The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 3 – 13
When Babylon fell, it was survived by two metaphorical children; the son (Isaiah 14:22) became the beast empires. But Babylon also had a daughter (Jeremiah 51:33). And where the son of Babylon failed, the daughter prevailed. For over 500 years Rome was unable to fully conquer the barbarians in war, and in the end fell to the barbarians even as it was conquering them with false Christianity. So, ironically, the conquerors of Rome’s armies ultimately bowed to Rome’s priests. Likewise, when Nimrod originally formed Babel (called Babylon in Greek), it was a militaristic institution – he was a mighty hunter. But Shem killed him and destroyed his empire – and it was his wife who survived and prospered by transforming his religion into a secret religious institution.
See, we have the idea that paganism sprang fully formed from the mind of the devil at the Garden of Eden, but that really isn’t what happened. What is the point of paganism? Matthew 24:24. Why does God allow this deception? 1 Corinthians 11:19. The prime purpose of paganism is to deceive the saints of God. Think about it like Matthew 18:12-13; Satan has deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9). He doesn’t need to spend any time re-deceiving believers in Shinto; he doesn’t need to update or tweak his doctrines to keep the voodoo witches from finding God. They’re already taken care of. They belong to him. So he can let them develop their false religion out of the imaginations of their own heart.
Satan and his ministers focus their attention trying to deceive the very elect of God. Those who are skilled in the Bible, those to whom God has revealed a part of His true nature. Is it likely they will be deceived by someone trying to get them to howl at the moon? Of course not. This is why Satan tries to deceive them with false Christs, not with Buddha. And since the Garden of Eden, this has always been the method. Not to create ridiculous religions with fantastic gods like the Hindu; but to create deities and stories to mimic the true religion as much as possible, and deceive those who can be deceived away from God. And is it not the way of a hunting serpent to move slowly, ever so slowly, until it’s too late for his prey to escape? Genesis 3:1. It is his patience, his slow movements, and his ability to blend in to the background that makes the serpent dangerous.
BABEL
With that in mind, think about the time of Babel; it was perhaps 200 years after the flood. Noah was still alive, and would be for another 150 years. Shem was still alive, as were, most likely, his two brothers and all their wives. So if someone comes along and says “the flood never happened!” everyone would laugh at them! They would deceive no one! Because everyone was related to people who had been there, people whom they respected! Today, sure, that lie would work – because the event has dimmed in our racial memory, clouded by millennia of myth. But back then, they’d have to be more subtle than that! So how would you corrupt the true religion?
Would you deny the stories that Noah heard about Cain and Abel – stories he might have heard fromCain himself? Would you deny Adam and Eve, or the serpent and the tree and the apple? Of course not. Later, when Noah and Shem and everyone who knew them were thoroughly dead, then you could try such blatant lies. But not at Babel! At Babel, at the start, you’d have to be more clever! The Bible says very little about the original false religion of Babel, and nothing at all about Nimrod’s wife as such. We know of her through indirect references in the Bible, and through her own stories about herself in ancient Babylonian mythologies.
We do know that 1,500 years later the Jews were condemned for worshiping the “queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 7:18, for instance). It’s tempting to connect her with the great whore, but Jeremiah’s queen of heaven is a specific deity – not an abstract church symbol. So what did this queen of heaven teach?
EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Thanks to archaeology we know exactly what sort of things were taught back then. The epic of Gilgamesh was written on clay tablets around the time of Babel, and it is one of the oldest surviving religious works on Earth. The tablets predate the writing of the Bible by around 600 years, and they tell many of the same stories found in Genesis – Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark and the flood, Cain and Abel. This leads modern scholars to believe it was the original source of those stories, because they are eager to prove the Bible is a fraud. But if the Bible contains the true story then these are the earliest attempts of the religion of Babel to rewrite history! Remember, the tablets date from perhaps 200 years after the flood, these stories were well known – many people had probably heard them from Noah himself, who was still alive at the time!
So denying the events themselves would be impossible. But by changing the events – twisting them to their own ends – those who had only heard the stories second-or-third hand could easily be led to believe that theirs was the true story. Isn’t that just what 2 Peter 3:16 said? In the epic, Gilgamesh was a mighty hunter and builder of Uruk – Biblical Erech, see Genesis 10:9-10. This means he was most likely yet another name for Nimrod. And among Gilgamesh’s many adventures, he sets off to find immortality by going to meet the one man who is immortal – the one man who survived the great flood.
