WHERE DOES IT COME FROM!
Like his supposed father Nimrod, Tammuz was reputed to have been a great hunter. Perhaps his greatest conquest of all, however, was his mythical union with Ishtar, the mother goddess who embodied all the reproductive energies of nature. Also variously regarded as the moon goddess and the queen of heaven, Ishtar was the principal female deity of the Assyrians. This same goddess, with certain variations, can be identified in other cultures as Ashtoreth (Phoenecian), Astarte (Greek and Roman), Eostre (Teutonic), and Eastre (Saxon). Her counterpart in Egypt was Isis, wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus. Rabbits and eggs were both symbols of life and fecundity that early came to be identified with Ishtar. The yearly celebration honoring her took place around the first full moon after the spring equinox, when all of nature seemed to be bursting with reproductive vitality. Unfortunately, the youthful Tammuz (also known as Adonis, meaning “lord,” in classical mythology) met an untimely death at the tusk of a wild boar. Here legend overtakes history altogether. Some accounts say that after three days Tammuz miraculously resurrected himself; others say that the grief-stricken Ishtar journeyed far into the netherworld to find him. After many days she succeeded, but during her absence the passion of love ceased to operate and all of life on earth languished in mourning. By all accounts, when the lamenting was over, Tammuz was firmly ensconced as the new god of the sun, and his renown eventually exceeded even Nimrod’s. Every year following Tammuz’ tragic death and presumed ascension to the sun, the forty days preceding Ishtar’s festival were set aside for fasting and self-affliction to commemorate his suffering and death. (It was this practice, “weeping for Tammuz,” that God called an abomination in Ezekiel 8:13, 14.) At the end of this period of mourning the people would waken early on the first day of the week and travel to the highest hills near their homes. There they would present their offerings of wine, meat, and incense and prostrate themselves before the rising sun, exclaiming “Our lord is risen!” Then would commence the festivities of Ishtar, queen of heaven and goddess of fertility. In preparation for this high celebration, the people would make small cakes, inscribing them with a cross (a pagan fertility symbol), for baking in the sun and eating as part of their ritual. The day would conclude in orgiastic revelry of a most debasing sort, and often included human sacrifices.
The practice of these ancient perversions was so widespread that even the nation of Israel, a people sanctified by worship of the one true God, did not escape their baleful influence. Ever compromising with their pagan neighbors, the Jews allowed their own pure worship to be adulterated with one heathen custom after another until at a last it was almost wholly corrupt. In Jeremiah 7:17-19, the prophet revealed God’s clear displeasure at the idolatry of His people. “Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto their gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?” Indeed, confusion was the inevitable result of every compromise by God’s people with the ways of the unsanctified world. And confusion was the legacy left to the generations who came after. It may be unsettling to learn that virtually every religious holiday now observed throughout Christendom originated in paganism, many hundreds of years before Christ, but ancient history proves it beyond a doubt. The birthday of the sun’s child, Tammuz, became the alleged birthday of the Christ child. The season of mourning for Tammuz became Lent, and the resurrection legend of Tammuz conveniently lived on as the resurrection story of Christ. The cakes to the queen of heaven became hot cross buns, and the disgraceful fertility rites of Ishtar evolved into the celebration of Easter, (Incidentally, Easter is still a movable festival that finds its date each year from the cycles of the moon. It is always celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.) Even the lesser pagan holy days, or “holidays,” were absorbed into Christian culture. During autumn, the season of decay, spirits of the dead were believed to be hovering nearby. If they were not prayed for and provided with adequate food and shelter, the people feared they would remain and haunt them with misfortune. In other words, trick or treat. Today we are left with All Soul’s Day; the evening before is called Eve of All Hallows, or more commonly known as Halloween. St. Valentine’s Day is what remains of Lupercalia, an early spring purification rite in which the priests would run through the streets with whips made from strips of goatskin. With these whips they would strike women, insuring them of fertility for the coming year. Matchmaking between young people would occur later in the day by random selection of names. The goatskin whips evolved into little arrows shot by Cupid, and matchmaking today occurs through the more purposeful exchange of Valentine cards. Many other examples might be given, but suffice it to say that our religious and secular culture today is littered with pagan traditions, large and small. How did it happen? After all, we are a Christian nation in an enlightened age, aren’t we? The first question is probably easier to answer than the second. Life was difficult at best during the early years of the Christian church. The pagan world was ruthless and powerful, and it sought to stamp out the little sect of worshipers who revered Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. But the blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the church, and as time passed it became clear that Christianity would prevail. When Satan failed to destroy the church by violence, he resorted to a new strategy – he would join the church himself, and corrupt it from within. This prove to be a far more successful plan. By the fourth century A.D. the Roman Empire had invested the growing church with its own wealth and a large degree of political power, thinking to extend its own domain. Unfortunately for the world, this blend of religious and temporal power was an intoxicating mix that forever changed those who tasted it. No longer the meek and harmless body of Christ, the church devoured the hand that fed her, and in 538 A.D. Emperor Justinian decreed that the Roman Church now ruled the world. Henceforth, its reign would be known as the “Holy Roman Empire.” The world staggered under the oppression of the Roman Church during the dark ages that followed. In her thirst for ever greater power and domination, she absorbed all other religions into herself and adulterated the pure doctrine of Christ with an amalgam of superstitions and heresies.
Babylon
In the Euphrates, we find a River that represents the ancient Babylon. When we talk about Babylon, the first person that crosses our minds is Nimrod – the great hunter who rebelled against the teachings of God. He had a queen named Semiramis and she gave birth to illegitimate son after the death of Nimrod who she called Tammuz. Tammuz was called the fertility god in Ezekiel 8:14. The symbol of Tammuz was a cross on the sun-disc. He was born on the 25th of December and he had the fertility animals dedicated to him; at Easter time nine months before the day of his birth; and that’s where we get the Easter egg, and the Easter rabbits. The first letter of Tammuz is T representing the cross and the sun-worship because he was the son of the sun-god. And the cross has now come down to the church today. When Tammuz was killed by a wild boar, the women wept for Tammuz that’s in Ezekiel 8:14; a counterfeit of Jephtha’s daughter in Judges 11:29-20 and the boar became known as the killer of gods and the destroyer of the cross and in different places in the world today, people still worship the boar. Some still commemorate the killing of the boar by serving its head on plate on the Christmas day. When Jesus was hang on the cross, He was made a sacrifice for every evil because the cross was a symbol of pagan-worship and we do not venerate the cross, we venerate Jesus Chris the Son of God not the cross, the symbol of the sun-god. In ancient Egypt, we find again the counterfeit trinity; Horus the god of the sky and the light and goodness; Isis, the queen of heaven and the nature goddess and Osiris the god of the underworld. Today we see the cross everywhere.
For me Romans 6:1-4 is the remembrance of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.
