The real meaning of ‘Easter’?

One of the central themes in my newly released book, Prophecy Shock, is that many Christian interpretations of prophecy have drifted so far from their original Jewish context and the faith from which they came that they have lost their original meaning.

But that problem doesn’t stop with prophecy. It also shows up in other important areas which don’t feature directly in my book but where later Christian tradition has gradually replaced the original Jewish meaning of things that God established.

A good example of this would be Easter, the event which much of the world is marking today.

Easter was originally intended to recognise the connection between the Hebrew Passover and the crucifixion of Christ. Just as the Hebrews remembered that God delivered them from slavery in Egypt by marking their door frames with the blood of an innocent and unblemished lamb – Christians recognised the fulfilment of this tradition in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, by crucifixion.

Just as God instructed the Hebrews to commemorate the Passover by choosing an innocent lamb on the 10th day of the first month (Nisan) and kill it on the 14th of Nisan at twilight – there is very strong evidence that Christ was publicly presented in Jerusalem on Nisan 10 and crucified at Passover on Nisan 14. This is reflected, in particular, in the Gospel of John.

Early Christians recognised and kept that link by commemorating Christ within the original Passover sequence. However, over time, the focus shifted away from the actual biblical ‘dates’ and onto the ‘day’ that the resurrection happened to fall.

Obviously the original Hebrew ‘dates’ were more important because they are fixed – whereas the ‘Sunday’ just happened to be the day the resurrection took place. (if it had taken place the following year it might have been a Tuesday or a Wednesday, for example).

Sadly, however, this distinction wasn’t clearly understood and, over time, the focus shifted away from the ‘date’ that God had built into the Passover and toward a specific ‘day’ (Sunday).

This shift was later locked in by the Catholics at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 – formalising the move away from scripture in favour of tradition.

Then came the avalanche of nonsense. Mystic symbolism, mythology, eggs, rabbits, baskets, candy, spring folklore. None of this comes from Scripture. None of it is Christian. It is external mythology – mostly pagan in origin – gradually reshaped by Catholic tradition and then buried under layers of non-biblical custom and commercial nonsense which is unrelated to the original Passover story outlined by God.

I get that kids enjoy ‘easter’ eggs and that we all appreciate a long weekend – but let’s not pretend that this has anything to do with Jesus Christ other than to insult the lifechanging importance of what He did for us 2,000 years ago.

And that’s the larger point. Easter is just one example of what happened when the Jewish context of Scripture was pushed aside and later tradition took over. Once that happened, the original meaning was lost – leading directly to the confusion that confronts us today….