Easter - Lent – Passion week – Good Friday
Holy or Profane – Christian or Pagan?
By Pastor Dave Most
Christians celebrate the resurrection of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on what is traditionally known as Easter, but Biblically identified with Passover!
Many times, Christians do things from tradition in ignorance, without knowing where the tradition started or of its background. But in Truth, God has told believers that they are to “test all things” and to make sure that everything they do is in agreement with what He has prescribed according to His Word. I would like to share with you what has been found as I have studied out the background of “Easter” thoroughly. Indeed it has become very obvious that it is rooted directly in cultic paganism and has no Biblical foundation whatsoever.
In fact, the typical holiday of Easter that most professing or ignorant Christians celebrate today is loaded with pagan rituals. For example, the name "Easter" is not a Christian name, but is the English version from the ancient Chaldean pagan title "Astarte," [Isthar] which was one of the titles of Nimrods wife, Semiramis, the "queen of heaven" (Hislop, "The Two Babylons", p. 103). The belief in the "queen of heaven" (Semiramis) and her resurrected son (Tammuz) were a constant spiritual corruption for Israel (Ezek 8:14).
Pagan Easter, which started 5000 years ago, was originally celebrated by the pagan mystery religions of Babylon and most of its predecessors that actually originated with Nimrod, Noah's great-grandson in Exodus 10 who built many cities including Babel and Nineveh. After his death, his wife deified him as Baal/Molech and carried the legend further by saying it was also a day to commemorate the resurrection of Tammuz, who was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess (Semiramis) and the sun-god (Bel or Baal). In pagan legends, after Nimrod's death, Semiramis was miraculously conceived by a sunbeam, and her son, Tammuz, was killed and was raised from the dead after "forty days" of fasting by his mother.
Many pagan traditions and practices have been added, carried, or brought into Christian worship, especially by the Catholic church, such as Lent, Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, etc.
"The forty days' abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshipers of the Babylonian goddess [the queen of heaven]. Such a Lent of forty days, 'in the spring of the year,' is still observed by the Yezidis or Pagan Devil worshipers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians" (Alexander Hislop, "The Two Babylons", 104).
"Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt . . . was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god. . . among the Pagans this Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the [supposed] death and resurrection of Tammuz [Babylonian name for Adonis or Osiris], which was celebrated by alternate weeping and rejoicing. . ." (Hislop, 105).
Satan, the great deceiver, has worked diligently for centuries to destroy the truth concerning Mary and Jesus by poisoning man’s thinking with the infiltration of numerous pagan beliefs. These same basic legends are found in counterpart religions throughout the ancient world. "Semiramis" was known variously as Ashtoeth, Isis, Aphrodite, Venus, and Ishtar. "Tammuz" was known as Baal, Osiris, Eros, and Cupid.
It is important to note that these pagan religions continuously infected the nation of Israel. This pagan belief in a "mother goddess and her son," such as Semiramis and Tammuz, was a continual hindrance to God’s people (Jer 44:17-19). This is why God wanted them to drive all of the people out of the Promised Land. It was to the Egyptian goddess "Ishtar," queen of heaven, that the wicked and rebellious Israelite exiles in Egypt insisted on worshiping (Ex 32:4-8).
This organized system of idolatry is effecting the church today just as it did the Jews of the Old Testament. In 155 A.D. The Catholic church added the pagan celebration of Easter to the Sunday mass. By the fourth century A.D., much of the polytheistic paganism of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome had found its way into the church. For example, the Catholic Church places unbiblical emphasis on Mary, even blasphemously calling her the "Queen of Heaven" and placing her on par with Jesus Christ Himself as "co-redemptrix" and "dispenser of all graces" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 964-975). As you can see, it was from this source that the ideas of Lent, Mary’s immaculate conception, and of her being the "queen of heaven" originated.
According to early church fathers, the festival of which we read in Church history, under the name of Easter, before the fourth century, did not include the practice of Lent whatsoever. Even Cassianus, the monk of Marselles, writing in the fifth century, and contrasting the early church with the church practices of his day said "that the observance of the forty days [Lent] had no existence, as long as the perfection of that primitive Church remained inviolate" (Geisler,’s Eccles. History, 1846, Vol 2, p. 42).
The forty days of Lent has no Biblical foundation, as it is only pagan! For this vital reason, Christians should not practice Lent, but look forward to the remembrance of our beloved Lord’s resurrection celebrated on Resurrection Sunday.
God condemns the Babylonian Mystery Religion system (Rev 14:8; 17:2-6). Christians are not to accept the beliefs of the pagan dying gods of Attis in Rome, or Adonis of the Greeks, or Osiris of the Egyptians. So the question begs to be asked and answered, Considering the pagan day of Easter, which is filled with its pagan rituals and ideas, should Christians continue to celebrate it, alongside the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? The clear answer is “No,” Indeed we need to make a distinction between what is Holy and what is profane and separate from the world and its ways!
The True day, Resurrection Sunday, is celebrated to remember the time of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection which occurred during the Jewish celebration of the Passover (Matt 26:17). The Passover celebration began with the "Feast of Unleavened Bread" and was observed for seven days from the 14th through 21st of Nisan (March - April) according to Leviticus 23:6. The significance of the feasts is what God has given to us as Christians to observe!
We realize the importance and significance that God has placed on the Biblical holidays and festivals, meant to turn our hearts toward Him and His Son’s wondrous gift of salvation (7 Feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, First fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles). The first four have been literally fulfilled by Jesus Christ and we anxiously look forward to the last three. In contrast to the biblical model for celebrations and holidays, many cults have outlawed them as heretical practices of which the Bible gives us warning (Rom 14:5; Col 2:16).
In addition, we see in the New Testament that even the apostles continued to celebrate the Old Testament Jewish ceremonies even though they knew that the Messiah, Jesus Christ, had already come and fulfilled prophecy and Mosaic Law feasts which so beautifully typified Christ as God and Savior (Acts 20:16, 24:17).
As Christians, we are to make sure to remember the significance of the Passover feasts and to celebrate Resurrection Sunday in a fashion that will please God, by NOT including any of the pagan symbols of ancient "Ishtar," such as Easter eggs, Easter bunnies and chickens, hot cross buns (Jer 7:18), and other rituals that find their origin directly from cultic mystery religions. Indeed friends, this is not child's play!
In ALL things, whether of Easter, or Christmas, or CCM or other mundane forms of pagan worship, Christians are to be "Bereans" (Acts 17:11) we are to "study to show ourselves approved unto God" (2 Tim 2:15) we are to “test all things” and we are to “prove what is acceptable to God.” May God be glorified as we separate from the world to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ acceptably!
