A Bible lesson on paganism in the church

Sargo’s Surprise

A candid discussion with an ancient Babylonian

Sargo, the Babylonian, lounges by the Hanging Gardens, day­dreaming of the far distant future. What will the 21stcentury be like, he wonders. “What if I could go to those future lands spoken of in the legends, to see how people live 4,000 years from now?” he fantasizes,chomping on a pork chop.

“Will the great god Bel have allowed the people to be powerful? Will Earth Mother Beltis have protected them through the years, and will Ishtar have blessed them with many children to sacri­fice? Or will future faiths have forgotten our Babylonian beliefs?”

No, Sargo, you would be pleasantly surprised to know that were you alive today you would not feel all that uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the state of religion in the 21st century. In fact, you may even be moved tell the modern church­goer, “You worship much like I do.”

Sargo, your Babylonian beliefs have become the standard for nearly all the world’s religions. They are evident the world over in a wide variety of religions and practices.

Hindus practice it, still keeping your sacred cow sacred, and still honoring the Trin­ity – except they changed the names to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. They haven’t lightened up on your belief in immortality of the soul, either, just gave it their own spin in the wheel of samsara.

Your story of Nimrod and Tammuz taught them well. In fact, the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation is a hot item in parts of Europe and America. It’s called New Age. I know, Sargo, it is not new. I realize they should give credit where credit is due. After all, you Babylonians are the true masters of all things heathen.

The fastest growing religion today is Islam. It was started by a man, just as Nimrod founded your faith, Sargo. Mohammed gleaned many of his be­liefs from Judaism and another religion called Christianity. You’ll find essentials of your revered Babylonian mys­teries in these religions as well.

Your notion of a gloomy, dark world where evil people go at death and burn forever still is very much alive. Here again lives that immortal soul idea you are so famous for. Your faith in many deities has an outlet in some faiths today with their venera­tion of saints.

Sargo Would Be Very Comfortable

What day is it? you ask. This is Mon­day, Sargo. You get it? Mon-day/Moon Day, the day your forefathers set aside for moon worship. It still comes right af­ter Sunday, the day your ancients wor­shiped the sun-god Shamas.

All the other days of the week still reflect heathen worship, like Tuesday, the day the deity Tiu was hon­ored. And Wednesday, named after Woden, a Celtic deity who came later in Europe. Then there’s Thor’s day (Thursday), Frigg’s day (Friday), and of course, Saturn’s day (Saturday).

No, Sargo, most people today don’t worship the planets as you Babylonians did, but they do read horoscopes where they seek their futures from the stars – in the same manner your fathers did.

Fortune-telling by the stars is so popular today that even a former First Lady consulted an astrologer before advising her husband.

I believe in the Bible. The Bible con­demns prophesying through the stars.

And the Bible doesn’t name the days of the week either, it only numbers them, except for the seventh, which is called the Sabbath.

What’s the Bible, you ask? It’s the Book inspired by the true Almighty Yahweh and on which Christianity is claimed to be based. Christianity is a major religion that has spread around the world. Its worshipers claim to wor­ship the true Heavenly Father.

You may be surprised that they call Him God. Yes, that’s right. It’s not a name. And I agree that it is rather odd that Christianity seems to be the only major religion in all of history that doesn’t honor the One it worships by name.

Pardon me? …Oh of course, their Mighty One does indeed want to be called by His Name, just as you do yours. He said over and over in His inspired Word that His Name is Yahweh, and even sealed it in the Third Commandment. But THEY don’t think it is important.They say, “He knows who I mean.”

I agree, it IS very strange – and very confusing. But there are many as­pects about this faith that you would find familiar, Sargo.

For instance, if you could see its temples, called churches, you would recognize the tall spires most of them have … Yes, you’re right. They are a carryover of the Asherah you had in Babylon. This is what a scholar says about the asherah:

“Originally a tree, symbolical of the ‘tree of life,’ it was an object of rever­ence and veneration. Then came the perversion of the earlier idea which simply honoured the origin of life; and it was corrupted and debased into the [male] organ of procreation, which was symbolized by the form and shape given to the Asherah. It was the phal­lus image of Isaiah 57:8, and the im­age of the male, Ezekiel 16: 17.” (Com­panion Bible, Appendix 42)

Babylonian Days Prosper

This religion worships on the venerable day of the sun, just as you and your forefathers did, Sargo, when you wor­shiped sun deities. Strangely, their own Bibles command that they worship on the seventh day, not the first day of the week (Ex. 20:10). But because they wanted to break clean from another faith known as Judaism, they decided on their own to change their day of worship.

They chose Sunday because that is the day their converts from pagan Babylonian religions were accustomed to keeping holy. A king even enforced it. His name was Constantine. And they have been observing Sunday ever since.

But there is much more.

They observe a holiday each year in honor of your goddess Ishtar. It still sounds similar: Easter. Many of them even are aware that Ishtar was the Babylonian queen deity of love and fer­tility, yet they still paint and hide eggs, symbols of life and reproduction, and flood this observance with rabbits, also symbols of fertility.

They claim they observe it because the Savior was resurrected on Sunday morning, although Scripture says He was already gone by the time Sunday sunrise rolled around. Anyway, they still honor where this obser­vance really comes from – with your now symbolic rabbits and eggs.

You Babylonians certainly were big on worship of sex. But is that something to be proud of, Sargo? The big paradox is that the Bible condemns mixing these rites with True Worship. “Learn not the way of the heathen,” Jeremiah 10:2 reads, but they continue practicing your pagan traditions of worship anyway. They cite something about do­ing it for the children’s sake.

In Ezekiel, the One they seek to worship says He will have no mercy on those who practice sunrise worship rites:

“And He brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about 25 men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east: and they worshiped the sun toward the east… and they put the branch [asherah] to their nose… Therefore shall I deal in fury…” (8:16- 18)

Modern Holly Folly

Amazing, isn’t it, how all these rites of your influential heathen faith are so entrenched in today’s worship? But I’ve barely scratched the surface, Sargo. Where your religion really shines today is in the annual extravaganza called Christ­mas.

The biggest promoters are the merchants, who have kept this observance alive and growing in order to reach their annual sales quota. They claim to make half of their annual sales in the last two months of the year before Christmas, when gifts are exchanged and people go into debt for the next year. So they start Christ­mas advertising in September.

The Bible prophesies that the mer­chants of the earth will “have waxed rich through the abundance of her [Babylon’s] delicacies,”Revelation 18:3. Amazingly accurate, isn’t it? Never so accurate as in this the biggest shopping extravaganza the world has ever seen.

You’ll be more amazed at how Christmas rites are so very like those in ancient Babylon.

Some practices may have changed cosmetically through the years as they left Babylon and diffused through the Mithraic cults and into northern Eu­rope, but the essence still shines through.

For instance, you know about the myth of Nimrod, symbolized by a tree, and how he became deified and was “reincarnated” after being cut down. Well, the fable is still celebrated in De­cember with a yule log. At Xmas the burning log represents the glowing sun­ god Mithras returning to the skies af­ter the winter solstice.

In Egyptian worship Nimrod reap­peared as the palm tree. In Rome and northern Europe he was the fir or evergreen that is always green and seemingly immortal.

One source put it this way, “Now the Yule Log is the dead stock of Nimrod, deified as the sun-god, but cut down by his enemies; the Christmas tree is Nimrod redivivus – the slain god cometo life again,” The Two Babylons, p. 98. It continues, “This entirely accounts for the putting of the Yule Log into the fire on Christmas-eve, and the appearance of the Christmas-tree the next morning,” p. 97.

You pagans were always quite con­cerned when your source of life, the sun, appeared less and less each day at the end of the year. At the winter sol­stice, about December 25, you cel­ebrated the return of the unconquered sun as it made its cyclical appearance once more and promised springtime re­newal of life from the dead of winter.

In honor of the solar deity, even though they may not realize it, people at Christmas today decorate their ever­green trees with bulbs and balls sym­bolic of the returning sun, as well as to honor the renewal of life. Then they stand back and virtually worship this tree idol, placing gift offerings beneath it.

Yes, Sargo, without hesitation you could say that Christmas is indeed a gift from you sun-worshiping Babylonians. Some people today still claim December 25 is the day the Savior was born,but many know bet­ter.

In her book, All About American Holidays, Maymie R. Krythe writes, “The exact date of [the Messiah’s] birth is not known; and during the first two or three centuries little note, apparently,was taken of the anniversary. For church officials opposed such celebra­tions as savoring of paganism,” p. 254.

Early American colonists detested the Christmas observance, realizing its true origins. Associated Press writer Peter Coy writes, “Celebrating Christmas in Mas­sachusetts three centuries ago was risky: Anyone who took the day off from work could be fined 5 shillings. When George Washington crossed the Delaware River the night of Dec. 25, 1776, he could count on catching the Hessian soldiers drunk and sound asleep after a day of carousing. But, for Washington’s men, Christmas was just another day. And it wasn’t until 1836 that the first state – Alabama – de­clared Christmas a holiday.”

Christmas is also rooted in the Ro­man Saturnalia, a sister heathen festival in honor of Saturn, deity of agriculture. According to Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Refer­ence Encyclopedia, “The customs of the Saturnalia were later, in Christian times, blended with those on January 1, the celebration of the New Year, when it was also the practice to give presents, and much of the traditional merrymak­ing of the Christmas season seems to have developed from the earlier pagan festival,” Saturnalia, p. 7825.

Passing on the Mysteries?

You see, Sargo, other cultures also borrowed from your mysteries, and ours borrowed from and built on theirs as well as yours. The Roman counterpart to your Tammuz was Mithras, the sun deity. He supposedly hatched from an egg on De­cember 25.

Because Mithraism was one of the last of your mystery cults to reach the West, it became a rival of Christianity, with which it was contemporary. Many of the practices of Mithraism were picked up by Christian worshipers.

The book, The Golden Bough, says about the blending of Mithraic rites with Christmas nativity customs, “In the Julian Calendar the twenty-fifth of De­cember was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the sun, because the day begins tolengthen and the power of the sun to in­crease that turning point of the year. Now Mithras was regularly identified by his worshipers with the Sun, the Uncon­quered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December,” p. 416.

What is the harm in observing holidays your forefathers began? you ask. Well, Sargo, your pagan back­ground allows for the worship of nu­merous “gods.” Naturally, these “gods” don’t mind sharing your worship be­cause they don’t exist.

But Almighty Yahweh does exist, and because of Him you exist. He says that if you seek salvation – to live for­ever in His Kingdom – then you must obey and worship only Him.

Here are His exact words: “I am Yahweh: that is My Name: and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images,” Isaiah 42:8. He also said through the Apostle Paul, “Take heed unto yourself, and unto the doctrine: continue in them: for in doing this you shall both save yourself, and them that hear you,” 1Timothy 4:16.

We can’t compromise True Wor­ship, Sargo. The Roman Empire toler­ated many different religions because they did not understand truth, and what they were really after anyway was political unity. So they forfeited truth whenever expedient to appease their subjects. And compromise is what began the fall of man in Eden.

You see, being a follower of the one true Mighty One Yahweh means enjoying a close, father-child union with Him. He actually lives in us by His Holy Spirit power. He says, “You are the Temple of the living Elohim; as Elohim has said, ‘I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.’ Wherefore, ‘come out from among them, and be separate,’ says Yahweh, ‘and touch not the unclean thing,’ “ 2Corinthians 6:16-18.

If I worship other deities in the popular customs, even though main­taining that I’m really worshiping the true Creator Yahweh, then I can no longer be a son of Yahweh. He makes that clear. It’s like giving up my fam­ily and all it stands for and going to live at the neighbor’s house.

What would you think if your child did that to you, Sargo? It is the same with the Father Yahweh, the only true Mighty One of the universe. When we accept false worship and we compromise the truth, it is the same as leaving our Father.

Think about that, Sargo.

by Elder Alan Mansager

What the Bible says about Easter

Easter- The Fertility of It All

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Is Easter in the Bible?

 Egg-laying rabbits; hot cross buns; Lent and ham dinners; sun-centered worship — why the strange customs? Why the strange name, “Easter”?   

On an early Sunday morning in April dad gets up and stumbles in the darkness searching for his best suit. He swallows a quick juice and heads off to the church. There he joins 20 of his friends gathered outside. As they look to the eastern sky they become enraptured by the brilliance of the dawning sun. Someone begins to sing a hymn. Others join in, faces glowing as they respond in adoration of the warming rays of the yellow orb.

Back home mother drives the chill from the house as she warms the oven. The smell of baking dough will spread to the bedrooms, beckoning awakening children to join her in making sugary crosses on toasty cakes.

A fat ham roasts in the oven. Dad’s mouth waters as he anticipates returning home and dining on the ritual offerings he has come to savor each spring. But first one more prayer with hands stretched upward in praise as the vernal sun rises to jumpstart the life-cycle of another new year.

As he heads home he notices many others celebrating the return of spring in groves of trees that line the road.

The year is 500 years before the Messiah. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah conveyed Yahweh’s disdain for a celebration that not only has survived millennia, but even blossomed into one of the major celebrations of Christianity today—Easter.

Easter takes its name from a deity of the Chaldeans known as Astarte or Ishtar. “Her presence was thought to guarantee fertility, and in her absence the land, humans, and animals could not reproduce,” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.

Easter a Phantom Observance

But is Easter in the Bible? Can we find the word Easter? Only in Acts 12:4 in the King James Version. It is a mistranslation of the Greek Pascha or Passover.

Barnes Notes says about the KJV’s changing the term Passover to Easter: “There was never a more absurd or unhappy translation than this. The original is simply after the Passover.”

Here’s how other versions translate Acts 12:4:

New Living Translation:
“… Herod’s intention was to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover.”

