Which Jesus

Q. Which Messiah?
Is Jesus the Son of God or the sun god?
(Sunday, Easter, Christmas)


Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
John 8:12

In recent times Jesus has sadly been mocked, ridiculed and undermined by intellectuals who have compared the Lord with false pagan solar deities. The attacks and arguments against the Lord are neither new nor original, they have just been repackaged for the culture of the post-modern world.  These men have never understood the nature of Jesus’ ministry and His threefold role in the redemption of man as a prophet (Deut. 18:15, 18; Luke 4:24; John 5:46, 47; Acts 3:19-26), a priest (Ps. 110; Heb. 6:20) and a King (Dan. 7:13, 14; Rev. 14:14).  The Gnostics attempted to distort Him historically in the fraudulent manuscript, the false ‘gospel of Judas’; the Jewish Talmud openly blasphemes Him and the Muslim’ sacred book the Quran tries to demean His divinity and His sacrifice by claiming that He wasn’t even crucified, but was replaced by another person, an absurd idea Mohammed borrowed from the Ebionites (Surah 4:157; 5:72-76).

Jesus made it plain that He came from heaven (John 1:10; 6:38), is equal with God the Father (John 1:1, 2; 10:30), proved His divinity (John 2:1-11; John 5:12-14; Luke 7:12-16;), prophesied His own death and resurrection (Matt. 16:21; Luke 9:22), as well as the betrayal of Judas (John 13:18, 19; Matt. 26:23, 47-50) and the deceptions and rapid events leading up to the end of time (Matt. 24; Luke 21); declared after His resurrection that ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and earth’ (Matt. 28:18) and promised that He will return a Second Time to rid the world of wickedness and restore it again when the gospel is preached to the entire world (Matt. 24:14; Rev. 21), a claim that neither of the false sun gods nor any other false prophet has ever done.  There are a few reasons for these cowardly attacks against the Messiah; it is due to a distortion and misunderstanding of history and a lot of compromising over the years of Christianity and paganism within the Church.

When the everlasting gospel was fresh and was spreading rapidly in the earth, restoring and reconciling fallen man back to God, paganism was scared and did not know where to hide for it was losing control over the hearts of man and men were losing their business and livelihood of selling their false gods (Acts 19:21-27).  How would it stop itself from being totally relinquished?  It would have to come under a new guise and under a new banner and this took place in the prophetic churches of the Dark Ages called Pergamos and Thyatira (Rev. 2:12-29).  It was under Emperor Constantine (c.272-337) that this adulteress marriage between paganism and Christianity took shape, where paganism got a new facelift and was camouflaged under a new system called the ‘mystery of iniquity’, better known as the Papacy.

‘The Magian philosophy had long prevailed in the East; in the West had arisen the polytheism of Rome; while in Greece, forming the link between Asia and Europe, and combining the contemplative and subtile character of the Eastern idolatries with the grossness and latitudinarianism of those of the West, there flourished a highly imaginative but sensuous mythology.  The ancient Chaldean worshipping the sun, - the Greek deifying the powers of nature, - and the Roman exalting the race of primeval men into gods, - are but varied manifestations of the same evil principle, namely, the utter alienation of the heart from God, - its proneness to hide itself amid the darkness of its own corrupt imaginations, and to become a god unto itself.  It was in the soil of the Seven Hills, amid the trophies of unnumbered victories, the symbols of universal empire, and the gorgeous rites of a polluting polytheism, that Romanism, velut arbor avo, grew up.  The Papacy is a new Babel, in which the old redoubtable idolatries are the builders.  It is a spiritual Pantheon, in which the local and vagrant superstitions find again a centre and a home.  It is a grand mausoleum, in which the corpses of the defunct Paganisms, like the mummied monks of Kreutzberg, are laid out in a ghostly pomp, while their disembodied spirits still live in the Papacy, and govern the world from their grave.  Analyse Popery, and you will find all the ancient systems existing in it.’ (1)

It was Emperor Constantine who introduced and opened the door to solar worship in the church and this is the reason why Christians keep Sunday, Easter and Christmas.  These pagan customs are so fully established and entrenched within the citadels of God’ spiritual temple and city on earth, His church, that they have become divine truths to the majority who practice them and most have no idea and are unaware of their origins but this study will get to the root.

