Christian
Churches of God
No. B7_i
Introduction to Mysticism
(Edition 1.0 20040807-20040807))
Here we see the origin, aims and thrust of the Mystical Systems.
Christian
Churches of God
E-mail: secretary@ccg.org
(Copyright ©
2004 Wade Cox)
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Introduction to Mysticism
In the period at the end of the Third Millennium BCE, a religious system emerged in Chaldea under the rulers of the land we now know as Iraq, in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the city of Babylon. This land, located in what was known as the plain of Shinar, was the centre of the known world.
The Bible details who the inhabitants were, and the leader is identified as Nimrod.
There was a religious struggle that emerged within the mythology of the time in the two major centres and in the land between known as the Levant or Canaan.
The legends of all the civilisations connected with that area record a great flood that covered the earth and destroyed their civilisations and their people.
Of those who survived, there is a record of a great catastrophe and the division of men into nations, and tribes, each speaking differently from one another. The area was named Babel, meaning confusion, reportedly after the confusion of languages.
The religion that developed in that area was opposed by a priest of God who was the youngest son of Noah, named Shem. He was a priest of the One True God. He is recorded in the annals of the Egyptians as a god that opposed their gods.
The religion that emerged from Babylonia was a mystery system that centred on Nimrod, and the Mother goddess figure identified with him as Semiramis. She was the mother and lover of the god known by various names. The Assyrians called him Dumuzi; the Bible calls him Tammuz. He was the dying god of the myths known elsewhere as Attis among the Phrygians and the Romans, and Adonis among the Greeks. He was associated with Mithras in the east, and later in the Roman Army, and also Apollo Hyperborios, among the Celts. In Egypt he emerged in the triune system there, which was composed of Osiris, Isis and Horus. In the early Roman system it was Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.
The festivals of this religion centred on the events related to the mythical experiences of these entities. It appears that the myths may well have come from the events surrounding their lives and the passage of the seasons, which were explained by them.
There were many forms of the religion and the deities took many names. Even to this day the festival of the reborn son/lover is found in the Easter Festivals. The word Easter is the Anglo-Saxon form of the name for the Mother goddess Ishtar, or the biblical Ashtoreth, consort of Baal. At this time the son as god is slain and enters into the earth where the goddess rescues him, and restores him to life. This is the festival of Easter, where the god dies on Friday and is resurrected on Sunday. The mystery cults reflect this process in a number of ways, all of which can be seen to have similarities.
Some scholars have known and understood this system and its origins. Some have explained the process but have come under criticism. That is because the theology of the modern systems is opposed to the cosmology surrounding the Bible systems. Such explanations supporting the Bible do not fit in with the political agendas of the current world systems. Thus, any minor error, or fault, has been used to discard their works. In that way the works of Layard, and in particular Hislop, and his work The Two Babylons, have been effectively discarded. The Bible itself has been attacked, and most often by people purporting to be theologians of the Christian system.
There is, however, a traceable history of the doctrines that can be seen to have spread out from Babylon into the various parts of the world to which the people from the Middle East came, and in which they established systems.
As men spread about the face of the earth they used this system. Most particularly the Aryans, as they moved north after the conquest of India, retained the system of the Sun God, and the Mother Goddess, and its Triune system. They enshrined the festivals of Christmas and Easter as the calendrical symbols of this cosmology. It was opposed by a small number of people. Those people were identified by their adherence to the worship of the One True God, and their religious struggle is recorded in the pages of what has come down to us as the Bible.
In this work we trace the origins, structure and spread of this system in volumes that explain each phase of its spread, and the basic tenets of its beliefs and its calendar.
It is not new. It is very ancient. It is a religion with a common view and belief system that has spread throughout the entire earth.
The Bible identifies it as Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots, and the Abominations of the Earth (Rev. 17:5).
This system is so great and powerful that it is identified as the persecutor of the followers of Jesus Christ. Yet, she is the woman that has power and authority over the kings of the earth. Thus she is seen as a religious structure being represented by a woman symbolic of a religious system in ancient theology.
Bullinger, in The Companion Bible, has this to say of the text in Revelation 17:5:
MYSTERY: The verse should be read, “And upon her forehead (she had) a name written, a secret symbol (musterion), BABYLON THE GREAT, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” The name of the woman is therefore a secret sign or symbol of “that great city” which she personifies (v. 18)
HARLOTS = the harlots.
OF THE EARTH: Babylon is the fountainhead of all idolatry and systems of false worship. This is the mystery of iniquity (2Thes. 2:7) seen in all the great “religions” of the world. All alike substitute another god for the God of the Bible, a god made either with the hands or with the imagination but equally made; a religion consisting of human merit and endeavour. The “Reunion of the Churches of Christendom” and the “League of Nations” are two of the most arresting signs of the times (fn. to v. 5).
Thus Bullinger, one of the most respected Bible scholars of Protestantism, saw the Whore of Babylon as essentially a Christian system desirous of world domination. Islam must also follow in its train to achieve this aim.
Bullinger did not live to see the fall of the League of Nations, and the subsequent United Nations that followed it after World War II.
He did, however, understand that this sequence was part of the culmination of the world systems prior to the return of the Messiah.
The coming wars are essentially of a religious nature. Religion is being used to coalesce the free nations of the world into states that can be controlled and enslaved, so that the world can become a controlled vehicle ruled by a small elite class of beings. This religious system is being adapted to that end.
Bullinger says that the term “abominations” here in the text (Rev. 17:4-5) is the Greek “bdelugma” which was used in the Septuagint of an idol (2Kgs. 23:13 etc.); in plural, of idolatry (Deut. 18:9). Called “abominations” because of the uncleanness practiced in the worship (fn. to v. 4).
He says of the words: “And filthiness = and having the unclean things; as the texts” (fn. to v. 4).
The system was not obscure. The understanding of the system was spread throughout the earth and was readily identifiable.
This work, Mysticism, explains in sequence how the system spread, and how it influenced the various elements and systems set up as it spread, and produced a theology that is identifiable and distinctive.
We will see it spread east into India with the earliest civilisations there, and later emerge full-blown in the Aryan conquests. It moves north and west into Europe, and south into Egypt and Africa. The spread throughout Asia corrupts many religious systems. Its form, as Mysticism, is the vehicle by which it is transported everywhere.
Its aim is to release the individual from obedience to the One True God, and to enshrine a system that aspires to immortality through the existence of a soul. It seeks to purge that soul of the limitations imposed upon it by the fall from the heavens.
It seeks to restore itself to the heavens and to immortality on its own terms, free of obedience to, and by the grace of the God, understood from the pages of the Bible.
This system will almost destroy the world.
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