Approx 2200 B.C. to 2000 B.C. - Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod Become Involved In A Mighty Post-Flood Satanic Assault On Truth?
Semiramis depicted in both images? Many say yes! 7 Rays Of Light From Each Woman's Head, For Instance.
There really was a division of languages a few hundred years after the great flood of Noah's time, when post-flood mankind tried to build the Tower of Babel in defiance of God's directive to spread out upon the surface of the flood-devastated Earth and reform colonies. God was very displeased with their disobedience. He divided one language into many, by family or clan perhaps. It was apparently a miraculous event....a rewiring of the brains of God's created humans. If anyone reads about how Jesus will remake the minds and hearts of His people one day, remember this event. It has been done in part before, right? Minds have been rewired. No less so when Nebuchadnezzar spent years eating grass like a beast, though that was about 1500 years later. In the days that the languages were divided men were then told to go out into the Earth along with their animals into the barren, flood devastated lands and form colonies, as they had been told to do in the first place. From Genesis 8:16,17. God speaking to Noah :
16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.
17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
End Quote
But going off in different directions to desolate flood ravaged lands did not sound appealing to many of the human population. They did not wish to obey God's directive to go live as pioneers in the drying reaches of the Earth. Instead the people of the post-flood world, a significant fraction of them at least, gathered together and built cities. They even built the famous tower of Babylon specifically to defy God. The wicked 'Royal Family' of Cush, Nimrod, and the reportedly talented but misled Semiramis (wife to both Cush and later his son Nimrod old traditions say) convinced men to join their early proto-type version of a 'One World Order' and unite in opposing God's plans. So, when the people were dispersed by God, Who used the division of their language to confuse their ill-bent efforts, each group took with them their clan's understanding of the political cause and events of it all.....but the place names and the people names changed because there were now many languages instead of one. Here are verses from Genesis Chap 11 that pertain:
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
End Quote
So, the Lord once again ended a rebellion by mankind with great power and authority. He had done it with Adam and Eve and their eating of the fruit. They were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and they were cursed to hardship. He had done it in the days of Noah before the flood when the fallen angels tyrannized among mankind on the surface of the Earth, living as fleshly beings of great power, too powerful for men to oppose, and man had been corrupted right along with them. God had sent the flood and mostly destroyed the planet's life forms but for aquatic types and perhaps other sorts that only God knows the particulars of, preserving those types He called to the ark. Now another rebellion was afoot: mankind was building a tower to help them to defy God's will, and so God rearranged the internal workings of their human minds so that their one language was divided into many. A curious work indeed. Yet it worked just as God intended, and mans' efforts to work together against God were confused, frustrated, and contravened.
And the story of what exactly happened in that wicked 'Royal Family' of Cush, Nimrod, and Semiramis (Semiramis is never mentioned in the Bible) has metamorphosized over time as well. Or perhaps not all of that family were wicked. It appears that they defied God, but perhaps the facts are confused by time and retellings. When the languages were divided each of the 'clans' knew the facts of the occurrences with some degree of accuracy we can surmise. But time went by, and peoples didn't talk with each other like they once might have. They spoke their different tongues. And wars happened. One people would conquer another and their 'gods', often the very same 'gods', merely known by different names, sometimes became confused and conflated with each other.
But Semiramis, who apparently out-strategized Cush and later Nimrod according to the composite details of the old legends from many lands, somehow became perhaps the most worshiped figure of the three. She became a named 'goddess' in many lands: she was Semiramis, she was Esther, she was Aphrodite, she was Libertia (the Statue of Liberty is a depiction of Libertia), she was Isis, she was Esdras, she was Shing Moo in China, Venus among the Latin speaking Romans, she was Diana in the city of Ephesus. Some people say that she is being depicted in the Columbia Pictures woman that holds up the torch at the beginning of many movies. The word Columba meant 'Dove' in some ancient languages, and one of Semiramis' names in ancient days was said to be 'the Dove'. It is a symbol known to be associated with her from statues and writings. This false goddess' image is very pervasive in our world today, over 4,000 years later.
What happened? What were the events of those times? Can we still know?
How did it come about that people began to worship false gods again after the great flood? There is much that is not clear, and many versions of the story. I am rewriting a portion of this article on the request of a good man from New Zealand who wished for more sourcing. I don't see the Deeds of God site as an ultimate sourcing site. I wanted it to be a 'pointer' site. I wanted it to be a truthful site, but one that largely just presented great historical occurrences and also physical realities and evidences attributable to God. I think that there are so many avenues in our time through which to pursue deeper study. Libraries and the internet, documentaries....but I will add more sourcing detail to this account at the request of the people who requested it.