Remember, at this time Noah would have been around 800 years old, by 500 years the oldest man alive. It would be hard for people not to think of him as immortal. (In the Bible, of course, Noah’s three sons also survived the flood, but this makes a better story for Babel’s purposes.) So the presence of the “immortal” flood survivor in the story lends it credibility. After all, the real truth about the flood came from Noah – many of them had heard it. So if Noah, through this story, changes the details a bit – that’s more believable than someone just saying that Noah was wrong!
So this epic shows us one of the earliest systematic attempts to revise an unpopular history, absolve the people of guilt for the flood, and give the credit for their salvation to a different set of Babylonian deities! Setting the stage for the flood story, it begins: “You know the city Shurrupak, it stands on the banks of Euphrates? That city grew old and the gods that were in it were old. There was Anu, lord of the firmament, their father, and warrior Enlil their counselor, and Ninurta the helper, and Ennugi watcher over canals; and with them also was Ea.” Anu was chief of the gods – the Biblical God the Father. Enlil was His counselor – the Word, the being who became Jesus. Ninurta the “helper” and Ennugi “watcher over canals” clearly have a high position in this government, and are certainly angels – possibly Babylonian recastings of Gabriel and Michael.
Remember, Babel’s purpose wasn’t to destroy truth. It was to subvert it to their own ends. They would have used real characters as much as possible to make the story ring true. Given that, notice how it says “And with them also was Ea”. Note the way Ea is separated in the story – as if he were an outsider in heaven. We’ll come back to that. “In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamour. Enlil [Jesus] heard the clamour and he said to the gods in council, ‘The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.’ So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind. Enlil did this, but Ea because of his oath warned me in a dream.” (All quotes from Epic of Gilgamesh until further notice.)
So the “new and improved” flood story Satan’s ministry told, Earth wasn’t destroyed by God for their sins, but because they were noisy and kept Jesus from sleeping! Now this is actually similar to what the Bible says in Genesis 6:5-6 – that Jesus was “grieved at his heart”, and from that we could infer that He “lost sleep over the problem”, as parents often do when their children are rebellious and getting themselves into trouble. And so while building on real truth – Jesus/Enlil being grieved and losing sleep – the Babylonian version conveniently ignores the main reason for the flood, that man was sinning and hurting each other! Their version makes God seem selfish and cruel! It paints Him as a God who would rather murder His own creation rather than wear earplugs to bed!
Denying the flood wasn’t possible yet; but reinterpreting the reason for the flood was! Likewise, they paint Enlil as the ogre and Ea as the hero by claiming that Noah wasn’t warned by God because he was righteous; he was warned by Ea behind God’s back! Remembering this is Satan’s story, who could Ea – the guy who warned Noah to build the ark – be? The one who saved mankind from God’s grumpy, unfair judgment? Who has ALWAYS saved mankind from God’s just judgment? Satan! So Ea is Satan, the good guy! Because he is always the hero of his own story! Now remember how Gilgamesh’s story said “and with them also was Ea”? The Bible uses the exact same terminology to refer to Satan in Job 1:6 “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them”!
The story continues with Satan telling Noah to build a boat, and Noah responds: “‘Behold, what you have commanded I will honour and perform, but how shall I answer the people, the city, the elders?’ Then Ea opened his mouth and said to me, his servant, ‘Tell them this: I have learnt that Enlil is wrathful against me, I dare no longer walk in his land nor live in his city; I will go down to the Gulf to dwell with Ea my lord.’” So Noah, warned by Satan of the flood, was not a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5); he was a liar who didn’t warn the world and give them a chance to repent! So Noah builds a boat, launches it, and various storm and water gods bring the actual flood.
The Bible cuts to the chase by saying God brought the flood (Genesis 6:13), which He certainly did – but not personally, just like He didn’t personally do much in Revelation, He had the “angel of the waters” do this (Revelation 16:5), or the “angel of fire” do that (Revelation 14:8). So given Revelation’s far more detailed version of the end time destruction, which specifically parallels Noah’s flood (Matthew 24:38-39), we must infer that the angels had just as many specific jobs during the time of the flood. Noah likely knew much more of this than Moses wrote down, which he likely told people. And in the Epic of Gilgamesh, we hear that corrupted echo of the real truth – that God destroyed the Earth through angels in the time of Noah, just as He will do the same thing through the same angels at His return.
