The Kingdom of God, here and now: Part 2

A Theocratic Kingdom where God reigns supreme and his subjects obey his every command in love and in voluntary subjection to his authority has been His goal since the beginning of time. The holy angels who refused to follow Satan in his villainous journey of rebellion, have always obeyed God since their creation and will continue to do so for the eternities to come. Someone once said that Satan’s and the fallen angels’ rebellion and their subsequent banishment from heaven left a huge void in heaven and that God decided to make man and woman in their own image so that they and their descendants may fill that void. How true this is, is debatable. Nonetheless, the fact is that God in his infinite wisdom decided to make man and woman in their own image and to appoint them as co-workers and co-rulers over his creation and to place them in a resplendent garden of much beauty and abundance, not only to indulge in and enjoy God’s love, goodness, mercy and loving-kindness but also to be tested.

Because reciprocate love is the very bedrock of a relationship, God first had to exact a time of probation for Adam and Eve so that he could see whether they would love Him as much as He loved them. Forced love is not love; it not only stifles the image of God in man but kills the most basic element of that image which is free-will. Forced love is coercion at its worst. The  only way to see whether they loved Him was to give them a very simple command – “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The bottom-line is: Obey and live in the awesome holy presence of God for all eternity OR disobey and be separated from the awesome holy God for all eternity in the lake of fire. You will recall that Jesus once said that the keeping of His commandments is the litmus test for true love. “If ye love Me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). This is precisely why it is so difficult to believe that the Emergent Church fraternity can say they love Jesus with all their heart, mind and strength and that they are his followers when they have cast just about every doctrine (commandment) He has given to the wind.

Unbelievers and in particular the atheists are easily aggravated by the idea that a single act of disobedience affords God the right to judge dissidents and cast them in hell. How can a single act of disobedience possibly warrant such a horrible punishment? There are two main reasons: the awesome, incomparable and incomprehensible holiness of God and the overwhelming, incomparable and incomprehensible wickedness of Satan. These are the only two opposing entities in the entire cosmos who have been at war since Satan’s fall into sin, disobedience and unrighteousness. All sin, all disobedience and all unrighteousness can be traced back to Satan (1 John 3:8).

Consequently our first parents’ act of disobedience was a giant step into the dominion or kingdom of Satan. When Adam and Eve took this step they dragged the entire human race with them. It is imperative to understand that God did not prepare the Lake of Fire for men and women who were made in his image; He prepared it for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). Accordingly whoever prefers to remain in Satan’s kingdom of darkness and refuses to be translated from his kingdom to the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:13) will inevitably bear the consequences of God’s righteous wrath in the Lake of Fire, simply because they are of their own accord subjects in Satan’s kingdom. It is not his will that they perish but their own will and choice to remain in Satan’s kingdom of darkness seals their fate. If God were to overlook a single act of disobedience and allow it to go unpunished He could never have been the awesome, incomparable and incomprehensible holy God that He is. In fact, a single unpunished act of disobedience would have compromised not only his own holiness but the holiness of his Kingdom as well. It is for this very reason that no unclean person will ever be permitted to enter the Kingdom of God and his Christ (Ephesians 5:5).

Thanks be to God, his initial purpose to populate his Kingdom with creatures made in his own image was not foiled by Satan or the Fall. In fact, He had already set his plan of redemption in motion even before the foundation of the earth (Acts 2:23; Revelation 13:8). He sent his Son whose single most important mission it was to do the will of his Father.

Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:7-10) (Emphasis added).

Jesus could never have been our final, complete and perfect sacrifice for sin on the cross if He had not fulfilled every single iota and title of his Father’s Law (Matthew 5:17) and if He, although He is the Son of God, had not learnt obedience through the things He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). His substitutionary sacrifice was not only to pay the debt in full for our sins but also to fulfill the Law in behalf of everyone who believes in Him and who by faith are baptized into his death (Romans 6:3). They are the ones who are given access to the Kingdom of God.

