Maybe it's that Easter. The question is should Christians celebrate Easter?
I'm going to start with, do you think because this is in the last fifty years, that question has asked more now than it ever has been. I'm not talking about a hundred years or tw hunred year. I'm talking about the last fifty That question our lifetime, our lifetime. Yeah, that question has resurfaced. Who do you think is the louder voice right now on if Christians should celebrate Easter? And I say it that specific way, I'm not talking
about resurrection Sunday. I'm talking about the word Easter. Should celebrate it in the way that well, there's ways that we could celebrate it, you know, there's like levels of celebration. We'll talk about that. True, But who do you think is a louder voice? The people against what we're saying are the people for it?
You mean, against celebrating Easter? Yes, yeah, against I think right, I think just because the question is that that's the louder voice. The question is should you celebrate Easter? That means that everybody's going, well, I don't know, should we celebrates Let's talk about that And that's and that's the louder one right now, yea, yeah, and I think it goes in waves. Yeah, and I'm not sure that it's
one time over last fifty years. I've heard several times, but it's probably the loudest right now.
Yeah. So growing up, do you celebrate Easter?
Well? Yeah, And I thought, honestly as a kid, it was the most Jesus holiday that we celebrated.
Yeah. Well, I mean the.
Yes speak like just thinking about the what the holiday means. The resurrection is, the is the hinge of the of all humanity. The birth of Christ is only pointing towards that. Sure, and the birth is one instance. He had his birthday and it was over. That's Christmas, right, And then with Easter you have it. Depending on what faith.
You are, you may have been celebrating for the last month and half not eating certain things or giving something up with lint, and then on Fridays going to McDonald's and having your fish sandwiches and what have you, and then doing a good Friday something and then doing a Sunday. So that's why I say I think it was the most centered in the word than any other holiday we celebrated, especially including Christmas.
Yeah, even if you look at the creation of the universe, it was always pointing toward the resurrection of the God Man, the Christ, the Messiah, who would come to save the world for those that look to him for forgiveness. So every miracle, every god movement, including the birth of Christ on Christmas, was always pointing towards this, this, this celebration. So when I just say it that way, you think, why wouldn't we celebrate that?
Yeah, of course.
And the quick answer before we get into our stuff, and I guess the outline of this will be, well, we'll talk about this, We'll go back and forth on on some history. We'll talk about the how accurate that history even can be that we could know it as history, and we'll then we'll end, we'll end with our opinions, which I don't know what yours is.
You know what mine is.
So so we'll start with this.
There are.
I guess there are, like you said, it comes in waves, and there are many people that would say we should celebrate the resurrection every Sunday.
Right, Well, no, we should celebrate it every day. We shouldn't say Sunday.
I just in terms of the gathering of the people, we should we should celebrate it every day. Seventh Day Adventists will be like, you should celebrate on Saturdays. But that's that's another podcast for another time, and we could be happy to walk through that as well, which is another good question. But should we celebrate the resurrection every day?
Start with that?
Yes, of course, yes, of course, without question.
Easy, that's an easy I think we made the easy argument. The whole world is centered around that. Did you get out of bed? Did he leave the grave?
That's it.
Yeah, he got out of bed, he left the grave.
Let's let's celebrate.
Yeah, So tell me about your your Easter growing up.
Easter growing up, and it's funny still today my mom will ask my wife to be sure and get me a chocolate bunny because she always did. That was something, you know, regardless of how big the basket was, if there was even a basket that you got, you know, on Sunday morning, Uh, there was always chocolate bunny. And now they used to be solid, all every one of them are solid. Man, They were good. They would last about a month for me in a fridge, you know,
and then then now they're all hollow. That speaks to the world we're in right now. Yeah, But Uh, yeah, that was That's probably the most memorable. Well, of course, you know, hunting Easter eggs, but the biggest thing was always I couldn't understand as a kid what why it was called Good Friday when Jesus died. And two was the you know, going to church on Sunday. And and that was probably the first time I ever wore a suit. It's kind of just just things I'm pulling out that
I remember as a kid. You know, I get a suit for Easter, and that was good for everything else that happened that year if I needed a suit.
