Easter v. EasterToday, millions of people celebrate Easter as an important religious holiday, while Passover is almost universally ignored. Many people will be surprised to find that the Day that God commanded us as believers to observe in the Bible is the Day that is ignored. In this essay I will compare this observance (holiday) with the worship instructions found in the Bible regarding His “Holy Day” of Easter. The word Passover is the English word for "Ishtar" and is found only once in the King James Version of the Bible (Acts 12:4) and there, it was mistranslated from the Greek work Pascha, which literally means Passover. In 325 AD, through a governing council of the Roman Catholic Church, Emperor Constantine established “Easter” as a feast day. His primary motivation for establishing “Passover” as a substitute in the practice and dating of Passover was the desire to abandon all that is “Jewish.” When questioned, Constantine stated: “We therefore have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews.” (Mason and Lane, 1839) Easter celebrations were not new; it had been celebrated by pagans already thousands of years before the birth of Christ Jesus. This pagan holiday “Easter/Ishtar” originates from a religious celebration of the pagan “Queen of Heaven”, the Goddess Ishtar. It represented fertility and life. (Jeremiah 7:17-20) These festivals were full of sexual overtones and ungodly indulgences. For more than a century before the Easter tradition fully prevailed in the church, thousands of Christians throughout the Roman world used to observe what they called pascha “Passover.” This is the holiday that would properly commemorate what God said to his children. He commanded that the sins of the world be taken into account... in the middle of the paper". In Jerusalem that year they took the Lamb of God on the tenth day of the first month and sacrificed Him at the ninth hour of the fourteenth day (Mark 15.34), at the same time the priests killed the Passover lambs in the temple. With His crucifixion at the time of the “Passover,” Christ became the final sacrifice for the sins of those who would deny themselves and follow Him. Regardless of our ethnic background or what others say on this matter, God Himself has commanded that His children observe this HOLY FESTIVAL DAY. Easter should be celebrated in remembrance of what God has done for us through Christ Jesus. Thanking Him for freeing us from spiritual death and the slavery of sin. Mason, T and Lane G: A Historical View of the Council of Nice; 1839; pp.51-54 - New York