LUNAR SABBATH KEEPERS
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Creation/Lunar Sabbath Keepers
EASTER THE ORIGON OF IT
Zone 1
The Origin of “Easter”
By Jim Staley
Have you ever wondered why we celebrate Easter? Where did we get all those traditions anyway? Why do we have Sunrise services? Why do we eat ham on Easter Sunday? Why do we dye the eggs? Where did Lent come from and so on? And as crazy as it might sound, does God approve of His people celebrating this holiday with all of its traditions? After all, it's all for His glory, right? He has to accept it. Or does He? Hmmm.
This article will explore the historical origin of "Easter" and will detail virtually every last part of its tradition. We will then dig into the scriptures and see if God has anything to say about this subject and you will be left to consider all the facts and be challenged to prayerfully bring this subject before our Lord for you and your family. May God grant you the openness of heart and mind as you read through this article. Let's start our journey by reaching into the past to find out just how this holiday that we call "Easter" came to be.
It's all about the Sun
In the ancient heathen world there were gods and goddesses for everything. There were gods for the sun, moon, trees, animals, love, and so on. And as Paul found out, there was even a god called the “unknown god”, just in case they missed any. Some of these gods were at one time real human beings and after death were glorified to the status of a god or goddess by their followers. The people did not necessarily worship the sun or the moon but the god that was “in charge” of the sun or the moon, etc… Even the great Caesars were given god-like status even while some were still alive. And the greatest of all of the gods was the “sun-god”. And the first god worshipped as the god of the sun was Nimrod.
Who was Nimrod? The very same Nimrod from the book of Genesis. From that same book of Genesis we learn that Nimrod was a great grandson of Noah, an incredible hunter and became a mighty one on the earth. Genesis also records for us in chapter 10 that he was responsible for building the kingdoms of Babel and Nineveh along with many other cities. But his most famous accomplishment was the idea to construct a “tower whose top would reach the heavens” (Gen. 11:4). This in turn provoked the LORD to come down out of heaven to confuse their language and scatter them over the face of the earth. This infamous tower became known as the “tower of Babel”.
Nimrod was the most powerful ruler of his time and when he died, Babylonian legend says that he ascended into the heavens and he became the sun-god. And they called him “Baal” which means “lord”. The wife that he left behind on earth was named Semiramis and now became the “Queen of Heaven” since she was the wife of the sun-god (her late deceased husband). Years later Semiramis became pregnant with a son. She declared that she had become pregnant by the rays of the sun of her deceased husband, Nimrod (Baal). And nine months later she gave birth to a son and named him Tammuz. And Tammuz was said to be the reincarnation of his father Nimrod. Tammuz was also a mighty hunter like his dad before him. But when he was forty, he was killed by a wild boar. And because he was revered to be the reincarnated sun-god, his death brought great despair upon the people of Babel. So they set aside forty days of weeping for Tammuz. One day for each year that he was alive. (This tradition has been passed down through the ages to the church and is where we get the forty days of fasting before Easter Sunday-Lent. Lent DOES NOT come from the forty days Jesus spent in the desert like some suppose. The pagan sun-worshippers were practicing this tradition of weeping and fasting forty days prior to Easter Sunday long before any Christian ever dreamed of changing the meaning.) Now, listen to this! After the forty days of weeping, they would kill a wild boar (getting back at the boar that killed Tammuz) and eat the ham on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox. That is the same day that we call “Easter” Sunday. Now you know where we get our ham from!
Many years later, Tammuz’s mother Semiramis, dies and ascends into heaven. But as the luck of the Babylonian legend would have it, when she ascended into the heavens, the gods sent her back down to earth in a giant egg at sunrise on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox (first day of spring). She landed in the Euphrates River, the egg busted open and she supposedly turned a bird into an egg laying rabbit. This is where we get our Easter bunny and eggs from!
Eggs were very symbolic of many pagan religions as many believed that the earth itself came from a giant egg. The rabbit was looked at as the most fertile animal on earth and the egg was also viewed as a symbol of fertility and new life. This is why these two symbols were attributed to the goddess, Easter.
