Posts Tagged ‘Pascha’

Examine Yourselves….

Posted: February 23, 2015 in Biblical, Calling, catholic, Charismatic, Christian, Church, Church History, Covenant, Covenant theology, Evangelical, Evangelism, life, Liturgical, Ministry, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Reformed, Repentance, Sacramental, sanctification, Scriptural, universal
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Lent2

Lent

How should I prepare myself for Pascha?

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”  2 Corinthians 13:5 (ESV)

What is Lent?

Lent is a season of forty weekdays and six Sundays for the church to journey with Christ to Holy Week and Pascha. It is an opportunity for of self-examination, repentance, purgation, and spiritual renewal.

Why may we struggle with Lent?

  1. Thanksgiving and Christmas are so ensconced in secular American culture that a period of preparation during Advent makes sense to us. Most Christians are attracted to this season as a way to rise above the materialism and commercialization of Christmas.
  2. Pascha is so foreign to secular American culture that a period of preparation during Lent just seems weird, threatening, out of place.

I. Lent seems like a dark, foreboding ritualism to some Christians – candles, ashes, fasting, prayer, works, and pilgrimage. Haven’t we been saved from empty, meaningless religion?

  1. Perhaps we struggle with Lent in the same way we struggle with the Psalms of lament, which make up two-thirds of the Psalter. Grieving over our lives (i.e. Lenten repentance and Psalms of lamentation) is foreign from our American way of living and our spiritual experience. We often subconsciously screen out what is dark, awkward, and uncomfortable.
  2. We need a season to prepare for Pascha. Most people think of Pascha as a weekend event, and the main preparation is the purchase of new clothes and a carefully planned Pascha egg hunt. However, Pascha is a forty-day season of feasting and celebration in response to the resurrection and new creation. If we prepare for a wedding, an anniversary, a birthday, a graduation, a vacation, an athletic competition, or any other special occasion in our lives, how much more do we need to prepare for Pascha? The forty days of Lent gets us ready for the forty days of Pascha.

The journey to Paschal joy

  1. Lent is a spiritual journey and its destination is Pascha, “the Feast of feasts.”
  2. Pascha celebrates the death of Death, the annihilation of Hell, the beginning of new and everlasting life.
  3. Pascha celebrates Christ’s resurrection as something that happened to him, is happening, and will happen to us.
  4. God has granted us the gift of new life. The resurrection alters our attitude toward everything, including death. In his death, Christ changed the nature of death from the inside out, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into ultimate victory. “O death, where is thy sting?” God made us partakers of Christ’s resurrection.
  5. We live as if Christ never came, never died, never rose again from the dead, is not the Lord of the world, and will not come again to judge the living and the dead.
  6. This is the real sin, the sin of all sins, the bottomless sadness, and tragedy of our Christian life.
  7. We may acknowledge and confess our various sins, yet we fail to refer our life to that new life which Christ revealed and gave to us. We continually lose and betray the “new life” we received as a gift from God.
  8. We are weak. We forget, we get busy; we become immersed in our daily preoccupations. We focus our material possessions – on what we have or what we do not have. We focus on our experiences – on where we are or where we want to go. We think only of ourselves. We live as if Christ did not rise from the dead, as if that unique event in human history has no meaning for us, as if we will not also rise from the dead. We fail to live constantly by “faith, hope, and love.” We fail to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”
  9. Through our failure and sin, our life becomes “old” again – petty, dark, meaningless – a meaningless journey to a meaningless end.

II. Lent is a journey of repentance and return to Pascha.

  1. Lent helps us recover the vision and taste of that new Pascha life which we so easily lose and betray.
  2. The aim of Lent is precisely the remembrance of Christ, a longing for a relationship with God that has been lost. Lent offers the time and place for lamentation of our alienation and the recovery of relationship with God.
  3. The mood of Lent is “bright sadness.” The darkness of Lent allows the flame of the Holy Spirit to burn within our hearts until we are led to the mysterious and radiant brilliance of the resurrection.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday

  1. The Service (Book of Common Prayer, 264-269)
  2. Prayer and invitation to repentance, both now and over the season of Lent
  3. Imposition of ashes
  4. Psalm 51: the prayer of the penitent
  5. Litany of penitence: a template for self-examination and confession during Lent
  6. The peace and Eucharist: Christ saves us from narcissistic self-absorption knowing that Good Friday means forgiveness and Pascha means joy.
  1. Why ashes?
  2. A sign of our Adamic identity, is that we are “of the earth”

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)

  1. A sign of our finitude, brokenness, and mortality

“Dust you are and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

“Abraham said, ‘I am nothing but dust and ashes.’” (Genesis 18)

  1. A sign of mourning and lamentation, often because of our or another’s rebellion and alienation from God

“But David continued up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went; his head was covered and he was barefoot. All the people with him covered their heads too and were weeping as they went up…When David arrived at the summit, where people used to worship God, Hushai the Arkite was there to meet him, his robe torn and dust on his head.” (2 Samuel 15:32-34)

“On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting, and wearing sackcloth and putting dust on their heads.” (Nehemiah 9:1)

“Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6)

“When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly… In every province to which the edict and order of the king came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes.” (Esther 4:1-3)

  1. In the third century, the church began the custom of burning the branches used on Palm Sunday, saving the ashes for the following year, and marking notorious and penitent sinners, such as robbers and murderers, with these ashes. Out of sympathy and solidarity, family and friends of these “marked” persons began using the ashes also, which is consistent with the gospel message that all of us are in need of God’s grace and in need of repentance and restoration.
  2. A Christian vision of the world
  3. Dualism – The radical separation between matter and spirit, profane and sacred, earthly and heavenly.
  4. Sacramentalism – The whole creation is of a piece; physical elements signify deep spiritual realities (i.e. water, bread, and wine; also oil, candles, ashes, palm branches, laying on hands, rings, etc.). We do damage to ourselves, to Jesus, and to the Bible when we try to separate the physical and spiritual, the human and divine, the earthy and the heavenly.

Repent

“Repent, and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15)

  1. Repent: change, turn your life around, move in another direction.
  2. The first of Martin Luther’s 95 theses was, “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite (Repent ye!), willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”

III. Repentance is the beginning and continuation of a truly Christian life. Repentance, especially focused during Lent, is a long and sustained spiritual effort.

  1. Lent reminds us (in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer #88) that two things are involved in genuine repentance: “the dying of the old self and the coming to life of the new.” New life with Christ involves a daily surrendering of the old life.
  2. “It is not easy, indeed, to reject a petty ideal of life made up of daily cares, of search for material goods, security, and pleasure, for an ideal of life in which nothing short of perfection is the goal: ‘be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.’ This world through all its ‘media’ says: be happy, take it easy, and follow the broad way. Christ in the Gospel says: choose the narrow way, fight and suffer, for this is the road to the only genuine happiness. In addition, unless the Church helps, how can we make that awful choice, how can we repent and return to the glorious promise given us each year at Pascha? This is where Great Lent comes in. This is the help extended to us by the Church, the school of repentance, which alone will make it possible to receive Pascha not as a mere permission to eat, to drink, and to relax, but indeed as the end of the ‘old’ in us, as our entrance into the ‘new.’” (Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha)

Turn from sin toward Jesus via remembering your baptism

“Live in your baptism.” (Martin Luther)

  1. Listen to the Father’s voice in baptism: “You are my child whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3)
  2. Review the baptismal vows and prayers before God (Book of Common Prayer, 302-307)

IV. Remember the practice of baptism in the early church

  1. The baptized turned their backs on the west (the symbolic direction of the evil one and sin), saying, “I renounce the devil and all his works,” and spitting in the face of Satan as a sign of ending that relationship.
  2. The main purpose of Lent was to prepare the catechumen (the newly converted Christian) for baptism, which was performed during the Pascha liturgy. Even though we are baptized, what we constantly lose and betray is precisely that which we received at baptism. Therefore, Lent and Pascha is our return every year to our own baptism, our identity in Christ, our death in him, our life in him. Pascha is the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection.

Turn from sin toward Jesus

  1. Remember that life with God is a loving, engaging, and demanding relationship. Sanctification (becoming increasingly righteous like God) is a subtle and gradual process rather than dramatic and instant moment.
  2. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the three primary acts of Jewish piety: fasting, – prayer, and almsgiving. He did not reject these practices, but sought to correct and deepen them. Jesus promoted an embodied, lived out piety in order to establish, maintain, repair, and transform our relationship with God, neighbor, and self. Be sure to meditate on Matthew 6:1-18 before Lent.

