911:The Birth of Idolatry

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Exodus 20:4 "Thou shalt not make unto thee "ANY" graven image, or likeness of ANY THING that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:thou shalt "NOT" bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I am a jealous GOD,visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me,and keep my commandments."

Jeremiah 10:3-5 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

Romans 1:21-25 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

NIMROD AND BABYLON: THE BIRTH OF IDOLATRY

Intro

Genesis 10:8-12; Genesis 3:15; Genesis 11

After the flood Noah and his family repopulated the earth. Because the deluge did not eradicate sin, man’s sinful nature ran wild once again. At the same time, territories were overrun with wild beasts, turning against the inhabitants of the land. The battle of man against beast was hot and fearful, but in the midst of it, Nimrod, son of Cush, appeared as the 'knight in shining armor'. A "mighty hunter," Nimrod delivered the people from the fear of beasts. Hungry for power, though, he also emancipated man from the LORD.

Until Nimrod, mankind was governed by the patriarchal system where the heads of families heard from God and guided their individual tribes. Nimrod, more accurately a "mighty hunter against the LORD," usurped patriarchal rule, and crowned himself the first human king in all of history. Now man ruled instead of God.

According to Jewish legend, Nimrod feared the prophecy that a child was to be born who would turn the people back to God. In an effort to preserve his kingdom, he slew 70,000 babies in hopes of killing the would-be savior. The story goes that Abram of Ur was the prophetic baby, the father of Israel from whom the messiah would come.

Although Nimrod’s motive was to keep the promised child from ruling, he used the fear of the wild beasts as a pretense for uniting the people, and established the kingdom of Babel. Presenting himself as savior, Nimrod convinced the inhabitants to look to him as the lord of the earth instead of the true God. Thus, the establishment of the kingdom was the beginning of the Babylon we read about in the Bible. Historically and symbolically, Babylon is any organized system that replaces God’s rule with human or demonic rule.

Nimrod’s greed and ambition led him to sell himself to demonic powers, and he became the high priest of devil worship. During this time Nimrod married the beautiful and cunning, but notoriously immoral, Semiramis. Together they ruled the world.

Plans were made for a grand tower, a massive type of building called a ziggurat, which consisted of a series of terraced platforms, each smaller than the one below it, and all together reaching a great height. At the top would be a shrine to Bel, whom they worshiped as 'the Most High god', the god of the sun and of fire; other 'sky gods' would also be included. Therefore, Genesis 11:4, in speaking of "a tower and his top with the heavens (literal translation)," is not referring to the height of the tower, but instead to the inscriptions of the stars on the walls of the shrine. The constellations were there, but with outlines of the 'sky gods' on them in order to cause people to associate the 'pictures in the sky' that they had known about from childhood, with the images Nimrod wanted them to worship. This is indicative of the occult deception which reigned in Babylon.

The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger reveals the true meaning of what we call 'the signs of the zodiac'. They were meant to be pictures in the sky representing God’s promise of a coming Deliverer, who, being the Seed of the Woman, would bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). For this purpose, God gave the stars as "lights . . . for signs and for seasons" (Gen. 1:14 signs, from Hebrew oth means 'evidence'; seasons from Hebrew moed means 'appointed time'). The sky pictures were reminders meant to serve as evidence that all was under God’s divine control, and at His appointed time the events promised (the coming Deliverer, etc.) would happen.

God decided that the perversion of the celestial witness was an attempt to extinguish all hope in man for redemption -- this He would not allow. "This they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do" (Gen. 11:6) indicates that evil was about to be unleashed that would be "unrestrained." God defeated all of their designs by confusing their one language into many and scattering the people across the earth; when they could not communicate, their knowledge became fragmented. Various elements of stargazing by the civilizations that followed (Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, etc,) can be traced back to their common beginnings in Babylon. The 'divine astrology' -- God’s witness in the heavens -- was still intact, while pagan astrology was broken into corrupt pieces, a mockery of the former danger of the tower that had its "top with the heavens."

Meanwhile, in the height of his power, Nimrod died. It was a violent death, shrouded in mystery. Semiramis, pregnant from an adulterous relationship and desperate to keep her position, devised a scheme. Taking advantage of the prophecy written in the sky with which the remaining inhabitants of Babylon were familiar, Semiramis covered up the details of Nimrod’s death and publicly proclaimed that:

• Nimrod’s death was voluntary and self-sacrificial for the benefit of the world.
• Nimrod would rise again by mystical means.
• She was a virgin.
• Nimrod "visited her in a flash of light and the baby was the reincarnated Nimrod".
• Nimrod’s rising in the form of her son was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy (Gen. 3:15).