There are a number of questions that critics of Jesus have never been able to answer when foolishly comparing the Lord to the pagan sun god.

(1)  Where in the Holy Scriptures does it mention the day of Jesus birth?

(2)  Where did Jesus instruct His disciples before or after His resurrection to keep Sunday holy as a day of rest?

(3)  Where did Jesus instruct His disciples to keep the pagan feast of Easter?

Many critics such as the late Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), African-American historian John G. Jackson (1907-1993), African-American Anthony T. Browder in his book The Browder File and American New Age conspiracy theorist Jordan Maxwell in the undocumented You Tube hit Zeitgeist, have foolishly compared Jesus with the sun god and do not understand the spiritual and figurative language of the Holy Scriptures, because ‘the natural man recieveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned’ (I Cor. 2:14). 

The prophet Isaiah almost 700 years before Christ’ birth under inspiration prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23), which was an elaboration of the prophecy God said to Adam, Eve and Satan that the promised saviour would be of the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15).  Jesus warns us about the satanic cleverness and craftiness of individuals who would attempt to undermine and usurp His role in prophecy and the plan of redemption. 

Jesus is called the ‘Sun of righteousness’ (Malachi 4:1), ‘the day star’ (II Pet. 1:19) and He titles Himself as the ‘bright and morning star’ (Rev. 22:14) in the prophecy.  He is also described as the ‘dayspring’ (Luke 1:78) because those who embrace Him as their saviour will be released from the chains and bondage of spiritual darkness.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deed should be reproved.  But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be manifest, that they are wrought in God.

John 3:19-21

Jesus is also called ‘the Lamb’ (Isa. 53:7; John 1:29, 36; I Pet. 1:19; Rev. 5:5, 6; 6:1; 12:11; 13:8; 14:1; 17:14) to describe His one and complete sacrifice as well as ‘the stone’ and ‘the rock’ (Matt. 7:24, 25; 21:42; Acts 4:10, 11; I Cor. 10:4; Eph. 2:20), are we to also take these symbolic descriptions of Jesus’ role and apply it literally like many did in Jesus’ day (Matt. 16:6-12; John 6:48-66)?

In the Old Testament, God unequivocally forbade the worship of the sun as one of the grossest forms of pagan idolatry and an open rejection of the Almighty.

Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.  And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD'S house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.

Ezekiel 8:15, 16

If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.

Job 31:26-28

And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
II Kings 23:5

If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.  At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.  The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.  So thou shalt put the evil away from among you.
Deuteronomy 17:2-7

The ancient sun god was called Utu and Shamash in ancient Sumeria/Babylonia, which was the birthplace of pagan idolatry (Gen. 10:8-12; 11:1-9; Jer. 51:7)

A 14^th century B.C. Egyptian king Akhenaton (which means effective spirit of Aten) and his wife Nefertiti sit under the rays of the sun god Aten (Ra)

The sun was the chief deity among every pagan nation all over the earth and though he was given different names by each nation – Shamash (Babylon), Ra (Egypt), Surya (India), Tonatiuh (Mexico), Hellios (Greece) Sol/Mithras (Rome) etc., he was the centre of all of their worship and they were deceived into believing that the ball of fire in the heavens was the source of all life upon the earth.  What happens when the church adopts the same emblems, festivals and artwork of the pagans depicting the sun god and “Christianizes” them?  Does their faith look unique and authentic or fake, cheap and fraudulent?  Many individuals, both pagan and Christian have observed through in-depth research, the influences of sun worship within the church. 

 

‘Demon worship disguised as nature worship and centering chiefly in the sun, began in the astrological religion of ancient Babylonia and has continued unabated from that day to this throughout the world.  It has as its basic principle the placation or appeasement of the evil deity.  It is a religion of fear, and represents an attempt to avoid his destructive powers by becoming his servants.  The Hebrew Chaldee word Sorath, sun or solar heat, is frequently found written in the sun in medieval solar charms, with its Hebrew-Chaldee spelling SVRTH (S, Samech, 60; V, 6; R, 200, Th, 400, total 666). (2)

