Is it Passover or is it Easter?
It all started in Egypt thousands of years ago. The people of Israel, who were slaves to the Egyptians, were told by God through Moses that they should remove all leaven (Yeast) from their homes on the 14th of Nisan (Our March/April). This would later be called the Feast of unleavened bread. Then on the 15th of Nisan they should take the blood of an animal without blemish and put it over the door to their house and on either side of the door posts. That night the death angel would Passover all homes with the blood yet kill the firstborn of everything and everyone else. This would become the Feast of Passover. The word Feast in the Bible did not refer to eating or food, it was merely a time of celebration.
God commanded Moses to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Passover each year at specific times. These are recorded here: Lev. 23:4-6 “These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations (holy assemblies), which ye shall proclaim in their seasons. In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread”. As we read further on: Lev 23:10-11 “ Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it”. The Jewish days started after dark and went to dark the next day. This all may seem inconsequential to you but they are very significant to our Lord. I will show you how Jesus fulfilled all three celebrations.
The Three Spring Feasts
The Feast of Unleavened bread
Jesus followed the Jewish law and fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the night of the 14th of Nisan. The Biblical definition of leaven is falsity or lying as in Mat. 16:12 ‘Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees”. During the celebration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread the Jews were to search all day and get rid of any leaven found. I feel the Lord showed me this while I was studying this topic. I saw that when Jesus told Judas to go ahead and do what he was going to do He got rid of the leaven among them! John 13:26-27 “Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly”.
The Feast of the Passover
When Judas left the dinner then Jesus and the disciples enjoyed the Passover meal. John 13:1 “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end”.
The Feast of the Firstfruits
The Feast of the Firstfruits was the celebration of the Barley harvest Deu. 26:10 “And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, Oh LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God”. Jesus was called the “firstfruit of them that slept” - 1 Cor. 15:20 “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept”.
God’s deliverance on Passover
Interestingly God did the same with Moses at the Red Sea on the 15th of Nisan, and to Ester and Mordecai, and the beginning of eating the fruit of Caanan. Passover could occur on any day of the week which also happens to be the 14th day of the first month, the Feast of First Fruits is always the following Sunday, the day after the regular weekly Sabbath after Passover. The year the Lord was crucified, Passover fell on a Thursday. Three days and three nights later it was Sunday morning, the Feast of First Fruits. And for several hundred years after that, the Sunday morning after Passover was known to Christians as Resurrection Morning. But at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, Eastern and Western bishops of the Church disagreed over the official date for the Church’s most important Holy Day. Eastern bishops favored staying with the calculation involving Passover as Leviticus describes, since many of them were of Jewish origin, and since the gospels had placed Resurrection Morning just after Passover.
Western bishops, being mostly Gentile, favored a date closer to the beginning of spring. Because there were already a number of pagan festivals held during that time a religious holiday would fit right in. Perhaps this is when the Western church began referring to Resurrection Morning as Easter Sunday, which was named after the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar. Eventually, due in part to their view that since the Jews had rejected Christ, Jewish traditions shouldn’t be used in selecting the date for Easter. The Western Church settled on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. An equinox is the time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth and occurring about March 21 (Vernal or Spring Equinox) and September 22 (Autumal Equinox).
What is Easter?
The word Easter in Acts was a bad translation. Act 12:4 “And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people”. The word Easter is used for the Greek word Pascha. This is a poor translation because this is the only time that Easter is used in the Bible. The word is translated Passover in all other 26 times it is used. It is a poor choice because Easter was a pagan holiday long before Christ. Act 12:4 “And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people”.
Christ is Our Passover
1. Passover was observed the evening of the fourteenth day of Abib (Mar.-Apr.). Also called Nisan, the first Jewish month Exo. 12:6 “And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening”. Passover was the time appointed by God for Christ’s crucifixion, Mat. 26:18 “my time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house…”. 1 Cor. 5:7 “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us”
2. The sacrificial lamb was to be without blemish. Exo. 12:5 “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats”. Jesus was without blemish. 1 Pet. 1:19 “ But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot”.
3. The lamb was killed at evening 3 PM was the time of the evening sacrifice). Exo. 12:6 “And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening”. Jesus was killed at evening or three P.M. Luke 23:44-46 “And it was about the sixth hour (noon), and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost”.
4. The priest do not kill the lamb, the people do. Exo. 12:6 “And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening”. The people killed Jesus, the Priest didn’t. Mat 27:25 “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children”. This word spoken two thousand years ago is still true for the Jews today.
5. They were to eat the meal with unleavened bread (without yeast) Exo. 12:8 “And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it”. When Jesus got rid of Judas He cleansed the place of falsity.
6. Nothing was to be left over on the fifteenth, Exo. 12:10 “And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire”. Jesus was removed from the cross so nothing was left over on the high Sabbath. (6 PM) John 19:31 “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was a high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away”.
