Approx 2200 B.C. to 2000 B.C. - Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod Become Involved In A Mighty Post-Flood Satanic Assault On Truth

  How did it come about that people began to worship false gods again after the great flood?  Some who've researched this think it happened something like this:

  There was a short time after the great flood when it looked like the Earth had been scrubbed bright and clean of evil, because only the small family of Noah had survived, and Noah was a preacher of righteousness before the flood we are told in the Book of Genesis.  Noah was found perfect in his generation, by God. So, with so noble and righteous a human father, all might have gone well - assuming man is a good creature beneath it all. But with us - we humans - therein lies the problem, as they say.

  The exact post flood issues which first ensnared that small and blessed family may be forever obscured by time and revisionist history writing, but we have hints, and we know a few things. For instance, Noah’s 3 sons (Shem, Japheth, and Ham) were about 100 years old. They were not blank tablets. They were not unformed pristine personalities. We don’t know exactly what kind of men they were, but they had spent about 100 years (all of their life) in a world so wicked and corrupted that God decided to destroy all but the tiniest sliver of a remnant of all that it held. These 3 boys, and Noah more so, had seen wicked, wicked times, and those images were in their hearts and in their minds whether they wanted it so or not.

  And the mind is a bowl that you eat from all of your life, and never really get to wash.

  So the men in Noah’s family were, at least in part, products of their times, though we don’t know exactly how that affected them. Then there were the women…..and they had their memories of the past.  Noah’s wife and the wives of Shem Ham and Japheth were likely to have been of similar ages to their husbands. They too had known the dark world before the flood. They too had lived it.

  So, you have a case where a people from a society overflowing with wrong and violence were miraculously rescued by the frightening and mighty hand of God, brought to a new place, and were then asked to lead Holy and righteous lives. Though that sounds reasonable and achievable, when in history has mankind ever managed such a thing? Look what happened to the Hebrew slaves led by Moses that God brought  through the parted Red Sea. They were soon building a golden calf idol for themselves to worship at the same time Moses was up on Mt. Sinai receiving the 10 commandments. How’s that for loyalty to our Father?

  And not all of the players were human. What of the demons, the spirits of these fallen angels who left their first estate in heaven in order to possess wives and to live as powerful rulers on the pre-flood Earth?? What of Satan, who needed a new plan after the flood wiped out his progress of old? Those rebellious ones, those fallen angels, were still in a war for their lives, just like we find them to be today. And they are wise and cunning when it comes to tricking man (who is prone to do evil anyway. ) But how would they go about it? The rebellious angels no longer seem to have had physical bodies of their own. Those had perished in the flood. They only had the ability to try to spiritually influence man. Would that be enough?

  The first window of opportunity provided to them after the flood, the first one which I can perceive to be mentioned in scripture, was provided by Noah himself. He managed to reestablish grape vines, and he made wine. And he drank wine …..too much wine. And he appears to have passed out in his tent in some embarrassing and unseemly physical posture. His son Ham saw him like this, and called out to others to come and see his father in this shameful state. But Shem and Japheth were concerned for their father’s dignity, and walking in backwards so as not to see their father‘s humiliating posture, they covered his form with a blanket.

  Noah awoke, found out what had occurred, and cursed the son of his own son Ham. He did not curse Ham himself, but rather he cursed Ham’s descendents through Canaan, one of Ham‘s sons. Noah called down a curse upon Canaan. This spared both Ham and therefore his presumably innocent wife, and some of Ham’s descendents were spared this cursing. But it did also give Noah a course for expending his anger, and indignation, and for setting the example of wrongdoing receiving punishment - of recompense for bad behavior. Yet, sadly, it also sowed division among the blood lines of his three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. It was a punishment conceived by an imperfect human mind, and it wasn’t without ramifications for the future. Yet Noah was greatly loved by God, and who is to say whether it was part of God’s plan that Noah spoke as he did in Genesis 9:25: 

“Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers. “

And Noah continued, saying concerning his other sons:

“Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave.”

And about Japheth, he said:

“God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.”

