The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 10 – 11
Millions of Spanish-speakers pray to Dios every day. Are these Christians just as Christian as those who pray to God? They read the same Bible, they keep the same observances; can you really say they are different, simply because the Spanish word for “God” is “Dios”? Of course not! (Acts 2:5-11, Acts 10:34-35).
This fact forces us to radically revise the way we look at mythology. Because Dios evolved, like most of the rest of the Spanish language, from Latin. And the Latin word for Dios is Deus. It’s the only word there is in the language for “God”. So did someone who prayed to Deus really pray to a different God than you do?
Deus in turn comes from an earlier proto-indo-european word deiwos, meaning “celestial” or “shining”. You are already familiar with this word Deus, without realizing it, from the name Jupiter. In Latin, this breaks down into Dieu-Pater, or Shining-Father. Similarly in Greek, the full name of Zeus – recognizably similar to Deus – is Zeus Pater, with the same meaning of Shining-Father.
So did someone who prayed to Zeus pray to a different God? There is a direct etymological link from Dios, to Deus, to Zeus. At which point does He become a false God? Now if you were to go to ancient Sumeria, say to the city of Ur where Abram came from, and talk to someone, you’d have had to speak Sumerian, because that was their language! So when Abraham lived there, and talked to them about their false beliefs, he would have had to translate the word “God”
into their language – just as the Hebrew word El was translated into your language! And so in Sumerian, he would be talking to them about Anu, for that is their word for God, deity, heavenly, you name it. There is no other word that simply means “God”. And most of the Gods had names – Anu Enlil, Anu Ninurta, etc. But the problem is, there is also a deity in Sumeria called by the sole name of Anu – father of the gods, lord of the heavens. So is this Anu a false God?Don’t be too sure you know the answer!
EL-YAH
Yes, Anu was worshipped in many ways contrary to the Bible, but in how many unbiblical ways is Dios worshipped today? How many people worship “God” in ways that are clearly not what our God commanded? Does that mean their “God” is a false God? Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists – they all worship God very differently, and whomever you believe is right, others are certainly wrong. So just because they worship Him wrongly, does it necessarily follow that their God is false?
Is Dios a false God, just because many of His followers don’t obey the Bible they believe He wrote? Is Anu a false God, just because Sumerian priests made up bad ways to worship Him? Is Ptah, the Egyptian creator God, a false God? What about Aten, the monotheistic God of Akhnaten? What about “Sin”, the Father of the Gods worshipped monotheistically by Nebuchadnezzar after his humbling by the true God? Just because his name for God is different from yours, does it necessarily follow that his worship is directed at an enemy of the true God?
To take a more modern example, the names for God and the Lord in the Bible are “El” and “Yahweh”, or sometimes simply “Yah” (Psalms 68:4). The names can be combined, such as Elijah which is literally “El-Yah”, or “Yah is God”. Why that matters is that a huge chunk of the world today worships Elijah. Or rather, they worship El-Yah, which is more recognizable to us as… Allah! Is that a false God? If so, then so is El-Yah, since it’s literally the same word. And if El-Yah is a heathen deity, how can El and Yahweh from the Bible be holy?
You literally cannot go to an Islamic country and speak Arabic and teach them about the Christian God without using the name Allah for that IS the name for God in their language! Just as it is in your Bible! So… does it follow that the God of the Muslims is a false God? Think about that.
MARS HILL
I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I’m forcing the facts to fit my beliefs, because arguing that, say, Zeus or Allah are basically just misunderstandings of the true God is pretty far out. I mean, Zeus is a pagan god, a false god, one worshipped in strange and sometimes horrible ways by people who were no more Christian than a tomato. Like I said, if you think that, it’s fair. There’s just one problem. Paul said Zeus was the true God!
Acts 17:27-29 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device Speaking on Mars Hill in Athens to highly educated Greeks, this meant something it doesn’t mean to us.
Paul explicitly referred to “their own poets”. These poets were widely read and highly respected particularly by the stoics he was debating (verse 18). And fortunately, both of these quoted works have survived from antiquity. The first, from around the 6th century B.C. says… “They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one, Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies. But you are not dead: you live and abide forever, For in you we live and move and have our being.” (Epimenides, Cretica)
Paul clearly appreciated the work of this pagan philosopher since he quoted him twice – one line here, and a different part in Titus 1:12. In this quote, the character Minos was addressing Zeus, king of the Greek gods, telling him – telling Zeus, just to emphasize my point – that “in you we live and move and have our being”, which Paul quoted without qualification to apply to the Christian God!
