Editor's Note: Last Night (April 2) night is Passover. It is a Christian holy day. Today is PASSOVER DAY and The Feast of Unleavened Bread. The following by Garner Ted Armstrong explains…. Although the article is wrong on the REAL DATE of PASSOVER and when the DAY BEGINS, the message of the holy day comes thru!
Easter is the greatest of all "Christian" observances, closely followed by Christmas. It supposedly celebrates the resurrection of Christ. WHY, then, did Paul command the Gentile Christians to "show the Lord's DEATH" till He come? Jesus Christ Himself celebrated His famous "Last Supper," with His disciples, proclaiming that a bit of unleavened bread represented His body; that a sip of wine represented His shed blood. This was in commemoration of His DEATH for the sins of all mankind. Why is there no command anywhere in the Bible to celebrate His resurrection? Why did not the apostles celebrate it? Is the "Passover" only "Jewish," and therefore not Christian? Should Christians observe Easter? Does the Bible command Easter observance? You will be astonished at the answers! Here, from the pages of your own Bible is the PLAIN TRUTH about EASTER and the Passover!
You were born into a "ready-made" world. You had no voice in how it is structured; its customs, traditions, religions, or politics. It took you about two years to learn the language of your parents; about six years to learn your own indigenous alphabet; about seven or eight years to learn to read simple sentences, and to begin to write.
However, from your earliest years, long before you learned to read or write; long before you learned what "research" or "study" was, you heard about the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and watched, no doubt, hundreds of cartoons and kiddy shows on television. From your earliest years on this earth, your parents were inculcating into your mind the traditions, customs, fables, superstitions and assumptions of their own upbringing.
The point is, you first learned of "Easter," or other religious customs through your parents or guardians. You did not research history, carefully weigh the facts, and make a reasoned decision to observe "Easter."
Millions of adults in the western world of professing Christianity have memories of those sleepy mornings when, all excited to be dragged from bed at perhaps 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., they were dressed in frilly little frocks or a new little boy's suit, complete with clip-on bow tie; white patent-leather shoes, greens and yellows—the colors of spring—and trundled off in the family car to an open air coliseum, or perhaps to a hilltop, to join with hundreds or thousands of others in an "Easter Sunrise Service."
You didn't know what "Easter" was. Only that it sounded a little like a point on the compass. Of course, the sun rose in the East. Maybe that was it? Or was it merely the opposite of "Wester"? Most likely, if you are like millions of others, you never became curious enough to go to a major encyclopedia and look up the term. We tend to take our environment for granted.
Have you ever looked into the history and origins of Easter?
You were born into a "ready-made" world. You had no voice in how it is structured; its customs, traditions, religions, or politics. It took you about two years to learn the language of your parents; about six years to learn your own indigenous alphabet; about seven or eight years to learn to read simple sentences, and to begin to write.