So far, we have discovered why we have Easter on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox, where the bunnies and the eggs come from, and even why we eat ham on Easter Sunday. So, where did we get the actual word "Easter" from? Well, when someone was deified, the process included renaming the individual after they had died. Many times they would be given a name that represented whatever they were going to be the god of. When Semiramus was deified she not only was the wife of the sun-god Baal and the Queen of Heaven, she became the god of fertility and the god of the sunrise. According to the Phoenicians and the Greeks she was called Astarte and the Zidonians called her Ashtaroth (Judges 2:13 “And they forsook the LORD and served Baal and Ashtaroth.”). The Celtics called her Eostra. (Judges 10:6, “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served Him not.”) Last but not least, the Philistines in the time of Saul and the Babylonians called her Ishtar. And how do you pronounce "Ishtar" in the East? You guessed it: "EASTER". But all of these names were referring to the same goddess: the bare-breasted fertility goddess of the spring—Easter. The Bible does mention most of the various names of Easter, but does not go in great detail of how she was worshipped. So we are forced to go to history books and ancient extra biblical sources that describe these subjects in more detail. In the same manner, if God tells us not to worship Him the way that people used to worship Baal, (Deut. 12:29-32), and not to even mention the names of their gods in connection with Him (Ex. 23:13), then it is very vital to know HOW people worshiped Baal and Ishtar so that we do not adopt those same practices in our worship of the true God, Yahweh. Scripture does not give us all of the details of how the people worshipped Baal and Easter. The reason is that the people to whom the scriptures were written to already knew all of the details. So because we are thousands of years removed from their time period and culture, we rely on what the Bible does tell us but we also rely heavily on historians like Josephus and others that paint the pictures of what each day looked like in vivid detail. Even a quick look into what Catholic historians say about this subject is revealing:
“The reasons for celebrating our major feasts when we do are many and varied. In general, however, it is true that many of them have at least an indirect connection with the pre-Christian [pagan] feasts celebrated about the same time of year — feasts centering around the harvest, the rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice (now Dec. 21, but Dec. 25 in the old Julian calendar), the renewal of nature in spring, and so on.”
Source: The New Question Box - Catholic Life for the Nineties, copyright 1988 by John J. Dietzen, M.A., S.T.L., ISBN 0-940518-01-5 (paperback), published by Guildhall Publishers, Peoria Illinois, 61651., page 554.
Even the Oxford English dictionary defines “Easter” as “The name of a goddess whose festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox…originally known as the dawn goddess, the goddess of fertility.”
So let’s get back to the story. So as sun worship (Baal worship) increased and became world wide, so did the worship of his wife, the “Queen of Heaven”, Easter. History tells us that every year on “Easter Sunday” at sunrise, the priests of Easter would impregnate virgins on the altar of Baal. Then, the next year, they would take the now three month old babies and sacrifice them on the altar on Easter Sunday at the sunrise service. Then, they would take the eggs of Easter and dye the eggs in the blood of the sacrificed infants. (NOTE: Sometimes digging up the truth is difficult to believe or hear. But it is necessary, for the power of the truth to be revealed in each of us.) Ever wondered why red is the most popular color to dye eggs? Here is an interesting quote that I found on the internet. “Red is a traditional color for dying eggs…Red dyed eggs are offered to the god and goddess of the bed in China.” Red is the most popular color that Easter eggs are dyed worldwide. Even the official White House Easter egg is made of ruby red glass. This tradition finds its roots all the way back to the dying of Easter eggs in the blood of sacrificed children! So, now that you know the history of our "Christian" holiday of Easter and its traditions, let's move on to find out how we as a Christian church adopted this pagan holy day as our own.
How did the Resurrection become associated with Easter?
One author on the subject writes,
“Around the second century A.D., Christian missionaries traveled among the Teutonic tribes north of Rome. Whenever possible, they converted the tribes of northern Europe realizing that the time of the crucifixion of Jesus roughly coincided with the Pagan springtime celebrations of Easter…Since it would have been suicide for the very early Christian converts to celebrate the biblical holy days (Passover) alongside the pagan observances that were already set in place, the missionaries cleverly devised a plan. In order to save the lives of their converts, they would allow them to continue to celebrate their pagan feasts, but to do so in a Christian manner. Since the Easter festival to celebrate spring coincided with the time of the Christian observance of the resurrection (Passover) of Christ, this crossover was achieved smoothly.”
