Ishtar/Easter
In this study we want to explore the relationship between Easter and the goddess Ishtar, and why the celebration of the Easter holiday is a great abomination to Almighty God. We will explore the history of the goddess Ishtar as well as her various attributes and names that she was called in different ancient cultures. We will also find out exactly what God has to say about this adulterous, idolatrous worship of Easter/Ishtar in these in time days.
Let's begin with the fact that the word "Easter" is not in the Scriptures. Some may say that it is Acts 12:4, but they haven't done their homework. Let's look at Acts 12:4: And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternons of soldiers to keep him, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.
The word is not Easter. It is a corrupted translation of the Greek word "pascha" which means "Passover," from the Hebrew word "pasach" meaning "to pass over." If you don't believe this, look it up it is #3957 in the Strong's Concordance Greek Dictionary.
Most often in trying to explain to people that the Easter worship is in fact the worship of the goddess Ishtar, their immediate reply is that they are worshipping Jesus, and that the Easter worship is the celebration of the risen Christ, His resurrection from the dead. What does it really matter if the word Easter is a transliteration of the word Ishtar? We are still worshipping Jesus Christ and His resurrection. God knows the intent of our hearts.
True enough, God does know the intent of our hearts. But God also knows the utter abomination of this Easter/Ishtar worship, as well as the fact that most are caught up in this worship in ignorance. But now you are no longer ignorant concerning this matter. You will be presented with the facts in this lesson that the Easter worship is indeed the worship of the goddess Ishtar, and not the worship of Jesus Christ, as you have been taught to believe. It is up to you to discern the truth of this matter from the facts that will be presented. He that heareth, let him hear; and he that forbeareth, let him forbear. If you forbear, then your blood shall be upon your own head. If you hear the truth of this matter, then repent.
Let's begin with the fact that nowhere in the Scriptures does God tell us to worship the resurrection of Christ, what Easter is supposedly all about. Therefore, the Easter worship is a Tradition of Men. What does the Scripture tell us about the traditions of men? "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." [1]
Beware, lest the traditions of men spoil you. Why? Because they are not of Christ and they will lead you astray. Furthermore, what do the Scriptures have to say about those who would insist that it is Christ whom they are worshipping at Easter, according to the tradition of men? "Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men." [2]
The people do honor the Lord with their lips, lip service, but their hears are far removed from Him, because their fear, their reverence, and their worship of Him is taught by the precepts and traditions of men. The Easter worship is a tradition of man, and its origin comes from the worship of the pagan goddess Ishtar. God tells us over and over throughout the Scriptures to leave behind those traditions of men, to come out of mystery Babylon.
On that note, let's look at the history of the goddess Ishtar and her connection with mystery Babylon, meaning confusion, from the root word Babel. To fully understand the origin of the worship of the goddess Ishtar and her subsequent history, we must find go back to the origin of mystery Babylon and understand from whence this worship evolved, even back to the garden of Eden.
We know from God's word what the true nature of the sin in the garden was, a sexual relationship between Eve and Satan, and from this relationship Cain was born. Cain was the son of Satan, the serpent, called the devil. Cain was the founder of ancient Babylon in Sumeria, and history bears this out. In Genesis 4, the Scripture tells us that Cain built a city and named it after his son Enoch. Archaeologists have uncovered ancient city that is called Erech located in what we know today as Iraq, the land of Babylon.
The king of this ancient Babylon was known as Sargon, which translated means King Cain. To make a long story short for the sake of sticking to the subject of Ishtar, Cain made deities of Adam and Eve. He called them Anu and Ea, later known as Ishtar. His other chief deity was Bel, a form of Baal, another name for Satan.
Without digressing too far, a thorough study of the evolution of mythology and most world religions will lead one back to ancient Babylon and Cain. For a more thorough study concerning Cain and his conquests, order the book "Sargon the Magnificent." Now that we have taken you back to the beginning, to the origin of this worship of Ishtar and where it comes from, let's now move onto Ishtar herself. Let's find out what Ishtar is all about, the stories and myths about her, what was involved in the worship of her, and what that worship signified. The following passage is an excerpt from "The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 7: "Inanna, the Sumerian astral deity representing the planet Venus, was known throughout the Mesopotamian world; the Akkadians (and later the Assyro-Babylonians) called her Ishtar. For both the Sumerians and the Akkadians, she was the principal goddess in their respective pantheons. Inanna-Ishtar's closest counterparts to the west are the Canaanite Astarte (called Ashtoreth by the Hebrews) and the later goddesses of Greece and Rome, Aphrodite and Venus.
