in James Jordan somewhere, I think it was Persian, which followed the Gospel story. The Greek is supposedly a perversion of that (e.g. Virgo is Mary, holding Christ, not a vase).　　Please, if anyone reading this can recommend books about Persion astronomy, please let me know, please. Thank you.

Calendar of Saints
I’m still not sure what to think about saints days or what biblical basis there is for them. It seems not only unbiblically Eurocentric (maybe each continent or country can have its own calendar of saints?) but unnecessarily bound to one period in time.

OK, that’s all for now.

If you’re reading this, chances are you know the rush, the thrill that you drown in when you realize someone you love feels the same way about you. Tingling, intoxicating, it feels so good it’s almost painful. That silly stage when the two stare at each other like besotted fools and believe everything they say to each other is profound, when the boy promises the world and the girl believes him

Such is the way of a man with a maid … or some men with some maids. Even the complete cynics among us have felt it at one time or another, and the loss of it is probably what made them cynics in the first place.

Poets and musicians have waxed lyrical about this feeling for I’d say, approximately 6,000 years … but what is it? When is it right or wrong? It’s been called passion, lust, love. It’s so easy (ahem, at least in certain circles), to think that “passion” and “falling in love” have to be wrong, because they are of Hollywood. But the most powerful lies are the ones that contain mostly truth and that there are stories aplenty in the Bible about people falling madly in love … not to mention the Song of Solomon. Passion just is another gift from God that people abuse. Passion might be love. But not necessarily. There are also stories we like to forget about, though, about arranged marriages. Did they have passion? I don’t know and I guess it doesn’t matter for us to know. I suppose we’ll find out in heaven after we’ve been dead for a while. It does seem that arranged marriages can generate passion, though. Like Isaac and Rebekah.

Here’s my problem, though. When is it right for the fires to be lit? What should one do if they seem to have come ablaze on their own?

The point is the desire to share everything, absolutely everything you have with that other person. But that’s not really possible.

For some, it comes and goes. For others, it stays gone. But whatever happens, it doesn’t last. It never does. Some people think that finding someone to share everything with means you’re not lonely anymore. But that’s not true. You’re just lonely in a different way. Because sin cuts you off from people and so does finiteness. As sinners we can never be wholly united with anyone and being finite (to varying degrees) keeps us from understanding each other completely.

It’s fun have to get merry on beer and wine and cocktails, it’s fine to go to the amusement park, but confusing passion with love is grievous for everyone involved.

The worst is passion and love without God.

There can be love without passion, passion without love, neither is necessarily better. But there is no love without perseverence, or love without longing.

Four of the top 10 Froogle searches were for iPod products….

The Yahoo Empire is spreading. They’ve taken over the Konfabulator widgets, for good or for ill, I know not, but regardless, the widgets are cool beyond description. I just installed a bunch.

If you didn’t get one but expected to, chances are I don’t have your e-mail address, so just drop me a line.

emeth DOT hesed AT gmail DOT com