And so the pagan converts of Christianity were allowed to keep the festival of Easter as long as they tied it to the resurrection of Christ. It is also a fact that Christians outside of those pagan social pressures, DID keep the Biblical Holy day of Passover as Jesus commanded for over 200 years after the death of our Lord. Listen to what the Roman Emperor Constantine said at the council of Nicea in 325A.D., “It appears that the churches of Syria and Mesopotamia continues to follow the custom of the Jews, and celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon whether falling on Sunday or not. All the other churches observed the solemnity on Sunday only.” (The “fourteenth day of the moon” was how the Bible tells us to calculate Passover. Lev. 23:5)
So, how did the Christian church come to the point where it universally celebrates Easter instead of Passover? By the power of one man-The great Roman Emperor Constantine. It was at this same Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. that Constantine made it law that the celebration of the resurrection of Christ was to be done on Easter Sunday and no longer on Passover as Jesus Himself instructed for his disciples to remember him by. Watch this: “…This subject having been discussed, it was decreed to celebrate Easter on the same day…(Sunday) …which was the practice of Rome. Constantine was a huge sun worshipper before he supposedly converted to Christianity as was most all the citizens of Rome. And celebrating Easter on the first Sunday after the spring equinox was already “the practice of Rome”. Constantine went on to declare, “…We should perpetuate to all future ages the celebration of this rite.” And so it went down in history on that day, in the Roman Catholic Church, that anyone that celebrated the resurrection on any other day would be killed. And not much has changed since that proclamation by Constantine almost seventeen hundred years ago. Those that choose not to celebrate Easter are still made fun of and called legalistic. At least their not killed anymore. Sure, there was a Protestant Reformation that drastically put back in order many unbiblical traditions. But for the most part, most Christian churches operate in some way, shape or form EXACTLY how their Catholic predecessors taught them without virtually any examination of doctrine and traditions to verify their biblical accuracy. And this subject is proof.
The worship of Ishtar (Easter) was very close to the time of Passover. It was NOT "Easter Sunday" that Jesus rose from the dead, but the first Sunday after the First day of the week of Passover. (Mat. 26:2, “You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.” And Luke 22:7 which says, “Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb must be killed.”, and 1 Cor. 5:7, “…For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.” And just as a lamb was killed and sacrificed for twelve hundred years as a rehearsal for the atonement of the sins of Israel, was now going to be on this day, the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John 1:29. As you will see by the end of this article, the only reason why we keep Easter instead of the Biblical celebration of Passover is because as more and more pagan Gentiles were coming into the church, instead of adopting a new holy day, it would be easier for them to just "Christianize" their current pagan practices over to the true God. And that is exactly what Constantine did. (The Gentiles also hated the Jews at the time and did not want to appear as sympathetic to their holy days whatsoever. I'm not to sure that deep down the church as a whole today still doesn't have this kind of thinking.)
So, does JUST knowing all of the above actually mean anything? No. The following question must be answered by each and every one of us: Can we “Christianize” pagan holidays and worship our God using the things that the pagans used to worship their gods?