This is important, so I’m going to say it again; Paul didn’t merely say that their beliefs about their false God were applicable to the true God. Paul directly implied that we live and move and have our being in Zeus! So somehow, Paul seemed comfortable comparing “the Lord Jesus” to “the king of the Greek gods”! The second quote in Acts 17:28 comes either from the poet Aratus, or the poet Cleanthes; both are from the 3rd century B.C., and both say effectively the same thing, so it’s hard to be sure which one Paul was referring to – he may have been thinking of both, since he said that their own poets, plural, said these things!
“Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken. For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus. Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity. Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus. For we are indeed his offspring…” (Aratus, Phaenomena 1-5). “Most glorious of immortals, many-named, Almighty and for ever, thee, O Zeus, Sovran o’er Nature, guiding with thy hand All things that are, we greet with praises. Thee ’Tis meet that mortals call with one accord, For we thine offspring are, and we alone Of all that live and move upon this earth, Receive the gift of imitative speech.” (Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus).
This audience in Mars Hill who was dedicated to “hearing or telling some new thing”, would certainly have known these works by heart, as Paul clearly did to have them so readily available on the top of his mind. So knowing his source material, let’s again note that Paul did not distinguish Zeus, “almighty, eternal, sovereign over nature” from the God of the Jews… which can only be because it wasn’t really a different God!
Around now I can hear you saying “But Zeus was an idol, he was worshipped by unbelievers, his followers didn’t obey the Bible!”… and that’s all true. But Jesus as worshipped by, say, the Catholics as an idol; is Jesus, therefore, a false God? The idea of a supreme God, Lord of Heaven and Earth whatever you may call Him, however little you know about Him, ultimately points back to the same Being because, whatever your idolatrous, catastrophically disobedient beliefs about Him, He is HIM!
After all, the Greek poet openly admitted that this almighty God was “many-named”! Paul agreed with this, and that’s why he didn’t bother calling Zeus a false God because Zeus wasn’t really a false God, any more than the Catholic “God the Father” is a false God. He is served wrong, and their worship is deceived, and the end of their worship will be death… but none of that makes God or Zeus a false God. It makes them false followers, who diligently worship a God whom they don’t know at all! (Acts 17:23, Matthew 7:23).
FALSE FOLLOWERS
The only way to tell whether God, Anu, Allah, Zeus, or Ptah is the true God or not is to do what our God, the God of the Bible, said to do in 1 John 4:1, Isaiah 8:20, Matthew 7:15-18, etc. After all, even in the Bible, some of God’s favorite people knew Him by different names (Exodus 3:13-16, Exodus 6:2-3, etc.). And so when someone comes and says “Zeus is Lord” you should pause before you say “No, Zeus is a demon, enemy of God!” Consider those quotes above one more time; do you disagree with Aratus that “every street, every market-place is full of God”? Proverbs 15:3.
Do you disagree with Epimenides that “They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one… But you are not dead: you live and abide forever”? (Romans 6:9-10, Acts 13:33-37, Isaiah 53:8-10, John 8:35, etc.). If you judge the truth based solely on the source, then you are a respecter of persons! (Acts 10:34-35). So think carefully before you answer… do you really disagree with Cleanthes that God is “Most glorious of immortals, many-named, Almighty and for ever, thee, O Zeus, Sovran o’er Nature, guiding with thy hand All things that are”? (Daniel 4:17, Exodus 6:3, Psalms 68:4, etc.)
When you think about it, Cleanthes’ work agrees quite nicely with Psalms 8; so then what could be so wrong about quoting a Greek poet, if the Greek poet spoke the same thing that David said about the same almighty creator God?? (Jeremiah 23:21-24). So when someone comes and says, “The Lord laid it on my heart to tell you something”, pause and consider it; odds are, it’s a vision “of the imagination of their own heart” (Jeremiah 9:14). But then again, it can’t hurt to consider their correction like you should honestly consider ALL correction to see if there is merit to it.
Listen to them; is there truth in the words their possibly-false God said? Do they speak “according to the law and to the testimony”? Then repent and do good! And if not… it’s not because their God is a demon, but because their own hearts are corrupt (Jeremiah 14:14). But that doesn’t mean His NAME is the name of an unclean God! So no matter the name of their God, judge their words on their merits. Whether they’re false Gods or homeless bums or little children, you should hear their correction, compare it to the Bible, and if it matches, thank them and repent! Because if you don’t, you’ll die in Armageddon.
