Ought not self-professed 'Christians' ask themselves what rabbits and eggs have to do with the resurrection of the Messiah? Or perhaps where the name "Easter" even comes from?
The name "Easter" originates from a Babylonian goddess named "Ishtar", who was also known as "Semiramis" in Babylon, "Ashtoreth" in Hebrew, "Astarte" in Greek, "Ostara" by the Norse, and other names in other cultures. Ishtar is a goddess of fertility. [1] And what do rabbits and eggs symbolize?
As with Christmas and many other allegedly "Christian" doctrines and practices, Easter is another example of pagan infiltration into the true religion of YHWH.
While the date of Easter sometimes falls near to Passover, it is sometimes weeks apart. Easter has acted as a substitute for the Passover observance.
Background: The Legends-Mythology of Nimrod, Ishtar, and Tammuz in Babylonian Mystery Religion
Nimrod built and organized major cities. The Bible notes that these included Babel, Asshur, Nineveh and Calah (Genesis 10:10-12).
When Nimrod eventually died, the Babylonian mystery religion in which he figured prominently continued on. His wife Queen Semiramis saw to that. Once he was dead, she deified him as the Sun-god. In various cultures he later became known as Baal, the Great Life Giver, the god of fire, Baalim, Bel, Molech, etc.
“Later, when this adulterous and idolatrous woman gave birth to an illegitimate son, she claimed that this son, Tammuz by name, was Nimrod reborn.” Semiramis “claimed that her son was supernaturally conceived [no human father] and that he was the promised seed, the 'savior'” - promised by God in Genesis 3:15. “However, not only was the child worshipped, but the woman, the MOTHER, was also worshipped as much (or more) than the son!” Nimrod deified as the god of the sun and father of creation. Semiramis became the goddess of the moon, fertility, etc.
"In the old fables of the Mystery cults, their 'savior' Tammuz, was worshipped with various rites at the Spring season. According to the legends, after he was slain [killed by a wild boar], he went into the underworld. But through the weeping of his mother… he mystically revived in the springing forth of the vegetation - in Spring! Each year a spring festival dramatically represented this supposed 'resurrection' from the underworld.
Thus, a terrible false religion developed with its sun and moon worship, priests, astrology, demonic worship, worship of stars associated with their gods, idolatry, mysterious rites, human sacrifice, and more.
Babel was the origin of an idolatrous system that swept the world. The Bible says of her, “Babylon… the nations drank her wine; Therefore the nations are deranged” (Jeremiah 51:7). The Bible often speaks of the Satanic religions which came from her. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus "witnessed the Mystery religion and its rites in numerous countries and mentions how Babylon was the primeval source from which ALL systems of idolatry flowed.
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Tammuz was the son/husband of Ishtar:
TAMMUZ
tam'-uz, tam'-mooz (tammuz; Thammouz):
(1) The name of a Phoenician deity, the Adonis of the Greeks. He was originally a Sumerian or Babylonian sun-god, called Dumuzu, the husband of Ishtar, who corresponds to Aphrodite of the Greeks. The worship of these deities was introduced into Syria in very early times under the designation of Tammuz and Astarte, and appears among the Greeks in the myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, who are identified with Osiris and Isis of the Egyptian pantheon, showing how widespread the cult became. The Babylonian myth represents Dumuzu, or Tammuz, as a beautiful shepherd slain by a wild boar, the symbol of winter. Ishtar long mourned for him and descended into the underworld to deliver him from the embrace of death (Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris). This mourning for Tammuz was celebrated in Babylonia by women on the 2nd day of the 4th month, which thus acquired the name of Tammuz (see CALENDAR). This custom of weeping for Tammuz is referred to in the Bible in the only passage where the name occurs (Ezek 8:14).
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Pagan Easter Celebration Continues After Europeans Are Converted to Christianity and Adopted into "Christian" Practice
The Britannica Encyclopedia (1934) states:
"EASTER (es’ter). Ostara, or Eastre, was the goddess of Spring in the religion of the ancient Angles and Saxons. Every April a festival was celebrated in her honor. With the beginnings of Christianity, the old gods were put aside. From then on the festival was celebrated in honor of the resurrection of Christ, but was still known as Easter after the old goddess." [2]
Origin of Lent - 40 Days of Weeping For Tammuz
Alexander Hislop, in his work The Two Babylons, says this of the origin of Lent:
"Whence, then, came this observance? The forty days' abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent of forty days, "in the spring of the year," is still observed by the Yezidis or Pagan Devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians.
