Cornerstone Church

These message send by my friend, and I want you to read it. Is VALENTINES DAY is Biblical? You will be the judge. But i pray that God will open your understanding!


Valentines day background

The origions of the world's most loving day

Valentine's Day

Forget the red roses, sentimental cards, and candle-lit dinners
this St. Valentine's Day. Do something really unusual this
year, something that harks back to the original traditions of
this ancient day of love - like sacrificing a goat, for
example. Yes, as with many modern festive days, St. Valentine's
is an old pagan festival which was later adapted by
Christianity. The roots of the Feast Day of St. Valentine lie
in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, believed to have
been held to ensure protection from wolves (lupus in Latin
means wolf).

Every February 15, Ancient Romans would gather in nearby caves
and sacrifice goats or dogs. The bloody knife would then be
smeared on the foreheads of two youths of good breeding and the
blood wiped off with wool soaked in milk. The whole party would
then run through the streets wearing the skins of the
slaughtered beasts and beating people with straps of goatskin.

This was also believed to encourage fertility and infertile
women were supposedly glad to receive the blows.

While Lupercalia seems to have more in common with the riotous
behavior of modern soccer crowds than with St. Valentine's Day,
the romantic and fertility significance of the ancient Roman
festival was gradually incorporated into the Christian Feast
Day of St. Valentine on February 14.

Exactly why is a mystery. None of the limited historical
evidence shows either of the two martyred Saint Valentines as
having any connection with love or romance. One legend,
however, has it that Valentine, a priest and later bishop of
Rome, performed secret weddings when Emperor Claudius the Goth,
believing marriage prevented men from being good soldiers,
banned them.

Valentine was clubbed to death, then beheaded, on February 14
around 270 A.D. during the Christian persecution. In a way, it
could be said he died for love and it may be for this that his
feast day, named in 496 A.D. by Pope Gelasius, has become
associated with romance.

The modern festival of St. Valentine's Day dates from at least
the 14th century. It developed most strongly in England and
France, but throughout all medieval Europe it was believed to
be the day when birds chose their mates.

The first recorded Valentine note was sent by a French knight
captured by the English at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. On
St. Valentine's Day he sent his wife a rhymed letter from
London, where he was imprisoned. The first recorded Valentine
from a woman was sent in 1447 by a Norfolk lady to her lover
saying: "To my right well beloved Voluntyne."

While drawing a girl's name from a love urn remained the
traditional way of choosing one's Valentine in parts of England
and America up until the 1880s, many other customs evolved
concerning the lovers' day.

Throughout England, one way to chose your Valentine was to kiss
the first person of the opposite sex you encountered in the
morning. Another English custom practiced by young, unmarried
women in the 1700s was to pin five bay leaves to their pillow.
If during the night the girl dreamed of her sweetheart, it was
believed she would be married within the year. She could help
stimulate the desired dream by scooping out the yolk from a
hard-boiled egg, filling it with salt, and swallowing it (shell
and all).

The BIBLE declare that "Be excellent of what is good and be innocent of evil" ( Rom.16:19 ).