Groundhog Day & Reincarnation

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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

Today is February 3rd, 2021.

We are one day past Groundhog Day.

Yes, yesterday was Groundhog Day and I didn't mention it on the program.

My plan originally was that I wanted to have a little fun today and replay yesterday's program on today's program as a little nod to the film Groundhog Day where the character in that film, Phil Connors, had to live the same day over, over, over and over again.

And I was just going to play yesterday's program as a joke, but I wasn't sure how many of you would get it.

But I did decide today, since it is the second day after Groundhog Day, that I wanted to talk a little bit about this particular day.

A lot of us know that we celebrate it every year on February 2nd, but a lot of people don't know where it came from or what it's about.

And I thought it might be fun to share this with you.

This actually is from History.com.

That is where I'm going to be reading today.

And it tells us that Groundhog Day actually began in 1887.

On February 2nd, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, it gets scared and runs back into its burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter weather.

No shadow means an early spring.

Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of crystal moss, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter.

The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be.

Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal, the hedgehog, as a means of predicting weather.

And once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were more plentiful in the Keystone State.

Now, I know for many of us in the South, we don't get too caught up on Groundhog Day because ultimately, whether or not we get six more weeks of winter doesn't really matter a whole lot if you live in Florida.

You may have another one or two cold days this side of January, but it's usually not that big of a deal.

But up north, when the winter weather is severe, and sometimes dreadfully so, to know that you've got another six weeks coming is somewhat of a difficulty, and so people look to Groundhog Day as an opportunity for having some kind of hope that the all-seeing eye of the groundhog will know for sure whether or not they're going to have six more weeks of winter.

And ultimately, everybody knows it's a joke.

Everybody knows it's all for gags.

It's not something that's real.

We don't know if the groundhog sees his shadow or not.

The whole thing is just for fun, and the celebrations and all that that go along with it are really just an opportunity for people to engage in some harmless frivolity.

But it does bring to mind today something that I thought would be interesting and fun for us to discuss on the program, and that is what the movie Groundhog Day reminds us of.

And for many of you who have seen the movie, you probably remember that, as I said earlier, it's about a character named Phil Connors, who has the opportunity to live the same day over and over again.

And we never are told how long he lives this day over and over again, but we do know that throughout the movie he learns to play piano, he learns to time out everything that is going on in the town so that he's able to sort of control what's going on.

He's able to do so many sort of miraculous things because he has spent this one day over and over and over, and apparently everything is going on the same every day except him.

He's the only variable, he's the only different thing, and he changes his routine every day, but everything else stays the same.

And throughout this time he's able to ultimately create a perfect day.

That's the whole idea of the movie, is that he has these what seems to be hundreds of years worth of days to create this one perfect day.

And it plays with a lot of ideas, really on a spiritual level it plays with the idea of death.

In certain parts of the movie he tries to commit suicide, he tries to, because he gets tired of living the same day over and over, so he tries to die, isn't able to die, and so ultimately it plays with a lot of those ideas and a lot of those thoughts.

Thoughts of death, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of living a life that seems to be repetitive and mundane, it doesn't seem like you're going anywhere, all of these things.

But one of the things that really as I was thinking about the program today and thinking about what I wanted to say about Groundhog Day and thinking again, most of us, especially those of us in the South, when it comes to Groundhog Day the thing that we connect most with is this movie, is the idea of what the movie reminds us about regarding the concept of life and death.

The movie reminds us, or portrays a man who gets to try over and over again, as it were, to have a perfect day.

Ultimately he's trying to win the heart of this woman, played by Andy McDowell, and he wants to try to win her over by having learned all about her and learned about all that makes her happy and he wants to learn to make her happy and therefore he goes through all of this work to try to learn to do that.

He does so essentially by coming back to life every day at the beginning of the day, starting over and getting to try it again, and again, and again, and again.

And if you're not familiar with the religious concept of reincarnation, this movie sort of depicts a form of reincarnation.

And the idea of reincarnation is this, is that you don't move from life to death, but rather when you die the energy that you have simply moves to another life form and you are reincarnated or reborn in another life form.

And if you study some of the religions that teach forms of reincarnation, they basically argue that when you die in this life you're going to come back in another life and depending on how well you live this life will determine how good you have it in the next life.

And a lot of this, you hear people talk about karma and things like this, a lot of this is connected to that because if you do bad in this life it's going to come back and get you in the next life.

You may have even heard somebody who is going through something difficult and they say, oh I must have done something really bad in a past life.

Well that's all based on this false idea of reincarnation.

And again, I know the movie isn't about reincarnation, but the movie is about doing the day over and over and over until you get it right and that's sort of the idea of reincarnation is living lifetimes over and over and over until you get it right.

But when we think about life from a biblical perspective, the Bible does not say that we are reincarnated.

The Bible tells us that God forms us in our mother's womb and that he knows us when he's forming us.

Psalm 139 says that he forms us, that he knows us in our mother's womb, he intricately weaves us together in our mother's womb and we are fearfully and wonderfully made or created in our mother's womb and we go through this life and we have one shot.

We do not have many shots, we don't have many lives, we don't have a hundred chances, we don't have fifty chances, we have one life.

Now here's the thing, we are not in this life to quote unquote get it right, if getting it right means to live a perfect life because we won't.

We are born sinful and we will not get this life right perfectly because we are sinners.

But at the same time there is something that we absolutely must get right and it is at the peril of our soul if we do not and that of course is how we respond to the gospel.

The gospel call is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Repent of your sins and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Turn from your sin, turn to him, know that you are a sinner deserving God's punishment.

Turn from your sin and trust in Jesus who received the punishment that you deserved on the cross and you will be saved.

And here's the thing, you don't get a second chance at that.

After you die, that's it.

There is no Groundhog Day.

You don't wake up another day after you die to another opportunity to do it all again.

You're not going to hear the Sonny and Cher song that Phil Connors heard every day that he woke up on Groundhog Day.

What's going to happen is when we die, we are either going to be in the presence of the Lord or we are going to be in the presence of torment.

The Bible teaches that.

It teaches that there is only one of two possible ends and it's either going to be that we're going to be with the Lord or that we are going to be in hell.

And so my reminder to you on this, the day after Groundhog Day, is to remember that we don't get do-overs.

We don't get a life do-over.

There is no such thing as reincarnation and there's no such thing as having a day repeated, repeated, repeated until you get it right.

No.

So we have one life and ultimately we have only this life as an opportunity to respond positively to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now some of you may be saying, well, you're a Calvinist.

You don't believe people can respond positively outside of a work of the Holy Spirit.

And that's true.

I do believe that God has to open our hearts before we will respond positively.

So my prayer for you today is that if you've never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, that God would open your heart and that you would believe that you would see yourself as the sinner that you are, that you would see yourself in desperate need of a Savior, and that you would know that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I hope that you would turn from your sin and I pray that you would trust in him.

And if you have, praise the Lord.

You don't have to worry about what happens after this life because the word of God promises that we will be with him.

Hallelujah.

What a blessing.

Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.

May God be with you.