Part 2 - Corrupting Changes Introduced into Christianity:

This Article is part of a multi-part Study Series called Is ‘Easter,’ As We Know it, Biblical?.

 

Considering the foregoing, you might ask how did such pagan customs and practices become associated with Biblically recorded True Events of Israel’s “Passover” and that of the Biblical Crosswork of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Please realize that these two critical understandings serve to accentuate the importance of Bible Truth concerning Christ’s death of the Cross for our redemption and salvation from perdition.

  • The ‘Jewish Passover’ with its sacrifice of ‘innocent animal blood’ was to cover the Israelite’s sins.’ This practice foreshadowed the coming of the real “lamb of God.”
  • Only Jesus Christ’s shed blood and Death actually ‘removes all sins’… taking away all the sins of all who will believe in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior?

The corruption of these truth was accentuated by the government of the Roman Empire’s Emperor Constantine (~AD315) who regarded the early Christian Church as an extension of or branch of the Jewish religion. This was because many of the earliest Christians still ignorantly and staunchly observed the same Jewish laws and religious celebrations.  Religion did not recognize Paul’s words; “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for [because] ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Romans 6:14 (KJV)

Later, persecution against Jews increased following Jewish rebellion against Roman rule. Many groups of professing Christians then chose to dissociate themselves from any appearance of Jewish religious practices and started assigning those Jewish religious practices to their Old Roman Pagan festivals.

What about the Sabbath? Even earlier, during the reign of Rome’s Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-135), Jews were harshly persecuted and practices of Judaism forbidden. These oppressive measures apparently influenced many early so-called Christians in Rome to abandon the Biblical Sabbath [i.e., Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) and then turned to ‘Sunday’ because Sunday was historically observed by the Pagan Romans as a day of veneration of the Sun god. The Sun god even today is depicted as radiating from the center of the Roman Catholic monstrance,’ which is sacred to Catholics.  Hence, SUNday, the first day of the week, took the place of the seventh-day Jewish Sabbath (Friday Sunset to Saturday Sunset), and “some of the old heathen pagan feasts became ‘church festivals’ with change of name and of worship” (Portions taken from Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, The Story of the Christian Church, 1954, pp. 43, 45, 77, 79).

In other words, the Jewish Sabbath and festivals of God, outlined in Leviticus 23, which were practiced by both Judaism and ignorantly by the early Church (Acts 13:14, 42, 44; 16:13; 17:2; 18:4, 21; 20:6, 16; 27:9), were supplanted by unbiblical Pagan traditions and practices. With that, as time passed, the truth and purity of the early Church of God were even further corrupted.

Today learned Bible students now realize that no external religious laws, rituals or rites (Jewish or pagan) are valid during today’s Gentile grace age of “the dispensation of the grace of God.” Thus, the Apostle Paul says don’t let anyone judge you with regard to whether or not you keep these religious sabbath days, holidays, or food restrictions.

Let no man therefore judge you [bible believers] in meat [foods], or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:” (Colossians 2:16 (KJV)

CONTROVERSY OVER WORSHIP:

Accompanying this transformation was early confusion over the timing and focus of their Easter observance.

“In Rome Easter was celebrated on the Sunday following the full moon after the spring equinox, and it was a memorial of the Resurrection (The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, 1990, p. 36).

By contrast to this we should note how that Jesus actually instructed His Jewish disciples to commemorate His DEATH … yet, the ‘Easter celebration’ was subtly changed by Rome into a celebration of His RESURRECTION. Although Christ’s resurrection itself is very important part of God’s eternal plan (see 1 Cor. 15 and 1 Pet. 1:3), there is NOT a single command in the Bible, by Jesus or His apostles, for Jesus’ followers to have a particular ceremony, service, or mass to celebrate His Resurrection.

Yet most believing Christians today still celebrate the Easter on a SUNday as the Resurrection day.’

Recall how that Jesus had highlighted what was to be accomplished by HIS DEATH by directing His Jewish disciples to partake of the bread and wine as symbols of His body and shed blood given for them in His DEATH. This as Israel’s New Covenant meaning of the Old Covenant “Passover (Matt. 26:26-28; Mk. 14:22-24; Luke 22:17-20).

Then also in the Bible’s account of how the Lord liberated the Jews from bondage in Egypt. The night before they left Egypt, they had to kill a lamb, take its blood, and smear the blood over the doorpost and lentils of the door to their house. With the blood in place, the ‘Death Angel,’ which was to kill all the firstborn, including the Egyptian Pharoah’s son, would PASS OVER” and the children would live.

This foreshadowed Jesus as “the Lamb of God” who would DIE, offering Himself as the TRUE PASCHAL PASSOVER LAMB’ in sacrifice for “the sins of the world (Jn. 1:29). Thus, Jesus’ DEATH fulfilled what had been foreshadowed by the slaying of the Passover Lambs.

But again, this was corrupted, being replaced by the ‘Roman Catholic Pagan Easter,’ a day that neither He nor the early New Testament Church would approve of.

INCONSISTENT and INCORRECT DATING OF JESUS’ DEATH AND RESURRECTION:

In Part 3 we will see how that the proper dating of Jesus’ Death is crucial to proving His Messiahship as “the Lamb of God”!

Thus, today’s so-called Easter celebration on SUNday is a mixture that includes ancient Pagan ‘fertility and resurrection celebrations’mixing it with the Resurrection of Jesus.

Putting all this together, we see that the world’s observance of Easter’ is a mixture of ancient Pagan mythological practices and arbitrary dating, which actually obscures and discredits the proof of Jesus Christ’s Messiahship based upon His Resurrection. The Jewish Passover that Jesus observed and commanded was discarded and replaced with a very different pagan celebration they call Easter.’

This also gives us some of the background on how Friday came to be observed as the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the following Sunday as the day of His resurrection.

The problem with all this is that these Friday and Sunday Easter Observances Are Actually CONTRADICTED BY THE DETAILS OF THE BIBLICAL RECORD!

We will precisely discuss the day of the week of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection later, in Part 4.