Joseph Herrin (10-11-08)

Genesis 11:4
And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.“

Revelation 18:4-5
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, that you may not participate in her sins and that you may not receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.”

In the first part of this teaching I spoke on the topic of Christians being aliens and strangers in this world. In particular I made application to Christian involvement in this fallen world’s political systems. If you missed the first part and want to read it, you can find it here: https://heart4god.ws/wordpress/2008/09/deconstructing-babel-part-1.html

In part 2 I will look at the Christian religious system, and how it too has become a manifestation of Babylon. In the passage quoted above from the book of Revelation, John uses the word Babylon to describe the Christian religious system, being astonished at what he sees.

Revelation 17:3-6
So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Yahshua. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.

Many have identified this harlot with the Roman Catholic Church, and the harlots she has birthed being the various denominations of Christianity that have drunk from the same cup of abominations that is in her hand. I know that many protestant Christians recoil at the suggestion that their church or denomination may be a daughter of the great harlot, but truly, the impurities in her cup are imbibed by every Protestant denomination of which I am aware.

Some time back the Spirit of Christ directed me to create a presentation called Removing the High Places. This teaching focuses upon the two highest holy days (holidays) of the church. The same holidays are celebrated by both Catholic and Protestant. The same symbols are found in their association, and many of the same practices are observed. Yet neither of these holy days are found in Scripture, and both can easily be traced back to pagan roots which go back as the mystery religions of ancient Babylon and her fertility cults.

If you have not read Removing the High Places, I would highly encourage you to do so. A picture is often of more value than many words, and the presentation employs many graphics to reveal the association between the pagan rites and the holidays of the church.
http://www.heart4god.ws/id585.htm

I do not want to repeat the things taught in Removing the High Places. I would simply declare that it should be obvious to the student of the Bible today that there is no apostolic tradition of celebrating either Christmas or Easter found in Scriptures. The name Easter is the name of a pagan goddess of fertility (Eoster, Ishtar, Astarte, Ashtoreth). If you will read the writing suggested you will find that I am not proclaiming that the church should not commemorate the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. I am saying that the Biblical holy day set to mark this occasion is Passover, not Easter, and they do not fall on the same date. Nor do they employ the same symbols or rites.

Is God concerned that His people are mixing the holy and the profane together? Does He care that the church has corrupted the holy with the vile? Yes He is! There are many Scriptures that reveal the wrath of God being poured out upon His people who mixed the worship of the Holy God with the worship of false deities and abominable practices.

Leviticus 20:3
And I will set My face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane My holy name.

Ezekiel 22:26-31
Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean… so that I am profaned among them… Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads,” says Yahweh God.

The church is to be a kingdom of priests. One of the roles of a priest is to teach the people the difference between the holy and the vile.

Ezekiel 44:23
And they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the unholy, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.

We should not think that God was only concerned about making such distinctions under the old covenant of the Law. It is in the New Testament that we read John’s words to come out of harlotry and to not participate in the sins of Babylon (confusion, mixture), lest we become partakers of the judgments poured out upon her. There are many New Testament admonitions given to the people of God to avoid all corruption and mixture. On what basis are we NOT to apply such instructions to the practice of mixing the worship and rites of false deities? I tell you there is no argument to support adopting that which is vile and detestable in God’s sight.

I Corinthians 10:21-22
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?

II Corinthians 6:14-16
What partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

Truly God views it as an abomination when the people of God commemorate the death and resurrection of His holy Son, while calling the celebration by the name of a pagan goddess. Most definitely does He consider it a cup of abomination to mix in symbols and rites pertaining to a fertility goddess with the honor due to His Son.

In this writing it is my intent as a priest of God, to teach the difference between the holy and the profane, and to urge the people of God to separate themselves from all that is impure. In an hour when the wrath of God is about to be poured out upon a disobedient people, you do not want to be found dwelling in Babylon. Come out of her!