So after the angels bring the flood, everyone not in the Ark dies. But the Bible doesn’t record anything about the angels’ reaction to the flood. While the Babylonian version is certainly skewed, we have to ask – how did the angels feel about the carnage? How will they feel when they perform the destruction at Christ’s 2nd coming? Babel says… “Even the gods [angels] were terrified at the flood, they fled to the highest heaven, the firmament of Ann… Then Ishtar the sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven cried out like a woman in travail… ‘are they not my people, for I brought them forth? Now like the spawn of fish they float in the ocean.’ The great gods of heaven and of hell wept, they covered their mouths.”
Here we see all the gods – except Enlil and Anu, Jesus and the Father – showing remorse and fear. In particular Ishtar, queen of heaven, who regrets agreeing to the flood and realizes how much she loves mankind whom she had created! Now we know that women are churches, so here Ishtar, representing the church of Babel, is writing herself into this story. More on that later. So after the flood, the ark rested on a mountain, and Noah made sacrifices, much like the Biblical version. The story continues: “When the gods [angels] smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice. Then, at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted her necklace with the jewels of heaven
[the rainbow?] that once Anu had made to please her.” Notice that Anu – the Father – is in love with Ishtar, His queen. This will be very important later. The Father has no consort in the Bible, but in Babylonian mythology she is His queen, above all the other gods – even Enlil, Jesus. Ishtar continues speaking: “O you gods here present… these last days I shall not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice, except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my people to destruction. When Enlil had come, when he saw the boat, he was wroth and swelled with anger at the gods, the host of heaven, ‘Has any of these mortals escaped? Not one was to have survived the destruction.’”
See now the flood is entirely blamed on Enlil’s senseless cruelty, and Ishtar boldly defies even Him, God’s counselor, for killing her people. Someone responds “Who is there of the gods that can devise without Ea? It is Ea alone who knows all things.” This makes it certain that Ea represents Satan, for even God said he was the wisest angel (Ezekiel 28:12). Ea was also called Enki, which means “Lord of all the Earth”. Isn’t this just what Jesus called him in John 16:11, 2 Corinthians 4:4, and what he called himself in Luke 4:5-7? “Then Ea opened his mouth and spoke to warrior Enlil, ‘Wisest of gods, hero Enlil, how could you so senselessly bring down the flood?’ Lay upon the sinner his sin, lay upon the transgressor his transgression, punish him a little when he breaks loose, do not drive him too hard or he perishes. Would that a lion [or a wolf, or disease, or famine] had ravaged mankind, rather than the flood…’”
Satan accuses Jesus of harshness with sinners and begs Him to be more compassionate in the future. So according to this story, rather than promising on His own never to bring another flood as He did in Genesis 9:11-16, the only reason Jesus didn’t kill even Noah was because Satan and Ishtar intervened to save him!
BETTER LIES
See, a lot of that was true. There certainly were angels involved, even though the Bible doesn’t mention it; they very likely were horrified by the flood. But notice the deception here – every word was written to express how harsh and unfair Anu and particularly Enlil are, and to show how compassionate Ea and Ishtar were. Many of the details match the Bible pretty closely, although some poetic license was used, like changing the rainbow in the Bible to be a gift of “jewels of heaven” God gave to the false church. Thus implying that protection from another flood was to be found through HER, and not a promise He made to the world at large! If not for Ea and Ishtar’s intervention, there wouldn’t be a human race today, is the message you’re supposed to take away from this. And if you want to be protected from another flood, you should hide behind the skirts of Ishtar, who is the only one who can protect you!
Why would you even want to continue exalting Enlil and Anu? Sure, Anu and Enlil exist, but only Ea and Ishtar care about mankind! Anu and Enlil only care about their stupid laws! Would you not rather worship man’s protectors, the real heroes of the story? And, if you hadn’t talked to Noah yourself, or, worse yet, if he had yelled at you and you didn’t like him – you might easily believe this alternate version which purports to be Noah’s own words! This is how deception works. Satan always starts with the truth you understand, and just changes minor details to make God the villain and himself the hero. But paganism can’t stop working; for as they grow stronger and develop better lies, God reveals more truth to His servants (Psalms 25:12-14, 19-21), usually just enough so they can see through those lies.
