Some Truths About EASTER & GOOD FRIDAY

I try not to comment about the holidays of "Easter" or "Christmas" and rather leave people to do as they please because of the wide proliferation of others commenting on the same subjects around that time each year. This is a brief synopsis on the pagan holiday known as "Easter". I celebrate both the birth and resurrection of Yeshua Messiah but not Easter or Christmas; they aren't the same. When you have knowledge of the truth you stop following the traditions of false doctrine. I don't condemn others for what they choose to follow but I do make the truth available as necessary for them to make their own decisions.

People don't seem to actually study the very Holy Bible they claim to believe in, but instead prefer having it read to them and told what to believe which is why they are so easily deceived. Folks trust more in those teaching them the Scriptures rather than in the "One" of whom the Scriptures speak when it comes to truth. The following passage of scripture can be used to make a case against "Easter" as a pagan holiday even mentioned in scripture, that was celebrated close to the same time as the feast of "Unleavened Bread" in conjunction with the Passover.

ACTS 12:3-4; "And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.). 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 writer, Luke, uses a noticeable event as a marker in time to show the intention of Herod concerning Peter's impending execution upon his arrest and detainment. It is not recorded to validate "Easter" as a God ordained holiday to commemorate the resurrection of the Moshiach (Christ). Easter was and is completely separate from the Resurrection of Christ and not even remotely associated with it. The term itself was actually a substitute insertion into the original scriptures for the Hebrew term "Pesach" which was translated into the Greek term "Pascha" for "Passover", and finally became "Easter" after a Saxon word "Eostre" taken from a pagan fertility goddess.

The Roman Catholic Church combined the two to make it easier to convert pagans to Catholicism (not true Christianity) and made it a christian holiday. They also incorporated elements of the pagan fertility celebrations such as the symbol of the bunny rabbit laying eggs; which is actually satanic druid symbolism rooted in witchcraft that has nothing to do with Yeshua Messiah or the scriptures concerning being "fruitful and multiplying". The bunny rabbit's ability to multiply quickly is symbolic of these pagan beliefs and satanic forces increasing at a rapid uncontrollable rate like an infestation to overtake the truth and the world.

Christ was crucified on a Wednesday from 9am (morning sacrifice) to 3pm (evening sacrifice) and died at the exact same time the evening sacrifice was slaughtered for Passover according to Hebrew tradition as commanded by YAH. Due to Hebrew custom Christ had to be buried before the Sabbath began at 6pm. During the week of the Passover celebration there was the "Day of Preparation" for the Passover that was before the high Sabbath which began on Wednesday at 6pm, the "Feast of Unleavened Bread" which was back-to-back with the Passover, and on that particular week led up to the normal Sabbath which began on Friday at 6pm and ended on Saturday at 6pm. 

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 an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away."

JOHN 19:42; "There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand." 

"Good Friday" was created by the Roman Catholic Church and is numerically an impossibility if we truly believe the words of Christ that he was to be in the grave for 3 FULL (24-hour) days & nights. MATTHEW 12:40; "For as Jonas 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." They had to coincide his resurrection with "SUNday" which was created for the worship of the false "sun god" and not for the only begotten "Son of God" to make Christ more appealing to European pagans, and less Hebrew. The errant teaching of "Good Friday" also created the myth of an evil "Friday the 13th". 

If you can accept the Jewishness of Yeshua the Messiah and understand that he wasn't a "Christian" then you can begin to see why it's not necessary for his resurrection to coincide with Christian tradition; such as on Sunday morning.

A full day on the Hebrew/Jewish calendar and also in the Bible begins at 6pm in the evening and ends at 6pm the next day with the evening always preceding the morning.The first 12-hours of "daylight" were often called "the day" as in the time of light but the entire 24-hours was a full day that was divided into two 12-hour parts that were then further sub-divided into four 3-hour parts known as "watches". This lines up accurately with the scriptures in Genesis as to the evening preceding the morning in terms of how YAH reckoned time, and not 12-midnight as reckoned in the western world and the world over by the Julian/Gregorian calendar system.

GENESIS 1:5; "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." 

Yeshua arose at 6pm Saturday which would have been after the Sabbath and a full 3 days & nights buried according to his own words from Wednesday 6pm - Thursday 6pm (Day 1), to Thursday 6pm - Friday 6pm (Day 2), to Friday 6pm - Saturday 6pm (Day 3). The women wouldn't have gone to his tomb at night in the evening so they had to wait until Sunday morning, but he had already been up the day before. The stone at the tomb wasn't rolled away to let Yeshua out but to let them in to witness that he was no longer there because he had resurrected as he said. All this information can be proven in scripture if searched out.

These are just historical and biblical facts, not debate. You can debate it if you choose too but your tradition don't and won't change the truth that so many ignore. While I'm at it let me throw this in there: true Christianity is not the "white man's religion" but an "all mankind's religion" which was originated in Israel and spread into Africa long before Europe received it, and black Afro-Asiatic Christians were key members at its founding as well as the first to take it to pagan Europe.

What White European slave masters did was distort, pervert, and twist the scriptures to suit their own needs, not tell the truth. The gospel makes men free, not enslaves them in chains. Believe what you will, but at least research and diligently study so you know what you believe. Don't just parrot false beliefs out of man made traditions that take you away from truth ordained and given by The Most High. Shalom. ~ I.J. West