Yesterday a brother in Christ sent me a link to a book titled The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. It is a very well researched expose on the educational system and the intentional plan to strip away people’s ability to perform critical thinking. The author documents how the education establishment created crises, and then put forth solutions to these crises that have led to a more pliable and controllable people. It is the same process we are seeing carried out now in the financial sector, and the government would not be able to carry forth their agenda to move America toward socialism unless that had first done their work so well in the education system.

The author describes how the school systems have departed from teaching critical thinking skills in English, Math, Science and History, and they have incorporated the psychological principles of B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov. Operant conditioning has replaced critical thinking. Like Pavlov’s dog, students have been conditioned to react to stimuli in a specific way, rather than to think about issues.

Ivan Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate every time it heard a bell ring. He did this by ringing a bell every time he fed the dog. Soon the dog came to associate the bell ringing with food and he would immediately begin salivating at the ringing of the bell.

Consider how this method has been used upon the American public. In school the students have been taught to make associations between things in the same way that Pavlov’s dog was trained. They have been trained to associate America with democracy, and democracy with righteous government. They have been taught to associate the names of those who rebelled against England with honor, courage, bravery and patriotism. On the other hand they were taught to associate those who were loyal to the government of England with treason and cowardice.

As I have shown in recent blogs, many of the men I was taught to revere in school I have discovered to be ant-Christian in the extreme. They have been blasphemers of the Son of God, but these things were never mentioned in school.

The education system has indoctrinated an entire generation to simply respond to stimuli, to not question what is stated in the news media of by government officials, but to believe they are hearing the truth. The whole intent has been to create sheeple, a pliable and subservient citizenry who will not present any strong opposition to the plans of the New World Order.

I mention this because Christians in America have been greatly influenced by the education system. They have been conditioned to believe what they are told, and have lost the desire to exercise critical thinking. Christians have been dumbed down.

Christians today do not study the word of God as they once did. I have often marveled in reading the biographies of Christians from the 1800s and 1900s as I have observed the training they received, often in their homes at the hands of their parents, in the Scriptures. Many homes taught their children Greek and Hebrew. There was a great emphasis upon studying the word of God.

Today, however, most Christians never even read their Bibles outside of church. While in church they do not critical thinking. They just absorb what is spoken to them from the professionals in the pulpit. Is this not a large part of the reason that so many Christians are deceived by the prosperity preachers? Is not the dumbing down of Christians responsible for so little judgment being exercised that so many thousands were flocking to Lakeland, Florida recently to partake of the “ministry” of Todd Bentley?

Seldom has there ever been a more egregious lack of sound, Biblical teaching than what was witnessed in Lakeland. False doctrines were the order of the day. Talk of angels and impartations and behavior more fitting to a carnival were received with complete openness and delight. Why? In large part, because the Christians flocking there had fallen away from the practice of examining all things carefully, and studying to show themselves approved unto God by rightly dividing the Scriptures.

Christians today have been trained to respond to stimuli rather than to examine all things with a critical mind. In the end of the age when Christ said deceivers and lying spirits would abound, this has led to a very tragic consequence.

You may protest, “I have not been dumbed down. I am not failing to examine all things closely.” Are you sure?

How much of what goes on in church have you examined carefully, testing it against the Scriptures and the witness of the Spirit of Christ? When you slapped that fish symbol on the bumper of your car, did you examine the origins of it first to see if it was Christian or pagan? Oh, I know you have been told repeatedly that the fish is a symbol of Christianity, for the disciples were fishermen, but did you ever read of the apostles using a fish as a symbol of their faith? Did you examine this matter to see where the symbol originated, and when it was first used?

Augustine is considered by Catholics to be the greatest theologian of the Catholic Church. He was the one who came up with the rationale to use the fish as a symbol for Christianity. Augustine wrote:

If you combine the initial letters of the five Greek words, which are Iesous Chreistos Theou Uios Soter, Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour, they make the word ichthus, meaning fish, and the mystic meaning of this noun is Christ, because He had power to exist alive, that is, without sin, in the bottomless pit of our mortal life, as in the depths of the sea.

