Posted on 04/16/2006 9:07:24 AM PDT by The Lumster
The Pagan Origin Of Easter
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Easter is a day that is honered by nearly all of contemporary Christianity and is used to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holiday often involves a church service at sunrise, a feast which includes an "Easter Ham", decorated eggs and stories about rabbits.
Those who love truth learn to ask questions, and many questions must be asked regarding the holiday of Easter.
Is it truly the day when Jesus arose from the dead? Where did all of the strange customs come from, which have nothing to do with the resurrection of our Saviour?
The purpose of this tract is to help answer those questions, and to help those who seek truth to draw their own conclusions.
The first thing we must understand is that professing Christians were not the only ones who celebrated a festival called "Easter."
"Ishtar", which is pronounced "Easter" was a day that commemorated the resurrection of one of their gods that they called "Tammuz", who was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god.
In those ancient times, there was a man named Nimrod, who was the grandson of one of Noah's son named Ham.
Ham had a son named Cush who married a woman named Semiramis.Cush and Semiramis then had a son named him "Nimrod."
After the death of his father, Nimrod married his own mother and became a powerful King.
The Bible tells of of this man, Nimrod, in Genesis 10:8-10 as follows: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad,and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
Nimrod became a god-man to the people and Semiramis, his wife and mother, became the powerful Queen of ancient Babylon.
Nimrod was eventually killed by an enemy, and his body was cut in pieces and sent to various parts of his kingdom.
Semiramis had all of the parts gathered, except for one part that could not be found.
That missing part was his reproductive organ. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod could not come back to life without it and told the people of Babylon that Nimrod had ascended to the sun and was now to be called "Baal", the sun god.
Queen Semiramis also proclaimed that Baal would be present on earth in the form of a flame, whether candle or lamp, when used in worship.
Semiramis was creating a mystery religion, and with the help of Satan, she set herself up as a goddess.
Semiramis claimed that she was immaculately conceived.
She taught that the moon was a goddess that went through a 28 day cycle and ovulated when full.
She further claimed that she came down from the moon in a giant moon egg that fell into the Euphrates River.
This was to have happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Semiramis became known as "Ishtar" which is pronounced "Easter", and her moon egg became known as "Ishtar's" egg."
Ishtar soon became pregnant and claimed that it was the rays of the sun-god Baal that caused her to conceive.
The son that she brought forth was named Tammuz.
Tammuz was noted to be especially fond of rabbits, and they became sacred in the ancient religion, because Tammuz was believed to be the son of the sun-god, Baal. Tammuz, like his supposed father, became a hunter.
The day came when Tammuz was killed by a wild pig.
Queen Ishtar told the people that Tammuz was now ascended to his father, Baal, and that the two of them would be with the worshippers in the sacred candle or lamp flame as Father, Son and Spirit.
Ishtar, who was now worshipped as the "Mother of God and Queen of Heaven", continued to build her mystery religion.
The queen told the worshippers that when Tammuz was killed by the wild pig, some of his blood fell on the 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 the death of Tammuz.
During this time, no meat was to be eaten.
Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Baal and Tammuz, and to make the sign of the "T" in front of their hearts as they worshipped.
They also ate sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top.
Every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a celebration was made.
It was Ishtar's Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggs.
Ishtar also proclaimed that because Tammuz was killed by a pig, that a pig must be eaten on that Sunday.
By now, the readers of this tract should have made the connection that paganism has infiltrated the contemporary "Christian" churches, and further study indicates that this paganism came in by way of the Roman Catholic System.
The truth is that Easter has nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We also know that Easter can be as much as three weeks away from the Passover, because the pagan holiday is always set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Some have wondered why the word "Easter" is in the the King James Bible.
It is because Acts, chapter 12, tells us that it was the evil King Herod, who was planning to celebrate Easter, and not the Christians.
The true Passover and pagan Easter sometimes coincide, but in some years, they are a great distance apart.
So much more could be said, and we have much more information for you, if you are a seeker of the truth.
We know that the Bible tells us in John 4:24, "God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
The truth is that the forty days of Lent, eggs, rabbits,hot cross buns and the Easter ham have everything to do with the ancient pagan religion of Mystery Babylon.These are all antichrist activities!
Satan is a master deceiver, and has filled the lives of well-meaning, professing Christians with idolatry.
These things bring the wrath of God upon children of disobedience, who try to make pagan customs of Baal worship Christian.
You must answer for your activities and for what you teach your children.
These customs of Easter honor Baal, who is also Satan, and is still worshipped as the "Rising Sun" and his house is the "House of the Rising Sun."
How many churches have "sunrise services" on Ishtar's day and face the rising sun in the East?
How many will use colored eggs and rabbit stories, as they did in ancient Babylon.
These things are no joke, any more than Judgement day is a joke.
I pray to God that this tract will cause you to search for more truth.
We will be glad to help you by providing more information and by praying for you.
These are the last days, and it is time to repent, come out and be separate.
David J. Meyer
Last Trumpet Ministries International PO Box 806 Beaver Dam, WI 53916
http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/
I love these kind of folks, though. The one's who think Halloween is the work of the Devil. Always good for a laugh. Satan's bunny is comin' for ya!
True, Lawdoc! May the Lord be with you!
F
Rubbish.
First, the name Easter, or OEstre, was simply the name of the month of the Anglo-Saxon calendar in which the Feast of Our Lord's Resurrection, called Pascha in Greek, always fell. (Note, the same consonants as the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover--I've wondered whether the medieval rabbis who added vowel points didn't change the vowels to avoid having the name be the same as the Christian feast). It has no connection whatever to any Babylonian mythology, and is found only in English. All other languages have a name for the Feast of Our Lord's Resurrection derived from the Greek name, Pascha.
Using it no more makes the feast pagan than does calling Good Friday, Good FRIday, a reference to the Norse pagan goddess Freya, or calling the first day of the week Sunday makes the weekly celebration of Our Lord's Resurrection into a feast of Julian the Apostate's bizarre solar paganism.
Second, decorating eggs is an elaboration of the ancient Christian custom of using red eggs to symbolize the blood of Christ, and recall a miracle wrought in testimony of Our Lord's Resurrection by St. Mary Magdalene: when she brought news of the Resurrection to Pilate (or in some tellings, Caesar in Rome), she was carrying a basket of eggs (white or brown), and Pilate scoffed that he would no more believe that a man would rise from the dead than that the eggs the saint carried would turn red, where upon, they did. We Orthodox have always had red eggs at Pascha, even from the times when there were no Angles or Saxons in Britain or in the Church.
A joyous Feast of the Resurrection to our separated Latin and protestant bretheren, who insist on celebrating early (whether you call it Easter or Pasque): Pascha, following the decision of the First Ecumenical Council and Great Church of Alexandria, to which the Holy Council referred details for final decision, is next Sunday.
Learn Church history. Santayana's dictum doesn't seem to apply to Church history: in Church history, it seems, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to make it up.
Ping
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Well at least it wasn't another Jesus Seminar article in Newsweak or Time telling us some reinvented detail of their neo-Christianity. The news media really loves them and I bet this guy will make Time next Easter.
There has always been too much made of this and its too often for cynical reasons (not an accusation of your post). Of course, we only have four seasons. So the likelihood of correspondence of season is really good. If the Pagans had Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall festivals, the odds are 100% for correlation. Choosing Winter for the Birth of Christ (when you don't otherwise know) is a logical use of symbolism. The celebration of Christ's resurrection, however, has always been well known on the calendar, as it relates to Passover. The origin of the word "Easter" certainly corresponds with the WGMnc word for a fertility goddess, but the use of the name is more likely from their general use of the word to describe the "promise of life".
I personally dont care whether our customs were based out of pagan festivals or created for the celebration by early christians, the simple fact of the matter is that this time is a celebration of our Saviour.
That being said its not quite as simple as you state, to ignore the pagan customs that assimilated themselves through necessity into early christian history is to ignore history itself. Estre,Oester,Ostra are all variations of a Fertility Goddesses NAME not a month, the months name was usually followed by a tag such as Easter-monadh.
As far as your contention that Mary Magdalene carrying eggs, that is entirely extra-biblical and in fact a (fairly)modern MYTH. What is known is that pagans of the period had celebrated the spring equinox through the fertility goddess of there particular region by using eggs (and rabbits) as a symbol of that celebration well before Christianity existed.
Now all of this being said does it matter? Do we celebrate a rabbit over our Saviour? Is egg hunting more precious than remembrance? No of course not but to go against history to make origins of festivities change to fit a religion is doing yourself a disservice.
Anyways thats my 2 cents.
He Has Risen.
I was really confused in my youth with the rabbits, eggs and chicks part. I knew that chicks came from eggs and rabbits were prolific, but why is the season of fertility tied in with Christ's death and resurrection?
There HAD TO HAVE BEEN other images of re-birth to put forth besides chickens and rabbits, even in the pagan times. Maybe not.
Good Friday and Easter are the CRUX, the soul, the essence and core of the Christian faith....not Christmas, Halloween or Valentine's Day. Sigh. I know--that's just the way it is. Very sad.
It wasn't until I was an adult before I understood the candy and cards bit with Easter. That's just mercantilism.
The whole "easter bunny" scene with the mall-bunny and photos is really just stupid. But, then, I think the entire "x-mas" scene with EVERYTHING ELSE but the birth of Christ, the Holy Family and the three Kings is just stupid too.
Somewhere along the line we Christians made Christmas a season for just children and toy$. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Well, we in the Christian East have good recollection of lots of 'extra Biblical' facts: the Scriptures aren't an axiom system from which everything which is true about Christ and God are derived, but the primary written part of Holy Tradition.
St. Lazarus, whose resurrection by Christ's command the Christian East celebrated yesterday, went on to be Bishop of Cyprus, his tomb is inscribed (in Greek) "Lazarus of the four days, friend of Christ", and his bones were moved to Constantinple by the Emperor Leo the Wise; The Samaritan woman at the well was named Photini, and died as a Christian martyr; the child whom Christ called to Himself, when He told His disciples to 'become as a little child', was named Ignatius, and grew up to be the third Bishop of Antioch, and to die as a martyr, fed to lions by the Romans; St. James, who presided over the Apostolic Council, recorded in Acts, was the first Bishop of Jerusalem (hence his presidency), and is titled "Brother of the Lord", because along among St. Joseph's children by his first wife, he would acknowledge Jesus as his brother, and shared both the exile in Egypt and his inheritance from his father with Christ. These are 'extra Biblical', too, but nonetheless true.
Like I said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to make it up."
I understand where protestants are coming from, but your spiritual forebearers threw out a good deal that was true and holy when they decided to get rid of papal corruptions by tossing out all of Christian tradition except for a shortened version of the Scriptures.
What a waste of bandwidth.
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