Does Easter Have Pagan Origins?

With Easter coming up this weekend, I've heard some Christians say that the holiday actually has pagan origins.

Is this true? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. This is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. And you can call us in the next 25 minutes at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Of course, you can always post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts, or email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, here's a voicemail we received from Clay. Hey, Pastor Adriel. Thanks for the show.

Thanks for what you're doing. I had a question about church discipline. When church discipline is exercised in the local church, kind of a three or four step process laid out in Matthew 18 of go to them, you and him alone, go to them with another brother that may be established at the mouth of two or three witnesses. Take them before the congregation being step three, and then let them be to you like a tax collector and a sinner is step four. So a couple questions about that. Step three, is that taking them to the congregation? Is there a vote of the congregation? I don't know. And then in step four, practical advice on what that looks like for someone who's been excommunicated, what kind of interaction is acceptable or is there a hard and fast line in that applies to all cases?

Thanks again. Yeah, Clay, thank you for that question, a really important question. And frankly, we don't talk enough about church discipline. It sort of gets a bad rap because people think about church discipline and they view it as punitive.

It's like this primarily this punishment that's dealt out to people who are living in unrepentant sin, that kind of a thing. And many churches just don't practice church discipline. It's not even a conversation that's had amongst those within the church, but really everyone in the local congregation is always in one sense participating in discipline. We're all encouraging one another. We ought to be at least exhorting one another day by day while it is still called today, like the author of the Hebrew said. And so in that sense, we're all always under the discipline of the church. That is the encouragement of the word of God.

We're all under the word of God. But then there are cases where sin is in the fellowship and it needs to be dealt with. That's one of the big problems that you see in the church today is people don't take sin seriously. And so when Jesus is highlighting this process in Matthew chapter 18, he's doing it so that we can take sin seriously because he knows, and he taught this to the apostles and they taught it to the pastors in the churches that they planted, that sin spreads. It's like this disease. And so we have to address it.

We have to deal with it. Now with regard to Matthew 18, the sort of third step that you mentioned there, you know, taking it to the church, there are differences of opinion there. And this relates to what we refer to as ecclesiology, our church government.

How do we understand the way in which the church is to be governed? And there are some people who are of a view, it's called the congregational mindset, where they would say, yeah, this is something that you take before the entire church. And some churches do do votes, that kind of a thing. There are others who say, well, no, sometimes in the New Testament, that idea of taking something to the church or just that phrase, the church, can refer to a smaller group of people. Some would say that the elders of the church in particular, who are representatives of the whole congregation. And you see the word church used in ways like that. I think of places like Acts chapter 15, where you have the situation of the Jerusalem Council, where the whole church came together through its representatives to discuss a very important issue. And then in terms of practically speaking, you know, say someone goes through the process of church discipline and they've been excommunicated.

Well, how do you treat that individual? Let me just again say church discipline is all about restoration. It's pursuing the best for another person. It's helping them to see you're engaging in behavior, in a sin that is going to destroy your life and ruin your relationships. That's what sin does.

And so we have to take it so seriously. And Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, actually a situation where discipline, church discipline, needed to be enacted. And he says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater or reviler, drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. So Paul is saying, look, if somebody has gone through this process, if they've been convicted of being an idolater, that kind of a thing, don't just hang out with them like you normally would, you know, get together and watch the football game and have dinner and laugh and joke as if there's nothing wrong. No, they're engaging in a sin that is going to destroy them. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't continue to love them and reach out to them and share Christ's goodness with them, even inviting them to church.

I mean, they could still be there to hear the preached word, but we don't treat sin as if it's not an issue. If you saw someone on the side of the road, you know, gasping for air, struggling for life, about to die, you would do something, at least I hope that you would, that we would, you know, we'd have to take action because the situation was so severe. It's similar with something like this.

When a brother or sister is engaging in this kind of behavior, behavior that we know is destructive, well, in love, we don't just sort of brush it under the rug. We address it. We talk about it. And so I think that's what we're called to do.