  Per Genesis 10:6 , the sons of Ham were Cush Ethiopians and Cushites), Mizraim (founder of Egypt), Put (Northern Africa), and Canaan. Of these sons of Ham, (Ham being Noah’s youngest son), only Canaan was cursed. Cush, Mizraim and Put are not mentioned to be included in this curse in any way. And they went on to form mighty kingdoms and do great things. Yet we know that the house of Ham was dealt a severe blow here. And there must have been some bad feelings.

  The Jewish historian Josephus says that the fledgling kingdoms founded by Canaan’s descendents (lying mostly in present day Israel’s geographical confines) did not last too long before they were defeated soundly by other peoples, and for the most part were never reformed as nations. Josephus thought this to be the form which Noah’s curse took. Josephus was just a man, though, and may or may not have been right.

  And Ham’s son Cush went on have sons: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Ra’amah, Sab’teca, and importantly, Nimrod.

  Ra’amah also had sons: Sheba and Dedan. (And the early Hindu peoples used almost these very names for some of their gods: Braham, Shiva, and Raamah are Hindu 'gods' whose names are nearly matches for Ham (notice 'ham' is in the word Braham), Sheba, Raamah (see Genesis 10, v. 6 &7.  It seems possible that the early Hindu peoples may have sprung from Cushite stock, and began to worship their earliest post-flood ancestors.)

  So, why is this important for a Christian to know? Because Satan seems to have used certain of Ham’s descendents, Cush and Nimrod, along with Semiramis (whose family lineage seems uncertain) who was the chief woman in their lives (and probably human history’s most powerful and potent villainess) to wreak a great and terrible spiritual slaughter on humankind in numerous nations by misdirecting their worship from God to men.

  It seems that Cush, a son of Ham (Ham being Noah’s youngest son) may have been the founding father of post-flood false religion, and that this poison, in the initial form of permutated ancestor worship, did eventually shift to become full blown idol and false gods worship to the most extensive and insidious degree. This has lasted to and through the time of Jesus, and in fact to our very day - a period of approx 4,300 years. And in that time, more than a billion people have been successfully deluded into worshipping what is not God and is not Jesus, perhaps to the permanent torment of their soul.

  Because Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod were all apparently alive, or recently deceased at the time the languages of man were divided, many cultures have a legend, a myth, a plotline for their religious mythology which basically describes certain actual historical events. Summing up the aggregate myths and simplifying the storyline, it appears that the following is the basic way things occurred:

  Cush was called a great and enlightened teacher in his post-flood world - a man of extensive knowledge and technical ability. He also formed a kingdom of his own, built cities of his own, then expanded his empire through warfare. He became ruler of a large kingdom and of some notable early cities in the Middle East. He expanded as far eastward as what we know today as India, where he fought the people living there, and was clobbered. (These would have been the descendents of Cush's close relatives.  Cush lives a pretty  long time, we can surmise.  Shem's first few generations of descendents did, anyway.  Like 400 years, at first, soon after the flood, but decreasing as time went by, so that 350 or so years after the flood the bible records ages more like Abraham's 175 years.)  

  So, beaten back from India, Cush retreated, expanding no further eastward. This area became known as the kingdom and region of Cush - the Cush of most ancient times - somewhere around 2200 B.C., is about as close as I can seem to determine the time frame to be. But his kingdom - and Cush himself - likely spanned a couple of centuries. Their lives, again, were in the 400 year time frame - in the first centuries after the flood.  You can have a lot of children in 400 years. 

  That Kingdom of Cush was composed of both southern Asian land, as far east as, but probably including little of today’s India. And to the south, part of Northern Africa also was included in this kingdom, and also was known as Cush. Later in history, the northern Asian portion of Cush would be conquered and renamed, but the African portion would still be called Cush, then at a later time, the African part would be called Ethiopia, with somewhat different borders. And it would endure.

  Emperor Cush eventually found a wife. She was extraordinary in her beauty - very extraordinary - and powerful in mind. She was ambitious, brave, and politically shrewd. She was said to be a tavern owner or tavern girl originally, at an early stage of her life, though the Bible never mentions her name at all.  But according to other old writings of various degrees of reliabiolity when she rose to power, first through marriage, then later through her formidable abilities, she would sanitize her image somewhat. She would associate herself with the sea, as if she had originated from the sea. She would start her own religion - a false religion. She would become the de-facto high priestess of it. Her religion opposed the God of Noah, and basically supplanted Him. And her husband Cush was involved with this religion as well. This woman’s name was Semiramis, the old writings say. But she came to have a great many names, after the languages were divided at the tower of Babel.

