The Good News: Christians Who Don't Celebrate Easter: What do bunnies and colored eggs have to do with Jesus' resurrection - by Jerold Aust

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Christians Who Don't Celebrate Easter: What Do They Know? - by Jerold Aust

Easter is considered the most important religious festival in today's Christianity. "The Easter feast has been and still is regarded as the greatest in the Christian church, since it commemorates the most important event in the life of its Founder" (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1986, Vol. 2, "Easter"). Every spring, the anticipation and excitement of Easter is electrifying for many people. Churches prepare elaborate Easter programs that illustrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Parents take time to color Easter eggs and hide them so their children can hunt for them. Given its popularity, one would think that surely this observance is found in God's Word. Television advertisements and commercial businesses also get very involved with Easter as they offer colorful Easter baskets, Easter costumes and chocolate rabbits to celebrate this great religious event. Many churches advertise outdoor Easter sunrise services, with any and all invited. But what do bunnies and colored eggs have to do with Jesus' resurrection? So where exactly did Easter and its customs come from? Why do hundreds of millions of people celebrate the holiday today? Some cite Acts 12:4 in the bible as authority for celebrating Easter. But there's a problem in that Easter isn't really mentioned there at all. The King James Bible translators substituted "Easter" for the Greek word Pascha, which means "Passover." "The word [Easter] does not properly occur in Scripture, although [the King James Version] has it in Acts 12:4 where it stands for Passover.

The name Easter, comes not from the Bible. Instead its roots go far back to the ancient pre-Christian Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, known in the Bible as Astarte or Ashtoreth. The desire to bring heathens into the Catholic Church without forcing them to surrender their idolatrous celebrations "may have led the ecclesiastical authorities in the past to assimilate the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god which fell at the same season . . . the Catholic Church probably consciously adapted the new festival [of Easter] to its heathen predecessor for the sake of winning souls to Christ. "As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains in the section titled the Liturgical Year: "at the Council of Nicaea in 325, all the Churches agreed that Easter . . . should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon . . . after the vernal equinox".

Surprisingly, the celebration of Easter didn't finally win out until A.D. 325, nearly 300 years after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection! Up until this time, many believers had continued to commemorate Jesus' death through the biblical Passover as Jesus and the apostles had instructed (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Now, however, with the power of the Roman Empire behind it, the Catholic Church enforced its preference for Easter. Those who wished to continue to observe the biblical Passover had to go underground to avoid persecution.

If Jesus were in the flesh today, would He celebrate Easter? The simple answer is No. He does not change. "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever," as Hebrews 13:8 tells us. Jesus never observed Easter, never sanctioned it and never taught His disciples to celebrate it. Nor did the apostles teach the Church to do so. Today, Jesus would observe the biblical Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread as Scripture teaches and as He practiced and taught (John 13:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8). In fact, He specifically said that He anticipated observing the Passover with His true followers "in My Father's kingdom" after His return (Matthew 26:26-29)."