To Those Who Have Ears . . .One of my main fields of study has been the paganization of the early church, exactly how far this process extended and whether it was malignant or benign. I have done some research on this topic, and I have discovered something, which I believe must be publicized. The “secret doctrine” of the ancient mystery cults, according to Cardinal Newman, was “perpetuated” in the “early Councils.”1 The “secret doctrine,” according to other sources, e.g. Alexander Hislop, etc., was, in its simplest terms, the doctrine of the triunity of God:
“Now, viewed in this light,” Hislop wrote, “the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity shows clearly what had been the original patriarchal faith. First, there is the head of the old man; next, there is the zero, or circle, for “the seed”; and lastly, the wings and tail of the bird or dove; showing, though blasphemously, the unity of Father, Seed, or Son, and Holy Ghost. While this had been the original way in which Pagan idolatry had represented the Triune God, and though this kind of representation had survived to Sennacherib’s time, yet there is evidence that, at a very early period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had come to be, the Eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a human mother, and a Divine Son, the fruit of that incarnation . . . .”2
Also central to the secret doctrine was the doctrine of the equality and even the identity of the Father and the Son:
“This lamented one,” Hislop went on, speaking of the basic Babylonian myth of Nimrod, Ninus and Semiramis, the father, son and mother of the Babylonian trinity, “exhibited and adored as a little child in his mother’s arms, seems, in point of fact to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name, Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified ‘The Son’ . . . . Now, this Ninus, or ‘Son,’ borne in the arms of the Babylonian Madonna, is so described as very clearly to identify him with Nimrod . . . . Now, assuming that Ninus is Nimrod, the way in which that assumption explains what is otherwise inexplicable in the statements of ancient history greatly confirms the truth of that assumption itself . . . . Thus, then, looking at the fact that Ninus is currently made by antiquity the son of Belus, or Bel, when we have seen that the historical Bel is Cush, the identity of Ninus and Nimrod is still further confirmed . . . .”3
When the languages of the world were confounded at the Tower of Babel, this “mystery Babylon,” according to Hislop, spread all over the world and formed the basis of the various mysteries such as those of Dionysus, Eleusis, the Phrygian mysteries, the cults of Adonis and the Egyptian mysteries (hence the apostolic expression, “mother of harlots”4. The names varied according to locality, but the underlying “mystery” did not change:
“In every case [of the mystery cults] there is a basic pair of deities dissimilar in rank. Of these two, the female figure embodies fertility itself, whereas her male companion (who is intended to portray fecundity, the result of fertility, i.e., the abundant growth of plants and animals) is represented sometimes as her son, sometimes as her lover, and hence exhibits a peculiar hybrid character.”5
It is easy to recognize in this description the basic elements-Nimrod the rebellious father, Semiramis the lascivious “Queen of heaven” and Ninus the illegitimate, incestuous son-of the pagan trinity, the “mystery of iniquity,” as described by Hislop. The “peculiar hybrid character” of the male deity corresponds to the Babylonian maxim, “Ninus is Nimrod,” referring to the “miraculous” replacement of the dead father, Nimrod, by the bastard, Ninus, who becomes his mother’s husband and thus exhibits the “peculiar hybrid character” of son-lover. It is easy to see, in other words, that the data in the New Catholic Encyclopedia corroborates both Hislop and Newman concerning the identity of “mystery Babylon.” Three weighty authorities, two Catholic and one Protestant, thus agree in regard to “mystery Babylon,” and these three authorities base their scholarship in turn on many other specialists in ancient civilization. We can, therefore, presume that additional research will simply bear out past research and that we can be confident that “MYSTERY BABYLON” has been identified.