The baby, named Tammuz, was taught the lie and worshiped as god. Semiramis soon claimed that Nimrod had become the "sun god," and was worshiped as such. Not surprisingly, Semiramis was also worshiped as a goddess -- her original goal finally achieved. Thus, the birth of the mystery religion of Babylon: pagan worship of the bogus virgin and child.

Three key figures are prominent in every idolatrous system -- Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz:

• a famous, but sinful king dies or is cut off;
• an immoral queen encourages false worship, bears a child, and is elevated to the status of god;
• a child, worshiped as god, but serving as husband, lover, or son of the mother.

From Babylon the worship of mother/son spread across the whole earth. In Egypt there is Isis and Horus; in India, Isi and Iward; in Asia, Cybele and Deorius; in ancient Rome, Fortuna and Jupiter; and in Greece, Ceres/Irene and Plutus. The demonic counterfeit was long in place before the real mother and child walked the earth -- Mary and Jesus, the Christ.

REFERENCES:

Adam's Kin, by Ruth Beechick Astrology, the Ancient Conspiracy, by Ben Adam Devil Take the Youngest, by Winkie Pratney The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop

Also see:

• Myth of Osiris and Isis
• Mesopotamian mythology
• Cosmology
• Comparative religion

Life-death-rebirth deity

Intro

Source and [1]

Enough has been said thus far to permit comment on one of the major faults of the above-mentioned liberal scholars. I refer to the frequency with which their writings evidence a careless, even sloppy use of language. One frequently encounters scholars who first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think they have discovered. One can go a long way toward "proving" early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology. J. Godwin does this in his book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, which describes the criobolium (see footnote 6) as a "blood baptism" in which the initiate is "washed in the blood of the lamb."[10] While uninformed readers might be stunned by this remarkable similarity to Christianity (see Rev. 7:14), knowledgeable readers will see such a claim as the reflection of a strong, negative bias against Christianity.

Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged likenesses between baptism and the Lord's Supper and similar "sacraments" in certain mystery cults. Attempts to find analogies between the resurrection of Christ and the alleged "resurrections" of the mystery deities involve massive amounts of oversimplification and inattention to detail.

Pagan Rituals and the Christian Sacraments

The mere fact that Christianity has a sacred meal and a washing of the body is supposed to prove that it borrowed these ceremonies from similar meals and washings in the pagan cults. By themselves, of course, such outward similarities prove nothing. After all, religious ceremonies can assume only a limited number of forms, and they will naturally relate to important or common aspects of human life. The more important question is the meaning of the pagan practices. Ceremonial washings that antedate the New Testament have a different meaning from New Testament baptism, while pagan washings after A.D. 100 come too late to influence the New Testament and, indeed, might themselves have been influenced by Christianity.[11] Sacred meals in the pre-Christian Greek mysteries fail to prove anything since the chronology is all wrong. The Greek ceremonies that are supposed to have influenced first-century Christians had long since disappeared by the time we get to Jesus and Paul. Sacred meals in such post-Christian mysteries as Mithraism come too late.

Unlike the initiation rites of the mystery cults, Christian baptism looks back to what a real, historical person -- Jesus Christ -- did in history. Advocates of the mystery cults believed their "sacraments" had the power to give the individual the benefits of immortality in a mechanical or magical way, without his or her undergoing any moral or spiritual transformation. This certainly was not Paul's view, either of salvation or of the operation of the Christian sacraments. In contrast with pagan initiation ceremonies, Christian baptism is not a mechanical or magical ceremony. It is clear that the sources of Christian baptism are not to be found either in the taurobolium (which is post first-century anyway) or in the washings of the pagan mysteries. Its sources lie rather in the washings of purification found in the Old Testament and in the Jewish practice of baptizing proselytes, the latter being the most likely source for the baptistic practices of John the Baptist.

Of all the mystery cults, only Mithraism had anything that resembled the Lord's Supper. A piece of bread and a cup of water were placed before initiates while the priest of Mithra spoke some ceremonial words. But the late introduction of this ritual precludes its having any influence upon first-century Christianity.

