The Easter Bunny and... Feminism?!

WARNING: Includes disturbing content. May not be appropriate for children. Parental discretion is advised.

The world has gone mad. Men pretend to be women, and women to be men, going so far as to mutilate themselves and get their own genitals chopped off. Sick, twisted perverts in the public school system convince innocent children that they were born the wrong gender, and pressure them to be castrated and mutilated.

These abominations are the natural outcome of the feminist movement. From the beginning, Satan has sought to blur the lines between men and women, to pervert the gender roles that God created, to convince men to be feminine and women to be masculine.

When God finished creating the world, He looked on “everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). But Satan’s goal is, and always has been, to pervert and destroy God’s good creation.

Thus, the cancer of perversion killing our society today has been around awhile. Neither human nature nor Satan’s nature ever really change. As King Solomon wrote in Eccl. 1:9, “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

But what does any of this have to do with the Easter bunny, Easter eggs, or anything else about Easter? Hold onto your hats, folks, because this ride is going to get wild. The story you’re about to read will shock many.

Divine Feminine?

In the New Age wing of the feminist movement, it’s common to hear such terms as “divine feminine,” “Mother Earth,” “Mother Nature,” “mother goddess,” “God the Mother,” etc. It’s common, too, for them to speak of God Himself as a “she,” even though God’s Word never speaks of Him that way.

Where did this idea of a “goddess” come from?

It goes back to very ancient times, and we can read about it in the Bible. In Jer. 7:18, God spoke through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger.”

Because the people of Judah worshiped the “queen of heaven” (and committed plenty of other sins, too), God brought the Babylonians against Judah in the 6th century BC. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and carried thousands of Jews away to Babylon. But in the midst of this calamity, the people refused to learn their lesson.

Those who remained in Judah fled to Egypt, where they clung to the “queen of heaven” and spurned their Creator God. We read in Jer. 44:15-19 (LITV),

15 Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah saying,

16 As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of Jehovah, we will not listen to you.

17 But we will certainly do whatever thing goes out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings, and our rulers, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. And we had plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil.

18 But when we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been devoured by the sword and by the famine.

19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our men?

So who was this false deity, this so-called queen of heaven? How did modern, “enlightened” people come to believe in such a thing?

The “Queen of Heaven” and Her Consort

Again and again, God rebuked the Israelites for worshiping “the Baals and the Ashtoreths” (Judg. 2:13; 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:4; 12:10). Persuaded by his pagan wives, even King Solomon, the wisest man who had ever lived and “who was beloved of his God” (Neh. 13:26), built high places to worship Ashtoreth (1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13).

1 Kings 11:5 adds that Ashtoreth was “the goddess of the Sidonians.” Ancient records describe Ashtoreth (“Astarte” in Greek) as the queen of heaven.

Now, as we’ve seen before, all the world’s pagan religions bear striking similarities, for Satan authored them all. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that pagans all over the world worshiped this “queen of heaven,” albeit under different aliases.

To the Assyrians and Babylonians, she was Ishtar or Inanna. To the Egyptians, Isis. To the Greeks, Aphrodite. To the people of Asia Minor, Cybele. The Romans, Chinese, and others, too, worshiped similar female deities.

The Book of Acts records that the Ephesians worshiped Artemis (or Diana), and that her worshipers rioted against Paul and the other apostles (Acts 19). But more on that later.

God’s Word often mentions Ashtoreth together with Baal, suggesting a link between the two. In secular history, we find that the pagans believed them to be lovers.

This theme, too, crossed many cultures. In Babylon, the “queen of heaven” loved Tammuz. In Egypt, Osiris. In Greece, Adonis.

As we’ve already glimpsed, worshiping the “queen of heaven” and her consort continues in the modern age. But we’ve only glimpsed a sliver so far.

Greater Abominations Than These

In Ezekiel 8, God exposed a series of abominations committed by His people, each one greater than the one before it. Let’s pick up the story in vv. 13-16. Ezekiel reported,

13 And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.”

14 So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

15 Then He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you will see greater abominations than these.”

16 So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

Weeping for Tammuz is well-documented in ancient records, across many cultures. It dismayed Ezekiel, and the reality of it is indeed shocking! Like Ezekiel, we’re about to see many abominations, each one greater than the one before it.