The God of the Bible is the God of new beginnings. However, his new beginnings are not haphazardly implemented; his new beginnings are always inaugurated by the shedding of an innocent victim’s blood in behalf of the guilty. Throughout the Old Testament the refrain “built there an altar unto the Lord” introduces a new beginning (Genesis 13:18; 35:7; Exodus 17:16; Joshua 22:10, 11; Judges 6:24; 1 Samuel 7:17; 2 Samuel 24:25; 1 Kings 18:32; 1 Chronicles 21:26). Subsequent to Adam and Eve’s fall God took the initiative and slew an animal to make coats of skin for them to wear and to replace their own hopelessly insufficient aprons of fig leaves they made for themselves (their own goody-goody deeds and efforts to cover their sin) (Genesis 3:7 and 20). This singularly beautiful deed of unfathomable mercy and loving-kindness was God’s magna carte of salvation and the foundational sign that the remission of sin and a new beginning shall be granted by the shedding of blood only. (Hebrews 9:22; 2 Corinthians 5:17). God’s triumphal song of new beginnings “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15) would ring true again and again on each and every occasion when a burnt offering was brought to the Lord. Noah offered burnt offerings to the Lord as soon as he and his family set foot on dry ground after the Great Flood, indicating that God had once again offered them a new beginning. Sadly, the men of renown in Genesis became dissatisfied with God’s new beginning founded on blood; They were the most ancient of the emergent clan or tribe who wanted a new spirituality for millennium one and decided to opt for a religion based on mysticism. Their leader was Nimrod whose wife, Semiramis, was a woman of ill-repute. Alexander Hislop has this to say about her in his book The Two Babylons:

The Chaldean Mysteries can be traced up to the days of Semiramis, who lived only a few centuries after the flood, and who is known to have impressed upon them the image of her own depraved and polluted mind.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS compared with JUSTINUS, Historia and EUSEBIUS’ Chronicle. Eusebius says that Ninus and Semiramis reigned in the time of Abraham.

That beautiful but abandoned [uninhibited] queen of Babylon was not only herself a paragon of unbridled lust and licentiousness, but in the Mysteries which she had a chief hand in forming, she was worshipped as Rhea, the great “MOTHER” of the gods, with such atrocious rites as identified her with Venus, the MOTHER of all impurity, and raised the very city where she had reigned to a bad eminence among the nations, as the grand seat at once of idolatry and consecrated prostitution.¹

The mysticism or mysteries enshrouded in the Roman Catholic Church and particularly in the teachings of the Desert Fathers and now finally in the Emergent Church had their origin in the Chaldean mysteries of the Babylonian whore, Semiramis. Satan used a woman to introduce his chaos into God’s perfectly created world but thanks be to God He used a woman to bear his only begotten Son into our world who  ultimately will disperse of Satan’s chaos when He destroys his kingdom. Sadly Satan also used a woman to introduce to mankind a false religion based on a false trinity — Ninus or Nimrod (the father), Semiramis (the Mother and Babylonian holy spirit) and Tammuz (the Seed or the Son). Satan, having been the great deceiver and imposter from the very beginning, concocted his own version of Genesis 3:15. It is well-documented in Alexander Hislop’s book The Two Babylons that all the nations of antiquity were familiar with the promise in Genesis 3:15 and that they incorporated it in their own respective mythologies. The Babylonian rendition of it is the oldest which spread rapidly to all the surrounding countries.