Claims that the Lord's Supper was derived from pagan sacred meals are grounded in exaggerations and oversimplifications. The supposed parallels and analogies break down completely.[12] Any quest for the historical antecedents of the Lord's Supper is more likely to succeed if it stays closer to the Jewish foundations of the Christian faith than if it wanders off into the practices of the pagan cults. The Lord's Supper looked back to a real, historical person and to something He did in history. The occasion for Jesus' introduction of the Christian Lord's Supper was the Jewish Passover feast. Attempts to find pagan sources for baptism and the Lord's Supper must be judged to fail.

The Death of the Mystery Gods and the Death of Jesus

The best way to evaluate the alleged dependence of early Christian beliefs about Christ's death and resurrection on the pagan myths of a dying and rising savior-god is to examine carefully the supposed parallels. The death of Jesus differs from the deaths of the pagan gods in at least six ways:

1. None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to Christianity.[13]
2. Only Jesus died for sin. As Gunter Wagner observes, to none of the pagan gods "has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.)."[14]
3. Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated deaths and resuscitations depict the annual cycle of nature.
4. Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The death of the mystery god appears in a mythical drama with no historical ties; its continued rehearsal celebrates the recurring death and rebirth of nature. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its proclamation of Jesus' death and resurrection was grounded in an actual historical event makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, nonhistorical stories of the pagan cults.[15]
5. Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like this appears even implicitly in the mysteries.
6. And finally, Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph. Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its report of Jesus' death is a message of triumph. Even as Jesus was experiencing the pain and humiliation of the cross, He was the victor. The New Testament's mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of the mystery religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the terrible fate that overtook their gods.[16]

The Risen Christ and the "Rising Savior-Gods"

Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. One can speak of a "resurrection" in the stories of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis only in the most extended of senses.[17] For example, after Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris's dismembered body, Osiris became "Lord of the Underworld." This is a poor substitute for a resurrection like that of Jesus Christ. And, no claim can be made that Mithras was a dying and rising god. The tide of scholarly opinion has turned dramatically against attempts to make early Christianity dependent on the so-called dying and rising gods of Hellenistic paganism.[18] Any unbiased examination of the evidence shows that such claims must be rejected.

Christian Rebirth and Cultic Initiation Rites

Liberal writings on the subject are full of sweeping generalizations to the effect that early Christianity borrowed its notion of rebirth from the pagan mysteries.[19] But the evidence makes it clear that there was no pre-Christian doctrine of rebirth for the Christians to borrow. There are actually very few references to the notion of rebirth in the evidence that has survived, and even these are either very late or very ambiguous. They provide no help in settling the question of the source of the New Testament use of the concept. The claim that pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is read back into earlier rites, which are then interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate's "new birth." The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used "rebirth" as a technical term lacks support from even one single text. ,br> Most contemporary scholars maintain that the mystery use of the concept of rebirth (testified to only in evidence dated after A.D. 300) differs so significantly from its New Testament usage that any possibility of a close link is ruled out. The most that such scholars are willing to concede is the possibility that some Christians borrowed the metaphor or imagery from the common speech of the time and recast it to fit their distinctive theological beliefs. So even if the metaphor of rebirth was Hellenistic, its content within Christianity was unique.[20]

Seven Arguments against Christian dependence on the Mysteries

I conclude by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts to show that first-century Christianity borrowed essential beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions.

1. Arguments offered to "prove" a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.
2. Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a "Last Supper" in Mithraism or a "baptism" in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word "savior" with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.
3. The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.
4. Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).
5. Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. "A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ....Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone."[21] This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.
6. Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real historical events, as Paul regarded Christ's death and resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan mystery religion.
7. What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian influence on the pagan systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, "It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction."[22] It should not be surprising that leaders of cults that were being successfully challenged by Christianity should do something to counter the challenge. What better way to do this than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter the growing influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly apparent in measures instituted by Julian the Apostate, who was the Roman emperor from A.D. 361 to 363.

Final Word

Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse quickly once a full account of the information is available. It is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad scholarship. Indeed, this conclusion may be too generous. According to one writer, a more accurate account of these bad arguments would describe them as "prejudiced irresponsibility."[23] But in order to become completely informed on these matters, wise readers will work through material cited in the brief bibliography.

Links

• [2]

Astrotheology

• Aren’t there some striking parallels between the Jesus and Sun/Zodiac stories? [3]

Videos

• Ecumenical Idolatry and Delusion