I'm going to return to the wiki text I pasted in the last post later, but first I want to highlight some salient points in the video I included in my last post. I knew what it was about, but I only re-listened today, and I cannot get over how the information fits with the subject in hand.
Know Your Enemy - Scottish Christian Mark Fairley's content, I think you'll find he covers these topics in a refreshing way. He has an online fellowship, The Fuel Project, that's worth checking out: -
https://thefuelproject.org/
Transcript of
PART NINE:
In the end, we know that Nimrod met a violent and untimely death; but there are contrasting stories as to why and how it happened. Some have suggested it was at the hands of Shem's descendants who had become outraged at what Nimrod was attempting to do in Babylon. Other say it was an act of rebellion by a band of his subjects. The most intriguing and shocking version of events however, is he was killed by Semiramis, his wife.
Nimrod was, by all accounts, a brilliant tactician, but it seems he made a fatal flaw in allowing Semiramis to retain control over the religion. Because it was the religion that was the true source of power behind his rule. Through it, she won the hearts and minds of the people, and she used this to her advantage when a schism developed between herself and Nimrod. She had become pregnant with an illegitimate son. When Nimrod heard about this he threatened to dethrone her and expose her true origins as a prostitute; but Semiramis retaliated by devising a plot to overthrow him and retain power for herself. The story goes that she had the priests kill him on her behalf at an annual New Year feast. The Babylonian people were then given a cover story to explain his death. And when she eventually gave birth to her illegitimate son, she further claimed to the people that he was an immaculately conceived reincarnation of Nimrod. She called him Tammuz and presented him as the seed of the woman mentioned back in Genesis 3, the Messiah. We know that this verse really refers to Jesus Christ. And so Tammuz was the first Christ imposture, the first anti-Christ.
Semiramis's rule in the aftermath of this event appeared to be rather shaky, and because of the increased threat to her safety she took to building walls, towers and gates around the city of Babylon to defend herself. She was actually the first to build fortifications of this type, and therefore became so associated with this concept that in later times she was often depicted with a crown of turrets. To secure her position, she increasingly emphasised her position as the 'Mother of God' and the 'Queen of Heaven', in other words she continued to use religious motivation to keep power. As Tammuz grew up and reached maturity he began demanding to be installed as the new King. Not only did Semiramis refused this, but seeing that he was becoming a threat to her rule, concocted a plan to have him disposed off in the same manner she disposed of Nimrod. Tammuz however, caught wind of her scheme and ran her through with a sword before she had the chance to implement it. He then purged the priesthood of all who wouldn't swear allegiance to him to consolidate his position within the religion. This ended Semiramis's 102 year rule, it did not however end her relevance.
After death, Nimrod continued to be worshipped as the 'Sun God', and after Semiramis's death, she continued to be worshipped as the 'Moon Goddess'; and they continue to be represented by the leading lights of the sky. Semiramis, also known as 'The Great Mother', 'Divine Mother', 'Virgin Mother', etc. would often be depicted standing on a crescent moon with stars encircling her head. Both Nimrod and Semiramis were also given new names in their post life godly form. Nimrod was confirmed by the priest of the religion as a god called MARDUK, and Semiramis was confirmed as a godess called ASTARTE. These names however were never revealed to the masses, but instead their attributes were set forth under pseudonyms of various gods constructed for the public interest. For example, in Christian terms, we can call God, 'Jehovah-Jireh' meaning 'The Lord Who Provides', or 'Jehovah-Nissi' which means 'The Lord is my Banner', but we know these different names refer to the same God. In Babylon however, these different names which represented different parts of Nimrod's and Semiramis's character morphed into separate entities altogether, and polytheism, multiple God worship was truly born.
Some of MARDUK's alter-egos for example included, ENKI or APSU - who was the god of wisdom, incantations and deep water oceans; another was ASTALLUHI, the god of healing and exorcism. Another was NEBOU or BEL, who was believed to have come out of a cave or hole in the ground, and so worship ceremonies were held for NEBOU underground. This cave theme became significant in Babylonian beliefs and as a recurring theme, it also curiously echoes Revelation 13, which talks of a beast coming out of the ground.
