The Real Meaning Of Easter

Dusty

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The Real Meaning Of Easter

Easter is the day when we celebrate Jesus Christ rising from the dead. Jesus is the Son of God and gave His life to die for our sins. On the third day after He died -- the day we now celebrate as Easter Sunday -- His friends went to His grave, and found that He had risen from the dead. They saw an Angel who told them, “Do not be afraid” I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn't here. He has been raised from the dead, just as He said it would happen."

Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday; now He offers to you the gift of eternal life and forgiveness of sins. This is the true story of Easter, and how it can change your life.

Here are 4 principles that tell how you can receive the gift of God for your life.
1. God Loves You!
The Bible says, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life"
The problem is that
2. All of us have done, said or thought things that are wrong. This is called sin, and our sins have separated us from God.

The Bible says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” God is perfect and Holy, and our sins separate us from God forever. The Bible says “The wages of sin is death.”
The good news is that, about 2,000 years ago,
3. God sent His only Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

Jesus is the Son of God. He lived a sinless life and then died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. “God demonstrates His own love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”

Jesus rose from the dead and now He lives in heaven with God His Father. He offers us the gift of eternal life -- of living forever with Him in heaven if we accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Jesus said
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me."

God reaches out in love to you and wants you to be His child. "As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." You can choose to ask Jesus Christ to forgive your sins and come in to your life as your Lord and Savior.

4. If you want to accept Christ as Savior and turn from your sins, you can ask Him to be your Savior and Lord by praying a prayer like this:

"Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Please forgive me my sins and give me the gift of eternal life. I ask you in to my life and heart to be my Lord and Savior. I want to serve you always." Amen.




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Hi there Dusty.

It's interesting that you refer to the Christian meaning of Easter and the "real meaning."

I always thought the real meaning was rooted in the pagan festival of Eastre (the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe). It was always my understanding that the Christians took that pagan celebration and 'christianized' it so as to gain a wider acceptance in much the same way as they did with Christmas.

I remember as a child always being somewhat confused why we always celebrated Christmas on the same date, but the date Jesus died always seemed to be different and therefore hard for me to pin down in chocolate terms.

I wonder, as new religions begin to gain momentum will they 'steal' Christian holidays in the same way Christians stole festivals from Pagans? Its not difficult to make the assertion that our consumerist and capitalist society has indeed already dramatically eroded the religious significants of Christmas and Easter, but is this merely the cycle of life, or a work of the devil I wonder?

I\d be curious to hear what Pagans said about their festivals getting hijacked by the Christians all those years ago, though in truth the Christians probably simply executed any Pagan who refused to convert a tactic that sounds somewhat similar to what you hear extremist Muslims doing today! Yikes!

Anyway, I read your post with interest and actually, as I've mentioned in another post here, I just wrote about this on my blog at beforeiforget.co.uk
 
Christian festivals will always survive.

You are of course quite right that Christianity took over the Pagan festival of the goddess Eastre and indeed the Yule celebration. There is no need to worry about them being taken over again by another religion - although commercialisation has largely done that already.

The Pagan festivals, and temples were taken over by Christians with much bloodshed. You need to remember that in the first few hundred years of the spread of Christianity there were thousands of gods and the Christian god, was simply one more to most people and the growth of Christian power was ignored until it was too late. What came as a surprise was that the Christians were not prepared to accept anyone believing in other gods and Pagans/heathens were frequently slaughtered either by Christian mobs or by War Lord Bishops raiding pagan settlements. Bishops rode to war in their armour for many hundreds of years. The account of the Bishop of Durham at the battle of Crecy makes particularly unpleasant reading.

Murder of non Chistians still happens hopefully only on a small scale like those poor children in Africa thought by the Christians to be witches (i.e. of a different religion). We tend to think of the biggest Christian slaughters as being during the many Crusades, the slaughter of the Cathars, the Inquisition, the many interdenominational wars but probably far more 'heathens' were killed when missionaries went to under developed countries to bring them the word of God. Unfortunately the heathens already had their own gods and resisted being converted to Christianity. It was the missionaries unfortunate duty to protect themselves and they just had to kill millions of the native people. Fortunately the heathens had lots of gold and other wealth so the mission/conquest was not in vain. Much of the wealth brought back to Europe eventually went to make the fabulous cathedrals and palaces that we still enjoy today.

Never forget the shameful days of our Christian legacy. Many of our forefathers were even more aggresive and warlike than some of the militant Muslim groups that now plague the world. What drove them to behave like that? Money? Power? The words in the bible? Who knows? Just don't forget it when dreaming of the good things that Christianity had brought to the world.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
 
Eastre and Mithras as well

Hi Mr Melt

I'm amazed your post has survived so long. Usually factual comment which conflict with Christian beliefs quickly get deleted. The problem is that the majority of Christians have no idea how many festivals etc have been 'borrowed' from other religions.

I don't think many Christians even realise that the last supper/ this is my body and this is my blood/ death and resurrection to save mankind tales were all direct copies from the god Mithras. Those particular tales preceded Jesus by hundreds of years. Mithras was in fact a favourite god of Roman soldiers so it is perfectly understandable that Rome wanted to keep their soldiers happy when they thrust the new religion, Christianity, upon an unsuspecting world where people of different religions accepted each other's faiths. That soon changed.
 
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