EASTER

                                     By

                                                               C.

 

Easter, for most of  Christianity, is the observing of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter is always on a Sunday, the first Sunday after the full moon on or after the first day of spring.  It it usually celebrated by sunrise worship services and giving candy eggs and rabbits to children in Easter baskets.  This year Easter falls on Sunday April 5, 2026.  The Passover of the Jews will be on Wednesday April 8, 2026.  

Today the way Christians celebrate Easter is more of a modern development from what first century Christians did. First of all the first century church, at its start, kept the Passover that Jesus instituted at the last supper, and the church was composed completely of Jews because the Gentiles were not yet being called into the church. In order to correctly understand what happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus you have to look at these events through the eyes of a Jew.  This involves understanding of the Jewish practices of the first century. 

In the time of Jesus the days began and ended at sunset, not midnight like today, so when the scriptures refer to the dawn of a day they mean sunset, not sunrise.  A knowledge of the Jewish holy days is required to understand what happened that last week during which Jesus was crucified because it was during these holy days that Jesus was crucified.  An understanding of the history of the Catholic Church contains information about why Passover was changed to Easter in an event called the quartodeciman controversy occurring in the second century AD.  The Eastern Orthodox Church chose to keep the Passover on the 14th day of the first month on the Jewish calendar while the western church at Rome chose to keep Easter.  This decision by the Catholic removed the knowledge to understand just what took place during the last week of the life of Jesus because they completely abandoned all the Jewish teachings and replaced them with the customs of former pagans that joined the Catholic Church.  Have you ever wondered what eggs and rabbits have to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ?  The answer is absolutely nothing. Then overtime much of the original practices of the first century church became lost to western civilization and Christianity. 

If you want to know just what took place in that last week of the life of Jesus then you must think like a Jew living in the first century in Jerusalem.  This is how the people that wrote the Bible, all of them Jewish, thought.  If you are willing to try then consider the following.

In that last week of the life of Jesus there were two sabbaths; an annual sabbath, the first day of unleavened bread, the 15th day, the day after Passover, that was called a high day in John 19:31, then the weekly sabbath, the 17th, when the sunset on Friday, the 16th, until it set again.  That week Passover, which is not a holy day, was on Wednesday the14th and the high day sabbath the next day on the 15th and is the day that the Jews did not want the bodies of the three who were crucified on the Passover to be on their crosses. Therefore Jesus had to be placed in a tomb before sunset, the beginning of the first day of unleavened bread on the 15th.  The only sign Jesus gave that he was the messiah is recorded in Matthew 12:40 that Jesus would be three days and three nights in the tomb. Beginning at Passover near sunset if you count three days and three nights you will arrive at Saturday before sunset. You cannot do this with the modern day Easter because there is no way to have three days and three nights from near sunset Friday to sunrise Sunday, which would only be one day and two nights. This does not fulfill the only sign Jesus gave.

What actually occurred was from a Passover Wednesday crucifixion and burial, that was near to sunset, then the next day Thursday was the high day sabbath of the first day of unleavened bread, followed by the preparation day, Friday, until late on the sabbath day would be three days and three nights. This scenario fulfills the sign Jesus gave.  So the just as the gospel of Matthew reports, “near the end of the sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week the two Mary’s came to the tomb and it was empty”, Jesus had risen near to the end of the weekly sabbath before the women arrived at the tomb. The king James, the American Standard, English Revised, Websters Bible, Youngs Literal, Lamsa Bible, Godbey New Testament and  Worrell New Testament are only a few translations that show a late in the sabbath day resurrection of Jesus. When the word dawn appears in these translations you must remember that days in the time of Jesus were sunset to sunset thus the “dawn” of a new day was at sunset, not midnight.  Do you see what the Catholic Church did by removing the Jewishness of those times that totally changed the facts that occurred during the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ ?  The Catholic Church replaced the true events with pagan practices, the church used pagan forms of worship to worship GOD and Jesus. Deuteronomy 12:29-32 

 ²⁹ The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, ³⁰ and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” ³¹ You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. ³² See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.

 GOD forbids using pagan ways to worship HIM and HIS son.  The law of Moses contained all the holy days of the Jews and they were shadows and symbolism of what Jesus would fulfill in his lifetime.  To understand these holy days is to see how the flow of events transpired in that last week of the life of Jesus.  By doing away with all things Jewish the Catholic Church removed the knowledge required to understand the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Catholic leadership chose to adopt pagan rituals that are still practiced today by many in both Catholic and Protestant Christians.  The only sign Jesus gave that he is our messiah is lost to anyone that is ignorant to the truth and instead keeps Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  In doing this they violate GODS command to not use pagan things to worship HIM or HIS son in Deuteronomy 12:29-32. 

²⁹ The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, ³⁰ and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” ³¹ You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. ³² See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.

Easter is not the only example of using paganism because the custom of Christmas, the immortal soul and the trinity is pagan as well.

GOD ALMIGHTY desires us to worship HIM in spirit and in truth. John 4:23-24 , “in spirit and in truth”, to worship in spirit means you cannot use physical things because the physical is not spirit. This includes using physical time or days, months, seasons or years. Galatians 4:9-11  Paul viewed keeping physical days to worship a GOD who is spirit the wrong thing to do and he feared for the Galatian people.  The true church of GOD keeps no days at all because they view all the days of their lives as holy to GOD who dwells in them, their bodies being the temple of GOD.  GOD does not dwell in churches and temples made by men. Acts 17:24  The true church of GOD does not build temples or churches, does not keep days, worships GOD in spirit and in truth and is taught the truth by GOD through Jesus Christ. John 6:43-45  1 John 2:27   John 14:26   John 16:13   

This article explains how pagan practices like Easter crept into Christianity to the degree that Christianity is no longer Christianity, it is paganism.  This was all predicted to happen by the prophets , Jesus and the Apostles.  Revelation 13:9  2 Timothy 3:1  Matthew 24:12  1 Timothy 4:1  2 Peter 3:3  2 Timothy 4:3 

So I hope you see that Easter is just one of many heresies that Jude describes, Jude 1:3-4  

If you understood this article what will you do ?