by R.F. Becker
Let us begin our study of Lent by asking, as many will, If this observance of abstinence is wrong, how did it become so universal?
How Did It Come To Occupy So Large A Space On Our Calendar?
Why, the Roman Catholic Church put it there during the sixth century! She “borrowed” the 40 days called “Lent” from the worshippers of the Babylonian queen of heaven.
Let not my reader suppose that Lent is observed only in the Roman Church and our anemic Protestant churches today.
In Layard’s “Nineveh and Babylon,” page 93, we learn that Lent is observed by the Yezidis, devil-worshippers of Koordistan. They inherited this heathen fast fashion from their early Babylonian masters.
In Humboldt’s “Mexican Researches,” volume 1, page 404, we find how the pagan Mexicans kept a Lent. “Three days after the vernal equinox began a solemn fast of forty days in honor of the sun.”
In Landseer’s “Sabean Researches,” page 112, we are informed how an Egyptian Lent of 40 days was held expressly in honor of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god. So we can see Rome is by no means original in observing her pagan Lent.
Just as on December 25 a great celebration and feast was held in Babylon in honor of the birth of Tammuz so in that same country the 40 days’ fast was observed as an important preliminary of the great feast held in commemoration of the death and resurrection of the same idol! And this same Lent was observed in Babylon by alternate weeping and rejoicing, just as Rome today has her poor blind subjects keep holy-weeks by alternate days of joy and sorrow.
Lent Was First Observed In Assyria And Palestine In The Month Of June.
In Egypt it was the month of May when it was kept. When it finally migrated to Britain this pagan fast was observed in April. It seems to be a most flexible fast suitable for any type of pagan idolatry. For I notice that in 1950 the Roman Lent begins in February!
Rome’s method of enveloping Babylon’s Lent and incorporating it into her ritual should he noticed. About the year 525, Rome, pursuing her usual policy of absorbing the pagan observances and in order to gain nominal adherents to the church, engineered a new religious merger. Under the shrewd management of the Abbot Dionysus the Little, the pagan Lent was established as a church observance. And so the Church, now controlled from Rome, and fast sinking into every form of corruption, added yet this evil of a “sacred fast” to her list of idolatries.
In his manipulations to fit a 40-day Lent into the calendar this same Dionysus caused the approximate date of Christ’s birth to be changed four years later than the truth. This change of calendar brought in the grossest corruption and rankest superstition in connection with the abstinence of Lent. It was only the beginning of another form of Roman evil.
An early Christian of Marseilles, writing in the fifth century, said: “It ought to be known that the observance of the 40 days’ fast had no existence so long as the primitive church remained pure.”
Rome Has Modernized And Streamlined Her Lent To Fit The Present.
And the lukewarm so-called Protestants have followed her, as is their habit. In their observance of Lent they only prove how the virus of Jesuit paganism has numbed their sense of sin. Well could our Lord say of the professing Protestants who observe Lent: “Ye do dishonor me” (John 8:49).
Perhaps it is needless to remark about the ordinary individual’s observance of Lent. It does not even deserve comment. The world’s fast is no fast at all, say nothing of a “sacred fast.” One gives up chocolate bars. Another does not eat butter. Another smokes one cigarette per day instead of ten or twenty. Still another refrains from drinking only one glass of beer or wine or whiskey per day!
So sunk in sin is man that by these Romish pagan denials of the flesh, he supposes he is placing himself in God’s favor.
Christian, can you take part in such a mockery of God as Lent, which not only brings ignominy upon the name of Christ, but helps to ruin the souls of thousands and thousands? Remember one more fact. The Rome that put Lent on our calendar is that same scarlet woman that has shed the blood of millions of the martyrs of Jesus, and has sent billions of her own slaves out into eternal night believing the LIE. Can you take Rome’s bloody hand in yours and join her in observing a pagan season she has stolen from Babylon of old?
What is a fast that brings honor to Christ Listen to Isaiah:
“Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high . . . Is not THIS the last that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? . . . Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the GLORY of the Lord shall be thy rereward” (Isa. 58:4-8).
by R.F. Becker
No, if you truly read the Bible, Lent is not Biblical.