7. No bones were to be broken on the sacrificial lamb. Exo. 12:46 “In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth aught of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither shall ye break a bone thereof”. No bones were broken in Jesus. John 19:33 “But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they broke not his legs”.
8. The blood was to be struck on the door posts and the lintels. Exo 12:7 “And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it”. Jesus’ blood saves us from Spiritual death if our heart (door) has the blood of the Lamb on it. Lev. 17:11 “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” ; Eph. 1:7 “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”.
9. To be saved they had to remain inside the house. Exo. 12:13 “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you”. We are to stay in the fellowship of the believers (our spiritual covering). 1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin”.
10. Passover is to be observed forever Exo. 12:14 “And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever”. We will have life forever with Christ. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
So we see that Jesus fulfilled the whole law showing us that He indeed was and is our Passover!
What Easter is not:
Easter was a pagan holiday celebrating the Spring Equinox long before Christ, and named for an Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre. She was known by the Greeks as Aphrodite and by the Romans as Venus. The name is derived from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (Queen of Heaven = Semiramis [wife of Nimrod “the Sun God”]). The Saxon goddess Eostre or Eastre is the same as the Astarte, the Syrian Venus, called Ashtoreth in the Old Testament. It was the worship of this woman by Israel that was such an abomination to God. 1 Sam. 7:4; 1 Ki. 11:2; 2 Ki. 23:6 2 Ki. 23:13; Jer. 7:18, Jer. 44:17-23. Round cakes with the sign of the cross were used during celebration. (The sign being in the ancient Babylonian mysteries, a sign of life). The fable of the egg declares, that “and egg of wondrous size fell from heaven into the river Euphrates, the fish rolled it to the shore where doves hatched it; and out came Astarte, or Ishtar, the goddess of Easter.” Rabbits and eggs were used to symbolize fertility and new life.
The origin of Easter
The origin of Easter started just after the flood. Nimrod had become world ruler and the architect of the Tower of Babel. When he died, his wife Semiramis deified him as the sun god, known in some cultures as Ra, Baalim, Bel, Molech, and Baal the father of creation and god of fire. Semiramis made herself into the goddess of the moon (the queen of heaven), the goddess of fertility. The Mother goddess was frequently worshipped as the goddess of fertility - and as a sort of Mother Nature and goddess of Spring and sexual love and birth. She was also worshipped as a mediator between god and man. Sexual orgies and temple prostitutes were often used in her worship and in attempting to gain her favor. She had an illegitimate son named Tammuz and said he 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 Gen. 3:15 “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel”.
“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
For example, notice the embarrassing irony in these traditions which are practiced innocently by most people. They are repeated year after year, because they have become traditional and their origin is unknown to many. On the day commemorating Christ’s resurrection, Americans roll decorated eggs on the White House lawn and pretend the Easter rabbit hid them. The same ritual is practiced at some Christian churches.
“In Lancashire, England, on Easter eve, boys and men have been in the habit of touring the towns and villages as ‘Pace-eggers’ begging for eggs before performing the ‘Pace-Egging’ or Pasch (i.e., Easter) play.”
In Greece each person in a group bangs his red Easter egg [not knowing that it is symbol of the Goddess] against the eggs of all the others present in turn, saying ‘Christ is risen,’ and receives the reply ‘He is risen indeed.’”
The seductive symbols of ancient ungodly religions inspired by Satan have been incorporated into people’s everyday lives, even to this day - continuing to obscure the truth of God .
The Firstfruits of the Resurrection
Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. 1 Cor. 15:20 “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept”. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus was not crucified on “Good Friday”. I will explain. Jesus stated in Mat. 12:40 “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”. So, Jesus’ body lay in the tomb Thursday night through Sunday morning. Three days and three nights. The reason people thought it was Friday was that the Bible said that the next day was the Sabbath. John 19:31 “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was a high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away”.
The answer to this so called dilemma is that all the Jewish Feasts days were called Sabbaths as well as the weekly sabbath on Saturday. The above verse said also that “For that sabbath day was a high day” . That day was the Feast of the Firstfruits which was always held on the day after the regular weekly sabbath following the Feast of Passover which would make it Sunday... Resurrection Sunday. If it were a regular Saturday sabbath then why the special distinction noted here? He was raised the first day of the week, Sunday Mat. 28:1, Mark 16:9, John 20:1. Now three days and three nights prior to this would be Thursday night. Jesus was crucified Thursday afternoon before six and was in the belly of the earth Thursday night, Friday day and night, Saturday day and night, then raised Sunday morning. Some say that the Jews call a day as any part thereof. If this were true then He would have said, “So shall the Son of man be a part of three days and three nights”.
Summary
As we see here it is easy to take the things of the world and adapt them to the Church. We perpetuate traditions without knowing the first thing about them. We as Christians should return to calling the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus as “Resurrection Day” and leave off the bunnies and eggs.
Happy Resurrection Day!