The Babylonian Mystery Religion at Pergamum

RV187-02

Furthermore, the nations of Central and South America now are rapidly forming up regional associations such as the European Community of Nations. This is a unity which is being formed at the expense of national sovereignty in order to create powerful economic and political blocs. The long-range goal of these separate groups worldwide is to take these regional power blocs, and to unite them into a larger worldwide unit for socialism. The international bankers are on a high roll. They have these nations over a barrel, and in their grip, through loans which they have given these countries, and encouraged these countries to accept, to in-debt themselves for, when these countries have no way of repaying.

The Bible makes it very clear that you are the slave of the person from whom you have borrowed money. The debtor is a slave to the creditor, and one of the wisdoms of the book of Proverbs is to stay out of that position. Don't put yourself in that position personally. This has been done to whole nations at a time. A nation like El Salvador, which was once a prosperous country, and a country of great freedom, and a quality standard of living, has been brought down to a basket-case economically, because it was talked into taking the great loans from the international bankers under the guise that then the governments could do things for people, but that always makes a nation poorer.

The insiders of the Council of Foreign Relations and David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission are devoted to destroying the economic independence of nations and the freedom of their people from government domination in order to force them into a socialist new world order. The new world order is not a world order of independent free nations. The new world order that President Bush envisions is a socialist world – a world which is united on a common financial basis, where governments are in dominant control, and the insider establishment bankers control the governments.

The Pax Universalis

Conservative candidates, naturally, in the United States who are running for political office, are being savaged viciously by the liberal media, which is controlled by these insiders in order to neutralize the warning that these men are bringing to us against globalism. These individuals are being attacked. These individuals are saying, "We should not be part of a new world order – globalism." Some even go so far as to say, "It is a non-biblical concept; it is anti-biblical; and, it's anti-Christian." Who are these men? What is it that they're promoting? They're being accused of being anti-Semitic, just as the Christians in the early Roman Empire were accused of being atheists and anti-God. The news media has had its button pushed. The disinformation, misrepresentation, and falsehoods are being focused upon men that the insider establishment of the international bankers fear, lest their message should get through. What is their message?

These are these are men who declare that the United States was founded on the biblical laws of God, and that that has been the source of America's greatness and blessing. The news media says, "We don't want people like that in political office. They think that the laws of man should be compatible with the laws of God. They fear that that some political ruler in this country will think that there is an inherent morality which comes from the Word of God which is above the opinions and the majority vote of mankind. These are men who want juries (informed by judges) have the right to take into account whether a law is just, and whether it is being properly applied in the case under trial to determine a person's guilt."

Most of you probably don't know that, do you? You have the right, if you ever sit on the jury, not only to judge the guilt or innocence of the individual, but to pass a judgment upon whether the law under which he's being tried is right or wrong. So, if somebody is being tried for opposing abortion, because it's against the law, the jury should consider what the Bible says about abortion. What they're trying to do now is to make opposition to abortion not a civil misdemeanor, but a criminal act. That puts it in a whole different category. What are you going to do as a Christian, when you're on a jury, and you are called upon to condemn a person because they stood in the way opposing abortion, and even sounding off when it comes time that you can't even talk about it publicly? Is that a law under which you should condemn a person?

Juries are supposed to be told that by judges, but judges don't want juries to take that into account. These are men who want to reduce the pay of public officials and all their perks. They want to bring down the check-writers of Congress that you've been hearing about – men who have written themselves loans for thousands of dollars that they don't have from the congressional bank because they know their checks will be covered. These are men that are being attacked by the liberal media who propose repealing the income tax and balancing the national budget. These are men who want a money system which is backed with precious metals so as to eliminate the bankers' control of the nation's economy through the Federal Reserve System.

These are men who want Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to limit the jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court in areas like: education; abortion; and, affirmative action quotas. How many of you know your Constitution well enough to know that the Congress can tell the Supreme Court to butt-out in areas of jurisdiction, and say, "You cannot make a decision on abortion? That is a right, under the Tenth Amendment, for the people of the states to decide for themselves."

That's the kind of men that the media is savaging. These are men who want to void United States treaties with foreign countries which threaten the sovereign independence and the interests of the United States. These are men who want to build a strong military, in keeping with scriptural principles, to defeat foreign aggressors against the United States. These are men who want to eliminate the unconstitutional practice of foreign aid with taxpayer's money, which always enslaves the nation to the bankers who give them money. These are men who are running for public office who want fair trade practices which do not jeopardize American industries and businesses. They are opposed to free trade zones with Mexico and Canada, such as is being propagated and proposed today. These are men who oppose gun control, which violates the Second Amendment right of the citizen to own his own weapon. These are men who are who oppose abortion on demand, which allows women to murder their unborn children. These are men who want to restrict the use of drugs, and to punish with death those who sell drugs to the addicted.

