Last time we looked at how the emerging religious ethos that is accompanying and helping define this emerging technology. This is the definition of the New Order that is coming into being. The Scripture is clear on the matter. There is coming a time when the world will dance to the tune of Antichrist, as the political, economic and religious spheres are totally controlled. But while we’ve glanced at these first shoots of this new religious phenomenon, it seems it would be helpful to look at where we’ve come from. After all, it is all part of the same age-old rebellion.
THE REBELLION IS BORN
“And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Thessalonians 2:11-12)
Now this begins with a bit of an ancient history lesson. If you can hang with it, it will reveal some very interesting ties that go a long way toward connecting all of history. To understand it all we must know this. The flowering of the END TIMES REBELLION is but the final expression of a WAR AGAINST GOD that was born in the Garden and – by tradition – took its current form in the days of Nimrod, the Tower of Babel and the founding of Babylon. That’s how the story of the founding of the false religions is generally presented. Its antecedents however may be a bit more complicated. (We’ll look at that in due time.) In its modern form it gets all tangled up with the New Age Religion, – the teachings of Universalism; which tells us that all ways lead to God, – and the creeping apostasy in the churches that increasingly denies the authority of God’s Word expressed in the Scriptures and replaces God-given commands with human speculations on the meaning and validity of Scripture.
In order to understand the coming End Times religion of the Antichrist, we must first get a handle on the world’s on-going attempt to establish a human-generated religion. After all Alice Bailey, prophetess of the New Age, clearly teaches that the coming of the New Age ‘Christ’ (Antichrist), will be followed by the “definite restoration of the Mysteries” that age-old religion founded near the dawn of civilization itself.[i] You see, it’s all related. Man’s End Times rebellion has its roots in all those ancient forms of Satanic worship that have permeated societies from Egypt and Babylon to the present.
Now legend would have it that the history of man-made religion can be traced back to a man named Nimrod. In the Bible, he first shows up in Genesis 10:8-9, where we are told “Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD.” We can actually trace it back even farther. Nimrod was the great grandson of Noah through Noah’s grandson Ham.[ii] He built several cities in Babylonia, (including Babylon), and also founded more cities in Assyria, including Nineveh. His existence is testified to by the fact that besides the Bible he shows up in the ancient literature of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites; being the central figure in the Epic of Gilgamesh. He is even written of by the Jewish-Roman historian, Flavius Josephus.[iii] Josephus wrote: “Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. … He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if He should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!”[iv]
Just who was this man? Let’s start with the fact that Nimrod was a real figure. His existence his well attested to by the evidence revealed through the study of history and archaeology. Christopher Eames, writing for The Trumpet, gives us some examples. “According to the Sumerian King List, Enmerkar built the city of Uruk. The Bible states that Nimrod founded the city of Erech.” He also tells us that Sumerian legends, emerging in about 2100BC talk of how the Sumerian version of Nimrod, named Enmerkar, gets into a “back-and-forth dialogue” with another ruler regarding the providing of “tribute” a form of taxation, for the building of a tower. During the course of the exchange, “Enmerkar threatens that if the tribute does not come from the lord of Aratta, he will wreak havoc on the land of Aratta ‘like the devastation which swept destructively’ (possibly a reference to the Flood).” The ancient Sumerian epic then goes on to reference to the wish to establish a single language, drawing a clear parallel to the Biblical account in which God says: “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11:7) The Sumerian epic states: “Once … the whole universe, the people in unison, spoke to Enlil in one tongue. … Then Enki, the lord of abundance … changed the speech in their mouths, brought contention into it, into the speech of man that had been one.”[v] A telling reference that tends to confirm the Biblical account using an ancient historical source.