Babylon

First, a little background. The Babylonians viewed Ishtar not only as the queen of heaven, but also as the goddess of love, war, beauty, and fertility. In a theme common to fertility deities, they often portrayed her as naked, wearing not a single thread.

As we read earlier in the Book of Jeremiah, women baked cakes for the queen of heaven. For Ishtar, they baked the cakes in ashes. Archaeologists have discovered many such cake molds shaped like naked women.

The Babylonians associated Ishtar with such symbols as a lion, a dove, and a six-pointed or eight-pointed star. They also identified her with the planet Venus — a fact that will later prove vital.

As one might expect of a naked fertility goddess, her worship included prostitution and unspeakable sexual perversions. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Babylon required young women to prostitute themselves in the temple of Ishtar at least once.^[1]  

God’s Word adds that pagan worship involved “every abomination to the LORD which He hates” (Deut. 12:31). We find this to be true in every pagan culture.

God forbade prostitution and sodomy: “There shall be no prostitute among the daughters of Israel, nor shall there be a homosexual among the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute, or the price of a dog [sodomite], into the house of Jehovah your God for any vow; for even both of these are an abomination to Jehovah your God” (Deut. 23:17-18; LITV).

But worshipers of the queen of heaven honored her with both.

God forbade castration: “He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the LORD” (Deut. 23:1).

But worshipers of the queen of heaven sometimes mutilated themselves and offered their own genitals to her.

God forbade cross-dressing: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God” (Deut. 22:5).

But priests of the queen of heaven often dressed as women, especially if they were also eunuchs or sodomite prostitutes, as were some.

God forbade cutting and disfiguring oneself: “You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:27-28).

But worshipers of the queen of heaven shaved their heads, cut their flesh, and flogged each other with whips in ceremonies of ritual mourning.

Such abominations weren’t unique to Canaan or Babylon, but transcended nations and cultures. In fact, heathens not only honored their gods and goddesses with such abominations, they boasted of these things in writing and portrayed them in artwork!

In a striking parallel to ancient goddess worship, modern-day feminism came hand-in-hand with the 20th-century Sexual Revolution and all its abominations: rampant fornication and “free love,” sodomy, transgenderism, pornography, no-fault divorce, abortion, and more.

Now, we come to the weeping for Tammuz witnessed by Ezekiel.

In Babylonian myth, Ishtar married Tammuz, a shepherd and fertility god. Eventually, the underworld queen, Ishtar’s sister, killed her and confined her to the underworld. But at the pleading of other gods, Ishtar’s sister restored her life on one condition: that she find someone else to take her place in the underworld. Searching heaven and earth, Ishtar discovered her husband Tammuz seemed unbothered by her death and chose him to take her place in the underworld.

As the underworld demons tortured Tammuz, however, Ishtar experienced a change of heart and began weeping over his death. Eventually, it’s determined that Tammuz, too, will be restored to life — with a catch. For half of each year, Tammuz will live with Ishtar in heaven while his sister takes his place in the underworld, and for the other half, he will live in the underworld.

It takes little imagination to see in this myth a Satanic counterfeit of God’s plan. Tammuz was a false messiah, even described as “the dead anointed one” in one Babylonian poem.^[2]  “Anointed one” in Hebrew is mashiach, from which we get our English word “messiah.”

God the Father and Jesus Christ had planned Jesus’ death and resurrection even before creating mankind, “before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20), and Satan evidently knew this. So he sold human beings a lie, his own counterfeit.

Every summer, when Tammuz supposedly died, women mourned and wept over his death. As late as the 10th century AD, an Arab chronicler mentioned women weeping for Tammuz. He added that, in one version of the myth, Tammuz’s bones were ground in a mill and scattered to the wind, so women abstained from ground foods while mourning his death.^[3] 

The myth of Ishtar and Tammuz spread throughout the world, and many cultures had their own version. The Egyptian version was the myth of Isis and Osiris. So the Babylonians wept for Tammuz; the Egyptians for Osiris. Most of these myths add nothing vital to this study, except to show that Satan tried his best to twist and pervert God’s truth.

Greece

There are some noteworthy things about the Greek version. Though more than one Greek goddess shared traits with Ishtar, the primary counterpart was Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sex, and beauty. The Greeks imagined Aphrodite as the queen of heaven, portrayed her naked, called the planet Venus by her name, and often identified her with a dove. Additional symbols for her included a rabbit or hare, dolphin, sparrow, swan, goose, and more.

