By Bob Barney
Today is my beautiful bride Tammy’s special day…she is the love of my life and how blessed I am that she was born. I dedicate today’s program to her and take this opportunity share about the topic of birthdays and the Bible.
The Plain Truth is so Happy That You Have Been Enjoying Bob’s Broadcasts.
2000 years ago, a newscaster that we know of as Jesus Christ warned us about false Christianity. The warning was not against the devil but against false Christianity…about people who come in His name and deceive many.
Click Here to Listen to Bob’s 7:11 Broadcast on Birthdays and the Bible! Happy Birthday to his wife, Tammy!
Hi, this, is Bob Barney at 7:11 in the morning and this is the Plain Truth Today Broadcast.
What I would like to start off today first mentioning is a very warm, happy birthday to my wife Tammy.
Tammy and I have been married now; this is our 45th year this December. She is the love of my life and the company that we have is named after her and not me for a reason. I want to wish her a very happy birthday and I hope the Lord God gives her many many more because she has been a gem in my life, and she is the most important thing in my human life…only God is above that fact.
I want to wish her a very happy birthday and what I want to talk about today is a bit about birthdays in general. I have had people tell me, and again, I want to point out that this is not a religious site, yet we do talk a lot about things in the Bible because do you know, what is in the Bible is the news and this is a news site.
Many predictions that the Bible has still yet to fulfill will be mainstream news that you will be watching on ABC or CBS if they are around, or on any that are around…just like you watched that bridge fall down yesterday as shocking as that was, it would have been nice to know the day before it was going to fall so people aren’t there. This wouldn’t help you unless you learn from it and we try to use yesterday’s news, things in our history to learn from this so we do not repeat those mistakes again.
Unfortunately, oftentimes we do not learn from our mistakes.
We are a news site, but we often talk about what people would say to be RELIGIOUS MATTERS and that is because the Bible and what is in the Bible is news. A lot of people don’t want to think about these things and separate their daily life from their Sunday go to church life, but to God, there is no separation. Every day is a day between you and your Maker, if you know that or not. Your Maker is in control of your ultimate destiny whether you believe that or know that or not, it just is the truth.
When our three girls were growing up, we didn’t do Christmas or Easter or even Halloween, so they didn’t have the celebrations that I ever grew up which were fantastic…we believed in Christmas until I learned the Plain Truth about Christmas, but our children had very good birthdays. One was in May, one in August, one in December, they were all 14 months apart, so they are close in age…when one had a birthday, all three had a birthday at the same time so they celebrated 3 birthdays a year for most of their childhood up until their early teens; a birthday for one was a birthday for all. But a very good friend said to me, “you won’t follow Christmas or Easter, but aren’t birthdays against the Bible, too?”. I told him that I know Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religious sects believe that and a reason by the way, that they don’t and think birthday celebrations are ungodly, it is because from my knowledge there is only one birthday mentioned ever in the Bible…that is the birthday of King Herod. That resulted in John the Baptist losing his head when his stepdaughter, his illegitimate wife’s daughter danced for him and sexually turned him on and he offered her anything she wanted for her dance…knowing probably how she was dressed at the time, it was most likely very 20 or 21st century garb. She asked for the head of John the Baptist.
To this day, many people say that the only birthday being something that cost John the Baptists head and nowhere do we see Jesus’ day being celebrated…that leads people to say that it isn’t really in the Bible so we shouldn’t follow birthdays. If that is your conviction, I have no problem with that. I really do not. I personally think that just because something is not mentioned in the Bible or is only mentioned one time in a very bad way, it does not mean that GOd intends for it to be wrong to do.
It is wrong to celebrate something that is false. Like what people call Christmas, putting Christs or God’s name in it…like Easter coming up…or Christmas…
Jesus was not born in December and easily proven, the shepherds are not in the field in the Palestine area in December…it is more likely he was born in Passover week time or around the Day of Atonement in the fall…I tend to believe the latter. There are great arguments both ways…
…back to what is no okay…it is not okay to celebrate sexual immorality when God’s Law is against that for example, but if there is no law against birthdays, no law that I see in the Bible that says, “DO NOT CELEBRATE a birthday,” and someone decides to do so, I have no problem with it. That is why we have always had very good birthdays in our family. It is going back to the same idea with Thanksgiving for example. American pilgrims understood the Old Testament idea of having a day of Thanksgiving at harvest time like the Feast of Tabernacles is, to thank God for a bountiful year and for the divine protection that God gave them that year and the crops they were able to raise to maturity on a day of Thanksgiving. Sometimes they celebrated for a weeklong. There is no such thing though in the Bible as a proclamation, that you are supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving on a certain day of the month every year.
There just is no command to do so.
However, the idea of giving thanksgiving is a Biblical term in the King James older version, as it means today as giving thanks for the giving’s of God. In Old English it was one word but today we use several words to describe this. Now Thanksgiving though has turned into a football day and a day to have turkey and time with family but there is nothing wrong with celebrating a day of Thanksgiving. This is not the same with Christmas because that is a pagan holiday, but if you choose any day instead of a pagan day to pray and fast for example, there is nothing wrong with that. The same with Thanksgiving, we want to choose a non pagan day to celebrate all that we have in our family, our town, our state…our country.
