The Semi-Annual Pity Of Christ
It is nearly time for some of the professed gospel preachers to begin plans for their Union Easter Services with the denominations, and some professed members of the church to begin assembling their new outfits to wear to services on that day. Such preachers are not sound in the faith and such members need to learn that more homage is due Christ than semi-annual worship, or pity, on Christmas and Easter.
Any Bible student knows that Easter is unscriptural. The uninformed will argue that the word is found in the scriptures, and those who accept the King James Version as "the" Bible will have it no other way. These translators rendered the original word "passover" in every case except Acts 12:4. They had no license to render it Easter in Acts 12:4. Even the Catholic Bible is not so inconsistent as to render the word Easter. The early church was condemned for observing "days, months, seasons, years." (Gal. 4:10) All who practice such are seeking God through hollow forms of ritualism. The observance of Easter, Lent, Christmas are evident tokens of apostasy.
Easter Sunday there will be three classes of people attending services of the church:
1) The largest group, we trust, those who have come to worship sincerely as they do the first day of the week.
2) Another group present to show off their fine clothes.
3) A third group vainly believing that by observing Easter, they will help to keep God in good humor with them until Christmas.
It is wrong to enter into union services with denominations at any time. Instead of fraternizing with them and encouraging them in their error we should do all in our power to get those among them to "come out from among them and be separate." We are not to become partaker of their evil deeds. (II John 10-11) To acquiesce in error and cooperate with error is to eventually corrupt the teaching of the New Testament.
We should be careful not to leave the impression that our refusal to religiously celebrate Easter is not that we do not appreciate the sacrifice of Christ, his mission in the world and his love for us. The centuries that have intervened should not dull our ears to the good news of his resurrection, but his resurrection was on the first day of the week, and that is the time of celebration of that event, as often as the first day rolls around.
To assemble on Christmas and Easter for worship is to give little more homage to Christ than we do on the Fourth of July as we recall our becoming free and independent states. Christ deserves more than this.
Men should disillusion themselves concerning the meek and lowly Jesus, who soon will become the semiannual object of the world's pity, (then again at Christmas) and think soberly of Christ as he is today, and as he will he on that day when he comes with ten thousand saints to execute judgment upon all who have remembered him only at Christmas and Easter and have lived for self the rest of the time. Today he is not a meek and submissive sacrifice, but sits with authority at the right hand of the Father.
Many churches will have their semi-annual ingathering in a few weeks, and will make as much noise about it as a pullet laying her first egg, but to the faithful members of the congregation it will, at least in one respect, be an occasion of sorrow. The neglect of the things God appointed, and observance if that which he did not appoint, are unmistakable signs of departure.