[Gary Petty] You've probably never heard of Bead. He is a man who is considered the father of English history. Back in the 700s he wrote a book titled "A History of the English Church and People." He tells a story in there about how Pope Gregory I who became known as Pope Gregory the Great was at a slave market looking over the slaves and he saw some young boys that were there that were being auctioned off. And he was amazed because they had very fair skin and blonde hair and they just looked very strong and healthy. And he asked, "Who are these people?" He said, "Well, they're Angles." He said, "Where are they from?" "Angleland." England. So he was so impressed with them. And then he said, "Are they Christians?" And they said, "No, the Anglo Saxons are all pagans." So, he got some missionaries together and he sent them to what we call England today to try to convert the Angles and the Saxons.

Well, when the missionaries got there, they were having a hard time getting these Angles and Saxons to accept Christianity. So, he wrote a letter to them and it's here in his book where Gregory sent a letter and said, "Look, we know they're pagans. So what we have to do here is we can't make them give up all their paganism overnight. So, let's do away with the idols. Let's turn all their temples into churches and on all their feast days that they would have all these celebrations to pagan idols, let's just change the name to the name of a saint and let's bring in relics and put it there and they can bring in their oxen and they can kill them," because that was part of what they did as a sacrifice, "instead of eating it then, this meat to a pagan idol, they're eating it to a saint."

The idea that we can Christianize paganism was very common at that time. What are the things that Gregory says is that the best example we have of this is that when the Israelites came out of Egypt, God let them continue to sacrifice to Him in the way that they had sacrificed to pagan gods in Egypt. When you study the book of Exodus, that's not true at all. And when you study Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you see that over and over again God told them, "You cannot take pagan customs and somehow make them to Me and it's okay." They were forbidden to do so.

What we find in this letter, that Pope Gregory wrote, that Bead recorded is something that most people never read. And yet it's very important. It was a time period when pagans were coming into what was then the Catholic church in large numbers and they were trying to convert them and they just sort of mingled Christianity and paganism together as an attempt to get them into the church.

That leads us to a point of wondering how many Christian customs that we have today and aren't biblical at all? In fact, they come from paganism. I mean, I can think of a couple right now: Easter, Christmas, Valentine's Day.

What Gregory did is not what the Bible says to do. Paul, Peter, James, John would've been appalled by that concept.

So, maybe it's time you take a look at your life and start to analyze, do I have customs that I think are Christian but really come from paganism and would God accept that?

"BT Daily," join us next time.