Right, this is Oklahoma.
This is Oklahoma. Yeah, southern in Oklahoma. And uh but yeah, I mean we walking distance to our Methodist church, and you know I was hunting for eggs all the way there, because we did walk on the Easter Sunday, we'd walk down there.
How far is the walk a block?
Okay, maybe a block and a half maybe, Yeah, it was very very close. In fact, I was just back there and it you know, when you become an adult, everything that seemed big becomes smaller. Well, this is already short, and now I'm like that was across the street basically, you know, everything so small in compact when you're an adult. But yeah, that's what we did. We always did the Easter dying on I guess dying the Easter eggs on Saturday, if I'm not mistaken, Friday or Saturday. And yeah, we
didn't have money eggs. We didn't have cash eggs, we didn't have prize eggs. We just had hard boiled eggs that had die on you were happy with them, and a chocolate bunny. It's true. Yeah, how about you.
Yeah, it's surprisingly similar in a lot of ways. My grandmother who on my dad's side, specifically, for some reason, we would celebrate Easter with them, my grandma and grandpa.
That was their holiday with the family.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know how it got a sign that way. I'm not sure besides the fact that they loved Easter.
I loved it.
In fact, my grandpa, he's the one that flew the B twenty four. It seems like I talk about him quite a bit of right now about him talking about this. And so we got together with them, and they lived in San Antonio, and almost everybody lived north of there, which is the most of the world lives north of San Antonio. You know, that's down south for all Texans. And so they ended up. Grandpa built a house I
called him Paul. Paul built a house on Lake lbj O Cool and this was back when it was just they were given away land out there, and so he built a little house and we called it the Lake House. And we would come together from all the different parts of the state. There were five kids on that side and all the grandkids. We would get together, and to me, it was always connected with the weather's getting a little
bit warmer, but it's still cool. Blue bonnets are out, Yeah, Texas flowers, everything's green.
I always say.
Texas has got her best dress on in the springtime. And my grandma, who I called Granta, she loved her chocolate bunny and she because they were Episcopalian, I will a little asterisk they were. It was it was a conservative what we we the Episcopal Church is not the same, I'll say as it used to be.
But she was.
She loved the Lord and was so faithful, and she celebrated lint that the Episcopal Church celebrates lint. And she would give up chocolate every year because she loved it. She loved chocolate, gave it up for lint, and then on Easter Easter Sunday, she got her bunny, her chocolate bunny, and she was content with with breaking lint with a bunny, you know. And so so many of my memories are
with her. And we had the little baskets we had, you know, my little you know socks with the stripes pulled up, and my little you know, pastel shorts and shirt and Tyler's out with me. And this is before Parker's days, Parker wasn't born, and all the grandkids and we would go out in the Texas cool green, lush grass with with wild flowers and and look for eggs
similar to you. We would have the you know, hard boiled eggs that we would We would die the the night before and we ate a lot of eggs that morning, you know, with some salt and pepper.
You didn't get you didn't get scrambled eggs, that sunny one. You got a hard boiled yeah.
And we'd had a little basket.
We would we would put out a little basket and it would get filled the next day with some candy and some chocolates.
And if my mom.
Was here, she could remind me of all the you know, a little there was always like an orange or and apple, you know, different things like that in the basket.
Something practical along with this.
Yeah, something practical, like literally like a toothbrush and toothpaste a lot of times, and maybe like a little book, a little Bible book or something, you know, something like that. As we got older, it would be like a CD. Oh yeah, like a DVD, you know, or something. It would be in that basket. Uh and yeah, always just great,
great memories. It was kind of the gateway to summer's coming soon, you know, similar to you you know, although we celebrated it and we talked about it, and my grandmother was the first to say he has risen and we would repeat back, he has risen indeed, but didn't quite know what that meant as a kid.
Did you do sunrise service? I forgot about that.
Yes, it wasn't consistent to do sunrise service, but we did.
It was something that we have done.
Yeah, yeah, that's not that. When I got older, I guess I remember that more than than just going to the service of being sunner up so early. Yeah, you gotta be able to get ready so you can be there when the sunrises. Yeah, you walk there in the dark can.