When her husband Nimrod died a violent death, presumably at the hand of the God-fearing Seth (the third son born to Adam and Eve after Cain murdered his brother, Abel), she spread the lie that her illegitimate son, Tammuz who was born after the death of her husband Nimrod, was none other than Ninus (Nimrod) who had been raised from the dead. Hence the mother and child worship that is being perpetuated in the Roman Catholic Church to this day. To counteract the narrative that Seth and seventy-two judges found Nimrod guilty of apostasy and sentenced him to death by having his body cut in pieces,² she claimed that he prayed to the supreme God of heaven to take his life. Hislop writes:

. . . his prayer was heard, and . . . he expired, assuring his followers that, if they cherished due regard for his memory, the empire would never depart from the Babylonians. What Berosus, the Babylonian historian, says of the cutting off of the head of the great god Belus, is plainly to the same effect. Belus, says Berosus, commanded one of the gods to cut off his head, that from the blood thus shed by his own command and with his own consent, when mingled with the earth, new creatures might be formed, the first creation being represented as a sort of a failure. Thus the death of Belus, who was Nimrod, like that attributed to Zoroaster, was represented as entirely voluntary, and as submitted to for the benefit of the world. . . .

But yet, as we shall afterwards see, among the civilised nations of antiquity, Nimrod almost everywhere fell into disrepute, and was deposed from his original pre-eminence, expressly “ob deformitatem,” “on account of his ugliness.” Even in Babylon itself, the posthumous child, as identified with his father, and inheriting all his father’s glory, yet possessing more of his mother’s complexion, came to be the favourite type of the Madonna’s divine son.

This son, thus worshipped in his mother’s arms, was looked upon as invested with all the attributes, and called by almost all the names of the promised Messiah. As Christ, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, was called Adonai, The Lord, so Tammuz was called Adon or Adonis. Under the name of Mithras, he was worshipped as the “Mediator.” As Mediator and head of the covenant of grace, he was styled Baal-berith, Lord of the Covenant (Judges 8:33). In this character he is represented in Persian monuments as seated on the rainbow, the well known symbol of the covenant. In India, under the name of Vishnu, the Preserver or Saviour of men, though a god, he was worshipped as the great “Victim-Man,” who before the worlds were, because there was nothing else to offer, offered himself as a sacrifice.³

You may recall that God’s wrath was kindled when the Israelites mourned and wept over the death of Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14).⁴ Ninus (Nimrod), the father, who fell into disrepute after his death, was worshipped in silence. Hislop writes:

. . . the first person in the Godhead was practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate concern in human affairs, he was “to be worshipped through silence alone,”⁵

John of the Cross, one of the contemplatives’ idols, taught that silence is the first language of God which, of course, is but an extension of the Babylonian heresy. Could it be anything else, bearing in mind that Roman Catholicism is but an extension of Babylon? For more information on the Emergent Church’s fallacies on the silence of God, read here. Having lost his eminence to the extent that Nimrod was worshipped in silence only, one would have thought that his splendor, honor and glory would have come upon the child (Tammuz). No so! It was the whore, Semiramis, who usurped his attributes. Hislop writes:

Now while the mother derived her glory in the first instance from the divine character attributed to the child in her arms, the mother in the long-run practically eclipsed the son. At first, in all likelihood, there would be no thought whatever of ascribing divinity to the mother. There was an express promise that necessarily led mankind to expect that, at some time or other, the Son of God, in amazing condescension, should appear in this world as the Son of man. But there was no promise whatever, or the least shadow of a promise, to lead any one to anticipate that a woman should ever be invested with attributes that should raise her to a level with Divinity. It is in the last degree improbable, therefore, that when the mother was first exhibited with the child in her arms, it should be intended to give divine honours to her. She was doubtless used chiefly as a pedestal for the upholding of the divine Son, and holding him forth to the adoration of mankind; and glory enough it would be counted for her, alone of all the daughters of Eve, to have given birth to the promised seed, the world’s only hope. But while this, no doubt, was the design, it is a plain principle in all idolatries that that which most appeals to the senses must make the most powerful impression. Now the Son, even in his new incarnation, when Nimrod was believed to have reappeared in a fairer form, was exhibited merely as a child, without any very particular attraction; while the mother in whose arms he was, was set off with all the art of painting and sculpture, as invested with much of that extraordinary beauty which in reality belonged to her. The beauty of Semiramis is said on one occasion to have quelled a rising rebellion among her subjects on her sudden appearance among them; and it is recorded that the memory of the admiration excited in their minds by her appearance on that occasion was perpetuated by a statue erected in Babylon, representing her in the guise in which she had fascinated them so much. . . .

