This year we took time off from our gathering for Easter. We still had questions come up. So this week the question,

“Why are Easter and Passover apart from each other if Jesus was celebrating Passover with His disciples right before He died?”

This question is more about history than Bible. The answer is that the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar are different ways of tracking the year. For the Roman Catholic Church, (they formalized the holiday) it was more important to annualize the event on a Sunday than to keep its relationship to the lunar calendar instituted by God. In doing so they established a number of fictional ideas about the holiday, such as the idea that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. This was also OK with the institutional church because they wanted to distance themselves from the Jewish roots of the faith as well. Proper understanding of the Bible narrative and history is leading true believers away from common practices associated with Easter. Many pagan practices have been allowed to infiltrate our celebrations.  Association with bunnies, eggs and chickens are fertility cult practices and even Sunrise services are hold-overs from Apollo worship. The name Easter itself comes from Ishtar an ancient pagan female deity. I believe the church needs to rediscover the Passover.

More will be forthcoming as we have answered more detailed questions about the Eucharist which will show up here on the blog at some point.