Christianity

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Each year in the springtime, the mainstream Christian world celebrates a holiday called "Easter." Many assume that this holiday originated with the resurrection of Jesus Christ but as the information provided here will demonstrate that this spring tradition of men is actually or an older and far less 'holy' than one would imagine. The following quotes have been derived from several valid and even scholarly sources. The purpose is to unveil the truth about the origins of this spring 'Christianized' pagan holiday.

The Origin and History of Easter : "The term 'Easter' is not of Christian origin. It is another form of Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean goddess, the queen of heaven. The festival of Pasch [Passover and the Feast of Unleavens] was a continuation of the Jewish [that is, God's] feast....from this Pasch the pagan festival of 'Easter' was quite distinct and was introduced into the apostate Western religion, as part of the attempt to adapt pagan festivals to Christianity." (W.E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger, William White, Jr., Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, article: Easter, p.192) Ish·tar : Mythology The chief Babylonian and Assyrian goddess, associated with love, fertility, and war, being the counterpart to the Phoenician Astarte. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000)

Tammuz: ancient nature deity worshiped in Babylonia. A god of agriculture and flocks, he personified the creative powers of spring. He was loved by the fertility goddess Ishtar, who, according to one legend, was so grief-stricken at his death that she contrived to enter the underworld to get him back. According to another legend, she killed him and later restored him to life. These legends and his festival, commemorating the yearly death and rebirth of vegetation, corresponded to the festivals of the Phoenician and Greek Adonis and of the Phrygian Attis. The Sumerian name of Tammuz was Dumuzi. In the Bible his disappearance is mourned by the women of Jerusalem (Ezek. 8.14).(The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001)

Of all the tales of lost treasure, ghosts, inexplicable lights, apparitions, spirit horses, unsolved murders and disappearances across the Southwest, the legend of María Jesus de Ágreda - the fabled "Lady in Blue" - surely ranks among the most strange and mysterious of them all.A Spanish nun who, physically, never left her convent in her country's province of Soria, she nevertheless purportedly traveled by spirit - a phenomenon called"bi-location" or "teleportation" - by the Church to minister to Indians in Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas.

She left an enduring mark on the folklore of the desert.North-Central Spain; the Franciscan Poor Clares' Convent of the Immaculate Conception at Ágreda; Holy Communion; the year, 1620: Sister María Jesus de Ágreda, 18 years old, knelt to pray in the chapel. As she chanted, her face grew pale. She began to sway. She slumped into unconsciousness. A beggar, apparently watching her surreptitiously, claimed that a brilliant blue light enveloped her and that her comatose body rose and hovered several feet above the floor. Sister María had experienced her first trance, the springboard to a mystic life that would propel her to fame across Catholic Europe and into New Spain and the American Southwest even thoughphysically, she never in her life left her hometown of Ágreda in the province of Soria, northeast of Madrid. She would become the quintessential expression of the mystic Spain of the 17th century, a religious descendant of figures such as the Discalced Carmelites' Santa Teresa and Jerome Gratian and the painter El Greco, who, collectively, gave voice, energy and imagery to the spiritual dimension of Spanish Catholic life. (An irony in the rise of Spain's mysticism is that Santa Teresa, a central figure in the movement, had Jewish origins - in a land which persecuted those who dared practice Judaism or even bore Jewish blood.) During her career, Sister María would play a strange and mystic role in the exploration and colonization of New Spain and the Southwest. She would face investigation by the Inquisition. She would counsel the king of the land. She would writewhat may be the Ch......

By Doug Linder (2002)

Providing an account of the trial of Jesus presents challenges unlike that for any of the other trials on the Famous Trials Website. First, there is the challenge of determining what actually happened nearly 2,000 years ago before the Sanhedrin and the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. The task is daunting because almost our entire understanding of events comes from five divergent accounts, each of which was written by a Christian (who did not witness the final days of Jesus directly) for a distinct audience from thirty-five to seventy years after the trial. Second, there is the challenge that comes from knowing that readers of this account are likely to have prior understandings of trial events that come from their own religious training--and that any account of the trial provided here that varies substantially from these prior understandings may not be easily accepted. Nonetheless, I believe the trial of Jesus merits analysis for the simple reason that no other trial in human history has so significantly affected the course of human events.

The Setting : In 63 B.C.E. the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, and in so doing put an end both to the independent Jewish state of Palestine and eight decades of rule by the Hasmonean dynasty of high priests. Rome began appointing the high priests that served the Temple in Jerusalem. High priests from then on juggled the religious interests of Jews and the political interests of Rome, at whose pleasure they served. Seven decades after Rome assumed control of Palestine, in 6 C.E., growing Jewish opposition to Roman laws relating to the census, taxation, and heathen traditions boiled over. Especially despised was the Roman imposition of a census of property for tax purposes. Ancestral land held an exalted position in Jewish ideology and many Jews feared that the new laws would lead to its appropriation by Rome. Jewish uprisings in protest of the laws led to the crucifixion of over 2,000 Jewish insurgents and the selling into slavery of perhaps 20,000 more. The most intense opposition to Rome came from an area of Palestine called Galilee, which was the center of an armed resistance movement called the Zealots...

In 1917, in the village of Fatima, about 70 miles north of Lisbon in Portugal, three peasant children reported seeing an apparition of the "Blessed Virgin Mary". They were 8-yr. old Lucia Santos, and her cousins Francesco and Jacinta Marto. On Sunday May 13, 1917, the visions began. They were told to return on the 13th of each month for six consecutive months. This they did, and received prophetic information from the visits. On the last visit, Oct. 13, 1917, they and 70,000 onlookers beheld a series of solar transformations known as the "Miracle of the Sun" in which the sun seemed to dance in the sky.

Among the information, the children were given three secrets. The first secret of Fatima is the vision of hell, the WWII prophecies and the rise of communism. The second secret of Fatima is the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The third secret was written down, and placed in an envelope. It eventually made it to the Vatican where despite the apparition's instructions for it to be read to the world in 1960, it has remained a secret.

Some of the prophecies from the first secret are: The war is going to end. (Meaning WW1), A worse war will break out in the time of Pius XI (WW2), The good will be martyred. (Those terrorized by the Nazis?), Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars. (the rise of communism?), Russia will be converted and some time of peace will be given to the world. A night illuminated by an unknown light will be the sign of coming hunger, war and persecution. (Happened on Jan. 25, 1938), The Holy Father will have much to suffer (some say this was the attempted assassination of John Paul II on the anniversary of the Fatima apparitions. He had a vision of Mary in the crowd, which caused him to change his position and possibly kept the shot from being fatal.), In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me. Various Nations will be annihilated. (Absorption into the Soviet Empire?), A common comment by practicing Catholics in defense of the continued witholding of the contents of the third secret is...