These are men who want the United States to stop giving vast sums of money to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are being used by the establishment insiders for world control. This is how they get nations over a barrel. They bring them into these organizations that are money lenders. The money has come from you, the American people.

These are men who want to stop government grants to the National Endowment for the Arts, with its vulgar, obscene, blasphemous productions. You'll get a handout and a letter from me today. I didn't dare put it out on the chairs because I feared your children might read it. It's going to tell you what some of the productions have been of the National Endowment for the Arts. I noticed on TV this morning that there was a big program lauding the National Endowment for the Arts, because they're now under the gun and they're running scared, because men like Senator Jesse Helms have gotten up in Congress, and they have shocked everybody by exposing publicly what is being done with money. Where in the Constitution do we ever have authorization to give money for artistic purposes, which should be a private thing? I just wish I could find some place in the Constitution where the government should give money to Berean Academy, and to Berean Youth Clubs, and to the Berean Tape Ministry. We deserve it as much as these who have the obscenity to which Christ is treated in these pictures drawn by these artists sponsored by taxpayer money.

The argument this morning on TV was that it only costs 68 cents a person in the United States. Why would anybody object to the government giving that small amount from each of you? How many people do we have in this country now? Does anybody know? It is something like 140 million to 160 million. Multiply that by 68 cents, and pretty soon you got some big money.

You see the subtlety of the liberal media to expose our Lord, as you will see in this handout that you'll get through the mail, to the degradation and blasphemy at taxpayers' expense.

That's the men they don't want to put in public office. These are men who want to identify the people who are infected with AIDS in this country, and to quarantine them so they cannot spread the deadly infection, just as it is done with any other communicable disease. These are men who oppose the welfare state, which confiscates the fruits of its citizens' labors, and gives it to favored groups in order to secure their political loyalty so that they may be placed repeatedly in public office. These are men who refuse to treat homosexuality as a legitimate alternate lifestyle, and which is to be protected by law. These are men who want to reduce the oppressive prosperity, stifling-mess of government regulations on businesses.

Asbestos

This is the kind of madness that is calculated to keep America from being prosperous so that she can be equated with the rest of the nations of the world in a global socialist world system.

These are men who want to limit the terms of office of politicians, as is done with the president. These are men who are running for office who want to terminate government subsidies to keep in business favored groups like the tobacco growers. Can you imagine the money that is put out to research on the consequences of smoking and cancer, and how to care for people who are desperately dying with cancer from their smoking? And yet, do you realize that our government spends millions of dollars subsidizing the tobacco growers, or they'd be out of business?

These are men who want to reduce taxes on the American people so that the nation can prosper as people then are free to invest and be entrepreneurs. That's what makes a nation prosperous – when people are free to use their money to produce things that make life better, and that people will want to buy.

The Tenth Amendment

Satan is also unifying his world religiously in order to create a world church which will be led by the false prophet. The modern expression of the religion of Nimrod's Babylon is upon us in the form of the New Age movement, and it declares that man is God. This is the same basic doctrine of Hinduism, but Hinduism is now the New Age movement. The doctrines of demons promoted by Nimrod's Babylon have now been incorporated into major religions which call themselves Christian. These religious systems, in fact, worship Satan as their Supreme Being. Illicit and perverted sex practices played a major role in Nimrod's Babylonian religious system.

The apostle John, in his vision in the book of the Revelation, hears an angel near the end of the tribulation pronouncing God's judgment of total destruction on this Babylonian mystery religion system. Most church members today are so poorly taught in the principles of doctrine that they do not understand objective biblical truths. So, they seek truth about God through their emotions and through their personal experiences. Satan, therefore, has a field day with the charismatic movement. The average Christian can be made to look like a fool when it comes to defending the teachings of the Bible.