So that was that was my childhood Easter.
And you know, you get older and you know, you get you reflect back.
We sound like we have. We had a similar upbringing, and.
Most people probably listening that were raised in the in the eighties had a similar similar I think the nineties too, probably even early two thousands. But there's been a major shift and the pendulum swings and it's good. The pendulum of life is sometimes it's like a strong breeze that needs to blow out some dead branches that get caught up in the top, and it needs to it needs to make way for the new fresh branches before things
get stagnant again. This happens in life. The fundamentalist movement, the Christian fundamentalist movement that happened at the in the early twentieth century, was a result of this kind of stagnation.
That was happening sure and.
People people realized that Christianity was getting liberal and the Bible was getting to be an afterthought. And this happened in the Great Awakening, and it happened it happens throughout history. You could always market and you look back and you go things were getting stagnant, Things were getting liberal and they needed to smack everybody in the face again and say, hey, go back to the scriptures.
What did the scriptures say.
One instance of that is the Puritans, the Puritans after the Reformation, the split from the Catholic Church, the Reformers became pretty stagnant, they became pretty liberal in the Church of England was on their rise and it just started kind of taking on the same repetitive nature of the
Catholic Church that they split from. And there were groups like the Quakers and the Puritans that said, you know, the people that actually fled and founded this country in America because of religious persecutions, and it wasn't because of the Catholic Church a lot sometimes it was because of the Church of England Protestants, and they said, what are you doing. You're you're just you're fading back into this man made religiosity.
We can't do this.
We need to go back to the scriptures and be followers of Christ and take up our cross. And the Puritans, which I love the pure I love reading Puritan writing. I love the Christ honoring literature that they have and the way they thought, you know, it was life or death for them, and then stuff like Easter and Christmas.
They said, we're done with these holids, right, you.
Know, anything you feel comfortable with, if you feel comfortable in any way, it's gone. Yeah.
So you know, the the original founders of this country really thought that way. In fact, you and I were reading this little article here that in fact, they the Puritans that settled the United States in the early days, that settled the the the New England colonies, they were celebrating Commencement Day, election Day, and Thanksgiving. So they were celebrating holidays. Yeah, but they were not celebrating any religious holiday because because it was either a distraction or atain ittain it.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean you think about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was wasn't a religious holiday. He was a man made holiday to give thanks and it mostly stayed that way. Imagine most of their time, you know, it is to give thanks for right.
And so even today that like Thanksgiving, is not debated. When exactly should Christians celebrate Thanksgiving?
Should we do a podcast around Thanksgiving? Should Christians celebrate thanks Should we fry the turkey or should we bake the turkey?
Should we stir controversy? Christians should celebrate right?
Yeahving, Yeah, well I never thought about that Jesus didn't have a smoker, or did it.
Yeah, we should.
Create a controversy just for the sake of it's the one that doesn't have controversially, let's start it.
So uh so that that brings us to today twenty twenty five, I believe so. Certainly there is I mean not not in the fundamentalist movement and certainly not in the Puritan movement and the Great Awakening, but there is there is a stirring, there is a wind blowing that more and more people are saying, hmm, maybe the Amish have had it right for a while, maybe the Puritans were right.
What are we doing? And it's clear why we say that.
You look at the TV, and Easter has nothing to do with Christ anymore, not at all.
And Christmas has nothing commercially for birth of Christ.
And perhaps even Christmas still has a more of Christ in it kind of than Easter, but Easter's almost completely lost it. And so I think there are movements today where that's a legit question should Christians even celebrate at all? That's that's actually not how we started this idea of this podcast. We started it with saying, should we sellbrate the pagan aspects, right, are so called pagan acts?
Well, a lot of people think that a lot of them are. And some of the research that I've done just well that I've allowed, I've taken from someone else who does research. How about that?
Let me know, let me know what you got.
And uh, you know, a lot of the pagan stuff that we hear about a lot sometimes it's just misconstrued, not without some foundation of truth in there. Of going and if this, if this does have this reflection of a pagan holiday, maybe we need to get rid of that in our Christian holiday? Why are we doing that? But some things aren't They have no basis in it.
