Hanukkah
I thought that now was a good time, with the season upon us, to explain why we have decided to stop celebrating Christmas and begin celebrating Hanukkah. Most people think of Hanukkah as the “Jewish Christmas.” I submit to you that nothing could be further from the truth. I do not intend for this article to be a Christmas bashing dissertation. I do, however, want you to know that we have decided to stop celebrating Christmas due to its pagan origins. According to Scripture, we are commanded to “not learn the way of the heathen” (Jeremiah 10:2). We have discovered that the celebration of Christmas has its traditions rooted in paganism. I am not saying that anyone is pagan because they practice the traditions of Christmas, just that those traditions came from pagan traditions. A simple look in the encyclopedia will give you ample evidence of this fact. I realize that most people do not even realize that the holiday did not originate after the birth of the Messiah. But enough about Christmas, this article is about Hanukkah. I want to concentrate on the true meaning of the holiday, not the significances attached to it by Judaism, nor the unimportances placed on it by Christianity. I would submit to you that Hanukkah is truly a Christian holiday because Jesus Himself celebrated it. I will deal more with that later. First, we need to understand when and where the celebration of Hanukkah originated.
Around 167 BCE, the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes of the Seleucid dynasty, took the city of Jerusalem. This wicked man sacrificed an abomination, i.e. a pig, on the altar of God in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. He further erected a statue of the god zeus in the Temple and demanded its worship. He continued his evil practices by forbidding the Jewish people to circumcise their children, observe the Sabbath, and required them to pollute themselves by eating swine’s flesh. There happened to be a priest by the name of Matthias, who refused to obey the order of the king, and fled with his sons to the town of Mo’din in northern Israel. When the king’s soldiers came to Mo’din to enforce the decree of the king, Matthias and his sons refused. There was another Jew there that was attempting to obey the order of the king, whom Matthias slew. At that time, Matthias and his sons instituted a revolt and handed the Syrians several defeats through guerilla warfare. Matthias, at the time of his death, placed his son Judah in command of the revolt. Judah was called “the Macabee,” which means “the hammer.” Judah and his followers continued the revolt and won back Jerusalem in 164 BCE. When he went to the Temple, he found everything defiled and in disarray. He started purifying the Temple by taking apart the altar that Antiochus Epiphanes had desecrated and erecting a new altar. According to the law (Torah in Hebrew), the dedication of the altar took eight days (seven days to sanctify it with the additional day to start the altar’s service, according to Exodus 29:37). There was enough sanctified oil to light the golden lampstand, or Temple Menorah, for one day. The legend states that the oil lasted for eight days, until enough sanctified oil could be procured. The story of the Maccabean revolt and the institution of Hanukkah can be found in the Apocryphal books of Maccabees.
With that said, why would we, as Christians, want to celebrate Hanukkah. The simple answer would be that we want to do things and celebrate holidays that please Him and from which we can learn. I stated earlier that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah. You may not recall this due to the fact that it is not called Hanukkah in the New Testament. The Hebrew word Hanukkah was translated into “dedication.” In John chapter 10, we find that Jesus was in Jerusalem at “the Feast of Dedication” and that it was winter.
And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. John 10:22
This Feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah, is celebrated on the 25th day of the Hebrew month Kislev, which corresponds roughly to early to mid-December on our calendar. It is a commemoration of the re-dedication of the altar in Jerusalem. Judaism emphasizes the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days, hence the eight-day celebration, and the restoration of religious freedom. However, as Christians, what can we learn from Hanukkah? First, we need to understand the central objects relating to Hanukkah—the altar and the menorah.
