The word Lent comes from a Germanic
root meaning Spring but is more often associated with the 40 days from Ash
Wednesday to Easter Saturday. It originated in the Babylonian pagan religion,
but was folded into Christianity when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as
its official religion.
Here’s how it began. According to
tradition Semeramis, the wife of Nimrod the King of Babylon, claimed she had
been supernaturally impregnated by the Sun god and gave birth to Tammuz. One
day while hunting, Tamuz was killed by a wild boar. Semeramis mourned for 40
days, at the end of which Tammuz was supposedly brought back from the dead. She
proclaimed herself Queen of Heaven, founded a celibate priesthood to worship
her son and declared its chief priest infallible, and memorialized her mourning
in an annual 40 day period of denial. It was the world’s first counterfeit of
the Biblical story of the Redeemer and grew into a mother-child cult that was
duplicated in almost every pagan mythology.
If you feel the Lord is leading you
into a 40 day period of self-deprivation to draw nearer to Him, more power to
you. But if you’re just observing a tradition of man’s religion it won’t serve
any purpose except to prove that you can go without something for 40 days. Ask the Lord for guidance in this and
follow the leading of His Holy Spirit.
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