What’s Wrong with Easter? (Lane)

Passover and Easter are a month apart this year, 2008. The next time Easter
will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228, 220 years from now. It will
fall on March 22, 2285, which is 277 years from now.  The last time it was
this early was in 1913, so unless you’re 95 or older, you weren’t here for that
date. But how can it be that if Yeshua died on Passover, that the dates of
Passover and Easter can be so far apart? We will see as the story goes on.

If you are reading this website, you are undoubtedly aware that Easter is a
“derivative” of Passover. You know that Yeshua is the Passover Lamb of God who
died on the 14th of Nissan, the day that God told the Hebrews to commemorate their
deliverance from Egypt by His mighty Hand. You no doubt are fully aware that not
just Yeshua and the disciples celebrated the Passover, but the early Believers
continued to do so, now with far greater, even sublime understanding of Yeshua’s
deliverance from the power of sin – a force far greater than Egypt.

As Gentiles began to come to faith in Yeshua, about 15 years after His death
and resurrection, they too were keeping the Passover with the Hebrews,
participating in synagogue worship and Torah study. (See Acts 15:21.) 

When the Romans destroyed the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70 and its
citizens, including the Believers, were thrust into the world, they shared their
faith in Yeshua with the Gentiles they came to know.  As more and more
Gentiles came into the faith (now without knowledge or understanding of Torah and
Hebrew ways), they began to see things differently. Animosity for the Hebrews was
growing in the church.

Let’s remember that it is not just people alone that make these kinds of
decisions, but there is an adversary of God (ha satan, in Hebrew) who is
able to influence men’s hearts toward evil. Yeshua Himself has said,
“salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22), so it’s always the devil’s plan
and purpose to discredit the Jews and remove the church as far from them as
possible. If he can keep the people who call themselves Believers in Yeshua away
from the Jews, he can weaken the church and actually keep many from salvation
because of their distorted concept of salvation.  That’s exactly what
happened when Constantine institutionalized the church in the 4th Century and at
the same time, took a stand against the Jews.

One early issue became a heated debate that went on for a long time between
those who wished to celebrate the resurrection on the date of Passover and those
who wanted no part of the Hebrews and anything connected with them. The eastern
churches of Syria, Cilicia and Mesopotamia wanted to keep to the 14th of Nissan
date. But those of Alexandria and Rome wanted to make sure that the “Christian
Passover,” that is, the celebration of the Resurrection, never coincided with the
Jewish observance of Passover and decided to celebrate it instead on the first
Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, completely
independent of the Hebrew calendar which, incidentally, God Himself had set in
place. The motive clearly was their opposition to Judaism. 

When the emperor Constantine had his epiphany and took the giant leap to make
Christianity the State religion, he changed the entire premise of the church. The
format, the venue, the leadership structure, the purpose, the vision, the images
of Messiah Himself, and their relationship with the Hebrews – of which Yeshua was
one — all took a radical departure, not only from its foundation, but from the
truth. 

Take a read through some of what Constantine has written:

“…It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy
feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their
hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness
of soul… Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd;
for we have received from our Savior a different way.”  He also wrote: “It
was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the
celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with
crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded… Let us, then,
have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries… avoiding all
contact with that evil way… who, after having compassed the death of the Lord,
being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained
passion, wherever their innate madness carries them… a people so utterly
depraved… Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may
no more have anything in common with those parricides and the murderers of our
Lord… no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews.” 

Constantine further barred the Jews from their beloved Jerusalem except on the
anniversary of the Second Temple’s destruction and then only upon paying a special
tax in silver. The Jews actually had much more freedom under pagan rulership than
when the Church became the State religion. It is ironic (surely there must be a
more apt word for such a treachery) that the church thought itself justified in
separating from the people whom God used to bring the Messiah into the world. Yet,
Yeshua emphatically stated, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah or
the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill…Whoever then annuls one
of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least
in the kingdom of heaven…” (Matthew 5:17).

While Torah scrolls may have been rare to the Gentiles, surely at least some of
the early church leaders must have had them. We can only conclude that Constantine
and many of the church leaders did not seem to understand that Jesus died for all
men’s sins, including their own and those of the Jews. They did not understand
that Yeshua “gave his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28; Mark
10:25) which included all men, and “to the Jews first“! (Rom.1:16). 
And surely they did not understand God’s heart for Israel. When one does not read
the Tenach (the entire Old Covenant), one does not know the commitment and the
promises of God toward Israel. God is not a liar; neither does He abandon His
covenant promises. If He would forsake Israel, then how can we depend on Him to
overlook our own sins? But Constantine and his cronies didn’t see this. They
evidently weren’t aware of God’s heart for Israel. Seems to me they were preaching
another gospel, which Paul sternly warned against. (See 2 Cor. 11:4.)