In short, Sun worship, symbolically speaking, lies at the very heart of the great festivals which the Christian Church celebrates to-day, and these relics of heathen worship have, through the medium of their sacred rites, curiously enough blended with practices and beliefs utterly antagonistic to the spirit that prompted them.  Many of the mystic signs common to pagan worship are in evidence to-day, “and the High Churchman decorates in which he officiates with symbols similar to those which awed the worshippers of Ashur, Ishtar, or the sun.”  Chief among these ecclesiastical symbols is the cross, symbol of the Christian faith, a symbol that antedated the birth of Christ, and one that found its origin in solar worship.  It occurs upon the monuments and utensils of every primitive people, from China to Yucatan.  The halo depicted as encircling the heads of the saints, and those endowed with holy attributes, is clearly a solar symbol, and the wheel symbol suggested by the disk of the sun was often used as an emblem of God.’ (3)

The halo was a pagan symbol of the sun that was adopted from the east into the west and was incorporated into Medieval Catholic art and placed upon the head of many of her thousands of saints in artwork all across Europe

A statue of the eastern deity Buddha with a halo around his head

A stone tablet of the Babylonian sun god Shamash (seated right) with the eight-rayed sun wheel in the centre and the Babylonian king Nabu-apla-iddin giving obeisance to the sun god in between two of his attendants (left)

The biggest eight rayed solar wheel on earth is situated in Vatican City

Q. Why do the majority of professed Christians throughout the world keep Sunday?

Jesus kept the seventh-day Sabbath (Luke 4:16), rested in the tomb on the seventh-day Sabbath (Luke 23:56) and declared that He was the ‘Lord of the sabbath’ (Mark 2:27, 28), so why then do His professed followers all over the world do contrary to Him and keep Sunday holy like the pagans did?  They argue that, as Jesus was resurrected from the tomb on the first day of the week, they keep Sunday in memorial of the resurrection.  That argument is very weak and does not have any scripture to support it, for the Holy Scriptures divinely instructs us that the new life we live after our baptism is in memorial of the resurrection (Rom. 6:4; I Pet. 3:21).  So where did Sunday sacredness come from?  Is it from God or from the pagans?  Did the disciples observe it, or was it a pagan custom that gradually weaned itself into Christendom?

Webster thus defines the word Sunday: - “Sunday; so called because the day was anciently dedicated to the sun or to its worship.  The first day of the week.”

Worcester, also, in his large dictionary thus defines it: - “Sunday; so named because anciently dedicated to the sun or its worship.  The first day of the week.”

Verstegan says: - “The most ancient Germans being pagans, and having appropriated their first day of the week to the peculiar adoration of the sun, whereof that day doth yet in our English tongue retain the name of Sunday.” – Verstegan’s Antiquities, p.10, London, 1628.  Again he says: - “Unto the day dedicated unto the special adoration of the idol of the sun, they gave the name of Sunday, as much as to say, the sun’s day, or the day of the sun.  This idol was placed in a temple, and there adored and sacrificed unto, for that they believed that the sun in the firmament did with or in this idol correspond and co-operate.” – Idem, p.68

Jennings, speaking of the time of deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, thus speaks of the Gentile nations as – “The idolatrous nations who, in honor of their chief god, the sun, began their day at the rising.” – Jewish Antiquities, book 3, chap. 1.  Again: - The day which the heathen in general consecrated to the worship and honor of their chief god, the sun, which, according to our computation, was the first day of the week.” Idem, chap. 3.  We see, therefore, according to this author, that Sunday was more ancient than the coming out of Egypt.

Morer says: - “It is not to be denied but we borrow the name of this day from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and we allow that the old Egyptians worshipped the sun, and as a standing memorial of their veneration, dedicated this day to him.  And we find by the influence of their examples, other nations, and among them the Jews themselves, doing him homage.” – Dialogue on the Lord’s Day, pp. 22, 23 (4)

The Church of Rome who has claimed from her embryonic beginnings that she is the arbiter of truth and the one and only true infallible church, ‘for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow’ (Rev. 18:7), openly tells us that she adopted Sunday from the pagans where all the Protestants, Orthodox and non-denominational churches keep in honour of her.  Many of the Protestant denominations, though they keep Sunday holy, also confirm that it is not Biblical.

Why then do Christians observe Sunday instead of the day mentioned in the Bible?  Since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn’t it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not from the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday?  They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon an explicit text in the Bible.  That observance remains as a reminder of the Mother Church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away – like a boy running away from home but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair. (5)

Cardinal James Gibbons (1834-1921), Archbishop of Baltimore

“Is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties?  But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single authorizing the sanctification of Sunday.  The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.” (6)

Anglican: “And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all?  We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day.” – Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pages 334, 336.