International Standard Version
“…planning to bring him out to the people after Passover season.”

New American Standard Bible
“…intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people.”

American Standard Version
“…intending after the Passover to bring him forth to the people.”

Bible in Basic English
“…his purpose being to take him out to the people after the Passover.”

Douay-Rheims Bible
“…intending, after the pasch, to bring him forth to the people.”

English Revised Version
“…intending after the Passover to bring him forth to the people.”

World English Bible
“… intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover.”

Young’s Literal Translation
“… intending after the passover to bring him forth to the people.”

New International Version
“…Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.”

New King James:
“… intending to bring him before the people after Passover.”

New Living Translation:
“… Herod’s intention was to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover.”

Notice the preceding verse 3 of Acts 12: “These were the days of unleavened bread.” What connection does the Feast of Unleavened Bread have with Easter? None. What does Easter have to do with the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Nothing. But the Passover and Feast of UB have a lot to do with each other. In the law the Feast follows the Passover on the 15th of Abib.

The early New Testament believers in Acts were still observing the Old Testament’s Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread! Never did Yahshua the Messiah or His apostles or any of the Jews of their day observe Easter.

Easter today is known in other languages by words that link it directly to Passover: French-­Paques; Italian-Pasqua; Spanish­-Pascua; Dutch – Pasen. The word for Easter sounds similar in each of these languages. The problem is, it doesn’t sound at all like “Easter” but like the original and scriptural “Passover.”

Its absence in the ancient manuscripts shows that the Easter celebration was completely missing in New Testament worship. This fact has not escaped even secular sources. The New Werner Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says, “There is no trace of the celebration of Easter as a Christian festival in the New Testament or in the writings of the apostolic fathers,” vol. VII, p. 531.

It wasn’t until 800 years after Yahshua that an observance of His resurrection was ever called Easter.

Nelsons Illustrated Bible Dictionary says on p. 317, “Easter was originally a pagan festival honoring Eostre, a Teutonic [Germanic] goddess of light and spring. At the time of the vernal equinox, sacrifices were offered in her honor. As early as the 8th century the name was used to designate the annual Christian celebration of the resurrection of Messiah.”

The word “Easter” is a renaming and completely unauthorized replacement of the Passover. The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica makes this short and eyeopening statement: “The name Easter (German Ostern) like the names of the days of the week, is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bede, it is derived from Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eostur-monath, was dedicated.”

Historically, Easter is the celebration of the ancient queen of heaven, Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. Her beau was the Babylonian Tammuz (Greek Adonis). She is the same goddess worshiped throughout the Near East and Mediterranean worlds almost from the beginning of recorded history. She was variously known as Inanna, Innin, Astarte, Ashtar, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus.

Solar Survivals a Heathen Legacy  

Virtually all heathen religions of antiquity worshiped the sun. In Ezekiel’s day Judah had incorporated sun worship into their own worship of Yahweh. Yahweh was no more happy with their doing that than He is with admixing the same practices today and calling it a “biblical” observance. We have no authority to make our own worship. Doing so is making Yahweh into our image.

We read that this idolatry consumed ancient Judah in Ezekiel 8: “Then he brought me to the entrance to the north gate of the house of Yahweh, and I saw women sitting there, mourning for Tammuz. He said to me, ‘Do you see this, son of man? You will see things that are even more detestable than this.’

“He then brought me into the inner court of the house of Yahweh, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of Yahweh and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east.”

The sun-worship services of the backslidden Israelites, with their women participating in the rites of Astarte worship (Easter) and weeping for Tammuz was detestable to Almighty Yahweh. Little angers our Father in heaven more than embracing the idolatry of the heathen nations.

No Commemoration for the Resurrection 

Nothing about memorializing Yahshua’s resurrection is commanded anywhere in the Bible. The proper observance of Yahshua’s death is the Passover, for which we have plenty of commands and examples in both Old and New testaments. Yahweh instructs, “These are the feasts of Yahweh, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their seasons. In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is Yahweh’s Passover,” Leviticus 23:4-5. Nowhere is man given authority to alter this observance or morph it into something else.

Early believers observed the Passover according to the command. Ultimately the Roman church instituted Easter. “The Passover, ennobled by the thought of [the Messiah] the true Paschal Lamb, the first-fruits from the dead, continued to be celebrated and became the Christian Easter” (Britannica).

In the Passover-to-Easter transformation, the first act was to change the day on which Passover was observed. The Britannica notes, “A difference as to the time of its observance speedily sprang up between Christians of Jewish and Gentile descent, which led to a long-continued and bitter controversy, and an unhappy severance of Christian union.”

Some of the early churches stuck with the biblical command for the 14th of Abib. They were called Quartodecimani and were regarded as heretics.

Others couldn’t decide which day of the week they would observe the “holy day” and did as they saw fit. “In the words of Epiphanius, ‘Some,’ he writes, ‘began the festival before the week, some after the week, some at the beginning, some at the middle, some at the end, thus creating a wonderful and laborious confusion,’ ” Ibid.

It finally took a papal decree of Pius I to settle the issue. And thus we have the modern Easter falling on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

They Couldn’t Stick with Scripture

It would be bad enough to keep an arbitrary day named and observed for a pagan deity in honor of the Savior. But the atrocity doesn’t stop there.

The many trappings of the Easter rite sank the participant further into the abyss of idolatry. As the Roman Church grew it encountered heathen nations who held tenaciously to their idol worship and man-made customs. The Roman Church recognized that to amalgamate these peoples into its church-state, it would need to make an easy crossover for them. Rather than forcing the pagans to drop their worship altogether, the church found it expedient to recognize as much as possible their heathen rites in its own ecclesiastical calendar.

This blending of beliefs is explained by James G. Frazer in his book, The Golden Bough: “Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian and the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals. The inflexible Protestantism of the primitive missionaries, with fiery denunciations of heathendom, had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance, the comprehensive charity of shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly 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.”

With those carryovers came the inclusion of the idol-rooted customs of eggs, rabbits, hot cross buns, ham dinners, bonfires, lent, and sunrise services all used in pagan worship.

Each of these was related either to sun worship, fertility worship of pagan deities and worship of life itself or, as in the custom of eating swine, a snub of the Jews they disdained.

Easter hams get their origin from the corn goddess and counterpart to Astarte, Demeter, whose mascot was the pig.

The heathens believed that by eating what represented their god, in this case swine, that they were literally partaking of their god.

What does Yahweh think of those who practice such things each year? Note Isaiah 65:3-5. “A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine’s flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels; Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.”

None of Easter’s traditions can be found in connection with pure worship of the Bible. Not Lent. Not Good Friday. Not Easter itself.

It is no coincidence that Easter involves symbols of eggs and rabbits, historically representing fruitful reproduction. Consider Easter’s bizarre melding of two powerful symbols of fertility — egg-laying rabbits. It’s a powerful example of the whole absurdity of using this observance to celebrate Yahshua’s resurrection.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909 ed., has the following admission: “A great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring…The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been a symbol of fertility.”

The egg became associated with Astarte or Venus, when she hatched from a giant one that fell from heaven. The egg to the ancient represented the entire universe, which engenders everything. It is round, like the world, and is the universal principle of new life. The mystic egg was venerated in most paganistic nations of the world: Greece, Egypt, Persia, Babylon, India, Japan, and Phoenicia.

Lent on Loan from the Ancients

The 40-day, pre-Easter “fast” known as Lent is an appendage of the mythologies of Greece and Rome. But as with much of false worship, the custom of Lent was original with Babylonian paganism.

“From Arnobius we learn that the fast which the pagans observed, called ‘Castus’ or the ‘sacred’ fast, was, by the Christians in his time, believed to have been primarily in imitation of the long fast of Ceres, when for many days she determinedly refused to eat on account of her ‘excess of sorrow,’ that is, on the account of the loss of her daughter Proserpine, when carried away by Pluto, the god of hell,” Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, p. 105.

Because the early Roman church had no direction from Scripture on the observance of Lent, its first steps with the custom were faltering. “Originally, even in Rome, Lent with the preceding revelries of the Carnival, was entirely unknown; and even when fasting before the Christian Pasch was held to be necessary, it was by slow steps that, in this respect, it came to conform with the ritual of paganism,” The Two Babylons p. 106.

At first, Lent was only half as long as the present 40 days. Hislop explains, “But at last, when the worship of Astarte was rising into the ascendant, steps were taken to get the whole Chaldean Lent of six weeks, or forty days, made imperative on all within the Roman Empire of the West,” pp. 106-107.

Each year before Easter we see people walking around with palm ash in the shape of a cross smudged in the middle of their foreheads. They are marking the 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter. It’s a time supposed to be spent in penitence and fasting, and is a practice completely missing from the Scriptures.

Cakes for a Pagan’s Deity

Mother’s making of hot cross buns for Easter traces to worship of the goddess Astarte or Easter. Jeremiah the prophet underscored this abomination in speaking Yahweh’s denunciation of these same heathen practices of his day: “See not what they do 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 their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other deities, that they may provoke Me to anger,”Jeremiah 7:18.

In Jeremiah 44:19 is another stinging rebuke of those who offered to the pagan goddess. The prophet says in one of the succeeding verses, “Yahweh could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which you have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day,” verse 22. He continues, that because His people rejected His laws and statutes, a curse would befall them.

Various pagans have depicted Astarte differently, but always in connection with procreation. Her worship is alive and well today in the symbols and customs of Easter.

Passover: the Right Observance for Today

Yahweh tells us in Proverbs 14:12 that even if we think we are serving Yahweh in ways that seem okay to us, that those ways are still wrong and carry an ultimate penalty. “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

The masses just blindly fall into this observance each year because everyone else is just blindly falling into it. Unless something drastic happens to a person, he will continue traditional ways just as his parents did and their parents did and their parents did. And he won’t ever question why! We truly are slaves to habit, to custom, to routine, to convention and to ritual.

Our Creator has prescribed the only way He wants to be worshiped, and we as His creation have no authority to change anything. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,’ says Yahweh.”

Passover is the memorial commemorating the death of the Savior for the sins of mankind. Through His death, which paid the ultimate penalty for us, we can have everlasting life. That is the message Yahweh wants us to hold on to. And we do so every year when we partake of the Passover memorial emblems.

Easter has nothing in common with the Passover. We find no command anywhere in the entire Bible to observe the resurrection of the Savior. We are enjoined to remember the day of His death, however, with Passover. At its core Easter is nothing more than the perpetuation of the practice of pagan rites and rituals. And Yahweh warns not to learn such ways.

In 1Corinthians 10:14-22 is the apostle’s warning against profaning the Passover and its significance by other practices and other symbols not given in the Word:

“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Messiah? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of the Messiah? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to Yahweh: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.Ye cannot drink the cup of Yahweh, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of Yahweh’s table, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Sovereign to jealousy? are we stronger than he?”

Now that you know the truth, you have a decision to make. Continue on in ways of ultimate destruction or return to the faith once delivered to the saints, Jude 3. That faith includes the true days commanded in the Word – His Feasts and Sabbath. You are being called to make a choice, which is truly a life or death decision. Choose life.

Watch: “Pagan Origins of Easter” below

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Easter in the Bible

In Search of the Scriptural Easter

In Search of the Scriptural Easter

With the Christmas extrava­ganza now a distant memory, churches are busily gearing up for their next big obser­vance—the celebration of the Savior’s death and resurrection.

As with Christmas, Easter is an­other major celebration featuring an odd blend of religious, mythical, and profane themes: chalices and chocolate, crosses and croissants; bonnets and bunnies, hymns and hams; Son worship and sun worship.

The unstudied may think it pe­culiar that Yahweh would require His people today to eat unleavened bread for a week following the Pass­over. Yet they find nothing weird about observing the Savior’s resur­rection by searching church lawns for painted eggs … allegedly laid by rabbits!

It is time to conduct our own search­ for the scriptural Easter to see whether there even is one.

One Verse in a Version – Proof of Scriptural Easter?

A peculiar fact jumps out immedi­ately. In a careful examination of the entire Bible we discover that the word “Easter” exists in only one verse: Acts 12:4. In the King James Version it reads, “…intend­ing after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”

But now notice how nearly all other versions trans­late this very same passage:

“ … intending to bring him before the people after Passover,” The New King James Bible.

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people,” New American Standard

“ … Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Pass­over,” New International Version

“ … with the intention of produc­ing him to the people after Passover,” James Moffat

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people,” Revised Standard

“ …intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover,” New Revised Standard Version

“ … Herod’s intention was to deliver Peter to the Jews for execution after the Passover,” Living Bible

“ …intending to bring him out to the people after Passover,” Modern Language Bible

“ … meaning to produce him in public after Passover,” New English Bible

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him forth to the people,” The Webster Bible

“ … purposing after the Passover to bring him forth to the people,” The Amplified New Testament

“ .. .intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover,” The New Berkeley Version in Modern En­glish

“ .. .intending, after the pasch, to bring him forth to the people,” Douay­-Rheims (Catholic).

In this last version, “pasch” is simply the near Greek word for the Hebrew Pass­over, Pascha. “Passover” is found 28 times in the King James New Testa­ment, Easter only once. Clearly a translation anomaly exists with the KJV. The idea of a “Scriptual Easter” is simply not true.

As the King James Newberry Refer­ence Bible shows in a side column note on Acts 12:4, the word “Easter” in the King James should have been “Passover” (Newberry includes the Greek letters for “Pascha”).

Amazing, isn’t it? Easter is the second biggest religious celebration of the Bible-professing world, yet, its only scriptural evidence is one erroneously translated word!