Oh, I don’t mean that metaphorically… someone literally died at Armageddon for this exact reason! (2 Chronicles 35:20-24). Note that this happened in the “valley of Megiddo”, which in Hebrew is Har-Megiddo, which was transliterated into Greek as Armageddon! This can’t be an accident – the king of the south battling the king of the north, just as the king of the north and south battle in the SAME VALLEY in the end times? (Revelation 16:12-16). So clearly, we were meant to learn something from this, and from how good king Josiah got caught in the middle and died.
Because you see, he didn’t have to die. He died because he was stubborn! Because he refused to listen to Pharaoh’s words “from the mouth of God” and meddled in strife that was not his (Proverbs 26:17). But when you read that story, put yourself in Josiah’s place. Pharaoh, historic oppressor and frequent enemy of your people, came from Egypt; a land whose gods are reviled in a variety of scriptures that Josiah well knew. And this Pharaoh would have spoken to his ambassadors in Egyptian. It’s almost certain he wouldn’t have spoken Hebrew.
So he said to his ambassadors to tell Josiah that “God” was with him, and that “God” would kill Josiah if he got in his way. Which God would he have meant? Certainly not Yahweh Elohim! Because that was not HIS Elohim! The word does not even exist in his language! Wikipedia says of this Pharaoh, identified as Necho II “His prenomen or royal name Wahem-Ib-Re means ‘Carrying out the Heart (i.e., Wish) of Re.’” So Pharaoh Necho’s “God” was, by his very name, declared to be Re, better known in English as Ra.
Thus, when Pharaoh said “God” sent me to this war, he would have said, in Egyptian, that Ra sent him to this war. And Ra is a strange God, the Elohim of the Egyptians; and yet… Ra the sun-God was an all-powerful creator God. Is that really so different from Zeus? Or the Catholic Father God? And didn’t Necho live up to his name and do God’s will – the will of Ra? For Pharaoh said that God had sent him to this war, and we know God does indeed do things like that on a regular basis. (2 Samuel 7:14, 2 Chronicles 16:9, etc.).
God validated all these claims of Pharaoh and the words of his God Ra, first by inspiring them to be recorded in the Bible and second by leaving us a clear moral: Josiah died because he didn’t listen to the words of Necho from the mouth of HIS God! Can you honestly say you’d have done differently? If a Muslim came to you and said “don’t buy this house, Allah said you’ll die if you do” would you have listened? Or would you have brushed it off saying “MY God is stronger than Allah, I don’t fear YOUR God”? But you see, Allah IS your God. Misunderstood, misworshipped, and misrepresented but the same God, called by the SAME NAME as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!
FALSE CLAIMS
On the other hand, when someone comes and tells you that the true God said you shouldn’t buy this house, you shouldn’t just take their word for it either, as the man in 1 Kings 13 learned too late. God had sent him to prophesy against an altar, and the king offered him a meal afterwards by way of reward, which he refused saying God had told him not to eat or drink. So far so good. God had said “don’t eat bread or drink water”, so he resisted the king, and kept on fasting. Then another prophet heard about the prophecy (1 Kings 13:11-17). And this other guy, who was also a prophet OF THE TRUE GOD, no less, invited him to eat.
Again, he refused – so far so good. Then the prophet said “I am a prophet also as thou art” (1 Kings 13:18). But he lied. But not about being a prophet! The Bible confirms that, and God used him to prophesy again later in this story. No, he lied about what God had said to do. It doesn’t say why, but later this man was very sad about what happened, so it doesn’t seem to have been spite (1 Kings 13:24-32). Regardless, the man had credibility; he was a true prophet of the true God So his credentials were impeccable.
There was just one problem: the first prophet didn’t “try the spirits, whether they were of God!” (verses 19-22). And he left on a donkey and was shortly killed by a lion. The moral was “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). God had told this man, personally, that he was not allowed to eat or drink. This other man, offering no reasoning for why God might have changed His mind, told him to do something else. And even if an angel from heaven had indeed said so… he should have obeyed the original gospel he received FROM GOD, and not hearsay from someone else!