The altar was (and is) the place where man can do business with God. The Israelites would bring their sacrifices to the altar…it is where they would worship God. After Jesus came, He set up an altar in our hearts. The altar in Jerusalem was a physical picture of what God wanted to do spiritually in the heart of every man. It is said that the altar was the “table of God.” On it, through the means of sacrifices, were meat, bread and wine. Regarding the sacrifices made upon the altar in Jerusalem, there was never a sacrifice given in the Old Testament for willful, defiant sin. There were sacrifices for thanksgiving, committing one’s life to God, and for remembering the goodness of God. And yes, there were sacrifices for sin, but upon close examination, we see that they were for inadvertent or unintentional sins—never for willful, defiant sin. I am afraid we have gotten the wrong idea about the sacrifices of the Old Testament. I am working on an article about the sacrifices and hope to have it completed soon to shed some light on that subject. But back to the altar. What significance does the altar hold for us today? Let’s look at the words of Jesus:
And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. Matthew 23:18-20
Here we see that Jesus places much importance on the altar—it is the altar that sanctifies, or sets apart, the sacrifice on the altar. We know that Jesus was our Sacrifice; so without the altar to set Him apart, He was just another noble man that was wrongly accused and executed. Removing the altar and its importance is very dangerous. Paul stated it this way:
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:29
When we remove the altar, the blood of our Sacrifice falls to the ground where it is trampled under the feet of man. So the altar is extremely important to the believer today!
The next object that we see emphasized at Hanukkah is the menorah. Remember that I said that it was a legend that the oil lasted for eight days? I said that it was a legend because we really cannot base that in Scripture. However, I do believe that the oil lasted for that long and there are some very significant reasons. The menorah is the seven-branched candlestick that stood in the Tabernacle and Temple. It is called the lamp of God (1 Sam 3:3). Jesus said that He was the Light of the world (John 8:12), a picture of the lamp of God, or the Temple Menorah. In Revelation 5:6, we read:
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
We see the Lamb has seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God. We read in Isaiah 11, just what these seven Spirits are:
And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; Isaiah 11:2
We know that these Spirits rested upon Jesus—He embodied them! Correlating these to the seven branches, we can see a picture of the eyes of God in the Menorah. So what does that have to do with the Menorah staying lit for eight days? It represents the eyes of God continually on the altar, making sure that it was dedicated properly so that the Sacrifice would be proper and acceptable. If the altar was incorrectly dedicated, it was not an altar to God and the Sacrifice of the Messiah would not have been proper—it wouldn’t have made an atonement for you and me.
Another thing that we learn for the celebration of Hanukkah is that faithfulness to God’s Word has tremendous benefits. Due to the faithfulness of Judah Maccabee, we see God rewarding him with victory over his enemies. By being faithful to His Word, we are promised the blessings (Deut.28:1-2). God will grant us victory over the adversary, Satan, and over sin.
We also can learn about the prophetic significance of the altar. The start of the Great Tribulation begins with the “abomination of desolation.” This is the desecrating of the altar of God. Most people think that the Temple must be completely rebuilt and the antichrist will sacrifice a pig on the altar, mirroring the abominable act by Antiochus Epiphanes. However, once an altar is dedicated on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in God’s eyes, the Temple is complete. Further, not one stone of the Temple can be laid until the altar has been dedicated and is working. As for the desecration of the altar, by simply stopping the sacrifices for dedication or stopping the sacrificing of the morning and evening lambs, the altar will be desecrated. So it is not required that a pig be sacrificed on the altar. When the antichrist commits the abomination of desolation (which, incidentally, is not just defiling the altar, but also setting up an image in the Temple), he will be making a bold statement to the God of the universe. The altar is also known as God’s ownership symbol. Anything that it touches belongs to God. Since the altar is touching the earth, the altar represents God’s ownership of the whole earth. When the antichrist stops the altar, he is testifying that God does not possess the right to rule the earth, rather that he, the antichrist, does!
So the altar has significant meaning to the believer today. The celebration of Hanukkah commemorates the past (re-dedication of the altar in 164 BCE), the present (the altar of the heart and the sanctifying means of the Sacrifice), and the future (the beginning of the Great Tribulation, with our nearing final redemption). This is why we have chosen to celebrate Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication.