Easter - Christian or Pagan Festival?
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It is not a Christian name or festival. It bears its Chaldean origin on its forehead. Easter is nothing else but 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 around the world. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was introduced very early into Britain, along with the Druids, 'the priests of the groves.
To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated but skilful adjustment of the calendar, it was not found to be a difficult matter, in general to get Paganism and Christianity, now far sunk in idolatry - in this as in so many other things, to shake hands.
The hot cross buns of Good Friday and the dyed eggs of Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The 'buns' known by the identical name, were used in the worship of the queen of heaven, the goddess Easter, as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens - 1500 years before the Christian era... The prophet Jeremiah takes notice of this kind of offering when he says: 'The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women make cakes to the queen of heaven" - Astarte! (Jer. 7:18)'
In ancient times eggs were used in the religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic purposes in their temples. From Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the banks of the Euphrates. The classic poets are full of the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians; and thus it is told by Hyginus, the Egyptian, the learned keeper of the Palatine library at Rome, in the time of Augustus, who was skilled in all the wisdom of his native country: 'An egg of wondrous size is said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates. The fishes rolled it to the bank, where the doves having settled upon it, and hatched it, out came Venus, who afterwards was called the Syrian Goddess'" - that is Astarte. Hence the egg became one of the symbols of Astarte or Easter.
The guilt of idolatry is regarded by many as comparatively slight and insignificant. But Yahweh God does not regard it so. Which is the commandment of all the ten that is fenced about with the most solemn and awful sanctions? It is the second:
NJB Exodus 20:4-5
4. You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.
5. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God and I punish a parent's fault in the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren among those who hate me;
These words were spoken by Yahweh God's own lips, they were written by Yahweh God's own finger on the tablets of stone: not for the instruction of the seed of Abraham only, but of all the tribes and generations of mankind. No other commandment has such a threat attached to it as this. Now, if Yahweh God has threatened to visit the sin of idolatry above all other sins, and if we find the heavy judgements of Yahweh God pressing upon us as a nation, while this very sin is crying to heaven against us, ought it not to be a matter of earnest inquiry, if among all our other sins, this may form the very head and front of our offences.
As can be seen, Easter is not a Christian Festival at all, and should not be celebrated by Christians in any respect. If Christians wish to have a celebration, then they should be celebrating Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which are Biblical Feasts which we have not been told by our Lord or his God (Yahweh) to forsake, and which Rome has removed and substituted for this Idolatrous Pagan Festival.