Chapter Five
. . . by Noah Hutchings
In our previous chapter we discussed the attempt by Satan to counterfeit the promise of God to send the seed of woman to bruise the serpent's head. This deception came first before the flood when Satan attempted to defile the entire human race through fallen angelic corruption. After the flood, Satan diverted the attention of mankind from the coming Savior through the rise of a false religion, Mystery Babylon. As we have already noted, the base of this satanic counterfeit salvation was the myth that after Nimrod's death his wife gave birth to a son whom she named Tammuz. The worship of Nimrod's wife, Semiramis, as the queen of heaven and her god-son spread throughout the world. It exists today in many forms, even within Christendom.
A tradition related to the religion of Babylon is that when Nimrod died, his body was cut into pieces, cremated, and the ashes were spread over the earth. In Judges 19 we find what may be considered a comparative story about a concubine who went out from her master and became a whore. Her flesh and bones were cut into many pieces and scattered throughout the coasts of Israel. The origin of such heathenish practices was probably in the scattering of Nimrod's human parts, and may illustrate the dissemination of the religion of Babylon into all the world.
In the case of Nimrod, according to the tradition as related by some ancient sources, all of the body was cut up and scattered with the exception of his reproductive organs. It was from this ancient and obscure Babylonian tradition that the worship of the "phallus" began.
In Genesis 10 we read that Ham begat Cush, and Cush begat Nimrod. It is generally agreed by most Bible scholars that Nimrod was a black man. The next great king of Babylon to arise after Nimrod was Hammurabi, his name signifying that he was a descendant of Nimrod through Ham. The laws of Hammurabi were graven on a large black stone in the shape of a phallus.
It Egypt Semiramis took the name of Isis, and Tammuz became Horus. The Encyclopedia Of Religions (Vol. 3, p. 264) states that Queen Semiramis in Babylon erected an obelisk one hundred thirty feet high to the memory of Nimrod. Such temples were common in Babylon and later in Egypt. These obelisks are replete in the temples of Luxor and Karnak. Many of the monuments have been removed to other nations. One stands in Central Park in New York City, one in London, and others in Italy.
According to The Two Babylons by Hislop and Babylon Mystery Religion by Woodrow, these obelisks, or standing images as they were called in the Hebrew, are mentioned in both 1 Kings and 2 Kings as a part of Baal worship. Baal is one of the names for Nimrod. It was into this kind of evil and licentious religion that Jezebel enticed Israel. It is to the abolition of the last vestiges of the Babylonian idolatry that Isaiah 27:1 and 9 is addressed, "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea . . . By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up."
A common practice in Egypt, Greece, and other nations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean area, where the religion of Babylon had spread was to erect an obelisk in front of the temple. This symbolism for the phallus associated the religion with the fertility cult of Nimrod. The temples of Diana, the Ephesian counterpart of Nimrod's wife, the queen of heaven, was supported by the temple prostitutes. According to Ezekiel 8:1-6, this abominable symbol was erected in front of the temple at the north gate. Ezekiel referred to it as the "image of jealousy." We can be certain that it was the Babylonian symbol of Nimrod because we read in verse fourteen that the prophet saw a woman at the temple weeping for Tammuz, the son of Nimrod.
Emperor Caligula was one of the most cruel and degenerate of the Caesars of Rome. According to the book Babylon Mystery Religion, Caligula transported an obelisk from Heliopolis in Egypt to the section of Rome which was called his circus. This hill is the place where the Vatican was later built. The obelisk remained in the Vatican until 1586 when Pope Sixtus V had it moved it front of the church at St. Peter where it is today. The pope had decreed the death penalty if it should be broken or damaged. The mover was a man named Domenico Fontana. Forty-five winches, one hundred sixty horses, and a crew of eight hundred men were required to move the obelisk to its new location. When the task was completed, the pope blessed it and the workmen who had moved it under such an extreme penalty for failure. An inscription in the pagan temple of Heliopolis, from where the obelisk came, reads: "I, Dionysus, dedicated these phalli to Hera, my stepmother. " The account of the moving of the obelisk can be found in the Hasting's Encyclopedia Of Religion and Ethics in a section on "phallicism."
It is also interesting to take note that the obelisk in front of St. Peter's Cathedral came from Heliopolis. We read in Jeremiah 43:13, "He shall break also the images of Beth-shemesh, that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he burn with fire. "The footnote in the Pilgrim Bible on Beth-shemesh reads, "This means 'House of the Sun,' or temples dedicated to sun-worship. . . . This was probably the city which was called Heliopolis by the Greeks."
Wherever we have gone in the world, we have seen the obelisk in its relationship to the mystery religion of Babylon. In Egypt we saw them at the temples of Luxor and Karnak. In China we saw the entire land punctuated with Buddhist shrines called pagodas. These pagodas rise high in the sky in tiers, much like the Tower of Babel, and the phallus symbol of Nimrod. In China Semiramis, the mother goddess, was called Shingmoo. Throughout the Moslem world from Morocco, to Egypt, to Syria, Jordan, and Iraq we have seen mosques surrounded by minarets, slender spires with an enlarged section at the top. The symbolism is apparent. Mecca, in the heart of Islam, fractures the skyline with a host of minarets with their slight enlargements at the apex.