Apostles Not Easter Dye Hards

But that’s not all. You don’t have to hunt long to discover that no one in the Scriptures ever observed Easter. Rather, even in the New Testament the Apostolic Assembly continued with the Bibli­cal Holy Days commanded in Exo­dus 12 and Leviticus 23. Our Savior died at Passover as the ultimate Passover sacrifice, a fact the Apostle Paul clearly explains in lCorinthians 5:7.

The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica confirms this simple and astounding fact, “There is no indication of the obser­vances of the Easter festival in the New Testament or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers … The first Chris­tians continued to observe the Jewish festivals, though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals had foreshadowed” (“Easter,” vol. 8. p. 828).

The commanded Old Testament Feast days were the ONLY annual observances that the early New Testament Assembly recognized. This fact should speak volumes to every Bible-believer today about the importance of honoring those same observances commanded to Israel.

Writing in Bible Review, Delbert Achuff, Jr., a retired Episcopal minister, noted what would happen if Yahshua were to return to earth to observe modern worship: “He would probably be amazed at what the worshipers accredited to Him. The accretions from having passed through several cultures would puzzle this peasant Jew who said He came ‘to fulfil the Law, not to destroy it’ (Matt. 5:17).St. Paul too is understood in a whole new light when seen as a Jew who is a member of the new sect, defending his new understandings of Torah and relationship with [Yah­weh]. Later he calls it the New Cov­enant, but the word (b’rith in the He­brew) is meaningless if one does not know the Old Covenant.”

Theologians cite Acts 2 as the start of the New Testament Assem­bly. But they neglect the reason that the Apostles and disciples were gath­ered that day. It was in observance of the command in Leviticus 23 to keep the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost)—one of the seven annual holy days!

Nowhere can we find a Biblical injunction to observe the Savior’s res­urrection as a special holiday. The command was and always will be to keep the memorial of His death at Passover. This being the case, where did “Easter” originate?

Thank the Babylonians

Yahshua told His disciples that the poor we would always have with us. The same thing can be said of hea­then worship, at least until Yahweh’s righteous Kingdom is established on earth.

The link between Easter and pa­ganism is so obvious no one could miss it. For starters, take the name. “Easter” even sounds like its name­sake—Eastre, the Saxon deity of dawn, spring, and fertility. One au­thority notes, “Easter is a word of Saxon origin and imparts a goddess of the Saxons, or rather, of the East, Estera, in honor of whom sacrifices being annually offered about the Pass­over time of the year (spring), the name became attached by association of ideas to the Christian festival of the resurrection, which happened at the time of the Passover,” Cyclope­dia of Biblical, Theological, and Eccle­siastical Literature, “Easter,” p. 12.

In his Dictionary of Word Origins” Joseph Shipley writes, “Easter. This is from Anglo Saxon Eostre, a pagan goddess whose festival came at the spring equinox. The festival was called Eastron(plural of Eastre). The Christian festival of the resurrection of [Messiah] has in most European languages taken the name of the Jew­ish Passover (Fr. Paques, It. Pasqua, from Latin pascha … ); but in English the pagan word has remained for the Christian festival,” p. 131.

Before she.was Eastre, the idol was called Ishtar (pronounced by the Assyrians and Babylonians as we do Easter).

John in Revelation tells us that Babylon is the mother of all false worship, and Revelation 14:8 says that Babylon caused all nations to partake in her spiritual unfaithfulness. Our society didn’t escape Babylon’s influence regarding the Easter observance, ei­ther.

Ishtar (a.k.a. Semiramis) was the wife of Nimrod, the priest-king and founder of Babylon. She was the first “deified woman” (Alexander Hislop, ­The Two Babylons, p. 304). The Greeks worshiped her as Aphrodite and the Romans as Venus, goddess of love.

Queen of Heaven

Jeremiah condemns worship of this heathen queen mother in a rite that includes a practice remarkably simi­lar to Easter:

“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 mighty ones, that they may provoke me to anger” (Jer. 7:18).

“Cakes” is the Hebrew kavvan, meaning a sacrificial cake, which was “used in worship of Ishtar,” The New Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 467.

Scriptural EasterThese “cakes” survive as today’s hot cross buns—an Easter tradition on which are marked crosses, the symbol for woman. In hieroglyphics the cross is a symbol for life. This ancient queen of heaven was the mother of life, the heathen believed.

Also prominent in the Easter cel­ebration is the egg. The 1994 winter Olympics opened with a ceremony featuring a huge egg, ancient pagan symbol of life. Mithras, the sun god, supposedly hatched from a cosmic egg.

Pagan mythology says a mystic egg of the Babylonians fell from heaven into the River Euphrates. Once fish had pushed it ashore it hatched and out came Astarte—Eas­ter (Venus). Hence, the egg became a symbol of Astarte or Easter (The Two Babylons, p. 109).

The egg soon figured into Chris­tian Easter worship. According to Hislop, “A form of prayer was even appointed to be used in connection with it, Pope Paul V teaching his superstitious votaries thus to pray at Easter—‘Bless, O L-rd, we beseech thee, this thy creature of eggs, that it may become a wholesome suste­nance into thy servants, eating it in remembrance of our L-rd J-sus Chr-st,’” p. 110.

Peter Cotton-tale

Imagine honoring Abraham Lincoln with Bingo parties. Or celebrating the first moon walk with a fishing derby. It makes as litte sense to observe the resurrection of the Savior with choco­late rabbits that lay colored eggs. Tradition has melded two entirely dif­ferent observances, intermixed them to produce the strangest of crossbreeds—not unlike remember­ing the Savior’s birth with Santa Claus, reindeer, and evergreen trees.

To understand why the rabbits, we need to go back again to a more ancient festival that in the apostate church merged with Passover to be­come the Easter hybrid.

“Although Easter is a Christian festival, it embodies traditions of an ancient time antedating the rise of Christianity,” says Funk and Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia. This source goes on to describe Eastre, the Teutonic goddess of spring and fertil­ity, to whom was dedicated “Eastre monath,” corresponding to April. “Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, and traditions associated with the festival survive in the familiar Easter bunny, symbol of the fertile rabbit, and in the equally familiar colored Easter eggs originally painted with gay hues to represent the sunlight of spring” (“Easter,” Ibid, p. 2940).

In its effort to join heathen with Bible believer, the early church ac­commodated many pagan obser­vances, finding common dates on which to merge. Easter and Passover is one example. Try as they could, however, they could not detach the pagan dates from the pagan rites and rituals.

Scriptural Caution

The Easter sunrise service is com­mon today. But how many who par­ticipate realize the ancient worship they are really keeping alive—adora­tion of the sun-god? Ezekiel gives this sobering account of what Yahweh thinks of this cus­tom employed in worship of Him:

“Then said he unto me, Have you seen this, O son of man?  turn yet again, and you shall see  greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about five  and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped  the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Have you seen this, O son of man?  Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled  the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them” (Ezek. 8:15-18).

Passover is the only legitimate and commanded observance in honor of our Savior’s death. He kept it with His disciples just before He was impaled, and He said He would observe it again in the coming Kingdom. What better certification for an observance can we get? No Scriptural mandate exists for an annual observance of His resurrection. Let alone the idea of a Scriptual Easter.

Yahweh will one day teach man­kind that He is the only true Mighty One. All will learn—through pain of plague, if necessary—that pagan abominations will not be tolerated. And man will one day discover what True Worship is all about and what blessings can be his if he will simply be obedient not to traditions of the world—but to the Word.

by Alan Mansager

If you enjoyed Scriptural Easter and want more info on Easter please check out our free booklet: Easter: The Fertility of it all

The Amazing Biblical Feasts

Refreshing autumn breezes bring cool, crisp days and the invigorating promise of another wonderful Feast of Tabernacles. Families from around the world are gathering enough belongings for an eight-day stay in the Golden City of Jerusalem, where Yahshua the Messiah now reigns. Many are already en route. Vast crowds are coursing along roadways, singing praises and anticipating the coming days with unspeakable joy.

The atmosphere is much like jubilant Israel leaving Egypt to keep a Feast for Yahweh (Ex. 5:1).

The “old days” of the 21st century, when obedient celebrators numbered only in the few thousands, pale in comparison. Those keeping the Feasts back before the Kingdom came to earth could never have fully appreciated this breathtaking drama — everyone from across the planet obediently going in an unending stream to Jerusalem!

Finally, after millennia of ignorance, persistent resistance, tired old excuses, procrastination and indecision, people everywhere are traveling to the place where Yahweh commands all people to be in this seventh Biblical month. They are coming to keep the great Feast of Tabernacles, the highlight celebration of the year.

Their happiness is indescribable! And why shouldn’t they be joyful? At long last, an entire world is being blessed of Yahweh for submitting to His laws and commands. After millennia of human rebellion, suffering and misery, universal gladness and peace reign under the righteous law of the King of the universe! Man’s hollow holidays are no more. Now all worship will be Yahweh’s way.

If you think this is some fantasy from the imagination of some movie script writer, you had best think again.

Human Misrule Soon Ending

What you have just read is as real as tomorrow – and nearly as close. It is a description of the millennial Kingdom of Yahweh come to earth. Thousands of years of human chaos and injustice will have ended. Finally the earth will be cleansed of the rebellion and sin that began in the Garden of Eden and continued through 6,000 years of misery and pain.

In the Kingdom ruled by Yahshua, men will no longer have the opportunity to ruin their lives and the lives of others through defiance of the Creator and His laws. Yahweh will at last take full control, and everyone will obey Him!

In the first year of Yahshua’s millennial reign, in the seventh month, people from around the world will fulfill what the prophets of old foretold. The scene will be the same everywhere – one dwelling after another will be vacant for eight days while residents of cities everywhere leave home for the annual Feasts.

Miraculously for the travelers, the typical problems and hindrances will disappear as quickly as they crop up. Priestly guides will assist them along their way to the great city to worship the King, Yahweh of Hosts. This kingdom of righteous priests will be composed of True Worshipers who were obedient to Yahweh in our day, before Yahshua returned, and were taken up in the first resurrection when Yahshua came to earth to gather His elect.

Now in the thousand-year reign, they assist Yahshua the Messiah in governing the nations of the earth. They teach how to obey the laws and statutes of Yahweh, just as they themselves had to learn back in a time when few cared about seriously following the Scriptures in their lives. This was a promise foretold in Revelation 2:26-27: “And he that overcomes, and keeps my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.”

Isaiah gives us a glimpse of these resurrected individuals serving as Kingdom priests: “And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, ‘This the way, walk you in it,’ when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left,” 30:21. You can be one of those teachers if you are obedient now.

Feast Prophecies Fulfilled

Biblical laws, including the Feasts, will be enforced everywhere by the greatest Power in the universe – Yahweh Himself.

Zechariah prophesied, “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zech. 14:16). The prophet Isaiah makes it clear that immediately after the return of Yahshua, once He subdues the earth and establishes His Kingdom, that people will start keeping the Feasts at Jerusalem. Everyone will either comply or die: “For by fire and by his sword will Yahweh plead with all flesh: and the slain of Yahweh shall be many,” Isaiah 66:16.

Further down in the passage we read, “For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory” (v. 18). And where will they go? Isaiah continues: “And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto Yahweh out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says Yahweh, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of Yahweh” (verse 20).

This scene will be replayed many times throughout the year as one by one each of the annual observances of Leviticus 23 will be faithfully followed by people around the world. “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, says Yahweh.”

Those who rebelled against Yahweh and refused to keep His Feasts will have their own infamous epitaph: “And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh” (Isa. 66:23-24).

All the scoffers, including those who today strenuously resist the keeping of so-called “Jewish” Feasts, are going to be either humbled or eliminated. It is their choice. Millions will be forced to admit that Yahweh’s people were right when they kept His appointed days. Many will be ashamed of themselves for once ridiculing the ways of Yahweh and dismissing His annual Feasts.

Cast Off the Prophetic Blinders

Remarkably, a key fact usually overlooked is that Yahweh’s Feasts prophetically foreshadow His plan of salvation for mankind! Paul in Colossians 2:16 explains the prophetic importance of these times: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Messiah [or, as it should read, “but the body of Messiah”].

Along with some of the other Old Testament commandments, Paul is referring here to Yahweh’s days of worship, like the Sabbath and Feasts. Before we delve into the prophetic message, it is important that we dispel a common misconception. Many interpret Paul as saying here that we are no longer obligated to observe these days. In other words, we are not to be judged on our freedom from these old and archaic commandments.

Is this the message Paul is conveying? Not in the least. He says that we are not to allow those outside the body of Messiah, those not in the assembly, to judge us on the worship of our Father in Heaven. Only the Body of Messiah is to judge, Paul says, because they themselves honor these days. They have the right and permission to correct others in the way of their observance.

In verse 17 we also find Paul confirming that these days are a shadow of things to come. What does he mean? He’s referring to the prophetic nature of Yahweh’s Worship. He understood that these days were more than times of worship; that they were also of prophetic value. As we will discover, each of these times prophetically foreshadow a special event in our Father’s plan of salvation for mankind.

Redemption through Blood

Let us examine each of the seven annual observances that Yahweh calls “My Feasts,” Leviticus 23:2.

The first annual observance that we find in the Word illustrates Yahweh’s redemption. Leviticus 23:5 reads, “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is Yahweh’s Passover.”

The word “even” comes from the Hebrew ereb and means dusk or sundown. In Biblical times the day began at sunset. We find that the Passover is to be kept at the beginning of the 14th day of the first month.

The name of this first month is “Abib.” In the Hebrew language this word literally means, “young ears of grain” and was the month that began the barley harvest.

On this night the death angel went through the land of Egypt and killed the firstborn within those homes that did not apply the blood. Even in the Old Testament it was through the blood that redemption was found. It was on this night that Israel won their freedom from slavery.

