Three Houses

The feast of Passover and of Unleavened Bread begins tonight & my heart wells up with anticipation to celebrate the Christ of these feasts.  “Easter” comes & goes & nothing in me registers.  I can’t bring myself to say “Happy Easter”.  The church in the first century knew nothing of this discrepancy between the supposed Christian Easter & the Jewish PAssover.  They knew only Passover & Unleavened Bread, particularly as the Lord celebrated it with His disciples & as the early church celebrated it (daily) in the Lord’s supper.  

Many have seen Easter as another form of the name of the Babylonian fertility goddess Astarte, known in Hebrew as Ashtoreth whose poles the Israelites were commanded to utterly destroy.  It is not for me to go into this further here but a quote I heard in a radio interview with Frank Viola about his book Pagan Christianity? expresses what’s in my heart about Easter: “Christianity didn’t destroy paganism, it adopted it.”  Like with Christmas, I’m aware of that many see redemptive aspects in these celebrations.  As He’s been bringing these things to light the last years I’ve sensed the depth of His jealousy though & I’m skeptical that He’s pleased with the mixture & adoption of counterfeits vs. their utter destruction. 

I see this confusion, adoption & mixture as having had the very detrimental outcome of having muddied both the gospel & our practise of the Lord’s supper.  In other words, critical aspects of the revelation of the Christ of the Passover & Unleaved Bread & consequently our life together in Him (as symbolized by His supper) have been lost to us.  I’m advocating rediscovery & celebration of the Christ of the feasts.  The implications of all this for our witness, particularly to the Jewish people, weighs heavily on my heart.  I don’t see them being able to recognize their Messiah in a people who are not living feasts of Passover & Unleavened Bread (& the rest of the Lord’s feasts).  More is at stake than we know.