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Part One of a Series

Easter has traditions that are not as pure and holy as people would like to believe. Many people know nothing of the pagan origins of the holiday. Many people simply do not care to find out the truth. The following should bring some fascinating reading and something to think about, to say the very least.

Origins of Easter:
Easter is one of the most popular religious celebrations in the world. But is it biblical? The word Easter appears only once in the King James Version of the Bible (and not at all in most others). In the one place it does appear, the King James translators mistranslated the Greek word for Passover as “Easter.”

Notice it in Acts 12:4: “And when he [King Herod Agrippa I] had apprehended him [the apostle Peter], 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 Greek word translated Easter here is pascha, properly translated everywhere else in the Bible as “Passover.”

Think about theses facts for a minute. Easter is such a major religious holiday. Yet nowhere in the Bible—not in the book of Acts, which covers several decades of the history of the early Church, nor in any of the epistles of the New Testament, written over a span of 30 to 40 years after Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection—do we find the apostles or early Christians celebrating anything like Easter.

The Encyclopedia Americana says:
“Easter is a convergence of three traditions, (1) Pagan. According to the Venerable Bede, English historian of the early eighth century, the word is derived from the Norse Ostara or Eostare, meaning the festival of spring, at the vernal equinox, when nature is in resurrection after winter. Hence, the rabbits, notable for their fecundity, and the eggs colored like rays of the returning sun, and the northern lights, or aurora borealis.”

And according to the second century historian Eusebius the history is the same. The name of Easter is pagan in origin also. “The Greek ‘pascha’, formed from the Hebrew, is the name of the Jewish festival, applied invariably in the primitive church to designate the festival of the Lord’s resurrection, which took place at the time of the passover. Our word, Easter, is of Saxon origin, … (The church history of Eusebius)

Easter did not become a Christian holiday until the second century after Christ’s death.

End of Part One

Many of us take for granted free speech in the West. However, some troubling legislation has recently touched many free nations including England, Canada and Australia and has threatened to limit that right and awakened citizens to the need for action. This type legislation is now being considered in the U.S.A. as H.R.254, the hate-crimes bill. Christian World News recently conducted an interview with an Australian pastor who was adversely affected by such legislation. Click below to watch this report on Australian Pastor Danny Nalliah.

At the end of the clip, Pastor Nalliah discussed H.R.254, the hate-crimes bill that has been introduced in Congress. What are your opinions on this bill? How do you feel it would negatively or positively affect speech in this country?

Sources: Christian World News and Persecution Blog