Gateway To Jesus Ministries Presents
The Bible Says!
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY ABOUT CELEBRATING EASTER?
Gateway To Jesus Ministries Presents
The Bible Says!
Because of the SHEEP mentality in us, most of us believe things that are not true simply because we have always believed them as taught by our parents and our churches. We just follow the church crowd. Most of us never ask why we believe the things we believe, and do the things we do? Do you? Does the Bible say it is acceptable in the eyes of God for Christians to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus even though it is not commanded in the Bible? The resurrection of Jesus Christ is obviously important because it validates who Jesus claimed to be, namely, the Son of God and our Savior. Believing that He rose from the dead is essential for Christians. The Bible says we must believe in His resurrection in order to receive eternal life. Christ paid our debt, but His sacrifice on the cross means nothing if He never rose from the dead. So the answer to the question about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus is Absolutely YES! /p>
But what about what the Bible says about celebrating Easter? Is it the same thing as the resurrection?
Is it acceptable in the eyes of God to celebrate EASTER, which is an entirely different holiday celebration that has nothing to do with Jesus or His resurrection? What? Isn’t celebrating Easter the same thing as celebrating the resurrection? According to what the Bible actually says, Absolutely NOT!
"Easter" is the English word for the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of sexuality and fertility, “Ishtar”, (pronounced Easter). The Phoenician name of this goddess was Astarte, consort of Baal, the sun god, whose worship is denounced by the God in the Bible as abominable pagan idolatry. Ishtar’s legacy from the Sumerian tradition is the role of a war goddess and fertility figure, delighting in bodily love, and was the protectress of prostitutes. She was a complex character constantly surrounded by war, death, and disaster. She was known as the Queen of Heaven, which the Catholic church foolishly changed to Mary’s title. The Bible says the Queen of Heaven is mentioned in Jeramiah 44:17-19 . “We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm." But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.”
After Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed from the celebration of Ishtar the Queen of Heaven, to the celebration of Jesus and His resurrection. But at its roots, Easter is all about celebrating a pagan goddess, fertility, and sex. That’s why God says He hates it. It violates the principle of the 1st commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3). God hates Easter, yet millions of Christians put this pagan goddess celebration before God with lavish meals and drink, dyed eggs, chocolate rabbits, and fertility based, bunny themed decorations and traditions.
What do children hunting for dyed and decorated eggs, bunny themed baskets filled with candy, treats, and toys, and lies about an Easter Bunny delivering all of these treats have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? Absolutely nothing! Eggs and rabbits were, and still are, fertility and sex symbols of a fertility goddess, hence their use in celebrating Easter every Spring. These fertility customs and traditions are really not connected with the resurrection in any way! They can only be connected with the celebration of Ishtar. Dyed eggs figured in the ancient Babylonian mystery rites, just as they do in Easter today. The ancient Druids bore an egg as the sacred emblem of their idolatrous order. According to James Bonwick: "Eggs were hung up in the Egyptian temples. The mystic egg of Babylon, hatching the Venus Ishtar, fell from heaven to the Euphrates. Dyed eggs were sacred Easter offerings in Egypt . Easter, or spring, was the season of birth, terrestrial and celestial" (Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, pp. 211-212).
Should parents break the 9th commandment and “bear false witness”, (Ex 20:16), and lie to their children about the Easter Bunny? Does lying set a good example as a Christian parent? What happens when the child finds out there is no Easter Bunny? Will they then question the existence of God, or even the resurrection of Jesus?
On Easter Sunday millions of Christians will gather outside, facing East to worship, celebrating the resurrection of the Son of God with the rising of the sun. Does this sound familiar? If so, you may have read about it long before Jesus ever walked this earth. Facing East and worshipping towards the sun at sunrise is a pagan tradition going back thousands of years. What does the Bible say about this?
Ezekiel 8:15-18 says this: “Have you seen this?” he asked. “But I will show you even more detestable sins than these!” Then he brought me into the inner courtyard of the Lord’s Temple. There were about twenty-five men with their backs to the sanctuary of the Lord. They were facing east, bowing low to the ground, worshiping the sun! “Have you seen this, son of man?” he asked. “Is it nothing to the people of Judah that they commit these detestable sins, leading the whole nation into violence, thumbing their noses at me, and provoking my anger? ”
How foolish that the Christian churches adopted this sinful pagan tradition of facing east at sunrise on Easter Sunday morning, bowing down and worshiping the “Son of God” at the rising of the sun, just like the pagans did worshiping the “Sun God” Baal and his idolatrous consort goddess, Ishtar. These worship practices are identical, but millions of Christians unwittingly do it every year in spite of God finding it detestable, and it fills Him with anger. He really HATES it! It’s just another pagan tradition that the church “Christianized” which should be avoided by true followers of Jesus. If you want to be in alignment with God’s WILL, don’t do it!
So how did Easter get injected into the Christian church anyway? Here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition, Vol. VIII, pp. 828-829) says: “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 had foreshadowed. Thus the Passover, [the 14th day of the first month] with a new conception added to it, [by Jesus], of Christ as the true Paschal Lamb and the first fruits from the dead, continued to be observed. The Gentile [Catholic] Christians identified the first day of the week with the resurrection, [without Biblical authority], and kept the preceding Friday as the commemoration of the crucifixion, irrespective of the day of the month, [another error].”
Encyclopedia Britannica is 100% correct! For several centuries after Jesus walked the earth, the original church of God, true followers of Jesus, followed Jesus’ command and celebrated God’s Festivals and Holydays. This includes observing Passover every year, the day that Jesus instituted during the Last Supper with His new emblems of bread and wine, and related customs. The false Western church on the other hand began incorporating the pagan customs and traditions on the wrong days and in the wrong ways contrary to God’s Will. Jesus, the apostles, AND the early New Testament Church, BOTH Jewish and Gentile-born believers, observed God's Sabbath and God's Festival Holydays at the correct times, the Sabbath weekly on the 7th day, and the Holydays annually as He commanded in Leviticus 23! Followers of Jesus today still observe the Holydays as special Sabbath days of rest, but now doing so spiritually, rather than keeping them physically with the customs God originally commanded for the Jews.
Do the Scriptures say observing man-made holidays like Easter is really OK, or does it say what is really the truth about worship that God actually commands? Does the Bible say the observance of holidays that God absolutely won't accept no matter how sincere we are, is permitted in any way? NO! Will we stand with the truth of God as actually spoken by Him in the Bible without interpretation, or will we continue to follow pagan inspired, man-made, erroneous church teachings and traditions that have no Bible foundation and God hates? Will we get in alignment with God’s WILL or keep following our churches false holiday traditions and customs or do what the Bible says?
The Scriptures say to "Prove All Things". (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Have you proved the celebration of Easter from the Bible? Is it possible God really hates this celebration no matter how well intended and we should not celebrate it in any way? Your eternal life really depends on you knowing the truth! And now you do know the truth about not celebrating Easter. What you do with this knowledge is between you and God! You can ignore it and continue believing and doing what God does not want, OR you can repent and change and do what God says. The choice is yours for all eternity!