Paul talks about it again, 1 Corinthians 5, and I appreciate this question on church discipline. So thank you, Clay. God bless. Yes, thank you for your ministry.

Definitely, thank you for your ministry. And my question today comes from watching a documentary on Mary Magdalene. And it was stated that she was quite wealthy because it was unheard of for her, for a woman to have the resources that she has and not be having a spouse. So the Catholic Church says that Mary Magdalene is the one that wiped Jesus' feet with her hair after she poured the costly perfume upon him. But I had always heard before this that it was Mary of Mary Martha and Lazarus because they were a great substantial amount of money also. So I thought you might be able to play that out.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Linda. There are actually quite a few Marys in the Gospels. I mean, obviously, you have Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary, the mother of James. You have Mary Magdalene. You have this woman here in Luke chapter 7. And it's sort of difficult to parse it all out.

The reality is I don't think we're entirely sure 100%. It's clear that Mary in Luke chapter 7, this situation in particular, she has a history. I mean, she's referred to as a sinner. Jesus is sort of confronted by this Pharisee. The Pharisee sees this woman wiping Jesus' feet.

And he says if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. Now, some people say, well, this is maybe the same as Mary Magdalene because we're told a little bit later, I think it's in Luke's Gospel as well, that Mary Magdalene had demons cast out of her. And so she also has this history, this past, but we're not 100% sure whether we're talking about the same Mary here.

Of course, that was a very common name. And we get that from the fact that there are all sorts of different Marys in the New Testament. One thing that I've been thinking about lately as we're approaching Easter here is the fact that Mary Magdalene was one of the first, the first person to see the risen Christ. I mean, she goes to the tomb. We're told in Mark 16, she's on her way there with probably a group of women to anoint the body of Jesus. They're expecting to find the corpse of Jesus.

And they're distraught to realize that the stone has been rolled away and Jesus isn't there laid in the tomb. And Jesus appears to her and tells her, rejoice. He gives her this greeting.

He calls her to be at peace. And it just is such a beautiful picture of our Lord coming to Mary, the one from whom he had cast out all of these demons. She's the first one to experience the presence of the risen Lord. And she's commanded to go and share this message with the apostles.

There are some theologians who have called her the instructor to the apostles. And so I've been really meditating on that, Lily, but I don't think I can give you a sure answer, and I don't think anyone can, as to whether or not this is for certain the same Mary. There's some similarities. Both have a sinful past, it seems.

You know, possessed by demons or struggling with some sort of sinful pattern, but we're not 100 percent sure, Linda. Thank you for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. By the way, here at the Core, we aren't supported by a particular church or denomination. We rely on people just like you to make donations to keep us on the air. And if you find this program helpful, we would ask you to prayerfully consider making a gift of any amount. You can do that on our website at CoreChristianity.com. You can also join what we call our inner Core. Just go to CoreChristianity.com forward slash inner Core to learn more about that.

Let's go to a voicemail we received yesterday from one of our listeners named Taylor in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've heard lots of people say that Easter and other religious holidays are actually pagan and aren't actually biblical. So I'm wondering what you would say to the people who say those kinds of things or what evidences you see for why we should celebrate them. Yeah.

Well, I mean, obviously a really relevant question right now, isn't it, Taylor? And the first thing I would want to say is, you know, Sunday, the Lord's Day, is the day that Jesus rose again from the dead. The reason Christians began meeting on Sundays early on, I mean, from from the days of the apostles on. You see this in places like Acts Chapter 20 and First Corinthians Chapter 16 is because of the resurrection of Jesus.

There was this great shift, if you will. And so they started to gather on Sunday on the first day of the week on the Lord's Day to celebrate the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead. And so we're called as believers to celebrate the resurrection. It's the message of joy and hope. It's the cardinal truth of our faith.

I mean, the apostle Paul makes this absolutely clear in First Corinthians Chapter 15. If Jesus Christ is not raised from the dead, we're still in our sins. We're lost.