Isaiah 36:7-10 is another case in point; Rabshakeh of Assyria claimed that God had sent him to destroy Jerusalem. Did not Isaiah himself say so, prophesying of this exact event? Isaiah 10:5-6. But Isaiah also prophesied the rest of this story: verses 7-27. Compare to Isaiah 37:21-38. So Rabshekah wasn’t wrong; the Lord had sent him to attack this country. He had sent him as a punishment for their sins. Because of course He had (Amos 3:6). And yet because this “axe” boasted against the guy who used it, God punished him and saved Zion. As Isaiah had also promised would happen.
And to prove that this particular “prophet” of the Lord should not be trusted too blindly, in Isaiah 36:7, we see him saying something the Lord wouldn’t say; for the Lord hated the high places. Thus, there is always a way to try the spirits, if you’re listening. It’s worth noting in passing that this proves the high places, the idols God hated which were set throughout Jerusalem on every high hill… were high places UNTO YAHWEH ELOHIM. Not because Yahweh Elohim is a false God… but because Israelites were false followers.
So try the spirits; when Josiah was told that Ra – God – was with Pharaoh, he could have said “Is Babylon evil? Is it likely that God would send Egypt to punish them?”; he could have said “is this my problem, or am I ‘taking a dog by the ears’ in direct contradiction to my own God’s scripture?” He could have said “by defending Babylon, am I making a treaty with pagan nations like God forbade in Deuteronomy 7, among other places?”; he could have said “if I have to disguise myself to go to war, maybe I’m doing something wrong!”; but he did none of these things, and died for disobeying the God of Pharaoh, who it turns out was speaking for the true God because he WAS the true God!
On the other hand, the prophet in 1 Kings 13 could have said “why would God command me one thing, then contradict Himself?”; he could have said “Why would God give me a command personally, then send someone else to repeal it?”; he could have simply said “I’m not hungry”! But instead of questioning the prophecy, instead of trying the spirits to see if they spoke according to the testimony, he simply accepted his word because the man was a true prophet of the true God! While, instead of questioning and considering the prophecy, Josiah ignored it because the man was a pagan king serving a false God. Both were wrong. Both died. Mightn’t you have done the same in their shoes?
ALL GODS ARE GOOD
In the Promised Land, God frequently identified Himself as “the Yahweh Elohim of Israel” (Joshua 7:13). As you’ve seen in Series 3, this specificity was necessary because the Canaanites had these same names for their gods – names which traced back to the real truth about God known by Noah and taught after the Flood, but slowly corrupted over time to where the only true thing left in the religion was the name. Sound familiar?
Yet saying that the Canaanite El was a false god is like my saying that the Catholic “God the Father” is a false god. In a way, He is… but at the same time, the Being behind the name “God the Father” isn’t wrong. It’s just everything they know and teach about Him is wrong! As you learned in Series 3, the “most high God”, creator of all and father of all, goes by many names in the world. The Sumerians called him Anu, the Egyptians called him Ra, Ptah, or Osiris; the Greeks called him Zeus or Cronus; he is the Native American “Great Spirit”, the Muslim Allah, the great Buddha, and the Brahma of the Hindu… you get the idea.
From lexical standpoint, these are not different Gods in any way. Most of their names mean God in their language. We know that God is a spirit (John 4:24), and He is a great God, above all Gods (Deuteronomy 10:17). So when an Amerindian fasts for a vision of the “Great Spirit”, isn’t that just another way of saying “Almighty God”? Whom you likewise believe to be the Greatest Spirit! (Hebrews 12:9). So is the Great Spirit truly a heathen superstition?
Likewise, when someone prays to Jupiter, Deus Pater, they are literally praying to God the Father. That’s what the words mean in Latin, as surely as they mean it in English! Is God the Father, therefore, a false God? Is Zeus Pater the name of a demon… or is He merely God the Father as misunderstood by the Greeks? Thus it is not Him who is false, but the fact that He is unknown to them which is the problem! Just as it is with your Baptist neighbors next door, who worship him at sunrise on Easter, rest on the wrong day of the week, and wear an idol of His instrument of torture around their necks!
Nevertheless, no matter how many misunderstandings they may have, when a Baptist or a Greek idolater beg for help from the “the most high over all the Earth”, no matter what name they use, there is NO OTHER “most High” it can refer to! God – and by this I mean God as known by EVERY NAME that humans have ever used for Him – is worshipped in widely differing ways, yet by which of these names does God want man to do evil, as they define the term “evil”? Which of these misunderstandings of God the Father teaches mankind that we should reject all authority, worship the evil one, and despise our fellow man and do him harm for no good reason?
