We see christians all over the world starting their season of preparation for the pagan easter celebration with ash Wednesday and lent, and most christians who don’t celebrate those things merely think it’s a difference of opinion or worship style, but that they are all worshiping the same god.
Actually, they’re right. It’s all part of worship of the same god; it’s just not the God of the scriptures.
Ash Wednesday is actually a pagan Norse ritual in which an ash cross is placed on the forehead in tribute to the pagan god Odin, which is where the word “Wednesday” comes from (Odin’s day). The Odin’s day cross above the brow is a pagan practice to solicit protection from the god Odin.
The day also marks the beginning of “lent,” which is a pagan observance that is actually mentioned in scripture. In Ezekiel 8, we see women in the temple “weeping for Tammuz,” which is the origin of lent. The observance was a 40-day period of weeping for the pagan god Tammuz, who was the son of Nimrod (Baal) and Semiramis (Ishtar).
As the pagan legend goes, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar, and some believed he rose again on the pagan ritual called “easter” (ishtar). His death by a boar is why ham is traditionally eaten on easter. Semiramis ordered the 40 days of weeping, which is the modern “lent.”
We also see the pagan easter observance in Ezekiel 8 where the priests were worshiping the sun toward the east, which is the sunrise service that is associated with easter. As a side note, Messiah rose again during the night on the Feast of Firstfruits, not in the morning—so, the sunrise service has nothing whatsoever to do with Him. It is pagan to the core. Also, to find out what happened to those people who had entered into the false worship in Ezekiel 8, just read Ezekiel 9 (spoiler alert: Yah ordered that they be killed).
It was christianity’s syncretism with paganism that is the source of all the holydays on the christian calendar (christ-mass, easter/ishtar, SUNday assembling, etc.). Rather than honoring the ordained Sabbaths of Yah, the inventors of christianity had such bitter hatred for the physical Jews (to whom Yah first gave His Sabbaths) that they rejected those foundations of the true faith, and adopted the pagan rituals with which they were already familiar, because they were, ultimately, just pagans and idol worshipers.
They gave their messiah a new name (IESOUS, which was also invented because of hatred for the Jews) and wrapped it with their pagan holydays as part of the genesis of their new religion called “christianity.” So, the teaching of a Friday crucifixion and Sunday-at-dawn resurrection are a fairytale crafted from pagan worship.
Messiah Yahoshua was crucified on Passover, which was on the fourth day of the week that year (what we call Wednesday), and He rose again after sundown following the weekly Sabbath. The first day of the week following the weekly Sabbath that follows Passover is the Feast of Firstfruits, which is the first day of the barley harvest.
We know that He rose again during the night because the women who walked to the tomb following the Sabbath did so while it was still dark—but He was already gone when they got there. The Jewish days were calculated from sundown to sundown, so when the sun went down at the end of the Sabbath, it became “the first day of the week.”
So, when we see christians with ash crosses on their foreheads, we should not conflate that practice with worship of the one true Elohim of scripture, for it is the worship of all things pagan in christianity. When folks speak of “giving things up for lent,” we should understand that they are not partaking in anything to do with Messiah Yahoshua’s Gospel, but a pagan counterfeit of it.
And, when they celebrate easter, they are not memorializing Messiah’s resurrection, but the pagan myths tied to Tammuz and his parents Nimrod (Baal) and Semiramis (Ishtar).
Truth is not determined by what we think about it “in our hearts,” but by the Almighty. We cannot use what is pagan in worship of Him, and think that He’s moved by false worship, simply because of what we claim is “in our hearts” (Deuteronomy 12:28-32, Jeremiah 17:9).
The Israelites crafted a golden calf while they were waiting to receive the physical covenant, and they tried to declare that they were worshiping Yah with it, as Aaron said, after he had constructed an altar to the golden calf, “Tomorrow is a feast to Yah” (a feast that was not ordained by Yah).
We see with that false worship exactly what christianity did when it rejected the true ordained days of the Father, and exchanged them for pagan holydays.
So, no, we don’t all worship the same god. The “few” that Messiah Yahoshua spoke of (Matthew 7:14, Luke 13:24) worship Yah in spirit and in TRUTH (because they have the covenant, which is the eternal seal of the Holy Spirit), but the christian world worships false gods of its own making. They are not all the same God.
For more information: Why I Am No Longer a Christian