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When was the last time you went to your public library, obtained one of the leading encyclopedias or histories, and studied an article on the subject of Easter? If you're like the average person, the answer is probably "never." Millions of sincere, churchgoing, professing Christians excitedly arise in the pitch-black hours well before dawn on Easter Sunday morning, hustle the kids out of bed, enjoy a quick breakfast, and bundle into the car for a drive to a nearby mountaintop, outdoor bowl, huge cathedral, or small countryside church. They are going to an "Easter sunrise service." At the precise moment of sunrise, the priest or minister may likely turn toward the east, extending both hands in a supplicatory gesture, heralding the dawn of "Easter Sunday," and ask all of the audience to pray as they face the rising sun in the east. While many of the less devout do not bother to arise early enough to go to an actual sunrise service, it is a well-known celebration, attended by millions in nations around the world. Why? These many professing Christians suppose they are gathering together to commemorate the anniversary of the precise moment Jesus Christ rose from the dead! They believe they are celebrating the resurrection. Of course, it is doubtful that even one of these sincere people has read what you are about to read in this article. Yet the information is readily available in any reasonably large public library. Have you ever researched the question for yourself? Have you ever asked yourself why you do some of the things you do? Have you ever looked up "Lent" in the history books or encyclopedias? Have you ever wondered why fasts, drunken ribaldry, drug-induced chaos, vandalism, and crime punctuate such pre-Easter celebrations as "Mardi Gras"? Have you ever heard friends joke about their "Lenten fast," giving up chewing gum or asparagus?
Certainly you recall seeing old motion picture news reports or television coverage of the famous "Easter Parade" in New York City. It's custom. And is custom to be questioned? What Does Easter Mean? What is Easter"? Is it the opposite of "Wester"? Does it have something to do with one of the points of the compass, or the Far East? Let's see what some of the historians tell us:
In a sense, we are dealing with a "hostile
witness" in this quotation, for the Catholic Church fully supports Easter.
Therefore, it is doubly important to note that The Catholic Encyclopedia
admits the "apostolic fathers" (including James, Peter, John, and the early
apostles) do not mention Easter. Now notice another important historical authority:
Just how Easter was adopted into the visible church, and how it became called "Christian," we shall see. Now, notice what an American high school level encyclopedia has to say:
The Encyclopedia Americana says
Very early after being rescued from slavery and established as a new nation under God's own laws, the Israelites turned to the idolatrous customs and practices of neighboring nations.
The pagan Zidonians, the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, and other surrounding tribes served the same gods and goddesses sometimes manifested in different ways. One of the prominent features (also adopted by sinning Israelites) was the worship of the goddess "Ishtar" in groves, called "asherim." This is merely the plural word for "Asherah," which meant an upright pale, or the trunk of a tree, stripped of its branches and leaves, and worshiped in the setting of a grove of trees, usually on a hilltop, representing life. (It was a phallic symbol.) Notice: "The children of Israel sinned against the Lord their God...and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God...and they set them up images [Hebrew, asherah] and groves [Hebrew, asherim] in every high hill, and under every green tree: And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said to them, you shall not do this thing" (2 Kings 17:711). The worship of the upright pales, or phallic symbols, was closely associated with the worship of other forms of the procreation of life. The whole festival at springtime, in the minds of the ancient pagans, was closely allied to the midwinter festivals when pagans implored their sun god to begin his northern journey once again, bringing back the warming rays of the sun and hastening spring, when new life would once again spring forth. When this was an accomplished fact, the heathens used the symbols of eggs, which they worshiped as a miraculous source of life; rabbits, as the most rapidly procreating domestic animal; and lit fires in order to bake cakes in sacrifice to the "queen of heaven" (Semiramis), the "Diana of the Ephesians," who was viewed as the goddess of sex and fertility.
Read Ezekiel 8! In this shocking chapter of the Bible, Ezekiel, in spirit, is shown the horrifying abominations of the sinning Israelites who had made an "image of jealousy" which "provoked to jealousy" the Eternal God (verses 3,4)! Showing Ezekiel, in spirit, even "greater abominations" (verse 6),
And is that not precisely what millions of churchgoing Christians believe today? A day-by-day, close awareness of the immediate presence of God; the fact that He watches and clearly sees every human act and deed; that He is immediately available through prayer; that He is not only our God, but our Judge, and our Ruler. This concept of a living, ruling, Creator God is lost to the minds of millions! They do not know the living God! Rather, they think of God in vague, unreal terms. It is as if He has truly "gone way off somewhere" into the blackness of the "other side of the universe." Few really believe that Almighty God does see through the rooftops, sees in the dark, and literally beholds the deeds (good or evil) of humankind. Later Ezekiel was shown "women weeping for Tammuz" (verse 14). Tammuz was their name for Nimrod, who made himself into "a mighty hunter before [in place of] the Lord " (Genesis 10:9)! Next, read on in Ezekiel 8 as he was shown even greater abominations
Consider what God told Ezekiel concerning ancient Israel's practices:
The Annual Holy Days of God When God first called His nation Israel out of captivity in Egypt, He had to reveal to them the months of the year; reveal to them once again the weekly Sabbath, and wean them away from the pagan, idolatrous customs of the ancient Egyptians, who worshiped Isis and Osiris. Prior to the exodus, God began revealing to the Israelites the Passover (see Exodus 12). Directly connected with the Passover were the Days of Unleavened Bread. Later, in the land of Sinai, before the giving of the Ten Commandments, God revealed to them His weekly Sabbath, and enforced the observance of God's holy Sabbath day by showing the Israelites that sin required the death penalty (Exodus 16:430). Later God revealed to them the remainder of His annual holy days (Leviticus 23), consisting of the Feast of Firstfruits (Pentecost), the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day, coming right at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. God revealed to them the beginning of months, or the "sacred year," which commenced in the spring with the month of Nisan (also called Abib). The Israelites were commanded to take an unblemished lamb from their flocks on the tenth of Nisan; to keep it to the evening of the fourteenth, and then to slay it as the "Lord's Passover." By striking the blood of the slain, unblemished lamb on the doorposts and lintels of their houses in Goshen, they would be under the sign of "the blood of the lamb," and the death angel, who was to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians in the final and greatest plague, would "pass over" the homes of the Israelites. That ceremony was to be conducted "with their staff in their hand," and by a meal of roast lamb and the "bread of affliction" (unleavened bread), signifying the great haste with which God was going to deliver them out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery. The spiritual types are set forth very clearly by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and by the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11). The paschal lamb was symbolic of Jesus Christ; the blood on the doorposts and lintels of the houses is symbolic of the blood of Jesus Christ to atone for our sins; the escape from Egypt is symbolic of our escape from the clutches of Satan the devil and sin; the passage through the Red Sea was symbolic of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:14); the land of Sinai, and the forty-years wandering prior to entering the promised land, are symbolic of the trials, testing, and tribulation which come upon every Christian; and the entrance into the promised land, across the River Jordan, is symbolic of finally leaving this human, physical life and entering the very Kingdom of God. Back to Articles Page!
For further proof of Easter's Pagan origins, just Google "SHOULD CHRISTIANS OBSERVE EASTER." Church of God Pagosa, thegodkind.org Web pages created and material written by Jeffrey T. Maehr. Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved. Reproduction allowed if credit to this website is listed with material. Other copyrights listed accordingly. |