The Pagan Origin of the Papal System and Its Connection with Clericalism

The Pagan Origin of the Papal System and Its Connection with Clericalism

We have noticed the motives and ideas which led church leaders in the third and fourth centuries to facilitate the united worship of pagans and Christians, and to adapt heathen observances and ceremonies to those of the Church in its apostate condition. The ingenuity with which this was accomplished was extraordinary. At the back of it lay the mistaken notion that, apart altogether from repentance and regeneration through faith, the nations of the world were gradually being incorporated into the Kingdom of God. Behind all this was the subtle scheming and operation of Satan and his hosts, into whose hands the churches had played, by their substitution of human aims, arrangements and expedients for the revealed will of God in the Scriptures. We can trace the craft of the evil one in preparing the way for this corruption.

The various heathen religions which were brought into requisition to enhance the power and extend the scope of the Church, had a common origin in the primitive postdiluvian worship of nature instead of the true God. The earliest systematization of this took place under that Nimrod of whom a brief account is given in Genesis 10, the center of whose pristine kingdom was Babel, and who sought, in establishing that city as the center of his power, to redress the disaster of the scattering of the people from the locality, consequent upon the confounding of their language. * Authentic sources of information, derived from history and discovery, show that, upon the death of Nimrod, his wife, Semiramis, inaugurated his deification as the sun god, and, in the further systematization of the Chaldean “Mysteries,” established the veneration of herself as the mother of the gods. The worship of the sun god was maintained by a large number of celibate priests, whose ordination was accompanied by the mark of the circular tonsure, the emblem of the sun. This order of priesthood spread into most of the surrounding nations. Roman historians record how when the worship of the Babylonian goddess was introduced into pagan Rome, it was established by celibate and tonsured priests. Early in the Christian era, in the Christ-dishonoring process of the amalgamation of paganism with Christianity, the prelates of the corrupt Church system adopted these heathen customs. In Egypt in the fourth century the tonsured, celibate priests of the goddess Isis were being regarded as the ministers of Christ.

At the death of Nimrod, sun worship received an important modification, through the ingenious and unprincipled scheming of Semiramis. Nimrod, whose death was to be celebrated by a period of mourning, must be venerated as her offspring, “the seed of the woman,” and she herself as the queen of heaven. In course of time the worship of mother and child, spreading from Babylon, became general in the heathen world with amazing rapidity, and was adopted with unbounded enthusiasm. In Egypt they were known as Isis and Osiris; in Asia Minor as Cybele and Deious, or Bacchus; in Greece as Ceres and Plutus; in Italy as Venus and Jupiter; in Syria and Palestine as Astarte and Tammuz, or Adonis.

Nimrod’s death was celebrated yearly throughout the various countries by a period of lamentation, and to this the passage in Ezekiel refers in which the Lord is revealing to the prophet the abominations practiced in Jerusalem. Brought to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north, he there saw “women weeping for Tammuz” (Ezek. 7:14). Similarly the Egyptians wept over Osiris, and the people of Greece and Italy bewailed the death of Bacchus. There are evidences of the same practice in the ancient history of nations of the Far East, as well as amongst the Indians of America and Mexico.

In the Spring season forty days of fasting were set apart previous to the actual celebration of the death, and everywhere the idea was borrowed from the custom initially instituted in the worship of the Babylonish goddess and her child. Pagans in Kurdistan observe the period up to the present time. Humboldt records a similar observance amongst the Mexicans. The forty days of fasting and lamentation were followed by a commemoration of the rebirth of the god. All this, with the heathen rites associated with it, was introduced into the churches in Christendom by the unscrupulous methods of ecclesiastical leaders. In this way the grossest corruption and superstitions spread into the Church.

What the apostle records, in Romans 1:23–25, of the effects, in the heathen world, of exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, was verified in Church history. All the revelries of the carnival in connection with Lent thus became associated with the professed commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. So successfully had Satan prepared the way, for centuries previous to the Christian era, for the hideous mockery of God, the grossest travesty of the Incarnation, atoning death and glorious resurrection of our Lord, and for the perversion of the truth by a corrupt and decadent Church, under the base and carnal aims of its leaders. The plans of the Adversary were laid with consummate ingenuity, all, however, under the ordering of God, whose righteous retribution falls upon man when he willfully rejects the Light.