American Congregationalist: “The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.” – Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890.

Presbyterian: “There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday.  The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observations of Sunday.  Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters.” – Canon Eyton, in The Ten Commandments

Methodist: “It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism.  Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week.  Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath.  But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose.  Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” – Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, pages 180-181.

Southern Baptist: “The sacred name of the seventh day is Sabbath.  This fact is too clear to require argument (Ex. 20:10 quoted)…On this point the plain teaching of the word of God has been admitted in all ages…Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week – that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend the first day supplanted the seventh.” – Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbath Question, pages 14-17, 41.

Episcopalians: “We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic church of Christ.” Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.

Baptist: “There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday.  It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions.  Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such transaction be found?  Not in the New Testament – absolutely not.  There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” – Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manuel

“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false (Jewish traditional) glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during the forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.  Nor, as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question.  Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counselling and instructing those founded, discuss and approach the subject.  “Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources.  But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostacy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism.” – Dr. E. T. Hiscox, report of his sermon on the Baptist’s Minister’s Convention in New York Examiner, November 16, 1893. (7)

It is plain and clear from the documents of the Papal and Protestant churches and also from secular journals that the seventh-day Sabbath which was instituted at the beginning of time for man to acknowledge God as the Creator of this earth has never been done away with and that Sunday is a pagan custom from the pre-Christian heathen culture’ in memorial of the sun god.  There are other solar pagan customs that have also entered into the church.

Easter:

It is clear from a study of the Holy Scriptures that Christ’ death, the one and complete sacrifice, represented in typology, all of the lambs, goats and sheep that were slain before Him (Heb. 10:1-10), for ‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us’ (I Co. 5:7).  He fulfilled prophecy when His forerunner John the Baptist ushered Him in as the ‘Lamb of God’ (John 1:29, 36) in fulfilment of how Isaiah described him almost 700 years earlier when he declared that ‘He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter’ (Isa. 53:7), which light was revealed to the salvation seeking Ethiopian eunuch by Philip the evangelist, that the prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ (Acts 8:26-40).  The apostle Peter describes Jesus’ sinless life as the main qualification to be our saviour, for He was ‘a lamb without blemish’ (Ex. 12:5; I Pet. 1:19).

His death was at the same time as the Passover, which was on the fourteenth day of the first month, ‘the beginning of months’, which was the Hebrew month Abib (April), when the children of Israel exited out of Egypt (Ex. 12, 13) and though the Lord’s death was at the same time as the feast and ordinance of the Passover, the breaking of bread can be done any time throughout the year as a memorial of his death ‘till He come’ (Acts 2:42; 20:7; I Cor. 10:23-26).  Christ’ death was also around the same time as the pagan feast of Easter as the Holy Scriptures makes plain (Acts 12:10-4), but the Lord is not to be celebrated with eggs and bunnies, for there are absolutely no similarities, but the Church has sadly amalgamated His death and resurrection with this pagan festival and pagan critics have gone in for the kill.

·      Easter – The English term, according to the Ven. Bede (De temporum ratione, I, V), relates to Ēostre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring. (8)

·      The Christian festival of Easter has its solar characteristics.  “The very word Easter,” says Proctor, “is in its real origin as closely related to sun movements as the word East,” and the notion that the Sun dances on Easter morning as it rises believed to-day by superstitious people.  In Saxony and Brandenburg the Peasants still climb the hilltops before dawn on Easter day to witness the three joyful leaps of the Sun, as our English forefathers used to do.  Tylor tells us that “solar rite of the New Fire, adopted by the Roman Church as a Paschal ceremony, may still be witnessed in Europe with its solemn curfew on Easter Eve, and the ceremonial striking of the new holy fire. (9)

·      The festival, of which we read in Church history, under the name of Easter, in the third or fourth centuries, was quite a different festival from that now observed in the Romish Church, and at that time was not known by any such name as Easter.  It was called Pasch, or the Passover, and though not of Apostolic institution, was very early observed by many professing Christians, in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ.  That festival agreed originally with the time of the Jewish Passover, when Christ was crucified, a period, which, in the days of Tertullian, at the end of the second century, was believed to have been the 23^rd of March.  That festival was not idolatrous, and it was preceded by Lent.  The forty days’ abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddesss.  Such a Lent of forty days, “in the spring of the year,” is still observed by the Yezidis or Pagan Devil – worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians. (10)

A British journalist, Andrew Alexander, wrote an article in the London tabloid the Daily Mail, trying to denigrate Christ during the time of Easter.  His neo-Gnostic arguments are not original, but it can affect many of Christ’ faithful who are weak in faith or those who do not investigate and research the hypothesis this man has written. Here is a portion of the article and we will see if his argument is authentic or not.