What about the New Testament? What symbolism do we find there for the Passover? In 1Corinthians 5:7 the Apostle Paul sheds light on the meaning of this very special time: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Messiah our passover is sacrificed for us:”

Paul is describing here the Passover and the role that the Messiah played in its fulfillment. Through his death he fulfilled the Passover. Today He represents the Passover lamb found in the Old Testament.

In John 1:29, John the Baptist stated, “Behold the Lamb of Yahweh, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The main purpose for Yahshua’s coming to earth was to shed his blood for the sins of mankind. He also came to set an example for us to follow, but if not for his sacrifice none of us would have the opportunity we have now.

Only through our Savior, Yahshua the Messiah, do we find forgiveness and a complete washing away of our sins. If not for his death we would have no atonement and no salvation and would be alienated from our Father in Heaven. Only through our Savior’s death are we reconciled to our Father. This was again the main focus and reason for the Passover – it was had the shedding of blood for the redemption of His people.

Yahshua’s Resurrection

The Feast that directly follows the Passover is Unleavened Bread: “And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto Yahweh: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Yahweh seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein,” Leviticus 23:6-8.

This Feast lasts seven-days and includes holy gatherings on the first and last day. The phrase “holy convocation” comes from the Hebrew qodesh miqra and refers to a sacred or called-out meeting. Based on verse 2, this meeting belongs to the one who established these days in the beginning, and He is Yahweh, our Father in heaven.

The Israelites began traveling out of Egypt on the first day of this Feast. Scripture says that they left Rameses on the 15th day of the first month. While they had won their freedom on the night of the Passover, they physically departed on the first day of this Feast.

We are commanded to abstain from leavening or yeast during this time. The Israelites left Egypt in haste and were unable to leaven their dough. Accordingly, we are to abstain from leavening.

Leavening often represents wickedness, malice, false beliefs, hypocrisy, corrupt politics, and sin. When Israel left Egypt, they left the sin of Egypt and the world behind.

This appointed observance also holds agricultural significance. It was during this Feast that Israel would offer the wave sheaf or firstfruits of the barley harvest to Yahweh. This wave sheaf prophetically points to Yahshua the Messiah. In 1Corinthians 15:20-22Paul explains: “But now is Messiah risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Messiah shall all be made alive.”

Paul states here that the Messiah represents the first fruits of those resurrected. Our Savior was the first among mankind to be resurrected to eternal life. So through his resurrection the Messiah fulfilled the firstfruits sacrifice that was offered during this Feast.

Do you see how the Old and New Testament harmonize? The concept of the Old Testament as a dead book could not be further from the Truth. Ask yourself, what Bible did the Messiah and his Apostles use? To the surprise of many, it wasn’t the New Testament; Yahshua and his Apostles used the Old Testament as their source for truth. The New Testament wasn’t canonized until 325 CE. This means that there was no official New Testament until 300 years after the Messiah. It was not even written until after Yahshua was resurrected.

What else do we learn from Paul? He says again in verse 22, “For in Adam all die, even so in Messiah shall all be made alive.” Only through Yahshua the Messiah do we find everlasting life. There is nothing we can do to earn salvation! This is a reference to His Second Advent, when He returns to establish his Father’s Kingdom here on earth. Understand that all of this was foreshadowed by the firstfruits that were offered during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As with the Passover, this Feast also has prophetic meaning in the New Testament

The Giving of the Law and Spirit

The next Feast to discover is the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost: “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto Yahweh…And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations,” Leviticus 23:15-16, 21.

To establish this Feast, Israel was to count seven complete Sabbaths. This count began on the morrow of the weekly Sabbath that fell during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, meaning a Sunday start of the count. This is where the Jews derive the name Shavuot, which in the Hebrew language means weeks. We also see that this day is a holy convocation.

This special appointment is also tied to agriculture; it represents the time of the wheat harvest. Because wheat had more value than barley, in some ways this was a greater harvest than the previous barley reaping. We also know that on this day in the Old Testament that they prepared two leavened loaves that were presented or waved before Yahweh as a firstfruits offering.

Many speculate as to what these loaves symbolized. Some maintain that they signify the Old and New testaments; others believe that they typify Jew and gentle. It’s also possible that they correspond to the giving of the Law in the Old Testament and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New. How do we know that the Law was given on this day in the Old Testament? We don’t have absolute proof, but what we do know is this: (1) according to Rabbinic belief the Law was delivered on this day and (2) the Bible does show that Israel was at Mount Sinai during this time, Exodus 19:1.

Assuming that the Law was given on the Feast of weeks, something else of significance occurred in the New Testament. Acts 2:1-4tells us that the Holy Spirit was poured out on this day. It reads, “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

The Apostles were obediently observing the day of Pentecost or as we find in the Old Testament, the Feast of Weeks. A key question is, why were they still observing an Old Testament Feast Day, especially after the Messiah’s death? Aren’t we told that the Feasts are no longer necessary, that they are old and archaic and of no value in the New Testament?

On the contrary. These days that Yahweh our Father in heaven commanded in the Old Testament are of as much value today as they were then. The disciples were there to worship Yahweh in one accord on His Feast Day according to His command.

We see here Yahweh poured out His Holy Spirit upon those gathered. Those who were present received the gift of tongues. “Tongues” comes from the Greek glossa and means “a known language.” This word refers to an actual, known language.

We now learn that the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost foreshowed the outpouring of Yahweh’s Holy Spirit. Why would our Father select an Old Testament Feast during which to provide this heavenly gift? The fact that He poured out His Spirit on this day shows unequivocally that these times still have meaning and purpose in the New Testament.

Yahshua’s Glorious Return

The next Feast we find in the word is the Feast of Trumpets: “Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Yahweh,” Leviticus 23:24-25.

Notice that this Feast falls on the first day of the seventh month. Why is this important? The Biblical month begins with the crescent moon, which while not a Sabbath or high day, is a time of fellowship and worship. Now the seventh month is also a special time since it holds four of the seven Holy Days. So not only does this Feast coincide with the new moon, but also ushers in one of the most important months of the Biblical year.

How was this day observed in the Old Testament? First, it was a day of blowing of trumpets. Second, it was a holy convocation. And third, it was a day on which Israel was to abstain from work.

In the New Testament this observance foreshadows one of greatest end-time events; the Second Coming of Yahshua the Messiah and the first resurrection. Paul in 1Thessalonians 4:15-18 offers prophetic insight into this event:

“For this we say unto you by the word of Yahweh, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Master shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Master himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of Elohim: and the dead in Messiah shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Master in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Master. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

Our Savior will first descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of Elohim. The trumpet is symbolic of this Feast. So most likely Yahshua’s second advent will take place on the Feast of Trumpets.

As Yahshua descends, the dead in Messiah will rise to meet him in the clouds. After that those who are yet alive will be changed to spirit essence and will meet the Messiah in the air and forever be with Him. Imagine this day happening in our lifetime! Imagine being changed from flesh to spirit? Can you fathom being with our Savior forever? This is the promise that this day foreshadows.

Paul explains this transformation in more detail: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” 1Corinthians 15:51-53.

Paul mentions a trumpet here in connection with Yahshua’s coming and the resurrection of the saints. In fact, he refers to the last trumpet, likely symbolizing this Feast.

At this time the believer will be changed instantaneously. They will go from corruptible flesh to incorruptible spirit essence; from mortal to immortal. As we find in the Greek, the chosen will receive unending existence in a state of deathlessness.

This promise of Yahshua’s coming and of the resurrection is a prophetic foreshadowing of this Feast and one reason that this time is so important to understand and observe.

Atonement and Removal of Sin

The Day of Atonement follows Trumpets. This day is special for many reasons; notwithstanding the fact that Israel found forgiveness from their sins on this day.

Leviticus 16:29-30 states: “And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourns among you: For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before Yahweh.”

The Day of Atonement, or as it is called in Hebrew, Yom Kippur, is observed on the 10th day of the 7th month. Israel was explicitly commanded to afflict their souls by fasting on this day. A scriptural fast is to abstain from both food and drink to show complete honor and devotion to the One we worship.

On this day Israel also found atonement or cleansing from their sins. “Atonement” comes from the Hebrew kaphar and is a primitive root meaning “to cover.” From the New Testament we find that the sacrificial system in the Old was only able to cover sin — it could not wash away or completely remove sin.

While many believe that this day foreshadows Yahshua’s death and our atonement, it possibly foreshadows something entirely different. The challenge with Yom Kippur symbolizing Yahshua’s death is that it was on the Passover that Yahshua died and shed His blood for mankind. In other words, this prophetic fulfillment occurred with the Passover.

This being the case, reason dictates that this Feast must foreshadow something other than Yahshua’s death.

On this observance in the Old Testament we read that Israel took a scapegoat and laid upon it all the sins of Israel. What’s intriguing about this scapegoat is that it wasn’t sacrificed, like the Messiah in the New Testament. Instead, a fit man was to take the scapegoat into the wilderness, removing it from the camp. This scapegoat might foreshadow Satan the Devil. In the apocalypse of John, or more correctly Yahshua, we find that Satan will be cast into a bottomless pit for the duration of the one-thousand year millennial Kingdom.

“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season,” Revelation 20:1-3.

Just as a fit man took the scapegoat into the wilderness, here a mighty angel will cast Satan into a bottomless pit where he will remain for the duration of the 1000-year millennial Kingdom. This prophetically seems to correspond to what we find with the Old Testament scapegoat. This also chronologically occurs after the return of Yahshua the Messiah, likely occurring on the Feast of Trumpets.

In essence, the scapegoat in the Old Testament prophetically foreshadows the removal of Satan from mankind at Yahshua’s Second Coming. Once Satan is bound the millennial Kingdom begins, which is symbolized by the Feast of Tabernacles.

Taste of the Kingdom

We find a description of this appointed time in Leviticus 23:34-35, 41-43: “Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto Yahweh. On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein…And you shall keep it a feast unto Yahweh seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations: you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths: That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am Yahweh your Elohim.”

This Feast is similar to the Feast of Unleavened Bread; it too is seven days in duration. It begins on the 15th day of the 7th month and includes a holy convocation on the first day. During this time we are commanded to stay in booths, a word derived from the Hebrew sukkah meaning a temporary dwelling. If you are able to physically travel, staying at home during this feast is not an option.

This special appointment represents the one-thousand year span in which our Savior will reign over the earth with those from the first resurrection. During this time Yahweh’s commandments will govern this world, meaning all of mankind. The main purpose of the coming kingdom will be to restore righteousness to the earth and to prepare it for the day our Father Yahweh Himself will establish His throne at the golden city, New Jerusalem.

In the Old Testament we find a prophecy about this kingdom. “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of Yahweh shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, and to the house of the Elohim of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of Yahweh of hosts hath spoken it,” Micah 4:1-3.

In Scripture “mountain” represents a Kingdom or nation. Here Yahweh’s kingdom will be established or exalted above all other kingdoms of the world. His commandments will also go out to all nations. Unlike today, Yahweh’s Word will be the guiding light and standard of morality. No longer will man dictate what is moral or not moral, what is proper or not, what is politically correct or not. Instead Yahweh’s Word will be that measure. His laws will be the constitution of the world. Since Yahweh’s laws will govern everywhere in the future, should we not be obeying them now? Especially since we know that the Messiah and His Apostles also observed and kept them in the New Testament.

We also learn here that men will no longer engage in war. Instead new uses will be found for weapons of war. After this, every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree. Not only will Yahweh’s laws finally be observed on this earth, but we also find that mankind will go back to an agricultural life, similar to the Garden of Eden.

In the kingdom, life will change drastically. No longer will the world be plagued by widespread immorality, like abortion; no longer will we see the atrocities of war; and no longer will man be free to live a life of sin without immediate consequences.

Final Judgment

The remaining Feast the Bible calls the Eighth Day or the Last Great Day, is described in Leviticus 23:36: “Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Yahweh: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Yahweh: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.”

This Feast immediately follows the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles. Possibly its most significant aspect is marking the end of Yahweh’s days of worship. This Feast likely foreshadows the last and final judgment of mankind. As the Feast of Trumpets symbolizes Yahshua’s Second Coming and the first resurrection, the Last Great Day foreshadows the final judgment of man and the redemption of the faithful.

John on the island of Patmos provides a prophecy of this final judgment: “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before Elohim; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and the grave delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire,” Revelation 20:11-15.

This time is known as the Great White Throne Judgment and the second death and will be final for the unrepentant. Except for those in the first resurrection, which Scripture declares will be exempt (Rev. 20:3), all of mankind will stand before the great judgment seat?

What will be the standard by which Yahshua will judge mankind? Verse 12 says that all will be judged based on their works. Many believe that because of Yahweh’s grace that we shouldn’t be concerned about works. Many even view works as bad, being a form of legalism. Our views and opinions must conform to Scripture, however. Scripture says that all mankind will be judged based on their works, and how they lived here on earth. The standard will be the Scriptures and how they measured up. Yahweh gave His Scriptures to live by and will judge on how closely we followed them.

Scores of the Chagrined and Brokenhearted

Millions will wish they had taken the teaching of the Feasts seriously back when keeping the Biblical observances and obeying the other laws was a free choice that relatively few took to heart. Had they done so, their blessings would have been far greater at their resurrection. They could have been among the priests ruling in Yahshua’s Kingdom.

Ezekiel’s prophecy about those who rebelliously serve their own lusts and desires stood as a Biblical warning for thousands of years: “Then shall you remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations” (Ezek. 36:31).

And what about those who perhaps in ignorance do not obey the Feast command in the Millennial rule of Yahshua? The prophet Zechariah says: “And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain” (Zech. 14:17). Famine! Death! One will either keep the Feasts of Leviticus 23 or one will suffer awful plague.