The name, uh they In fact, there's only like out of I believe it's out of German language and English language are the only two that have anything that sound like Easter. Obviously we do Easter, but everything else I believe the word is pashka, which is the it lines up with Passover and so Easter in all the other language, especially I think it was Latin. Anything with a Latin kind of background language, it's called pashka and it's about the passover. So rather than in the exact same word
so where did like Easter come up? Well, a lot of people think that it has to do with Ishtar, which I believe is a god or goddess or something like that, has nothing to do with that. The name has nothing to do that. In fact, they think it probably has more to do and more documents to back up. Is a month called eosturro Manath believes how you say it, I'm going to butcher these things. They're not English, but
at something which is Easter month. It's the month that has the holiday Easter, which is the celebration of the Passover. So it was I don't know where because they kind of sounded like something else, so they oh, yeah, this is what it was from. And a lot of people just taking that.
And you're getting this from apology at Canada, which is which is a good source.
Wes huff he I can't dig any deeper than he could, and he does this for a living all the time, and I'm just I'm gonna I'm gonna study what he's been studying and then I'm gonna work on the workout that he's been working out. That he's changed his name to Wes buff No. But anyway, he uh, but he uh. He dove into all this to find out, Okay, this is what people are saying that it's coming from. Let's
find some let's find some proof. And every time he got to the end there was very little, if any proof, and a lot of it was just a sound like, well it kind of sounds like this, So, yes, that's what it is. It's this goddess of springtime. That's what it is. And he's like, that's not where it just happens to be in spring.
Which is interesting because the Puritans thought it all was.
Yeah.
Now that doesn't mean the Puritans were right about.
You, which I understand wanting to stay it's it's, you know, having the the appearance of sin, yeah, you know, to have any so let's get away from it. Let's you know. Yeah, And I can understand and why they would want to do that.
And they were in the sixteenth century, so they didn't know any more than we do. They were just as far removed from the early Church, you know, over one thousand years removed from the early Church, right, so they weren't any better off. It sometimes that we look back on the Puritans and think they were closer to all this stuff.
In fact, we are probably closer because of all the digging, yes, and all the backgrafs. We've been fine in this. I mean we got to see a lot of the artifacts firsthand when we went to Israel and see where they what. You know, just fifteen years before we got there was just a patch of land. And you know since that time to when we got there, they had dug down six ten twelve feet and found a bunch of artifacts that none of the Puritans had.
Right, you and I have seen the pool of Bethesda John five with our own eyes, something the Puritans never saw. And God blessed the Puritans. Like I said, I can't say enough about how much I love Puritan theology and reading their writings, But they never saw the pool of Bethesda with their own eyes. We have an interesting perspective now, very much so.
And you don't know what you don't know. Yeah, you know, if you haven't seen it, you have it, and you haven't studied it, and you haven't dug which we've now had time to do. It does help us understand a little bit more, which I would say I commend them even more. I just want to stay I just want to stay pure. I just want to get closer and if it smells or looks like or sounds like sin, I want away from it.
Yes, and that's great way to sum up their ideas.
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And eggs eggs on a big one. The big thing is that this has to do with fertility and all this kind of stuff. We'll think about this. It happened. You know, you have lint going on before, and you don't eat dairy milk or eggs. Your chickens are still laying eggs. So they didn't want them to just rot, so they boiled them and kept them because they last
longer when their hard boiled. And so when kids had nothing to do, they would decorate them or do stuff like that was also King ed At King Edward the first he actually gave him as gifts because he put gold on them, put gold leaf on him and gave him two and decorated it. Well, this was in the thirteenth century, I believe, so, way before Puritans. Yeah, yeah, and so you know that's where they believe the decoration of the egg actually came from. Was because of that.
That's even way before Reformation.
