Easter: NO OTHER GOD by haRold Smith

BE FOREWARNED - this article is going
to stretch your boundaries. It is going to challenge you. It is
going to
require you to think outside what man's traditions have told you
are true.
Most do not want to do that, considering it too much effort and
comforted
by what they hold dear. If you have a love for the raw,
unblemished Truth
of God's Word, just for what the words on the page say and what
they mean,
not colored by any religious traditional template “ then, by all
means, proceed..

NO OTHER GOD
by haRold Smith
from Jerusalem, Israel
"You shall have no other gods before me." Exodus 20:3
"For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do,
living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking
parties and
all lawless
idolatry. With
respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in
the
same flood of debauchery, and they malign you, but they will
give account
to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead." 1Peter
4:3-5

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

"You shall not bow down to
them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third
and the fourth generation of those who despise me, but
showing
steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my
commandments. " Exodus 20:4-6

"Pray for the peace of
Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love you." (Psalm 122:6)
(prosper -
from the Hebrew, "shalav", meaning "to be at rest")
Â
Shalom Alechem B'Shem Yeshua HaMashiach.
(Peace
be unto you in the Name of Jesus the Messiah)
haRold Smith
Jerusalem Israel