In keeping the Feasts, which revolve around the harvest seasons, we rejoice in the abundance of the earth’s produce. Anyone refusing to do so in the Millennial reign will suffer just the opposite – starvation resulting from drought. Those who stubbornly resist will also feel the sting of the rod of iron administered by those who have been resurrected to priesthood and who rule under Yahshua, as we have seen.

It’s Your Choice Now

The entire planet will be in harmony with Yahweh once more, as it started out in the Garden of Eden. All of nature will return to an Edenic harmony and consequent beauty as earth’s people’s submit to their Creator in a way that hasn’t been seen since Adam and Eve before their rebellion.

It will be His way or no way. No excuses. No questioning. No compromising. No promises of “some other time, I’m too busy right now” when the Feasts roll around. No more “maybe next year when I’m ready.” Yahweh will accept nothing short of immediate, complete obedience from everyone. One will either submit or suffer the wrath of the Mighty One of the universe! This tells us volumes about how important He views His commanded observances.

What would you do in that day? Resist…or humbly comply? The important question is, what are you doing NOW, knowing that Yahweh’s Feasts are so imperative that they will soon be enforced around the world? Do you want to be in that Kingdom reign, or suffer from no rain as you are forced to learn Yahweh’s ways at that time?

‘But I’m Not Jewish’

Those who misconstrue the Bible’s clear command to keep the seven annual Feast days, as well as the weekly Sabbath, counter Yahweh’s mandate with the rationale, “I’m not a Jew. Those observances are for Jews.”

First, realize that the Feast days were given to Moses on Mount Sinai to pass on to Israel (see the Book of Leviticus, along with the last verse, which reveals that Moses was given all the law, not just the Ten Commandments on Sinai). Israel was composed of 12 tribes, only one of which was known as the Jews, the tribe of Judah. The 11 other tribes were not Jews, but Hebrews, who were collectively known as Israel. All 12 tribes stood at the base of Mt. Sinai to receive Yahweh’s laws and agreed to His covenant,Exodus 19:1, 5-6. Therefore, the requirement was given to more than the Jews. The entire nation of Israel received the statutes and judgments and the Jews were just a fraction of the 12-tribed Israelite nation.

The Scriptures make it clear that we are to become spiritual Israelites. That means we do what Israel did and live by the same laws Israel did. Paul wrote, “Who are Israelites?” Then he answers his own question, “To whom pertains the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of Yahweh, and the promises” (Rom. 9:4).

The original covenant was made with Israel and no one but Israel. What most fail to understand is that Yahweh is still working with and through Israel. Others have a part in the promises only by special adoption, as Paul reminds us.

Yahshua’s disciples clearly understood this fact. Just before His ascension they approached Him and asked, “Master, will you at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) They did not comprehend His timetable, but they did understand that He was working with those known as Israel. Others who want a part in the salvation promise must become spiritual Israelites (Rom. 9 and11) and abide by the same covenant agreement Yahweh made with Israel. That agreement included obedience to all of Yahweh’s laws given at Sinai – including the Ten Commandments and Feast days.

Yahweh’s Worship, Yahweh’s Days

Yahshua never changed the core terms of the covenant agreement with Israel when He came to earth. He said He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it, Matthew 5:17. Fulfill means to meet the law’s requirements. What Yahshua did was to open the way for those outside of Israel to come into the same promise by taking hold of the same covenant Yahweh made with Israel – now it’s a RENEWED covenant commonly known as the “New Testament.” The basic terms of that covenant are still the same: obedience to His laws (see Hebrews 8, Romans 7:1, Acts 24:14).

Another reason that the argument, “They’re Jewish Feasts,” falls flat is found in many passages, including Leviticus 23:2: “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.” This verse in the law tells us exactly whose Feasts they really are: the Feasts of Almighty Yahweh.

Prior to listing each of the seven annual appointments, Yahweh declared this important introduction, “These are the feasts of Yahweh, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their seasons” (Lev. 23:4). If these Feasts are just for Jews, then in the Millennial Kingdom only Jews will be required to observe them. But we have seen that in the Kingdom the whole world will be keeping them at their appointed times.

After Moses finished cataloging the Feasts in Leviticus 23, we find this: “And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of Yahweh” (v. 44). Notice that Moses spoke to all of Israel, not just to the Jews, and he declared to them the “Feasts of Yahweh,” not the “Feasts of the Jews.”

Only later in the New Testament did they begin to be referred to as Feasts of the Jews because the Jews were the one Israelite tribe still faithful in keeping them. The rest of the Israelites were derelict, being scattered throughout other nations and taking up heathen holidays, as we find in James 1:1; 1Peter 1:1, and John 7:35.

To keep the Feasts or not to keep them — that is the choice set before each of us today. It is our decision, and the appropriate consequences will follow our choice. Bear in mind that when Yahshua returns, ALL will comply or face plague (Zech.14:16-19). May you make the right choice, pleasing your Father in heaven and gaining His favor for the blessings of an eternity.

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Is new years in the bible?

Two Faces of New Year’s

Is New years in the bible?

When Roman Emperor Julius Caesar declared January 1 as the world’s New Year’s day based on a duplicitous deity, the connection could not have been more apropos. Specifically, the god he worshiped was two-faced, a fitting metaphor of the flip-flopping that marked New Year’s day through the centuries.

Caesar’s idol was named Janus, from which we get our month January. The emperor thought his deity would be the suitable portal to the new year, as one of his faces looked forward to a new year, the other backward.

That’s the sanitized version of New Years. The messy and convoluted history of the January 1 New Year’s observance reveals chronological confusion amid political intrigue, race hatred, and fuzzy math—all in an attempt to improve upon the Biblical calendar as inspired by our Creator.

Ancient Cultures Kept New Year’s

The January 1st new year is an on-and-off tradition. Surprisingly, January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years. The earliest record of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, c. 2000 B.C.E., and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox in mid-March.

A variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it at the winter solstice.

The early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the new year. The calendar had just ten months, beginning with March. That is why the name September means seventh in Latin but is actually the ninth month. October means eight but is actually the 10th. November means 9th but is the 11th. December means 10th but is the 12th month of the secular year.

January Joins the Calendar

The first time the new year was celebrated on January 1st in Rome was in 153 B.C.E. In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C.E., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.

February was the end of the year, making the new year a spring event. The new year was moved from March to January because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls—the highest officials in the Roman republic—began their one-year tenure. But this new year date was not always strictly and widely observed, and the new year was still sometimes celebrated on March 1.

Is new years in the bible?In 46 B.C. E. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar. The old calendar had become out of sync over the years. This new Julian calendar began the new year with January 1. Within the Roman world, January 1 would become the consistently observed start of the new year. Sacrifices were made to Janus, gifts and visits were exchanged, along with masquerading and feasting.

Not everyone found this observance acceptable. The early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. “Participation in the ordinary New Year’s Day observances as well as in the Saturnalia of December was from the first discouraged by the Church. Christians were expected to spend the day in quiet meditation, reading of Scripture and acts of charity” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Ed., Vol. 19, p. 594).

During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began melding its religious observances and dates with other pagan celebrations of the day, and New Year’s Day was no exception. New Years is still observed as the Feast of the Savior’s Circumcision by a few modern denominations.

In 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on December 25; March 1; March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would have a divine Son); and Easter. March 25 was the usual date among Christians in early medieval days.
After William the Conqueror became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the January 1 new year established by the Roman pagans. This move ensured that the commemoration of the Messiah’s supposed January 1 circumcision would align with William’s coronation, thus tying the English and Christian calendars and his own coronation into one neat bundle. William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.

January 1 Again in Vogue

In 1582, Pope Gregory’s calendar reform restored January 1 as new year’s day and synchronized the seasons with the months, which had gotten far out of harmony. This is still the calendar in use today. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately it was only gradually accepted among Protestant countries. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire — and their American colonies — still celebrated the new year in late March or early April.

New Year’s Rites

The giving and receiving of gifts at New Year’s has an ancient past. The Persians exchanged eggs at the beginning of the year. Gift exchanging at New Year’s is a custom strong in Europe. “The Druids distributed as New Year’s gifts branches of the sacred mistletoe. In Anglo-Saxon and Norman England New Year’s gifts were common, ”Britannica. Roman pagans found a different method of observance— drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was put in order by the gods.
However, gift-giving was not always in vogue at the new year observance. Sometimes bloodletting was more the case. Julius Caesar celebrated his first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee.

At the 1577 New Year’s inauguration of the second great Roman calendar (Gregorian) Pope Gregory decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to a compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services. On New Year’s Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity. On New Year’s 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign. Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, January 1 was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and murder.

Yahweh’s Biblical Calendar

The true Biblical calendar is based on the growing season, with the first month called Abib, which is rooted in the green barley grain. This calendar eliminates the need to perpetually adjust month lengths, add leap years and intercalate a 13th month in order to synchronize the lunar and solar cycles.

Here is how Yahweh told us to determine the start of the year: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb…And you shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it between the evenings.”Exodus 12:2-3, 6. This is the Passover lamb.

Which is this first month when the Passover was observed? “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto Yahweh your Elohim: for in the month of Abib Yahweh your Elohim brought thee forth out of Egypt by night,” Deuteronomy 16:1. Abib means green ears (of barley). When the barley grain comes to a harvestable age, then you have Abib. No need to juggle solar and lunar cycles, as they take care of themselves under the Bible’s calendar.

In Yahweh’s calendar, the first day of the year was observed by watching for the first visible crescent of the Abib moon. This “new moon” starts every month (moonth).

Most secular and some religious calendars base their new year on the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is that instant when the sun is directly above the earth’s equator while going from the south to the north (for the northern hemisphere). It is the time that most believe starts spring. Those who employ the vernal equinox point to Genesis 1:14, claiming that the sun, moon, and stars set the Feasts. It is true that the sun divides day from night and establishes the seasons, while the new moon sets the beginning of months. Yet, nowhere in the entire Bible does the vernal equinox establish Abib. Nowhere in the Bible is there even any mention of the vernal equinox. To say that Genesis 1:14 refers to the vernal equinox is reading what isn’t there.

Abib is a condition of grain as much as a time of year. The King James Version has led some astray in the way it translates moed inExodus 13:10, Numbers 9:2, 3, 7, and 13. The KJV uses “season” in these verses, causing some to believe that the command is specifically for springtime, and therefore must involve the vernal equinox. In reality, the Hebrew moed simply means “set time” or “appointed time.” Yahweh has set Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread by the criteria of the crops, not by a purely astronomical reckoning known as the vernal equinox.

The vast majority of Jews gradually got away from actually looking for the green ears of barley, going instead by a calculated calendar that involved the vernal equinox. This was done for the sake of convenience. But Yahweh tells us that His growing cycle reveals the proper month for His Feasts.

Is new years in the bible?

When the Roman church deliberately acted to separate Easter from Passover, it ruled in 325 C.E. in the Council of Nicaea that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. This setting of an observance was entirely man-made and appropriately applied to a man-made holiday called Easter. The Roman church on its own volition, therefore, bestowed a legitimacy to the vernal equinox as a calendar marker where it had none before — at least not in any kind of Biblical context. Among heathens, it was a different story.

Vernal Equinox Anciently

The vernal equinox had great significance among historic pagans and their calendars. Note the following:

• “Easter, too, celebrates the victory of a god of light (J-sus) over darkness (death), so it makes sense to place it at this season. Ironically, the name ‘Easter’ was taken from the name of a Teutonic lunar Goddess, Eostre (from whence we also get the name of the female hormone, estrogen). Her chief symbols were the bunny (both for fertility and because her worshipers saw a hare in the full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the cosmic egg of creation), images which Christians have been hard pressed to explain. Her holiday, the Eostara, was held on the Vernal Equinox Full Moon. Needless to say, the old and accepted folk name for the Vernal Equinox is ‘Lady Day.’ Christians sometimes insist that the title is in honor of Mary and her Annunciation, but Pagans will smile knowingly.” – Lady Day: The Vernal Equinox, by Mike Nichols.

• “The vernal equinox has long been a significant event in the lives of agricultural peoples as it symbolizes nature’s regeneration, fertility, growth and bounty. The word equinox comes from Latin and means “equal night” (German Tag und Nachtgleiche). On this day, night and day each last twelve hours. The Vernal Equinox used to be considered the beginning of the Pagan New Year. It was a time of joy called forth by the resurrection of the ‘Light of the World’ (sun god) from the underworld of the winter, from where he arose to join his goddess Eostre.”– by Ruth Reichmann, Max Kade German-American Center, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.

• “Babylonians and Assyrians placed greater importance on the Equinoxes than the solstices. The most important festival in Babylonia was the New Year, which occurred at the Spring equinox. This was the akitu, a twelve-day ceremony in which the King, as the son and representative of the divinity, regenerated and synchronized the rhythms of nature, cosmos, and human society.”– Tales of the Vernal Equinox, by Robin DuMolin

• “Modern Pagans also celebrate the universal principle of Resurrection at the Equinox – which is named for Eostre, a Pagan goddess. She is the goddess of Spring to whom the offerings of cake and colored eggs were made at the Vernal Equinox. Rabbits, especially white ones, were sacred to her, and she was believed to take the form of a rabbit. She is also said to be the goddess of the East, that being the direction of rebirth. Since the sun rises in the East, she is linked with the sunrise. Traditional Easter services stem from this association.” Ibid. “Easter is supposed to be derived from Anglo-Saxon Eostre, the name of the Norse goddess whose festival is celebrated by the pagans at the vernal equinox.” – A Book About the Bible, George Stimpson, p. 180.