This Babylonian queen was not merely in character coincident with the Aphrodite of Greece and the Venus of Rome, but was, in point of fact, the historical original of that goddess that by the ancient world was regarded as the very embodiment of everything attractive in female form, and the perfection of female beauty⁶

What evidence do we have that the Emergent Church and her adherents have inherited the legacy of the Babylonian religion of goddess worship? Most of you may be familiar with the etching of the Tower of Babel pictured on the left. When looked upon from above the architectural structure is in the form of a labyrinth, of which the very top and center was the headquarters, if you will, of Babylon’s occult religion, namely astrology. (See the picture of the Tower of Babel on a coin and its flipside showing the tower from above on the right). The queen of heaven, Semiramis (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-19, 25), and not her husband, Nimrod , or her son, Tammuz, (whom she claimed had a virgin birth and supposedly was the resurrection of her deceased husband) was the main cog in the  clockwork of the Babylonian idolatrous system. She ran the entire business. Genesis 11:4, in speaking of “a tower and his top reaching the heavens,” is not a reference to the height of the tower, but instead to the inscriptions of the Zodiac on the walls of the inner sanctuary. When Israel fell deeply into the idolatrous system of astrology she was seriously reprimanded by the prophet Isaiah:

Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. (Isaiah 47:12-14).

Taurus the bull is the second sign in the array of the zodiac figures. In antiquity a bull’s horns denoted power, might, strength and sovereignty (1 Kings 22:11). One of the symbols that was used for Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord, was the divided man-bull symbol, representing him as “The prince” who was cut asunder (cut in pieces at the height of his might and power). This half man and half bull symbol found its way into many countries and their respective religions of which that in Crete, Greece, is perhaps best known. According to Grecian mythology King Minos struggled for supremacy against his brothers and prayed to Poseidon to send him a white bull as a sign of his approval. Contrary to Poseidon’s command to sacrifice the bull in his honor, King Minos decided to keep it because of its beauty. As punishment the goddess Aphrodite (another name for Semiramis) made Minos’ wife, Pasiphaë, fall in love with the bull. She ordered Daedalus, the archetypal craftsman, to make for her a wooden cow and climbed into it so that she could copulate with the bull. Their offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. In disgust Minos commanded Daedalus to build a maze called a LABYRINTH where they were confined to live and never escape. The half brother of the Minotaur ordered that seven maidens of Athens be led into the labyrinth every ninth year to feed the Minotaur. The traits of a labyrinth can be summed up as follows:

1. The Minotaur’s labyrinth was used for human sacrifice.
2. The Chartres labyrinth in France is in a cathedral corrupted with pagan symbols and paraphernalia.
3. Labyrinths are used in witchcraft.
4. Labyrinths are used for magic.
5. Labyrinths are used by Druids.
6. Labyrinths are based on coiled serpents.
7. Labyrinths are temples and places of worship.
8. Labyrinths are associated with the underworld.
9. Labyrinths are associated with the god of the dead (Satan).
10. Labyrinths are not associated with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (He is the God the living, not of the dead – Mark 12:27).
11. Labyrinths are associated with sun worship.
12. Labyrinths are idols.
13. Labyrinths are associated with the Tower of Babel.
14. Labyrinths originated with other religions and cults and not the Christian faith.
15. Labyrinths are not straight paths but are crooked.
16. Labyrinths are not biblical at all but come directly from Satan and his demons. It is demonic through and through.

Christians who walk the labyrinth are not getting in touch with the God of the Bible but Satan himself and they are not promoting the Kingdom of God but the kingdom of darkness.

But what about the feminine aspect of the labyrinth? We’ve already seen that Semiramis, the licentious wife of Nimrod, played the biggest part in the development of the mysteries of Babylon. In fact, throughout the centuries she together with her son, Tammuz, and not Nimrod who was to be worshipped in silence, remained the major object of peoples’ worship (in the Roman Catholic Church as Mother Mary and the infant, Jesus). If we take into account that it was she who seduced King Minos’ wife, Pasiphaë, to fall in love with Poseidon’s white bull we may also assume that she was indirectly involved in the making of the labyrinth, although it was Minos who ordered Daedalus to build it for the MInotaur and Minos’ unfaithful wife.

Goddess worship is an integral part of Wiccan spirituality (white magic or so-called benevolent witchcraft). The various names applied to Sermiramis in Greece (Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Gaea, Hera, Hestia, Rhea) and Rome (Venus, Diana, Minerva, Ceres, Terra, Juno, Vesta, Ops), Egypt (Isis), and later in Germany (Hertha), Scandinavia (Disa), India (Isi or Devaki), Asia (Cybele) and China (Shing-Moo) are commonplace in pagan goddess spiritualties and in Wicca. Of the various symbols Wicca has attributed to the Great Goddess (as they call her) the labyrinth seems to be one of the more important ones. I found the following definition of the labyrinth on a Wiccan website:

The Labyrinth is a symbol of death and rebirth.

Walking the Labyrinth is a mystical journey into the other realms, and back to Earth. It is a symbolic pilgrimage out of the small self, or busy mind, back Home to the Divine.

Unlike mazes, which were modeled on Labyrinths, you can’t get lost in a Labyrinth. Despite the twists and turns, there is one path in, which is also the path out. Just like life.

The evidence seems to indicate that the Labyrinth was presided over by the Great Goddess. In Crete, the Labyrinth was dedicated to the Goddess Ariadne, and was created as a dancing ground in Her honour. (Karl Kereny, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life.) (Emphasis added).

By the by, the term Labyrinth comes from the word “labrys,” a double-ax that was used by priestesses during the Minoan civilization for sacrificial purposes. A woman who carried a double-ax was believed to have supernatural powers because she was connected to the Great Goddess. The double axe (labrys) is used in witchcraft to consecrate women to goddess worship. Read here. Christians who dabble in the labyrinth and its attended  practice of contemplative prayer is not worshipping the God of the Bible but are actually dabbling in witchcraft.

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Christians who acknowledge that rebirth (regeneration) is secured through faith alone in the blood-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, will never venture to walk in the crooked paths of the satanic labyrinth that comes from the lowest parts of the abyss. Those who do are not only denying that there is but a single way to be reborn, they are blatantly treading a path that leads to hell. Guess what? The Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg, where Johan Geyser, Trevor Hudson, Gys du Plessis, Stephan Joubert, Ron Martoia and other well-known emergent pastors preach regularly has its own labyrinth where many have already, perhaps unknowingly, tread the path of Semiramis (the Great Goddess) right into Satan’s lair. My most sincere and honest plea is that they repent of their evil ways, stop treading in the path of the labyrinth and demand of their pastors that the labyrinth on their premises be destroyed. Should they succeed in doing that they may well be associated with the repentant sinners in Ephesus who brought their curious arts and books and burnt them in public to prove that their repentance and regeneration was not just a sham but a genuine act of obedience from the heart (Acts 19:19). On the other hand, they may be excommunicated and asked to leave the church but then at least they would prove that they truly love the Lord Jesus Christ with all their heart, mind and strength and that they are his true followers (1 Corinthians 11:19).