Such a Lent of forty days was held in spring by the Pagan Mexicans, for thus we read in Humboldt, where he gives account of Mexican observances: "Three days after the vernal equinox...began a solemn fast of forty days in honour of the sun."
Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt, as may be seen on consulting Wilkinson's Egyptians. This Egyptian Lent of forty days, we are informed by Landseer, in his Sabean Researches, was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god. [...]
Among the Pagans this Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz, which was celebrated by alternate weeping and rejoicing, and which, in many countries, was considerably later than the Christian festival, being observed in Palestine and Assyria in June, therefore called the "month of Tammuz"; in Egypt, about the middle of May, and in Britain, some time in April. To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated but skilful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult matter, in general, to get Paganism and Christianity--now far sunk in idolatry--in this as in so many other things, to shake hands."
Origin of the Easter "hot cross bun" cakes
From Hislop's The Two Babylons:
"Such is the history of Easter. The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The "buns," known too by that identical name, were used in the worship of the queen of heaven, the goddess Easter, as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens--that is, 1500 years before the Christian era. "One species of sacred bread," says Bryant, "which used to be offered to the gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun." Diogenes Laertius, speaking of this offering being made by Empedocles, describes the chief ingredients of which it was composed, saying, "He offered one of the sacred cakes called Boun, which was made of fine flour and honey."
The prophet Jeremiah takes notice of this kind of offering when he says,
"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 gods, that they may provoke me to anger." Jeremiah 7:18
And who is the "queen of heaven"? Semiramis/Ishtar/Astarte, as noted by Hislop and others:
"Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, aas found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar."
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Worship of Ishtar and Tammuz is an Abomination to YHWH
"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth." Judges 2:11-13
Let's look at this passage from Ezekiel for a moment:"He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. The he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. The said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again and thou shalt see great abominations than these." Ezekiel 8:13-15
You see, the Lord is condemning this practice of worshipping Ishtar and lamenting for Tammuz, and calls it a great abomination Easter worship is an abomination to God. Let's reflect back upon the story of Ishtar and pick out some of the key points. Notice the resemblance of the story of Ishtar to that which is written in the Gospel about our Savior, Jesus Christ.
As Ishtar descended, she was stripped and humiliated; Jesus was stripped and beaten in humility. Ishtar was killed and hung on a stake; Jesus was crucified on a stake. Ishtar was resurrected after three days; Jesus rose from the tomb on the third day. By now it should be quite obvious to you why Easter is in fact the worship of Ishtar.
Satan has taken the truth about Christ and overlaid it with the worship of Ishtar, bringing it into the church through the traditions of men and presenting it as the celebration of Easter, a transliteration of the word Ishtar. Satan knew the purpose of this earth age and has tried repeatedly to subvert God's plan. He tried to corrupt the seed line in the garden so that Christ could not be born and die on the stake.
Satan failed at that attempt, so he used his offspring, Cain and the Kenites (the sons of Cain) to propagate false religions and myths that have a resemblance to the truth. In order to create confusion and disbelief so as to deceive God's children. For every positive there is a negative, and Satan is the Great Imitator.
Remember, Satan's whole thrust is to be worshipped as God. Let's for a moment review a few more of the characteristics of Ishtar, not losing sight of the story of Ishtar and what the ritualistic worship of her represented, the resurrection of the dead god. Ishtar was also known as the Queen of Heaven (there is a large denomination that openly prays to the Queen of Heaven). Ishtar was connected to the planet Venus, called both the "morning star" and the "evening star." Ishtar was worshipped as female in the morning and male in the evening. You should also note that in Isaiah 14:12, Lucifer, another name for Satan, is called the son of the morning. The name Lucifer itself means "the morning star." Ishtar is also called the goddess of fertility, from another one of her notorious legends. As the legend goes, an egg fell from heaven one day and landed in the Euphrates river. Some fish managed to roll the egg to shore, hence the tradition of rolling Easter eggs.
Then several doves (a symbol of the Holy Spirit) descended from heaven and incubated the egg and hatched the goddess Ishtar, the goddess of Easter. The egg became the universal symbol for fertility, and as such can be traced to pagan ritual and worship worldwide. Like the egg, the rabbit became part of the Easter tradition because it too was a symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt.
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Resources:
Last Trumpet Ministries: "The Pagan Origin Of Easter"
The Restored Church of God: "The True Origin of Easter"
The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, Chapter III, Section II, "Easter"
Watchman Willie Martin Archive: "Ishtar/Easter"
ChristianAnsweres.Net: "Where did “Easter” get its name? Where did the concept of an Easter egg and bunny originate?"
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