Fasting: turning away from self

  1. A commemoration of the wilderness experiences of Israel and Jesus and a spiritual reminder that “People do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).
  2. A reminder that your body is holy and belongs to God – made by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and filled by the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

V. We are a psychosomatic unity. Our souls affect our bodies; our bodies affect our souls (i.e. kneeling, folding, or lifting hands, bowing head, etc.).

  1. To what are we saying “no”?
  2. Food – Saying no to my hunger that is often disproportionate to my hunger for God; saying no to what I enjoy in order to enjoy God more; anticipating the Eucharist (i.e. single day fast, multi-day fast, or extended fast – sweets, meat, caffeine, alcohol, etc.).
  3. Time – Saying no to my busyness, distraction, and noise in order to have extended solitude and silence or time to listen to God through is Word or his people (i.e. limit your extracurricular

Activities and commitments, take a true Sabbath).

  1. Money – Saying no to my greed, my urge to acquire, accumulate, hoard, compare (i.e. no advertising, no new purchases for myself, pursue extravagant generosity).
  2. Words – Saying no to my pride, envy, jealousy, anger, dishonesty, my insecure ego that needs more power, attention, pity, gratitude, approval (i.e. not defending myself, not dominating conversation or talking about myself, not gossiping or slandering, using my tongue, my lips, my words to encourage and affirm).
  3. Sex – Saying no to lust, my unfulfilled desires for pleasure (i.e. look people in the eyes, recognize their personhood and dignity as the image of God, delight in their beauty, mourn for their brokenness).
  4. Are these things inherently evil? Does God not want us to enjoy food, time, money, words, and sex? God made all these things good. In addition, we often enjoy them in sacred and redemptive ways. However, we also have a tendency to forget that these are gifts from God. We may become overly comfortable or bored with them. We may become ungrateful. We may distort and pervert them to self-serving ends. We may use them to advantage ourselves and disadvantage others. We may use them for evil. So one way to sanctify or redeem them as God’s good gifts is to go without them for a time to recalibrate our relationship with God and our relationship with these material goods.
  5. The all-day fasts during Lent are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We do not fast on Sundays, the day of resurrection and Eucharist.

VI. When you fast you are vulnerable. Do not plan to turn away from self if you do not also have a plan in place to turn toward God (prayer) and toward your neighbor (almsgiving).

Prayer: turning toward God

“Evening, morning, and noon I cry out to the Lord” (Psalm 55:17).

  1. The prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian (306-373)
  2. “O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. Nevertheless, give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.”
  3. Pray it in the morning, afternoon, and evening. In the morning, meditate on the four powers from which you seek to be delivered – sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. In the afternoon, meditate on the four virtues you desire to experience in your daily life – chastity, humility, patience, and love. In the evening, review the events of the day, confessing where you failed, giving thanks where you have succeeded, and praising Jesus Christ for his righteousness and grace.
  4. “Faith… is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off’, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with your beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of your digestion. Consequently, one must train the habit of faith. The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next step is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, the sum of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. Moreover, in fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?” (C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven)

Almsgiving: turning toward our neighbors

  1. Combine God-focused prayer and neighbor-focused almsgiving by praying for your apartment complex or your street or the block where you work.
  2. Serve via Project Peace.

VII. Brainstorm simple acts of compassion toward known and unknown neighbors.

  1. Save money during Lent to give to the Pascha diaconal offering, which goes to meet financial and other tangible needs within and beyond the community.

Personal reflection and group discussion

  1. Have you ever practiced Lent? If so, what was your experience? If not, what do you hope to gain from the Lenten journey?
  2. How would you apply the Lenten themes to your life and spiritual journey in the coming season?

What do you need to put off and what do you need to put on?

VIII. Fasting – Could we each commit to giving up something we enjoy on a daily or regular basis in order to deepen our desire for God? What? Could we all commit to fasting the entire day on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday? How about fasting from lunch on Wednesdays during Lent?

