EASTER
He has risen!!!
He has arose!!!
He has awaken!!!
These and more we will see and hear in a few hours...
But, has anybody taken time to consider what we are celebrating?
On Friday, I was appalled to see how people has turned the "passion of the Christ" into some big joke. People carrying crosses, playing on the streets and laughing...
Is that what the season entails?
Is this an occassion to laugh at, even play with?
yes, some may say... Our Lord Jesus Christ came, saw and conquered... But is it a thing to play with?
Ask an average Christian how we should behave on Easter day, and you'll get a couple of comments bordering on "merriments".
But, is that all there should be to it?
But that is a fatal lie, propagated by the Devil himself... Which is why we see so many sins committed on the "Easter" day.
How then should we view this season?
This is a period of Sober reflection.
We all should be sober.
In fact, that is what Jesus Christ wanted us to do... He never asked us to celebrate his ressurection, rather, his death.
On the night before his death, Christ instituted the memorial of his death, the only event he commanded Christians to comrmorate. At Luke 22:19, 20...
Jesus celebrated that
His Disciples did it (1Corinthians 11:23-26)
Sadly, the so-called Christians today have conveniently ignored that command, and opted for the merriment.
How would you feel if you sacrificed so much to save a friend, and he totally forgot your sacrifice and remembers only their freedom?
What is the truth about Easter?
Easter is Christendom’s chief religious holiday, said to be held in memory of Christ’s being raised from the dead. But did Christ give a command to celebrate his resurrection? No, he did not. History books tell us that Easter was not celebrated by early Christians and that it is based on ancient pagan practices. The Encyclopœdia Britannica says:
“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament. . . . The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.”
Dr. Alexander Hislop says of Easter customs:
“The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean [Babylonian] rites just as they do now.”
The word “Easter” that appears once in the King James Bible at Acts 12:4 is a wrong translation for the word “passover.” “Easter” appears nowhere in the Catholic Douay Bible. Christendom’s chief holiday, Easter, therefore finds no support at all in the Bible. It is of pagan origin, and therefore displeasing to God.


“Taken altogether, the coincidences of [Christmas and Easter] with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. . . . [Clerics] perceived that if Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate which leads to salvation.”—The Golden Bough.
Promoted as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Easter is actually rooted in false religion. The name Easter itself has been linked to Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn and of spring. And how did eggs and rabbits come to be associated with Easter? Eggs “have been prominent as symbols of new life and resurrection,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica, while the hare and the rabbit have long served as symbols of fertility. Easter, therefore, is really a fertility rite thinly disguised as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection.
Would God condone the use of a filthy fertility rite to commemorate his Son’s resurrection? Never! (2 Corinthians 6:17, 18) In fact, the Scriptures neither command nor authorize the commemorating of Jesus’ resurrection in the first place. To do so in the name of Easter, therefore, is to be doubly disloyal

© Godswill

Jesus came to save all.

Godskidk:
Easter is Christendom’s chief religious holiday, said to be held in memory of Christ’s being raised from the dead. But did Christ give a command to celebrate his resurrection? No, he did not. History books tell us that Easter was not celebrated by early Christians and that it is based on ancient pagan practices. The Encyclopœdia Britannica says:
“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament. . . . The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.”

I looked at the Easter article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. These quotes are nowhere to be found in it. Perhaps they are from an earlier edition, but they are not present anymore, making the accuracy of this citation suspect.

It is true the New Testament records no explicit observance of the Easter festival, but it could have easily not been mentioned for brevity's sake; there was little reason to remind people of a celebration if they were already having it. Admittedly, that is speculation. However, we do know that within a century of the apostles, (well before the supposed paganization is normally alleged to have occurred), Easter was being widely celebrated, to the point there were even disputes among Christians as when to celebrate it. In a letter remarking on the controversy in his day (late 2nd-century), the early Christian writer Irenaeus mentions an earlier dispute between Anicetus and Polycarp in the mid 2nd-century regarding the date of celebrating Easter and more importantly, each of those two cited the customs of the Christians that came before them, showing it was celebrated even before then. So within a century of Jesus's resurrection, Easter was being celebrated. Still not early enough for you? Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John and pointed to him as the one he learned his customs from, which if true, would show that the celebration of Easter is of direct apostolic origin!

Even if one disregards this information as not being in the Bible itself, the Bible also gives no statement to not celebrate the anniversary of the Resurrection. So the most the absence of an explicit mention of Easter celebrations in the Bible would mean is that one is free to celebrate or not celebrate it as they choose.