The Greeks chose Friday as her special day; this day is now named for the equivalent Germanic goddess Freya. They viewed Aphrodite as a warrior goddess like Ishtar, though not a goddess of war, per se. Sometimes Aphrodite took the form of a virgin to seduce human men, but the Greeks linked virginity more with her sister Artemis, whom they deemed a perpetual virgin and, somewhat confusingly, also the goddess of childbirth.

According to the Greek philosopher Plato, in his Symposium, Aphrodite patronized all sorts of perversions and abominations, including sodomy and pedophilia. In addition, Greeks worshiped what might be described as a “transgender” counterpart of hers called Aphroditus. A disgusting and obscene image of it survives to this day, depicting a bearded figure wearing female clothing and possessing both male and female anatomy.

As observed earlier, Satan’s goal is to twist, pervert, and destroy everything God created. He strives to destroy masculinity and femininity; he encourages every sexual perversion.

As for Tammuz, the Greeks called him Adonis and said he was a man born of incest who became Aphrodite’s primary human lover. They fancied him to be extraordinarily handsome and a lover of various gods and goddesses in addition to Aphrodite. In their version of Tammuz’s death story, they said a wild boar fatally wounded Adonis and he bled to death in Aphrodite’s arms, later being restored to life by their chief god.

Every midsummer, as the Babylonians wept for Tammuz, the Greeks wept for Adonis. Greek women planted small gardens on their rooftops, then watched the plants wither and die in the hot sun as a tribute to Adonis’s death. Afterward, they held a funeral procession for him, tearing their clothes, beating their breasts, and wailing aloud.

In the 3rd century AD, church writer Origen commented on these Greek and Babylonian traditions, observing, “For they seem to perform certain mystic rites yearly: first, they mourn for him as though he is dead; second, they rejoice over him as though he has risen from the dead.”^[4] 

Asia Minor and Syria

In Asia Minor, the people of Ephesus worshiped a goddess called Diana by the Romans, Artemis by the Greeks, and Cybele by other peoples of Asia Minor. There in Ephesus stood a temple to this goddess, a temple revered in the ancient world.

When the Apostle Paul and other servants of God preached in Ephesus, many repented and turned from idolatry. But Demetrius, a silversmith and idol-maker, saw the apostles as a threat to his income. In Acts 19, he assembled his fellow craftsmen and said,

25 “Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade.

26 “Moreover you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands.

27 “So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship.”

28 Now when they heard this, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”

This sparked a riot, and for two hours an unruly mob chanted “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:34). At last, the city clerk pacified the mob with a short speech and a reminder that riots invited Roman crackdowns (vv. 35-41).

In his speech, the clerk made an interesting comment: “the city of the Ephesians is a devotee of the great goddess Artemis [Diana], and of that which fell down from Zeus” (Acts 19:35; YLT).

“That which fell down from Zeus” references regional myths. The peoples of Asia Minor thought the queen of heaven, whom they called Cybele, fell from heaven as a meteor. The Syrians believed the queen of heaven, in this case Aphrodite, fell from heaven as a giant egg and landed in the Euphrates River. Fish rolled the egg onto land, where the goddess hatched in the form of doves.

That last version parallels a Babylonian tale, in which the Assyrian queen Semiramis fell from heaven as an egg. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the ancients linked Semiramis to the Babylonian Ishtar and the Canaanite Ashtoreth.^[5]  And, of course, Semiramis had a lover, Ara the Handsome, who died and whom she later claimed had been resurrected.

Eggs played a prominent role in ancient religions. The ancients claimed several deities hatched from eggs. Many believed the universe itself hatched from an egg, such as the Orphic egg pictured here. Cultures scattered from the Pacific islands and China to Egypt and Canaan to West Africa believed such foolishness.

Returning now to Artemis (or Diana) of Ephesus, let’s quickly note just a few more facts. The Greeks and Romans considered her the goddess of hunting, childbirth, the dawn, the countryside, virginity, fertility, and the moon. They further viewed her as a “triple goddess,” a goddess with three different forms.

Even though the ancients imagined that Diana had love affairs, and even children, they considered her a perpetual virgin. Accordingly, her priests in Ephesus were eunuchs; her priestesses, young virgin girls.^[6] 

Being also a fertility goddess, the image of Ephesian Diana featured a multitude of breasts, or perhaps eggs.