‘In the pre-Christian world, the idea of sacrificing a godlike figure in anticipation of his resurrection was almost commonplace.  In the Eastern Mediterranean, the worship of Osiris, Attis, Adonis and Dionysius all had features similar to those of the Christian passion.  The worshipped god was usually semi-divine and his birth almost invariably miraculous.  He was essentially a corn and wine god.  The rites of worship revolved around his death and resurrection and usually took place, significantly, at the Spring Equinox – Easter. (11)

It is very interesting that this Gentile journalist ridiculously compares Christ to a deity that God in the Old Testament condemns – Tammuz (Eze. 8:14), who is also known as Adonis.  Though they may have different names these man-made deities mentioned by this journalist are all the same.  Let us look at what the Holy Scriptures says about all of these demonic deities from pre-Christian culture’ and sadly parallel them Jesus.

For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.

Psalm 96:5

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
I Corinthians 10:20

Then shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.  Every man is brutish in his knowledge: every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
Jeremiah 10:11, 14

·      Osiris: According to Herodotus, the only two festivals, in which it was lawful to sacrifice pigs, were those of the moon and Bacchus (or Osiris).  A festival was held on the 17^th of Athyr, and three succeeding days, in honour of Osiris, during which they exposed to view a gilded ox, the emblem of that deity; and commemorated what they called the “loss of Osiris”.  Another followed in honour of the same deity, after an interval of six months, or 179 days, “upon the 19^th of Pachon.  Another festival in honour of Osiris was held “on the new Moon of the month Phamenoth, which fell in the beginning of spring, called the entrance of Osiris into the Moon;” Among the ceremonies connected with Osiris, the Fête of Apis holds a conspicuous place.  For Osiris was also worshipped under the form of Apis, the Sacred Bull of Memphis, or as a human figure with a bull’s head, accompanied by the name “Apis-Osiris”. (12) Osiris was properly a form of Ra.  He was the light of the lower world, the sun from the time that the sun sinks below the horizon in the west to the hour when he reappears above the eastern horizon in the morning.  This physical idea was, however, at a later date modified, and Osiris was generally recognized as the perpetually presiding lord of the lower world, the king and the judge of Hades or Amenti.  His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae.  Ordinarily he was represented in a mummied form as the god of the dead, but sometimes he appears as a living man, standing or walking.  He carries in his two hands the crook and the flagellum or whip, and commonly wears on his head the crown of Upper Egypt, with a plume of ostrich feather on either side of it. (13)

The Egyptian deity Osiris (left) being worshipped by a priest (right)

·      Adonis: Adonis, or Tammuz, which was probably his true name, was a god especially worshipped at Byblus.  He seems to have represented nature in the ultimate decline and revival, whence the myth spoke of the death and restoration to life; the river of Byblos was regarded as annually reddened with his blood; and once a year, at the time of the summer solstice, the women of Phoenicia and Syria generally wept for Tammuz. (14)

·      Dionysius (Bacchus): Dionysus was the god of the inebriety, the deification of drunkenness.  He was viewed as the creator of the vine, or at any rate as its introducer into Greece; the teacher of its culture, and the discoverer of the exhilarating properties of its fruit.  The worship of Dionysus was affected by taking part in his orgies, and these were of a furious and ecstatic character, accompanied with exciting music, with wild dances, with shrieks and cries, and sometimes with bloodshed.  Both men and women joined in the Dionysus rites, the women outdoing the men in the violence of their frenzy. (15) Dionysus also appeared under his multiple aspects as a bull god, a god having a double birth, a horned god, and sometimes as a young Dionysus riding a panther. (16)

Dionysus (or Bacchus), the Greco-Roman deity of drunkenness and sexual pleasure

The hedonistic Greco-Roman festival Mystery cult known as the Bacchanalia was in honour of the worship of sexual pleasure.  The modern-day carnivals all over the world, though not as sensual, are a revival of this pagan festival in honour of the pagan nature deity Bacchus where it is still called by its original name in Trinidad, the Bacchanal.