If someone were to come up to you today and say “God didn’t destroy man with a flood because they sinned, but because they kept him awake!” you’d laugh at them. If they told you “Satan was the one who actually warned Noah” or that God was furious when He found Noah had survived you’d call them a heretic and a pagan and have nothing more to do with them. Because these deceptions wouldn’t work today! Does that mean Satan has given up? Certainly not – he just has crafted lies that work against THIS generation! As he has done against every generation since Cain! So today, someone might tell you the flood never happened, or that the Bible grossly exaggerated a purely local flood from a dam bursting… and that you might believe! A great many Christians have! Because that is a deception.
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
It’s impossible not to connect the Bible’s “queen of heaven” with the Ishtar of Gilgamesh; and it’s hard to imagine she isn’t the same as Nimrod’s wife, who reigned over the gate of heaven in Babel. But she has gone by a lot of names in the past 4,000 years. Ishtar is her Babylonian name, but she also went by Inanna in Sumerian. In Egypt, she is was known as Aset or Isis. Around Palestine she was known as Astarte, Ashtoreth, and Asherah. And these are just the names that are recognizably similar to each other, close enough we KNOW they are the same woman. Under each of these names, she was always the mother, wife, daughter, or sister of the chief god; often, more than one of those things. She was always a goddess of fertility, and was usually worshiped in brothel-temples – worshiping her involved hiring a dedicated prostitute, so she was a very popular deity. A god who likes it when you sleep with prostitutes? Who wouldn’t like that!
She even brags about this in the epic of Gilgamesh; there was a wild man, Enkidu, who lived in the woods and protected the animals. To tame him, a temple prostitute was brought to seduce him, and then she taught him the true way of life. After all, men have always been very willing to believe something whispered in their ear while they’re thinking about something else. All these goddesses share so many characteristics it’s difficult to believe they were not inspired by a single historical figure – Nimrod’s wife. Now it takes a bit of work, but we can prove that in the Bible through her name Asherah.
Scholars mostly believe Asherah was originally distinct from Ishtar, but later – by the time of Jeremiah – had become the same deity. I suspect she was always the same, just different faces for the same goddess, but either way, we know Jeremiah’s Asherah was synonymous with Ishtar. Judges 3:7 And the children of Israel did evil… and served Baalim and the groves [Asherah]. Due to an unfortunate Hebrew pun, verses like this are usually mistranslated. The Hebrew word Asherah means “grove of trees”. But it was also a proper name for the queen of heaven who was worshiped in those groves, through images, or simply with upright poles like maypoles.
For example in 2 Kings 23:4-6, it’s obviously quite impossible to bring groves out of a temple. So it must have been idols of Asherah that were carried out and burned. Likewise in Isaiah 17:8, it is clear that your fingers don’t make groves – you plant them. But idols of Asherah are made with your fingers (Isaiah 44:9-19, Jeremiah 2:27). And they were no doubt made out of sacred trees from her groves which were planted on every high hill! (Jeremiah 17:2). Note that last reference mentions groves by the green trees – thus, the grove must be the Asherah idol next to the sacred grove. Various references to Asherah, either as groves or the goddess, are scattered throughout the OT, almost always in a negative sense; see Deuteronomy 12:1-4, 2 Chronicles 24:18, Exodus 34:13 and Isaiah 27:9.
2 Kings 23:4-7 (BBE) Then the king gave orders… to take out of the house of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal and for the Asherah and for all the stars of heaven… And he put an end to the false priests… And he took the Asherah from the house of the Lord… he had the houses pulled down of those who were used for sex purposes in the house of the Lord, where women were making robes forthe Asherah. This was said 13 years before Jeremiah’s first prophecy, as Josiah was destroying the idols in the temple. Notice the prominent place in the temple of God of the goddess Asherah, and the presence of a “sacred” brothel in the temple grounds. Much of Jeremiah was spent yelling at Judah for these exact practices; read Jeremiah 16:10-17:2. Note that they were actually shocked that God was unhappy with them! “What have we done??” they cried! Think about what that means. It means they had been deceived! They THOUGHT they were doing things that would make the God of Abraham happy! How could they be that dumb?
It was a surprise to them to find that God might be angry with them – and frankly, hard for them to believe. Later, after they had further proof of God’s anger, they were willing to concede God might be angry and asked Him what to do in Jeremiah 42:1-6. God basically said “whatever you do, don’t go to Egypt” (the rest of the chapter, particularly verse 19). They of course promptly went to Egypt. Once there, they continued their idolatry, and added some Egyptian idols as well; so in Jeremiah 44:7- 19, God sent Jeremiah to threaten them, and they responded with open rebellion. Notice how they consider this queen of heaven as an alternate choice; someone else who can save them, even though the true God is angry with them. Just as she had done in Gilgamesh!