• “Ostara, also known as The Spring or Vernal Equinox, the Festival of Trees, Alban Eilir, Ostara, the Rites of Spring, and the Rites of Eostre, occurs between March 19 and 21 and marks the first day of true Spring. Day and night are equal on this day, hence the name Equinox. It is observed by Pagans throughout the world.” –from The Witches’ Web

• “Pagans revere the G-d and G-ddess through rituals or ceremonies of various kinds. Pagans of the western traditions celebrate eight festivals or Sabbats each year. They comprise the four solar quarters i.e. the two solstices (longest and shortest days) and the two equinoxes (day and night are the same length) plus four Celtic seasonal festivals. All these mark important events in the cycle of life. They are: Ostara (Easter), the spring equinox, 21st March: Return of the sun from the south, springtime proper. Some celebrate a holy union between G-d and G-ddess.” – from What Do Pagans Do?

The secular New Year’s observance is significant beyond a collection of quaint, heathen customs. Scripture records Yahweh’s displeasure whenever anyone fiddled with His holy calendar to devise different observances. The coming Beast of Daniel 7 is an unsettling case in point. This individual, who will pose as the true Messiah, will be empowered by Satan himself. Note especially his actions: “And he shall speak great words against the most high and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time,” v. 25.

This anti messiah will enforce his own calendar on the world, making his own celebrations that honor only himself exclusively. The world is already accustomed to alternate days of worship. His actions will prove to be the definitive calendar crime of all time and he will pay eternally.

Watch “The Pagan Origins of New Years” below:

Mithras and Saint Nick Santa claus

Holly Day- Mithra Meets St. Nick

Father rises early, throws a large log on the fire, dresses warmly, grabs his axe and heads into the woods. He’ll soon return with bundles of greenery to place on and around the house.

Humming cheerfully, Mother prepares the ham, lights the red candles at the center of the table, and fills wine glasses for the adults who will soon arrive. Everyone eagerly awaits the gift exchange amid brightly colored candles and figurines.

The decorated living room will shortly be filled with singing as the children, off from school, join the festival games while eating their fill of fruits and nuts. “Merry Mithra” they call out. “May Mithra bless us, every one.”

This is the Roman Saturnalia, a.k.a. Feast of Mithra. It’s December 25 – some 50 years before the Savior is born at Bethlehem. It could just as easily be 2,000 years before that, as these same rites are rooted in the customs of the ancient Babylonians and their worship of their sun god.

The focus of this holiday is a Roman god known as the Sun of Righteousness. This is his birthday celebration of the Saturnalia, the Feast to the Roman deity Saturn.

seven-xmas-ritesBut for the Name, the Rest Is the Same

If you were to place this celebration up against today’s December 25th festivities you would be hard pressed to discern any major differences. Except there would be tons more presents to exchange and homes would be more garish today. Other than that, the masses would be just as comfortable with the rites of Mithra as with St. Nick.

Even those who want to “put Chr-st back into Christmas” will sense a communion with the ancient sun god of the Romans. Mithraism promised immortality to its faithful. The pagan Roman faith included such rites as fasting at certain times, baptism, marriage, the last rites, and liturgy with candles, incense, and holy water.

More striking than this, perhaps, are the personal similarities of Mithra and Messiah: Mithra “was the creator and orderer of the universe … he incarnated on earth … his birth on 25 December was witnessed by shepherds. After many deeds he held a last supper with his disciples and returned to heaven … after the last battle, victorious over evil, he will lead the chosen ones through a river of fire to a blessed immortality” (Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, p. 99).

All of this begs the question: who is being honored on December 25th? The Savior, or the Roman sun god? Don’t feel alone if you are mystified by it all. Many ancients were also confused. Pope Leo I (440-461) chastised Christians, who on Christmas celebrated the birth of the sun god. And the syncretism never stopped.

Strange Mixture

From the start, the Christmas observance was mired in a pagan and pseudo-Biblical combination that still scourges it today. Why the discordant mixture of the nativity with evergreen trees, St. Nick, Wassail bowls, wreathes, mistletoe, and Alvin the chipmunk? Is this how the Savior should be honored? Who authorized such a thing?

Search the Scriptures and you will not find one instance where Yahweh commanded or even requested such a rite. For that matter, He never even authorized a birthday celebration for His Son. Surprisingly, there was no birthday observance for the Savior until 300 years AFTER His birth. Being that no one knew when He was born, the Christmas observance was timed to coincide with a midwinter pagan festival already in progress for thousands of years. It honored the imperial gods Mithra and Saturn.

By a process of amalgamation, the winter solstice celebration became permanently linked with the birth of the Savior. Here is how one of many references describes it:

“In the 5th century the Western church ordered the feast [of the Savior’s birth] to be celebrated on the day of the Mithraic rites of the birth of the sun and at the close of the Saturnalia, as no certain knowledge of the day of [Messiah’s] birth existed. Among the German and Celtic tribes the winter solstice was considered an important point of the year and to commemorate the return of the sun they held their chief festival of yule, which, like other pagan celebrations, became adapted to Christmas” (Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 6, p. 622).

This source candidly admits that Christmas customs have no basis in the Bible. Notice:

“Most of the customs now associated with Christmas were not originally Christmas customs but rather were pre- Christian and non-Christian customs taken up by the Christian church. Saturnalia, a Roman feast celebrated in mid-December, provided the model for many of the merrymaking customs of Christmas. From this celebration, for example, were derived the elaborate feasting, the giving of gifts, and the burning of candles. Lights also played an important part in most winter solstice festivals” (ibid).

Does Yahweh honor such worship?

‘But He Understands… Doesn’t He?’

So what if we borrow customs pulled from heathenism? Shouldn’t Yahweh be pleased simply because we observe the birthday of His Son? Does it really make any difference HOW we do it?

Simply put, it certainly does. Every aspect of His worship must be honored according to His precise commands or it does not consititute His worship.

Yahweh says that any worship outside of His commands is expressly prohibited:

“Take heed to yourself that you be not snared by following them [pagan worshipers], after that they be destroyed from before you; and that you enquire not after their elohim, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their deities? even so will I do likewise.’ You shall not do so unto Yahweh your Elohim: for every abomination to Yahweh which He hates, have they done unto their elohim … Whatever thing soever I command you, observe to do it: you shall not add thereto nor diminish from it,” Deuteronomy 12:30-32.

Mixing forms of worship was what got ancient Israel into so much hot water with Yahweh. He is pointedly particular about how we worship and glorify Him. Adding rites and rituals is adding unacceptable worship. Anything less or anything added to what is commanded in His Word – and we will reap our own judgment.

Consider the biggest rite of the holiday, adoration of the tree. The brightly lit tree is a solar religion survival, and its greenery a symbol of life and fertility worship.Jeremiah 10 condemns tree worship, a mainstay in the worship of pagan gods.

“Thus says Yahweh, ‘Learn not the way of the heathen … For the customs of the people are vain: for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, and with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not…’’’ verses 2-4.

Yahweh is not pleased that most have not chosen to separate themselves from the ways and worship of the world. Paul urged the Corinthians, “Wherefore ‘come out from among them and be separate,’ says Yahweh, ‘and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters,’ says Yahweh Almighty,”2Corinthians  6: 17-18.

mistletoe-factsLet’s Just Be Honest

The Corinthians shared the same misconception as many today: they thought they could worship Yahweh the same way they had always worshiped their other gods. Just retool and rebaptize the rites and rituals to a Biblical context and have the best of both.

Yahweh says if you do that, it won’t be Me but some other you’ll be worshiping. I’m not like the many false gods of heathenism. I demand special worship from those who are mine. Not only is your worship vain, but I will also punish those who will not listen to Me.

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4).

Be honest with Yahweh. Pretending you are keeping the birthday of the Messiah by gathering around a pagan tree, coveting presents, eating ham, standing under mistletoe perhaps to steal an immoral kiss, and using Santa Claus as a surrogate savior who keeps track of who’s naughty and nice – and rewards accordingly – is tacitly wrong and does not honor or serve the One you may be trying to worship. To our Heavenly Father and His Son, any unauthorized worship is an abomination.

Keep in mind what Yahweh told Israel at the foot of Sinai about the deities of false worship:

“You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I Yahweh your Elohim am a jealous EI, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep My commandments,” Exodus 20:5-6.

His ways as revealed by His laws are not grievous (lJohn 5:3), but point to His exclusive and saving way of life. Come to know Him. Shun the empty ways of the world that ultimately lead to destruction, and find Him through real and complete obedience to His Word. Nothing less will do. Nothing more can please Him than to do just what His Word tells us to do.

 

Watch: “Christmas the Untold Story” from Discover the Truth TV below.

Straight to the Heart of Valentines Day

Every February 14 we see an “angelic” infant with a bow and arrow aiming for the heart of his “valentine.”

Cupids are everywhere with bows and arrows, heart shapes, paper lace, birds, and flowers. All these are associated with St. Valentine’s Day. But just where did these symbols and celebration of the 14th of February come from? Most of all, should we be celebrating this seemingly innocent day on which so many remember sweethearts and loves?

A Priest with a Heart

The origin of this day is not clear, as there is more than one explanation. The most accepted legend is that a Roman priest named Valentine had a special feeling for young people.

When the Roman Empire needed soldiers, Emperor Claudius II decreed that no one could marry or become engaged. Claudius believed that marriage made men want to stay at home instead of out fighting wars.

The kindly Valentine defied the Emperor’s decree and secretly performed weddings for a number of young couples. He was arrested, imprisoned, and put to death.

Another legend holds that Valentine was aiding persecuted Christians and was imprisoned. A jailer and his family were so impressed by his sincerity that they became Christians themselves. Valentine was fond of the jailer’s blind daughter and by a miracle restored her sight. On the morning of his execution he sent her a farewell message signed, “From your Valentine.”

February 14 a Fertility Festival

Valentine was beheaded supposedly on February 14. Not so coincidentally, this is also the eve of an important and more ancient Roman festival, the Lupercalia. (Lupus is Latin for wolf.) On this evening Roman youths drew names of girls who would be their partners during this ceremony.

To the Romans, Lupercalia was serious business. Mark Antony was master of the Lupercali College of Priests. He chose the Lupercalia festival in 44 B.C.E. as the proper time for offering the crown to Julius Caesar.

On February 15 the Luperci priests gathered at the cave of Lupercal, where according to legend, Romulus and Remus—founders of Rome—were nursed by a mother wolf.

Following a sacrifice, two youths of noble birth were brought forward. After a ceremony, they ran through the Roman streets, lashing about with goatskin thongs. The streets would be crowded with young women because a lash of the sacred thong was believed to increase their fertility.

The goatskin thongs were called februa and the lashing the februatio, both stemming from a Latin word meaning to purify. From it comes the name for the month February.

Long after Rome had become a walled city and the seat of a powerful empire, the Lupercalia lived on. When Roman armies invaded what are now France and Britain in the first century B.C.E., they took with them many pagan customs. Included was the Lupercalia.

Pagan-Christian Merger

By the fourth century Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome and the Lupercalia was declared unlawful. Throughout the empire the church endeavored to stamp out pagan practices brought in by the heathen.

“Unable to abolish some of the pagan festivals that the people loved, they accepted these and gave them Christian names,” we read in The Story of Valentine Symbols, by Edna Barth.

Barth explains, “So it was with the Lupercalia, which survived late into the fifth century. St. Valentine’s name was given to a festival that had celebrated springtime and fertility in human beings and other animals. And, do what the church might, the ancient meaning never quite left it. Memories of the Lupercalia as a celebration of mating were handed down, attaching themselves to the saint’s name.”

It was the eve of the ancient fest of the Lupercalia, when Romans habitually preserved the memory of an ancient rural deity, Faunus.

It is not difficult to imagine that the public beheading of Valentine the Christian was a pagan’s victory—here was a priest who professed the Bible, beheaded at this heathen celebration!

Frank Staff writes in his book, The Valentine and Its Origins, “In later years when the early Christian fathers were busy obliterating pagan superstitions and dates by substituting those of the Christian belief, names of many of the martyred Saints were used to replace the old festivals.

“In this way St. Valentine, having suffered on the eve of the Lupercalia, the 14th of February was now to perpetuate forever the memory of this festival of the return of the Spring when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love and when the birds begin mating.

“Centuries later it was usual on St. Valentine’s Day for young men to draw by lots the names of young women, a custom that lingered in some of the more remote villages of the British Isles right up to Victorian times. Some accounts written during the Victorian era of St. Valentine’s Day maintain that the putting of the names of young women into a box to be drawn for by the men was part of the ceremony of the Lupercalia, and has been repeated so often as to be believed true. But it has been authoritatively stated that this has yet to be proved.”

Not all historians agree with Staff, and see a direct connection between drawing names for Valentine’s Day and the Lupercalia,

Strong evidence also exists that the custom of sending valentines and other rituals on February 14 has erotic origins and it likely was a licentious festival. Lupercalia was a spring festival involving peculiar fertility rites and especially involved young people.

The little cherub called cupid, from the Latin cupido or “desire,” is actually the Greek deity of love known as Eros. Alexandrian poets made him popular in Rome (Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, p. 2542)

Valentine’s Day customs in the United States trace to early settlers from Germany and Britain.

Bottom Line: The Dollar Sign

Valentine’s Day is immortalized by manufacturers of greeting cards and candy, florists and clothiers who see the chance to induce customers through yet one more holiday to part with their money. “If you don’t give a gift at Valentine’s Day you don’t love others” is the subtle message.

The big problem with involvement in worldly holidays and special days of man is their rank pagan origins that have nothing to do with Scriptural worship. Even more, these days have replaced the true, Biblical observances commanded by our Creator. Paganism has always sought to replace True Worship. The one condemnation Yahweh repeatedly leveled against Israel was their desire to participate in the heathenism of those around them and worship other deities in place of Yahweh.

We as believers must never place anything before Yahweh and His way of life. We must give up the ways of a deceived world that has no love of Yahweh.

“Wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, says Yahweh, and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you,”2Corinthians 6:17.

It is amazing how much our world is steeped in heathen, truth-supplanting tradition. The days of Lupercalia are with us even in subtle ways.

As one writer observed, “Today we still refer to one who fancies himself with the ladies as something of a ‘wolf,’ and when a pretty girl walks down the street young men give a ‘wolf whistle,’ which shows that the spirit of the Lupercalia is still with us.”

Yahweh’s true Spirit is here as well, and available to those who have a real desire to live honestly and purely for Him. A position of rulership in His coming Kingdom awaits those who do.

 By Donald R. Mansager

Holy Days in the Bible

Holidays or Holy Days?

Sounds of holiday “cheer” grow louder as we draw to the close of the secular year. One can hear the Christmas juggernaut rev up in September and then explode into warp drive once it rumbles past a hardly noticed Thanksgiving.

Christmas, the granddaddy of all worldly celebrations, was never kept with such intensity when we were a more Bible-based nation. The observance was even outlawed by Puritan colonists. But now that it is deeply ingrained in the mass conscience by annual mass practice –and relentlessly driven by merchants with massive greed – it will not be dislodged until Yahshua returns and reinstates His righteous and true holy days.

The Yuletide extravaganza is nowhere commanded or even found in the Scriptures. Yet, we see the familiar signs admonishing, “Put Chr-st back into Christmas” when He was never there in the first place.

In stark contrast to Christmas, just recently honored again by Yahweh’s true saints is the Feast of Tabernacles. This joyous, eight-day Biblical blessing has been a standing command in the Scriptures for more than 3,000 years. It is taught and observed in both testaments. Along with other holy days, it was kept by the ancient patriarchs as well as by the Apostles and Yahshua the Messiah Himself. Still, it remains a near total mystery to the world.

Why do you think that is?

One answer is that man has always had difficulty doing what his Creator asks of him. There is a natural, human resistance against anything Yahweh tells us to do. We would rather make our own rules for life and worship, unfettered by Biblical do’s and don’ts. Added to this clash of the carnal are multiple layers of family ritual and cultural tradition, and a society with preconceived notions about what everyone will automatically be observing. No one ever asks, “Do you keep Christmas?” They just assume you do as most everyone else, and so overcoming that common presumption presents an automatic obstacle.

All of this adds up to a formula for forgetting the Father and just going with the traditional flow.

It’s nothing new. A stubborn Israel was constantly being admonished by Yahweh to follow Him and eschew the ways of the world. They mostly failed. Yet, when Jeroboam created his own false observance a month after the Feast of Tabernacles, ordaining his own priesthood to boot, the people flocked to it, 1Kings 12:32. That’s the nature of recalcitrant man.

The key to True Worship is that honoring the Father must be done on Yahweh’s terms and His alone. If that means keeping His holy days and giving up the world’s holidays, then that is what it must be.

Nowhere in the list of “Days to Keep” found in Leviticus 23, Exodus 12, Deuteronomy 16 and elsewhere do we see any of today’s popular holidays. We are presented the same option as ancient Israel – keep Yahweh’s days as commanded or ignore them and follow the inventions and conventions of man.

Some will take this issue up with their minister, expecting fair and honest consideration of the issue. Instead they will immediately hear the tired old bromide, “Those Old Testament days are unnecessary today. We are in a New Testament dispensation.” (Which leads one to ask, since when did the New Testament teach us to keep heathen holidays?)

Today’s clerics completely disregard the fact that Yahshua the Messiah and His apostles in the New Testament observed the very days found in Leviticus 23, and they will keep them again in the Kingdom along with the resurrected saints, Ezekiel 45:17-25,Zechariah 14:16-19. This fact begs another question: If the Biblical days were kept by the early Assembly and will be kept in the Kingdom, why shouldn’t they be observed now? We are told in 1Peter 2:21 that Yahshua left us an example to follow. Shouldn’t we be following it?

It is appalling that sincere inquirers cannot get the Truth from most ministers who are supposed to be guiding them into it. Instead, they are sent spinning off in an oblique direction whenever they inquire about why the church ignores the Bible’s commanded holy days. Ezekiel prophesied of this very thing, “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them,” 22:26.

If one seriously studies the Bible with an open mind, it will soon be obvious that churchianity is ignoring some of the most important and elemental truths of Scripture – Yahweh’s laws. At the same time telling you how unnecessary Yahweh’s Scriptural holy days are, churchianity observes with dedicated veneration the popular holidays that are completely missing from the Scriptures.

So what will it be, holidays or holy days? Is your desire to please people or to please Yahweh? It is your choice. And so are the consequences of what you choose.

pagan origins of halloween

Unmasking Halloween

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As Labor Day ends the world draws a bead on its major year-end holidays. The first of which is the strangest of all, Halloween. Candy and costume makers love it. Discount retailers make a huge “killing” on everything Halloween, their promotions driven by a lust for profits helping to keep the sinister observance near the top of the secular holiday charts.

Until recently it was mostly a childhood affair, but Halloween has grown up. Adults are joining the celebration by the droves as they head off to work dressed in adult-size costumes sporting red or green hair and painted faces, later in the evening they will paint the town red with costume parties. It seems that everyone is getting into the spirit.

But what spirit are they getting into? Is all of this just harmless fun? One look at the displays and costumes and it is clear that Halloween is in a contest with itself to be scarier and more sinister than ever. Murder and mayhem are the core themes, which prompts one to ask whether glorifying evil is wholesome and enriching to anyone, let alone innocent children. Consider the message being sent to children when society gives its sanction to the forces of darkness.

Then there is the rite of trick-or-treating, which introduces the twin ideas of threat and extortion to impressionable young minds.  The other side of “trick” is the “treat,” where children are encouraged to don the masks of the dark side for the questionable “reward” of massive quantities of unhealthy candies! It leads one to wonder – who is really getting tricked?

Real Fears and Superstitions

One must ask what Yahweh the Heavenly Father thinks of all of this. Can a Bible believer celebrate with a clear conscience an observance that revels in the occult and evil?

Halloween is an intensely superstitious observance deeply rooted in ancient Celtic mystery worship. It was originally the Druidic Feast of Samhain until the Roman church came along and morphed it into a holiday called “All Hallows Eve” or Halloween.

The Celts and their priests, the Druids, were nature worshipers who dreaded winter’s darkness. With the end of the harvest season and the approaching of winter, the Celts believed that the veil separating the living from the dead was at its thinnest on October 31, the last day of the Celtic year.

Enter the Many Spirits

These people believed all laws of space and time were suspended on this night, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. On October 31 the disembodied spirits of all those who had died during the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be the spirits’ only hope for the afterlife.

Joining this mix were evil phantoms in the form of fairies revisiting the earth and tormenting the living. The fairies were often considered hostile and dangerous to humans because they were thought to be resentful of human takeover of their lands. Consequently on this night they would sometimes trick people into becoming lost in fairy mounds where they would be trapped forever. There was great apprehension for other dangers as well. Crops were in jeopardy, babies could be stolen, farm animals killed, food and milk spoiled – all because of this open doorway for evil spirits. It was a frightening time for these ancients.

To protect themselves and prevent harm, the Celts would leave treats for the spirits outside their homes. The idea was that a spirit looking for a person to possess would be sidetracked by a bowl of fruit, nuts, and other treats. The spirit would then leave in peace. Spirits were believed to assume grotesque appearances this night. To avoid being recognized by them people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits and not plague them. The trick-or-treat custom reflects this superstition.

Other Defensive Measures

Fire symbolized the power of the sun deity while it was believed that it offered protection against mischievous ghosts. Home fires were allowed to go out and be rekindled with protective sacred fires at the end of this, the pagan year.

Some believed spirits could be warded off by carving a grotesque face into a gourd or root vegetable like a turnip and placing a candle inside. Because ghosts and witches feared fire, the candle within the jack-o-lantern along with the scary face became a weapon against evil influences when placed in front of the home.

It was believed that witches used skulls on Halloween to communicate better with the dead. It was also believed that witches derived from black cats their power to invoke evil spirits. The Celts were particularly fearful of black cats because they thought the animals were originally humans who had been transformed by sinister powers.

Halloween an Occultic Synthesis

Since this night belonged neither to one year nor the other, Celtic peoples thought that chaos reigned, and so the masses would engage in horseplay and practical jokes. Hence we see some of the original “trick” in trick-or-treating.

Other ancient superstitions survive today. Ducking or bobbing for apples was a marriage divination. The first person to bite an apple would be the first to marry in the coming year. Apple peeling was a tool to predict how long your life would be. The longer you could make the apple peel come off unbroken, the longer your life was destined to be.

Why apples? In the course of the four hundred years that the Romans ruled Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees and whose symbol was the apple.

Yahweh’s true Holy Days revolve around three harvest times in the year. The Celts also had three harvests: August 1, or Lammas, was the first harvest when the first fruits were offered to the gods in thanks. The fall equinox coming in the third week of September was the “true harvest.”  This was when the bulk of the crops would be brought in. The third, Samhain at the end of October, was the final harvest of the year.

No one blended profane practices with their own beliefs more than the Roman Church, which typically baptized paganism in order to draw heathen converts into the fold. In 1000 C.E. this church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day and November 1 All Saints Day in honor of the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils.  When Christianity spread through Europe the November 1 holiday was merged with All Saints’ Day, also called All Hallows’ Day. The evening before was referred to as All Hallows’ Evening or the contraction we know as Hallowe’en. Together, the three celebrations – the eve of All Saints’, All Saints’, and All Souls’– were called Hallowmass.

A Righteous Creator vs. the Unrighteous

Halloween is a holiday with a dark past that is only thinly masked by the addition of a few later traditions. What does Yahweh think about observing it? Is Halloween okay because “it’s just harmless fun for the children”– as if Yahweh sighs passively and says to Himself, “Oh well, let them have their fun reveling in ancient rites of the occult and deceived. I’ll just look the other way.” That is how many must reason if their consciences ever start to tug at them.

The masses just drift along letting society shape their personal beliefs and practices, not stopping to question anything the world observes but blindly joining in. Most have never tried to learn what Yahweh their Creator thinks about what they do and how they live out their lives, and Halloween is no exception.

Can we mix light with darkness? Is a little compromise with idolatry acceptable to a sovereign Heavenly Father? Will He reward such behavior?

In 1Corinthians 10:20-21 is a message for those who want it both ways, thinking that no harm is done so long as they give lip service to the Bible, too: “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to Elohim: and I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Savior and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the Savior’s table, and of the table of devils.”

If there is no Heavenly Father then it doesn’t matter one way or the other what we observe. But because there is a Mighty One who demands that we follow Him in complete Truth, then we have a problem with the world’s days rooted in ancient mystery practices that glorify the dark side as well as the Evil One himself.

Imagine Yahweh giving a passive nod as He sees all kinds of symbols of witchcraft being pandered to and glorified at Halloween. Imagine this in light of Exodus 22:18, where He thunders in His law: “You shall not suffer a witch to live.”

Or consider what we find in Deuteronomy 18:10-14: “There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto Yahweh: and because of these abominations Yahweh your Elohim does drive them out from before you. You shall be perfect with Yahweh your Elohim. For these nations, which you shall possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for you, Yahweh your Elohim has not suffered [allowed] you so to do.”

Participating in the practices of rank heathens as one does in the observance of Halloween is expressly forbidden in the Scriptures. Read Deuteronomy 12:29-32: “When Yahweh your Elohim shall cut off the nations from before you, whither you go to possess them, and you succeed them, and dwell in their land; Take heed to yourself that you be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before you; and that you enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. You shall not do so unto Yahweh your Elohim: for every abomination to Yahweh, which he hates, 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: you shall not add thereto, nor diminish from it.”

How can a True Worshiper allow his son or daughter to dress up like a witch or warlock, knowing that Yahweh condemns witchcraft? In 1Thessalonians 5:22 we are told to avoid even the appearance of evil. Halloween celebrates and revels in a vast array of evil appearances! And is it any wonder that all this glorification of evilness is a nighttime activity? In John 3:19-20 Yahshua said that evil loves the darkness.

One of the biggest problems of Old Testament Israel was their inability to keep their worship pure. The Apostle Paul in1Corinthians 10:6 tells us that their experiences are an example for us “that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.” Yahweh does not accept compromise with any other belief system, let alone practices that spring from the darkness of rank heathen religion and superstition.

Trying to put a positive spin on Halloween, the chorus of the world will say, “Oh, come on, Halloween is just harmless fun. How can you deprive the children?”

Keep in mind that what children practice they also learn from. How can a parent seek to promote healthy, wholesome values in a child who is allowed to don masks of vile creatures or deformed humans with the underlying theme of murder, mayhem and evil? Should a caring parent wanting to teach truth to his or her child introduce that child to sinister, pagan falsehoods that Yahweh repeatedly condemns?

 Nothing but the Truth

As we have seen, a Bible believer cannot follow Truth while dabbling in the exact opposite and still be acceptable to the True Father. Jeremiah 10:2 says very clearly, “Learn not the way of the heathen.”

The sincere worshiper can’t live a lie.  Halloween is filled with lies born in the depths of rank ignorance in one of history’s most pagan and superstitious cultures. In fact, virtually all of the world’s major holidays revel in lies, from Santa and Rudolph of Xmas customs to Easter’s egg-laying bunny.

The true man and woman of Yahweh must make conscious, deliberate choices. The true faith is not a passive banality that just goes along with whatever society does.

In 2Corinthians 6:14-18 we are admonished to separate from all forms of evil and darkness. “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Messiah with Belial? or what part has he that believes with an infidel? And what agreement has the temple of Elohim with idols? for you are the temple of the living Elohim; as Elohim has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, says Yahweh, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says Yahweh Almighty.”