Now the word Nimrod, may not be a name at all but rather an appellation derived from his chief characteristic. The root word in the ancient Hebrew means “rebel”, and rebel he was. Extra-Biblical literature tells us that he was born of the mixed parentage of ‘the gods’ and men. Genesis 6 tells us of these unnatural unions that produced “giants on the earth in those days, [before the flood] and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4) Many scholars believe that these “sons of God” refer to nothing less than the Fallen Angels who followed Lucifer when he rebelled against God. More on that later. In addition, get this, there is a Masonic connection. The Masons can trace their roots to the globe’s first master builder. Mackey’s History of Freemasonry names “Nimrod as one of the founders of Masonry.”[vi]
According to what we can know, Nimrod became the founder of empires, (Babylon & Nineveh), the builder of the tower of Babel, (an open act of rebellion against God), and the dictator of the known world. His was an empire that exercised both civil and religious control. Now here we get into some dicey territory, with legend leading in one direction and verifiable fact in another. According to those legends, and the work of a 19th century Scottish preacher, Alexander Hislop, Nimrod introduced the black arts including “astrology, occultism and devil worship.” He married a beautiful woman named Semiramis, and together they established a religion based on the worship of themselves, – and eventually their son. It was a religion full of mystery and ceremony and secret sacred knowledge. As a unifying centerpiece, he began to build a tower that was to house an astrological / astronomical observatory at its’ peak. And so the story goes, that when God scattered the people after their attempt to build the Tower of Babel, they took aspects of their Babylonian Mystery Religion with them to the far ends of the earth.[vii] Now, more recent scholarship has brought into question many of the details of the Semiramis account. The real Queen Semiramis of Assyria lived many centuries after Nimrod’s time.[viii] Nonetheless, a religious tradition did emerge that focused on goddess worship. Characteristics included a veneration of Semiramis – or her equivalents in other cultures – as the “mother of god.” There also grew up the practice of mother-son worship as well as recognition of this figure as a “fertility goddess.” One author tells us: “When Caesar invaded Britain, he discovered the Druid priests worshiping the “mother of god” as Virgo-Patitura. In Egypt, as the “queen of heaven” she was the greatest and most worshiped of all the divinities. During Egyptian bondage, the Israelites repeatedly departed from the one true invisible Elohim and worshiped the pagan mother. When the Israelites fell into apostasy under King Solomon, they worshiped this mother goddess as Ashtaroth (Asherah), a name by which the pagan Babylonian goddess was known to the Israelites”[ix]
Nimrod’s followers were scattered throughout the earth. And what they took with them was a strange amalgam of both the dimly remembered “revelations of God” as well as the lies of the Devil & the Nimrod worshiping cultic ideas that originated in Babylon. This system is known as ‘The Babylonian Mystery Religion.’”[x] As we will see later, this manifested itself in some very interesting ways.
Whatever the exact portions of legend and historical accuracy in this emerging religious paradigm, the fact is that the ideas of the Nimrod / Semiramis cult was being transferred from culture to culture with only the names changing. In Israel and the surrounding nations such as Phoenicia, Syria and Caanan; – the Babylonian god named Bel became the more well known and Biblically condemned Baal. (It is from here that we get Satan’s appellation Beelzebub, or Lord of the Flies.)[xi]
You see, the people apparently bought into this whole notion of worshipping Nimrod, Semiramis and her son, Tammuz. Banking on the remembered promises of God later recorded in Genesis 3:15; – that salvation for the human race would come from ‘the seed of the woman’; – the Enemy presented the son of Semiramis as the fulfillment of that prophecy. So there developed what you might call a ‘shadow religion’ or imitation of God’s real plan, – as best they could. Semiramis’ son, Tammuz would play the role of the world’s savior. Semiramis, desired is presented as the ‘mother of this savior’. She became the only way to God and the “Queen of Heaven.”[xii] [xiii] Through their contacts with other cultures in the region, even the Hebrews picked up the worship of this “Queen of Heaven”. Jeremiah 7:18 quotes God saying: “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger.” Chapter 44 of Jeremiah details how the Israelites persisted in their rebellion by continuing this pagan worship. They subsequently lost the favor and protection of God for a season on account of this sin.
However, it was not just the Israelites that were involved in this abomination. Statues began appearing all around the world depicting the likeness of the Queen of Heaven, all in the form of a mother holding an infant child. The worship of mother and child spread throughout the ancient world, taking on local names. In Egypt, mother and son were Isis and Horus or Osiris. In parts of India it was Devka and Krishna. The Greeks called the mother figure Ceres or Irene or Aphrodite and Eros. Rome gave us Venus. Even Germany and Scandinavia had their versions. The cult spread as far as Japan and China where the mother Shing Moo was portrayed holding her child with a halo of light around her.[xiv] [Now where have I seen that before?]