BAD THINGS FOR GOOD REASONS
When the Aztecs sacrificed their captives to Huitzilopochtli, we see this is as an savage act of evil; and that’s fair. Yet they believed that the sun-God needed the blood of sacrificial victims to give him the strength to battle his evil siblings. They believed that without our support, the sun would succumb to the forces of darkness and the whole world would die. What were the lives of a few hundred slaves compared to the lives of all mankind? So was their human sacrifice an act of evil… or a horribly misguided attempt to do good?
Half a world away, the Thuggee cult of India strangled and robbed travelers as an act of sacrifice to the terrifying Goddess Kali; “thugs believed they had a positive role in saving human lives. Without the Thugs’ sacred service, Kali might destroy all mankind” (Wikipedia, “Thuggee”). If you truly believed that unless you murdered a stranger, a terrible Goddess would wipe out humanity, would it not be a sin to allow her to destroy everyone? Would it not be more noble to sacrifice a few foreigners so that all might live?
So viewed in this life were the Thugs and Aztecs evil… or noble? Were their acts barbaric, or chivalrous? Objectively, of course, these things were hideous. But they were doing what they thought was right. What more can you ask of them? (Romans 7:8, James 4:17). God judges people based on what they understand (Luke 12:47-48). And these people sincerely believed they were helping God in His fight against evil. Had God suddenly appeared, they would have joyously bowed before Him and chanted “We have obeyed the commandment of the Lord!” (Jeremiah 2:31-35).
And they would have been stunned to hear Him say “I never knew you, you workers of iniquity!” So would the Catholic Inquisitors, the Islamic suicide bombers, the Crusaders (both sides), the people responsible for the witch trials of Salem, the burnings at the stake for heresy in both Protestant and Catholic Europe during the Reformation, and ultimately, everyone who ever killed a true Christian who thought “that he doeth God [or El, or Zeus, or Allah] service” (John 16:2).
BELIEF AND PRACTICE
Because the religion we grew up in and the society we called home is ours, we were raised to think that our religion is right and all other religions are either deceived, misguided, or consciously evil enemies of the truth. Thus, we have a tendency to think of every other religion as worshippers of false Gods. Depending on how self-confident (read: arrogant) you are, the line between “true God” and “false God” may be drawn at the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), or just at Christianity, or only Protestant Christianity, or your own sect, or even your own congregation. Or even yourself.
Yet whatever your own petty views about how special your church is, all of these religions are serving the true God as they understand Him. And most importantly, none of them are actively trying to disobey God; rather, they kill heretics believing they do God a service. Did it not make perfect sense that Jesus should die for the stability of the nation? John 11:50. Did the people murdering Jesus believe they were “keeping the commandment of the Lord”? Luke 23:34. Did Paul murder Stephen believing it was the right thing to do? 1 Timothy 1:13.
So set aside the external practices of these religions, however gruesome or irrational they may seem to you. Look at them as they look at themselves – which is an absolute requirement for judging them by the golden rule after all – and try to grasp that everything they do is done to please the Father… as they (mis)understand Him. Even the modern so-called “Church of Satan” has as its chief tenet the doing of good works. So where is the evil in the world? Who is bent on oppressing others in the name of himself, who desires to slaughter innocents for the fun of it?
Show me the church that doesn’t believe they are serving the best God(s) and helping him push back the darkness in the world. Show me the being whose ways are not right in his own eyes (Proverbs 16:2). And if they are right in their own eyes… can they truly be called “evil”?
KNOW THYSELF
So the God of the Catholics, or the Greeks, or the Amerindians, or the Hindu, or the Babylonians, is the Father of all, creator of heaven and Earth; He is no more a false God than Dios is. Obviously, almost everything they think about Him and what He wants from mankind and what He plans for our future is wrong… But the idea of Him is not. The fundamental concept of a ruler of heaven and Earth, creator of mankind is not. So crucially, their intention, to save mankind from their sins and unite them under God as they know Him, is not wrong.
Their intent, to help mankind be obedient to the king of the Gods, is not wrong. And yet most of the evil done in history has been done in the name of religion. Because acting in the name of a God you can’t see gives your selfish nature enormous latitude to interpret God’s will. It gives people in power an excuse to stay in power, it gives the herd instinct a banner to rally behind, and has caused them to “follow a multitude to do evil” more times than can be counted.
