IS LENT A NON BIBLICAL, PAGAN, INVENTION?

What is Lent?

What does it mean?

Does the Bible support the observance of Lent?

Did the apostles observe it?
Lent is a forty-day period of time that proceeds the holiday commonly called Easter. During this time, observers tend to give up something they like (such as a food, like meat or certain meals or a form of secular entertainment, like television) essentially as a form of “fasting” for the purposes of getting closer to God or for penance.

Specifically many:

…observe Lent by fasting, performing penance, giving

The word “lent” comes from a Germanic word meaning “Spring,” and refers to the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Saturday.  The ashes are made from the “blessed” palms used in the last year’s Palm Sunday celebration. The ashes are christened with Holy Water and are scented by incense.  Then the ashes are used to mark a cross on your head.  This shows that you are doing pennance; practicing marital abstinence, and fasting.  This follows a,  ”salvation by works doctrine.”  By doing these good works it is also supposedly possible, to reduce someone’s time in purgatory.

Some poor religious souls feel that they have to work their  way up to Easter Sunday, and they celebrate Lent. That is, forty days of eating no meat, and supposedly, expressing penitence for sin. In most cases this is, hypocritical, because, before Lent, people tend to pile up the sinning, since they have to do without for a while.

In fact, there are two Lenten  words. One is “Mardi Gras,” and the other is “Carnival”.  In the United  States we’re  familiar with Mardi Gras. In other parts of the world, they celebrate carnival. It is a time of unbridled sinning, of drunkenness, rioting, sexual misbehavior, getting ready for penitence in view of Easter.

Carnival comes from words that we’re familiar with. ” Carne,” means meat. “Val,”means farewell. Carnival means farewell to meat. So you have a big party before you get “spiritual” and then you hope that it’ll all turn out good in the end, and  if you’re penitent enough, maybe someday God will raise you up, and save your soul.

There is no biblical reference to this practice whatsoever, and the New Testament Church knew nothing of it.

It comes from the mystery, cult, religions of Babylon.  It is one of Satan’s strategies, to cloud the issue by substituting ritual for faith alone. Lent consists of 40 days of deprivation and has nothing to do with the Bible.  It is never advocated in the Bible, but is borrowed from the worst kind of paganism, which has nothing to do with anything Christian.

Every Sunday true believers celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord, and as believers, we should be preparing and repenting each day of the week, every week, not just Lent.  Each Sunday is the “big event.”   We should engage in soul searching and repentance not just a during a 40 day ritual, but rather, every day, all 365 of them (24 x 7) not just in a certain season.  Ephesians 4: 1- 4 gives us a good idea of the believers daily walk, and it certainly is not seasonal.

” Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,  with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love,  being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling;  one Lord, one faith, one baptism,   6  one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:1-4