I believe the same applies, in my opinion, to the idea of celebrating birthdays. A birthday is a very important time in your life. You were born on that day, and yes we were alive in the womb, we all understand life begins at conception no matter what liberals want to believe, God believes this is so, but the time that you come out of your mother’s birth canal…and that umbilical cord is cut and you are slapped and you start crying…you are born on that day and that is a momentous time in your life. To remember that each year in a celebration of your life which is a precious gift given by God…it is a miracle in fact…your birth…
I spoke about honoring your mother and your father the other day and was talking about the same idea that with God you have to understand that we are created in the image of God. Even if our parents were not good parents, they conceived us. The father’s sperm and the mothers egg gave birth to us. We are a miracle. Even if our parents were rotten, we are to respect the fact that that miracle produced us…and if we do good for God then God blessed that union in YOU. You are a miracle of birth. If you do the will of God and the will of Jesus Christ, you are a miracle that should be proud of that fact and respect your parents at least for giving you birth. The same thing about birthdays…each year, that you are alive, on the day you were born, it is a day to remember the day of the miracle that you were born, that you lived and survived though a time of abortions and miscarriages and prescription medications that causes people to not get pregnant or have abortions, it is a fact that it is a miracle you are alive and to celebrate it with a party…I do not think God has a problem with it.
We were a young couple Tammy and I with three young children, had them quite quickly in our marriage and the idea of having birthdays for all three children at the same time, three times a year made sense to US…because we knew in this world they were going to public school, that they were missing out on Christmas and Easter and Halloween, things we allowed them to make their own decisions on eventually, and maybe they would say more today than they did then, they wanted to please us and followed our will and not necessarily their will at the time. Our daughters were somewhat like outcasts amongst the other students because they did not do the things those other children did. To give them these special birthday parties and gifts…meant a lot to our family.
We were not a rich couple when we started out. We have done well very recently, but we were on a tight budget and Tammy did a beautiful job dressing them as if we had a lot of money from the thrift stores and we did what we needed to do to make sure they had beautiful gifts and memorable birthday parties. Tammy always made sure that I had a happy birthday even when we were poor, and I remember certain birthdays that are very vivid in my memory. I also remember within a year or two being married and forgetting Tammy’s birthday one time, the ONLY time…and that was not a very nice thing for me to do…that was not a very warming memory, the truth is though, Tammy is the love of my life, and I am so proud to admit that and proud to admit that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. I am not ashamed of Christ or God the Father or for my love for Tammy Barney, Tammy Lee Howard, who became my wife taking my name. It is a great thrill for me to be married to this beautiful woman who took on my name.
So we celebrate birthdays and the beauty of our life together.
I have a theory I want to share with you…March 27th, Tammy’s birthday, a Wednesday this year…I have a theory on birthdays…
I believe it is the special blessing for people who live a godly life, to die on their actual day of birth. Our of 365 chances, to actually die on the date that you were born is almost miraculous!
Not too many people in my knowledge have this happen this way.
There is a very important person, a memory of a person in my life that I have never met…whom I think is one of the greatest Christians of the 20th century and every time I watch the movie about her life and family in Nazi Germany and read her book, or even listen to her voice, I get emotion and cry. This woman and her sister, her brother and father, hid Jews in a place they called The Hiding Place in their home Her name was Corrie ten Boom, and she was born on April 3rd which is the day of Passover. Because the true Passover does not change…it begins the night of April 2nd and the day of April 3rd.
Corrie ten Boom died 90 years later on her actual birthday!
I believe in my heart that God was telling her when He let her go to her resting place, to go to sleep until her resurrection, that she did a good job.
If you take the time and read the story of Corrie ten Boom, you will get emotional too.
She was a remarkable woman and a remarkable Christian. I just wish that I could be an ant of a Christian next to her giant structure of a Christian.
The ironic thing with Corrie was that she lost her faith in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, but her sister never did…and her sister died in the camp never losing her faith. Corrie on the other hand lost her own faith, got mad and cursed her captives, cursed her God…and was released from the camp and lived. That guilt that she carried made her a true tramp for Jesus Christ. The phrase was coined as her sister Betsie ten Boom was carried away to the hospital ward just before she died, Corrie whispered to her sister, “We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.
So that is my tribute to birthdays, and I proudly say Happy Birthday to my wife Tammy …I love you very much and this show is a dedication to me. You inspire me to do these shows and to do The Plain Truth…you inspire me to do the paint company, to struggle through in a small business world in a big business environment and to have the motivation to continue.
I love you very much, Tammy…
and I wish every woman and every man could have the love that we do.
Happy birthday to anyone else who is born on March 27th…or any other day of the year, your birth, was a miracle of God. Never throw that thought away.
You are a miracle.
You were born in the image of God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You are in their likeness in their image, and you will be if you choose to be, obey, and believe, children of God!
Guess what that means? Your destiny is to be GOD. You will be Jesus’ brother, sister…and your father will be God the Father.
Thank you for listening, goodbye friends, till tomorrow.