  1. Prayer – Could we each commit to at least morning or evening prayer each day during Lent?

Could we spend 15 extra minutes on Sundays praying for the life and mission of the church?

  1. Almsgiving – Could we give up a luxury item during the week (i.e. lunch on Wednesdays) and give the money to a friend in need or the diaconal fund or a social service provider? Could we donate a portion of our weekend to do extra volunteering?

Adapted from Lent at Christ Church, edited by Rev. Gary DeSha

Pagan Influences upon the Church

Posted: February 27, 2012 in Charismatic, Christian, Church, Evangelical, Liturgical, Pentecostal, Reformed, Renaissance, Repentance, Sacramental
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Each year in the springtime, the mainstream Christian world observes a period called “Lent” and celebrates a holiday called “Easter.” Many assume that this holiday originated with the resurrection of Jesus Christ but as the information provided here will demonstrate that this spring, tradition of men is actually an older and far less ‘holy’ than one would imagine. When you have read these through and discern the truth it is my hope that you will remain convicted and follow His lead – away from non-biblical holidays. The crux of the matter is not so much the hidden meanings of the symbols and story but one of how your heart is before your Creator. Do you decide what days to observe or does God? The bible tells us that a little leaven leavens the whole lump – Come, let us reason together.

The Origin and History of Easter

The resurrection of Our Lord God Jesus Christ is truly Pascha. “Easter” is an undesirable name, derived from a pagan festival in honor of Oestre, the Teutonic equivalent of the Egyptian fertility goddess Osiris, whence the word “estrus.” This same Osiris, with her partner Isis, is much beloved of the Freemasons, Gnostics, and other cults. Anyone who doubts the connection is invited to journey to San Francisco, CA and pay a visit to the façade of the Masonic Temple Al-Islam, there to witness a remarkable display of religious emblems carved in stone, amongst which are the much suffering of Cross of Christ alongside the scimitar of Islam. The whole is overshadowed by a giant bas-relief of Isis and Osiris. The Calendar, names of feasts, theology, the whole forms one continuous fabric of lies and deception.

How do we truly understand this celebration? Quite specifically, it is related to the Hebrew Passover, for Christ Jesus is our Passover. He, the Son of God, is the sacrificial Lamb; He is the Messiah, the One Who is the True Deliverance. In other words, “I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.” What has occurred with Easter is that the Church has overlaid the true Christian celebration with a wide variety of pagan foolishness or worse (Easter eggs and Easter bunnies). To turn our backs on the Truth incarnate in time, as incarnate in God made Flesh, is to deny the Incarnation and the Resurrection itself. It is to unravel the seamless robe of Jesus Christ. The following quotes have been derived from several valid and even scholarly sources. The purpose is to unveil the truth about the origins of this spring ‘Christianized’ pagan holiday. The following will explain how the Church has overlaid pagan observances upon true Christian celebration.

“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 and the Feast of Unleavened Bread] was a continuation of the Jewish [that is, God’s] 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, Merrill F. Unger, William White, Jr., Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, article: Easter, p.192)

Ish·tar : Mythology The chief Babylonian and Assyrian goddess, associated with love, fertility, and war, being the counterpart to the Phoenician Astarte. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000)

Tammuz: ancient nature deity worshiped in Babylonia. A god of agriculture and flocks, he personified the creative powers of spring. He was loved by the fertility goddess Ishtar, who, according to one legend, was so grief-stricken at his death that she contrived to enter the underworld to get him back. According to another legend, she killed him and later restored him to life. These legends and his festival, commemorating the yearly death and rebirth of vegetation, corresponded to the festivals of the Phoenician and Greek Adonis and of the Phrygian Attis. The Sumerian name of Tammuz was Dumuzi. In the Bible, his disappearance is mourned by the women of Jerusalem (Ezek. 8.14). (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001)

“There is no warrant in Scripture for the observance of “Christmas” and “Easter” as holy days, rather the contrary…and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” (Morton H. Smith, How is the Gold Become Dim, Jackson, Mississippi: Steering Committee for a Continuing Presbyterian Church, etc., 1973, p.98)