“Everything is Holy”⁷ a saying that has become an Emergent Church maxim is rooted in Goddess worship. We’ve seen earlier that one of Semiramis’ names was Gaea (in ancient Greece) and Terra (in ancient Rome) which in modern-day terms is Gaia. Sue Monk Kidd’s journey into Roman Catholic mysticism began when she started reading Thomas Merton’s books. She wrote:

We also need Goddess consciousness to reveal earth’s [Gaia’s, Terra’s] holiness . . . Matter becomes inspirited; it breathes divinity. Earth becomes alive and sacred . . .. Goddess offers us the holiness of everything. (Emphasis and parenthesis added).⁸

In Ray Yungen’s book A Time of Departing, posted at Lighthouse Trails Research, the author says “Monk Kidd had made the full transition to a spiritual view more in tune with Wicca than with Christianity. Now she worships the Goddess Sophia rather than Jesus Christ.” (Emphasis added) During my visits to the Mosaïek church in Fairlands, Johannesburg at several of their conferences I couldn’t help noticing the large array of portraits of women on the wall. The fact that it is very artistically painted is not the issue; the question we need to ask is: why do they place so much emphasis on women? They may argue that it is the artist’s style and forte to paint portraits of women instead of landscapes or anything else. Nonetheless, when their excessive emphasis on women adjoined to their unbiblical interpretation of Jesus as God’s Sophia (the feminine Greek word for wisdom) are taken into account, it becomes evident that it is their goal to accentuate the supposedly feminine side of God.

In September 2009, at a congress held at the Mosaïek Church Stephan Joubert spent an entire session to explain away Jesus Christ’s association with the purity story (Leviticus) in favor of the wisdom story (Proverbs). He made a big issue of Jesus being the Sage and Sophia from heaven. Indeed Jesus is the Wisdom of God but his is primarily a wisdom steeped in the foolishness of the preaching of his Word with a design to destroy the wisdom of the world.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1Co 1:19-25) (Emphasis assed).

Please note the wise interplay between the Sophia of God and the Sophia of the Greeks He intends to destroy. Contrary to the post modern belief that all wisdom comes from God (read here), the Lord of hosts cannot tolerate the wisdom of unbelievers or the wisdom that allegedly is entrenched in other religions. Although the emergent fraternity claim allegiance to the Sophia of God (ensconced in the foolishness of the preaching of his Word and his Cross) they are, as we’ve seen earlier, actually following the Sophia of the Greeks (Goddess worship) that is meant for destruction. Lillian Calles Barger, an ardent admirer of Sue Monk Kidd, says in her book Chasing Sophia, reclaiming the lost wisdom of Jesus,

This is why sophia—the feminine Greek word for wisdom—is a fitting motif for this hook. For those seeking to find their female voice, sophia has not remained merely a Greek word for wisdom. Borrowing from ancient images of wisdom as a woman, sophia becomes Sophia—a feminine, divine being. I discovered that the early Christian understanding of Jesus, as the Sophia of God, needs to be dusted off from centuries of neglect and reclaimed and re-imagined as an emotionally and spiritually powerful image. As a wisdom seeker and a lifelong follower of Jesus, I also recognized the need to untangle the meaning of Sophia. . .

. . . women felt betrayed by the institutional church and saw the very nature and basis of the Christian faith as a hindrance to their liberation. In workshop after workshop, we were challenged to do theology for ourselves and to “tell the truth” by being more honest about our lives. We were encouraged co “trouble the waters” of a patriarchal system and to reimagine the faith. The theology presented included substituting, if not completely replacing, Jesus with Sophia—the feminine personification of the Greek word for wisdom. This was a seemingly more appropriate image of the Divine for women to embrace. Sophia was blessed and worshiped in emotionally laden prayer and song. This was the first time I had heard of wisdom being used in this way.

Stephan Joubert said something similar at the Mosaïek Church’s congress that took place in September 2009 when he presented his paper called “Being a Radical Pilgrim and Prophet.”

Jesus is not a reformer. He is not a reformer trying to reform some of the stories. Jesus does not link onto, particularly, the purity story, never at all. Jesus, if I might, may put it like this, Jesus links onto the, to wisdom. And if you understand this, it will change the entire understanding of Jesus. Jesus takes the fourth story of Israel, the story that did not win, the story that belonged to the upper classes: the story of wisdom. (Emphasis added).

In Matthew Fox’s book called “A New Reformation!” he writes that we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, . . . and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom (Emphasis added).