It is quite clear that many of these deities’ festivals revolved around the cycle of the heavenly bodies, especially the moon and the sun, where this idolatrous worship we have observed, God totally condemns.  It is absolutely absurd to compare Christ with these bogus, false pagan nature deities.  It is ludicrous. How can Jesus who condemned idolatry be compared with gods who represented idolatry?  If Jesus clearly says, ‘That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her already hath committed adultery already with her already in his heart’ (Matt. 5:28), then how can a God who preaches sexually purity be compared with Dionysus/Bacchus, a god that represents sexual immorality, drunken debauchery and the degeneracy of human nature, it doesn’t make any sense.  If the pig (swine) was forbidden by God for the children of Israel to eat and was called ‘unclean’ (Lev. 11:7, 26-28; Deut. 14:8) and if the Egyptians offered it up in sacrifice to Osiris, then where is the comparison to Jesus?  When the stubborn and impatient children of Israel rebelled against God not long after they came out of Egypt, when ‘they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass’ (Ps. 106:20) by worshipping Apis, the sacred Egyptian bull god, who was a representative of Osiris and the sun god in a Bacchanalian style of worship, where the ‘people were naked…unto their shame among their enemies’ (Ex. 32), the question is posed for the last time, where is the comparison with the Lord Jesus Christ?  These false gods were man-made deities conjured up in the minds of fallen man.  Did any of these deities and their mystical priests prophecy their death, resurrection, their return and restoration of this dying earth? No. They couldn’t, for the Egyptian and Greek kingdoms were prophesied by God’ holy prophets to fall (Jer. 25; Dan. 7:21, 22).  There is no comparison, for Jesus came to restore the image of God back in fallen man and He will return in power and great glory to reclaim His heritage that He brought with his blood. 

It is also very important to note that when Jesus Christ died in ‘the reign of Tiberius Caesar’ (Luke 3:1), when ‘both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together’ (Acts 4:27), to ‘bruise his heel’, which means when His feet and hands were nailed to the cross and Jesus, the promised seed of the woman, also bruised the serpent’ head, (a sentence pronounced against Satan in the garden of Eden to destroy his control over ‘the kingdoms of this world’) and the hearts of fallen men according to the oldest prophecy in the world (Gen. 3:15), there was a very interesting story in the Roman Empire concerning the death of these pagan man-made nature deities who were also representatives of Satan.

‘In the time of Tiberius, as related by Plutarch, one Thamus, pilot of a ship making for Italy, was thrice called by name and bidden to give the news that “great Pan was dead.” (17)

Not only did God through the prophets prophecy the fall and rise of earthly empires for their idolatrous, selfish cultures (Isa. 13; 14; 15; 19; Jer. 25; 28:8; 46-51; Dan. 2:21; Obadiah; Jonah; Nahum), but even the Gentiles knew that their false gods had come to an end with the first advent of Jesus Christ and He’s also coming back to permanently destroy them once and for all.

Christmas:

When Jesus ushered in the New Testament/Covenant just before He was betrayed and crucified, He declared what should be observed in remembrance of Him.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.  And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.  But I say unto you, I will not drink, it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Matthew 26:26-29

In the ancient world superstition dominated every culture on the planet and the cycle of the sun affected their lifestyle.  December 21^st is one of the four cardinal points in the year that gives us the winter solstice.  It is the shortest day in the year known as the official start of the winter, but to the ancients it was known as the death of the sun. Four days later they believed the sun had a rebirth and all over the world in practically all pre-Christian cultures they worshipped the rebirth of the sun god on December 25th.  Every year people all around the world come together as a family and share presents on December 25^th on the ancient solar festival which was originally called in the Latin Natalis Invictis Solis (Unconquerable Birthday of the Sun), but which most people know today as Christmas.  The church stole and hijacked this pagan festival from the heathens and still claim it as theirs, but recently, pagans have been asking Christians a very serious question, ‘Why have you stolen our festival?’ and there has not been a response from the most influential voices in Christendom.  Whenever Christians are challenged about why they partake in this pagan festival, they usually respond with the same answers to defend their love of this world.

