In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of focusing on the real purpose of celebrating and remembering the word of God. They mention that society is being diverted by symbols and pagan festivals, which are infiltrating schools and laws. The speaker emphasizes the significance of the resurrection of Christ, stating that without it, the cross has no meaning or power. They highlight that the resurrection gives hope and assurance that the work of Christ was accepted, and encourages listeners to examine their faith and receive Jesus as their Savior.

Well, we welcome you to O'Neill's Wings on this resurrection morning. We'd like to start off by reading from Acts chapter 3 verse 19 down to verse 26. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me. Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that followed after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first, God, having raised up his son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. Notice the words. Sent him to bless you. Unto you first, God, having raised up his son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the living Savior that we have. We thank you that we can know him as our Savior, that he lives. Because he lives, we live, those of us that know him as our Savior. We pray for those that do not know Jesus Christ in a personal way, do not have the witness of the Holy Spirit in their heart, do not have the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their life, do not have the testimony of godliness and a desire to grow into the likeness of Christ. We pray that they would be drawn to the wonderful Savior, the one who was crucified, buried, and raised again for us. Thank you for this day. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for life. In you we live and move and have our being. We commit this time to you. We ask for your blessing and that you would use us to be an encouragement to those that are listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we have Dennis Hatfield and myself. Carter, he may be around. I'm not sure. Last I heard, he'd gone off to Florida to check out a revival, I think it was. And maybe he's back this morning. But anyway, this is an exciting day. You know, I was up last night, real early in the morning, going through the book of Acts, looking at the resurrection of Christ. You know, the book of Acts is a living record of the power of the resurrection of Christ. And actually, a believer, Dennis, is one that has Jesus, the living Jesus, living in his life. And this month, I was just talking with you earlier, how we, well, I guess tonight we'll finish up our seventh speaking time this month. But so many times I'm out there and sometimes I get into some churches and it's just dead. And if I preach in power and the power of the Holy Spirit, it brings life. Some people think you're crazy or what's wrong? But we've got to have life when we live. We have to have evidence of life. And so the record of the resurrection in Acts, to me, I was going through, I actually only got up to about 20 chapters in it. Then I decided I'd better go take a nap. I'd got up so early before we had to get going. But the record of the resurrection in Acts is just refreshing. And if you go down through here, I have some of them listed here. Peter, of course, he was the first one preaching there. And in 1-3, it says, Christ showed his disciples that he was alive. You come over to 22, Peter said that they needed a replacement for Judas to be a witness of his resurrection. And the one that they chose had been with them and had seen everything. And you just come all the way down to actually chapter 2, there's a lot in there on the resurrection. In verse 24, I flipped back over there, Peter got on to them how God had raised him up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be holding. And as we come all the way down through here in 27, David prophesied of the resurrection of Christ. 30, if Christ did not rise in the Scriptures, is inaccurate. And all these things. It's really exciting. And I'm not going to take the time. I'm just going to challenge you to sit down and go through the book of Acts on the resurrection. And we're going to talk about something in a few minutes. Matter of fact, there's something very, very important in relation to this day that the Scripture talks about. What is the importance of the resurrection? Why was it preached so often? What is it about the resurrection of Christ that is so crucial? G. Campbell Morgan, one of the old commentators, he said, lift the resurrection out of this book and out of history and what remains. The cross is left, but the cross without the resurrection has no meaning and no power. It is ordinary, tragic, everyday catastrophe. Nothing else. Genesis, as you were saying, all these other leaders, Mohammed and whatever, none of them claimed to rise from the dead. And Jesus said that He would. Three days later. So this is, even Festus, I was looking at Acts 25, 19. He pointed the whole thing down. He pinned the whole thing issue down to one point. That was the resurrection of Christ. Paul, he went and he'd be preaching about the Messiah coming and everything. But when he got to the resurrection, boy, they had a revival or a riot. And usually both. Those that got a hold of it and caught it, they received revival. The rest of them started a riot because he preached on the resurrection of Christ. And it was, you know, it was not the rejection of God the Father when he sent John the Baptist that was really so bad. Not even really the rejection of the Son of God when He came, when He died on the cross. But to reject the witness of the Spirit through the church as the church gave a witness of the resurrection of Christ became fatal. And this is why it's so important that we today as believers do not lose fact of the resurrection power of Christ. Paul said that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection. I really believe very few of us know