While Constantine and his followers were removing all things Jewish from the
church, they were adding in what the Torah would have warned them against and
protected them from had they allowed it to be part of their worship experience.
But they didn’t and so the reasoning was, in order to satisfy both the Christians
and the pagans, why not combine the two so everyone will be happy? That was the
idea behind not only moving the date, but it made way for what we now call Easter
rather than Passover. The roots of the Easter celebration date long before
Yeshua’s life, death and resurrection. Further back, in fact, than the Exodus.
Waaaay back to Nimrod.

The story goes like this: Nimrod was the grandson of one of Noah’s son named
Ham. You remember him — he built the tower of Babel in Genesis 10. It says of him
that he was a mighty hunter (10:8-10), which did not mean he was a good provider
of food for his family, but that he was a powerful and evil man who killed other
men. He was known as a god-man.  His mother, Semiramis, who was also — get
this — his wife, became the powerful Queen of Babylon and eventually was recognized as the Queen of heaven.

Nimrod eventually met his match and was killed by an enemy and his body cut in
pieces and sent to various parts of his kingdom. Semiramis somehow managed to
gather all the parts, except for one part that remained missing. Without it, she
claimed, he could not come back to life so Semiramis told the people that Nimrod
had ascended to the sun and was now to be called “Ba’al,” the sun god. She claimed
he would be present on earth in a fire lit lamp (no electricity then remember) or
candle flame when used in worship. Hence the use of candles in worship.

What she was doing was creating a mystery religion, no doubt under the
“inspiration” of satan, with Semiramis herself as the goddess, claiming also that
she herself was immaculately conceived. Semiramis further claimed that she came
down from the moon in a giant moon egg that fell into the Euphrates River, which
was to have happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox.
The equinox is the two times a year when the sun crosses the equator and day and
night are equal length everywhere, around March 21 and September 23. It also is
said to have to do with the celestial sphere, which is of significance if you’re
developing a mystery religion.

At some point, Semiramis’ name changed and she became known as “Ishtar” which
can be pronounced “Easter.” While the language was not Hebrew, it still serves to
illustrate how the name might have come to be Easter. The symbol in Hebrew for an
“s” is the same as for “sh”, and an “i” is pronounced like our “ee” making it
“eeshtar” or “Easter.”

It just so happens that Ishtar quite mysteriously became pregnant, claiming
that it was the rays of the sun-god Ba’al that caused her to conceive.  And
so she brought forth a son and named him Tammuz. As an adult he was rather fond of
rabbits, likely related to their reproductive prowess as a sexual symbol, and they
became sacred in their religion, rabbits now having risen to the status of being
worthy of worship. Tammuz, who became a hunter like his father, as luck would have
it, was killed by a wild pig. Ishtar told the people that Tammuz had now ascended
to his father, Ba’al, and that the two of them would be with the worshippers in
the sacred candle flame as father and son. 

Queen Ishtar, now known as the “Mother of God” (Note: Mary was proclaimed to be
the “Mother of God” in AD 600) and the “Queen of Heaven,” continued to build her
mystery religion by telling the people that when Tammuz was killed by the wild
pig, some of his blood fell on a stump of an evergreen tree, and the stump grew
into a full new tree overnight. This made the evergreen tree sacred by the blood
of Tammuz. She also proclaimed a forty-day period of time of sorrow each year
prior to the anniversary of Tammuz’s death, during which time no meat was to be
eaten. Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Ba’al and Tammuz,
and to make the sign of the “T” in front of their hearts as they worshipped.

Perhaps some of this is ringing a bell for you. Tammuz, you may recall, was
worshipped by Israel resulting in God’s great displeasure and wrath (Ezek.
8:13-15). Pagan worship in Israel was often connected with trees, especially on
high hills (Deut. 12:2). The evergreen tree does bring up the image of a Christmas
tree. Making the sign of the “T” across one’s heart, sounds much like “crossing
oneself” as the Catholic practice of making the sign of the cross.  They also
ate sacred cakes with the mark of a “T” or cross on the top, which sure sounds a
lot like the “hot cross buns” eaten at Easter. 