So religion – all religion – is the single most evil force in the world, and has always been that way. Why? Because religion is, by definition, a group of people who claim to speak for God. Who claim to have a special revelation, who answer to an invisible, unprovable master and are beholden to no earthly laws, justice, or even reason. If that group actually does have a hotline to God, then they can be a force for good. But since none of them do… it ends, at best, in apathy; at worst, in slaughter and oppression of people who have committed no crime but questioning your assumptions and misunderstandings about God.
But what is true religion? James 1:26-27. True religion is learning to bridle your tongue and not deceive your own heart. To break the spirit and the heart, in other words. If you don’t do this, your religion is a waste of time – and unfortunately, though some Christians do know God, what He is like and what He wants from us… they know nothing about themselves.
Whereas the few religions who think about these concepts (Tao, Hindu, Buddha, etc.) are so far from the fundamental truths of the Bible, that their worship is in vain for a different reason because they don’t know God even if they know a few things about themselves. Undefiled religion – which is to say, religion uncorrupted by the opinions of other nations’ ideas about God – is to focus on strengthening your soul, ruling your beast, and making your spirit learn the truth as defined by the words of God.
True religion is to visit the widows – churches whose angel has repented, and whose Elohim has therefore died – in their affliction. And the orphans – nations whose Demon has been baptized in water, and therefore died – in their affliction. And to show both the true words of the God their angels were not able to teach them, for they didn’t know themselves.
GODS OF THIS WORLD
As we have seen, God Himself called these other angels Gods in Psalms 82, for they were created by God just as much as we are; thus, they bear the name of Elohim just as we should, for they are sons of God just as we are. In fact, the Bible affirms the Godhood (Elohim-ness) of other “false” “pagan” and “heathen” Gods on a regular basis; for example, Judges 16:23 refers to a sacrifice to Dagon Elohim; where the people “praised their Elohim, for they said our Elohim has delivered…” etc.
They were wrong about whom to thank for it (Dagon Elohim did not, in fact, do this), but the point is that Dagon was an Elohim just as much as the Lord Elohim of Israel was! For Dagon was the daemon of the Philistines, the head of their house as appointed by the Lord after the Flood in the days of Peleg! In the same way, 1 Kings 11:33 speaks of Ashtoreth Elohim, Chemosh Elohim, and Milcom Elohim and their respective inheritances of the Zidonians, Moabites, and Ammonites. Thus, in Judges 2:12 it literally says they forsook the Yahweh Elohim of their Fathers, and followed other Elohim, the Elohim of the people that were round about them, to provoke the Lord to anger.
Which the Lord had warned them about in Exodus 23:24, 32-33; in each of these cases, the Lord warns them about following other Elohim. And that trend continues into the NT and Christianity as we see in 1 Corinthians 8:1-6; the KJV doesn’t quite convey the sense correctly, so here is the relevant part in the BBE translation: 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 …we are certain that an image is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one. For though there are those who have the name of gods, in heaven or on earth, as there are a number of gods and a number of lords, There is FOR US only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we are for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we have our being through him. Thus, other nations have Gods and Lords (principalities and powers, priests and kings); but only oneLord and one Master has authority OVER US (John 13:13).
BAD SONS… NOT FALSE GODS
The key, though, is that these other Gods are real Elohim, and these other Lords are also real Elohim. But interestingly few, arguably none, of these other Elohim claim to be God, the Father of all. If you go back to the gods as worshipped in Series 3, particularly Lesson 3-13, you’ll remember that Dagon and Baal were not pretending to be the most high God. They, like Yahweh, were sons of God. Which the Bible confirms in many places (Job 1-2, etc.).
So it wasn’t that Dagon was a false God. On the contrary, he was the very real, divinely appointed Elohim of the Philistines. Who, in the mythology he taught his people, was not the one true God, not the most high El, but merely his dutiful son. Now Mighty Baal, son of Dagon, desired the kingship of the Gods. He contended with Prince Yam-Nahar, the Son of El. But Kindly El, Father Shunem, decided the case in favour of His son; He gave the kingship to Prince Yam. [Epic of Baal, 1500 BC].
Baal was not the most high El; nor was he seeking to overthrow El; indeed, note the reverence and respect he gives to “Kindly El, Father Shunem”. But Baal desired to be first among the Elohim, first of the 70, in the place of the Lord – Isaiah 14:13. And Baal was miffed that El preferred Yahweh to himself. Nonetheless, Baal continued to believe himself a loyal son of El and thus was never a false or counterfeit of El! Rather, Baal felt El had been deceived by Yahweh and took it upon himself to show El that Yahweh was not who El thought He was.