what this power of His resurrection is. We associate it with all kinds of things. But it is Christ living in me. And the crucial point in Christ coming was not just His rejection before the cross, not even His rejection on the cross, but His rejection after the resurrection becomes something that is a burning fire, a crushing stone, and nothing's left but judgment. If you reject the witness of the Holy Spirit on the rejection of Christ, it's just judgment. And there are so many important reasons about the resurrection. Just to give you a couple of them. It proved that Christ was God. The resurrection without that, then it would all have been over. But Paul said in Romans 1-4, He was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. So this day, and we're going to talk about this, why is it that we see a paganizing of... I've got a question to ask you, Dennis. Why do we see a paganizing of Christians? I'm going to ask Dennis Hatfield this question and let him answer this. What does a rabbit and an egg have to do with Easter? You get out your theological notes or whatever, your Bible, and I want the answer to that one. What does an Easter bunny and a chicken egg have to do with the resurrection of Christ? We're going to have a little fun this morning. This thing about the resurrection, actually every day is a resurrection day for me. If I wake up in the morning and I'm still on this earth, then it's time to rise and shine and give God the glory. The scribes and the Pharisees, they wanted to sign what Jesus sang. He's going to give them a sign. It's going to be the same one of Jonah. Jonah was raised from the dead. He got a revival and got to go on again. Now, you know something else. Not only did it prove that Christ was God, but it gives us assurance that the work of Christ was accepted, who was delivered for our offenses, Romans 4.25, and was raised again for our justification. You know, I just thought of something that I read in the Joplin paper the other day. What's her name? The president's daughter. Chelsea. I guess she was down in Africa with her mom and talking with the teenagers. One thing she said, that the teens in America had no hope. Boy, if there's one word, I wrote it down somewhere, I don't know where it went. If there's one word to describe the resurrection of Christ, one word, it would be hope. It gives us hope. Because when you go out to the graveyard and you put your loved one in the ground, if there is no hope of the resurrection, if you don't have that, you don't have anything to look forward to. But it gives us hope. Gives us something to look forward to. And so, this is an exciting day. Maybe one other thing here. Just going over some things. It made Christ our high priest. I don't know if you realize it, but in Romans 8.34, it says, Who is he that condemneth? If you feel like you're getting beat down and you're under some attack and things like that, listen, the Scripture says, Who is he that condemneth? If somebody's putting you down for being a Christian, you say, Who is he that condemneth? Or maybe the enemy's trying to break you down or whatever. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. You see, my friends, because He rose, He is our high priest. He just didn't rise again and then that's it. But He rose and He's active in interceding for us. And of course, He does many things to help us out. He provided the possibility of you, if you've not received Christ, He's given you the possibility of repentance and of forgiveness. There's provision for you to have power in your life because of the resurrection of Christ. Go read Ephesians 1, 19 and 20, it talks about it. Provision of gifts was because of the resurrection of Christ. Ephesians 4, 8. Provision of all our needs, Philippians 4, 19. So without the resurrection of Christ, there isn't all of these things that we can have. Now, I've got something, I'll bring my question back to you on this. What's Dennis, what does a chicken and an egg have to do with this? You ready for this? Of course, we're having a little fun. We as Christians, we know it doesn't. This is why my kids don't get an Easter basket. I got one when I was growing up. I never could figure out. I just wasn't smart enough to figure that out. What did this basket of eggs and this stuff have to do with Easter? And then a little later on, I figured it out. Nothing. It had to do with something else, with the pagan worship of Esther. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. And actually, my statement is, are we paganizing the resurrection of Christ? The Passover comes in. Are we paganizing it? We've been looking at some scriptures and things like this. I believe that we are. Now, you know, we've paganized the birth of Christ. And you know we've been paganizing Easter, what we call Easter. Really, we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. And it had to do with the Passover. Easter is actually, I don't know if you realize it, and maybe Dennis would want to talk about this, but Easter was actually a pagan holiday. And they used the same word, what was it? Pascha? They used the same word Pascha to describe the Passover and also Easter. They used that same word. And so I think we ought to talk about that. Because if you want to turn in your Bibles, matter of fact, this is a Bible test for you on the resurrection of Christ as we get into this time, about your knowledge. Let's go to Acts chapter 12. I'm going to do a little study in the scriptures. Acts chapter 12 and verse 1 starting, Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of John with a sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. Then were the days of unleavened bread. And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four quantarians of soldiers. Peter is really a dangerous convict. We have 16 men on four different shifts, so three at a time. So they had to guard him to keep him, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. But