"Easter" or Resurrection Day?

John 14:6 tells us that Jesus is ?the Way, the Truth, and the Life? . Where does the Bible say that Jesus is the rabbit, the bunny, and the egg?

This is what we're going to be looking at today, on RESURRECTION DAY!

Easter Sunday.   What is it?   Why do people care about it?

What does the word "Easter" mean? Who started the celebration of "Easter"?

Many people have asked me why "Easter" offends me so much. I have been tempted several times to really get in the spirit of Easter and to respond to this question with the traditional greeting of holding my middle finger up to their face. I think that they would then be offended by my participation of Easter. But why?

What would they think if they said "Happy Easter" to me, and I chased their children, all dressed in soft pastel colors, around with a lighter and tried to light them on fire? Would I be arrested and placed in jail? Why? This is also one of the historical events linked with "Easter"?

Perhaps I should not use the historical Easter greeting of holding my middle finger up to their face, and I should not light their children on fire. Perhaps, instead, I should invite them to my home to hunt "Easter eggs", and to eat "hot crossed buns"? I could take them on a tour of my "grove". A "grove" was a patch of oak trees that were cultivated in rows so that some of them could be carved into huge phallic symbols. I've driven past a homosexual candle shop in Seattle where they specialized in phallic shaped candels. Maybe these would make great Easter gifts? I once worked in a restaurant where I was the only worker that was not a homosexual, and the typical birthday gift was a giant phallic candle. Why don't people exchange these gifts at church Easter services? We seem to have stopped this tradition. But why do we not have giant phallic sympols in our yards and exchange phallic candles, but we dress our children in "Easter colors", hunt Easter eggs. etc? Some people have told me that these are innocent traditions that don't hurt anybody. I find this kind of logic to be rather backwards. Rather than wonder what negative effects these behaviors have, I have always wondered what they have to do with Christianity. My thinking goes more like this - Who DO these activities, rather than why NOT do these activities.

Why would they be so willing to accept certain things taken from pagan fertility rituals but then be so offended by other things from the very same pagan fertility rituals?  They usually just stare at me. It's OK, I'm used to it.

Is then, our procedure of evidence to be, accept those things that are popular and reject those things that have not yet become popular? Sounds pretty stupid to me!

This is not only stupid, but it is also anti-Biblical!

For one thing, Resurrection Day is NOT Easter!

The word "Easter" is not even a Christian word. The word Easter is derived from the name of a pagan god Eostre and has been incorporated into Catholicism because of the mixing of pagan beliefs with Christian beliefs within the Catholic church by the emperor Constantine. Or in other words, various pagan teachings of the Old Roman church were incorporated into the New Roman church, which is known as Catholicism. During the reformation, many of these same pagan customs such as Easter, the Mass of Christmas, Mother & Child worship, worship of relics, and many other customs were brought into Christianity by the so-called reformers.

  I've always wondered why so many people are willing to import certain pagan traditions into Resurrection Day and not certain other ones. Rabbits and eggs are included into the celebration of this particular day, but these same people would most be likely offended if the gesture of tribute to Eostre, "giving the finger", "flipping the bird", "flipping someone off", etc were practiced. Yet... if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we should be equally offended by the use of rabbits and eggs to celebrate this day as we are at being flipped off.

Why aren't we offended by all of the trappings of Easter instead of only being offended by some of them?

We seem to get used to things we see a lot, and as a result of seeing them frequently, we stop thinking about them.

I was watching a TV program about events from twenty years ago. Miss America had to step down because it was discovered that she had posed in a porno magazine. The commentator made the statement that if that same thing had happened today, that nobody would have even noticed. Our morality has deteriorated to this degree in only twenty years! I wonder what another twenty years will bring?

This is not simply an issue of changing the name "Easter" to the name "Resurrection Day". This is not about a title, it is about the origins, the concepts, the history, the practise, and the scriptures!

Our being constantly in a state of cluelessness does not mean that God is pleased with our worship however. Because Resurrection Day is such an important day for Christians, we need to decide if we are going to celebrate Resurrection Day, or Easter. I personally don't believer the argument "I did it because I'm totally clueless" is a valid defense to doing things that offend God. Will God be pleased or amused at our purposeful or ignorant traditions? Jeremiah 7 quotes God saying "My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched."

This doesn't sound like something I'm will do to, either with knowledge or without. If it doesn't please God, we shouldn't do it, regardless as to how popular it seems.

 Assyrian Origin of the Goddess
Like so much else in Canaanite religion, the name and worship of Asherah were borrowed from Assyria. She was the wife of the war-god Asir whose name was identified with that of the city of Assur with the result that he became the national god of Assyria. Since Asirtu was merely the feminine form of Asir, ?the superintendent? or ?leader,? it is probable that it was originally an epithet of Ishtar (Ashtoreth) of Nineveh. In the West, however, Asherah and Ashtoreth came to be distinguished from one another, Asherah being exclusively the goddess of fertility, whereas Ashtoreth passed into a moon-goddess.
(International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)

 The Attributes of the Goddess
Asherah was the goddess of fertility, and thus represented the Babylonian Ishtar in her character as goddess of love and not of war. In one of the cuneiform tablets found at Taanach by Dr. Sellin, and written by one Canaanite sheikh to another shortly before the Israelite invasion of Palestine, reference is made to ?the finger of Asherah? from which oracles were derived. The ?finger? seems to signify the symbol of the goddess; at any rate it revealed the future by means of a ?sign and oracle.? The practice is probably alluded to in Hos 4:12. The existence of numerous symbols in each of which the goddess was believed to be immanent led to the creation of numerous forms of the goddess herself, which, after the analogy of the Ashtaroth, were described collectively as the Asherim.
(International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)

Ever wonder how the gesture of showing "the finger" got started or where it comes from? Ever wonder how this gesture became associated with sex? ?The finger? is a symbol associated with the goddess of fertility Eostre. I don't mean to be overly crude here, but celebrating Eostre or Easter is basically giving God ?the finger?!

The word Eostre comes from a Greek word that means "frenzy", or in the English "estrus", which is commonly states as "being in heat".

It should be clear now how the gesture of "the finger" is related with sexuality through the fertility goddess. The only thing I wonder is why people have stopped practicing giving each other "the finger" during "Easter". Perhaps because they do it the rest of the year and it has lost it's importance to them? Most people that "give the finger" to other people don't even realize that they are paying tribute to Eostre when they make this vulgar gesture.

In Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, Desmond Morris and colleagues note that the digitus infamis or digitus impudicus (infamous or indecent finger) is mentioned several times in the literature of ancient Rome. Turning to our vast classical library, we quickly turn up three references. Two are from the epigrammatist Martial: ?Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and put your middle finger out.?
(The verse continues: ?But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either, Sextillus, nor is Vetustina?s hot mouth your fancy.? Martial, and Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there, subject-matter-wise. Another verse begins: ?You love to be sodomized, Papylus . . .?) In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party ?points a finger, an indecent one, at? some other people. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor ?expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . . . because when a spectator started to hiss, he called the attention of the whole audience to him with an obscene movement of his middle finger.? Morris also claims that the mad emperor Caligula, as an insult, would extend his middle finger for supplicants to kiss. It?s not known whether one displayed the digitus infamis in the same manner that we (well, you) flip the bird today. In another of his books Morris describes a variety of sexual insults involving the middle finger, such as the ?middle-finger down prod,? the ?middle-finger erect,? etc., all of which are different from the classic middle-finger jerk. But let?s not quibble. The point is, the middle-finger/phallus equation goes back way before the Titanic, the Battle of Agincourt, or probably even that time Sextillus cut off Pylades with his chariot. And I ain?t kidding yew.
?CECIL ADAMS

Tammuz
tam?b4uz, tam?b4moôoôz (æenz?, tammuôz; Èáììïýæ, Thammouñz):
(1) The name of a Phoenician deity, the Adonis of the Greeks. He was originally a Sumerian or Babylonian sun-god, called Dumuzu, the husband of Ishtar, who corresponds to Aphrodite of the Greeks. The worship of these deities was introduced into Syria in very early times under the designation of Tammuz and Astarte, and appears among the Greeks in the myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, who are identified with Osiris and Isis of the Egyptian pantheon, showing how widespread the cult became. The Babylonian myth represents Dumuzu, or Tammuz, as a beautiful shepherd slain by a wild boar, the symbol of winter. Ishtar long mourned for him and descended into the underworld to deliver him from the embrace of death (Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris).
(International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)

The counterfeit, or adulteration here is quite clear! Here Tammuz has descended into the underworld, not Jesus. It seems that there is nothing that God can come up with that Satan doesn't try to adulterate!

Is burning your children alive in the fire a Christian teaching?
The ancient Druids celebrated Easter by building a fire and sitting around it. They each take a piece of oat cake and place it in a shepherds bonnet. One piece has been previously blackened in the fire. They are then blindfolded and they each draw a piece from the bonnet. The one that draws the blackened piece is required to jump through the fire and pay a forfeit. This is derived from the worship of Baal mentioned in the Bible where the person that drew the blackened piece was thrown into the fire alive, as a burnt sacrifice to Baal.

I know, you're thinking, "but today people don't think about the paganistic origins of "Easter" they are thinking about the resurrection of Jesus". So, if their motives are right, isn't it still ok to celebrate Easter?"

Well, that's not really a valid point anymore, because now you have heard about the pagan rituals that Easter came from, because I have just told you about them. There is also this verse that makes things really clear.

                Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other
               gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.  Exodus 23:13 (NIV)

Just how many times do you think Christians say the word "Easter", which is really the word "Eostre", in the month of April each year. Considering the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for us, I can think of few things that are as offensive to God as hearing the word Easter over and over instead of the word Jesus. The only reason I even say it here is just show the contrast of what we should be doing, and to let people know that the real focus of this day should be Resurrection Day.
 
 

            Revelation 2:1-7 ?To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of
            him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden
            lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that
            you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles
            but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured
            hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You
            have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent
            and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your
            lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the
            Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
            churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is
            in the paradise of God.

The word used here for forsaken (or in other versions ?departed from?) (ajfivhmi, afihmi) can actually
be used of divorce. So in other words the church in Ephesus had left their first love, Christ, and been unfaithful to, or "had divorced themselves from" Christ. Who was their "new" love? Diana, or the "goddess of all things".
The goddess Diana was also called the "Queen of Heaven". The Catholic church simply accepted the existing statues of Diana into their worship system, and renamed them "Mary". Thus, Mary became known as the "Queen of Heaven".

            Jeremiah 7:18-20 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women
            knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink
            offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. But am I the one they are provoking?
            declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?
            ??Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: My anger and my wrath will be
            poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit
            of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched.

Clearly this shows that God is "provoked to anger"! To me, this sounds a bit less than innocent! So, who are we really serving when we celebrate "Easter" with all the trappings of paganism? Certainly, in no stretch of the imagination, is it God! Not when God has explained to us very clearly that this activity provokes Him to "anger"!
 

Still grinning and giggling about how cute the bunnies and eggs are, and how innocent the whole idea of Easter is? Or how cute the kiddies are running around the yard looking for colored eggs? The Druids used to sacrifice their children to Baal!

             Jeremiah 7:9-11 (NIV)  ?Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense
            to Baal and follow other gods you have not known,  and then come and stand before me
            in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ?We are safe??safe to do all these
            detestable things?  Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers
            to you? But I have been   watching! declares the LORD.

            Jeremiah 19:5 (NIV)  They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as
             offerings to Baal?something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind

Should the Christian Church should adopt this adulteration of OUR faith. What is adulteration? This is when an original substance has been tainted or polluted with another substance. It doesn't mean that the original substance has been destroyed, but it does mean that the characteristics of the original substance has been altered in some way. If you have a food product that has been adulterated, the food value of the original product is still intact, but in the case of an adulterated food item, you will also ingest the characteristics of the contaminant. This is where the problem is, and the danger.

The word ?sin? doesn't mean some great assault against God. It means a shortcoming. It means ?missing the target?. It means coming up short. It means not pure, less than perfect. It means adulterated!

Passover > Resurrection Day > Easter
Resurrection Day (which has it's roots in Judaism) has been adulterated into the so-called "Christian" event we know today as Easter. The original event was the Passover. This is when blood of a slain lamb was painted on the door posts, and the avenging spirit of the Lord ?passed over? houses showing the slain blood of the lamb. The Bible talks about Jesus being The Lamb.

             Exodus12:12-13 (NIV) "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down
            every firstborn?both men and animals?and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.
            I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and
            when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when
            I strike Egypt.

             Exodus 12:21-27 (NIV)  Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them,
            ?Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb.
            Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on
            the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his
            house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians,
            he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that
            doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.
             ?Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants.
            When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this
            ceremony. And when your children ask you, ?What does this ceremony mean to you??
            then tell them, ?It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses
            of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.??

This event was a precursor to the Christian event of the resurrection of Jesus. The entire Old Testament points forward to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Pagan fertility rituals celebrating Ishtar were incorporated with the Christian holiday adulterating the Christian holiday of resurrection day into a semi-pagan, semi-Christian holiday of Easter. To ingest Easter is to ingest the goodness of resurrection day, but to also ingest the poison of Ishtar. And for what reason? Chocolate eggs?

Resurrection day is an amazing thing in itself. This one day celebrates the line between past and future, between death and life, between hell and heaven. This is the day when Jesus, The lamb, our sacrifice, changes into Jesus the Shepherd, our safety and our refuge! Jesus was sacrificed as the Lamb, but has arisen as the Shepherd. He has taken OUR place, and faced death for us! This is the day that we change our gaze from the darkness of the grave towards the light of heaven! This is the day when our sorrow changes to celebration!

What does the enemy offer us in the way of adulteration? Chocolate eggs? Jesus offers us love, eternity in heaven, salvation, resurrection, forgiveness, and what does the enemy offers us, chocolate eggs, candy rabbits, and Easter baskets? You must be kidding! Who would go for that deal?

Almost the entire world, that's who!
            Matthew 7: 22 (KJV) ?Many (POLLOS) will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not
            prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done
            many wonderful works??
How many people that celebrate Easter don't even have a clue as to who Jesus really is?

Secularized "Easter" is nearly identical to Pagan Ishtar
I just saw and ad in a local Anchorage paper that really confused me. It was for a sexy underwear store here in town. They were offering items for you to create a ?naughty Easter basket?. What in the world does that mean? I would think that anyone celebrating Easter would be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Apparently not so! This ?naughty Easter basket? is right in line with the pagan holiday celebrating sexuality and fertility. HERE is a prime example of the adulteration attempts by Satan, plain and simple.  This is where the bunnies and the eggs and the chicks associated with Easter came from.

How many people celebrate resurrection day, and how many people celebrate Easter? As I am writing this, the news on TV took sugar coated yellow chicks to several restaurants and food businesses and asked them what they would do with a yellow candy chick. One place took a chocolate egg and put pudding inside, then dipped the sugar coated yellow chick in melted chocolate, and then pastel colored sprinkles, and then placed the chick on top of the pudding. They then took a chick to Benihanana?s. They made a ball of rice and placed the chick on top and had Easter chick sushi. Finally they took a chick to a Jewish restaurant and they dipped the chick in chocolate and then into matzo chips and gave it to a cute baby to make of mess of themselves with. Good news story. Really? What is the ?good news?? It is the fact that even though Jesus was killed and buried, that He then arose from the dead. Where was THIS part of the good news story? And they call this news? But what's a little adulteration? It is poison. Millions of people look at presentations like this and they are swept away by the mass appeal of attractive, educated, and persuasive news personalities. They are entertained to the point that they don't even think about the real ideas behind ?Easter?. They are distracted!

            Exodus 34:25 (NIV) ?Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing
            yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

            Matthew 16:6-12 (NIV) ?Be careful,? Jesus said to them. ?Be on your guard against the
            yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.?  They discussed this among themselves and said,
            ?It is because we didn?t bring any bread.?  Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, ?You of
            little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not
            understand? Don?t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many
            basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand,  and how many
            basketfuls you gathered? How is it you don?t understand that I was not talking to
             you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and
            Sadducees.?  Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against
            the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 Paganistic teachings of fertility, of bunnies, of Easter eggs, of candy chicks is the YEAST to watch
 out for on resurrection day!

Who is the main focus of this distraction Our children. The paganistic indoctrination begins with our children, and is continued by customs, rituals, and the media. Not to mention the candy industry. The advertising guys  go nuts with this stuff. An event. Easter! We are sold cars, candy, clothes, brunch, and nearly everything under the sun, even sexy underwear?

            Matthew 19:13-15 (NIV) Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his
            hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.
            Jesus said, ?Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of
            heaven belongs to such as these.?  When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from
            there.

             Matthew 18:5-7 (NIV) And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.
            But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better
            for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths
            of the sea.  Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such
            things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!

Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea. And this is the BETTER thing?

If Jesus is this intolerant of paganistic indoctrination of our children, then why are WE so tolerant of these teachings? Christians have created thousands of Easter webpages and even offer free clip-art so that others can also maintain Easter pages. Strange isn't it.

I?ll say it again! In John 14:6 Jesus said that He is ?the Way, the Truth, and the Life? . It doesn't say that He is the rabbit, the bunny, and the egg?

What of the resurrection? Why don't people want to deal with this? Because it implies responsibility.

Resurrection day is God showing His commitment to us. This is a gift from God. When ever there is a gift given, there is a universal understanding in ALL cultures, that there should be a reciprocal gift. This is not a one-sided event, but an exchange. A contract if you will. God has given our very lives to us, and in return, we have given our very lives back to Him. Why don't we give Him something else in return? Simply because we don't have anything else to offer. Everything is His already. It would be a little stupid and a lot insulting to give God something that is His already. Our lives, which we can not keep anyway, are the only thing we really have to offer God. And in the end, that's all God really wants anyway. Us!

So if Jesus is our example, what should we be doing now, instead of fixating on chocolate bunnies, candy chicks, and dyed Easter eggs? Our example, Jesus, was crucified on the cross for OUR sins, because He had no sins of His own! He then arose from the dead. Our focus should be on arising from our old sin natures, into the new creatures that we are becoming. Our goal, is to become shepherds like Jesus.  Our job is to lead the other sheep, those still blinded by sin and Satan, to the resurrection. That is - to the real idea behind so-called Easter. Our job is to stop being ?probaton? or sheep (things that move forward), and to become shepherds, working for the Great Shepherd.

On every day, but especially on resurrection day, our focus should be on Jesus being resurrected from the dead, and taking His rightful place as the Shepherd.

We are called to follow His lead, and become shepherds also. Leading all those that will listen, into a relationship with the Sacrificial Lamb that has taken our place in death, and has become the Great
Shepherd by His resurrection. Our focus on resurrection day is that of  The Lamb changing into The Great Shepherd, not of silly empty celebrations including chocolate rabbits, candy chicks, and dyed eggs. This is the entire idea of being a Christian, that of being ?born again?!

Amen,
     Franz Sigel Shroy