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by haRold Smith
from Jerusalem, Israel
"You shall have no other gods before me." Exodus 20:3
"For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties and all lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you, but they will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead." 1Peter 4:3-5
To understand scripture properly, it becomes imperative to recognize the fundamental approach from which the words on the page were written. Throughout scripture there are three demarcations that remain indisputable separations between all people - Jew-Gentile, slave-free and male-female divides all mankind. All of scripture was written by Hebrew people, from a Hebrew mindset that saw the rest of the world from this perspective of the Hebrew God of Israel. Yeshua even reinforced this perspective in Matthew 18:15-17 (click on highlighted verse to see scripture). We may not think of the traditions we embrace today as being pagan, Gentile in nature, but if they do not line up with this scriptural Hebrew perspective – by definition, they are. see Who's Word).
Some may not even consider what they embrace to be classified as "tradition" (perhaps the reason for "surprise" in 1Peter above?). Yeshua gave us the definition of tradition in Mark 7:13 as that which has been "handed down" to us by others – supposedly, by learned men. So much tradition has been intertwined into what we believe over several millennia that, for most of us, we are not even aware of its existence in our lives or from where it came. Many would be "surprised" to learn that much of what they simply accept as "truth" today comes from a Greek Westernized mindset with its roots in the Council at Nicaea in 325 AD (see My Big Fat Greek Mindset for an explanation of this phenomenon). This was a council of bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia (present-day Iznik in Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine specifically for the purpose of adopting a separate, anti-Semitic, New Pauline Religion which has come to be known as "Christianity" (a quick history search will show this Council to be the foundation for the Catholic Church and subsequent attempts to "reform" it still kept intact the traditions adopted here). This event occurred hundreds of years after the deaths of the Hebrew witnesses to the Resurrection. It was here the tradition of "Easter" was formally adapted for the purpose of making it easier for new Gentile converts to join their ranks with a ritual that was similar to what they had already been acquainted with in other worldly religions.
Easter has become one of several traditions celebrated as "Christian" whose roots can be historically traced to ancient pagan rites. The actual origin of Easter dates back to not long after the global flood recorded in Genesis 6-9. Nimrod, a grandson of Noah, had turned from following his grandfather's God and had become a tyrannical ruler, believing the original clothing of animal skins of Adam he had acquired through thievery elevated him to godlike status. According to the biblical record, as king, Nimrod created Babel (in which came the infamous tower - Genesis 11:1-9), Nineveh, Asshur, Calla and other cities, all known for lifestyles that promoted unspeakable evil and perversion. When Nimrod died, his wife, Queen Semiramis, deified him as the Sun-god, or Life Giver which later would become known as Baal, the Great Life Giver, the god of fire, Baalim, Bel, Molech, etc. and those who followed the religion Semiramis created in his name would be called Baal worshippers. They became associated with idolatry, demon worship, child sacrifice and other evil practices.
The origin of Easter involves the birth of Semiramis' illegitimate son, Tammuz. Somehow, Semiramis convinced the people that Tammuz was actually Nimrod reborn. Since the people had been looking for the promised savior since Adam
(see Genesis 3:15),
they were persuaded by Semiramis to believe that Tammuz was that savior, even that he had been supernaturally conceived. Before long, in addition to worshipping Tammuz (or Nimrod reborn), the people also worshipped Semiramis herself as the goddess of fertility. In other cultures, she has been called Ishtar, Ashtur and yes, Easter - going back to the springtime ritual instituted by Semiramis following the death of Tammuz (who, according to tradition, was killed by a wild boar). Legend has it that through the power of his mother's tears, Tammuz was "resurrected" in the form of new vegetation that appeared on the earth. Because of their prolific nature, rabbits have long been associated with fertility and the goddess Ishtar, thus contemporary traditions such as the Easter Bunny and the Easter egg can also be traced back to the practices of ancient Babylonia established by Semiramis, the original Madonna, still worshipped today in Iraq.
Seeking to distance themselves from their Jewish heritage so as to become politically aligned with the Roman empire that was heavily persecuting Jews at the time and to make "Christianity" more palpable to the increasingly non-Jewish believers of the world, the pagan rites of Easter were embraced by the Council of Nicaea, given a "Christian face-lift" and became assimilated into what this new "Christian" religion now refers to as "Easter." Separating from and compromising the commandments of God with the comfort of the world is as old as the tower of Babel. To give ourselves to the rites of Easter is to worship the pagan god of the Gentiles – not the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To say, "Well, I don't worship an idol. I am really just worshipping Jesus in my heart. After all, outward appearances don't mean anything" is to say to the God of Creation that you know better than He about what it means to worship something. Yeshua repeated what the Father originally said that what we serve, what we give ourselves to, IS what we worship (Matthew 4:10, Deuteronomy 11:16). The Easter "sunrise" ritual is directly associated with this pagan worship of the sun-god, Baal. The reality of the Jewish Yeshua's Resurrection actually occurred at night, just after sundown.