  Cush at some point had a son named Nimrod. I do not know if Semiramis was Nimrod’s birth mother or not. Nimrod was said to be a giant - though he was more extreme concerning his strength than he was his height. He was probably about 8 feet tall. One source says 4 ½ to 5 cubits, of the royal 20” type of cubit. That’s about 7 ½ feet tall or maybe 10“ more. But he was very broad through the shoulders - about 3 feet in statue depictions thought to be of him - and strong and athletic. And he was bold, warlike, and ambitious. So much so that he grew to found a nation - a kingdom of his own to the west of his father Cush‘s kingdom. And eventually, when established, he made war even against his father Cush’s kingdom, and defeated his father in battle. And - he ended up with Semiramis as his wife!! The woman who had been his father’s wife became his queen also. The woman that had been some sort of mother to him - a real mother or a step mother - became his wife.

  And sometime after this, Semiramis became angry with her son/husband, Nimrod, and had him tricked into taking hallucinogenic drugs at one of the ceremonies of her false religion. And while he was disabled by these drugs, she had him offered by her priests as a sacrifice to her gods. She apparently made it out to be a great honor for Nimrod. She said that the gods wished Nimrod to join their company, according to some accounts.  But, by whatever subterfuge she used, Nimrod was killed then.

  So, another man, also a son of Semiramis, apparently ruled for a time, but proved to be unfit for ruling. So Semiramis , portraying herself to be partly divine, made herself ruler of the kingdom, and ruled it for over a hundred years. She warred against many, defeating most of her adversaries, and expanding her kingdom. Then she made the same mistake as Cush, and made war against the people of India.  Nearly her whole army was killed in a terrible and crushing defeat. It is said that after that she retreated, shied away from further empire expansion, and she focused on developing great defensive walls around the cities of her kingdom, and upon building amazing architectural creations, cities and buildings and pyramids of the stepped sort. And she built roads throughout her kingdom. And then, eventually, she died also.

  And somewhere during all of these happenings, before his murder, Nimrod began influencing his people to build the tower of Babel, though God's word to men at that time was that they should disperse and populate the Earth, according to the historian Josephus.  Josephus believed that the tower was Nimrod's way of escaping another flood if God became mad at everyone for clustering together in his Babylonian empire instead of dispersing to form colonies.  God became displeased with the tower, and God divided the languages of man into many languages so that they could less readily be made to cooperate on such a project as the tower, or to again unite under one ruler. God knows quite well how easy it would be for Satan to take control of the mind of a man who leads all other men, the mind of a great world leader. Only Jesus meets His criteria for being righteous enough to lead all men.  And Jesus constantly deferred to His Father, so how could we not do so as well? 

  And at about that time - or soon after - Abraham’s family began to move away from Ur of the Chaldees, a city in the Babylonian empire, to Haran, and later Abraham, Lot, and family left Haran and wandered on God's command towards the land of Canaan, which was future Israel.

  Is this set of rulers (Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod) historical, or fictional?

  Literally dozens of the early civilizations are known to have believed in a set of three ancient gods or ancestors who acted out their lives in nearly the exact manner and who had experienced the same basic life events as Cush, Nimrod, and Semiramis. They merely did it under modified names, with the events sometimes altered slightly, or the motivations modified slightly. And that makes sense if the languages were modified. Many cultures retained knowledge of the events, but through time, they changed some of the details.

  How did Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod affect human kind?

  These three became gods in dozens of ancient cultures. Belief in them and worship of them supplanted belief in the one true God, the God of Noah, the maker of all, and later the Father of earthly Jesus. And the misled methods of worshipping these three false gods came to involve everything from wicked sexual practices to actual human sacrifice - even the sacrifice of infants and children in cases.  And this false worship continued strongly and pervasively for more than 2 thousand years. Both ancient Israel and ancient Judah were destroyed for taking part in such false worship. Then, starting about 2000 years ago, Christianity began to wipe it away in some parts of the world. But even today, many places continue to worship one form or another of the actual historical figures who were Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod.