Yeah. The bunny, A lot of people think about that being fertility as well. The first account of a bunny being associated with Easter came in fifteen seventy two, long after pagan traditions were set, and it had no correlation between the two. In fact, it wasn't even a bunny. The very first first one was a hare and did and learned this and I didn't know this until I learned this from Wes, was that a hair is not a bunny. It can't mate with bunnies, and they're two
completely different things. I had no idea about that. And the reason that most people, most experts, think that they're associated with it is because it's a mascot for a springtime animal. Now they actually I believe I'm quoting this correctly. They they mate all year long. We just see more of them in the springtime because they're out of the ground. And that's why it looks like it just goes crazy in fertility as I that they're like that all the time.
Are there connections to these pagan ideas? Are those legitimate connections?
From what he was saying, in what he was presenting, what Wes was presenting, there was there was very little, if any. The connection was very very loose, if there was any connection at all, and as far as based in fact, in findings of writings and instances where things
were tied together in history. Now, most everything that we hear about today has happened in you know, since the I don't know, eighteen hundreds, seventeen eighteen hundreds, yeah, long past, you know, any of the probably about the time that people were putting stuff together. Puritans hear and see that stuff and go, yeah, no, we don't want anything to
do with that, but actual facts. And on the back he found very little, if any, especially, I mean with all three of those, the three big things, the name, the eggs, and the bunny. Especially, I thought the name was the biggest thing, because that's what I've always heard, right, Easter is actually a celebration of a pagan god exactly. Yea, And it actually it was just because it was the biggest part was the month. I think I wish I'd quoted this better, but about the month and of how
it was I was correlated. That's when Easter always happened, and Easter was the celebration of Passover, and it happened to be the great explanation was the fourth of July, and Independence Day fourth of July has nothing to do with the celebration. It's just the month that Independence days.
Oh wow? Did you get that from apology a kind? Oh wow?
And just like so Easter has nothing to do with Easter, that has to do with when it's happening in the month Estero Manatha.
Oh that's that's helpful. And then eggs and bunnies are the other thing. And I think you did a pretty good job, you know, I think you.
Did a good job.
Yeah, you look at this, you go, you go, Easter, pagan goddess name eggs fertility, and then the bunnies the the little creators of the fertility fertility. So I can see how you put that distraction, you know, Yeah, you put it together and you add on top of that it becoming commercial, making a lot of money.
And the big focus that, yeah, absolutely, the big focus at the end of that with Wes was that now, don't mistake everything you do during this celebration should all point to the death and resurrection of Christ. But know that what we have in our celebration right now isn't pulling holistically, is not pulling pagan traditions and celebrations into Passover. It's just things that we've that we put in along the way.
Yeah, it's just it's it's just kind of part of the furniture.
In the room, in the month, it's in the time of year, it's end. Hey, let's oh, we're gonna do this and we're going to celebrate the Passover. Let's throw some pastels in. Hey, let's throw some you know what's Oh, there's bunnies everywhere. Let's throw some bunnies.
In Christmas and snow white Christmas bingo.
Absolutely, I don't think anyone looks at snow and goes Snow's taken away from the person of Christ.
Jingle bells on horses that are sleds.
You know, I'm gonna why why we're sitting here. I thought about something that I want to look at in the Bible, Exodus twelve, it is the passover. So the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months, which is what we talked about in the In the Puritan calendar, they wanted to make March the first month, right, So what's happening in in this story in Exodus twelve.
The backstory is you probably know, people listening probably remember that the people of Israel are enslaved to the Egyptians for about four hundred years, and their cries go up to heaven and the Lord sinds a redeemer to redeem them and take them to the Promised Land, which is it's a typology of Christ. It's Moses, who the Lord sins is a type of Christ, a type of Savior. He's he is only pointing towards the Great Savior capital s but he is a type. And the Bible comes
up with these types constantly. They're like they're like echoes of the Great the Great noise, They're like shadows of the Great figure. And Moses is sent as the redeemer of the people. He goes to Egypt and he demands
from Pharaoh, let my people go. Pharaoh says no. Every time he says no, Moses provides a sign from God to convince him, and every time he says no. The final sign that God gives Moses to give Pharaoh is if he says no, you tell him, I will kill all the firstborn of Egypt indiscriminately, and even animals, firstborn sons, right, yes, firstborn males, including the animals.