Why would they still think that? From our perspective, knowing only Jeremiah and God’s side of it, it seems absurd. They’d seen what God had done! How could worshiping another goddess be a good idea? But somehow, this made sense to them! You’ll see why later.
MOSES
By the time of Moses, everyone who remembered the flood was long dead. So the mythology could be much more bold. It had overwhelmed them in Egypt, which is why God called them out of Egypt and sent them to Canaan, and gave them details about what He was like. Even so, as soon as they got to Canaan, they started worshiping other gods. Can you imagine? All the miracles they had seen, and they couldn’t see the difference between God and Baal. I mean, they have different names! God is God, and Baal is Baal! How hard can that be, right? But it wasn’t as simple as that. Remember, the false religion is not stupid. They had to make a good deception. You can’t deceive people away from God with Osiris. You have to deceive people into following another God. I mean that literally, this time – another being called God.
The OT primarily uses three words for God: El, Yah/Yahweh, and Elohim. As you learned in Lesson 2-8, El refers to the Father. Yahweh or Yahweh Elohim or, rarely, Yah (often translated Jah, see Psalms 68:4) refers to the Word, Jesus, as God/Lord of the OT. Elohim by itself often refers to both of them together, although there are exceptions. This is relevant because when Israel crossed the Jordan and entered the land of Canaan, they didn’t find the religion of Osiris, Tammuz, or Zeus. No, they found the inhabitants worshiping a God called El! El was king of the Gods just as He was in Moses’ writings, and Yah was His favorite son!
BAAL AND YAH
Because we weren’t there, and because the average Christian knows very little about the environment the Israelites lived in, we don’t appreciate that this was a deception designed to separate them from the God who had just rescued them in Egypt! Not by telling them to worship a different God! Paganism NEVER does that! The daughter of Babylon wants you to continue worshiping the very same God but in a more exciting and fulfilling way by adding HER rituals, by adding HER secret wisdom! She promises you can worship God in a way that would please Him EVEN MORE! In the Ugaritic (old Canaanite) myths, the story of a fight between Baal and Yam is recorded in the Epic of Baal, dating to about 1500 BC – just about the time Israel invaded the Promised Land. Now Yam has many spellings, but is equivalent to the Hebrew Yah or Yahweh – Jesus. With that in mind, read on… “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. He gave the power to Judge Nahar. “Fearsome Yam came to rule the Gods with an iron fist. He caused Them to labor and toil under His reign. They cried unto Their mother, Asherah, Lady of the Sea. They convinced Her to confront Yam, to intercede in Their behalf. “Asherah went into the presence of Prince Yam. She came before Judge Nahar. She begged that He release His grip upon the Gods Her sons. But Mighty Yam declined Her request. She offered favours to the Tyrant. But Powerful Nahar softened not His heart.
Finally, Kindly Asherah, who loves Her children, offered Herself to the God of the Sea. She offered Her own body to the Lord of Rivers. “Yam-Nahar agreed to this, and Asherah returned to the Source of the Two Rivers, She went home to the court of El. [The Garden of Eden was the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, according to Genesis, and was widely believed to be the home of God by the Mesopotamians – equivalent to the Greek Olympus. The actual source is in easternTurkey, near Mt. Ararat.] “She came before the Divine Council, and spoke of Her plan to the Gods Her children.
Baal was infuriated by Her speech. He was angered at the Gods who would allow such a plot. He would not consent to surrendering Great Asherah to the Tyrant Yam-Nahar. He swore to the Gods that He would destroy Prince Yam. He would lay to rest the tyranny of Judge Nahar.” El, the Father, is still chief of the Gods. Asherah, their beloved queen of heaven is still His consort, just like Anu and Ishtar. Yam is El’s favorite son – Jesus, to whom He gives rulership over the Earth. But unlike Enlil, who was merely capricious to humans, Yam is pictured as a brutal dictator who oppressed the other gods (angels), even when His own mother, the queen of heaven begged him to stop.
