‘Roughly 3,000 Saddleback volunteers are needed to pull off 32 Easter services at five locations. The services, all with a live or video message preached by Warren, are expected to draw 45,000 members and visitors. The services began Thursday evening and continue today and Saturday. Easter Sunday also marks the launch of two new regional campuses, in Irvine and Corona, and a first-ever sunrise service in Coto de Caza. Erik Rees, pastor of community relations, says volunteers will keep the bathrooms stocked with paper towels, mow the lawns and administer first aid if anyone trips or feels faint.’
‘Life Christian Church is host of North San Diego County’s largest and most successful Easter Egg Hunt and Easter Celebration Service. Our 50,000 colorful candy-filled plastic egg hunt is located at our new beautiful and spacious facility located at 1132 N. Melrose Drive, in Vista.’
‘A community Easter Egg Hunt will be held at LaVale Baptist Church on Saturday, April 16th from 1:00-3:00pm. Children toddler through age 12 are invited to hunt for candy filled eggs, make a craft, hear the Easter Story with “Resurrection Eggs and enjoy refreshments. The church is located at 1115 National Highway next to the State Police Barracks.’
‘Thousands of eggs will be dropped from a plane to join thousands more already on the ground at the community wide Egg Drop on Sunday, April 17, at University Business Plaza northwest McKinney.
The event, sponsored by Stepping Stones Church, is for kids ages 12 and under and will feature a live DJ, bounce houses, games, face painting, food and prize drawings.
Jeff Nyberg, Ph.D., pastor of Stepping Stones said, “This unique event promises to be fun for the whole family. Preschoolers and younger children love just about any kind of egg hunt. But older kids and parents alike will get excited about eggs falling from the sky. Our church is all about family so our door prizes include a deluxe car detail for Dad and $100 bills for moms and other cash prizes for the kids.”’
At the Council of Nicaea in 325, all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox.
However, today, Easter is movable, as it is observed on the first Sunday after the full moon of the spring equinox, that is, between March 22 and April 25.
Jer 10:2-3 Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain:
CELEBRATING ASTARTE?!…
The word “Easter” is a more modern form of Eostre, Ostera, Astarte, or Ishtar; all being different countries’ names of the very same Semiramus, or Ashtoreth; the mother/wife of Nimrod.
Gn 10:8,9 states: 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. This worship of the goddess Ashtoreth was sharply rebuked by the Lord in 1Sa 7:3, 1Ki 11:5,33; 2Ki 23:13; Jer 7:18, and 44:18: 1 Sam 7:3 And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.
At the center of the pagan festival of Easter was Astarte, the female deity. She is known in the Bible as the “queen of heaven”. She is also known as Mother Nature, the fertility goddess, and is also called Semiramus. The festival of Astarte (Easter) involved a celebration of reproduction. For this reason the common symbols of Easter festivities were the rabbit (Playboy symbol) and the egg. Astarte was the mother of Tammuz who was also her husband!
When Tammuz died she followed him to the underworld where she pleaded with the queen of the dead to sprinkle them both with the “water of life” so they could return into the light of the sun for six months, repeating this every year. Thus, the goddess of spring, Astarte or Easter, is responsible for the resurrection of Tammuz, the Sun god. These perverted rituals would take place at sunrise on Easter morning.
Because Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead in the Spring of the year, it was not to difficult for the pseudo-Christians of those days to incorporate the longstanding practice of Easter observances into their system of beliefs…just Christianizing it all to make it seemingly acceptable. The Catholic teaching on Mariolatry is heavily based upon Semiramus! Mary took on the role of Astarte and her son Jesus would take the role of Tammuz (blasphemy!).
Jer 7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched. (see also Jer 44:18+)
Ezek 8:14-15 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
EASTER MISTRANSLATION?
The pagan holiday of “Easter” had been widely practiced by Christians since the 4th and 5th centuries. They simply took the pagan practices of long ago and applied them to their belief system involving the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was evident in many of the Bible translations of the distant past. When Tyndale began translating the Bible he was faced with the popular translation of the word pascha as “Easter” in 19 instances of the New Testament and 22 instances of the Old Testament. Tyndale departed from the commonly (mis)translated term of Easter and used a new term for all these instances …. ”passover”; but there was one instance of these 41 where he would not change ‘Easter’ to passover, and that was in Acts 12:4.
ACTS 12:1 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. 2 And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.) 4 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.