What’s even more interesting is the whole look of the thing. This Mystery Religion introduced practices that while innovative at the time, were adapted successively by the various adopting cultures. One of the central feasts of this religious system was based on the ‘resurrection’ of Semiramis’ son, Tammuz. The story goes that he was killed by a wild boar and after 40 days raised from the dead. Temple virgins would fast those 40 days each year, in mourning over the dead son. After the days of fasting came the feast of Ishtar, (from whence we get our name Easter), which is just another name for Semiramis. During that Feast of Ishtar, colored eggs serving as a sign of fertility became part of the celebration. Son and mother were both being honored: He as savior and she as Co-Mediatrix between God and man.[xv]
Summarized below are some of the practices and characteristics of this Mystery Religion:
- The son, Tammuz was the ‘savior of the world’.
- Semiramis was the “Queen of Heaven”.
- Salvation came by following certain ceremonial rituals or sacraments.[xvi]
- A period of purging followed death, ‘cleaning’ one of his remaining sins. Instead of entering paradise, the dead person would at first reside in an intermediate place where they awaited the release of their soul. The idea dates back to at least the time of Plato, who adapted the idea into his philosophical system.[xvii]
In some form or another, this strange hybrid religion manifested itself throughout the ancient world. It was headed by a supreme High Priest who took the title Pontifex Maximus, (bridge maker), – and who served as the gate or bridge between life on earth and the afterlife. This Pontiff remained in Babylon, – a kind of head of the amalgamated pagan religions, – through the life of the Babylonian and Medo-Persian Empires when the seat of power moved to Pergamos, in present day Turkey. It remained there officially until 133 BC when the leadership of this “Babylonian Priesthood” moved to Rome. Pergamos, however remained a hotbed of Satanic / pagan activity. Jesus Himself acknowledged this fact in his letter to the Church at Pergamos found in Revelation 2. In Revelation 2:13, He instructs John to write “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is,” and later refers to the city as “where Satan dwells.”
By 63 BC the civil and religious power had merged once again, – just as in the days of Nimrod. It was in that year that Julius Caesar was made Supreme Pontiff of the Babylonian Order. From that point forward that religious office became the purview of the line of Roman Caesars until AD 376, when the Emperor Gratian refused it as an improper office to be held by a Christian. Two years later, Damus, the Bishop of the Church at Rome was prevailed upon to accept the office. Thus, in the words of Clarence Larkin, author of Dispensational Truth: “So in AD 378, the Head of the ‘Babylonian Order’ became the Ruler of the ‘Roman Church.’”[xviii] Thus was laid the foundation for the infiltration of the Church and the Great Apostasy of the Last Days.
[i] Alice Bailey, The Externalization of the Hierarchy, 1957, pg 570
[ii] Dr David P Livingston, Nirmod, Associates for Bible Research
[iii] See Flavius Josephus, Antiquities 1:4:2
[iv] Christopher Eames, NIMROD: Found?, Watch Jerusalem, The Trumpet, September 14, 2018
[v] Christopher Eames, NIMROD: Found?, Watch Jerusalem, The Trumpet, September 14, 2018
[vi] Albert Mackey, History of Freemasonry, pg 601
[vii] Babylon Mystery Religion, Petersburg Gospel Center
[viii] Joshua J Mark, Semiramis, Ancient History Encyclopedia, August 18, 2014
[ix] The Worship of Semiramis, Alethia, monitored September 9, 2019
[x] Nimrod, Mars and the Marduk Connection, Bryce Self, (onesimus@ix.netcom.com), Edited November 1985 by Lambert Dolphin
[xi] Nimrod, Mars and the Marduk Connection, Bryce Self, (onesimus@ix.netcom.com) Edited November 1985 by Lambert Dolphin
[xii] Woodrow Kroll, from a sermon entitled The History of False Revelation,
Back to the Bible, broadcast on WDCX , Buffalo, NY, 2006
[xiii] Babylon Mystery Religion, Petersburg Gospel Center
[xiv] This admission is presented by an official website of the Bahai Faith, arguing in short that all paths to God are ultimately the same. The Bahai’s Under the Provisions of the Covenant. The article entitled : Worship of Semiramis.
[xv] Babylon Mystery Religion, Petersburg Gospel Center
[xvi] Woodrow Kroll, from a sermon entitled The History of False Revelation, Back to the Bible, broadcast on WDCX , Buffalo, NY, 2006
[xvii] Craig Truglia, The Pagan Origins of Purgatory, Orthodox Christian Theology, December 10, 2016
[xviii] Clarence Larkin, Dispensational Truth, pg 140. I was led to this reference by Babylon Mystery Religion, Petersburg Gospel Center
Leave a Reply