  These three seem to have been the principal human players in the first great post-flood apostasy. And they have led many hundreds of millions of men, women, and children , perhaps billions of people, towards a dark and cursed eternity.

  Who were these three known as? Under what names have they been falsely worshipped? There are many more names than these listed below, and some of these are disputed by people that are actually experts in these studies, which I assuredly am not, but a partial list, gathered from a few easily found compendiums of these false gods, would be as follows:

Noah: Ouranos, Uranus

She was often depicted with her 'holy' child, as she did make herself out to be a deity.  Some of the Scandinavians called this mother with child Disa with child.  The Germans called her Hertha with child.  In parts of India she was Devaki w/ Krishna.  And there are other pairings of her with child - many pairings in many cultures.  Such images moved easily into the officially recognized Constantinian Christian churches of Rome, billing themselves as Mary and child.  Yet Jesus never referred to His mother as deity, and He did not relax His Holy Father's restrictions on idols, though He offered freedom from past covenants on other fronts. 

  But in fact, even in the book of Revelation there is a verse which ought to do quite a lot to clarify how to unify the ten commandments with Jesus's teachings.  It is Rev 12:17, a scene where 'the Dragon' was chasing 'the woman', but was not allowed to catch her.

"Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God's commandments and bear witness to Jesus." 

This woman had earlier given birth to a child destined to 'rule all nations with an iron rod.'  Rev 12:5.  This child is Jesus, as affirmed by other sources such as Psalm 2: V. 7-9. 

"I will proclaim the decree of the Lord, who said to me "You are my son; today I have become your Father.  Only ask it of me, and I will make your inheritance the nations, your possessions the ends of the earth.  With an iron rod you shall shepherd them, like a clay pot you shall shatter them."  

  So, there are people who are supposed to be both keeping the 10 commandments, and bearing witness to Jesus.  Isn't that us?  So, if we are to keep the commandments, then we must keep the second one also, forbidding both the making and worshipping of statues, images, or idols for involvement in our worship.  Exodus 20:4 (the second commandment)

"You shall not carve idols for yourself in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them.  For I the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their father's wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments."

  I believe that there are about 100 "20 year long generations" between today, and Jesus's time.  And there are 77 generations mentioned (inclusive) in the geneology in Luke chapter 3 which takes us from God thru Adam to Jesus.  So today, in the year 2009, we are about 177 generations removed from creation.  It varies, depending on our individual line of descent, which few of us claim to know.  I don't know mine, that's for sure.  But that 'mercy' that  God said he'd bestow on us if we love Him and keep His commandments is still within reach of His 'thousand generation long' arm.  So even if you've violated His commandments, begin trying to keep them, or keep trying. 

  Anyway, to finish, here are some of the names of Nimrod worship. 

Nimrod: Baal, Ninus (the root name of the city Ninevah), Mars, Ares, Zoro-Ashta, Aegyptus, Sesostris, Dagda, Cronus, Orion, Jupiter, and Balder, Hercules, and Heracles.

***Just as something to think about, there is a place in the Bible where it says that 'all Cretans are liars'.  Such a statement is pretty out of keeping for the Bible, but it is in there.  There is another place in the Bible where Satan is referred to as a  'liar and the Father of lies'.  So, who was the mythological Father of Crete?  Well, Zeus was said to have been born there, in a cave.  Supposedly, the first God was Ouranos.  (Nos is one of the ways 'Noah' is pronounced in some old tongues.  As for the 'Oura' that pre-cedes it, I don't know.  Maybe it means Father or Son or something different than that.) 

  Ouranos was deposed by his ambitious and disloyal son Kronos (Chronos).  And to prevent his own sons from doing to him what he had done to his father, he began to eat the sons that his wife Rhea gave birth to.  So, she tricked him, and hid one of her sons, Zeus, in a cave on the island of Crete, and so he lived.  He lived to successfully team up with some of his brothers to defeat his father Kronos.

  So, could this be a Biblical hint that Zeus is the founder of Crete, but to us, the one known as Nimrod?  Or would Kronos be a better candidate?  Just food for thought.