The names NEBOU and BEL became the official names of MARDUK in later periods and are popular in these same periods among the ruling classes of Babylon as name-elements. In the same way that Muslims are often named Muhammad after their prophet, Babylonians often had names like NEBU-CHADNEZZAR and BEL-SHAZZAR. Finally and perhaps most importantly, MARDUK was known as BAAL. This was the primary name by which the other nations including Israel, were introduced to the worship of MARDUK. BAAL means 'Lord' or 'Master', and was from very early times known as the sun god, under this name with many prefixes and suffixes, he was worshipped by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Syrians and to some extent by the Egyptians.
The name BAAL sometimes occurs in connection with the locality. For example, in Peor, he was known as BAAL-PEOR, or in Hermin, BAAL-HERMON, more frequently it occurs with compound attributes such as BAAL-ZEBUB, which means 'Lord of the Flies', still today one of the epithets of Satan. 'Zebub', meaning fly, comes from the root word that signifies 'restless motion' and so BAAL-ZEBUB has a double meaning as 'Lord of restless and unsettled motion'. This agrees precisely with the characteristics of Satan as described in Job 1:7. BAAL-ZEPHON, another famous version means, 'Lord of the Black North' or 'Lord of the Northern Void'; and MERI-BAAL translates as 'Lord of the Rebellion'. All these different names are just different sides of the same dice. They all originate with MARDUK, who is Nimrod.
Finally, because all pagan gods and goddesses originated with a dysfunctional human family of Nimrod, Semiramis and Tammuz and the Babylonian system, this clearly affected the views of what the gods and goddesses were like in ancient times. The gods were given family type structures. The gods had affairs, they argued, they competed for a position. They were as prone to family and relational problems as any human. Like Babylon is first family they even killed each other. Put simply, they were humanised. The Babylonian religion developed in such a way that men began to envision their gods in conformity with the image of man, the gods of the Babylonians are not only understood to interact with each other and operate their affairs as humans do, but they also behave like humans or worse. As one modern poet wrote, 'The more the gods become like men, the easier it is for men to believe the gods when both have only human appetites, then rogues may worship rogues.'
Nimrod and
Tammuz are both named in the Old Testament, but Semiramis is not. So does this mean she didn't exist? ... It's far more interesting than that. You might know the name of God in Hebrew is 'YHWH'; actually, people bang on about the letter 'J' not existing pre-Reformation, yet 'U, W, Y' are also additions to the alphabet. Hebrew has 22 letters, as did the Roman alphabet at the time of the first century. But that's an aside, the point is, Hebrew was more like a type of Hieroglyph; each of the letters describes certain characteristics, by adding letters it changes the meaning. Hence, Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, and Lucifer becomes Satan.
The point is, the 22 letters where all consonants, hence why no one knows for sure how to say 'YHWH', and why the extra letters were added. 'U, W, Y' take sounds relating to the 'V'; and 'J' takes sounds from 'I' and 'G'. If you look at English words there are certain overlaps, but J was added, as were the earlier letters, to help people pronounce important words around God. At the time of Paul, Greek was the predominant language, so Paul referred to Jesus in his letters as 'Iesous'; from Hebrew we write it as 'Yeshua', but the 'Y' is also a new letter. A direct translation of Yeshua from Hebrew to English would be 'Joshua'. This is why it's not worth engaging with the 'RIGHT NAME' stuff, however you look at it, everyone is WRONG, else, everyone is RIGHT. Use whatever name you feel comfortable with.
But back to the 22 Hebrew letters/symbols, they were all consonants and considered "male", the next bit is IMPORTANT. The vowels, FEMALE, were not written down, they were HIDDEN and only passed down to Rabbis via the aural traditions, hence 'THE SECRET DOCTRINE'. The secrets, by their nature, are feminine. ... So, if Semiramis is a female goddess, would we expect her name to appear anywhere in the Old Testament, or would she be kept a secret? ... And we further have this compounded, as we've seen, by people wanting to remove references to Nimrod and instead tell us Nebuchadnezzar built the 'Tower of Babel'. This is not entirely false, because as we see from above NEBU-CHADNEZZAR gets his name from NEBOU, one of the names for the 'god' MARDUK, who actually is Nimrod.
Finally, one of the other things I wanted to point out, when Tammuz killed Semiramis, "he then purged the priesthood of all who wouldn't swear allegiance to him to consolidate his position within the religion"; ring any bells from ground previously covered?
Baha'i COVENANT-BREAKERS, the SDA Church excommunicating people who challenge the TRINITY doctrine. The Church of Rome burning HERETICS at the stake, the Pharisees stoning Stephen. It's always the same story, this is why there are so many religions and subset Christian denominations.
Back to the wiki text next post.