He finally agreed only because she promised to sleep with Him. If this story were true, Baal’s righteous fury would indeed be justified in open rebellion against the rightful Lord of the Earth, even if He were appointed by the Lord of Heaven. So when Israel entered the Promised Land, this is the story they found; stories that use the names they learned at Sinai, but which show another side of the story – and if you believe that other side, it would be hard not to worship Baal instead of Yam. But notice that the skeleton of this story is true. The Father still rules; Jesus is His son, Lord of the Earth. And this all started because “Baal desired the kingship of the Gods”, which is exactly what Isaiah 14:13-14 said. Even the part about Jesus being an inflexible dictator is true from a certain point of view, Revelation 19:15 for example.
But it’s in the motivation of the story, when Satan tells why he rebelled, that the deception enters. Satan paints Jesus as cruel and merciless, and himself as the daring hero who risks the wrath of the Most High God to save his brethren from oppression and his mother from violation. Painted in that light, Baal doesn’t seem so bad, does he? If you just read Isaiah 14, God’s ranting at Satan, sure – it makes him look bad. But if you hear his side, you develop a bit more empathy for him. …and that’s the whole point, of course. Anyway, moving on with the story, Baal refuses to submit, and with help from other gods, manages to kill Yam. [This, too, actually happened when Jesus died on the cross – which, at the time this was written wouldn’t happen until 1500 years later, proving that Satan understood at least the outline of the plan of God.]
Baal then gets Asherah [Ishtar] to beg her consort El to give Baal a house, which eventually He does, then Baal goes out and conquers cities; “thus Baal returned to His home as Lord of all the World.” A happy ending for Baal/Satan! The death of Jesus, the rise of Catholicism (a house for Baal) where the dragon rules the beast, and Asherah deceives the whole Earth, all foretold BY SATAN! But even Satan knows it’s not that easy, that this happy ending won’t be the end of the story. Earlier in the same book, Baal sneeringly calls Yam: “…El’s beloved Yam Nahar!” And at this point in the story, a new villain arises to threaten Baal, called “Mot” or “Mavet”, meaning Death. But this antagonist is ALSO called “El’s beloved, the Hero!”
Like Yam, Mot boasts “I alone am He who will rule over the Gods. Yea command Gods and men. Even dominate the multitudes of the earth.” So this is none other than Yam, resurrected with a new name! The second coming of Jesus! Now remember, this is telling a story of Satan killing Jesus, and Jesus coming back to slaughter all those who caused His death. This is real! The first half happened, and the second half is assured in our future. Remember, Satan is not stupid. He can read the Bible, and he must have known at least the general outline of the plan before he was kicked out of heaven in the first place! So by this time, he is starting to tell his side of the prophetic story, to preempt the resurrection story of Jesus (Proverbs 18:17).
And with this mythology, Satan – Baal Hadad, God of Storms – is consciously trying to get people sympathetic to his side of the story, so they will weep for him and support him when the real struggle comes! Now, to prove that this was written specifically to deceive those who read Moses’ writings, read the story of how Baal died; unable to defeat Mot, he sends a message of submission. Then “…Baal hearkens. He loves a heifer in Deber… He lies with her… so that She conceives and bears Moshe [the Hebrew form of Moses].”
So first they portray the other side – Baal as hero, Yah (“Lord” or “Jehovah” in the OT), first as merely tyrant, then after his death/resurrection as the far more terrifying God of death (not the God of life, as Jesus portrays Himself in Matthew 22:32). Then they try to discredit Moses by saying not only was he wrong, but he was born as the result of an unholy union between a dying Baal and a cow!
ANAT
So what we see here is the true dying-resurrected Savior being vilified while a false dying-resurrected savior is being deified. After this passage, Baal is wept for by the whole world, including El. Then Anat, Baal’s “virgin” sister seeks his body to bring him back to life. “Although she is consistently referred to as ‘virgin’, Anat also seems to have been one of the two consorts of El” (New World Encyclopedia, Anat). She was also sometimes called queen of heaven, and is simply another version of Ishtar. Anat boasts that she has put an end to several gods in addition to Mot: “Did I not demolish the darling of El, Yam the Sea? Did I not make an end of Nahar the River, the great god divine Rabim? Did I not snare the Dragon, vanquish him? I did demolish the Twisting Serpent, the Tyrant with Seven Heads?”