We're hopeless. So we ought to, as believers, celebrate the resurrection. Now, the question is, what do you think about one day out of the year really focusing on it? You know, something like Easter, that kind of a thing. And it is also historically the case that early on believers did begin to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on a particular day of the year, where they would observe this sort of feast, this celebration of what they called Pascha.

They didn't call it Easter. They referred to it as Pascha because it was the fulfillment of the Passover. And of course, the apostle Paul says in First Corinthians Chapter 5, we were just there talking about church discipline. First Corinthians Chapter 5, verse 7, Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Jesus Christ is our Passover Lamb, who through his exodus, if you will, brings us into new life through his death and resurrection. And in fact, Jesus's departure, his death, is referred to as an exodus. Really interesting, sort of echoing the scriptures in the Old Testament in Luke's Gospel at the Transfiguration in Luke Chapter 9, verse 31.

Jesus talked about his death as an exodus. And so Christians celebrated Easter on a particular day of the year. There were even debates in the ancient church about what day that was in particular. And Christians were dividing over this, which I think is unfortunate, because instead of just focusing on the fact that Christ had risen, they were arguing about what day specifically did he rise on. But the core truth is he's risen.

He's risen, and because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, we have the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Now, were there other celebrations, even pagan celebrations around that same time of the year throughout the history of the church? Well, yeah, but the church wasn't trying to engage in those things. For Christians, historically, it really has been a focus on the resurrection of Jesus. I do sympathize with the concern of not wanting the worship of the church to be corrupted, not wanting sort of pagan religion, pagan ideologies to creep into the worship of the church. God cares about how he's worshiped. Hebrews chapter 12 makes this very clear. God wants to be worshiped with reverence and awe, and we have to be on guard that these false ideologies or religious beliefs don't creep into the church. But I don't think that the main problem is celebrating Pascha or Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. I think it's the consumerism that we see all around us in the church today, not a high view of the word of God, not a high view of sin.

We were talking about that earlier on the program, Taylor. That's what we need to recover. We need to recover the core Christian doctrines, doctrines like the doctrine of the resurrection. And so I, for one, am excited to gather together with believers, and every Sunday we rejoice in the resurrection. But one thing I'll say that I actually appreciate about doing this sort of annual celebration of the resurrection Easter Pascha, whatever you want to call it, is that it's an opportunity. There are a lot of people who don't go to church every Sunday or hardly at all who might be open to showing up on Easter. And what an opportunity to invite friends and family members who ordinarily don't darken the door of a church or sit in a pew to come and hear a message of hope. The hope that we have, and especially in a year like the one we just sort of went through, where there's so much concern about death, mortality, it's sort of everywhere in front of us, to be able to bring to people the resurrection, to preach it, to share it, to encourage our friends and neighbors with the fact that death has been conquered. What a blessing. And so I'm excited about that, and I think that you can be as well.

Thanks for your question. You know, Adriel, I'm struck by the fact that most pastors, and I'm guessing this includes you as well, are very sensitive to the fact that people may be bringing friends or relatives to church on Easter, people who, as you said, would never darken the door of a church or may never have heard about God's love for them in the past. And so many pastors are particularly sensitive to that, and they sort of gear their sermon for the people that really don't have any background in the faith. What a great opportunity for all of us to be evangelistic this week and maybe take that extra step, that risk of inviting a friend or relative to go to church with us on Easter.

Yeah, I appreciate that you say that, Bill. As a pastor, I'm trying to encourage all of you listening right now. Think about that.

Pray about that. Who's someone in your life that you could potentially say, hey, I've never invited you to church before, but this Sunday is Easter Sunday, and I'd love for you to join me. Yeah, I read a poll or a statistic some time ago that said that most people, if you invited them to church, would be willing to come. The thing is we just don't invite them. And so, man, especially when on this Sunday in particular, a lot of pastors are going to be preaching on that core truth of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus.

It doesn't get more central than that. What an opportunity, as I said, after the year that we've just had to really encourage someone, and you never know what the Lord will do in an individual's life. So invite your friends and come prayerfully and expectant to receive God's grace and His word. Amen. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and today we have a very special offer for you.