Peter, therefore, was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. And you know how that is. God entered the prayer. Peter got out and he had more trouble getting into the prayer meeting than he did getting out of prison. Go back to verse 3. Dennis, let's look at the context of this a little bit. Then were the days of unleavened bread. What do you know about the unleavened bread? What's the scriptures say about that? Well, Numbers 28 verses 16 and 17 probably give the clearest description of what this was to the Jews. Let me read here from Numbers 28 verses 16 and 17. And in the 14th day of the first month is the Passover of the Lord. And in the 15th day of this month is the feast. Seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten. So apparently, Don, on the 14th day of the fourth month, was the Passover and that was to be the Passover meal was supposed to be eaten at the evening meal. It was never the Passover was never referred to as unleavened bread. It was only that one meal on the 14th. Then beginning the 15th day began a seven day period of unleavened bread. Right. Signifying they're coming out of Egypt. And so in the context here of what he's saying is that verse three, then were the days of unleavened bread. So it was it was Passover was already OK. And so they're in the days of unleavened bread. So then we come down to verse four talks about Herod intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. So what is Easter referring to? Wait a minute now. OK, let's make sure everybody's with us. If Passover is already passed and he's intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people, then Easter isn't Passover. That's correct. So what is Easter? This is what we want to talk with you about this morning. This well, Don, if you if you read any of the other modern versions, New King James, NIV, New American Standard, they all say after the Passover or after Passover. They in other words, they replace the word Easter with the word Passover. Yes. Instead of right. But according to the context, very simply, the unleavened the days of unleavened bread follow the Passover. So this word Easter is correct. It cannot be Passover. So the translators translated this correctly. Actually, starting back with William Tyndall. He's the one that began to use the word actually that it referred to as Easter. Now, why this is the only place in the King James or any other Bible, by the way, that uses this word Easter. And this is the only Bible that uses the word. That's correct. It's the only correct word to use, though, according to the context, just simply laid out there. You know, in the rush to accuse the authorized version of error, many have not taken the time to consider what the passage actually says. In other words, it was in this days of unleavened bread. I don't understand that. You and I, we don't claim to be scholars, but you can just look right there and get it figured out real quick. What's going on? Why would... And of course, they say that this is an error. And actually, it's just been within the last year. This is the thing that got me over the hump of seeing that this is the Word of God because of this Easter passage. I said, what about this? This is a mistake. This is a mistake in the King James. And you say that it's correct. But when I, by faith, just received this as the Word of God, then God showed me what this is. And it just opened up like daylight. But it would not happen until I accepted by faith that this is the Word of God, that it is without error. Then I understood. It's like my eyes were opened and I see it now. I never did understand this before because I was always taught that this was a mistake. Don, maybe we should talk about a little the history of this word Easter or this pagan festival. I think that's very important because what Herod was referring to, he was an Edomite, right? Yes. And so he worshipped. Now, I'm a little bit familiar with this because I lived for a year and a half over in Turkey and they had their pagans, the goddesses and everything. You could see their statues. They still have even modern day ones of the old ones of Diana and all those. They had those. But this was very strong pagan worship. And Herod was a pagan worshipper of, would it have been Esther then? Yes. Well, it was a festival. It was a Babylonian pagan festival. And it was generally held in late spring. I believe it was actually in June or in that time of year, normally in Assyria and that area of the country. It was a celebration of the earth regenerating itself after winter. So there's like this death resurrection type thing. And it was a celebration of the reproduction of the earth. And so what we see here is this whole worship of Mother Nature in this worship of Easter. You're going to get me to the rabbit and the egg? Yeah. And the common symbols of this pagan festival of Easter was the rabbit and the egg, both known for their reproductive abilities. So you see the correlation to our modern day. We wouldn't happen to be trying to paganize the resurrection of Christ today, would we? Well, I don't know. It's been going on for a long time, hasn't it? This rabbit and egg business. When you go to any commercial store today, you don't see anything about Jesus and the resurrection. All you see on the shelves and their early hawking is Easter bunnies and eggs and new dresses and so forth. It's more of a it's almost a pagan festival here, replacing the real meaning of Easter or the resurrection. So they get up real early in the morning and they go out to really to worship the sun as it comes up. They worship the queen of heaven, who was a sun goddess. That's actually who Herod was worshiping. Yes. Right. And that's why this word Easter is describing a pagan, a thoroughly pagan, separate from Christianity holiday, intending after the pagan holiday of Easter to bring him forth. He didn't want a big stink on his holiday. This was his big day. The Jews had already had those, the believing Jews had already had their holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ the day before. And now for seven days following this is the pagan holiday Easter. So he's going to wait for another week or so. Well, we're not really sure exactly how long that was after the I mean, it could have been several weeks possibly because we did find some research done that later on it was Rome that wanted to kind of conciliate the pagans to nominal Christianity. And so Rome pursuing this policy took measures to get Christian and pagan festivals amalgamated together. And so they adjusted the calendar so that this pagan holiday of Easter would also follow right along with the Passover and the celebration of the resurrection. So this is precisely why this passage has to be interpreted Easter. And so if there's any other word there, then it's wrong. It has to be Easter. It must be used in the translation Passover. Actually, if they put Passover here, that would have conflicted with the immediate context because it would not work out with unleavened bread. This is just it's very clear, very simple to see. I could not see this. I just never could see this because I was schooled in the other. And it's just really amazing. Maybe we could share a little history here. What we found about you might be surprised to know that the word Passover did not even exist before William Tyndale coined it for his version in 1526. He was also the first. His was the first English Bible to use the word Easter. Previously, the Hebrew and Greek were left untranslated. So this word past was left in its original form, and he was unsatisfied with the use of a completely foreign word and decided to take into account the fact that the season of the Passover was known generally to English people as Easter. So that's one of the reasons he substituted the word Easter also. So, well, this is really, really interesting. You know, a little bit Bible dictionary, I guess that's how he pronounced his name. I just saw this says, quote, strictly speaking, the Passover only applied to the Paschal supper and the feast of unleavened bread followed. So this has to be the pagan holiday. You know, if there's any conflict, it would be that they use the same word to describe both holidays. But the translators were sharp enough and clear enough under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to put in the right translation for us. And our so-called scholarship that's supposed to be smarter than than us. They just sort of blow it right here because the days of unleavened bread is the clue. Well, every one of the translations, the English translations that followed Tyndale did in this one particular case translate the word Easter. But when we come down to these modern translations, they substitute the word Passover for Easter. So it appears one thing that's happened is they have followed these Alexandrian manuscripts and they've all jumped on that board rather than going back and following the Texas Receptus and how it was translated this word Easter. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. God inspired it and it's accurate. So here's a little statement that was made. The word came to be associated with both Christian and pagan observance. And it was to this latter that Herod was referring. So actually, if we go out here and somebody says Easter is coming and say you're in a store and you're talking with a friend or a stranger or a relative or whatever, and you refer to Easter, if they are unsaved, actually Easter to me would mean something different to an unsaved person. And that's the same case it is here. To me, it meant the resurrection of Christ. To them, it means, hey, they're going to get to go boil an egg. And that's sort of what we see happening with Christmas, too, for the secular world. Christmas is no longer the birth of Christ. It's more of a just a secular holiday of giving of gifts. OK, well, if we just continue on, I might give you just Dix has this note. Easter is derived from Ishtar, one of the Babylonian titles of an idol goddess, the queen of heaven. The Saxon goddess Astrea is the same as Astartes, the Syrian Venus called Astorette in the Old Testament. It was the worship of this woman by Israel that was such an abomination to God. So, Dennis, if it got Israel into trouble, what's going to happen to the church today when we're putting where we're actually putting the same stuff into these other Bibles that got Israel into trouble, changing terms and things? And actually, we see it working out in the church where a lot of Christians do not see anything wrong with with celebrating this pagan holiday. They don't even know they're doing it. They think it's a Christian thing. Yes, a lot of the things we do. It's just as I'm sure it's grievous to the Lord. Well, Don, you know, we live in the last days and the apostasy and the falling away from revealed truth is a real characteristic of the age we live in. And so the church has fallen right into this trap and been deceived by Satan. It seems like that Satan always with these major events where God wants people to focus on his son, Satan wants to provide things that will draw attention away. We see that at Christmas with many of the celebrations and the symbols at Christmas are things to divert people's attention away from the Lord Jesus Christ. And so here we come to the resurrection. We also see symbols and things that that tend to divert at least the world's attention and even to the church to some degree, divert our focus and attention away from the real purpose of what we're celebrating and remembering. Mm hmm. Well, I think that I think that we are moving ahead now into the days that are prophetic. My family and I for family devotions in the morning now, we call it a wisdom search. We're going through Daniel and just taking the kids through. And boy, when we hit chapter seven, I said, we're going to have to stop and really spend some time studying to go through seven, eight, nine, ten on through there when you get into