Days of the Week

I was talking to my Father the other day about the craziest things we had seen in churches.  As a kid my Dad was dragged to many churches in the Tri-State Area (West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.)  His parents sung in a gospel quartet, and they played wherever they were asked.  So my Father was dragged along to any and all sorts of denominations of Christianity.

His stories bought back a memory of something that happened to me from 27 years ago (Circa 1991.)  You see, my Mom decided to join a church back then.  It was when the Evangelical movement decided to take cues from musicians, and put on a service like a rock concert.  Instead of sitting there thumbing through your bible, they had you stand up, clap, etc.  It was even better when someone passed out.  It all made for a good show.

Mom was invited by a friend of hers to attend "New Life Christian Center," on April Lane.  Again, this was back in the early 1990's.  The church is still there today.  It's called something else, and run by a different group.  Back then, the pastor was Bishop James (sometimes Jimmy or Jimi) Higgins.

Normally on my posts I won't name anyone specifically.  But he's posted his information on the web.  He still preaches to this day.  Also, the service was filmed semi-professionally by the churches own employees/volunteers.  That way, you could purchase a VHS tape of the service for later.

So I went.  The service I remember was stranger than usual that day.  Bishop Higgins started preaching about the days of the week.  Or more importantly, Sunday.  He preached/argued/plead his case that Sunday was the first day of the week.

I looked at my calendar, and saw that he was right.

Alright, there it is.  A 1991 calendar.  You can see that Sunday is the first day of the week.  Again, I agreed with him.  But then he kept going... and going.  For two hours he made his argument about how it wasn't Monday or any other day of the week.  It was Sunday.

Now I didn't know it then, but this is what is called a, "Strawman Argument."

Here's the Wikipedia link to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

In case you didn't read the article, they use a good example of the "Strawman Argument" when Richard Nixon used it by saying he was going to keep his dog Checkers.  What happened is that, he took illegal campaign money.  By law, he was supposed to give it back.  One of his donations was a black and white dog his daughter named Checkers.

He said his opponents told him he had to give back everything, but he wasn't going to give back Checkers.  No.  That's not what they said.  They said he shouldn't have accepted the illegal donations to his campaign.  They didn't say anything about his dog.

And this is what Bishop Higgins was doing.  He was fabricating some argument that someone, somewhere, sometime wanted to change the days of the week to make our holiest day the last day of the week.  Go look at your calendar.  Yes, the one in your home or on your computer.  What's the first day of the week?  Yeah.  It's still Sunday.

It's been 27 years, and I haven't seen anything on the news or any protests about changing the days of the week.  Let's be honest.  It was never about the days of the week.  It was about the weekly whipping of the church crowd into a frenzy.  If you don't know what I'm talking about watch this Benny Hinn footage.

I can't even count the number of times I've heard, "Something is coming.  Something big is coming."  Again, I'm still waiting for it.  This is one of those, "If I had a nickel..." thoughts.

But the story doesn't end there.  So I go to church, yes the same church, the next week.  I open the church bulletin/Sunday flyer, and what do I see?  It's the Church calendar that shows what upcoming events are planned.

And you know what the first day of the week is?  MONDAY.   That's right.  After railing for two hours on the days of the week, the church's own calendar has Monday as the first day of the week.  So I ask one of Mom's church friends about it.

I'll admit, I was a bit smartassed about the whole thing.  I asked, "After last week I thought that Sunday was the first day of the week?"

You know what she told me?  "That's man's way."

I replied, "But isn't this, you know, church?"  (I'll admit I was 15 and not very eloquent back then.)

Without a hint of irony or understanding she said to me, "No.  That's man's way.  That's not God's way."

Again, I just had to ask, "But the Bishop railed for two hours last week about this.  Why would he say all of that last week, just for the church's own flyer to list Monday as the first day?"

It was like talking to a deer in headlights.  I saw pretty quickly she wasn't going to give one/one millionth of an inch on this, so I just gave up trying to make sense.

There are many more hilarious highlights of things that happened on those Sundays.  But I have to say this memory is one of two that really stand out to me from that time.  It's memories like this that make me glad I am no longer a Christian.  There's just too much "straw" to deal with.