The Babylonian Mystery Religions

RV12-01

Satan's seat of religious authority originally was based in Babylon until that empire fell to the Medo-Persian power. Satan's Babylonian religious system then moved its headquarters to Pergamum, where it was in John's day, though it had reached out like an octopus with its tentacles to cover the whole known earth. The church at Pergamum began to find accommodation with Satan's Babylonian paganism to be an easy thing. They found that instead of standing apart from paganism, they could live with it. They could play ball with it. So they could find that the pressure was taken off of them.

However, Pergamum represents an era in church history when the Roman government made Christianity the state religion. This began, as we have found, when Constantine became emperor of Rome in the year 312 A.D. Then, gradually, over a period of centuries until about 600 A.D., the marriage of the Babylonian mystery religion and Christianity was brought about, and finally completed. The Roman Catholic Church, as we know it today, simply absorbed ancient pagan beliefs and practices and clothed them with Christian meanings. But the resulting mutant was under divine wrath and completely rejected by God who loathes the whole system. God hates what Satan invented in Babylon. God loathes it. Anything that is contaminated by that system, you may be sure that God also hates and that God loathes equally.

The Roman Catholic System

We pointed out that basic knowledge about God was obviously available to mankind. After the flood, they knew a great deal about God. They knew a great deal of doctrine, even though they did not have recorded Scriptures at the time. They had a great deal of information about God. The true worship was in the form of theistic creationism. But in a sense, this was again contaminated by evolutionary humanism. Satan again had been able to proceed to oppose the kingdom and the authority of God on earth with the establishment of the kingdom of man. So Satan created a false religion which reached its epitome in the Tower of Babel in Babylon under its original creator, Nimrod. Satan's modus operandi was to create a religious system which incorporated what man already knew about God, but to convert it into a perverted form. So because man knew that God was a Trinity, Satan came up with a religious system that also had a trinity, but a perverted trinity. Whatever mankind knew about God, Satan incorporated into his evolutionary humanism system of religion, and then he perverted it.

Satan's Religious System

Now what he was doing was awaiting the day when Christianity could simply be absorbed into his system. If that was to be done, he had to have a system which point-for-point ran parallel to what God was doing. Well, that day came in the era when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and which is represented by this church in Pergamum, and the letter that was written to it. The Pergamum church lived under the specific kinds of conditions which prefigured the gradual amalgamation of biblical Christianity with the Babylonian mystery religion.

This religion centered upon the deification of a child. The ancient world, of course, knew very well the promise of Genesis 3:15, that the deliverer who would come would come in such a way that He would bruise the serpent's head a lethal fatal blow, but that the serpent, in turn, would bruise His heel. This Savior was referred to in Babylon by the title Zero-ashta. We have already indicated to you that "zero" means "seed" and "ashta" means woman, so that you have the "seed of the woman." This was symbolized by a circle in the Babylonian mystery cult, because that stood for the seed, on the one hand, but it also stood for the supreme god of the Babylonian system, which was the sun up in the sky. That sun was represented as the source of all life-giving substance. It smiled benignly upon mankind, and everything was sustained by this very gracious object in the sky. It was represented by the circle, which also represented the seed, which was equal to the savior, which had been promised in Genesis 3:15.

Satan knew all of this, and he brought all this together. This was all tied together in the worship of the sun-god. The ancient world understood that the bruising of the heel, that Genesis 3:15 speaks of, meant death to this seed. They understood that it would also mean a mortal wound to the serpent which represented the god of evil. The basic biblical revelation about the bruising of Satan's head, interestingly enough, is found in all the mythologies of the world. Wherever the archaeologists and the sociologists have gone and studied the remains of ancient cultures, they have found again and again and again the story about a deliverer coming into the world who would bruise the head of the serpent, but who in turn himself would be bruised, and the consequence would be death. This serpent-destroying God would suffer, and that suffering would end in His death.

Achilles

In time, the system of Nimrod became so loathsome; so degraded; and, so obscene that the forces of righteousness rose up (ancient writers record for us), and they killed Nimrod. They tried him; they passed judgment upon him; and, they executed him. The seriousness of what he had done was stressed by the fact that they cut him up in pieces and sent a piece of him to major cities. That was the custom in ancient days for dealing with an evil person, and for publicly proclaiming that his evil would not be condoned and would not be tolerated in others.

The death of Nimrod, the apostate, was seen as the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 by his wife, Semiramis. Semiramis had enjoyed a very popular position because of the honor given to her husband Nimrod. When he was killed, she was going to lose it all, or she had to take charge and rearrange things, and see what she could salvage out of it. And that's exactly what she did. So the idea was promoted that Nimrod's death was not a judgment, but was voluntary, and that it was done as per the promise that everybody knew that somebody was going to die to deliver the world from sin, and that's why he did it. The death of Nimrod was probably engineered by Noah's son, Shem, who mounted a revival toward God.

