This brief report focuses on Sunday worship, Christmas and Easter. These are the most common holidays. Most mainstream Christians have no idea the stories behind these so-called Christian customs. Contrary to popular belief, they are anything but Christian. By the end of this report, if you are a professed Christian, you should ask yourself seriously why you should continue to celebrate these heathen customs.
The Sunday Worship
Before I present the evidence of Sunday worship, I would like to show you what the bible says about the biblical Sabbath.
In Exodus Chapter 16, verse 25-30 reads:
25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field.
26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.
27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.
28 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?
29 See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.
30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
Now we know the seventh day is the biblical Sabbath.
In Exodus Chapter 20, verse 8-11 reads:
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Again, the seventh day is mentioned.
In Exodus Chapter 30, verse 12-17 reads:
12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
There are many other verses in the bible besides the evidence given. I am not going to list them all. Now we know that we should rest and worship our Lord on the Sabbath which is the seventh day of the week. That is Saturday. Now why are most professed Christian churches worship on Sundays?
The Sunday worship is not Christian, that's beyond any doubt.
For further information read:
http://www.biblestudy.org/godsrest/romechal.html
The Origin of Christmas
The Encyclopedia Britannica (1949, article "Christmas") says--
"CHRISTMAS (the 'Mass of Christ') ... Clement of Alexandria (about 200 AD) mentions several speculations on the date of Christ's birth, and condemns them as superstitious... The exact day and year of Christ's birth have never been satisfactorily settled. When the Fathers of the Church in AD 340 decided upon a date to celebrate the event, they wisely (!) chose the day of the Winter Solstice, which was firmly fixed in the minds of the people, and which was their MOST IMPORTANT FESTIVAL."
The Encyclopedia Americana (1946, article "Christmas") says the same--
"CHRISTMAS, the 'Mass of Christ'... In the 5th century the Western Church ordered it to be celebrated forever on the day of the old Roman feast of the Birth of Sol (the Sun)... Among the German and Celtic tribes, the Winter Solstice was considered an important point of the year, and they held their chief festival of Yule1 to commemorate the return of the burning-wheel (the sun)."
And Everyman's Encyclopedia says--
"CHRISTMAS (the Mass of Christ)... It is certain that the time now fixed could not by any possibility have been the period of Jesus' birth. The choice of this season was probably due to the general recognition that the Winter Solstice was the turning point of the year."
Alfred Hottes, Christmas Fact and Fancy --
"The roots of Christmas observance go deeply into the folklore of the Druids, Scandinavians, Egyptians and Romans."
The Chambers Encyclopedia records--
"Many of the beliefs and usages of the Old Germans, and also of the Romans, relating to this period, passed over from heathenism to Christianity."
R.J. Campbell, in The Story of Christmas, declares--
"There are not a few popular observances associated with the Christmas season which have NOTHING TO DO with the Christian religion and the birth of Jesus. Most of these observances are older than Christianity, and some of them--it must be confessed--are NOT OF VERY ELEVATED ORIGIN."
William Auld, in Christmas Traditions, notes--
"There are the green garlands, the marvelous trees, the mystic fire and lights, and customs many...still clustering about the great midwinter feast--all of which descend to us from the PAGAN CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE."
T.G. Crippen, in Christmas and Christmas Lore, confesses--
"The Feast of the Nativity rather incorporated than supplanted various heathen festivals. It was therefore only natural that RELICS OF HEATHEN PRACTICE should survive as traditional customs."
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics confirms this--
"MOST of the Christian customs [related to Christmas] now prevailing in Europe, or recorded from former times, are HEATHEN customs which have been absorbed or tolerated by the Church. The Christian feast has inherited these customs from two sources: Roman and Teutonic PAGANISM."
And the Catholic Encyclopedia (note the source) admits--
"There is NO DOUBT that the original Christian nuclei attracted PAGAN accretions."
The Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia similarly says--
"There were non-Christian elements present in the origin of Christmas. The giving of presents was a Roman custom. The Yule-tree [modern 'Christmas Tree'] and the Yule-log are remnants of old Teutonic NATURE WORSHIP."
The Encyclopedia Britannica says--
"Many current customs date back to pre-Christian origins: among them are Christmas decorations. The Romans ornamented their temples and homes with green boughs and flowers for the Saturnalia [Dec. 17-23] ... The Druids gathered mistletoe and hung it in their homes; the Saxons used holly and ivy."
The Everyman's Encyclopedia declares--
"The practice of decorating churches is pagan in its origin."
And this is from the Encyclopedia Americana--
"The holly, the mistletoe, the Yule log and the wassail bowl are relics of pre-Christian times...The Christmas tree has been traced back to the Romans."
Writngs on the wall?
The Origin of Easter
From the religious tolerance website:
Origins of the name "Easter":
The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similar "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [were] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. Some were:
Aphrodite from Cyprus
Astarte, from Phoenicia
Demeter, from Mycenae
Hathor from Egypt
Ishtar from Assyria
Kali, from India
Ostara, a Norse Goddess of fertility.
An alternate explanation has been suggested. The name given by the Frankish church to Jesus' resurrection festival included the Latin word "alba" which means "white." (This was a reference to the white robes that were worn during the festival.) "Alba" also has a second meaning: "sunrise." When the name of the festival was translated into German, the "sunrise" meaning was selected in error. This became "ostern" in German. Ostern has been proposed as the origin of the word "Easter". 2
There are two popular beliefs about the origin of the English word: "Sunday." It is derived from the name of the Scandinavian sun Goddess Sunna (a.k.a. Sunne, Frau Sonne). 5,6
It is derived from "Sol," the Roman God of the Sun." Their phrase "Dies Solis" means "day of the Sun." The Christian saint Jerome (d. 420) commented "If it is called the day of the sun by the pagans. we willingly accept this name, for on this day the Light of the world arose, on this day the Sun of Justice shone forth." 7
Pagan origins of Easter:
Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis ([the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." 3
Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."
Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternate explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.
Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.
As you can see the evidence of Easter is pagan in nature.
Conclusion
Well, as the evidence indicates, all these so-called Christian practices are merely babylonian customs in disguise. One should wonder why. Any genuine Christians should stop following these practices and worship our LORD Jesus Christ according to the Holy Bible. Remember the Holy Scripture is the sole authority on these matters, one should thoroughly familiarize with the concepts involved with the help of the Holy Spirit.
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