He was and remains to this day a son of El. And even though he was cast out of the mountain of God, he still hopes to prove Yahweh a fraud to their Father (compare to Psalms 2:11-12), to be restored to His former glory. Which is a bad plan, but when someone is bound in the spirit… they can’t quit even in the face of setbacks. And this is the original unbroken spirit.
FATHER TIME
But let’s go back to that name “Father Shunem”. This translates as “Father of Years”, and thus “Father Time”, which was the meaning of the name Cronus, father of Zeus. Compare also to the “ancient of days” of Daniel 7:9. Zeus was widely worshipped in Greece, as were all the other gods; because, as has been seen, Zeus correlates to the Lord, and all the other active Gods in Greece were His sons… just as all the 70 demons of the Earth were made by Yahweh Elohim.
But Cronus was Zeus’ own father, and therefore corresponds to El, the Father of all. In Greece, Cronus was a distant, unseen, and rarely worshipped deity who had, according to myth, been overcome and banished to rule paradise by his only surviving son Zeus (who later forced his Father to resurrect his brethren). Not unlike how the Christians today view the Father, really. Obviously, this is not quite what happened in heaven; yet it is possible to see dim relics of true understanding in these stories – about the preeminent role of Zeus/the Lord in the kingdom, about the jealousy of the other Elohim He created, about getting His Father to resurrect His brethren, and so on.
My point is, that it was to these father Gods like Cronus and El and Anu that Baal and Dagon and Mars ultimately pointed their worship; so they are not false Gods, not false Elohim; for they are Elohim and they do not pretend to be the Father of all – nor even the Lord of all! (Deuteronomy 32:31). The Elohim of these other kingdoms were not teaching against the respect of the most high El, Cronus, Anu, or Ra; rather, Baal Elohim was, in his mind, helping his people to see through Yahweh Elohim’s deception to serve their Grandfather El as Baal believed El wished to be worshipped!
And yet… these other Elohim did not really understand the Father. And they did not, for the most part, gracefully accept His love for His Son Yahweh Elohim, their own creator… even though they obeyed the Lord’s commands. So while Baal should have elevated and praised Yahweh – and he did acknowledge his power and authority – instead of willingly serving the servant of God, they plotted and schemed against Him (Psalms 2:1-6).
So it wasn’t a sin for the Philistines to obey their Elohim, Dagon; because it was their job to worship Dagon, they were HIS PEOPLE by right of inheritance. And Dagon, for his part, was trying to direct his people to worship his own (grand)father, as best he knew how. The problem is… he didn’t know how. But had Dagon done a good job of revealing the Father to his people, God would have loved and respected them no matter what name they knew Him by.
WORSHIP OF ANGELS
Read Colossians 2:16-18. Notice what that says… by obeying these other commandments of “men”, you will be deceived into worshipping angels! Remember, the word demon doesn’t really mean devil, it means the 70 beast angels. And many of them, if not all of them at some point, were worshipped in his own name. Not because he was opposed to God, or rebelling against the Father; but because it was so much easier to make himself a conduit for their worship, rather than to be a guide for their worship.
So much easier to let them sacrifice in his own name, intending to pass on their worship to his Father for them (Deuteronomy 32:15-19). But the wiser angels knew this was not acceptable (Judges 13:15-23, Revelation 19:10). Because when a messenger takes it upon himself to rewrite the message, it really becomes his own message that is delivered. And the people who learn from this message are not listening to the true God in whose name this angel was sent, but to this angel’s summary of what he thinks God meant.
And so the worship of that people in the name of God, is actually given to this angel’s idea of God, and thus given to this angel! (1 Corinthians 10:20-22). And so when the Gentiles sacrifice to Zeus, they are not sacrificing to the Lord; And yet at the same time, they are not truly sacrificing to a false Lord either; they are sacrificing to a demon’s understanding of their Lord, the imagination of Him that comes from the Prince of Greece’s own heart (compare to Jeremiah 23:16).
Thus, this is literally the worship of angels. But then again, not the worship of angels, as such; but rather, a worship of the misunderstandings that the angels taught their people about God, which in effect becomes the worship of what that angel believes is right… and thus, in the end, is in a sense the worship of that angel after all (Psalms 50:16-23). And all of mankind, in every religion, worships God (Psalms 65:5-8)… the way their God-appointed angel interpreted God to them!. And while they may have the best of intentions, they will only confuse us because every angel is an imperfect messenger.