Shem lived 500-some years after the flood, and he was alive at the time that Nimrod was running high, wide, and handsome, developing his counter religion. It's probable that Shem was the one who engineered this. But the Babylonian religious system, after the death of Nimrod, was now under public disfavor. Consequently, it had to go underground, and thus it became a secret society, and thus the word "mystery." And that's why the Bible speaks of a mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots – harlots in terms of a false religious system. Spiritual adultery in the Scripture is portrayed as being a perversion of true doctrine.

So this system went underground, and it incorporated magic, rituals, and ceremony. The purpose of this, of course, was to excite the senses, and to captivate the emotions of the devotees in the feeling that they were in the presence of a miracle – they were experiencing a miracle. This is the very same kind of thing that motivates the charismatics today – the obsession with the miraculous to give them the confidence that they're in touch with God. This is an old device. Semiramis, Nimrod's widow, simply proceeded to set up a system that incorporated this kind of miraculous contact. Because it was a mystery cult, its beliefs and its practices were revealed only to insiders – those who were going to become a part of it.

At some point in their initiation, they had a way of causing an image of Nimrod to appear, which would stir the emotions that somehow, after all, Nimrod was not dead, and wherever he was out there, he was speaking to them and giving them direction. This is exactly, of course, what the séance people and the spirits do today to get information from out there beyond where we are today.

This, again I tell you, is real. The mystery religion of Babylon had great power. It had great fantastic powers delivered to it by Satan through various demonic creatures. So the illusion of miracles here, of one kind and another within the cult, made it a very powerful system. Because the priest conveyed the impression that they still had contact with Nimrod, who was out there directing them, it gave the priests a very tremendous hold over the people. All the abominable practices of the Babylonian religious system was given authority, therefore, by this voice from beyond the grave of the deity of Nimrod, because that's what he had now become.

Reincarnation

Edgar Cayce

So thus was founded the mystery religious cult out of Babylon, and the center of this worship was the mother and her child, supernaturally born to her as a virgin woman. And this child and mother were then enshrined – not so much the mother, but the child was primarily the important thing. He was the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. The mother was more like a pedestal simply to hold and to display the child originally. It's not likely that, at first, Semiramis was presenting herself as a goddess, but simply the woman who had been marvelously chosen above all women to bear the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 to deliver the human race.

The ancient writers tell us that when she was portrayed in art and in sculpture, the artisans spent a great deal of time trying to convey that this was a monumentally handsome woman – just a beautiful woman. She represents the original pagan conception of the goddess of female beauty. Among the Greeks, she was called Aphrodite. Among the Romans, she was called Venus. But the names meant nothing. It was all going back to Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod, who now had reincarnated him in the form of a son.

So in time, the mother who bore the son became more adored than her son. She, in turn became an object of worship. The reason she became so adored was because her beauty represented all the expression of licentiousness within the human heart, and her system also did what her husband had done before her. It encouraged people to do just what comes naturally, and not to feel guilty at all about doing it. Nothing is sin unless you think it's sin. Consequently, the mother was very quickly not only an object of worship, but was raised to deity along with her son. She was looked upon as being sharer in the redemption which was to be provided by the bruising of the serpent's head. As a matter of fact, it even perverted the scriptural statement (which the Roman Catholic Church, incidentally, absorbed), that, "She shall bruise his head and he will bruise her heel. They had no compunction about even changing the gender. This was where the feminist movement had been born. For the first time, it presented the notion that God was a woman.

The Virgin Mother

School songs are often called my alma mater, and most people don't realize what they're talking about is what they got right back there from Babylon, and what it actually means is my virgin mother. This is an expression of the kind of thing that was permeating through the religious life in the city of Pergamum, and which was going to gradually be absorbed into Christianity.

So she was called Virgin Mother. The emphasis was upon Alma. Alma is the Hebrew word for "virgin." The emphasis was upon that part of her position. The birth of the true Savior, again, was, of course, well-known and well-predicted. A book like Isaiah tells it in so many words – that this Savior who was going to fulfill Genesis 3:15 was going to be born supernaturally of a virgin woman. All over the ancient world, interestingly enough, where there were no Scriptures possessed, and where there was no information concerning Jesus Christ, they found people worshiping the alma mater – the virgin mother. I mean they didn't have a scrap of the Bible in some out-of-the-way culture. They didn't know a thing about Jesus Christ and the claims of His virgin birth and so on. And the ancient writers record for us how they would come upon these people and discover that they had a mother and child cult. Where does it come from? It came from his majesty the devil. He had transported it throughout the cultures of the world.