Rome

In 205 BC, Rome found itself locked in a death-struggle with its arch-rival North African city-state, Carthage. For thirteen years, the Carthaginians, led by their renowned general Hannibal, had occupied large portions of Italy. Every Roman attempt to drive Hannibal out of Italy had met with disaster.

So now, the Romans looked abroad to find a foreign god that might deliver them. The one they chose was Cybele, the mother goddess and “queen of heaven” worshiped in Asia Minor. They even brought her “image,” a fallen meteorite, to Rome. From then on, the Romans observed a spring festival in honor of Cybele and her lover, Attis.

Now, as an aside, the Romans also worshiped their own queen of heaven, Venus. Like the Babylonians and Greeks, the Romans named the planet Venus after their queen of heaven and fertility goddess. And, just as the Babylonians and Greeks had done, the Romans portrayed her as stark naked.

The Romans still viewed Cybele and Venus as separate deities, though. The Romans called Cybele simply Magna Mater, or “Great Mother.”

Like Ishtar, Cybele was accompanied by lions. And like the Canaanite Asherah (distinct from Ashtoreth), her worship involved sacred trees and groves.

As for Cybele’s lover Attis, an agriculture deity, the ancients fancied that he’d castrated himself. Various myths claim that he bled to death from this self-mutilation, or else that a wild boar killed him, like Adonis.

So the ancients worshiped a eunuch as a fertility god, much as they also worshiped the perpetual virgin Diana as a fertility goddess. What foolishness!

To honor Attis the eunuch, the priests of Cybele castrated themselves, like the priests of Ephesian Diana. These eunuch priests, called galli, wore women’s clothing, makeup, and jewelry.

The Romans portrayed Attis as a shepherd, like Tammuz. In at least one statue, he’s portrayed with a hare, like the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Hares were commonly seen as fertility symbols, as humans from ancient times till now have marveled over their ability to “multiply like rabbits.”

Whereas the Babylonians wept for Tammuz and the Greeks for Adonis during mid-summer every year, the Romans wept for Attis during the spring. Some sources say March, some say April.

Worshipers cut down a pine tree, wrapped it with wool, and decorated it with violets. This supposedly represented Attis dying in the embrace of Cybele. They abstained from bread and other foods, paralleling a similar “fast” among the women weeping for Tammuz.

The priests scourged themselves with whips and cut their arms and legs to shed their own blood, danced about in a wild frenzy, wailed aloud, and beat their breasts. Caught up in the frenzy, some worshipers even castrated themselves as Attis had supposedly done.

The same ritual took place in Syria and Mesopotamia. In northern Mesopotamia, at Edessa, a certain King Abgar is credited with stopping this practice by ordering that every man who castrated himself would be punished by having his hand cut off.^[7] 

Minus the self-castration, the whole episode calls to mind what the Bible recorded about the priests of Baal and Asherah. In 1 Kings 18:26-28, we read,

26 So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us!” But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made.

27 And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.”

28 So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them.

Paganism Reborn

In this ancient world of wickedness, this world of false gods and false messiahs, Christianity began to spread in the years after the death and resurrection of the true Messiah, Jesus Christ. As they traveled throughout the heathen world, Christ’s apostles preached God’s way of life and condemned the paganism and wickedness around them.

This often wasn’t well-received. In Ephesus, as we’ve already seen, the locals rioted against the Apostle Paul. In Philippi, the angry pagans threw Paul and Silas into prison for delivering a young girl from demon-possession (Acts 16:11-40).

But Jesus had warned His disciples that all this would happen. In John 15:18-20, He told them,

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.

19 “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

20 “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”

Eventually, most of Jesus’ original disciples suffered violent deaths at the hands of their persecutors.

This has always been a risk of following God. In Heb. 11:35-38, we read about God’s servants of old,

35 Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

36 Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.

37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—

38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.

Yet, faced with social shame, mockery from their friends and family, loss of livelihood, and even the prospect of torture and death, it’s small wonder that many early Christians looked for an easier way. Such is human nature. Many tried to compromise with evil, they tried not to stand out too much, not to seem “too odd.”

So, they kept the trappings of paganism and appropriated pagan traditions in their worship of God. They also found that pagans would more cheerfully accept Christ if they didn’t have to give up all their pagan ways!

Centuries later, around AD 600, Christian missionaries traveled to England to convert the heathen Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory I wrote them a letter with these instructions:

Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God.

Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting.^[8] 

This blatantly contradicted God’s instructions in the Bible, but by that time, the church had centuries of experience. Pagan temples would become churches, pagan gods and goddesses would be replaced with saints, pagan holidays would become “Christian” holidays.

They borrowed the less odious forms of pagan worship and incorporated them into their worship of God. Rituals for worshiping Tammuz and Ishtar transformed into worship of Jesus and His mother Mary.

Fasting for Attis or Tammuz morphed into the 40-day fast of Lent, a concept found nowhere in the Bible. Of course, they tried to find Scriptural justification, citing examples of 40-day fasts by Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ. But God’s Word never commanded any such observance, nor associated any of them with Jesus’ death.

As the pagans whipped themselves and punished their own bodies, many monks and hermits would do the same for centuries afterward. Again, a custom found nowhere in the Bible.

Weeping for Tammuz transformed into weeping for Jesus. Good Friday, the imagined day of Jesus’ crucifixion, became the chosen day of mourning.

In reality, Jesus Christ died on Nisan 14, “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14). God’s Word commands us to remember His death and to partake of Him as our Passover Lamb, but does it command us to mourn and weep on the anniversary of His death? No, it does not! Why would we mourn Him when He is alive? On the contrary, His death and resurrection are our deliverance from death.

To the apostate Christians, though, celebrating Tammuz/Adonis’s mythical resurrection turned to celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. For weeks after Easter Sunday, the day they chose for Jesus’ resurrection, Christians greeted one another with the words, “He is risen!” And responded, “He is risen indeed!” These customs, too, are found nowhere in the Bible.

To this day, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Eastern Orthodox call Jesus’ mother Mary “the queen of heaven,” shamelessly stealing that title from the heathens! To Mary, they give the honor once given to Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Cybele, and countless other pagan goddesses. And the very act of praying to Mary is blatant idolatry, for only God the Father and Jesus Christ are worthy of worship.

But these churches aren’t the only ones that still worship the old queen of heaven under a new name. Mormons blasphemously assert that God the Father has a wife, an idea found nowhere in God’s Word!

Furthermore, Mary-worshipers call her “the virgin Mary,” as if she was a perpetual virgin and not a married woman! Mary was a wife and mother who had several other children after Jesus (Mark 6:3). The Bible never again speaks of Mary as a virgin after Jesus’ birth. But the early Christians used her to replace pagan goddesses, including the perpetual virgins Artemis and Diana.

Through the centuries, Christian artwork has depicted Mary cradling Jesus’ dead body in her arms, much as Aphrodite supposedly cradled the dying Adonis in her arms, and Cybele the dying Attis. This, too, is a wholly unbiblical tradition.

The Christians incorporated other aspects of paganism into their traditions about Jesus’ death and resurrection, too.

The cakes once baked for the queen of heaven transformed into Easter pastries, such as hot cross buns. The ashes in which the cakes were baked gave rise, perhaps, to Ash Wednesday. Yet God commanded that unleavened bread, not pastries, be eaten during the Feast of Unleavened Bread following Jesus’ Passover sacrifice (Ex. 12:15-20; Num. 28:16-17; 1 Cor. 5:7-8).

The cosmic egg of Venus and Semiramis, and the eggs used all over the world as fertility symbols, morphed into Easter eggs. No longer did they represent the birth of pagan gods; now they represented the rebirth of Jesus. And yet nowhere in the Bible did God command or approve the use of eggs in ANY manner of worship!

The hare or rabbit, itself a fertility symbol associated with Aphrodite (the Greek queen of heaven), became the Easter bunny. Nowhere in the Bible are hares or rabbits associated with any manner of Godly worship.

In addition, Christians used a symbol of three rabbits to represent the “holy trinity,” which, as we’ve seen before, is yet another unbiblical idea. The trinity bears striking similarities to the trinities of the pagans, such as the “triple goddess” Diana.

The boar that killed Adonis or Attis, the Greco-Roman Tammuz, perhaps inspired the tradition of eating ham on Easter. (The pagans used hogs in numerous religious rites, though.) Yet God specifically commanded His people not to eat swine: “Also the swine is unclean for you, because it has cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud; you shall not eat their flesh or touch their dead carcasses” (Deut. 14:8).

As we’ve seen before, Jesus Christ did not die on Friday, nor did He rise on Sunday. It’s mathematically impossible. He was first seen by His disciples on Sunday, but He rose from the grave on the seventh-day Sabbath.

