Atheist to Christian : March 2016

The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord...again.
The Lord allowed Israel to be defeated by the Philistines
The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord went through the land of the enemies and instilled fear of the Lord in them.
The Lord had mercy on the enemies because He didn’t burn them all up like He did to the rebellious Israelites in the book of Numbers.
The enemies returned the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord
The people of Beth Shemesh (a city of Judah) knew better than to look into the Ark and the Lord killed them
The Ark was moved to Kirjath-Jearim and stayed there 20 years until it was removed by King David and taken to Jerusalem. Kirjath-Jearim belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and Kirjath-jearim means “city of woods or forests,”. The words of Psalm 132:6, "We found it in the fields of the wood," refer to the sojourn or visit of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord at Kirjath-jearim.
1 Samuel 7:3-9 “Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only. And Samuel said, “Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.” So they gathered together at Mizpah, drew water, and poured it out before the Lord. And they fasted that day, and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the children of Israel at Mizpah. Now when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel had gathered together at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines. So the children of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that He may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” And Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. Then Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him.”
This is what it means to judge. As children of God, we are allowed to judge. However, we must judge righteously, as Jesus does, with mercy and grace. Samuel cried out to the Lord on behalf of the people of Israel and continued to cry out to the Lord on behalf of the people of Israel, especially when the Philistines went up against them. Samuel proceeded to make an offering of a suckling lamb as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. That poor little thing with it’s whole life ahead of itself was taken from it’s mother’s milk to be offered up to the Lord. Life is so precious, especially when it’s the life of a baby not even on solid food. That’s how Samuel judged Israel, by weeping and fasting and burnt offerings. When you have brothers and sisters in your life that have done evil, when they have hurt you and broken your heart, offer up a burnt offering to the Lord God of Israel, Jesus Christ, Who Was and Is and Is to Come, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Weep, mourn, and fast for them before the Lord and watch how things change. They aren’t on solid food yet, and most likely, they are just on formula, not even the real milk that comes from the truth of the Gospel because there are so many false teachers out there and we haven’t been taught the Way like it was supposed to be taught to us from generation to generation.
As I was reading what happened next, with the understanding of the Holy Spirit, I started to get choked up and I cried.

1 Samuel 7:10 “Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the Lord thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel.” The Lord’s mercy endures forever. This is in the book of 1 Samuel guys. I don’t know how many times Israel has messed up before this and God just keeps forgiving and keeps forgiving and keeps saving the day and keeps fighting for us and keeps showing mercy and keeps allowing us to come back to Him time and time again. He showed up in a huge way and I like to picture it like how a loving, protective Father gets up, stands up, and fights for you, making His presence known and taking care of those bullies for you or taking care of a harassing boyfriend even though you said you hated your Dad when you were a teenager but you remember when He read you stories and tucked you into bed at night and He still has your back today even after all the stupid stuff you did to him in your stubbornness and rebellion.
Now, remember when Samuel told Israel to put Ashtoreth away and come back to God? Who’s Ashtoreth? She has many different legends and has morphed into different things throughout the ages. In general, she was the goddess of fertility, love and war. She seems to be the equivalent of Astarte, the Phœnician goddess of fertility; as well as the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar; Athtart of Aram; Astarte or Aphrodite of Greece; and Venus of Rome. She apparently represented morning and evening stars, and, as such, was considered to be androgynous in origin. She later became female under Semitic influence, yet seemed to retain almost an equal footing with the male gods in Assyria and Babylonia. Will Durant wrote in his book titled “The Story of Civilization; Volume I Our Oriental Heritage”: Ishtar (Astarte to the Greeks, Ashtoreth to the Jews) interests us not only as analogue of the Egyptian Isis and prototype of the Grecian Aphrodite and the Roman Venus, but as the formal beneficiary of one of the strangest Babylonian customs. She was Demeter as well as Aphrodite—no mere goddess of physical beauty and love, but the gracious divinity of bounteous motherhood, the secret inspiration of the growing soil, and the creative principle everywhere. It is impossible to find much harmony, from a modern point of view, in the attributes and functions of Ishtar: she was the gods of war as well as of love, of prostitutes as well as of mothers; she called herself “a compassionate courtesan”; she was represented sometimes as a bearded bisexual deity, sometimes as a nude female offering her breasts to suck;”
How many know that Satan is the father of lies? Does he want to confuse you? Listen carefully to what I’m about to say because it can get confusing. Instead of just doing what God says to do, it has come down to this.
Why do Christians celebrate Easter? What is Easter? Most think that Easter comes from Ishtar but it actually comes from the German goddess of light named Eostre or Ostara because winter is over and spring has come. Another goddess of dawn is Aurora in Latin, and Eos in Greek. Both goddesses dealt with sex and fertility and come to find out, the Greek goddess of light, Eos, had a sister who was the goddess of the moon, aka Ishtar. Ishtar is her Babylonian name and Ashtoreth is her Biblical name. The Greeks called her Astarte. So Easter has a sister named Ashtoreth. However, pagan gods seem to get mixed up because neither Ashtoreth nor Easter had eggs and bunnies.

Here is a list of gods and goddesses who associated themselves with eggs.

Seb, the Egyptian god of the earth laid eggs daily,
The Egyptian Phoenix came out of an egg, and for some reason Christianity adopted it in the 1st Century AD.
The Egyptian god Osiris, because he was also god of agriculture as well as god of the dead, returned to life rising up from the shell of a broken egg
The Finland goddess Luonnotar has an eagle lay eggs on her knee, the eggs burn her, she shakes them off and out comes the sky, the earth, the sun and the moon
A Chinese Naga princess laid 3 eggs
The hindu god Prajapati forms an egg and pops out of it himself

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/beyond-ishtar-the-tradition-of-eggs-at-easter

Now, what about bunny rabbits? Female rabbits are called does and they reproduce very rapidly.

You know how Osiris was the god of the dead and popped out of an egg when he came back to life? Well, Easter’s sister, Ashtoreth has a similar story of going into the ground where it’s cold like bunnies like to do. In her descent to the underworld, she sits on her sister’s throne, rouses the anger of the Anunnaki and is turned into a corpse. Some legends say that only through the help of her minister Ninšubur, who secures the help of Ea, is Ištar able to come alive again and return to the world above http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/inanaitar/ and some legends say that she was stuck in the underworld unless she traded places with someone so she traded places with her husband and left her husband in the underworld forever.

An old Babylonian legend related how the descent of Ishtar into Hades in search of her dead husband, Tammuz, was followed by the suspension of marriage and birth in both earth and heaven, http://kukis.org/Doctrines/Ashtoreth.pdf

Why is this so confusing? Why are there so many different forms of the same goddess with so many different stories?

Frankly, I don’t care. All I care about is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Eggs and Bunnies are not in the Bible. God doesn’t want you using pagan symbols to worship Him even if you think eggs can somehow represent Jesus coming back to life, He isn’t in the same boat as pagan gods. He is separate and Holy. He doesn’t burrow Himself into the ground in cold places. He ascended into Heaven to prepare a place for me and you and sent His helper the Holy Spirit. His Spirit lives inside us and so that’s how you are able to hear what I’m saying to you. His Spirit reveals the truth.
1 Samuel 7:3-4 “Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only.”
We are to follow Jesus’s example, we are to be followers of Jesus. Jesus Christ is Lord and He tells us to celebrate the Lord’s appointed times and feasts. This is one way that we show the world that we are His. The Feast of Unleavened Bread or Passover is beautiful. Passover is all over the Bible, how are we missing it? Why can’t we just keep it simple and do what Jesus did?