The Golden Calf
Let’s look at how God felt in Exodus 32, when the Israelites decided to make a golden calf in His name. 1 ¶ Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." 2 And Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." 3 "So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, "This is your god, O Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt!" 5 So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow is a feast to YAHWEH." In order to really understand what is going on in this passage, it is important to know that the people viewed their idols as “mediators” and “symbols” of their gods and not the gods themselves. They understood the concept that communicating with immortal gods required a mortal mediator. So they would create idols that symbolized a particular god and would worship that god “through” the object. They knew that the object itself has no power, but believed the gods worked through the idol in the same way that we can only come to the Father through the Son, Jesus Christ. So, up until this point, Moses had been the mediator between God and the Israelites. But as verse 1 says, they did not know what had become of Moses who was their mediator. So, what did they do? They made another mediator in the form of a golden calf and worshipped Yahweh the next day THROUGH the image they erected. That is why Aaron, the brother and co-leader with Moses, went along with this grand scheme. And this is also why in vs. 4 they say, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” They were not worshipping another god per say in the way that we might think of it. But rather, the golden calf was an image that they made OF Yahweh, TO Yahweh. Thus, Aaron proclaims in verse 5, that “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” (LORD in all caps is YHVH-Yahweh in the Hebrew) And how excited was the God of Israel that they decided to worship Him in this way? Moses had to talk Him out of killing everyone, and three thousand people ended up being killed that day. Do you think Aaron’s heart was wrong? Only God knows. But the text does say that he did want to have this celebration unto Yahweh and not to any other god. So, why did God refuse to accept this form of worship? And if God would not accept Aaron’s good intentions, how arrogant are we to think that God will accept our worship in whatever form we want to give it just because our heart is “right”? The condition of our heart and motives ONLY matter AS WE ARE OBEYING HIM. Obedience must come first. Otherwise, what would be the point in even sharing the gospel? Virtually everyone is sincere and thinks that they are pleasing God. The reason why we share the gospel is because they can only please God THROUGH the TRUTH (John 14:6). We know that they cannot just choose any old way to worship God. But for some reason, many times we do not apply the same logic to our own beliefs and traditions.
"That's not what Easter means to me!"
Many might say it doesn't really matter if we celebrate Easter using pagan traditions, especially since we use them to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. It's the "That may be true, but that's not what it means to me" attitude. What do the Scriptures have to say about this line of thinking? The Israelites said the same thing and it didn't go over very well with God. Take a look: Deut. 12:29(NKJ) says, "When the LORD your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, 30 "take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’ 31 "You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. 32 "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.
31"You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way” The Israelites were engrained to worship gods through man-made things and ideas. And God knew that they would be inclined to want to take the idols of the nations and use them and their traditions to worship Him. And He makes it EXTREMELY clear that He wants his people to be “set apart”, a “holy priesthood”(I Pet. 2:5), to “not learn the ways of the heathens” (Jer. 10:2), and to “NOT WORSHIP THE LORD GOD IN THAT WAY.” Be careful not try to make this passage say that they wanted to worship other gods. That is NOT what it is saying. Verse 31 does not say, “You shall not worship other gods.” It says, “You shall not worship the LORD your God in THAT way…” These were people that were already prone, from the golden calf experience, to worship the true God through “unapproved” measures.
32 “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it. One author wrote on this verse,
“In this brief clause he teaches that no other service of God is lawful, except that of which He has testified His approval in His word, and that obedience is as it were the mother of piety; By forbidding the addition, or diminishing of anything, he plainly condemns as illegitimate whatever men invent of their own imagination; whence it follows that they, who in worshipping God are guided by any rule save that which He Himself has prescribed.”
It is our job to worship God the way that He wants to be worshipped. And NOT the way WE want to worship Him. Let’s use a modern example: Let's say Joe dated a girl for five years that had a 1969 red mustang. Furthermore, Joe had gone on hundreds of dates with this girl in this mustang. And on top of that Joe's wife knew all about this mustang and Joe's old girlfriend. How excited would Joe's wife be if he decided to buy her a 1969 red mustang for their first wedding anniversary? Not very excited I would imagine. It might be his last anniversary to say the least! No matter how pure his motives were in how he wanted to please her, she did not want to be pleased in that way. In the same way, we cannot say, “That’s not what Easter means to me”, because WE are not the ones receiving the worship. The only thing that matters is what GOD thinks. And I hope by now that it has become very clear what God thinks about using things, ideas and traditions that were formally used by pagans to worship their gods, for the purpose of worshipping the one true God. It does not matter if times have changed and Easter does not mean to us what it did 2000 years ago. The ways that the heathens worshipped their gods in Deut. 29 did not mean the same to the Israelites and God would not accept it. The facts are that virtually everything that is associated with Easter can be traced back to a pagan god that Yahweh hated. How do you think God feels looking down from Heaven and seeing us celebrate a day with the name of a pagan god, passing out stuffed Easter bunnies to the children that are picking up dyed Easter eggs, attending Easter sunrise services exactly the way the priests of Easter did, and eating Easter ham on the exact same day that all of the sun-worshippers did for thousands of years!? I believe that it disgusts him to see his people mix past abominations in with the resurrection of His son. And on top of that we KNOW that the tradition comes from a pagan background (every dictionary and encyclopedia admits this), and yet we justify it by saying that “it doesn’t mean that to me”. Have we fallen so far from truth that we put more of an emphasis on what WE think than what God Almighty thinks?