But the apostate Christians insisted that Jesus died on Friday — the day of the Greco-Roman queen of heaven, Venus/Aphrodite. They further insisted that He rose from the grave on Sunday, the “esteemed day of the sun,” as the Roman Emperor Constantine would later describe it.

In the Book of Ezekiel, as we’ve already read, the prophet witnessed women weeping for Tammuz. After this, he continued in his vision, “So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east” (Ezek. 8:16).

Today, millions of Christians follow the exact sequence of events described by Ezekiel. First is the day of mourning, Good Friday. And on its heels, on Easter Sunday, those same Christians turn their faces toward the east, watching the sunrise, and as the sun bursts over the horizon, they exclaim, “He is risen!”

In the 5th century AD, Pope Leo I complained that church-goers worshiped the sun on the very steps of his church:

From such a system of teaching proceeds also the ungodly practice of certain foolish folk who worship the sun as it rises at the beginning of daylight from elevated positions: even some Christians think it is so proper to do this that, before entering the blessed Apostle Peter’s basilica, which is dedicated to the One Living and true God, when they have mounted the steps which lead to the raised platform, they turn round and bow themselves towards the rising sun and with bent neck do homage to its brilliant orb.^[9] 

From Ezekiel’s day to the 5th century AD to the present, the Easter sunrise service continues unabated.

Now, why is Easter called “Easter”? Most nations call it by some variation of Pascha, after the Hebrew pesach, or Passover. But in Germanic languages, it’s Easter, or variations thereof.

Around AD 725, the English monk Bede, a renowned and careful writer of history who lived just a few decades after his people converted from paganism to Catholicism, explained in his work The Reckoning of Time,

In olden time the English people… calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and the Romans (the months) take their name from the Moon, for the Moon is called mona and the month monath.

The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath; May, Thrimilchi; June, Litha; July, also Litha; August, Weodmonath; September, Halegmonath; October, Winterfilleth; November, Blodmonath; December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called….

Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.^[10] 

Thus, the Easter, or paschal, season derives its name from an old Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostre. This same season, the Anglo-Saxons dubbed “Eostre-month.” The Anglo-Saxons’ cousins in Germany once had a similarly-named “Oster-month,” and “Easter” in German is “Ostern.”

Was Eostre the goddess of the dawn and/or the sunrise? Was she another incarnation of Ishtar, the queen of heaven? We can speculate, but have no concrete way of knowing. But we do know that they both came from the same source: the twisted mind of Satan the Devil.

The “Goddesses” Unmasked

There’s one final piece to this story, a final plot twist. What exactly were the goddesses of the ancient world?

Remember that a number of pagan goddesses were imagined as goddesses of the dawn. Others, such as Ishtar, Aphrodite, and Venus, were associated with the planet Venus, the brightest star in the night sky. The ancients identified this planet as both the evening star and the morning star.

They also considered both the goddesses of the dawn and the goddesses of the morning star to be light-bringers or light-bearers. In Latin, “light-bringer” or “light-bearer” is lucifer! The dawn goddess Diana was sometimes known as Diana Lucifera.

Furthermore, the Romans believed Lucifer to be a male incarnation of Venus, and they sometimes called the planet Venus “Lucifer.” Some of the goddesses, including Cybele and Venus of Syria, were said to have fallen from heaven.

In Isa. 14:12-15, we read,

12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!

13 For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north;

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’

15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.

Again, we find in 2 Cor. 11:14, “For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.”

Now, in Isa. 14:12, the name “Lucifer” has been imposed by the translators. In Hebrew, the word used is helel (Strong’s # H1966), which means “shining one, bright star.” The Septuagint translated helel into Greek as eosphoros, which equates to the Latin lucifer. Eosphoros was a Greek deity parallel to the Roman Lucifer, and is also the modern Greek name for Lucifer.

So the pagan goddesses of the ancient world were none other than Satan himself. Easter, named after a pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess, is really named after Satan the Devil!

Why, you might ask, would Satan disguise himself as a goddess? It appears to go back to a primary reason he fell from heaven. In Ezek. 28, God delivered a message to “the king of Tyre,” another name for Satan. As we read in vv. 15 & 17, “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.”

So Satan became puffed up because of his beauty, and lost his place in heaven. Cast down to the earth, he disguised himself not only as various gods, but also as beautiful goddesses of love, sex, and light.