I spoke to a young man at a meeting a few days ago who is in a charismatic college in the area. I can tell by my associations previously with him that he's a sharp person. He's going into the ministry, and he's an entrepreneur. I gave him a tape catalog, and I gave him the evangelism brochure on a previous occasion. I told him who I was, and what these tapes were about, and he was very warm in receiving them. The other day when I walked into the hotel, he saw me. He came up to me and greeted me warmly, and said, "I got some of those tapes, and they're just terrific. I've got to get more of those." He doesn't know that I'm laying an enormous trap for him, because after the meeting there, I went up and I felt him out for what his religious association was. I was afraid he was charismatic. He said, "Oh, I'm non-denominational." So, I said, "Would you like a series of tapes on a major problem that people in the industry face today like yourself on the charismatic movement, which will give you the whole story from the Methodist church 250 years ago, down to today. He said, "I sure would." So I'm going to hit him up next week.

He's going to a college purported to be a teaching institution of the Word of God. He's studying the Bible. What did he find? He found the simplest kind of tape (the intro tape), and the start of the techniques of the Christian life. This is stuff that all of you could stand up and preach for an hour. But he doesn't know it. Preachers leave their people ignorant of the Word of God so that they can build powerful organizations that bring them fame and fortune. Don't ever forget that. And the devil is at the heart of that kind of watering down of what churches should be doing in feeding people upon the Word of God, so they are left at the mercy of Satan because they don't know how God operates.

The objective truth of Scripture are replaced by the subjective beliefs of one's emotions and experiences. So, the average Christian can be made to look like a fool before the world. The world's opinion-makers are very fond and supportive of the preacher who does not threaten their human viewpoint views with Bible doctrine. That's why they jump on a politician who comes from a biblical frame of reference. They fear that man. He can tear down the whole structure of human viewpoint that they operate on. That's why they have no use for the preacher that is going to inform people on what's inside the Scripture. I mean that I repeatedly have the experience of speaking to people, and I'll tell them some simple little elementary thing, like eternal and temporal fellowship. I'll show them the inner circle and outer circle diagram, and they go out of their gourd with amazement that they didn't know this, and how important it is to know it. Well, there's a reason for it.

The Church at Pergamum

So, in Revelation 2:13, we read, "I know where you dwell." He is speaking to this congregation of believers; that is, the city where they dwell – where Satan's throne is. They dwell in the city where Satan's throne is. This was the northernmost of these seven cities to which John wrote his seven letters. Pergamum today is located in western Turkey. In the ancient world, it was located in the part of the world which was called Anatolia. Do you know what Anatolia means? It means "the land of the rising sun." Again, it is tying in with the God up in the sky – the star which is our sun.

It's located in a very lovely area geographically in Turkey, and it is situated on an acropolis. The city is on an acropolis, such as the ones at Athens and Corinth, which ran between two rivers. An acropolis is a high point in which there are found a number of the religious structures. At Pergamum, the city lay beneath the hill, and they had a temple of Zeus. This temple of Zeus is what Revelation 2:13 is referring to as Satan's throne. This acropolis was covered with public buildings, altars, terraces, and libraries, and the residential part was below the high point. Pergamum was once the capital of a kingdom made of my Lydia, Caria, and part of Phrygia. The Kingdom of Pergamum formed from the breakup of Alexander's empire after he died. Their independence ended when King Attalus III died in 133 B.C. He bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, and Pergamum became the kingdom became part of the Roman Empire. The Roman Senate incorporated Pergamum into the pro-counselor province of Asia.

Pergamum was a great political, religious, and cultural center. It was a frontier town, proud of the fact that it was a jumping off point from Greek civilization into the adjoining territory of the barbarian Celts. The citizens were very vain about the contrast between the elegance of their buildings; their rituals; and; their civilization, in contrast to the coarseness of the wild people beyond its borders. This city had a library which was second only to Alexandria, and that tells you something about the people of Pergamum. This was no ignorant place. This was a place of great culture. This ancient library contained 200,000 volumes. Cleopatra wanted it, so Anthony gave it to her. It's doubtful, however, that it was ever transported from Pergamum.

They invented a superior writing material which was known as parchment. It was the skin of animals, which proved to be more durable than papyrus sheets. The material was called pergamena, after the city. Legend says that the invention was the result of the refusal of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt to sell papyrus sheets to Pergamum for its library, because Ptolemy was afraid that their library would get bigger than his in Alexandria, so he wouldn't sell them the paper. And when there's only one distributor, that's pretty hard to deal with it. So, what did the people of Pergamum do? They invented parchment, which is what became the standard of writing of all ancient documents that are preserved to this day.

The Altar of Zeus

This altar was erected in 180 B.C by King Amences II to celebrate his victory over the Gauls. It was dedicated to the god Zeus. It stood 50 feet high in a colonnaded enclosure with an altar more than 100 feet square, mounted by great marble steps on either side. I mean, this thing was tall. You were a very small person standing next to it. That's how immense this was in that museum.

