Mystery Religions

Have you ever gone to hear a seminar on The Revelation all excited thinking, finally, someone who could explain all the mysterious passages of the Bible? Did it make a lot of sense? Were you expecting that once they gave you the clues you would be able to follow the path yourself; to read whole passages with understanding? Or did you just accept that you need someone to explain the Bible to you and lead you along?

Were you brave enough to ask questions? If you asked questions did you get any satisfactory answers?

One of these questions might have been, “what is the Babylonian Mystery Religion anyway?” And the answer might have been a mysterious, “we don’t know yet, if we knew, we would certainly be able to recognize the Antichrist when he comes”.

If you are satisfied with that answer than go no farther! Close this post and continue in ignorance; because once you have the information you will be held accountable to God for the knowledge that you do not act on.

However, if that answer irritates the heck out of you then you have no farther to go then to The Encyclopedia Britannica and looked it up. Ok, now-a-days you can also go to the internet. But either place will explain all about the Mystery Religions, and everything that history and archeology knows about them. You may at that point wonder, “how lazy could this teacher be?” It’s not like this stuff is hard to find. They are listed under Mysteries and under the different god’s names and cross referenced; pages and pages of information.

Once again we repeat, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly approved, rightly handling the word of truth.” 2 Tim 2:15

Caution here: this may be the beginning of your questioning your so called spiritual leaders.

In all fairness now, they may have meant well, but one brick shy of a load. Unfortunately they are not the exception. Teaching things that one has not studied to its fullest is a risky business. Likewise, trusting the state of your eternal soul to sloppy, ill-equipped, undereducated, so called experts is also unwise.

“The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual— the meter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of “god-eating”— were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.”
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003). p232.

Although The Da Vinci Code is a total fiction, it is a good read. However, this one paragraph is absolutely TRUE. Very little of the symbology and ritual of the church is of Biblical origins. Unfortunately a great deal of these false faiths have survived in, or returned to the Protestant churches. After all if they are attracting large crowds on these former pagan holidays, than we, the church, need to compete.

All false faiths have had their beginnings in the Tigress-Euphrates Valley; at the tower of Babel. That is why they are called the BABYLONIAN mystery religions. All the stories of mythology have some vague remembrance of creation, the fall or first sin, the promised redeemer, the flood, and the tower of Babel. But, it is all twisted and backwards; in these stories the serpent is the hero, knowledge of good and evil is a good and liberating thing. It was preventing the humans from eating of the tree of life that was a bad, evil, and selfish thing. The serpent is therefore our friend and liberator. As a fire brings us light so the serpent brought us light and thus became the “fire god” and is often a called the “Light Bringer” or “Light Bearer”.

Some form of the tower of Babel exist in these mysteries religions; often so symbolic that the tower in never mentions. The tale will go on about how men were so oppressed that they crawled along the ground in ignorance till a great man comes and pushes the sky up higher and higher. This is usually about Nimrod and the tower of Babel; pushing the heavens, and therefore God, higher and higher away from man. He thereby symbolically separates God from man. After this he is hunted down and cut into pieces; these pieces are then sent throughout the land as a warning. This is merely a perverted version of Shem judging Nimrod guilty of apostasy. This was how the ancients made a point to everyone else, as a warning that, this is what will happen to you if you do not follow in the truth.

A very similar story is in Judg. 19:29, “And when he entered his house, he took a knife, and laying hold of his concubine he divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.”

This is the event that made these religions go underground and made them MYSTERIES only available to those who were initiated into a secret society. They were all very similar, the priests or priestesses of a particular god or goddesses would attract new converts with the ruse that they had secret knowledge from the god or goddesses that would guarantee whatever that cultures view of eternal life was. But you had to be a member to hear the mystery. To be initiated you first had to confess your crimes. Threats were then made or implied that should you betray the god or goddess by telling the mystery, your confessed crimes would be exposed. There was always a kind of communion or eucharis consisting of a cake or bread and a mixed wine or beer. The cake or bread usually had seeds such as poppy or sesame, because seeds represent life and these were almost always gods or goddesses of fertility. The drink was usually mixed with spices, opium and other hallucinogens. When the initiate was fully under the influence of the drink then and only then was the mystery revealed. There followed a celebrations consisting of wild sexual and drunken revelry.

So how did they get into the church?

When Cyrus the Persian was shown the book of Is. 45:1, “ Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed”, he was so impressed with this prophecy. It was written 150 years before his time but called him by name! He must have had some kind of conversion at this point because he then had the Chaldean mystics deported .

They left Babylon, traveling up the Tigress-Euphrates valley into what is now Turkey and settled in the Greek city of Pergamum. This was the town that one of the seven churches of The Revelation was in. Once there they established a college of the mysteries making that area the world center of all things pagan. So the seven churches in The Revelation were completely familiar with these Mystery Religions.

The leader of this college was known as the Pontifex Maximus, which means “great bridge builder”. This title was eventually bestowed upon the King of Pergamum. In 131 BC Attalus III, the last king of Pergamon, died leaving no heirs he deeded the city and this title to Rome, where at first opportunity Caesar took the title for himself. Even when for a century and a-half the Roman Emperors had professed Christianity, they still continued to hold the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus. On high occasions they even appeared dressed in the idolatrous insignia of the pagan Pontifex Maximus.

The office title was held by all the Emperors of Rome till Emperor Gratian [375-383 AD], a Christian, moved by his conscience, abolished his own office of Pontifex Maximus. By 313 AD Constantine had established Christianity as the state religion outlawing the practice and worship of pagan gods.

The great serpent of fire was cast out, Paganism throughout, the Roman Empire, was abolished. Clearly the head of Paganism was wounded unto death. However, within just a few years the Vestal Virgins of the Goddess of Vesta who had been put out and their revenues been confiscated came back as nuns. Pagan temples were converted to Churches. And the serpent being a chameleon, of sorts, had only to change his colors when in 378AD the office title came back in use; Damascus the Bishop of Rome claimed the title of Pontifex Maximus.

Yes, if you just know this much about the Babylonian Mystery Religion, you will know the identity of the antichrist.

Have fun go read a book! You too can be “Smarter than the average teacher of religion”.

The Two Babylons  or  The Papal Worship  Proved to be The Worship of Nimrod and His Wife