“If it be inquired what was the object and design of these ancient “Mysteries,” it will be found that there was a wonderful analogy between them and the “Mystery of iniquity” which is embodied in the Church of Rome . . . . These Mysteries were long shrouded in darkness, but now the thick darkness begins to pass away. All who have paid the least attention to the literature of Greece, Egypt, Phenicia, or Rome are aware of the place which the “Mysteries” occupied in these countries, and that, whatever circumstantial diversities there might be, in all essential respects these “Mysteries” in the different countries were the same.”6
Here Hislop is just echoing the previous quote from the New Catholic Encyclopedia to the effect that the basic trinitarian pattern is ubiquitous in paganism. When Newman says that the secret doctrine was “perpetuated” in the “early Councils,” what he is saying is that the Alexandrian faction at Nicaea, long noted for their gnosticizing tendencies,7 cast the secret doctrine, or “MYSTERY BABYLON,” in Biblical terms, though it took some wrenching to do this:
“The decisions of Nicaea,” according to Henry Bettenson, “were really the work of a minority, and they were misunderstood and disliked by many who were not adherents of Arius. In particular the terms ek ths ousias ["of the substance"] and homoousias ["of the same substance"] aroused opposition, on the grounds that they were unscriptural, novel, tending to Sabellianism [i.e. tending to exaggerate the divinity of Yeshua to the point that the distinction between the Father and the Son ceased to exist] and erroneous metaphysically.”8
This wrenching at Nicaea immediately led to 50 years of war, followed by recurrent storms throughout history up to the present. Thus, the secret doctrine was preserved or “perpetuated,” unbeknownst to any but the elite initiates into the mysteries. Newman’s entire book, in fact, incredible as it may seem, defends Nicene orthodoxy, the very centerpiece of Roman Catholicism and much of Protestantism, on this basis! There had always been certain striking resemblances between Biblical and pagan religion, but there had always been certain critical differences, too. When the Apostolic faith came along in antiquity, the pagan priests, feeling mortally threatened, sought to efface the differences between pagan and Biblical religion. Paganism, according to E. L. Woodward, “could only rival Christianity by using the methods and even the doctrines of the church, and . . . These new elements could never really attach themselves to the old pagan foundations.”9 This statement by Woodward is extremely important to understanding what really happened in and after the Trinitarian Controversy of the fourth century. Now that we can see what the secret doctrine was, clearly it is evident that an attempt was made at Nicaea, contrary to the objections of many, to bridge the gap between “the old pagan foundations” and the new Apostolic faith, to effect a compromise, and that the hue and cry that followed was and is simply the inability, as Woodward put it, of the “new elements” to “attach themselves to the old pagan foundations.”
The “secret doctrine,” therefore, was foisted on the bishops at Nicaea and possibly on Constantine as well by the so-called “orthodox” fathers, e.g. Ossius (Hosius), bishop of Cordova, Spain, who was Constantine’s key religious advisor, Alexander, bishop of Alexandria and opponent of Arius the presbyter, Athanasius, Alexander’s successor, etc. Nimrod, Zeus, Osiris, Baal, etc., were all lumped together to become “the Father.” Hislop also explains how “the Mother” or “Queen of heaven,” Isis, Hera, Astarte, etc., came to be identified as “Mary,” the “Mother of God” and the Holy Spirit, and the place of “the Son,” otherwise known as Ninus, Apollo, Horus, Bel, etc., was taken, of course, by “Ye-Zeus,” i.e. “Jesus.” The infamous “homoousion,” which was the cause of so much “strife about words,” was simply the translation of the basic pagan doctrine that “Ninus is Nimrod,” i.e. the son is (of the same “substance” or “essential being”10 as) the father. With a relatively small amount of manipulation and subsequent dissent, the Biblical data was forced at Nicaea into the foreign mold of the secret doctrine creating a perfect, though monstrous, marriage of Biblical and anti-Messianic elements which had the double “virtue” of not provoking a wholesale revolt by the faithful and reconciling pagans with the mushrooming new religion from the Middle East. The secret doctrine, “MYSTERY BABYLON,” the “doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” the “mystery of iniquity” and “anti-Messiah” apparently are all terms for the same thing.