TARNISHED SILVER
The most significant use of silver in the Temple was in the two silver trumpets, the shofar, each of which was made of a whole piece of silver. It’s quite easy to connect angels to trumpets, (1 Thessalonians 4:16, Revelation 4:1). So why did God represent angels with silver? Most of the temple’s furnishings were gold or brass, picturing the first or second resurrection saints, respectively; but these were made of silver. Why? Well, silver has a few unique properties.
First, silver is the best conductor on the periodic table at room temperatures. Second, it is unique among all conductors in that it is still a good conductor… a good messenger… even when it has been oxidized, or tarnished! When iron, say, is freshly polished it is a fine conductor. But soon, with exposure to air, it forms a layer of iron oxide (rust) on the outside which is an insulator and prevents the passage of messages into or out of the iron.
Likewise with copper, aluminum, and other common conductors – they oxidize, and when they do, they become worse than useless as a conductor. But silver oxide is, strangely enough, still a great conductor. Thus, even after an angel has sinned… it can STILL be a messenger (1 Kings 22:22). Another oddity is that when polished, silver is the best reflector of all metals, reflecting 95% of the visible spectrum; which means that angels reflects the glory of God excellently when polished. Yet silver quickly tarnishes and appears black and ugly like lead, which is a symbol of sin (Zechariah 5:7-8).
Thus it quickly ceases to reflect the glory of God, yet it is still capable of carrying the messages of God! Kept in the vacuum of space where God presumably dwells, silver would stay shiny and beautiful forever! And so in His presence, angels maintain their polish, and their holiness. …But given messages to carry in air, on the Earth, silver quickly tarnishes! Just like the angels of God! And an interesting fact is that silverware, as commonly used in history (hence the name “silver”-ware), was polished… once a week. The tarnish would gradually build up throughout the week and before the Sabbath (or in the world, before Sunday, due to the very tarnish we’re talking about)… it would need to be polished clean. Think about that.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Whomever replaces God becomes your God; hence Moses was God to Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1), because Pharaoh had no direct relationship with God, it was conducted entirely through an intermediary – Moses. Thus, in a sense, Moses stood in God’s place, in front of God, hiding God from Pharaoh. Much as – for very different reasons – Nimrod stood before the Lord (Genesis 10:9). And much as, again for different reasons, Paul stood in the place of God (2 Corinthians 5:20). And this is perfectly fine to do – when God appoints you to do so. Not so much, when you take this authority on yourself (Hebrews 5:1-5). Hence God had ordered the Lord to create the worlds, and appointed Him as chief of the sons of God, appointed Him as His own priest (Hebrews 5:6-10).
And the Lord was allowed to accept thanks and glory for the things He had done. Just as I can accept glory for a house I have built (Hebrews 3:1-3) – even if I was only able to build it because of God’s blessing, nonetheless I did build it, and that is thankworthy. Thus, since it was the Lord’s job to forgive sins in heaven – as High Priest of the Most High God – it was appropriate to offer sacrifice unto Him (Psalms 3:8, Psalms 94:1). Baal did not have that authority given to him.
And so when Baal Elohim began to accept worship in his own name, instead of passing the glory on to God, he became an intermediary for his people. When Baal began to accept praise and offerings for having created the world – even though he probably intended, later, to pass that on to the Lord – it offended the Lord who had created Baal.
When Baal accepted sacrifices to forgive sins that the Lord had not approved, it angered the Lord for it was not Baal’s place to forgive sins. Those sacrifices should have been offered unto the Lord, the priest of the heavenly religion, and not in the name of one of the Lord’s own angels in the name of that angel. For even the Lord was not doing all this in His own name; He did accept sacrifices in His name, it is true; for as the High Priest of the Most High God, it was His job to do so. But the Lord, alone of all the seventy, never forgot that He was sent to the Earth to serve His own Lord (Psalms 110:1) and reveal Him to the people.
And He did so even in the Old Testament – for the Lord took them to Sinai to meet God, His Father, so they could serve Him (Exodus 19:17-19, Exodus 24:11). And this is the thing that the angels, in their confusion, selfishness, and pride, failed to do. Some have realized that, and repented; others… haven’t. At least not yet.