One of the most important myths about Inanna-Ishtar concerns her relationship to the shepherd god Dumuzi-Tammuz, who is probably a divination of an actual early ruler of Uruk (Erech, the city Enoch of Genesis 4). Although the myth has many variations, its basic outline can be reconstructed from the Sumerian 'Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld,' the Akkadian parallel 'Ishtar's Descent,' and recently translated fragments of the 'Death of Dumuzi,' as well as various laments for Dumuzi and a large set of 'Sacred Marriage' texts.
According to these sources, Inanna and Dumuzi have a passionate love affair and marriage. Subsequently the goddess wants to visit the underworld ruled by her enemy and sister Ereshkigal, probably to rule there as well as in heaven. After bedecking herself with jewels and finery, Inanna descends and is met at the gate by a servant of Ereshkigal, who at various stages removes her garments. Finally she approaches her sister naked and humiliated. Ereshkigal fastens on her the 'eyes of death,' turns her into a corpse, and hangs her body on a stake.
Inanna's servant, worried after three days of her absence, fashions creatures who descend with revivifying materials. They bring her back to life and she reascends to earth, accompanied by frightened demons who wander with her from city to city in Summer. When she returns to Uruk she finds her lover Dumuzi not bewailing her plight in the underworld, but actually celebrating it. She sets after him the demons, who after a long chase overtake and torture him and drag him down to the underworld.
There are many variations of this myth, but its importance lies in the love affair between Dumuzi-Tammuz, who comes to represent the annual dying and regenerated vegetative cycle, and Inanna-Ishtar, the embodiment of the generative force in nature. In their intercourse she fecundates the growth cycle of spring.
This came to be ritualized in an annual ceremony in which the king, representing Dumuzi-Tammuz, entered into a hieros gamos, a sacred marriage, with a sacred temple prostitute, representing Inanna-Ishtar, and thus sympathetically brought regeneration to the land. Their intercourse was, in a sense, the resurrection of the dead god, and lamenting turned into rejoicing. The popularity and geographical spread of this myth and its ritualization are attested in Ezekiel 8:14, where the prophet condemns the practice followed by some Jerusalem women lamenting for Tammuz." [3]
Let's look at this passage from Ezekiel for a moment. "He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. The he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. The said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again and thou shalt see great abominations than these." [4]
You see, the Lord is condemning this practice of worshipping Ishtar and lamenting for Tammuz, and calls it a great abomination Easter worship is an abomination to God. Let's reflect back upon the story of Ishtar and pick out some of the key points. Notice the resemblance of the story of Ishtar to that which is written in the Gospel about our Savior, Jesus Christ.
As Ishtar descended, she was stripped and humiliated; Jesus was stripped and beaten in humility. Ishtar was killed and hung on a stake; Jesus was crucified on a stake. Ishtar was resurrected after three days; Jesus rose from the tomb on the third day. By now it should be quite obvious to you why Easter is in fact the worship of Ishtar.
Satan has taken the truth about Christ and overlaid it with the worship of Ishtar, bringing it into the church through the traditions of men and presenting it as the celebration of Easter, a transliteration of the word Ishtar. Satan knew the purpose of this earth age and has tried repeatedly to subvert God's plan. He tried to corrupt the seed line in the garden so that Christ could not be born and die on the stake.
Satan failed at that attempt, so he used his offspring, Cain and the Kenites (the sons of Cain) to propagate false religions and myths that have a resemblance to the truth. In order to create confusion and disbelief so as to deceive God's children. For every positive there is a negative, and Satan is the Great Imitator.