In this way, too, the evil one prepared the way for the travesty of the blessed Trinity. Babylonish nature worship led to the veneration of Father, Mother and Child. The mother was the queen of heaven. How the people of Israel were corrupted in this respect is recorded by Jeremiah: “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven” (Jer. 7:18; see also 44:17). The worship of the mother gained precedence over that of the child. She, the favored object of worship, was deified as well as her son, and is represented in the inscriptions of heathen nations as the one who was destined to crush the serpent’s head. She became venerable as the Alma Mater and the Virgin Mother. It is significant, for instance, that practically all the details connected with the cult of the Ephesian Diana are identical with what is known of the worship of the Babylonian goddess. In many countries she was regarded as the incarnation of the spirit of peace and love and the source of life. As the mother of the gods she became the object of almost universal worship, and everywhere her cult was associated with the utmost licentiousness.

When the corrupted form of Christianity gained ascendancy over the nations, the worship of the Babylonish goddess was replaced by the worship of the Virgin Mary and her child. Pagans were taught simply to substitute Mariolatry for their accustomed object of veneration. The Madonna of Rome is really the Madonna of Babylon. Mary came to be regarded as the tabernacle of God with men, and the creature was blasphemously substituted for the Creator.

The evil one not only designed to keep the Christ of God before the eyes of Christendom as a child, he prepared the way, too, for a gross misrepresentation of the work of the Cross. The shape and sign of the cross, so abundantly in vogue in Christendom, was not primarily derived from the Cross of Calvary (which was probably of very different form), but from the mystic emblem of the ancient Chaldean rites and ceremonies, the evil meaning of which it is not incumbent to explain here. It served also to represent the initial letter of the god Tammuz, evidences of which are found on ancient coins. The letter was marked on the foreheads of those who were initiated in the mysteries, a ceremony accompanied by the sprinkling of water on the brow. In order to identify Tammuz with the sun a circle frequently was placed upon it, thus \. By way of variety the sign was inserted in the circle, thus [. The discoveries of Layard at Nineveh made clear that the sign was thus connected with sun worship. It passed into almost universal use in the heathen world. The vestal virgins, or prophetesses of pagan Rome, suspended it as a charm from their necklaces. It was marked on the garments of the priests. The emblem was the object of worship by the pagan Celts long before the time of Christ, and there are evidences of its use in most of the heathen tribes of the ancient world. Stone crosses were erected in Mexico ages before the first Roman Catholic missionaries went there. In Egypt and other lands the emblem was regarded as the sign of life, and was supposed to have healing virtues.

It is in Egypt, indeed, that this pagan emblem seems first to have found its way into Christian churches. The bishops in that country were prominent in furthering the extensive incorporation of heathens into the Church and in the general adaptation of heathen rites, ceremonies and emblems to the Christian religion. It was especially pleasing to pagans to continue the use of their idolatrous cross or Tau emblem under the patronage of ecclesiastics and the auspices of the Church.

There is no evidence that Christ was executed on a cross of this shape. Crucifixion was frequently carried out on a tree trunk or stake (which is the actual meaning of the word stauros). It was certainly contrary to the mind of the Lord and to apostolic teaching that anything like a crucifix should be used to commemorate the Lord’s death. When the facts are known the difference between the actual occurrence of the crucifixion of Christ and the superstitious representations and emblems of apostate Christianity, with all their foul and idolatrous origin, is startling in the extreme.

The aim, then, of God’s arch adversary was so to obscure the facts and meaning of the work of Calvary as to keep before the world the idea of Christ either as a babe in His mother’s arms, or as a corpse on a crucifix. What was fundamental to the Christian faith in the facts of the Incarnation and the death of the Lord was so perverted as to overshadow the facts of the living Christ raised and glorified, the Savior of all who believe.

The way was paved for the admission of all these abominations into the churches by the rise and progress of the clerical system of priestcraft which we have considered in former chapters. Once men begin to depart from the truth of God they play into the hands of Satan, and open the way for all manner of evil. One step taken, others inevitably follow, unless there is an immediate return to the right ways of the Lord. More remains to be said in connection with these matters. Sufficient has already been stated to indicate the significance of the title, “Babylon the Great,” in Revelation 17:5, and what is there revealed concerning it.

The earliest known systematized form of nature worship, which originated in Babylon, centered, as we have observed, in the veneration of the sun. In addition to the signs and emblems previously mentioned as characterizing the cult, and which were eventually adopted early in the Christian era by the apostate Church, the nature of the pagan sacrifices also bears witness to the Satanic efforts to forestall and eventually pervert the truth relating to the sacrifice of Christ and its significance. These offerings consisted of thin round cakes which were presented to the queen of heaven (originally Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod), and were accompanied by the burning of incense and the pouring out of drink offerings, idolatrous practices which, as we have noticed, spread amongst the people of Israel in the later times of their departure from God. Hence the remonstrance of Jeremiah to which reference has already been made, “the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger” (Jer. 7:18).