While pagans celebrate the rites of spring, calling it "Easter", the Jews celebrate Passover, the anniversary of the day the God of Israel delivered them out of Egyptian bondage. YHVH had demanded the firstborn male from every household as a judgment upon the Egyptian gods (Exodus 12:12), but had promised to "pass over" any house with the blood of a perfect lamb smeared on its doorpost. He then commanded a remembrance of this deliverance with the Passover memorial at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Pesach is the Hebrew word for Passover. It was on Pesach Yeshua became that perfect lamb by spilling His Uncorrupted Blood to fulfill the Covenant of bringing life out of death promised by the Father. To appropriate the Blood of the Jewish Lamb over the doorposts of our life means to separate ourselves from the worship and bondage of the false gods of the Gentile world.
The biggest problem we have with the pagan rite of Easter is that, in distancing itself from the Jewish origin, it obliterates the Truth of the Resurrection. Yeshua said the only sign given to validate His anointing would be the sign of Jonah who was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:38-40). Easter's ritual reduces that time to two days and two nights – from Good Friday to sunrise Easter Sunday morning.
Many reason "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" doesn't require a literal span of 72 hours. They speculate that any part of a day can be interpreted as a whole day. But the sign Yeshua referred to
(Jonah 1:17
specifically states that "Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." We have no biblical basis for thinking that Yeshua meant anything differently. If He was in the tomb only partially from what was written, then the sign He gave that He was the prophesied Messiah wasn't fulfilled. Three days and three nights mean what it says – three literal days and three literal nights. If we can't believe Yeshua meant what He said, then everything else He said becomes suspect. How, then, can it be emphatically stated (through celebration as Truth today) that the Resurrection was re-engineered to occur on a Sunday after having only been buried on a Friday?
So which is it? Is something wrong with Yeshua's words, or is it with tradition made of men? The fundamental problem most theologians have with the time frame Yeshua presents is that they are approaching scripture from a Westernized "Christian" mentality instead of from a Hebrew mindset (there were no "Christians" at the Resurrection). To begin with, there are no names for the days of the week in the Tenakh (the Original Books). In Hebrew, they are simply referred to as the first day, the second day, etc. All of the names in the Bible employed for days of the week are approached from the standpoint of Sunday being the first day of the week on the Gregorian/Julian calendar which was not invented until hundreds of years after the Resurrection of Yeshua. Even though, modern Jewish rabbis have embraced this calendar for convenience, that tradition does not negate the fact that the Hebrew first day of the week is the first day after the seventh day of rest, the Sabbath - regardless of where that Sabbath fell in any man-made calendar week.
The "Last Supper" referred to in Christianity was actually a Hebrew Pesach (Passover), the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These feasts are referred to in scripture as "High Sabbaths" but even in Jewish tradition they are mischaracterized - not so named in the original Hebrew. The feasts are listed in (Leviticus 23:1-8) as mikris, convocations - not Sabbaths. That they were considered "high holy days" and to be treated with the same respect as the Sabbath is true, but nowhere in scripture are they found to be equated with Shabbat. Passover, listed in that same scripture in Leviticus 23 is a mikra - not a Shabbat, a marking of clear difference. Leviticus 23:9-14 makes it clear that the Feast of First Fruit (where the barley sheaves are waved) is to be offered on the day after a Shabbat - not a mikra, or convocation. By equating the two, it makes this scripture sound as though they have to be held as back to back events while the original language indicates that is not the case at all.
"Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight (the Hebrew reads between the two evenings)." (Exodus 12:5-6).
Scripture tells us that six days before the Passover, Yeshua came to Bethany
(John 12:1).
The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Yeshua was coming to Jerusalem (only 2 miles from Bethany), took branches of palm trees & went out to greet Him
(John 12:12-13).
This is the day they received Him as the Lamb, thus fulfilling
Exodus 12:3
which expressly states that the lamb to be sacrificed on Pesach (Passover) is to be gathered on the 10th of Nisan by each family and prepared for the sacrifice. The Day of Preparation has nothing to do with the tradition of cleaning the leaven from houses, but with the slaughtering and preparation of the of the lamb to be eaten (it takes a while for it to bleed out and then to grill it) at twilight (or between the two evenings) of the 14th. Hebrew days begin at sunset, (from creation in Genesis, "there was evening and morning, the first day"). The lambs were not slaughtered in the physical confines of the Temple but by each family at their home at twilight to be completely eaten that night along with unleavened bread. This is how Yeshua was able to eat the Passover Seder (meal) the evening prior to His sacrifice.