What Newman is really saying, therefore, is that the secret doctrine, which is really “MYSTERY BABYLON,” was and is the basis of the very trinitarian or “triunitarian” dogma which continues to predominate in most Christian denominations, including Messianic Judaism. Not only is it the basis of trinitarian dogma: It is trinitarian dogma. The pagans had no problem with changing the names of the gods whenever it suited them. It was no great hurdle, then, to annex the New Testament terminology so long as the critical elements and spirit under the surface continued to advance the basic pagan agenda, following the Tower of Babel, of world domination and control, irrespective of, or rather in opposition to, the Kingdom of Yah’weh. “Constantine,” as Newman put it, “in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own.”11 The heathen world possessed traditions, Newman wrote, “too ancient to be rejected and too sacred to be used in popular theology.”12 The doctrine of the trinity, he said, was:
A “shadow,” a “representation, . . . necessarily imperfect, as being exhibited in a foreign medium, and therefore involving apparent inconsistencies or mysteries;” it was given to the Church by “oral” tradition “contemporaneously with those apostolic writings, which are addressed more directly to the heart;” but it was “kept in the background in the infancy of Christianity, when faith and reason being disproportionately developed, and aiming at sovereignty in the province of religion, its presence became necessary to expel an usurping idol from the house of God.”13
Here, in his oblique way, Newman names the secret doctrine of which he had been speaking. It is the doctrine of the trinity, which comes, not from the Bible nor even from Judaism but from the “dispensation of paganism”-the mystery cults. Here Hislop and Newman are in agreement; they both identify the secret doctrine as the same thing. First, in the “infancy of Christianity,” this “mystery” was in the background, viz. in the pagan mystery cults. Later, when the opportunity arose, when there were no more Apostles around to speak authoritatively against it, it leapt into the mainstream of Christianity and has been there ever since. Far from expelling an usurping idol, it was and is an usurping idol-the very idolatry from which all the other idols came.
Just as the devil told Chava (”Eve”) that it was ok to eat of the forbidden fruit, today he is still secretly trying to trick people into eating of the forbidden fruit of “MYSTERY BABYLON” by confusing it with Biblical faith. According to the Apostles, however, the idols of the pagans are “demons,” and “you cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons . . . .”14 So likewise today, it is still a fatal mistake to subscribe to both trinitarian or “triunitarian” dogma and the doctrine of the Apostles. They are two different things, as different as night and day. The basic doctrine of Biblical Christianity or “Messianic Judaism” is that “Yah’weh is our God, Yah’weh is one,” which does not mean three or “triune” or “plural,” and that the Messiah Yeshua is the yachid (unique, one-of-a-kind, beloved) Son of Yah’weh. That Yeshua did not claim to be Yah’weh is abundantly clear in the New Testament. He claimed to be one with Yah’weh. There is a difference between being someone and being one with someone. Yeshua said he was “in” the Father, and the Father was “in” him,15 just as all believers are “in” Yeshua and Yeshua is “in” all believers.16 There is a sense, then, in which believers are Yeshua and a sense in which they are not. If believers express their oneness with Yeshua wrongly, if they claim to be the Messiah in the sense of taking his place rather than obeying him, they may be guilty of spiritual aggression, a kind of ambition contrary to Godliness. Indeed, they may not even be believers but have a wrong spirit. The same kind of spiritual aggression or ambition is fostered by the dogmatic notion of the “deity” of Yeshua, not taking into account all the pertinent scriptures and projecting the idea that Yeshua is “God” in an aggressive, ambitious sense rather than in the correct sense in which the term “God” is applied to Yeshua in the New Testament. This aggressive ambition to take Yah’weh’s place comes from the enemy, i.e. Satan, not from scripture, and trinitarian dogma, alias “MYSTERY BABYLON,” is Satan’s hidden way of promoting his agenda of “[sitting] as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”17 The “head” of the Messiah is Yah’weh.18 “My Father is greater than I,”19 Yeshua said. The same “God” who is our God is also the “God” of Yeshua.20 These and many other pertinent scriptures which highlight the inequality of the Father and the Son are being hidden in the dark cloud of trinitarian dogma in Messianic Judaism today just as they have been suppressed in Christianity ever since the monstrous “early Councils” of the fourth century. The question might also be asked: How can God be eternally triune when He will be “all in all” when the Son in the end “delivers the kingdom to God the Father”?21 When Yah’weh is “all in all,” there won’t be anything but Yah’weh. So Yah’weh in the end is not “triune” or “plural.” He is echad, one, or first, and echad does not mean “triune.”