This Babylonian alma mater was also called the Queen of Heaven. We've already alluded to Jeremiah 44:17-25, where the people of Israel are making offerings to the queen of heaven, and Jeremiah is calling them to task for that and saying, "Don't do that. That's a terrible thing that you do. You're back in Babylon worshiping Satan's chief goddess. When you do that, you are worshiping Satan." But they wouldn't listen. Jeremiah cried out, and he lamented, and they ignored him. They would not pay any attention to him, even though he said, "If you keep this up, God is going to tear the nation to destruction." But they would not stop. This is the queen of heaven that the Bible is talking about.

There is an inscription on an Egyptian tomb that is very interesting concerning this virgin mother. That inscription says, "I am all that has been, or that is, or that shall be. No mortal has removed my veil. The fruit which I have brought forth is the SUN." When it says, "No mortal has removed my veil," it means that she is virgin. "The fruit (the child) which I have brought forth is the SUN. It's right there on an inscription on an Egyptian tomb. What is it referring to? It is referring to alma mater, the mother goddess, the original of which was Semiramis herself.

The name among the Romans for this mother goddess was Vesta, which means "dwelling place of deity," from which they also had the practice of the vestal virgins. The virgin mother goddess was represented on occasion by a dove with an olive branch in her mouth. This is an interesting representation, because in Scripture the dove represents the Holy Spirit, and the branch represents Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So here again, Satan took what people knew of the Scriptures, and he converted it into a perverted expression. So here is the dove representing the Holy Spirit, and here's the branch (which he holds) representing Jesus Christ. The result was that there was conveyed in the Babylonian system, on the basis of something that was really true from Scripture, that this virgin mother goddess was the Holy Spirit. And the branch was the son which she bore.

So the mother of God assured her worshipers of salvation while giving them full reign to all of their evil passions. She became immensely popular in the ancient world. The nations of the world literally were drunk on the wine of her fornication, which is what the book of the Revelation means when it refers to them in just that way – that the mother of harlots has made the nations drunk on the wine of her fornication. That means that the nations of the world had been put at ease relative to their sin, so that the majority of American women today can say that they do not believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful. They now have a personal release (a personal ease) to be able to pervert that gift of God.

The visual portrayals of this mother goddess was, of course, always with the mother holding the child. And one thing that's interesting about this is that when you come to the Bible, this mother, Mary, was Jewish. Therefore, in all likelihood, she was dark-haired and brown-eyed. But there was an interesting thing about the ancient productions of this mother, even down through the Middle Ages, until a certain point where (I think Raphael was one) they began deviating from this. This mother of god (now called Mary as the mother of Jesus) was in art, regularly portrayed as being blue-eyed and blond-haired. When you look back into ancient portrayals of the goddess mother of the Babylonian cult, that's exactly the way she was described. She was yellow-haired and blue-eyed. Instead of portraying an Italian looking woman with dark hair and brown eyes, or a Jewish looking woman with olive-colored skin and brown eyes, the mother of Jesus was reflecting the Roman Catholic origin of its paganism concerning the mother of Jesus as the virgin goddess – as the virgin to be venerated.

The gods and goddesses of the Babylonian mystery religion were also identified as being sacred by the fact that they would have a circle – a place around the head. This was a common portrayal. Everywhere that you look in the ancient world, in pictures of the gods and goddesses, here is this circle. Obviously, you can see immediately that this circle represents the sun. The sun was their chief god. If they were devotees of the Babylonian mystery religion, then the sun would be the god that they were chiefly worshiping. This sun-god had been reincarnated in this child of the virgin mother goddess, and their devotion to him would be shown by the circle around the images of the people that they considered saints, and priests, and so on. In the Middle Ages, under the Roman Catholic influence, this circle (or nimbus) was simply taken and put on the pictures of Christ and the saints of the Bible. The god Apollo was presented as a child of the sun, and he is often represented in pagan portrayals with this same circle around his head. Circe, the daughter of the sun, was so portrayed by the Romans in pictures that we have from them.

Well, after 313 A.D., the emperor Constantine gradually changed the worship of the virgin mother from what it meant to Babylon to meaning something that was appropriate to Christianity, which was Mary and Jesus. This did not happen overnight. It happened as gradually it became more and more evident that it was popular now to be a Christian, and that even those who did not want to give up their old ways and their own beliefs had to gradually come into Christianity, or they could not stand in favor with the government.

The False Trinity

Mary

So from Pergamum there has flowed into Christianity this satanic religion in Babylon, resulting in the hybrid which we know as the Roman Catholic Church today. The queen which the Roman Catholics venerate, in other words, is Semiramis of Babylon. The son whom the Roman Catholics worship is the husband of Semiramis, Nimrod, reincarnated as her son. The Zero-ashta, the seed of the woman of Babylon, is not the Jesus of God, no matter how the names are shuffled around.