Yeah, including the people of Israel, everybody. I'm gonna kill them all if he doesn't let them. And as predicted, Pharaoh says no.
So this is what happens. It picks over, picks up in Exodus twelve and God tells Moses, tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses. A lamb for a household, And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor take according to the number of persons, according to what each of you can eat shall make that shall
count for your lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish a male a year old, and you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. And then the whole congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on two door posts and on the lintel, that's the top part of the houses in which they
eat it. And they shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with unleathered bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. He's telling them to take a lamb, and he says, and eat it in haste. It is the Lord's passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and all the gods of Egypt, the lower case ge gods of Egypt. I will execute judgments. I am the Lord.
The blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no play will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. And this day shall be a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast. And then he goes on to say, therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a
statute forever. That's verse seventeen. And then he goes on and he's he's describing the day again, and then verse twenty one. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said it them, go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the passover lamb. Take a bunch of his hoop and dip it in the blood that's in the basin, and touch the lentil and the two door posts with the blood that's in the basin.
None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning, for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lntil and on the two door posts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer terrifying word to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you from the Redeemer, as the Redeemer takes you to the
New Land. As he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service, you shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses, and the people bowed their heads forever.
Wow.
And so.
It happened, as he said, the people of Israel were spared not because they were better, not because they were more righteous, not because they deserved it, not because they were worthy, but because they were covered by the blood of the flawless Lamb.
Yep.
That all of that is pointing towards what happened so many years later, fifteen hundred years later, when the Christ came to Jerusalem and goes up on the mountain, the same mountain where Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the Angel the Lord stopped him and saw it, And instead of sacrificing his own son, he looks and he sees a ram caught in the thicket. And the
Lord said that used that that's your lamb. And on that day, fifteen hundred years later, on Calvary, the perfect, spotless Lamb went onto an althar of a cross and had nails driven into his hands. The perfect Lamb capital l And that happened on Passover and the same time when the lambs were being sacrificed in the temple just down the hill from them. Now, this ram, this lamb, wasn't caught in a thicket. It was caught in a crown of thorns.
Yeah.
And as he Jesus laid out for the forgiveness the sin, to forgive the sins of the of his people, those who looked to him and turned from their sin and looked to him, that would be forgiven to those people. The blood of the Son of God covers them, and the Lord the Destroyer will pass over them.
And that is a that is.
A an observance that we still look to today. When our kids ask us, why why are we forgiven? Why why do we deserve it? We say we don't. But we're covered by the blood of the spotless Lamb. And the Lord will pass over us. And the Lord will love us and adopt us, and ransom us and redeem us and restore us and forgive us. And that is what we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday.
I don't call it that.
Why I'm saying that, just so that we don't be distracted by the main topic here of talking about Easter, which I think it's a great argument.
The fourth of July, I think is a great that's a great argument.
Yeah, but I do like that. I like the name and it because it for me, I think it helps me separate in my head that everybody, believers and unbelievers celebrate Easter. Yeah, believers celebrate resurrections. Yeah, that's a great point.
And so to the Puritans, oh man, I wouldn't dare. I wouldn't dare go against what the Puritans taught and I agree talked about it. I agree to two thousand percent with the Puritans that said we should celebrate the
resurrection every single day. But there is something around Passover every year as the spring comes and the flowers bloom, and we think there was a man that became the sacrificial lamb for us, that was put on an altar, and the sacrificial system was satisfied once and for all, as God was completely satisfied with his own son, because unlike Abraham, who his son was saved, his only son
was saved in the last minute. God did not spare his only son, but instead poured his wrath on him so that we might be saved.
And but Moses was willing to Yeah, I think that's what God was looking for in his heart. Yeah, yeah, am I wrong on that?
You know?
I think I remember Isaac asking, but we don't. We don't have anything to sacrifice. And he said, God will provide.
God will provide the lamb my son. That's what Abraham told him. God will provide the lamb my son.
And he did. And on that same mount Mariah.
Oh my Gosh, him the whole time, the whole time those guests, It just told you you've met your daily limit.