Around the whole structure is the frieze, or the carvings, that related to their religious system. The frieze commemorates the defeat of Antiochus III third by the Roman fleet with the aid of the ships from Rhodes and Pergamum at Magnesia in Libya in 190 B.C. Smoke of sacrifices constantly rose from this altar in the ancient days. And this in itself made Pergamum a very famous place. One of the classic pieces of art that you may have seen is the statue of the Dying Gaul, which depicts a victory of Attalus I, who was the king of Pergamum over the Galatians in 230 B.C. This city became the center of emperor worship. It originally was in Babylon. When Babylon fell, the priests and the system of religion were expelled. They ceased operation there, and they went to the city of Pergamum.

That's what the revelation means – that the city became the throne (the authority – the headquarters) of Satan. It became the center of emperor worship, and it was a city devoted to temples, but temples which practiced a licentious system.

After the death of Belshazzar, as you know, Babylon was conquered as an empire by the Medo-Persian Empire, it was the Medo-Persians that expelled the Babylonian priests. So, they simply moved their operation to Pergamum, and that became Satan's new headquarters.

Everywhere on the decorative friezes, you will see the symbol of their god. This is fantastic. As I walked around that room, I could see serpent. All around the carvings, the serpent was involved in one way or another. Why should the serpent be exalted like that? For the same reason that he's exalted down in the Mayan ruins in Mexico, where the serpent is found everywhere, portrayed in a variety of associations, because it represents his majesty the devil. This is what the Bible means when it says, "Pergamum became the headquarters (the throne) of Satan."

Madonna and Child

The religious practices of the Babylon system of mother and child were very depraved and licentious. Nimrod, as the Bible indicates, was a great hunter of animals. This is the way ancient kings liked to portray themselves. He was viewed as a great benefactor as an animal hunter, because after the flood, animals were now a threat. As you know, they are now very hazardous to people. They were ferocious, and they were fighting for a limited food supply. Nimrod also freed mankind from its faith in God and from the fear of divine judgment. He figured out a religious system that could give vent to the sin nature without fear of God and fear of judgment. Nimrod's religion, of course, came from Satan, and it taught that men could be regenerated. They knew they had a sin problem, but it taught they could be regenerated by external means rather than by internal faith. And that's the whole system. The whole system says, "You are a god." That's what Satan told Eve. Then the system says, "You can bring yourself into compatibility with the Supreme Being (God) by external means (efforts and things that you can do – works). That violated God's principle – that the only way you come to compatibility with him is an act of faith without your human works.

So, the system was a salvation by works, and this meant that Nimrod and his mother taught mankind that they could do things that would expel the sin nature from them. And one of the ways they taught that you could expel the sin nature from you was to exhaust it. Therefore, they thought that the thing to do was to just be unrestrained in sexual action and depravity of every kind until the system is exhausted, and then you'll be compatible with the Supreme Being.

In ancient writings, we read that when Nimrod died, he suffered a violent death. This death, we're told, came at the hands of the followers of the true God. We suspect, since he was alive at this time, that it may have been under the leadership of Noah's son Shem that brought about the death of Nimrod. The followers of Nimrod, of course, bewailed his demise. This was the origin of the ancient custom of weeping for Nimrod, or, as in the Bible, he's referred to by his Phoenician name, which is Tammuz. The women of Israel, as the nation was on its downward spiral, actually fell into this particular paganistic custom of weeping for Tammuz. In Ezekiel 8:14, the prophet condemns them for this vile act when he says, "Then he brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord's house, which was toward the north. And, behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz. And He said to me, 'Do this see this, son of man? Yet you will see greater abominations than these.'"

Then he goes on to tell how he took the prophet into the inner recesses of the sanctuary of the Jews. Here, the women outside are weeping over the death of Tammuz. This was a pagan custom. He says, "Do you think that's bad? Let me show you what they're doing inside?" And He takes him inside, and there he sees 25 men with their backs to the temple. They're standing in front of the temple, and they're bowing down to the sun. They are worshiping Satan's symbol for himself up in the sky.

A Mystery Religion

Masonry

Mormonism

So, religion was driven underground. They had to keep what they were doing secret, and reveal it only to initiate who were willing to come in. Those initiated in the system were finally introduced to the full meaning of what they were doing. Later on, however, when it reestablished itself in Pergamum, they didn't have to hide what they were doing anymore. Then they could tell you, "Go down to the temple. You'll find a prostitute, male or female, whichever you need, and you may perform a sexual act at the temple, and it will wipe your sins away. You will exhaust the nature of sin within you. This then became openly taught.

