Comments please...Sun Worship—Satans Ancient Counterfeit In ancient Babylon, the kings served as high priests of the sun, Bel-Marduk. To take the hand of Bel-Marduk was part of the ceremony of installation as king in Assyria and Babylon (Babylonian and Assyrian Religion, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed.). The celebration of the winter solstice around December 25 was regarded as the birthday of the sun. It was a major holiday associated with gift-giving and the sacred evergreen tree. Not only did much of Babylonian pagan worship involve the sun, but so also did the worship of each of Babylons successors in its own turn, first in Persia and later in both the Hellenistic world and Rome. In fact, by the time each of Daniels four beasts arose, sun worship had risen to prominence as the imperial religion. Persia was Babylons first successor. Ancient Persian religion centered on the worship of Mithras, the god of light. As a result of Babylonian influence, however, Mithras came to be identified with the Babylonian sun god. The Greeks of Asia Minor identified Mithras with their ancient sun god, Helios, and contributed to the westward spread of the cult of the sun. Alexander the Great traveled to Egypt to the Temple of Amon-Ra to be proclaimed by the priests as the literal son of the sun god. And what of Rome? Mithras, identified with Sol Invictus at Rome, thus became the giver of authority and victory to the imperial house (Mithras, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed.). Lemprieres Classical Dictionary states that Sol, the sun god of Rome, was worshipped as the Baal or Bel of the Chaldeans [Babylonians] (p. 590). Sun worship and its symbols were adopted by the Roman Empire from her predecessors and passed on to the entire western world! In modern Lebanon today there is a tiny Arab village called Baalbek. Located there are the ruins of two majestic temples, once the pride of Heliopolis, the Greco-Roman City of the Sun. Notice the explanation of historian Will Durant: Augustus planted a small colony there, and the town grew as the sacred seat of Baal the Sun-God.... Under Antoninus Pius and his successors Roman, Greek, and Syrian architects and engineers raised, on the site of an old Phoenician temple to Baal, an imposing shrine to Iuppiter Heliopolitanus (The Story of Civilization, Will Durant, vol. 3, p. 511). Thus the Roman Jupiter became identified with Baal the ancient sun god. Another great center of pagan sun worship was the temple at Heliopolis in Egypt, where a great obelisk sacred to the sun was located. Around 40ad, the Roman emperor Caligula had this obelisk transported from Egypt to Rome and erected in his circus on Vatican Hill. In 1586, upon order of Pope Sixtus V, this ancient obelisk—83 feet in height and weighing 320 tons—was moved a short distance to its present location. Requiring a crew of 800 workmen, 160 horses and 45 winches, the obelisk was exactly centered before the entrance of St. Peters Cathedral—where it remains to this day. In ancient Rome, before the days of the empire, there was a cult devoted to Sol, the sun god. Parrinders World Religions from Ancient History to the Present discusses the development of sun worship as the religion of Rome: It was natural that as the centre of gravity of the Roman empire moved eastwards, sun-worship should grow in power. It was already strong in imperial propaganda; Neros Golden House was an appropriate home for the incarnate sun, and Antonius accorded the sun peculiar honour. Under the Severan dynasty sun-worship became dominant; the sun-god was portrayed with Severuss characteristic beard, and the emperor took the title INVICTVS (unconquered), which was the peculiar epithet of the sun… The sun was a superb unifying symbol and rallying-point for the whole empire… in AD 274 Aurelian established the sun-god as the supreme god of the Roman empire (p. 175). Aurelian, emperor from 270–282ad, ascribed much of Romes third-century moral and political chaos to religious disunity. He sought to unite the whole empire in the worship of the sun-god, and of the Emperor as the vicar of that deity on earth… He built at Rome a resplendent Temple of the Sun, in which, he hoped, the Baal of Emesa and the god of Mithraism would merge… Aurelian advanced that Orientalization of the monarchy which had begun with Elagabalus and would complete itself in Diocletian and Constantine (Durant, p. 639). Constantine, considered Romes first Christian emperor, was himself a devotee of the sun god. In fact the emperor Constantines Christianity was ambiguous. His family owed traditional allegiance to the sun-god; the famous vision of the cross as he marched on Rome came to him from the sun; the sun continues to appear on his coins through the decade, and on his arch at Rome; his own statue at Constantinople bore the rayed crown of the sun-god (Parrinder, p. 175). By the first century, the seven-day planetary week was being popularized at Rome. The seven-day week itself originated at creation (Genesis 1) and the knowledge of the correct weekly cycle was preserved by the Jews. However, in ancient Babylon each of the seven days of the week became associated with what the ancients called the seven planets: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. This is significant because it set the stage for an imperial proclamation that indelibly stamped upon the Christian-professing world a mark, or brand, derived from ancient sun worship. The Encyclopædia Britannica records: The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in 321ad, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die solis) (Sunday, 11th ed.). By using the Latin term properly translated as venerable day of the sun, Constantine identified the first day of the week with that day dedicated from ancient times to Sol, the sun. Through the proclamation of a Roman emperor, a mark from ancient Babylon and the cult of sun worship was forcibly stamped on the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. That mark—with other associated symbols of sun worship—has continued right on down through the medieval period to modern times.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 01:36:22 +0000
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