The scarlet beast under the whore in Rev 17:3 is “full of blasphemous names.” The mysteries and their gods, therefore, are blasphemous. How much more, then, is the mother, the source, of these mysteries and gods, “MYSTERY BABYLON,” blasphemous, so much so that the name on the forehead of the whore, “ BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,” is written in all capital letters in the New Testament. So long as trinitarian dogma continues to be a predominant membership standard in contemporary Messianic Judaism, not to mention Christianity, “MYSTERY BABYLON” continues to be written on its forehead, and Messianic/Christian organizations continue to be in the infernal “whore” of Rev 17-18. When the “voice from heaven” says, “Come out of her, my people,”22 what this means for us today is that we must replace trinitarian dogma in Messianic and Christian membership standards with the fundamental Biblical principles of the deity and oneness of the Father and the acceptance of the Messiah Yeshua as the yachid (unique, one-of-a-kind, beloved) Son of Yah’weh, the “Word,” as described in the prologue of the book of Yohanan, the “image of Yah’weh,”23 and so forth, according to the scriptures, but “Babylonian” expressions such as “God the Son,” “fully God and fully man,” the “deity” of Yeshua, the “triunity” of God, etc., which are not found expressly in scripture, must be eliminated. These are the “accursed Babylonian garments” hidden in our midst, which, like the accursed Babylonian garments in the time of the conquest of the promised land under Yehoshua (Joshua),24 will only bring us defeat and misery in the form of the “sins” and the “plagues” of the iniquitous “whore” in the perilous days ahead and which, like those ancient Babylonian abominations, must be burned and buried. Only in this way can we elevate the Word to its proper place, viz. the “head,” in contemporary Messianic Judaism and Christianity, and put “mystery Babylon” in its proper place, viz. the garbage heap, even the “Gehenna” of “unquenchable fire.”25
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Notes
1. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century (Westminster, MD, 1968), p. 55
2. Rev. Alexander Hislop, Two Babylons (London, 1932), p. 18-19
3. Hislop, pp. 22-23, 25 and 28-29 (emphasis mine)
4. Rev 17:5
5. “Greco-Oriental Mystery Religions” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), pp. 155-156
6. Hislop, pp. 5 and 12
7. Cf. John C. Dwyer, Church History (New York, 1985), pp. 80-81
8. Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 41. See also Dan Juster, “The Christological Dogma of NicaeaCGreek or Jewish?” in Mishkan 1:1 (Jan 84?), p. 51, in regard to the “docetic” tendencies and other weaknesses of the Nicene formula
9. Woodward, Christianity and Nationalism in the Later Roman Empire (London, 1916), p. 10
10. J. F. Bethune-Baker, B.D., The Meaning of Homoousios in the Constantinopolitan Creed (London, 1901), pp. 60-61
11. Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 352
12. Newman, Arians, p. 91
13. Newman, Arians, p. 145
14. 1 Cor 10:30 (RSV)
15. Jn 14:10
16. Jn 14:20
17. 2 Th 2:4
18. 1 Cor 11:3
19. Jn 14:28
20. Jn 20:17
21. 1 Cor 15:24
22. Rev 18:4
23. 2 Cor 4:4
24. Cf. Josh 7
25. Mat 3:12, Lk 3:17
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