The King James version relied heavily upon Tyndale’s NT translation; the KJV rightly translated Acts 12:4 “pascha” as Easter. It is the only use of the word in our Bible (and never occurs in any other Bible version), and this KJV Bible is greatly attacked because of its rendering there in Acts 12. But, this is the exact location in Scripture where “Easter” must be used to differentiate it from “Passover”. In Nu 28:16,17 it states: And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the LORD. And in the fifteenth day of this month is the feast: seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten. Here we read that “the passover” is on the 14th day of the month Nissan and on the 15th day begins the feast of unleavened bread. Thus, the Passover occurred before the feast of unleavened bread, not after! So, in Acts 12 we notice that Herod put Peter in prison during the days of unleavened bread, and therefore after the Passover. The pagan festival of Astarte (Easter) would begin shortly after this Jewish feast of unleavened bread. Herod was evidently waiting for the celebration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz, the Sun god to pass before turning over Peter to be executed. Herod was not a Christian, but a devout pagan; and thus he would surely be honoring the pagan goddess Astarte rather than the Jewish God of the Bible and the proscribed observance of Passover and its 7 days of unleavened bread.
Your KJV Bible is exactly right here in Acts 12 concerning using the word ‘Easter’, and every other version is totally in error!
FISH on FRIDAY:
Certainly, the Scriptures never associate fish with Friday. The word Friday comes from “Freya” which is the goddess of fertility amongst the pagans. The fish is another symbol of fertility with the pagans.
The Roman goddess of sexual fertility was called Venus. Friday was regarded as her sacred day, and the fish was also sacred to her worship.
In ancient Egypt, the goddess Isis was often represented with a fish on her head. Isis is akin to Ashtoreth of the Israelites idol worship. The pope will wear his mitre which has its custom in honoring the fish god “Dagon”; the mitre being in the form of a fish.
Roman Catholicism teaches that Friday is a day of abstinence from meats except for fish, which is celebrated in their meals.
SUNRISE SERVICES
John 20:1-2 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.
Pagans have honored the Sun god (Tammuz, Rah, Baal, etc) with a “sunrise” celebration on or near their holiday of Easter. These are demonic entities. It is still typical for pagans to worship the “Rising Sun” and the “House of the Rising Sun.” Catholics and Protestants alike are technically involved with the same practice!
The Jews during the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel had blended sun worship with the worship of God, as we can see in the Scriptural references in regard to the “queen of heaven.” Ezekiel 8:15-16 talks about men standing with their backs to the Temple of God, facing the east and worshipping the sun. Albert Pike wrote that all pagan religions worshipped the sun. Whether they knew it, or not, they were actually worshiping Satan, because, as an angel, he was known as Lucifer, or the “bearer of light.” (www.remnantofgod.org)
Gal 4:9-11 But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
EASTER EGGS
On Easter Monday, some countries practice Easter egg rolling, purportedly symbolic of the rolling away of the stone from Christ’s grave.
“The President and First Lady announced today that this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll will be held on Monday, April 25, 2011 with the theme of “Get Up and Go!” promoting health and wellness. The event will feature live music, sports courts, cooking stations, storytelling and, of course, Easter egg rolling. All of the activities will encourage children to lead healthy and active lives and follow the First Lady’s Let’s Move! initiative, a national campaign to combat childhood obesity. The White House will open its South Lawn for children aged 12 years and younger and their families.” (www.whitehouse.gov)
Easter eggs have their origin amongst ancient pagan Babylonians, who believed that an enormous egg fell from Heaven into the Euphrates River, and the goddess Astarte (aka Venus, Semiramus) was hatched out of it in early Spring. The ancient Druids, and many other peoples, adopted this pagan myth, and the Easter egg developed to what we see today…brightly colored eggs used in festivals associated with Easter. The egg, of course, symbolizes fertility too.
Pope Gregory (590-604), forbad the followers of the Catholic Church to eat eggs during Lent, so they became a treat at Easter. The people in Poland said that the Virgin Mary dyed eggs in various colors for Jesus to play with when He was a child. The Ukrainians incorporated blue dots in the design of their eggs, which they say represent the tears of Mary. They believe she took a basket of colored eggs to Pontius Pilate as a gift, in hopes of convincing him to have mercy on Jesus. As she was making them, she began crying and the tears fell on the shells, making the dots.
“A serpent with an egg in his mouth was a symbol of the universe containing within itself the germ of all things that the sun develops. The property possessed by the serpent, of casting its skin, and apparently renewing its youth, made it an emblem of eternity and immortality.” Thus, we see an indication that the egg initially represented serpent worship, and, by extension, Satan worship. – Albert Pike, an Illuminati member (www.remnantofgod.org)
EAST
The goddess of spring, Astarte etc, was to come out of her egg every spring as the sun would rise in the East…and thus another significance for the term East-er.
EASTER BUNNY
As with the egg, the Easter bunny came about in later centuries, representing the pagan symbol of fertility.