“EASTER (AV Acts 12:4), an anachronistic mistranslation of the Gk. pascha (RSV, NEB, “Passover”), in which the AV followed such earlier versions as Tyndale and Coverdale. The Acts passage refers to the seven-day Passover festival (including the Feast of Unleavened Bread). It is reasonably certain that the NT contains no reference to a yearly celebration of the resurrection of Christ.” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by Geoffrey Bromiley, Vol 2 of 4, p.6, article: Easter)

“The term Easter was derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘Eostre,’ the name of the goddess of spring. In her honor, sacrifices were offered at the time of the vernal equinox. By the 8th cent. The term came to be applied to the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection.” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by Geoffrey Bromiley, Vol 2 of 4, p.6, article: Easter)

In primitive agricultural societies, natural phenomena, such as rainfall, the fecundity of the earth, and the regeneration of nature were frequently personified. One of the most important pagan myths was the search of the earth goddess for her lost (or dead) child or lover (e.g., Isis and Osiris, Ishtar and Tammuz, Demeter and Persephone). This myth, symbolizing the birth, death, and reappearance of vegetation, when acted out in a sacred drama, was the fertility rite par excellence. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001)

Attis, in Phrygian religion, vegetation god. …Like Adonis, Attis came to be worshiped as a god of vegetation, responsible for the death and rebirth of plant life. Each year at the beginning of spring, his resurrection was celebrated in a festival. In Roman religion, he became a powerful celestial deity. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001)

“The festival, of which we read in Church history, under the name of Easter, in the third or fourth centuries, was quite a different festival from that now observed in the Romish [and Protestant] Church, and at that time was not known by any such name as Easter. It was called Pasch, or the Passover, and though not of Apostolic institution [It was instituted by God and by Jesus–Lev 23; Matt 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; Luke 22:7-20; I Cor 11:23-30], was very early observed by many professing Christians in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ [It is a memorial of His death, not His resurrection–I Cor 11:26]. That festival agreed originally with the time of the Jewish [i.e., God’s] Passover, when Christ was crucified…. That festival was not idolatrous, and it was preceded by no Lent”(Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, p.104)

“The name Easter comes from Eostre, an ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess, originally of the dawn. In pagan times an annual spring festival was held in her honor.” (Compton’s Encyclopedia and Fact-Index. Vol 7. Chicago: Compton’s Learning Company, 1987, p.41)

“Easter. [Gk. pascha, from Heb. pesah] The Passover …, and so translated in every passage except the KJV: ‘intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people’ [Acts 12:4]. In the earlier English versions, Easter had been frequently used as the translation of pascha. At the last revision [1611 A.V.] Passover was substituted in all passages but this…The word Easter is of Saxon origin, the name is eastra, the goddess of spring in whose honor sacrifices were offered about Passover time each year. By the eighth century Anglo-Saxons had adopted the name to designate the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.” (New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, article: “Easter”)

“It is called Easter in the English, from the goddess Eostre, worshipped by the Saxons with peculiar ceremonies in the month of April.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol II, Edinburgh: A. Bell & C. Macfarquhar, 1768, p.464)

“The name of a feast, according to the Venerable Bede, comes from Eostre, A Teutonic goddess whose festival was celebrated in the spring. The name was given to the Christian festival in celebration of the resurrected Eostre, it was who, according to the legend, opened portals of Valhalla to receive Baldur, called the white god because of his purity and the sun god because his brow supplied light to mankind. It was Baldur who, after he had been murdered by Utgard Loki, the enemy of goodness and truth spent half the year in Valhalla and the other half with the pale goddess of the lower regions. As the festival of Eostre was a celebration of the renewal of life in the spring, it was easy to make it a celebration of the resurrection from the dead of Jesus. There is no doubt that the church in its early days adopted the old pagan customs and gave a Christian meaning to them.” (George William Douglas, The American Book of Days, article: Easter)