·      What about the children

·      It is a good opportunity to witness

·      We should not be too extreme and be a bit more balanced

There are 11 months in the year to tell people about the real Jesus and waiting till the end of the year is not only a cop out, but a denial of the evangelism we are meant to do every day of our lives, whether it be the holy lives we live each day, where we are to witness to our neighbours, friends, work colleagues or to people at our places of study (school, college, polytechnic, university, etc.), or the door to door witnessing, canvassing on the streets, literature evangelism or feeding the poor and lowly. 

Many Christians who have come to the defence of Christmas also misunderstand the Holy Scriptures.  God warns and counsels against pagan tree worship and planetary/solar worship, but Christians say these things have no association with Christmas whatsoever.  Are they blind, naive or do they just choose to be ignorant.  Let us look at the following passage of scripture and also see what the pagans say.

Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at he signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.  For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.  They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers, that it move not.  They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go.  Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.  Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.

Jeremiah 10:1-6

Assyrian monarch, King Ashurnasirpal depicted twice around the sacred tree that represented the tree of life in Babylonian mysticism

·   Many cultures held the tree to be sacred, infused with creative energy. (18)

·   The pagans set aside the 25^th of December as the birthday of the Solar Man.  They rejoiced, feasted, gathered in processions, and made offerings in the temples.  The darkness of winter was over and the glorious son of light was returning to the Northern Hemisphere. (19)

·   In our own time a number of Christian religious observances and festivals are of distinct solar origin.  Notable among these feasts days is Christmas.  “The Roman winter solstice,” says Tylor, “as celebrated on December 25^th (viii Kal. Jan.) in connection with the worship of the Sun-God Mithra appears to have been instituted in this special form by Aurelian about A.D. 273, and to this festival the day owes its apposite name of ‘Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.’  With full symbolic appropriateness, though not with historical justification, the day was adopted in the western church where it appears to have been generally introduced by the fourth century, and whence in time it passed to the eastern church as the solemn anniversary of the Birth of Christ, Christmas Day.  As a matter of history no valid or even consistent early Christian tradition vouches for it.” (20)

·   It is less well known that only as late as 350 a specific date was set for the observance of the birthday of Christ, namely, December 25, by Julius I, Bishop of Rome, though tradition says that it has been celebrated since 98, and was ordered to be observed as a solemn feast by Telesphorus, Bishop of Rome, in 137. (21)

·   “The Bible never gives an exact date for Jesus’ birth.  So when the Christian church adopted Dec. 25, it was superimposing a Christian festival on a previously held pagan one,” says Richard Heinberg, author of Celebrate the Solstice (Quest Books, ($12).  Mistletoe, carolling, even Christmas trees were tied to the solstice.  “Celtic cultures believed that mistletoe’s golden berries held the fire of the sun.  And Christmas trees are a vestige of pagan tree worship.”  Even St. Nick has solstice origins, Heinberg says.  “Santa Claus comes down to us with shamanistic characteristics.  He flies through the air, and he carries a magic sack on his back.” (22)

·   The early Christians never celebrated it, the Bible doesn’t tell people to observe it, and biblical references to shepherds tending their flocks indicate that there is no way that Christ was born on December 25 in winter.  This date was originally dated by pagans in the North who refused to stop their winter solstice celebrations to celebrate the return of the sun.  Pagans in the South celebrated the birth of Mithras (a god predating Jesus) on December 25.  Our current traditions of festive singing, exchanging presents and having Christmas trees again hark back to the pagans.  They decorated their evergreen trees with decorations, food and runes to help keep the spirits of tree spirits close to their villages, sang joyous songs and swapped presents.  The Christian authorities tried for years to stamp this out, so the pagans merely took their tree indoors, which is why we are still doing it to this day. (23)

The Medo- Persian sun god Mithras was adopted into Rome.  He was always drawn with his Phrygian cap where the Roman Soldiers embraced his cult and they worshipped him on December 25^th every year

We have seen that Jesus Christ is the LORD of the seventh-day Sabbath and He never instructed anyone to keep Sunday holy, neither keep Easter nor Christmas, so the arguments that the Gentiles put forward is useless and weak.  Jesus ‘hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us’ (Eph. 2:14), that long bridge between Jew and Gentile when He reconciled both heaven and earth through His sacrifice and made it possible through the everlasting gospel that all can have access to eternity and to the true and living God.  Even though ‘salvation is of the Jews’ (John 4:22) we were all ‘as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls’ (I Pet. 2:25), so ‘that in the in the dispensation and fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him’ (Eph. 2:10) at His Second Coming, for ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:28).