Remember, Satan's whole thrust is to be worshipped as God. Let's for a moment review a few more of the characteristics of Ishtar, not losing sight of the story of Ishtar and what the ritualistic worship of her represented, the resurrection of the dead god. Ishtar was also known as the Queen of Heaven (there is a large denomination that openly prays to the Queen of Heaven). Ishtar was connected to the planet Venus, called both the "morning star" and the "evening star." Ishtar was worshipped as female in the morning and male in the evening. You should also note that in Isaiah 14:12, Lucifer, another name for Satan, is called the son of the morning. The name Lucifer itself means "the morning star." Ishtar is also called the goddess of fertility, from another one of her notorious legends. As the legend goes, an egg fell from heaven one day and landed in the Euphrates river. Some fish managed to roll the egg to shore, hence the tradition of rolling Easter eggs.
Then several doves (a symbol of the Holy Spirit) descended from heaven and incubated the egg and hatched the goddess Ishtar, the goddess of Easter. The egg became the universal symbol for fertility, and as such can be traced to pagan ritual and worship worldwide. Like the egg, the rabbit became part of the Easter tradition because it too was a symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt. Let's now look at how this practice of worshipping the goddess Ishtar/Ashtoreth/Astarte was promulgated by the children of Israel. Pay attention to the word "groves." The Hebrew word for groves is "Asherah," a form of Ashtoreth/Astarte, pointing right back to Ishtar. "And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing." [5]
Using the Strong's Concordance Hebrew dictionary, let's look at the word for "groves."
groves...
Hebrew 842. 'asherah, ash-ay-raw'; or 'asheyrah, ash-ay-raw'; from Heb. 833; happy; Asherah (or Astarte) a Phoenician goddess; also an image of the same:-grove. Comp. Heb. 6253.
Hebrew 6253. 'Ashtoreth, ash-to'-reth; prob. for Heb. 6251; Ashtoreth, the Phoenician goddess of love (and increase):-Ashtoreth. The Asherah was a phallic symbol, shaped in the image of the male organ.
Again, the children of Israel participated in this heathen ritual of worshipping Ishtar, the "grove worship," and wrought wicked things that provoked the Lord to anger, after being commanded not to do this thing.
Will our people continue in this abominable practice of worshipping Ishtar/Easter and provoking the Lord to anger? Let's look at another instance of this practice among the children of Israel. "But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel. And the Lord spake by his servants the prophets, saying, Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols." [6]
What was that Manasseh did? From the Reader Digest "Great People of the Bible and How They Lived." "Inside the Jerusalem temple he placed an image of Ishtar, the Assyrian goddess of love and war, associated with the planet Venus. In her name, priest and male worshippers engaged in ritual sex with 'holy' prostitutes housed in the temple, a practice that was supposed to promote the fertility of crops, herds and families (akin to the rebirth or resurrection from the dead)." [7]
Manasseh brought the worship of into the temple, the house of God. The priests performed ritualistic sexual orgies with the temple prostitutes to worship the fertility goddess and promote the symbolic resurrection of the dead god.
Manasseh was not the only king to bring this worship into the temple. King Ahab under the influence of his wife Jezebel also brought the worship of Ishtar into the house of God. "And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him...But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel." [8]
Ahab, through the influence of Jezebel built an altar to Baal and also made groves. Remember the groves were for the worship of Ishtar, from the Hebrew word Asherah/Ashtoreth. Let's now go to these end times and see what God has to tell us about this Easter/Ishtar worship. "And the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and they patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds." [9]
King Ahab suffered that woman Jezebel, his wife, and brought the worship of the goddess Ishtar into the House of God. Do you suffer that woman Jezebel? Are you still practicing your worship of Easter, whose worship goes to Ishtar and not to Christ? God has given you His warning. He has given her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Where do you stand, with Christ or with Jezebel?
In this study we have presented you with the facts and history concerning Ishtar/Easter. You have had the opportunity to see that the worship of Ishtar and the ritualistic sexual orgies were symbolic for the resurrection of the dead god, the very thing Christians purport to be celebrating the resurrection of Christ.
Easter is a tradition of men and is taught by the precepts of men. It is an abominable, idolatrous and adulterous practice. Jesus said "follow me," not the goddess Ishtar. You must be aware of the wiles of the Devil. Satan has cleverly inserted the worship of the goddess Ishtar into the church, calling it Easter, by slightly twisting and corrupting the truth and perverting the minds of God's children, causing them to provoke the Lord to anger.