The celebration takes place on the first Sunday after the first full moon after
the spring equinox.  Sound familiar? That’s when Easter is celebrated. It was
Ishtar’s Sunday and it was celebrated with rabbits and eggs, both fertility (e.g.
sex) symbols. And because Tammuz was killed by a pig, she proclaimed that a pig
must be eaten on that Sunday. Therefore, the Easter ham. (It may have been her way
of bringing revenge on the pig. Who knows?)   Furthermore, Ba’al
worshippers would rise on Ishtar’s day and face the rising sun in the east to
honor Ba’al, who is also satan in reality.

Ishtar has other names. I found no less than thirty-four of them. Some deities
started out on their own but were assimilated or merged into Ishtar. Asherah
(plural is Asherim) and related titles are idols or statues of her and in the Old
Covenant are considered an abomination to God. Her influence persisted for
centuries, with a temple built to her in 550 BC. If you’ve seen pictures of a
great gate in Babylon, it is the Gate of Ishtar. Other images of her have
survived.  You may have seen representations of the ancient “dog god” that
assimilated into Ishtar worship. She is also seen standing on a lion which was her
holy animal.  She is also pictured as wearing a Zodiac belt, being queen of
the stars.

Ishtar is the mother apparently of other gods besides Ba’al. Without going into
it, worship associated with Ishtar and lesser female deities always involved
temple prostitution, sometimes both male and female, and sexual activities we
won’t mention here. Wherever you find pagan worship, you find gross sexual
practices; they go together which is not surprising when you consider that satan
seeks to influence us through our fleshly desires, an apple being the first
instance. The Canaanites adopted these same female deities, carving wood figures
of them from evergreen trees into fertility gods of the spring equinox, signifying
the beginning of living things growing for the summer season. She is often
associated with Spring rites in various countries even centuries later, though
often with another name.

On the first Sunday of the equinox, the Canaanite families would face east and
wait for the rising of the sun, which was the symbol of the sun god Ba’al. Later
in the day the children would go and hunt for eggs, which were symbolic of sex,
fertility and new life. Rabbits were also a part of their festivities which were
symbolic of lust, sexual prowess and reproduction.  The Canaanites worshipped
rabbits as deities as did the Egyptians and Persians (Babylonians). Decorating the
eggs came about in the Middle Ages by the Anglo-Saxons to honor their pagan gods
and were often presented as gifts to other families to bring them fertility and
“sexual success” in the coming year.

So as you can see, the roots of Easter have nothing to do with Passover or the
death, burial and resurrection of Messiah Yeshua. The two were made one when in
fact they are antithetic to one another. Yeshua’s death and resurrections should
be observed indeed and with great reverence and joy, but on the day God ordained
for it.

When we consider how God’s wrath came upon Israel for their idolatry, it might
be easy today to think that God has adjusted Himself to our paganism since it
doesn’t appear that He’s exhibiting any wrath toward the church for the
participation in things pagan. Granted, most of us have done so unknowingly, but
you who have just read this article can’t say that anymore. We who are truly
Yeshua’s are under His blood and forgiven. However, the quality of our
relationship with Him is greatly affected by our walk with Him, whether we walk in
holiness and sanctification or we choose not to. The quality of the entire
church’s relationship with God has not, on the whole, been what it was in the
beginning since men began to separate away from the Jews and the Torah God gave
them. It correlates precisely. Withdraw from the Jews and the Torah God gave them
and the Holy Spirit withdraws from the church. Even today most of us are living a
diluted gospel life compared to the Acts of the Apostles.

But doesn’t it make sense that for us to recant the false and embrace the
Biblical truth we will touch God’s heart with our quest for Him and Him
alone?  Perhaps this will be the very things that will cause Him to return to
us what our first century brothers and sisters were walking in — the love, power
and glory of the Holy Spirit that changed the world around them.  I’m
counting on it.

Will you pray with me?  Abba, in Yeshua’s name, we pray that as we divest
ourselves of error, doing away with the diluted and polluted ideas of life as a
Believer which keep us in heresy, that more and more Believers will seek to align
their lives of faith with Biblical principles and Your ways, that You will restore
the purity, power and purpose to Your people today, that we might once again truly
function as Your Body in the earth. Lord, may it be said of us who are living by
Your Spirit, “….many signs and wonders were taking place among the people;
and they were all with one accord….(and) the people held them in high esteem.
And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were
constantly added to their number” (Acts 5:12-14). Lord, hear our
prayer!!!