Thoughts On Easter?

[cricket]

Reaching out to those who are not yet believers does not in any way require that their beliefs or traditions be embraced by the church. Olger, are you somehow suggesting that a day of celebrating the anniversary of the ressurection of Christ is an equivalent of offering sacrifices to Satan or to encouraging sinful activities?

[olger]

Sis Cricket, the question that begs is: Where do we draw a line, or do we? And who or what gets to decide the placement of that line, and if we need one?

reflections,

Og

[Woody]

May I ask you a question Sir?

Do you celebrate Christmas and if not ... then why not. What lines have you personally drawn and why?

Do you feel the church should impose some "lines" for us ... or do we do the line drawing?

[olger]

Yeah you can butt in.

As to Christmass, we decided back in 1989 to forgo the gift trade stream, and find a needy family and spend the money we would have wasted on gifts on their needs. We have had numerous opportunities to pray with these families and one of them joined our church in 1994. Today, he is a deacon and a fine asset to our local church.

And it all started with the decision to drop out of the gift trade traffic.

Another example. Three years ago I asked my sister and her children if they would like to join us in this venture. They did and we pooled our monies and sent it to Ralph, a missionary in China. That gift was used to buy special treatment for a little girl who had leukemia. She survived and all the other people in the hospital ward got to hear about her friend Jesus who sent her a gift from America. Funny thing is, after the others heard about her hope, they died and she was left alone for a time in that section of the hospital. Then she went home. I carry a picture of her in my Bible (she's almost 7 years old now).

Go and do as He has done,

oG

[Lil Star]

awesome example olger. What a blessing that must be for you and your family and the little girl. Nothing wanted in return. That is just beautiful.

[cricket]

Sis Cricket, the question that begs is: Where do we draw a line, or do we? And who or what gets to decide the placement of that line, and if we need one?

reflections,

Og

Understood. The line should be drawn in the sand, I should think--if you catch my drift. We should do as Jesus leads us by the Holy Spirit to do.

[Kevin H]

We tend to have mixed feelings since we both love what is being cellebrated, but we want to be careful with the focus on going to church on Sunday.

As for the pagan aspects, there is a tension in the Bible where we tend to either want to go to either one side or the other. There are those who don't worry about the pagan orgins as long as we are not worshiping those gods, and others who want absolutely nothing to do with paganism. The first group has a tendency of ending up not having a firm grasp on our God, the second either remains in Biblical ignorance and want to force their views on to others, or shockinly give up the Bible with discust if they study deeper.

For example of how the Bible wants to ballance between the two, the Pentatuch the is a list of things that were "Abominations" and that word was limited to acts that were performed in pagan worship that God wanted no way in the worship of the Hebrews, yet there are otherthings that were welcomed and embraced.

For example, the feasts of the land were tied to the agricultural cycle of Canaan. They were kept by the Canaanites and found recorded in archaeological writings in cities that were already in ruins by Abraham's day. In the spring they ate the lamb and had the feast of unlevened bread. In the fall they had the day of Atonement to clean the temples, have two goats one sacrificed to the god the other being a scape goat lead to the wilderness. They even had the investigative judgment (the court systems had an investigative phase of the jugement and Prayer was based on this ancient court system as they asked the gods to judge and to give the request). I'm sorry, and this may upset many, but these central aspects of Adventism are just as pagan in orgin as Easter.

These holydays with many of their trappings came right into the worship of the Hebrews and into our Bible. Other things: The more ugly and dangerous things (such as the "uniting of life forces" i.e. orgies) were rejected, including ways of trying to unite life forces that were not necessarly dangerous in themselves but which seemed close enough to be a bridge that could lead to the dangerous practices (such as mixing grains and clothing material, cooking a kid in it's mothers milk) as all this mixing of people, adults, children, animals, grains, clothing materials and kids cooked in mom's milk were all part of the same aspects in the celebration. While the actual days, the unlevened bread and the scapegoates and aspects like that were readally accepted.

As for Easter itself: In the ancient world on Easter Sunday the king would dress in a linen ephod, and would lead a procession bringing the gods to their place of worship. The king would dance infront of the gods, the priests carying the gods would go 6 paces and offer a sacrifice. When the god was in place the king would pass out bread (hot crossed buns) and send them to their homes to be fruitful. The king would go to the queen (especially if she had not conseved a child on this date in the past) and if she were to conseve that night that child would be the promised son and the next king. If not then the other sons would fight it out. Finally the night would end with the king going to the temple to sleep there that night to want a prophetic dream from the gods.

Knowing more of the history of Easter we find it in the Old Testament. First the negative:

Ezekiel 8:13 and 14 where the women were weeping for the false god that was important on Easter, Tammuz. A good proof text for those who want nothing to do with Easter. However we cannot stop with this proof text as we find more references to the events of this weekend and they are in more positive to nutral settings

2 Samuel 6 and following David is going through the ritual, Michal refusing to come to him and thus David's sons had to fight out who was going to be the next king.

1 Kings 3: 2-15 Where Solomon comes to celebrate a major celebration that ends with him sleeping in the house of worship and God appears to him and he askes for wisdom

And of course our second favorite easter message Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel 2.

David, Solomon and Daniel found parts of this celebration acceptable while also finding other parts of this celebration abominations that they would have nothing to do with. Which catagory would they place the resurection of Jesus?

[Gail]

This Easter was different for us.

My son and his wife came over to visit and my daughter is home from school. My husband sent them on an Easter egg hunt.

My kids never participated in an Easter egg hunt before, and neither had my daughter-in-law. She was raised Mennonite. Rikki said, "Easter to us was about Jesus- not eggs!"

My husband doesn't have a very deep Biblical knowledge, but he knows what is traditional and fun for kids! So he hid plastic eggs outside and the grownup kids went out hunting for the eggs. We all got a good chuckle out of that one!

[Woody]

[John317]

... They even had the investigative judgment (the court systems had an investigative phase of the jugement and Prayer was based on this ancient court system as they asked the gods to judge and to give the request). I'm sorry, and this may upset many, but these central aspects of Adventism are just as pagan in orgin as Easter.

I've studied the similarities between the Canaanites' temples & cultus and the Hebrew sanctuary, so I'm aware that God used some aspects of the religions common in that time. After all, it wouldn't have made much sense for God to have taught lessons to people from things that were completely foreign to them. For much the same reason, Jesus taught important and even new lessons through use of familiar and common things.

Would you please go into more detail about the parallels that you see between the SDA understanding of the Investigative Judgment and that of the Canaanites? I'm very interested in this.