There are many sincere Christians who may find this very hard to swallow for they may never have been exposed to this information in their entire life.  Change can be very scary and difficult, especially when new light rocks and shakes our foundations and our traditional cultural heritage.  There are many Christians all over the world who worships God ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4:24), in the sincerity of their heart and according to the light that they have been exposed to and though the may keep Sunday, Easter or Christmas, God will not judge someone on what they do not know, for He winks at the things done in ignorance (Acts 17:30).  But before Jesus returns to this earth, He is clear and has foretold us in prophecy that the ‘everlasting gospel’ is going to be preached into every region on the entire earth and ‘then shall the end come’ (Matt. 24:14; Rev. 14:6).  This gospel will be straight cutting, with no pagan influences and no compromise.  It will be pure and clean like the apostolic message at Pentecost and it will be a final call to all men to come back to the true God.

Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and fountains of waters.

Revelation 14:7

When we ‘fear God’ we are being obedient to Him through faith (Gen. 22:12, 18; Prov. 8:13; 16:6).  When we give ‘glory to Him’, that is a worship that encompasses everything we do, from how we look after our bodies, how we dress and present ourselves and especially how we treat others.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

I Corinthians 10:31

If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever.  Amen.

I Peter 4:11

The last part of the first angel’ message also incorporates the seventh-day Sabbath, for it reads ‘and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters’, which is the command of the fourth commandment that God gave to the children of Israel after the Exodus (Ex. 20:8-11) which is a call back to what God originally instituted for man in the beginning of time (Gen. 2:1, 2).

It is this message as well as an expose of the spiritual fall of Papal Babylon and her daughter churches (Rev. 14:8) and a warning not to accept her mark (Rev. 14:9-11) that is going to usher in the glorious return of the Second Coming of Christ, when He will come, not as a babe in a manger but as a King to reclaim back this earth.  The Second Coming of Christ will be a frightening scene for most of the inhabitants on the earth who have rejected Him (Rev. 6:14-17; Isa. 2:10-22; Rev. 1:7; Matt. 24:30), but an absolute joy to those who have prepared themselves to meet Him (Matt. 5:8; Rev. 19:7-9; II Thess. 1:10; Titus 2:13; Job 19:25-27; Isa. 25:8, 9).  Are you going to worship God or accept the mark of the beast? The choice is yours.

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 

Revelation 14:14

Source: (1) The Papacy by Rev. J. A. Wylie pp. 9, 11, 13; (2) The Trail of the Serpent by Murl Vance pp. 6, 24; (3) Sun Lore of all Ages by William Tyler Olcott pp. 248, 299, 300, 301; (4) The Change of the Sabbath was it by Divine or Human Authority by Geo. I. Butler pp. 95, 96, 97; (5) The Faith of Millions by Rev. John A. O’Brien pp. 472, 473; (6) The Faith of our Fathers by James Cardinal Gibbons pp. 72, 73; (7) Why Protestants? Why Catholics pp. 44, 45; (8) Catholic Encyclopaedia, Volume 5, p.22; (9) Sun Lore of All Ages by William Tyler Olcott p.238; (10) The Two Babylons by Rev. Alexander Hislop p.104; (11) Daily Mail, Thursday, March 27, 1997; (12) The Ancient Egyptians by Gardiner Wilkinson pp. 286, 287, 288; (13) The Religions of the Ancient World by George Rawlinson pp. 27, 28; (14) Ibid p. 164; (15) Ibid p.229; (16) The Phallus by Alain Daniélou pp. 87, 88; (17) Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 17 p. 199; (18) Star Wars: The Magic of Myth by Mary Henderson p.68; (19) The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manley P. Hall p.L; (20) Sun Lore of All Ages by William Tyler Olcott p.229; (21) Christmas customs around the World by Herbert H. Wernecke; (22) USA Today, Thursday 19^th December 1996; (23) Metro, December 21, 2004