Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Truth About Lent

In her work, "Christian Feast Days and Their Relationship to Pagan Holidays," by Donna-Lynn Riley, she states: "As you progress through the Christian liturgical year, the other significant holiday is Easter, which is the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The forty days prior to this holiday is called Lent. In 519 AD, Lent gained acceptance by the Catholic Church. A writer of that time, John Cassian explains that the church didn't observe Lent. But as believers started to decline from their devotion, priests had called for a period of fasting to recall them to their original fervor. Many other regions, practiced a forty-day periods of fasting. In the Andes and in Mexico pagan followers practiced a solemn fast of forty days to honor the sun. The Egyptians also observed a fast of forty days to honor Adonis or Osiris, the mediatorial god. Among the Pagans, Lent seems to be a fast to prepare for the annual festival in commemoration of the "death and resurrection of Tammuz which was celebrated by alternate weeping and rejoicing...being observed in Palestine and Assyria in June, therefore called the 'month of Tammuz' Once again correlations can be found between the Christian Lent and practices of fasting in preparation for a great event or occasion. This event for most of the pagan religions appears to be the preparation for the coming of spring and the 'rebirth' of the land. This can be compared to the Christian belief that even though Jesus had died, that He was "reborn" in his resurrection and that the followers need to prepare themselves for the anniversary of this event by the practice of fasting."

Lent was not practiced by Yeshua, i.e. Jesus, Kefa, i.e. Peter, Sha'ul, i.e. Paul, or any of the early disciples. It was created by the Catholic Church some hundreds of years after the resurrection of Yeshua. Why would you want to practice a ritual not created by the One you claim to follow? If you are going to follow Yeshua, you should do what He did and He didn't do Lent. Further, He obviously never taught the disciples to perform the ritual because they did not either. The real issue is, who or what are you going to follow?

It is time to make a stand against a religion that dishonors YHWH. Lent may be for the "Christian," but it is not for the follower of YHWH and His Son Yeshua. We are to keep the Sabbath and the festivals as set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures. Don't be deceived. Be alarmed, very alarmed at the power of darkness that seeks to corrupt the true religion.

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