“The English word Easter is derived from the names ‘Eostre’ – ‘Eastre’ – ‘Astarte’ or ‘Ashtaroth’. Astarte was introduced into the British Isles by the Druids and is just another name for Beltis or Ishtar of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. The book of Judges records that ‘the children of Israel did evil …in the sight of the LORD, and served Balaam, and Ashtaroth …and forsook the LORD, and served not Him.’ Easter is just another name for Ashteroth ‘The Queen of Heaven.’ Easter was not considered a ‘Christian’ festival until the fourth century. Early Christians celebrated Passover on the 14th day of the first month and a study of the dates on which Easter is celebrated will reveal that the celebration of Easter is not observed in accordance with the prescribed time for the observance of Passover. After much debate, the Nicaean council of 325 A.D. decreed that ‘Easter’ should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox. Why was so much debate necessary if ‘Easter’ was a tradition passed down from the Apostles? The answer is that it was not an Apostolic institution, but an invention of man! They had to make up some rules. History records that spring festivals in honor of the pagan fertility goddesses and the events associated with them were celebrated at the same time as ‘Easter’. In the year 399 A.D., the Theodosian Code attempted to remove the pagan connotation from those events and banned their observance. The pagan festival of Easter originated as the worship of the sun goddess, the Babylonian Queen of Heaven who was later worshipped under many names including Ishtar, Cybele, Idaea Mater (the Great Mother), or Astarte for whom the celebration of Easter is named. Easter is not another name for the Feast of Passover and is not celebrated at the Biblically prescribed time for Passover. This pagan festival was supposedly ‘Christianized’ several hundred years after Christ.” (Richard Rives, Too Long in the Sun)

“EASTER: This is from Anglo-Saxon Eostre, a pagan goddess whose festival came at the spring equinox.” (Joseph T. Shipley, Dictionary of Word Origins, New York: Philosophical Library, MCMXLV, p.131)

“The word Easter comes from the Old English word eostre, the name of a dawn-goddess worshipped in the Spring.” (Oxford Junior Encyclopedia, London: Odhams, 1957, p.123)

“When Christianity conquered Rome: the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, the title and the vestments of the pontifex maximus, the worship of the Great Mother goddess and a multitude of comforting divinities, the sense of super sensible presences everywhere, the joy or solemnity of old festivals, and the pageantry of immemorial ceremony, passed like maternal blood into the new religion,–and captive Rome conquered her conqueror. The reins and skills of government were handed down by a dying empire to a virile papacy.” (Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 672)

“Satan, the great counterfeiter, worked through the ‘mystery of iniquity’ to introduce a counterfeit Sabbath to take the place of the true Sabbath of God. Sunday stands side by side with Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whitsun day, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, All Souls’ Day, Christmas Day, and a host of other ecclesiastical feast days too numerous to mention. This array of Roman catholic feasts and fast days are all manmade. None of them bears the divine credentials of the Author of the Inspired Word.” (M. E. Walsh)

“The {Roman Catholic] church took the pagan philosophy and made it the buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan, Roman Pantheon, temple of all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday. She took the pagan Easter and made it the feast we celebrate during this season. Sunday and Easter day are, if we consider their derivation, much the same. In truth, all Sundays are Sundays only because they are a weekly, partial recurrence of Easter day. The pagan Sunday was, in a manner, an unconscious preparation for Easter day.” (Willliam L. Gildea, D.D., Paschale Gaudium, in The Catholic World, Vol. LVIII., No. 348., March, 1894, published in New York by The Office of The Catholic World., pp.808-809)

“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times [i.e., aside from the Holy Days appointed by God] was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians, who continued to observe the Jewish [i.e., God’s] festivals, though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals had foreshadowed. Thus the Passover, with a new conception added to it of Christ, as the true Paschal Lamb and the first fruits from the dead, continued to be observed, and became the Christian Easter. The name Easter (Ger. Ostern), like the names of the days of the week, is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bede (De Temp. Rat. c.xv.) it is derived from Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eostur-monath, was dedicated. This month, Bede says, was the same as mensis pashalis, ‘when the old festival was observed with the gladness of a new solemnity.’ The name of the festival in other languages (as Fr. paques; Ital. pasqua; Span. pascua; Dan. paaske; Dutch paasch; Welsh pasg) is derived from the Lat. pascha and the Gr. pascha. These in turn come from the Chaldee or Aramaean form pascha’, of the Hebrew name of the Passover festival pesach…” (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th edition, vol. 8, p. 828, article: “Easter”)

“In ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, Ostara is the personification of the rising sun. In that capacity, she is associated with the spring and is considered a fertility goddess. She is the friend of all children, and to amuse them, she changed her pet bird into a rabbit. This rabbit brought forth brightly colored eggs, which the goddess gave to the children as gifts. From her name and rites the festival of Easter is derived. Ostara is identical to the Greek Eos and the Roman Aurora.” (Encyclopedia Mythica, article: Ostara)