Note another interesting fact; the serpent was the original cause of man’s sin. And ever since, the serpent has been slowly – oh, so slowly – stalking unwary true Christians. This is one of the main reasons God uses that simile in Genesis 3:1. The best way Satan deceives potential saints is by reversing the stories God tells, and casting the true hero (Jesus) as the serpent, and himself as the true Savior – the true Jesus, for Jesus means “Savior” in Hebrew. So Satan often tells a true story, but twists it upside down so that “evil is called good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). And so Satan calls Jesus a “twisting serpent”, “the tyrant with seven heads”. For doesn’t Jesus have seven horns (and horns and heads are related symbols)? Revelation 5:6.
So Jesus’ seven spirits, the seven angels who work for Jesus, could be seen as seven heads on one serpent, if you cast Jesus as the deceiver and Satan as the savior! See how Satan just turns things upside down and tells the lies with a straight face? Now remember earlier I asked you how the Jews could possibly have been stupid enough to worship the queen of heaven after all that happened? Now we’re ready to answer! “In Elephantine (modern Aswan) in Egypt, Jewish mercenaries, c. 410 B.C.E., left documents that make mention of a goddess called Anat-Yahu (Anat-Yahweh) worshiped in the local temple of Yahweh, originally built by Jewish refugees from the Babylonian conquest of Judah.” (New World Encyclopedia, article “Anat”).
This was the temple built by THOSE SAME Jews who spoke to Jeremiah! They built a temple to God in Egypt and worshiped God AND HIS WIFE ANAT there! So Anat-Inanna-Ishtar-Isis, the queen of heaven, was not a pagan goddess – not in the eyes of the Jews, anyway. She was literally the queen of heaven, and rightfully so – for she was the WIFE OF GOD! To the Israelites with Joshua, they were not worshiping some strange, foreign El; not for them some false, pagan Gods! No, they worshiped El and His more merciful, loving wife who interceded for sinners like them! According to all mythology they had ever read, the wife was more compassionate than her husband, and much more likely to forgive them than He was!
And they knew she had the power to persuade El to bless them even though they were actively disobeying Him! This is why the men of Judah were shocked when Jeremiah prophesied their doom! Because they not only believed they were worshiping God, they believed they were worshiping God BETTER than He had asked them to do, thanks to His wife the queen of heaven who had revealed the secret knowledge to them!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This lesson taught you little about the truth of the Bible, but hopefully a great deal about the way the devil fights against that truth. He isn’t a ranting, raving, adversary; he appears as an angel of light. He doesn’t teach rebellion, he teaches love. And he is very patient when stalking the doves of God, just like the serpent God pictures him as. To deceive the world, Satan started with the name of Jesus, and read carefully-chosen scriptures about Him; then he gradually pushed the doctrines from his old false church into the new false church.
Gradually, more and more of “Nimrod” was incorporated into “Jesus”. And after a century or so had gone by, it became easier because no one was alive who remembered the original church, so he could move faster. Many doctrines were copied-and-pasted from his old “pagan” church, with the old names crossed out and new “Christian” ones painted over top. Satan always starts with some actual truth; just as he did in Eden, Babel, and Canaan. Read Matthew 4:6. Satan quoted scripture at Jesus. And it was true, and it applied to Him! BUT! That scripture (Psalms 91:11-12) only applied to ACCIDENTS. There is a difference between “dashing your foot against a stone” (tripping)… and leaping from a cliff! And Satan well knew this!
All of the so-called-Christian doctrines which are not taught in the Bible have a similar origin – paganism, tracing their roots back to the ancient Babylonian mysteries, with the pagan names crossed out and “Christian” ones pasted on top. If a doctrine is not clearly taught in the Bible, it does not come from the Bible. It comes from a false Christianity! God is no dummy. When He wrote the Bible; He knew men are easily swayed into sin, and that we really aren’t that bright. If He wanted us to do something, He told us!
“If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:” (Revelation 22:18), nor would He have said “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). That doesn’t mean our understanding of the truth is finished; far from it. But the substance of what God wrote will never need to change, the names will not need to be crossed out, its ideas will never need to be updated to meet the needs of a new age – but our understanding of them might.
As I said at the very beginning, false religion didn’t spring fully formed from the head of Satan after the curse in Eden… But God’s religion did; Satan has been revising and editing his beliefs to keep up with God on a daily basis since then. But God mapped this all out long, long ago, and designed the heavens, our bodies, every species of fish and every blade of grass to fit into His Truth. That’s why He is able to be “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). And why Satan is not.