When, in the fourth century of the present era, the worship of the queen of heaven passed into vogue in the churches, as the worship of the Virgin Mary, the heathen custom of the round wafer was likewise incorporated into church worship by the bishops in their various dioceses. By this means the character of the Lord’s Supper, with its significant yet simple elements as instituted by Christ Himself, became perverted. The remembrance of the Lord and the commemoration of His death, observed in all its divinely appointed simplicity by the apostles and believers in the first century, when on the first day of the week they met to break bread in fulfillment of His command, became entirely changed into a superstitious ceremony, adopted in Christendom in order to please the susceptibilities of heathen people and make it possible for them to worship under the auspices of the Church without departing from their heathen customs.

The insistence upon the roundness of the wafer had no connection with the paschal loaf of the Jews. No commandments were given to Israel as to its shape. In the heathen world the thin round cake was placed on the altar in commemoration of the sun god. In Egypt, for instance, the wafer was presented in celebration of the sun deity Osiris, who by his rebirth had become the life and nourishment of the souls of men. What a significant anticipatory counterfeit of the Incarnation and death of Christ! The round wafer, symbol of an incarnate heathen deity as the bread of life! And this long before the actual birth of our Lord! How evidential of this heathen origin is the prayer of the Roman litany offered in the celebration of the Mass, “Bread corn of the elect, have mercy upon us.” Moreover, the ecclesiastical command requiring that those who partake of the wafer are to do so absolutely fasting, is the same injunction as was laid down in connection with the Babylonish sun worship, and is entirely contradictory to the fact that the Lord instituted the feast of remembrance immediately the disciples had partaken of the Passover Feast.

The offering of the wafer as a bloodless sacrifice, presented in heathendom before the Christian era, and continued as a sacrifice in the degenerate churches of Christendom, is thus a travesty of the sacrifice of the Cross and not a commemoration of it.

So with the letters I.H.S., which are used in connection with the wafer and in other respects. These stood originally for the initials of the Egyptian trinity, Isis, Horus, Seb. Ecclesiastical ingenuity transferred them to the words “Iesus Hominum Salvator,” “Jesus of men the Savior.” The motto in its latter significance is true indeed and good in itself, but its heathen connection and the motive for its adoption, namely, the incorporation of unregenerate heathen into the Church, and the pagan use of it in connection with the sacrifice of the wafer, have degraded it. They were sad times in Church history when the sacrifice of the Mass, with all its gross superstitions, superseded the simple observance of the Lord’s Supper according to His institution, and the false teaching was promulgated that the symbols are changed at consecration into the actual body and blood of the Lord, a doctrine “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.”

Other heathen customs were likewise incorporated. The rosary, an instrument of extreme antiquity in pagan nations, especially among Buddhists, was adopted in the churches long before Dominic preached and popularized it. The use of wax candles, incense, images, the practice of lustrations and of processions, the wearing of vestments, the adoption of the miter, derived from the fish god worship of the Babylonians and Philistines (a perpendicular representation of the fish head, and entirely to be distinguished from the Aaronic turban), and other forms of ecclesiastical ritualism, the enumeration of which would unduly burden these pages, all sprang from the same source. Priestcraft early paved the way for them all. The plea for their adoption was the recommendation of the Christian faith to the heathen by the attractive grandeur of a religion superior to their own. The favor of the emperors, the priestly assumption and worldly aspirations of the bishops and the indifference of the laity, all contrived to obscure the true Christian faith and suppress the operations of the gospel. Church decrees usurped the authority of Holy Scripture. The Word of God was set aside for the reception of heathen observances. Forms and ceremonies supplanted the guidance and power of the Spirit of God. Ritualism superseded divine and apostolic simplicity, and superstition was substituted for faith.

Satan is ever on the alert to take advantage of the neglect of God’s Word and of deviation from His will as revealed therein. The adversary’s plans had been skillfully laid, his idolatrous agencies in the heathen world were ready, and when once the Church ecclesiastics had opened the way for his inroads by their departure from the principles and injunctions laid down in the Scriptures, his Babylonish cult was foisted upon the churches to their utter undoing, with the result of the establishment of a false religious system which has rendered men and nations blind to the light of the gospel and the truth of God. “Babylon the great … hath made all the nations to drink the wine of the wrath of her fornication” (Rev. 14:8).

 

* Chronologically Genesis 11:1–9 precedes Genesis 10:8, 14, the latter passage forming part of a genealogical chapter.