It should be noted that the Catholic Church practiced syncretism. This is the practice of seeking to merge, or reconcile, various conflicting beliefs. When Constantine declared Rome to be a Christian Empire, there was a huge number of pagan practitioners throughout the empire. Constantine was himself a Sun worshiper, and the highest holy days of Sun worship were at the end of December when the Sun had passed through the shortest day of the year and was beginning to assert its ascendancy once more. This was where Christmas originated. Rome merged the worship of Deus Sol Invictus (unconquered Sun God) with Christianity, and it became a perverse mixture of pagan and Christian teachings.

It was through the merger of Sun worship and Christianity that the day of worship was moved to Sun-day. Every day of the week in our Roman calendar is devoted to a different pagan deity:

Sun-day: the Sun
Mon-day: the Moon
Tues-day: Tiews (The Nordic equivalent of Mars)
Wednes-day: Woden (equivalent to Mercury)
Thurs-day: Thor (Equivalent to Jupiter)
Fri-day: Freya (Equivalent to Venus and Aphrodite)
Satur-day: Saturn

Because Constantine was a Sun worshiper, he moved all worship to Sunday, forbidding Christians and Jews to worship on the Sabbath. Today the church has been so indoctrinated into this practice that they refer to Sunday as the Sabbath day. This is but one more example of the corruptions of Babylon.

The corruptions of Christianity due to its merger with Sun worship are many, and few realize the extent of them. Many Christians speak of “Sun-day worship” and “Sun-day school,” not realizing the origin and meaning of what it is they are saying. Even depictions of the Christ bear the marks of Sun worship.

This picture is easily mistaken as a painting of Christ. It is actually a painting of Apollo. The “solar halo,” also called a nimbus, was very common in depictions of deities that were related to the Sun and Sun worship. Due to Catholicism’s deep ties to Sun worship, symbols of the Sun are found in profusion.

This is a picture of the Pope carrying what is very evidently an image of the Sun. The sacrament of the Mass observed by Catholics is rife with Sun images. Even the wafer that is supposed to represent the body of Christ is in the shape of a solar disk. It is this which is held in the center of the image above.

These solar wafers were used in the observance of pagan rites. In contrast, at the Passover supper the Lord took unleavened bread and BROKE if. He did not carve it into neat little circles that resemble the Sun and pass it out to His disciples and say “This is My body broken for you. Eat this in remembrance of Me.” Nor did they mark this observance on Sun-day. (I am not advocating that Christians should return to a legal observance of the Sabbath which begins at sundown on Friday and runs until sundown on Saturday. The book of Acts reveals that the believers were meeting every day of the week. I share this to point out the influence upon pagan Sun worship in both the Catholic and Protestant churches today.)

The tonsure haircut worn by monks is also related to Sun worship. The haircut marks the circuit of the Sun in the heavens. Did you ever read about monks in the Scriptures? Monks and monasteries were also borrowed from pagan religion.

It is not hard to understand that numerous other corruptions were arrived at through the Catholic practice of syncretism. The fish symbol had long been employed in pagan religions. It was a symbol of Venus as well as Bacchus. In The Two Babylons, Alexander Hyslop writes, “Icthus, or the Fish, was one of the names of Bacchus.” Bacchus was another name for Tammuz, the Sun-deity.

The worship of the fish deity is found in Scripture as we read of Dagon, the fish god of the Philistines.

The priests of Dagon wore fish shaped hats.

It is from this that the Catholics obtained the Mitre. Note that this priest of Dagon is sprinkling water, just like the Catholics due in their rituals.

Pope Benedict XVI with fish god Mitre on his head.

Did you ever stop to question where the Catholic Church gets all of its costumes and symbols? The Catholics say they trace the lineage of the popes back to Peter. Did you ever read of Peter dressing up in such garb? I tell you the answer is NO! Peter would not have dressed in the clothes of a pagan priest in order to declare the gospel of Christ.