In Roman Catholicism the Virgin Mary is venerated as the seat of wisdom which immediately suggests that Jesus, who is portrayed as the perpetual child in his mother’s arms, receives his wisdom from her. It started in Babylon with Semiramis, the archetypal Queen of Heaven, when she and her husband, Nimrod, built a tower that reached unto heaven instead of an altar unto the Lord. They established a religion that was built on Genesis 3:15 but with a satanic slant to it. Semiramis gave birth to Tammuz from an illegitimate relationship and spread the lie that he had an immaculate virgin birth. But it was not Tammuz that would bruise the serpent’s head; Semiramis herself would do it. It is a lie that is maintained to this day in the Roman Catholic Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible.

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. (Genesis 3:15) (Emphasis added).

Ancient Babylon built a Tower that reached unto heaven. A new Babylon is in the making and it is called the Emergent Church. Like ancient Babylon they too are building a “tower.” It is called a labyrinth which is embedded in the mysteries of the RCC’s contemplative spiritualties that supposedly brings you into the presence of God.

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’ For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.” And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, “Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.” And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls. “The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again!” The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud, “Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.” And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in a single hour she has been laid waste. Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!” Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more; and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more, and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more, and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more, and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more, for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.” (Revelation 18:4-24).

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¹ Alexander Hislop: The Two Babylons Chapter I Distinctive Character of the Two Systems

² It was customary in the Old Testament to cut men or women or oxen in pieces and send their body parts throughout the nation to instill fear (Judges 19:29; 1 Samuel 11:7).

³ Alexander Hislop: The Two Babylons Chapter II Section II Sub-Section IV The Death of the Child

⁴ The name of a Phoenician deity, the Adonis of the Greeks. He was originally a Sumerian or Babylonian sun-god, called Dumuzu, the husband of Ishtar, who corresponds to Aphrodite of the Greeks. The worship of these deities was introduced into Syria in very early times under the designation of Tammuz and Astarte, and appears among the Greeks in the myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, who are identified with Osiris and Isis of the Egyptian pantheon, showing how widespread the cult became. The Babylonian myth represents Dumuzu, or Tammuz, as a beautiful shepherd slain by a wild boar, the symbol of winter. Ishtar long mourned for him and descended into the underworld to deliver him from the embrace of death (Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris). This mourning for Tammuz was celebrated in Babylonia by women on the 2nd day of the 4th month, which thus acquired the name of Tammuz (see CALENDAR). This custom of weeping for Tammuz is referred to in the Bible in the only passage where the name occurs (Ezek 8:14). The chief seat of the cult in Syria was Gebal (modern Gebail, Greek Bublos) in Phoenicia, to the South of which the river Adonis (Nahr Ibrahim) has its mouth, and its source is the magnificent fountain of Apheca (modern `Afqa), where was the celebrated temple of Venus or Aphrodite, the ruins of which still exist. The women of Gebal used to repair to this temple in midsummer to celebrate the death of Adonis or Tammuz, and there arose in connection with this celebration those licentious rites which rendered the cult so infamous that it was suppressed by Constantine the Great.

⁵ The name Adonis, by which this deity was known to the Greeks, is none other than the Phoenician ‘Adhon, which is the same in Hebrew. His death is supposed to typify the long, dry summer of Syria and Palestine, when vegetation perishes, and his return to life the rainy season when the parched earth is revivified and is covered with luxuriant vegetation, or his death symbolizes the cold, rough winter, the boar of the myth, and his return the verdant spring.

Considering the disgraceful and licentious rites with which the cult was celebrated, it is no wonder that Ezekiel should have taken the vision of the women weeping for Tammuz in the temple as one of the greatest abominations that could defile the Holy House.

⁶ Alexander Hislop: The Two Babylons. Chapter II Section III, The Mother of the Child.

⁷ Rob Bell Velvet Elvis – Rethinking the Christian Faith, (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2005) 77.

⁸ Sue Monk Kidd: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins), pp. 162-163. Published: 1996.