This mother and child were the supreme objects of worship. They were represented everywhere in the ancient world. From Babylon, this worship spread through the known world. Babylon was the heart of the system. It was a common practice after the flood for mankind to turn more and more away from God to this system which was flowing from Babylon. So Babylon, under Satan's system through Nimrod, became the cradle of all the moral and religious ideas of mankind, which we have to this very day. They're based on the worship of this mother and child cult. All heathen mythologies are derived from the Babylonian origins. Ancient historians have pointed out to us that Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, and Rome all have their religion from Babylon. That was the primary center, and in John's Day, Pergamum was the headquarters.

As we said, this child had different names. In Egypt, it was Isis and Osiris. In India, it was ... Ishvara. In Asia, it was Sybil ... In Roman, it was Fortuna and Jupiter, the boy. In Greece, it was Ceres the great mother with the babe at her breast, or Irene ... On one occasion, Jesuit missionaries visiting China, interestingly enough, were amazed to find a Madonna and child identical to what they were used to seeing back in Rome, indicating that this had come from a common source.

Madonna

Christmas

As you know, there is nothing in the Bible to indicate to us the day on which Jesus Christ was born. As a matter of fact, we don't have anything in the Bible to even help us to indicate the day on which He was born. We have a clue, like the fact that shepherds were feeding their flocks in open fields at night when Jesus was born. But if that was December 25th, that was impossible, because Palestine is too cold for sheep to be shepherded in open fields at night. Keeping sheep in open fields is not done past October. The taxing census by the Roman government would have been a great hardship had they done it in December rather than at a more suitable time of the year. Matthew 24:20 cautions the people in the tribulation to look to God and to pray that they will not have to flee from the antichrist in the wintertime (in the December time) in Palestine, because it will compound their agonies considerably.

There was no such thing as Christmas Day observance in the church, of course, for many centuries – not until the fourth century. Then the Roman Catholic Church said that December 25th was the day that Jesus Christ was born. And once more, Babylonian religion was amalgamated with Christianity. This Babylonian festival was observed long before Christianity came on the scene. It was celebrated as the birth of Tammuz, which was the Assyrian name for Semiramis's child as the queen of heaven. Tammuz's birth was celebrated on December 25th.

So Christmas Day was originally a major pagan holiday of the mysteries. You have perhaps been acquainted with the word "yuletide." We often see that on Christmas cards. This word "yuletide" is a Babylonian word. It means "infant" or "little child." Therefore, yuletide is celebration time of the infant child. We use this term today to describe the celebrating of the birth of Jesus Christ: "the yuletide season." It's a word directly out of Babylonian mystery religion relative to its god, Tammuz.

The sun was a chief object of worship in Babylon. The sun was viewed as God incarnate, and therefore the celebration of the birth of Tammuz was a celebration of the rebirth of the sun, because I need not tell you what happens to the sun come the winter solstice, the day upon which there is maximum night and minimum day. The winter solstice is a time when the sun seems to be almost gone for good. That's why the pagans, at this time of the year, would celebrate the coming of the revival of the sun-god by burning fires called "bonfires." "Bon" means good – the good fires. They were to help the sun to illuminate where it was losing its light.

But come the winter solstice, about December 25th, everything changed. The days started getting longer, and the nights started getting shorter. So it was a celebration of the revival of their god. So when December 25th comes along, whatever you are doing with the day in celebrating, in the back of your mind, you have to have the uncomfortable feeling that you have inherited a pagan day of celebrating the revival of the sun-god who, of course, represented Satan himself.

It was a day of drunken revelry among the pagans. You've heard of the wassailing bowl in England. We call it the office party in the United States. It is simply a big booze bowl. The wassailing bowl is a great thing of Christmas celebration in England. Candles are lit on the altars of Tammuz on December 25th to do him honor. Then these candles continue to burn.

The Christmas Tree

The Yule Log

What I'm trying to do is to give you the kinds of things that were in the pagan mind – the kinds of things that were normative attributes in Pergamum, and why the Bible says that was Satan's throne (his headquarters).

Mistletoe

Let me just read Psalm 85:10-11 which tell us exactly where Satan got this concept: "Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven." They have the exact picture of righteousness looking down from heaven and truth coming up from the earth, represented by the mistletoe, which represented the branch – the divine God fulfilling Genesis 3:15. The two are being brought together with a kiss of reconciliation.

The Boar's Head

The Goose

Round Wafers

There are three letters that are imprinted on this wafer. This is a fantastic tie right back to Babylon. And every Catholic opens his mouth, and gets this wafer with these three letters thrown on it. Do you know what they are? Do you know what they mean? Come back for the next session, and I'll tell you.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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