There are many symbols of sexual significance among the ancient pagans. Their religion was based upon sexual exploitation; just like we see present day Satanism. Sexual power mixed with pagan god worship is nothing more than Satanism. But, they went a step more wicked, and married true Christianity with their practices to now give us even more dangerous and deceiving practices.
To begin with, it is actually the hare, and not the rabbit which is Easter’s main character, because according to ancient tradition, the hare was a symbolic representation for the Moon, since they only came out at night to eat. Also, the Egyptian name for the hare was “Un” (which means “open”), because they are born with their eyes open, while a rabbit’s are not. Legend has it, that the hare never blinks or closes it eyes. To some pagan cultures, the Moon was the “open-eyed watcher of the skies.” The hare is associated with the goddess Ishtar, and was the symbol of fertility because they reproduce so quickly.
(www.remnantofgod.org)
EASTER LILLIES
The so-called ‘Easter lily’ has long been revered by pagans of various lands as a holy symbol associated with the reproductive organs. (www.remnantofgod.org)
EASTER CLOTHING
Everyone knows that Easter is the day that everyone has to wear their new Easter clothing. This mentality stems from the pagan tradition that it was unlucky not to wear some sort of new clothing or personal adornment, because it symbolically signified the end of the old, and the beginning of the new. -Controlled by the Calendar p 49
HOT CROSS BUNS
The “Hot Cross Buns” of Good Friday originated from 1500 BC where they were a sacred species of bread offered to the goddess of Heaven…Astarte, or Easter. In Jeremiah 7:18 we see the 1 of 4 references to the “queen of heaven” , and it is involving idolatry and the pagan practice of offering bread, or cakes: Jer 7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
They would eat these sacred cakes with the marking of a “T” (Tammuz) or a cross (Christianized) on the top. Astarte 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; just like the Catholics do today with the ‘sign of the cross’!
Matt 15:8-9 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
LENTEN SEASON
Legend states that Tammuz was killed when he was 40 years old and the ancient peoples began to “weep for Tammuz” 40 days, a day for each year he was old, hoping that Tammuz would resurrect again, and the “spring” to begin each year.
‘A forty-day abstinence period was anciently observed in honor of the pagan gods Osiris, Adonis and Tammuz’ (John Landseer, Sabaean Researches, pp. 111, 112).
“The forty days abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent of forty days, in the spring of the year, is still observed by the Yezidis or Pagan Devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians. Such a Lent of forty days was held in spring by the Pagan Mexicans…Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt…” -Alexander Hislops, The Two Babylons, p. 104-105
Romanism took this 40 day period and married it with their Christianized pagan religion and applied it to 40 days before their stated time of Christ’s resurrection (Sunday). Ezekiel 8:12-14 explains this weeping for Tammuz as abomination: Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.
Rome required all peoples to observe both Lent and Easter; ancient Baptists were persecuted to great length for not observing these. Those Baptists had 2 major reasons for being put to death: not honoring infant baptism, and not observing Easter!! How would you do as a Baptist back then?!
“Today, Lent is the 40-day period of fasting before Easter. The word “lent” comes from the Anglo Saxon word leneten, which means springtime. In the context of the Easter season, these days commemorate Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness immediately following His baptism. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and closes on the Saturday before Easter Sunday.
Shrove Tuesday, also known as Fat Tuesday or Mardi gras, culminates the final Carnival-season days before Ash Wednesday. It is the last big fling of riotous behavior before the Lenten period of so-called sackcloth and ashes. If you’ve ever observed on television the Mardi gras celebration in New Orleans, you have to wonder how such drunkenness, nakedness, and general lewdness could ever be deemed part of the worship of God.
On Ash Wednesday, Catholics gather for mass, and the priest marks their foreheads with ashes from palms burned on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. These ashes remind participants that man’s end is to return to the dust from which he was created and signifies the need for repentance, as is represented in the sackcloth-and-ashes mourning under the old law. Observance of this day dates from the eighth century.
The final Lenten-season event is Holy Week, also known as Passion Week. During this week, participants observe four special days–Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. This week immediately precedes Easter Sunday. The Holy-Week events are designed to commemorate Jesus’ suffering and the events immediately preceding His crucifixion. Maundy Thursday commemorates Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion and death of Christ. Many churches conduct quiet services from noon until three (called Tre Ore, or “Three Hours”), focusing on the events of the crucifixion and the words of Christ from the cross.
And Holy Saturday focuses on the time Jesus was in the grave.”
It may seem reasonable to Christianize pagan customs and still give glory to God. But, we would do well to take heed to Deut 12:28-32: Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD thy God. When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
Eph 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
2 Cor 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,…
Are you a Christian, or a pagan?….