It's a wonderful resource that Adriel actually produced himself. It's called Seeing Jesus. Yeah, and actually, I mean, I wrote it last year when we were sort of at the height of the pandemic, and there was a lot of concern.

We really didn't know a lot about this particular disease, and there was so much fear. And at that time, my focus was, look, we need to set our eyes on Jesus. Jesus is the one who gives us hope in the face of death.

And so really, I was sort of geared towards that. I think that this is a resource that will really edify you, and it's free. And so get ahold of Seeing Jesus. And Bill, you can tell them how to get that. Just go to our website, which is corechristianity.com forward slash Jesus. That's corechristianity.com forward slash Jesus to get your copy of Seeing Jesus. You can also call us for that at 833-843-2673. That's 833, the core.

Let's go to a voicemail that we received from one of our listeners named Jerry. Yes, we use NIV, and I believe it's Mark. At the very end of Mark, there's a series of verses that deal with handling of snakes and drinking of poison, which to me makes probably no sense. I think I've got a footnote in my Bible that says these verses were not included originally. Where did those verses come from, and why aren't they included as there's a question about them in the King James Version?

Yeah, that's a great question. So we're talking about what's referred to as the longer ending of Mark. In the world of textual criticism, this is one of the most disputed passages because it's just not in the earliest New Testament manuscripts that we have. The earliest New Testament manuscripts that we have end at verse 8. If you read Mark 16 to verse 8, it just sort of seems like that's an abrupt ending.

So people think, well, did the original ending get lost? Did Mark mean to end in this abrupt way? What scholars think is that later scribes essentially tried to take outside information or piece together things and added it to the Gospel of Mark.

Now, there's debate about this. One thing I will say, though, is even when you read that longer ending of Mark with drinking poison and handling snakes and speaking with new tongues, what you find there is a lot of what's described in the Book of Acts. It almost perfectly sets you up for the Book of Acts, so there's no contradiction, doctrinal contradiction, with anything that you find in the longer ending of Mark and what you see elsewhere in the New Testament.

It can be harmonized. There are instances in the Book of Acts where the disciples get bit by snakes and that kind of a thing and are fine. Obviously, you had the Day of Pentecost and all the miracles associated with that, like the speaking in tongues. So personally, and we've talked about this on the broadcast before, I don't preach or teach that longer ending of Mark because it does seem pretty well established that it wasn't a part of the original manuscripts. But, like I said, it also doesn't call anything into question. And so that's why there's that footnote in your Bibles, but I think that you can rest assured. I know that you can rest assured that there's nothing in there that calls into question the authority of scripture or any doctrine that we embrace as Christians.

Thank you for that question. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Cheryl in Roanoke Park, California. Cheryl, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Yes, in the book of Judges, it talks about Moses, and three generations later, there's Deborah. Okay, now Deborah took a spike or a nail, and she drove it into somebody's head. Now, she knew the Ten Commandments, and it says, I shall not kill. So I don't understand what's going on there.

Hey, Cheryl, thank you for that question. You're referring to the book of Judges, chapter 4, verse 21. But Jael, the wife of Heber, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness, so he died.

What's happening here is this is the death of Sisera. He was a commander of the Canaanite army. During a time in the history of Israel, the context of this conquest that's taking place, and God ruling over his people through these judges, and there is a ton of conflict here, and there's a ton of death, bloodshed.

This is a time of war, essentially. There's a difference between murder, self-defense, combat, war, that kind of a thing, and I think what you get in the Ten Commandments with this command not to murder. So I think that we can distinguish here.

So that's one way I would approach this question. Of course, the children of Israel, as they were entering into the land of Canaan, were called to cleanse the land of Canaan because it was supposed to be this paradise of God where no idolatry was to be permitted. So we have to have, I think, a more robust view of the commandments of God that allows for that kind of a thing as well. It's not just as simple or as black and white as we might think. Thank you so much for that question, Cheryl. It really does point us forward to the hope that we have in Christ as we gather together coming up soon on Easter. Praise the Lord. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar, or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.