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Easter & Paganism

Dr. Stephen Phinney




Christ | Culture | Creator

Easter Upside Wrong


Easter is a day that is honored 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 that includes an “Easter Ham,” decorated eggs, and stories about rabbits. As most of us know, the best part about Easter is chocolate.

 

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 Savior?

This article aims to help answer those questions and help those seeking Truth draw their conclusions.


We must first understand that professing indwelt Christians were not the only ones who celebrated a festival called “Easter.”

 

HERE ARE THE FACTS


The organic origins of Easter reveal some horrific facts that flow directly from ancient paganism. Shortly after the flood, Nimrod reestablished idolatry in the earth. After his death, Nimrod was promoted as the original sun-god by his mother/wife.


Remembering that Nimrod was the grandson of the cursed son of Noah, Ham. The curse didn’t take long to show its ugly head.


Nimrod’s widow, Semiramis, was called the “queen of heaven.” Various cultures continued the idolatry of these original pagans under different names. To the Egyptians, Semiramis was Isis, presently known as the Islamic militant god. To the Babylonians, she was Beltis, counsel to the Babylonian god, Bel. To the Canaanites, she was Astarte. The Assyrians called her Ishtar.


“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. But in reality, “Tammuz” was the illegitimate son of Semiramis by way of adultery.


While Semiramis was alive, she demanded that her son/husband dedicate one day out of a year to require all the workers of the tower of Babel to stop working and worship a statue of herself at the tower’s base. According to Babylonian history, Ishtar, Easter, found great delight in being worshipped as the “queen of heaven” – a goddess of sorts.


The worship of Easter as a goddess involved occult fertility practices. These demonic rituals were practiced even by the Israelites when in apostasy. The God of the Hebrews warned and denounced any Israelite involvement in these pagan celebrations. The God of Israel considered them idolatry and worshipping of God’s greatest enemy, Satan.

 

“Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.” (Jeremiah 7:17-18)

 

While the Israelites forgot the basics of their history, the women were easily seduced by the ideology of goddesses. The same madness method Satan used on Eve to get to Adam was the precise method he used to destroy the men of Israel.

 

And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing.” Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the LORD’S house which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.” (Ezekiel 8:13-14)

 

Few historians refute that Ishtar/Easter became the most powerful Queen of ancient Babylon. Queen Easter also proclaimed that Baal (Satan) would be present on earth in the form of a flame, whether candle or lamp, when used in worship. Because she set herself up as a goddess for Satan, she is considered in history as the great whore of the Old Testament, later referenced in Revelation’s book. Furthermore, she claimed that she was immaculately conceived.


Stay with me; it even gets weirder.


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, later referenced as an Ishtar/Easter egg. Ishtar/Easter soon became pregnant. Further claiming that the rays of the sun-god Baal (Satan) caused her to conceive. Now the weird part, her son was named Tammuz.

The connection to our Easter rabbit. Tammuz was noted to be especially fond of rabbits, and they became sacred in the ancient religion and empire of Babylon. The day came when a wild pig killed Tammuz. Queen Ishtar told the people that Tammuz ascended to his father, Baal (Satan) and that the two demanded to be worshiped through 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 the wild pig killed Tammuz, 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, which later evolved into our modern-day Christmas tree. She also proclaimed forty days of sorrow each year before the anniversary of the death of Tammuz.


This became the sin the Lord addressed with the Israelite women in Ezekiel eight.


The details of this idolized event are sickening. During this time, no meat was to be eaten. Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Baal (Satan) and Tammuz and make the sign of the “T” (for Tammuz) in front of their hearts as they worshiped. They also ate sacred cakes marking a “T” or “cross” on the top.


Every year, a celebration was made on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. It was Ishtar’s Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggs. This teaching also shifted the Holy day of worship, the Sabbath (Saturday), to Sunday – a misnomer that permeated all of Christianity in the latter days.

More ironic, Ishtar also proclaimed that a pig must be eaten on that Sunday because a pig killed Tammuz. Out of this demonic ideation, the Lord established a Law that Jews were not to eat the flesh of pigs, which remains a respected practice to this day by the Jews.


By now, you as a reader should have made the connection that paganism has infiltrated the contemporary “Christian” churches. However, a fact you might not be aware of, deeper studies indicate that this paganism came in by way of the Roman Catholic System. A method to win souls to the Roman state Church was adopting the pagan traditions of ancient Babylon, bringing them into the “church,” and revising the demonic practices with Christianized concepts. The “Queen of Heaven” is the mother of God, Mary, and Ishtar/Easter became the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection versus that of Tammuz. Their efforts proved effective; they cemented these traditions in Christianity, Catholicism, and Protestantism.

 

Easter Has Nothing To Do With Jesus


The Truth is that Easter has nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The date is nowhere close to the actual date of Jesus’s resurrection.


We also know that Easter is “moons” away from the organic Jewish Passover because the pagan holiday is always set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This was most likely one of Satan’s biggest “slight of hands.”


Some have wondered why the word “Easter” is in 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/Ishtar. The Roman State Church quickly adopted this “holy day” as a practice to honor Herod’s tradition but with a demonic bent toward Jesus Christ. The rest is history, as they say.

THE CONCLUSION


So much more could be said, and e have much history provided for us through the prophets of the Old Testament. However, it isn’t easy to stuff 40+ years of studies regarding paganism into one article.


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 Truth.”


Easter is much more than a pagan imposter pretending to be a Holy day for Christians. Satan is lurking behind the pretty face of Easter, covering up the greatest fraud of all time: a calendar change that hides the true day of the resurrection and the true seventh-day Sabbath. God’s entire timeline of humanity and heavenly hosts is based on Sunday being the first day of the workweek. He has mandated to keep the Sabbath Holy, Saturday. What did the clever Antichrist do? He made the Sabbath impotent. If anyone knows that God gave humanity six-thousand years, which is six days to the Lord, and reserved the Sabbath for His one-thousand-year reign, His day of rest, it would be Satan. No wonder Satan wanted to paganize the ordinances of God.

As the years passed and the first authentic Christians died, Satan began to corrupt the once-pure faith through paganism. Honestly, he did a pretty good job. The Church in Rome, greedy and forever power-hungry, sought ways to increase her influence. Satan mastered a single madness method that works every time – revisionism. A theological friend once said He who controls the dictionary controls the masses. No truer statement.

Most are probably thinking, what now? You can do what most do; when in Rome, do as the Romans do, or you can make a stand. When you identify pagan symbols and beliefs – refuse to acknowledge them. As a pastor, I always preach a message on the authentic history of Ishtar’s manipulative plan and then conduct a Passover service for our congregation – an organic Hebrew Messianic celebration of Jesus’s resurrection.

 

WATCH THE TEACHING VIDEO

 

Thank you for reading our Christ, Culture, and Creator article. This entry is from chapter two of my new book, "This Preeminent Darkness, 30 Cultural Movements Rising Against Christianity" - to be released in June, 2022.


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