I think he must have been recorded, so that's great.
He got some facts today.
So I think I think.
As we think about all that, I don't know how long we have, what long we've been doing. I mean I haven't been I didn't see when we started. But I don't think it's wrong to observe a day of the Great Passover. I'm not talking about the Jewish festival. I'm talking about observing the Forever Statute of the Lamb. Can I read you one more thing?
Yeah?
Absolutely, it's it's it was, it's it's fun to complete this story with John five.
Why not John five?
Revelation five written by John. John has a revelation. It's the last book of the Bible. And he has a revelation and he's taken to heaven and he's taken.
Into a great room.
There's angels, and there's elder kings, and there's a throne, and God almighty's on the throne. And this is right before this is in Revelation four. It's when you hear the angels saying Holy, Holy, Holy, and and John has taken it all in and he's in this throne room. And Revelation five begins here. It says, then I talk about John said, I saw in the right hand of him, who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals, like this scroll.
This is the this is the great book. It's so important, it's so secret, it's so holy that it's not sealed once, but it's sealed seven times. Right, And he says, and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice.
Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? Can you imagine John's excited, like you're in this room and all you know, there's all these angels and he's kind of a fly on the wall looking around. Who's worthy?
Oh, this is going to be incredible. Who is worthy to open this? And then verse three and no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it. And John saying that there was no one, he begins to cry, just his heartbroken with sorrow because the Great Redeemer is not to be found, you know, And so
it says he's not. He's not only crying, but in verse four, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look at or to look into it.
And one of the elders said to me, weep no more.
Behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered so that he could open the scroll and it's seven seals. And John probably just gets so excited, like oh.
A lie, yeah, yes, and he looks to the you know, he looks to the entrance of the throne room, and there's gonna be this big lion that's gonna come through and conquer and take this scroll Victory, and take it in his mouth and rip it up, rip open the seven seals, and there's the book, you know, the.
Secret Holy Book. Because he's worthy. And he looks.
That's not what he sees. Nope.
Verse six.
And between the throne and the four living creatures, and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain.
And he walks up.
This lamb walks up, and he went and he took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.
And when he had taken the.
Scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell down before the lamb. He's holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, a new song that said, worthy, are you to take the scroll to open its seals? For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they
shall reign on the earth. And that was the blood that marked the doorway, that if you're in there, you're covered by that blood. God passes over Verse eleven. Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voice of many angels, numbering myriads and myriads, and thousands and thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and
honor and glory and blessing. And every creature in Earth, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, and all of them saying to him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing in honor and glory and might, forever and ever. And the four limbing creatures said amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped man, the same one, the same Lamb, the Lamb. He's the Lamb. Only those covered by the blood.
That's what we celebrate yep on Resurrection Sunday. And anything else that might distract from that, whether it's eggs or bunnies or even the name Easter if that's going to distract, you get away from it. Yeah, And you tell your kids, just like in Exodus twelve, when they ask why do we celebrate this, you tell them because God passed over us those covered.
By the blood of the Lamb.
And if you can, if you can do an Easter egg hunt and it shows other kids in your neighborhood back towards that, if you could talk about a chocolate Easter bunny, but it points to everyone towards the blood of the Lamb, if you could, if.
You break your lint with.
If it always points backs to the cross, then by all means do it. If it becomes a distraction, then don't.
Get rid of it. Yeah, agreed, doesn't have to be pagan. It could just be a distraction. Yeah, that's the biggest, biggest thing I got out of.
I think you would say the same thing.
We would echo Joshua and say, but as for me and my house, yeah, serve the Lord.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is a good talk.
That's great talk. I'm ready for Thanksgiving. I'm not gonna mess the forth to July right now, we'll leave that one alone.
None of this this is good. We should do this more often because we were just.
We didn't really have anything planned and so we just talk. Even the scripture, it's kind of nice sometimes to go, you know what, let's go here.
Well, and it's what the Lord brings to your heart in the moment. Yeah like that.
Yeah, that's beautiful all right.
Appreciate your YouTube.
Happy Easter.
Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel, hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. Yiji