In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman Empire divided into two parts, with Constantinople becoming the capital city of the eastern leg. The church at St. Sophia was the pride of the holy Byzantine Empire. In front of St. Sophia in the town square was erected a tall obelisk. This obelisk is still standing today. When we were in Istanbul, our guide informed us that it was at this obelisk where doctrinal disagreements were settled through athletic contests. After the Turks captured Constantinople in 1292 and changed the name to Istanbul, St. Sophia was converted to a mosque and minarets were erected around it.
In temples, shrines, mosques, and churches of all religions of the world, obelisk-like spires and towers are included in construction. Many of these elongated units simply follow tradition without any realization of their meaning or relationship to the mystery religion of Babylon.
The obelisk in front of St. Peter's in Rome, including the foundation, is one hundred thirty-two feet high. Inasmuch as it came from Heliopolis in Egypt, it is probably no coincidence that it is approximately the same height as the one that Queen Semiramis erected in honor of her husband, Nimrod. But the largest obelisk in the world is in front of our nation's capitol building in Washington, D.C., the Washington Monument. Again, it was probably no coincidence that the phallus-shaped obelisk was chosen to memorialize George Washington as the father of the United States. We will comment on its relationship to Mystery Babylon later in this study.
As we consider the major religions of mankind, there are literally hundreds of connections that could be made to the mystery religion of Babylon. The most prominent, besides the obelisk, is the worship of idols, or the use of idols in worship.
As evil as the thoughts and deeds of mankind became in the millennium before the flood, there is no evidence that idol worship was among its sins. Idol worship originated at Babel, and after Babel, as the people were scattered over the face of the earth, they carried with them this religious abomination. Throughout Egypt, the Hebrews were confronted with idols to the Egyptian gods, which in reality were only Babylonian gods that had been given Egyptian names. When they passed through the lands of the Canaanite tribes, they saw similar idols which had been given Canaanite names. Therefore, the Lord gave this commandment to Moses for the Israelites: " Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God" {Lev. 26:1).
The Babylonian concept of idol worship was the chief weapon of Satan that the prophets of God had to contend with. There are thousands of references in the Old Testament alone to idol worship. Like a large segment of both Catholic and non-Catholic Christendom today, the Hebrews tried to make a pretense of worshipping God while catering to their idolatry. We read in Jeremiah 7:8-10, 18, 30-31: "Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? . . . The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods . . . For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not. ..."
It was the worship of idols, mainly Baal (Nimrod) and the queen of heaven (Nimrod's wife) that brought the judgment of God upon the nation. In the early church it was idol worshippers and makers at Ephesus and other cities who were the fiercest enemies of the disciples. In Athens, the city was overrun with idols, so much so that they even had an idol to the unknown god!
In Rome, at the Pantheon, there were idols to every god in the known world.
Like the Israelites, there were some in the early church who professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, yet clung to their heathen idols. We read of this abomination in 2 Corinthians 6:15-17, "And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you."
In India the Hindu temples are filled with idols of the Babylonian fertility cult; in Bangkok the temples are likewise filled with idols; in China the Buddhist temples have the largest idols in the world. After the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. sanctioned the worship of the godmother religion, the churches of Asia became filled with idols. When Mohammed ravaged the churches of this territory early in the seventh century, he brought fifteen hundred idols back to Mecca. Regardless how identifiable statues are with Christianity, it is an abomination to worship and kiss them. We read in 1 Kings 19:18,". . . I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." Kissing an idol is associated with the worship of Baal, or Nimrod.
All idol worship is related to the mystery religion of Babylon, and all religions are invested with it to some degree. The time is coming when the world religion of the tribulation. Mystery Babylon, will call upon all idol worshippers on earth to worship one idol, the image of Antichrist. "And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed" (Rev. 13:15).
The religion of Babel was centered in the person of Nimrod. This religion was to weld a one-world worship in rebellion against God. After Babel this fractured religion was carried into all the world where it has been propagated and perpetuated in various forms. However, its stronghold was retained in Babylon. It would appear that at the fall of Babylon God placed barriers upon this satanic deception and his fallen angels to prevent it from corrupting the entire world. But according to the prophetic Word of God, at the end of the age fractured Babylonianism would unite once more to produce another world leader who would defy God and declare to the whole world that he is god. This we see taking place today. We read in Revelation 9:13-15: "And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet. Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men."
This prophetic warning is repeated in Revelation 16:12-14: "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."
The confusion within Christendom today, the rise of Eastern religions in our own nation, and the rapid growth of the New Age movement indicate that mankind is rapidly approaching the Great Tribulation and Jesus Christ will come as a thief for those who are not watching.
The major religions of mankind today are looking
for a messiah to come. The New Age religion adherents are predicting
that Maitreya will come; messianic fervor is now sweeping Israel;
a large segment of the Islamic nations see in Saddam Hussein their
Mahdi. This too is a sign that Jesus Christ, the true Messiah,
may appear at any time (Matt. 24:23-27).
© 2000, South-west Radio Church Ministries
This article was used by permission from chapter 5 of the book "The Persian Gulf Crisis"by N.W Hutchings. For more information on how to obtain this book and more of these materials contact:
Southwest Radio Church,
P.O. Box 100
Bethany OK. 73008
Phone : (800) 652-1144 or (405) 789-1222
Website: www.swrc.com E-mail: info@swrc.com
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