One of the biggest mistakes Israel made upon entering the Promised Land was in not completely removing the false worship they found there. Our fallen natures have an attraction for what is wrong and sinful. It takes conscious, proactive efforts to overcome it. Wickedness pulls at us like a magnet drawing iron. We constantly struggle with iniquity.

Why are most children attracted to horror movies? What is it that draws the human spirit to the dark side? It’s a natural human attraction. And it is this pull, this desire that could lead to sin, that carnal human beings must overcome daily. Jeremiah 17:9 says about the natural man, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  I Yahweh search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

Why continue being involved in the abominable, which your Creator hates and condemns? Where’s the reward in keeping dead-end holidays? Begin pleasing Him and start reaping the blessings! Let the world have its fruitless, empty observances. Say with the patriarch Joshua, “As for me and my family, we will serve Yahweh.”

Resolve today to observe with Yahweh’s true saints the inspired holy days commanded in the Word. If you do that you will be most richly blessed when the Messiah Yahshua returns to reward those few truly faithful who followed a different path – one that leads to life everlasting.

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halloween and christians

Halloween Unmasked

This annual rite is bigger than ever—especially among adults. It’s just harmless fun, most believe. Harmless? Let’s take a look below the surface of this annual rite to see what’s really behind the mask-querade.

On October 31 children across the land learn how extortion works through one of the world’s most popular of ancient pagan festivals.

We call it Halloween, which is a contraction of the words “Hallowed” and “evening.” But there is nothing holy about this night. “Trick or treat!” the bantam, masked marauders cry as they go from door to door coercing goodies from mostly compliant residents.

Along with blackmail, the chance to deface private property and get away with it is also a big part of this “hallowed evening.” Shaving cream, soap, and toilet paper are essentials in the juvenile vandals’ bags of tricks prepared especially for this weird, annual ritual. Imagine trying to explain the whole scene to a visitor from another planet…

Adults Now Big into the Act

Visit many office buildings and department stores on October 31 and you’ll see adult employees dressed in silly or grotesque costumes, perhaps with painted faces and fluorescent green hair.

They are psyching up for the Halloween party that night — when they’ll have a chance to act foolishly with impunity. It seems that as our world sinks deeper into paganism and fascination with the occult, this holy day of the heathen Druids has zoomed to the top of the holiday charts. In fact, among adults Halloween is starting to vie in popularity with Christmas.

But is Halloween just a harmless time of fun for the whole family, where everyone can practice their pumpkin-carving skills and then head for the store to be the first to sport the latest in weird costumery?

It is time to tear the mask from Halloween and expose it for what it is. What we find at its roots should concern anyone who professes belief in Scripture.

Night of the Wandering Dead

Rooted in Druidic demon worship 2,000 years old, Halloween continues to cast its ugly spell on modern peoples.

The ritual was not called Halloween when the Celtic peoples of pre-Christian Ireland and Scotland observed it on November 1. For them it was the Feast of Samhain (pronounced Sa-ween), Lord of the Dead. This was also the beginning of the Celtic new year, a time to give thanks to the sun god for the harvest.

But it was also a terrifying night when it was believed time stood still and the souls of the dead walked abroad, mingling with the living and playing malicious tricks on them. The Celts thought that the sinful souls who died during the year had been transferred to the bodies of animals. Through gifts and sacrifices these souls could be freed to claim a heavenly reward. Samhain judged these souls and decreed that their existence was to continue as either animal or human.

The spirits of the dead that were thought to collect around houses of the living were greeted with banquet-laden tables. (They believed spirits needed food.) When the feast was over villagers donned masks and costumes to represent the souls of the dead and paraded to the outskirts of town to lead the ghosts away. Thus they thought they might avoid any retribution the roving spirits may cause them in the event they had not provided suitable and sufficient sustenance. Such reprisals included causing livestock to die, turning milk sour, and spoiling food.

In some areas, food was set outside for the spirits so that they would leave the house untouched. The trick-or-treat ritual re-enacts these ancient superstitions.

Amid all of this superstition the Druids were offering up sacrifices to the sun god. “It was common for horses to be sacrificed since they were sacred to the Sun God. There were also human sacrifices. Men, mostly criminals, were imprisoned in wicker and thatch cages shaped like animals or giants. The Druid priests set fire to the tindery cages and the men were burned to death…In the Middle Ages in Europe, black cats were still being thrown to the flames in wicker cages, for they were thought to be the friends of witches or even transformed witches,” Celebrations, The Complete Book of American Holidays, p. 258.

Samhain Merges with All Saints’ Day

So where does “Hallowe’en” come in, this “hallowed evening”? The celebration in the Roman Catholic Church, which was later to merge with Samhain, was known as All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day originated in the 7th century when the Pantheon at Rome was wrested from the barbarians, made into a cathedral, and renamed the Church of the Blessed Virgin and All Martyrs. Thus, from honoring all gods (which is the meaning of the Greek word “pantheon”) the Pantheon became the center for glorifying all saints (Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 363).

This day that honored all the “hallowed” or holy saints, was first observed on the evening of May 13, and was known as the All Hallows festival.

The day was officially sanctioned in 835 by Pope Gregory IV after it was moved to November 1 to coincide with
Samhain. It began on the evening of October 31, which was called All Hallows Eve.

Thus, without forcing the pagans to drop their heathen practices and accept Christianity, the Roman church merely made room to accommodate the barbarians.

Just as it confiscated the pagan Pantheon for its own uses, the Roman church incorporated the customs of Samhain to further its mission to convert the known world to Catholicism.

The two celebrations made strange bedfellows: one in respect of evil spirits, the other honoring so-called saints.

One writer noted, “The three days between October 31 and November 2 see pagan and Christian celebrations intertwined in a fascinating way. All Hallows Eve, usually called Hallowe’en, is followed by All Hallows’ Day, which is also All Saints’ Day, and the three-day period is a perfect example of superstition struggling with religious belief,” Year of Festivals, p. 76.

Can we mix light with darkness? Is a little compromise with idolatry acceptable to a holy Creator? Paul warns us, “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to Elohim; and I would not that you have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Master, and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the Master’s table, and of the table of devils,” 1Corinthians 10:20-21.

The joining of the two celebrations spawned an odd hybrid of beliefs about what was supposed to happen in the spirit world. Souls in purgatory appeared as witches and toads to persons who had wronged them. Halloween fires now were used to comfort souls in purgatory and people prayed for them while holding burning straw in the air.

Even the idea of trick-or-treating by evil spirits transformed into an acceptable church practice: costumed children went around on All Souls Day offering to fast for the departed souls in return for money or an offering.

As the Celts converted to the new religion, they did not forget their stories of the dead traveling to the afterworld on Halloween. Rather, exhibitions of this night became more evil and the observance adopted even more malicious overtones.

Let’s take a look at the familiar customs of Halloween and ask ourselves whether they are fit practice for a True Worshiper.

That Smirking Jack-o-lantern

jackolanternIn America it starts as a pumpkin, but in Europe it was often carved from a turnip, large beet, potato, rutabaga or even a skull with a candle in it. The fearsome face of the fat jack-o-lantern was representative of the god of the dead, Saman, who would drive off less powerful evil spirits abroad that night.

As glimmering lights flickered over an English marsh or an Irish bog, people imagined dead souls had returned to earth. They would place the jack-o-lantern on posts and in windows to ward off the spirits of the dead on Halloween.

The word jack-o-lantern is an abbreviation of “Jack of the Lantern.” Jack is another name for joker or Satan. In an Irish tale, a man named Jack was fond of playing tricks on the devil. Annoyed, the devil tossed Jack a burning coal from hell and with that in his lantern Jack was condemned to walk the earth forever.

The jack-o-lantern is a Halloween idol that keeps alive an ancient symbol of demonic superstition.

Witchery and Black Cats

A pagan practice that was not eradicated upon the coming of Christianity was witchcraft. The word “witch” comes from the Anglo-Saxon wicce, or “wise one.” Witches were thought to be possessors of magic.

Witches, who worship the deities of nature, have living talismans or symbols through which they derive their dark powers. They invoke evil spirits to enter the bodies of their talismans. Some witches have dogs, owls, snakes or swine for their talismans, but the most common are cats. Cats have been closely associated with mystery religion from the Egyptians to the Norse. But the Celts had a particular fear of cats, believing they were humans who had been changed into feline form by evil powers. The black cat particularly was connected to demonic powers.

Black cats are the chief idol of the goddess of Wicca, Diana. In legend, she turns into a black cat to commit incest with her brother, Lucifer.

Eventually the Druids themselves came to be regarded as witches. Witch hunting during Halloween became almost a national pastime in the colonial years of our nation.

Halloween is regarded as the highest “sabbath” for practicing witches today.

Witchcraft is demonic worship in diametric opposition to the worship of Yahweh. Yahweh minces no words about it. He told Israel through Moses, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22:18). He says in Deuteronomy 18:10, “There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.”

How can a True Worshiper allow his son or daughter to dress up in imitation of a witch or warlock, knowing how Yahweh condemns witchcraft? We are commanded to avoid even the APPEARANCE of evil (1Thes. 5:22).

The Airborne Witch

The broomstick is a symbol of the male organ, on which the witch mounts and leaps high around the fields to “teach” the crops how high to grow (ABC’S of Witchcraft, pp. 48-49).

The notion of flying witches relates to the fact that witches believed they could fly great distances to their feasts by smearing their bodies with ointments containing drugs. The drugs gave them psychedelic “trips” making them think they flew (Ibid., pp. 142-146).

Colors of the Demonic

“Orange, black, and red, the devil’s colors, are the colors associated with Halloween…,” so says the Good Housekeeping Book of Entertainment, p. 168.

Black prefigures black magic and demonic influence. The black of night is when these forces of evil are busiest, using the cover of darkness for their sinister works.

Yahweh warns, “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from Yahweh, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? and who knows us?” (Isa. 29:15)

In John 3:19-20 Yahshua said, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

How much time should any Bible believer give to a rite that is observed in the dark and that revels in the colors, symbols, and practices of Yahweh’s adversary, Satan the devil?

Skulls and Skeletons

The skeleton is a form of the god of the dead, the witches’ “horned god.” The Dictionary of Satanism by Wade Baskin says this about skulls and skeletons under “skull worship”: “Skulls play an important role as sacred relics and as objects of worship among primitives. Among Polynesians and Melanesians, skulls of ancestors are worshiped in order to establish connections with the spirits of the dead. Like the head of Osiris in Egypt, the skulls of ancestors may also serve as tutelar deities. The head or its parts, each of which may stand for the whole, can be used as magical food or as a means of increasing the fertility of the soil.”

Under “skull,” the Dictionary of Lore and Legend says, “Symbol of death, often with crossed bones beneath.”

Isaiah tells us what Yahweh thinks of the courting of death and the dead: “When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritualists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their Elohim? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isa. 8:19-20, NIV)

Fires to Call Up the Sun God

Being that Halloween is a Celtic new year’s festival, many of its surviving rituals trace to the Celtic feast. The fire rite was practiced in many areas around the world on the night before the new year. The old fire was allowed to go out and a new one was kindled — usually a sacred fire from which the fires of the village were re-lit. The fires were thought to rejuvenate the waning sun and aid in banishing evil spirits. The Druids built hilltop fires to celebrate important festivals (Celebrations, the Complete Book of American Holidays, pp. 258-259).

Ghosts and witches feared fire, it was thought, and so fire became the best weapon against evil spirits. Witchcraft was punished by burning at the stake, fire being used as a means of purification. The light that fires gave off was a sign of sacredness.

Apple Bobbing

Popular at Halloween parties is apple bobbing. It was a means of divination among the Druids and survives in cultures influenced by the Celts.

Because the apple is a common love charm, the practice of ducking for apples seems to have been associated with the selection of a lover (see The Folklore of American Holidays).

Apple bobbing was originally a fertility rite deriving from the Christmas observance, which was replete with various fertility rites.

Selling Out to Sin

One of the perpetual failings of ancient Israel was their inability to keep their worship pure. The record throughout history has not been any different. Yahweh’s people have always been tempted to compromise their faith by selling out to the dominant culture and its practices.

For those who are satisfied with less than total truth, the concessions come easier.

Today we witness Easter egg hunts on church lawns, Christmas trees in church vestibules, and Halloween parties in church basements (on the pretext of keeping the children off unsafe streets and away from tainted Halloween candy).

“It’s for the children,” goes the rationalization. “We really just do it for them.”

What our children practice they also learn from. Why would we want to introduce to them pagan falsehoods? How can we instill in them a desire for righteousness if we allow them to revel in ancient customs of evil on Halloween? How can we promote healthy, decent values while allowing them to don hideous masks of vile creatures or deformed humans — with the underlying themes of murder, mayhem, and death?

Can we live a lie? Can we mix the holy with the profane and expect Yahweh to still bless us? “Learn not the way of the heathen!” He thunders in Jeremiah 10:2. Come out from among them and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, Paul writes in2Corinthians 6:17.

Paul also admonished, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion has light with darkness?” (2Cor.6:14)

Halloween has no redeeming value. It is one big trick on an ignorant or indifferent society, and another victory for the forces of darkness.

Almighty Yahweh gives us a final warning in the law about demonism and witchcraft: “For all that do these things are an abomination unto Yahweh: and because of these abominations Yahweh your Elohim does drive them out from before you. You shall be perfect with Yahweh your Elohim” (Deut. 18:12-13).

Become perfect before Yahweh. Drop the empty, senseless, heathen observances of man and resolve to begin keeping the true holy days He has commanded in His Word. Discover what true blessings and deep fulfillment are when you begin to comply with His will and not the will of society.

Original article by Alan R. Mansager