W. E. Vine on December 25th as a Pagan Holiday
W. E. Vine, respected author of the well-known Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words , exposes the pagan origins of the Christmas celebration in his little-known but equally scholarly work, The Origin and Rise of Ecclesiasticism. Excerpt from Chapter 4, Further Developments Towards The Papal System "...We have noticed the combined effect upon the churches, in the third century, of the desire for worldly aggrandizement on the part of the Church leaders, and of the patronage of the Emperors, who on their part saw possibilities of unifying the elements of the State through the instrumentality of the Church. With a view to establishing his throne on a secure basis, the Emperor Constantine the Great reconstructed the official arrangements of the Imperial Government, and adjusted the constitution of the Church so as to model it approximately to that of the State. The ecclesiastical organization of the churches, by this time so vastly different from the New Testament ...