I must admit that the first time I came across this truth, I rejected it, on the account that I could not believe that for over 1700 years the “Christian” church would be teaching its followers to do something that God doesn’t approve of. But as my passion for truth grew stronger, I could not deny the facts any longer. Either I was going to honor God in the ways that HE chooses or the ways in which I choose. God has told us how He wants us to worship Him and we are not “to add or take away” from those instructions. Seventeen hundred years ago, the Spring feast of Passover was replaced by the Roman church for Easter. I believe it is time to replace Easter with what Jesus, the disciples and Paul tell us to keep: Passover. As foreign as it might sound to keep Passover instead of Easter, (because most of us have been brought up in churches that have adopted “Roman Catholic” holidays and traditions), it is time that we put our preconceived biases, anti-Semitism and emotions aside and call bible things by bible names and do bible things in bible ways. We keep SAYING that we want to be like the early church. Well, the early Christians kept Passover for almost three hundred years until it was outlawed by Constantine in 325 A.D.
WWJD? We see this everywhere. What Would Jesus Do? I can GUARANTEE you that He would most definitely not celebrate Easter, but Passover, like he instructed us to do. Don't think that Passover is a Jewish Holiday. It is not. It is a Holiday that God gave to His people for a remembrance of His power. First, the power to "Pass over" them and spare their firstborns if they applied the blood of the lamb to the door posts in the time of the Exodus. And second, the power of the blood of His Son, the Christ, who would take away the sins of all who applied his blood to the door posts of their hearts. This is what we are to teach are children to remember: That Jesus prophetically fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover) by becoming the Passover Lamb. Why try to force Jesus into Easter and spend all our time telling the kids that it's not about the bunnies, eggs, candy, etc...When you could spend your time teaching them the power of scripture through the way that Jesus told us to. I do not have the time to go through the amazingly symbolic meal of the Passover in this article. But I will tell you that it is supposed to be very much bent towards the children with games, candy, and stories. Don't think that the children will miss Easter for a second! My kids are not missing a thing! Instead they are gaining tremendous spiritual knowledge and insight into the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and all the fun and candy they can stand. We, as Christians, are good at making things fun. How about we take the real Holiday that Jesus died and rose on and use IT to teach our kids instead of allowing great grandpa Constantine to tell us what we are going to do and not do. Maybe it is time to go back in time and rewrite history the way it should have been written. This author believes it is just that time.
May God bless you and your family as you prayerfully consider this subject and take to heart all of the information presented. I will admit that change is difficult. It has taken me two years to actually implement these things fully into my life. We are all at different stages in our relationship with God. Some will take this and run with it. Others will sit on it for a while, while others will disregard it completely. God is our only judge and I believe it is His heart that His church be united in both Spirit and Truth. I pray that truth will be your guide and obedience be your sail as you seek Him in every area of your life.
Final Thoughts
It is not my intention by writing this article to condemn, alienate, divide or otherwise ruin anyone’s family traditions or beliefs. I sought out only to find where the Easter Bunny came from and “Holy Cow” (no pun intended), I ended up here! Jesus said to know the truth and the truth will set you free. And there is something very freeing in giving up traditions that God does not approve of and replacing them with the things that He has. In a way, I feel reconnected to the early Christians that chose to serve God only in the ways that He wanted to be served. As Charles Seymour once said, “We seek the truth and will endure the consequences.”
Jeremiah 16:19 O LORD, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction,... "Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things."
May God so spark a desire in His people to be different and set apart from the nations as to make the nations wonder who this God is that we so faithfully serve.
JIM STALEY
The Origin of Easter
http://www.passionfortruth.com/origin-easter.php
Informative!
www.GetRidofEaster.com
Get rid of Easter! Watch the TRUTH OR TRADITION video by Jim Staley, Passion for Truth Ministries