These things are abominations. God clearly told His people to not form images to represent Him.

Deuteronomy 4:15-18
So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth.

Regarding the appearance of the Ichthus symbol in Christianity, Alexander Hyslop writes:

About the very time that the Bishop of Rome was invested with the pagan title of Pontifex, the Savior began to be called Ichthys, or “the Fish,” thereby identifying Him with Dagon, or the fish-god; and that, ever since, advancing step by step, as circumstances would permit, what has gone under the name of the worship of Christ, has just been the worship of that same Babylonian divinity, with all its rites and pomp and ceremonies, precisely as in ancient Babylon.
[Source: The Two Babylons, page 370]

Is it not remarkable that the Catholic church eats fish every Friday? Where did this custom come from? It is not hard to discover. The Romans worshiped Aphrodite Salacia. As we observed already, Freya was the Scandinavian equivalent of Aphrodite. Aphrodite Salacia was a fertility goddess. The worshipers of Aphrodite ate fish on Fridays and engaged in orgies. Fish is considered an “aphrodisiac.” Also from the name of Aphrodite Salacia we get the word “salacious,” which is defined as “intended to arouse people sexually.”

The Catholics, with their practice of syncretism, have simply absorbed all of the practices of pagan religions. They often seek to give the pagan practices some “Christian” justification, but God is appalled at the mixing of the holy and the profane together. His Spirit cries out, “Come out of her My people, lest you participate in her sins and partake of her plagues.”

Do you have Ichthus symbols around your home, or on your automobile? What other pagan rituals and symbols might you have adopted? I do not desire to insult anyone, but I must point out that it is often because Christians have abandoned the habit of examining everything closely, having been dumbed down by the education system, and taught to accept the things “leaders” tell them without question, that they have come to embrace many things that are detestable to God.

I know that not everyone considers themselves called to be a researcher of the origins of rites and symbols, but all Christians are called to walk in the truth. We are all admonished to have no communion with Satan, and to separate ourselves from the table of demons. It would be prudent simply not to embrace any symbol that the Spirit of Christ has not specifically directed you to embrace. Most Christians’ participation in such things is arrived at on impulse. It is an emotional decision, not one arrived at by the Spirit of Christ.

Perhaps you bought a fish emblem because you saw other Christians displaying one and you wanted to give testimony to your faith in Christ. It is not wrong to desire to testify of your faith in Christ, but we need to be led of the Spirit in all that we do.

Romans 8:14
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Galatians 5:25
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

We live in an hour when it is critical that we be led of the Spirit in all that we do. The consequences of failing to listen to the voice of the Spirit will be severe, even resulting in loss of life. Begin now to press into the Lord to know His will for you in all things. Ask Him to reveal to you anything you have received from the church that is false. Ask God to reveal any custom, belief, symbol, or practice that you have adopted that came from an impure source.

I began to make this my prayer some years back, and the result has been that my eyes have been opened to many things. We have not because we ask not. I want to be found pleasing to the Father and it is a small thing for me to separate myself from anything that He reveals to be impure or profane.

I know from experience that some will object to what is written here. Some will say that I am being legalistic, and God doesn’t really care about such matters, for He looks at a person’s heart. Let me therefore speak to the matter of your heart. If you truly love Christ more than anything, would you not desire to be as separated unto Him as possible? Does not your love for Christ drive you to be cleansed and purified from all things that defile?

Christ is coming back for a Bride that has been purified. This knowledge produces in me the desire to want to identify all the corruptions of Babylon and to separate myself from them. It is in this spirit that I share these words with others who may also desire to be set-apart wholly unto the Lord.

May you be blessed with peace and understanding in these days.

Heart4God Website: http://www.heart4god.ws
Parables Blog: http://www.parablesblog.blogspot.com

Mailing Address:
Joseph Herrin
P.O. Box 804
Montezuma, GA 31063