“Vernal Mysteries (spring heathen rites) like those of Tammuz, and Osiris and Adonis flourished in the Mediterranean world and farther north and east there were others. Some of their rites and symbols were carried forward into Easter customs. Many of them have survived into our own day, unchanged yet subtly altered in their new surroundings to bear a ‘Christian significance.” (Christina Hole, Easter, and its Customs)

“…Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a month corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox; traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored Easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts.” (Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, article: Easter)

“EASTER: from Old English eastre, name of a spring goddess.” (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995)

“The pagan festival held at the vernal equinox to honor Eastre, the goddess of dawn, was called Eastre in Old English. Since the Christian festival celebrating Christ’s resurrection fell at about the same time, the pagan name was borrowed for it when Christianity was introduced to England, the name later being changed slightly to Easter. “(Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, New York: Facts on File, 1987, p.177)

“EASTER: West Germanic name of a pagan spring festival.” (Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1976)

“The English word Easter comes from the goddess Eastre, whose festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox, and who presided over the fertility of man and animals.” (Betty Nickerson, Celebrate the Sun, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969, p.38)

“The story of Easter is not simply a Christian story. Not only is the very name “Easter” the name of an ancient and non-Christian deity; the season itself has also, from time immemorial, been the occasion of rites and observances having to do with the mystery of death and resurrection among peoples differing widely in race and religion.” (Alan W. Watts, Easter: its Story and Meaning)

“Before Christ was born the people living in northern Europe had a goddess called Eostre, the goddess of the spring. Every year, in spring the people had a festival for her. The name of our spring festival, Easter, comes from the name Eostre.” (The Easter Book, Milan: Macdonald Educational, 1980, p.5)

“The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similar Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [were] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos.” (Larry Boemler, Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 18, Number 3, 1992-May/June, article: “Asherah and Easter”)

“Eostre: Saxon and Neo-Pagan goddess of fertility and springtime whom the holiday Easter was originally named after.” (Gerina Dunwich, The Concise Lexicon of the Occult, New York: Citadel Press, 1990 p.54)

“EASTER: Bæde Temp. Rat. XV. derives the word from Eostre (Northumb. spelling Éastre), the name of a goddess whose festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox; her name…shows that she was originally the dawn-goddess.” (The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)

“Astarte: a Phoenician goddess of fertility and sexual love who corresponds to the Babylonian and Assyrian goddess Ishtar and who became identified with the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, and others.” (Oxford Dictionary of English)

“Ishtar: ancient fertility deity, the most widely worshiped goddess in Babylonian and Assyrian religion. Ishtar was important as a mother goddess, goddess of love, and goddess of war. Her cult spread throughout W Asia, and she became identified with various other earth goddesses (see GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS). Great Mother of the Gods: in ancient Middle Eastern religion (and later in Greece, Rome, and W Asia), mother goddess, the great symbol of the earth’s fertility. As the creative force in nature, she was worshiped under many names, including ASTARTE (Syria), CERES (Rome), CYBELE (Phrygia), DEMETER (Greece), ISHTAR (Babylon), and ISIS (Egypt). The later forms of her cult involved the worship of a male deity (her son or lover, e.g., ADONIS, OSIRIS), whose death and resurrection symbolized the regenerative power of the earth.” (www.encyclopedia.com)

When we reflect how often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season. ( Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922.)

“Thus much already laid down may seem a sufficient treatise to prove that the celebration of the feast of Easter began everywhere more of custom than by any commandment either of Christ or any apostle.” (Socrates, Hist Ecclesiates., lib. v. cap. 22)

“Just as many Christian customs and similar observance had their origin in pre-Christian times, so, too some of the popular traditions of…. Easter dates back to ancient nature rites… The origin of the Easter egg is based on the fertility lore of the Indo-European races…The Easter bunny had its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore. Hare and rabbit were the most fertile animals our forefathers knew, serving as symbols of … new life in the spring season.” (Jesuit author Francis X. Weiser, The Easter Book, pp.15,181,&188)

