Our Roots are Jewish!
Not Babylonian, Not Roman!
Churches of Yeshua the Messiah of Israel, the congregation of the remnant, chosen out from this world for Yeshua, once-a-year, in the spring, celebrate a hodgepodge of the resurrection of Yeshua with the demonic Babylonian fertility [sex] cult of rabbits and eggs? “Is there anything wrong with a good old-fashion traditional Easter egg hunt,” christians ask? The ancient Anglo-Saxons (and other pagans) celebrated the return of spring with riotous fertility festivals commemorating their goddess of fertility and of springtime, Eastre the term derived from the Scandinavian Ostara and the Teutonic Ostern or Eastre, both pagan goddesses. The complete month of April was once called Eostur-monath and the entire month of April was dedicated to Eostre, the pagan goddess responsible for changing a bird into a rabbit. There is an old Latin proverb that conveys the idea: Omne vivum ex ovo, "all life comes from an egg.” This is said to be how the rabbit became the symbol of Easter; Rabbits symbolize the fertility of springtime.
It is apparent that there is also a pagan connection between Tammuz and Lent. Tradition shows that the wife of Nimrod, the King of Babylon, had become supernaturally impregnated by the Sun god, and gave birth to Tammuz. One day while hunting, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar. His mother and her family mourned for 40 days, at the end of which Tammuz was brought back from the dead. He was resurrected! The Wycliffe Bible Commentary states, "Mourning for the god was followed by a celebration of resurrection." Who was celebrating this witchcraft? Ezekiel spoke to the non-remnant people of Israel, "And He said to me, 'Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.' So, He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD's house (the Temple), and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz,"' (Ezekiel 8:13-14).
Yeshua’s death and burial is commemorated with Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits, the day of His Resurrection. Do most Christians know this? They know little to nothing of their Jewish roots. Instead, they celebrate Roman Catholic festivities, the Lenten season with Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and the 40 days, not including Sunday, established by Roman Catholic Canon Law. Ash Wednesday the start of Lent originates from the ancient Catholic practice of public penance in Rome, where penitents would wear sackcloth and be sprinkled with ashes, a big public display. This tradition was later institutionalized by Pope Urban II in 1091. It then evolved into the current practice of receiving ashes on the forehead as a symbol of repentance and mortality. Ash Wednesday doesn’t just smack of Popery, it is a superstitious Catholic ritual, falling between Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) and Lent, both being carnal observances at opposite extremes of the spectrum. The ritual for the “Day of Ashes” (Wednesday) is found in the earliest editions of the Gregorian Sacramentary which dates to the 8th century, and not to any Jewish origin in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th centuries. Its origin is Gentile Catholicism. The Lenten season was not practiced by any of the early Jewish believers in Yeshua, His disciples, nor the true biblical churches in Asia.
About the year AD 1000, one named Aelfric, an Anglo-Saxon priest began preaching, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.” Aelfric reinforced his point by using fear, that those refusing the Ashes would be damned. He told of a man who refused to go to Church on Ash Wednesday and receive ashes, and the man was killed a few days later in a boar hunt. Sounds like the Catholicism I know and remember for I was a young boy raised and living in south Louisiana for 28 years. Many friends were catholic.
How then, did such a pagan ritual as Lent and Easter come into the church? Alexander Hislop gives one answer: "To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated. By a complicated yet skillful 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" (The Two Babylons). I (Reggie Lisemby) personally would add, that like catholic priests, protestant and Baptist clergy have sought ways to entrench parishnors to be more “married” to their institutional church, and religious rituals are determined to bind unlearned yet seeking souls who happen to be easily led. It is extremely sad that the Jewish roots of the Christian faith have been disregarded even snubbed by Gentile believers (preachers and teachers) and replaced with human tradition, speculation, fabrication, fetishism, institutional rituals, and Babylonianism. Each of the four Gospels gives an account of what the Bible calls Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits, yet these are replaced with pagan Catholic Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Ash Wednesday, Lent, Palm Sunday, and Easter. Oy Vey! In the Middle Ages, butter, cheese and eggs would not last for 40 days, the length of Lent. So, the Tuesday before Lent, which came to be called FatTuesday, it was said, “We have to eat all the butter that’s left, and the cheese that’ left, and all the eggs that are left.” Fat Tuesday started as the day to consume perishables since they wouldn’t keep for 40 days.”
The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, also goes by another name besides Fat Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday was the day many Christians participated in confession, burning their palms from the previous Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter), and finalized their Lenten sacrifice or penance, they prayed more, gave up more, worked harder, a lifestyle practiced every day all year long by true believers. Originally, the Tuesday before Lent was about shriving, that is, confessing your sins. But eventually it became a carnal day of carnival, because it was the final chance people had to “party” before the serious season of Lent began. Catholic countries and communities still hold large public carnivals at this time of year. Some of the most famous of these are held in Venice, Italy and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since Lent traditionally meant fasting from luxuries like meat, eggs, sugar and butter (except on Sundays), the day before became a time to eat up all the ‘luxury’ foods in the house, sometimes in the form of pancakes. That led to the day being called Mardi Gras(French for Fat Tuesday) also called Pancake Day.
PROBLEMS WITH LENT
The ‘forty days' abstinence of Lent was borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess, Ishtare. Such a Lent of forty days, in the spring of the year, is still observed by the Yezidis or the pagan Devil worshippers of Koordistan, who inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians. Lent was held by the pagan Egyptians as well. The Egyptian Lent of forty days was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god. Among the pagans, Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz," (Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, pages 104 and 105). Popular Bible commentator John MacArthur agrees, "The celebration of Lent has no basis in Scripture, but rather developed from the pagan celebration of Semiramis's mourning for 40 days over the death of Tammuz before his alleged resurrection-another of Satan's mythical counterfeits," (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary; 1 Corinthians: Moody, 1984).
It all smacks of Popery. In Matthew 6, Yeshua instructed His talmidim (disciples) not to fast like the masked actors or hypocrites, not to publicly deface or blemish themselves for public display to show everyone they have or are repenting. Yeshua said, instead, dress as you would working 9 to 5, a typical day, no markings, no ash, no crosses, so your fasting (if you fast) is not evident to others, but only to your Father in heaven. John Wesley himself, in the prayer book that was adopted by Methodists, did not include a season called Lent in his Calendar of Sundays and Holy Days, and Wesley retained all the readings for the Christian year used in the Church of England.