In Pergamum, the sun then was the only god. It actually represented Satan. The sun-god was represented by Nimrod, or Tammuz, as the woman's seed – the supposedly supernaturally born son of Semiramis. This was to be the Savior of the world who was the product of serpent and the wife-mother.

Because Semiramis said that her son was born without a human father, she became she was worshiped under the title of the Holy Virgin. In Pergamum, the sun divinity, Satan, was worshiped in the form of a snake. In Pergamum, when they had a symbol for their sun-god, they had it in two ways. It was a round circle; or, it was a slithering circular snake. The connection is obvious. They worshiped the snake because they viewed him as the one who had opened my eyes to the first knowledge of good and evil. So, he was called Aesculap Soter (the Savior). The snake-god had a name, by the way, and I should show you that. His name was Aesculapius. The name means "the man-instructing serpent." Aesculapius was the name of their god in Pergamum, and it was the man-instructing serpent. The serpent was the source of their knowledge about God.

Snakes

Pontifex Maximus

People came from all over Asia to Pergamum to be healed at the temple of Aesculapius. Actually, Pergamum was a place where they studied illnesses and techniques for healing. And to this day, what is the symbol of the medical profession? The caduceus

See the snake? See his head? That's the symbol the doctors use. That's a medical symbol. Why did they do that? Because originally the snake was the snake-god was the healing God. Aesculapius was the god of healing and the God of enlightenment. And these two snakes winding around a pole with the wings at the top represent the medical profession today. People who came to Pergamum with physical problems would lie on the floor in the temple all night long. The temple was crawling with snakes, and if the snake slithered over your body, it was a sign that you had been touched by the god Aesculapius, and that you would be healed. It was a good omen. That therapy is not too popular today, so there are not too many people who are getting into that.

The Church at Pergamum

We Christians know that the position of the Word of God is the theistic creationism. The position of the society in which we live is evolutionary humanism. So, Satan proceeds to oppose any kingdom or any person in authority on the face of the earth today who seeks to bring people back to theistic creationism, because that's what represents everything that is in the Scripture. That is why political leaders today are being savaged and gutted by the insider establishment, because that insider establishment is Satan's team, and they are not about to stand by and let some whippersnapper upstart come along, and start being a voice in the wilderness, calling people back to their bases of freedom in the Word of God, and in the person of Christ.

Satan's modus operandi is very simple. It is to create a religious system which incorporates everything that people know about God, but to pervert it and give it a twist. That's why people who are ignorant of Scripture, but who know something about the Bible in general, will talk to like they know how to talk to you about what God thinks. Satan has taken all the things that are in Scripture, and he's given them a twist so that they serve his cause.

The 40 Days of Lent

A preacher in a liturgical church recently said to me, "Are you going to have a service on Ash Wednesday?" And I said, "Yes, we have a prayer meeting." Then it hit me later. He was asking me if we were going to start Lent to commemorate our weeping for 40 days, and therefore we were going to start punishing ourselves for 40 days. Of course, that's where Carnival comes in (Mardi Gras), because the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Fat Tuesday, and that's go-for-it Tuesday. That's to do everything you've ever wanted to do, because that's that Carnival. Meet Carnival goodbye: no more wiener schnitzels; more hot dogs; and no more ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches. Whatever really gives you misery, you're going to do without it for 40 days to please God. You can say, "Gee, I can't find that in the Bible." No, you don't. That's mystery Babylon.

Easter Eggs and Ham

Satan provided a system that parallels everything that God is doing, and then he distorts it. Why? Because he knew the day would come when he'd be able to amalgamate his Babylon Nimrod religious system with Christianity. He knew it was coming. When Emperor Constantine came on the scene in 325 A.D., and he declared Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, the fusion was made. And everything that ancient Romans believed from Babylon, they incorporated into Christianity. And out came the horrible, mongrel, religious structure that we have today called the Roman Catholic Church. Gradually, all true biblical knowledge of God was lost, and all true meaning of God's plan of salvation and biblical concepts were destroyed.

Satan plans for the long haul, and he thinks that now the time has come when he's going to bring it all together, and he is. But he's in for a big surprise because it's all going to blow up in his face when he thinks he finally has the world under control, and he finally has people going his way: "God is alive, and greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world." We are the winners, and you can stay a winner as long as you keep coming and getting yourself fed upon the Word of God, and you stay in that inner circle of temporal fellowship.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1992

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