the heavy things. But I believe that God is preparing a resurrection people. And I was just this evening was reading in Judges three about. Do you know who Othniel is? You ever heard of him? I believe God is raising up, preparing to raise up Othniel's. You know, let me give you a little bit of the background in Judges three. It said, therefore, the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan, Rishithah, Thayim, king of Mesopotamia, and the children of Israel served Chusha, Rishithah, Thayim. Don't ever name your kid that name. That's hard. Eight years. And what happened while they were in those years of chastising by God, God was preparing a man. And I believe that God is preparing children of his. And you may be one of those today that are listening. You feel like that you've just been God, like you're not being used, but you just continue to follow the Lord and let him refine you and continue to get the dross out of your life, because there's coming a day, and it may be sooner than we think, when he's going to have these children of light, his children of light to shine as the dark days come in. And here they were in these years, and their time was up. And it says, and when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, I believe when we cry out, it says, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel. Now, who was he? He was a nobody. Hey, but wait a minute. He was the son of Kinez, Caleb's younger brother. Caleb was a warrior saint. He was the one that said, give me this mountain. And there was his little brother. And you may be like the little brother. You say, well, there's all these giant preachers and all these great saints and everything, and I'm just a nobody. No, you're not a nobody. You may be an Othniel, but you are the son of God. And you know what? Here's what God's going to do. It says, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged. The Spirit of the Lord. Here he is, tucked back there. And God's preparing you to be an Othniel. And you know what his name means? His name means my season of God. In other words, basically it's saying in his time, in God's time, my season of God, in your time that God gives to you. Then he's going to pour out the Spirit of the Lord. It's going to come upon us as it did upon him. And he judged Israel. And it says that he went out to war. And the Lord delivered Chushem Reshathayim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. And his hand prevailed against. Chushah Reshathayim. And the land had rest forty years. But here's what I want to say. These three things. We must let God prepare us. All these things going on, all the bad news and everything, really shouldn't get us rattled. God, we know that we are in the situation we're in. Because we turned away from him. Actually, I think I was listening to the radio. I must have been thirsty. Yeah. No nation is ever going to be made moral without God. And it just doesn't work. And nations are trying to be good nations, but they just morally fall because it doesn't work without God. But so we must let God prepare us. In his time, the Lord prepared them. And there was that death and the burial and the resurrection of so many of God's saints. They went through the Red Sea, the type of the resurrection. Abraham and Isaac, type of the resurrection. Jonah, Lazarus. You just go on and on. All the types. We must let God take us through the death, the dying to self, so that he may bring us up to this resurrection life. And then this last thing, this third thing. Then the Holy Spirit will come upon us. The Holy Spirit will be able to use us as he did Othniel. The Holy Spirit will come upon us. We are hungry. You know, we're hearing of little... I've been listening for several years to the little reports of revival going around some places. Going for a couple years and things. But what we need to do is recognize that basically the church in general is going after Satan. Do you want to go that way? If you don't, get God's Bible, God's Word and follow it. Be careful you don't get sucked in with, as it's called, these New Age versions. Dennis, you was making a comment about the worship of the earth and things. In closing up, maybe you want to make a statement about that. Well, Don, as we've talked about, this pagan festival here of Easter was the worship of Mother Nature. And it seems like what we see today in this environmental movement. We see a resurgent and sort of a wide birth of worshipping Mother Earth. And so as Christians, we're going to have to be able to stand against that and in opposition to this environmental worship of nature and worship of the environment. It's in our schools and it's beginning to infiltrate our society and our laws. So we just see the effects of this pagan festival. I believe in more than a full New Age movement. And we believe in keeping our environment right and everything. But this is a worship system. Well, we're going to close down. Let me close up again with these questions. What is the importance of the resurrection? Why was it preached so often? What was it about the resurrection of Christ that is so crucial? It was the key. It was the key. And as Morgan said, lift the resurrection out of this book, out of history. And what remains? Nothing, really. He says, the cross is left, but the cross without the resurrection has no meaning and no power. It is ordinary, tragic, everyday catastrophe, nothing else. Let me challenge you to look at your life. Do you have the witness of the Spirit of God in your life? That there is Jesus living His life in you. Do you fellowship with Him? Do you know Him really, my friend? Do you really know Jesus or do you just know about Him? Well, until next time, we're just going to continue to believe the Lord is working. And we do see signs of His coming. He's coming soon. Don't put off another day on receiving Him as your Savior. Examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith, as Paul said. Well, God bless you, my friend.