When feminists exalt the “divine feminine” or the “mother goddess,” they’re worshiping Satan. When they try to overturn the gender roles God created, they’re worshiping Satan. When transgenders mutilate themselves and try to blur the lines between men and women, they’re worshiping Satan.

But Easter, feminism, transgenderism, and many other societal evils are all, sadly, different branches of the same tree. They go back to the same roots.

Satan truly “deceives the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). And among his victims are the billions of well-meaning Christians who blindly follow the traditions of men and celebrate the pagan holidays that Satan established!

Conclusion

Over and over again, God warned His people to cut off the demonic gods of the heathen. Again and again, He warned them against pagan ways. We read in Deut. 12:2-4:

2 You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.

3 And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.

4 You shall not worship the LORD your God with such things.

God gave us His instructions for our own good (Deut. 10:13). Satan and his demons — the real gods of the heathen — work diligently to deceive and destroy us. Satan “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).

Therefore, God said in Deut. 12:29-32,

29 “When the LORD your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land,

30 “take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’

31 “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

32 “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.”

So here’s the truth.

Roughly 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to earth as a human being. As John 1:14 tells us, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

At the appointed time, on Nisan 14th, He willingly yielded Himself up to His enemies. Beaten, cursed, and spit upon, “His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” (Isa. 52:14). He endured the Roman cat-o-nine-tails tearing the flesh from His bones, and was at last nailed to a stake or cross, hanging there in agony until He died six hours later.

Yet He did it all for us. Because He loved us, Yeshua/Jesus took on Himself the penalty for our sins and died in our place. Heb. 12:2 tells us that He “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.”

At His death, shortly before Nisan 14 ended and the First Day of Unleavened Bread commenced, some of His disciples took His body down from the cross, wrapped it in linen, and buried it. At the end of three days and three nights, He rose from the dead. He triumphed over the grave, “because it was not possible that He should be held by it” (Acts 2:24), and in His resurrection, we, too, have hope of resurrection to eternal life.

That’s the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, albeit abbreviated. There was no 40-day “fast” leading up to any of this. There was no Easter bunny, no Easter eggs, and no Easter sunrise service.

So let’s stop mixing good and evil, truth and lies, paganism and Christianity. Let’s heed and obey our Creator’s instructions, and forsake the traditions of men. Have no more to do with the Easter bunny, Easter eggs, Easter sunrise services, or any other part of Easter.

There’s no compromise to be had with evil, no deal to be made with the devil.

Let no follower of Christ indulge in the customs of the heathen. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 6:14-17,

14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?

15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?

16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

17 Therefore, “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.”

Come out from among the heathen and be separate! Paganism isn’t cute; it isn’t fun or nostalgic; it isn’t edgy; it’s demonic and evil.

This Passover season, let’s remember Jesus Christ’s sacrifice in the way God commanded. Let’s observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread and rejoice in God’s deliverance.

ENDNOTES

[1] Herodotus, The History, Book 1, Chapter 192. Accessed 12/19/2022 at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.+1.199

[2] Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once…: Sumerian Poetry in Translation, p. 64.

[3] Quoted by James Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 338

[4] Origen, Homilies on Ezekiel, 8.143. Accessed 3/26/2023 at https://archive.org/stream/OrigenHomiliesOnEzekielEdHooker2014/Origen-Homilies_on_Ezekiel-ed_Hooker-2014_djvu.txt

[5] Joshua J. Mark, “Sammu-Ramat and Semiramis: The Inspiration and the Myth,” World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 3/28/2023 at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/743/sammu-ramat-and-semiramis-the-inspiration-and-the/

[6] “Artemis,” Holman Bible Dictionary. Accessed 3/28/2023 at https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hbd/a/artemis.html

[7] Bardesan, The Book of the Laws of Various Countries, section on Syria and Edessa. Accessed 3/29/2023 at https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0862.htm

[8] Gregory I, Letter to Abbot Mellitus, Epsitola 76, PL 77: 1215-1216. Accessed 3/29/2023 at https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/greg1-mellitus.txt

[9] Leo I, Sermon 27: On the Feast of the Nativity, VII (Pt. IV). Accessed 12/12/2022 at https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360327.htm

[10] Bede, The Reckoning of Time, tr. Faith Wallis, Liverpool University Press 1988, pp.53-54. Quoted at https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/bede_on_eostre.htm