Now we move onto the claims of pagan practices.

Dr. Alexander Hislop says of Easter customs:
“The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean [Babylonian] rites just as they do now.”
The word “Easter” that appears once in the King James Bible at Acts 12:4 is a wrong translation for the word “passover.” “Easter” appears nowhere in the Catholic Douay Bible. Christendom’s chief holiday, Easter, therefore finds no support at all in the Bible. It is of pagan origin, and therefore displeasing to God.

Alexander Hislop's works are riddled errors and modern historians do not take it seriously. In fact, a former proponent of it, Ralph Woodrow, realized upon research how faulty Hislop's claims were that he wrote a book ("The Babylon Connection?" attacking them.

Some of Hislop's errors are not necessarily his fault, as he lived in the 19th century and relied on what are now outdated ideas about pagan religions. But whether it was his fault or not, his work is too out of date and too filled with errors to be of real use as proof of anything.

“Taken altogether, the coincidences of [Christmas and Easter] with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. . . . [Clerics] perceived that if Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate which leads to salvation.”—The Golden Bough.

Much like Hislop, the Golden Bough is not considered particularly reliable; even in its day it received considerable criticism from anthropologists and historians, and things have gotten only worse for it over time. Looking over your quote in fuller context, I notice that many of the "similarities" it cites are downright incorrect or are impossible to verify due to his sources not being given or being too vague to identify.

The fact that old and discredited sources such as Hislop and The Golden Bough must be cited as sources is actually reasonable proof of the invalidity of these claims.

Promoted as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Easter is actually rooted in false religion. The name Easter itself has been linked to Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn and of spring.

This one is an especially bad argument. Let's look at some other languages and how they write Easter:
Italian: Pasqua
French: Pâques
Spanish: Pascua
Portuguese: Páscoa
Dutch: Pasen

Do these sound anything like Eostre? No. English (and to a lesser extent German) are the only major languages where Easter sounds anything like Eostre/Ostara. These languages also did not even exist until centuries after Easter was an established holiday. So even if the word Easter comes from Eostre--which is disputed in itself--it would prove absolutely nothing regarding the celebration of Easter.

And how did eggs and rabbits come to be associated with Easter? Eggs “have been prominent as symbols of new life and resurrection,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica, while the hare and the rabbit have long served as symbols of fertility. Easter, therefore, is really a fertility rite thinly disguised as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

Like earlier, this quote is not currently found in the article for Easter in the Encyclopedia Britannica, at least not the current edition. Let's see what the Encyclopedia Britannica does say:

"The use of painted and decorated Easter eggs was first recorded in the 13th century. The church prohibited the eating of eggs during Holy Week, but chickens continued to lay eggs during that week, and the notion of specially identifying those as “Holy Week” eggs brought about their decoration. The egg itself became a symbol of the Resurrection. Just as Jesus rose from the tomb, the egg symbolizes new life emerging from the eggshell. In the Orthodox tradition eggs are painted red to symbolize the blood Jesus shed on the cross."

According to the source you provided, Easter eggs developed out of a simple practical matter of wanting to do something with the eggs you couldn't eat. It is true that it does not relate directly to the Resurrection directly, but it nevertheless appears to not be of pagan origin. If someone wishes to argue that the idea still didn't first come from Christianity (pre-Christian societies decorated eggs), I would note that pre-Christian societies also engaged in prayer.

As for the Easter bunny, the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say:

"The custom of associating a rabbit or bunny with Easter arose in Protestant areas in Europe in the 17th century but did not become common until the 19th century. The Easter rabbit is said to lay the eggs as well as decorate and hide them. In the United States the Easter rabbit also leaves children baskets with toys and candies on Easter morning. In a way, this was a manifestation of the Protestant rejection of Catholic Easter customs. In some European countries, however, other animals—in Switzerland the cuckoo, in Westphalia the fox—brought the Easter eggs."

So according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which you apparently consider reliable, the Easter bunny arose not from anything pagan like fertility rites, but from Christian (specifically, Protestant) areas.

But even if someone has a problem with Easter eggs or the Easter bunny, all one has to do is simply celebrate Easter without them. I do not utilize them at all. In fact, there are many countries in the world that celebrate Easter with essentially no connection to eggs or rabbits, such as the Central and South American countries.

So I do not find your arguments to be particularly persuasive.