A reminder for
today
Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover,
and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. (Matthew 26:2)
Easter does not accurately represent Jesus Christ’s
suffering, death and resurrection, though it appears to do so to those who
blindly accept religious tradition. In fact, it distorts the truth of the
matter. Easter correctly belongs to the Babylonian goddess it is named
after—Astarte, also known as Ashtoreth or Ishtar, whose worship is directly and
explicitly condemned in the Bible.
The ancient religious practices and fertility symbols
associated with her cult existed long before Christ, and regrettably they have
largely replaced and obscured the truth of His death and resurrection.
Easter is one of the most popular religious celebrations in
the world. But is it biblical? The word Easter appears only once in the
King James Version of the Bible. In the one place it does appear, the King
James translators mistranslated the Greek word for Passover as “Easter.”
Notice it in Acts 12:4: “And when he [King Herod Agrippa I]
had apprehended him [the apostle Peter], he put him in prison, and delivered
him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to
bring him forth to the people.”
The Greek word translated Easter here is pascha, properly
translated everywhere else in the Bible as “Passover.” Think about these facts
for a minute. Easter is such a major religious holiday. Yet nowhere in the
Bible—not in the book of Acts, which covers several decades of the history of
the early Church, nor in any of the epistles of the New Testament, written over
a span of 30 to 40 years after Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection—do we find
the apostles or early Christians celebrating anything like Easter.
The Gospels themselves appear to have been written from
about a decade after Christ’s death and resurrection to perhaps as much as 60
years later (in the case of John’s Gospel). Yet nowhere do we find a hint of
anything remotely resembling an Easter celebration.
If Easter doesn’t come from the Bible, and wasn’t practiced
by the apostles and early Church, where did it come from?
“The term ‘Easter’ is not of Christian origin. It is
another form of Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean goddess, the
queen of heaven. The festival of Pasch [Passover] held by Christians in
post-apostolic times was a continuation of the Jewish feast … From this Pasch
the pagan festival of ‘Easter’ was quite distinct and was introduced into the
apostate Western religion, as part of the attempt to adapt pagan festivals
to Christianity” (W.E. Vine, 1985, emphasis added throughout).
That’s a lot of information packed into one paragraph.
Notice what the author, W.E. Vine—a trained classical scholar, theologian,
expert in ancient languages and author of several classic Bible
helps—tells us:
Easter isn’t a Christian or directly biblical term,
but comes from a form of the name Astarte, a Chaldean (Babylonian)
goddess known as “the queen of heaven.” (She is mentioned by that title in the
Bible in Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:17-19; Jeremiah 44:25 and referred
to in 1 Kings 11:5; 1 Kings 5:33 and 2 Kings 23:13 by the Hebrew form of her
name, Ashtoreth. So “Easter” is found in the Bible—as part of the
pagan religion God condemns!)
Further, early Christians, even after the times of the
apostles, continued to observe a variation of the biblical Passover feast (it
differed because Jesus introduced new symbolism, as the Bible notes in Matthew
26:26-28 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-28).
And again, Easter was a pagan festival, originating in the
worship of other gods, and was introduced much later into an apostate
Christianity in a deliberate attempt to make such festivals acceptable.
Moreover, Easter was very different from the Old Testament Passover or the
Passover of the New Testament as understood and practiced by the early Church
based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles.
But that’s not the entire story. In fact, many credible
sources substantiate the fact that Easter became a substitute festival for the
Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Notice what The Encyclopaedia Britannica says about
this transition: “There is no indication of the observance of the Easter
festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers
. . . The first Christians continued to observe the Jewish festivals,
though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals
foreshadowed . . .
“The Gentile Christians, on the other hand, unfettered by
Jewish traditions, identified the first day of the week [Sunday] with the
Resurrection, and kept the preceding Friday as the commemoration of the
crucifixion, irrespective of the day of the month” (11th edition, p.
828, “Easter”).
Easter, a pagan festival with its pagan fertility symbols,
replaced the God-ordained festivals that Jesus Christ, the apostles and the
early Church observed. But this didn’t happen immediately. Not until A.D.
325—almost three centuries after Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected—was
the matter settled. Regrettably, it wasn’t settled on the basis of biblical truth,
but on the basis of anti-Semitism and raw ecclesiastical and
imperial power.
As The Encyclopaedia Britannica further explains: “A
final settlement of the dispute [over whether and when to keep Easter or
Passover] was one among the other reasons which led [the Roman emperor]
Constantine to summon the council of Nicaea in 325 . . . The decision
of the council was unanimous that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, and on the
same Sunday throughout the world, and ‘that none should hereafter follow the
blindness of the Jews’ ” (ibid., pp. 828-829).
Those who did choose to “follow the blindness of the
Jews”—that is, who continued to keep the biblical festivals kept by Jesus
Christ and the apostles rather than the newly “Christianized” pagan Easter
festival—were systematically persecuted by the powerful church-state alliance
of Constantine ‘s Roman Empire.
With the power of the empire behind it, Easter soon became
entrenched as one of traditional Christianity’s most popular sacred
celebrations. (You can read more of the details in our free booklet Holidays
or Holy Days: Does It Matter Which Days We Observe?)
When confronted with these facts about Easter, many
professing Christians might raise this question to justify its continuance: With
hundreds of millions of well-meaning Christians observing Easter, doesn’t this
please Jesus Christ? Yet He has already answered this question in Matthew
15:9: “In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of
men.” How will you choose to worship Him—in spirit and in truth, or in
fraud and in fable?
(extract by Jerold
Aust)
Lord, pleas open our eyes and our hearts so that we will
follow you and worship you alone. Open our eyes to the pagan festivals that
steals your glory. In Jesus name.
Have an awesome day dear friend of Jesus.
Cheers