Joshua 5:10
also bears witness to this fact.
"Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Yeshua" (Matthew 27:57). This was the man who had the tomb in which the body of Yeshua was laid: "So there they laid Yeshua, because of the Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby (John 19:42). Because it was the Preparation Day, the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day) (John 19:31). On the 15th day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to YHWH; 7 days you must eat unleavened bread. On the 1st day you shall have a holy convocation (mikra); you shall do no customary (servile) work on it." (Leviticus 23:6-7).
When scripture says He died at the ninth hour, that would be the evening of the 14th and His Body was placed in the sepulcher that same day, before sunset on the 14th. Luke 23:55-57 tells us that the women, after seeing Yeshua's body being laid in the tomb just before sundown, "returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." The term according to the commandment demands that there is to be a day in which to prepare the spices and ointments before resting on the Sabbath because "doing no servile work" on high holy days or on the Sabbath is what is commanded.
John 19:39-40 tells us, "And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury." The spices used in a Jewish burial were never used sparingly and the larger the amount the higher token of respect was given. The treatise known as Semahot or Ebel Rabbati states that no less than eighty pounds of spices were used at the funeral of Rabbi Gamaliel.
My good friend, Bethel, tells me there isn't a caring woman, then or now, after watching men prepare the precious Body of Yeshua in haste (because the next convocation beginning at sunset was quickly approaching) that would have thought that preparation to have been done properly. So, those women would have felt the necessity to return and "do it right" as soon as they could (thus a second preparation of spices for the Body of Christ). A hundred pounds of spices is not something thrown together in a few minutes nor is it something just kept laying around the house. The purchasing and preparation of those spices would not have been allowed on the day of a mikra (holy convocation) nor on a Shabbat (Sabbath) because it would have been considered 'servile' work. Given that the preparation of a large quantity of those spices required some formidable time to acquire and accomplish necessitated a day in between the end of the first day of Unleavened Bread and the beginning of the weekly Sabbath that the commandment of doing no servile work on those days might be observed. Luke 24:1 says it was early in the morning of the first day of the week (that would be the day after a Sabbath) that they returned to "the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them" and found Him to be risen on the day of First Fruit (the day after a Sabbath, a Shabbat - Leviticus 23:11).
Mary found Him in the garden. Thinking Him to be a gardener, she asked what He had done with her Master
(John 20:15).
Why did she think Him to be a gardener? Our Westernized concept of gardens would be of rose bushes and pretty flowers. Never would we consider it to be a plantation garden cultivated by the wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathea, where, as a Priest, Yeshua was quietly gathering barley sheaves to be waved before the throne of the Father, thus fulfilling all requirements of the First Fruit. His hands being full of barley sheaves, Mary thought Him to be a gatherer of the garden produce, preparing for the next feast.
The Chronology of Yeshua's Crucifixion & Resurrection
Yeshua, became our Passover sacrifice, having been slain on the eve of the 14th of Nisan according to scriptural requirements, has had His Body prepared and laid in the tomb before sunset.
First Day - the 15th, the evening and morning of the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, a high, holy convocation (a mikra) treated like a Sabbath but not a Shabbat. This is the first night and first day.
Second Day - the 16th, the evening and morning of the second day of the seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread (not a high day to be treated like a Sabbath) so that the spices and ointments thought to be needed for a second anointing of Yeshua's Body can be prepared 'according to the commandment' that no servile work be done on either a mikra or a Shabbat. This is the second night and second day.
Third Day - the 17th, the evening and morning of the weekly Sabbath (where it fell in relation to the other Westernized named days of the week is not relevant - it could have been on a Wednesday - we don't know and it doesn't matter) in which entering into His Rest is commanded for all. This is now the third night and the third day.
Fourth Day - the 18th, Yeshua arose from the grave early in the morning of the first day of the week (at sundown after the Sabbath ended), the day of the waving of the barley sheaves to become the First Fruit (also the day after a Sabbath).
To celebrate His Resurrection in Truth is to celebrate Pesach (Passover). To celebrate some pagan ritual simply because it has become the worldly popular thing to do is to celebrate a lie – the antithesis of the Truth. What we serve, what we give ourselves to, what we subject our children to - IS what we worship (read more about Pesach).
| "You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who despise me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." Exodus 20:4-6 |