“As with the other Christian holidays, there was also a holiday in ancient times that was celebrated at about the same time. In this case, it was the celebration of the vernal equinox-the tribute to the goddess of spring, Eastre. Eastre was an Anglo-Saxon goddess who is reputed to have opened the gates of Valhalla for the slain sun god, Baldrun, thereby bringing light to man. Easter also refers to the rising of the sun in the east.” (Carole Potter, Encyclopedia of Superstition, London: Michael O’Mara Books, 1983, p.69)

“Then look at Easter. When means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar.”[The Two Babylons (Or The Papal Worship), Alexander Hislop, 1916, Neptune, NJ, Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., p.103]

“When we reflect how often the [Roman Catholic] Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon the similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season.” (Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, New York : Macmillan Company, 1951, p .401)

“About the end of the sixth century, the first decisive attempt was made to enforce the observance of the new calendar. It was in Britain that the first attempt was made in this way; and here the attempt met with vigorous resistance. The difference, in point of time, betwixt the Christian Pasch, as observed in Britain by the native Christians, and the Pagan Easter enforced by Rome, at the time of its enforcement, was a whole month; and it was only by violence and bloodshed, at last, that the Festival of the Anglo-Saxon or Chaldean goddess came to supersede that which had been held in honor of Christ.” [The Two Babylons (Or The Papal Worship), Alexander Hislop, 1916, Neptune, NJ, Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., p.107]

“Many of the customs associated with Easter are derived from various spring fertility rites of the pagan religions which Christianity supplanted.” (Encyclopedia International, China: Lexicon Publications, 1973, p.190)

“Easter is connected in many ways with early pagan rituals that accompanied the arrival of spring.” (Merit Students Encyclopedia, New York: P. F. Collier, 1983, p.167-168)

“Both of these festivals [Easter and Christmas] have roots in old pagan rituals that they have superseded.” (G. MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1991, p.207)

“Even though it [Easter] has stood for over fifteen hundred years as the symbol of the resurrection of Jesus to members of the Christian Church, it is not entirely a Christian festival. Its origins go far back into pagan rites and customs.” (Charlotte Adams, Easter Idea Book, New York: M. Barrows and Company, 1954, p.11)

“Many of the customs associated with Easter originate in pagan celebrations of spring.” (New Standard Encyclopedia, Vol 6. Chicago: Standard Educational, 1991,pE-25-E-27)

“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the [so-called] apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the mind of the first Christians.” (The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol VIII, Cambridge: The University Press, 1910, p.828)

“Around the Christian observance of Easter as the climax of the liturgical drama of Holy Week and Good Friday, folk customs have collected, many of which have been handed down from the ancient ceremonial and symbolism of European and Middle Eastern pagan spring festivals brought into relation with the resurrection theme.” (The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1992. p.333)

“When Christians first spread across Europe, believers in the new faith changed many of the older rites and ceremonies, adapting them to fit with the life and teaching of Jesus. They did not try to stop people from having a great spring festival for their old pagan goddess, Eostre.” (Julian Fox, Easter, Vero Beach: Rourke Enterprises, 1989, p.11)

“About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.” (EASTER: ITS ORIGINS AND MEANINGS by The Religious Tolerance Organization Web site http://www.religioustolerance.org/easter.htm)

Lent

“The word Lent is of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning spring.” (Marguerite Ickis, The Book of Religious Holidays and Celebrations, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1966, p.114)

“The celebration of Lent has no basis in Scripture, but rather developed from the pagan celebration of Semiramis’s mourning for 40 days over the death of Tammuz (cf. Ezek 8:14) before his alleged resurrection—another of Satan’s mythical counterfeits.” (John MacArthur, Jr., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 Corinthians, Chicago: Moody, 1984)

“‘It ought to be known,’ said Cassianus, the monk of Marseilles, writing in the fifth century, and contrasting the primitive Church with the Church in his day, ‘that the observance of forty days had no existence, so long as the perfection of that primitive Church remained inviolate.’ Whence, then, came this observance? The forty days abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess.” [The Two Babylons (Or The Papal Worship), Alexander Hislop, 1916, Neptune, NJ, Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., p.104]

~ by Ken Hoeck & Brian Hoeck (edited by Rev. Gary DeSha)