Some who've researched this time period of the dividing of the languages and its events think that portions of 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 600 year old Noah even 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 must 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…the ladies of Noah's family....and they had their memories of the past. Noah’s wife (the Bible does not give her name, and there are several names given by extra Biblical sources, but Na'amah is one name) 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. They had survived and endured that dark pre-flood world, but there is no doubt those times left their imprint on these great mothers of the present world's many peoples. Yet despite their great importance to human lineage and human history they were only sinful humans like their husbands were. God does not celebrate humans too highly in His holy word. Sometimes he allows a few of the Bible's humans to be praised just a bit, but mostly He gives them only a modest place in His word. All humans are sinners, all sin is rebellion. All humans are rebels against God to a small or great degree. Mostly to a great degree I think. Women are mentioned even less than men in the Bible, and I think that this is because we humans are the bride of Christ, and 'the Bride' is so disobedient and rebellious that God uses the way in which He downplays women (the human version of a 'Bride') in His word as a reminder of the greater fact that all humans are undeserving of much praise or glory because of our never ending wickedness against our Maker and our Savior. He mentions them, but the main thrust of the story is seldom about them. That's how we humans should see ourselves, I think. We are noticed by God, but the main thrust of history is not about us. It is about God. He is the central figure, He is the important One. Humans have too much ego...are too selfish. Angels are much more obedient. Only a portion of them rebelled. Not so with humans. Where is a perfectly obedient human in all of history? I think the Bible lists none besides Jesus, Who was emplaced into human flesh and wore it without sinning. That's just my opinion.
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 directly from the hand of God (Exodus 32.) They tried to recreate some of the wrongness that they had known before in a terrible Egyptian world that had hated them in many respects....a society that had told them to kill their babies at birth, for instance (Exodus 1:15,16.) How’s that for loyalty towards our Father Yahweh Who had just rescued them?
And not all of the players in the post-flood world were human. What of the demons, the now disembodied souls or 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 a great but imperfect 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, naked. 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. That can be found in Genesis Chapter 9.
You might almost be reminded of Gospel of John 19:38 where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus obtain possession of the broken body of Jesus through Pontius Pilate's allowance so that they might give it a dignified burial before the beginning of the Holy day (6 PM basically on the day Jesus was crucified.) Jesus had drunk from a cup that He did not wish to drink from (in His own words, referring to the crucifixion that He knew that He must endure) and so Jesus had ended up naked and dying on the cross, humiliated by His enemies in their minds. And, as He had hung dying on the cross, passing fellow Jews, His countrymen, His own flesh and blood in many ways, had mocked Him. Noah means Peace or Rest. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Jesus actually brought sinful humanity those very two things if we will only join in His covenant. There is much to compare in the story of Noah's drunken moment and Jesus' death.
Noah awoke after passing out drunk, found out what had occurred, and cursed the son of his own son Ham. He did not directly curse Ham himself, the one who had mocked his own father Noah, but rather he cursed one branch of Ham’s descendents through Canaan, one of Ham‘s sons. Noah called down a curse upon Canaan. This spared both Ham and therefore Ham's presumably innocent wife, and some of Ham’s descendants (sons, perhaps daughters) were spared this cursing. But it did also give Noah a course for expending his anger and indignation, and a means 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 exactly 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 (said to be the founder of early Ethiopians and Cushites), Mizraim (founder of Egypt), Put (founder of some North African nations), and Canaan (occupied much of present day Israel according to historian Josephus.) 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, (invading Israelite tribes under Joshua for instance in the 1300 B.C. time frame, for instance, and for the most part the Canaanite peoples were never reformed as strong nations. Josephus thought this poor luck in warfare to be the form which Noah’s curse took. Josephus was just a man, though, a Jewish historian that lived in the first century A.D., and he may or may not have been right. Read the early chapters of his writing called The Antiquities of the Jews to read his reciting of Noah's descendants histories. It's available on line. His writings used to be the best selling after the Bible.
Ham’s son Cush went on to 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 foundational 'gods': Braham, Shiva, Raamah, and Cush are Hindu 'gods' whose names are nearly matches for Ham (notice 'ham' is in the word Braham), Sheba, Raamah, and Cush (see Genesis 10, v. 6 &7. It seems possible that the early Hindu peoples may have sprung from Hamitic stock, and eventually began to worship their earliest post-flood ancestors.)
So, why is any of this important for a Christian to know? Because according to some versions of the story Satan seems to have used certain of Ham’s descendents, Cush and Nimrod, along with Semiramis (whose family lineage seems uncertain, I've never found anything written detailing her lineage) who was apparently 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 mere men or perhaps worse.
It seems that Cush, son of Ham, grand-son of Noah, may possibly have been involved with or perhaps was even a founding father of post-flood false religion, and that this poison, perhaps in the initial form of permutated ancestor worship, did eventually shift to become full blown idol worship 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 4,350 years. And in that time far more than a billion people have been successfully deluded into worshiping what is not God and is not Jesus, quite possibly to the permanent torment of their soul.
Still, though there are accounts saying that this is generally how things evolved, we have it on more firm authority that Nimrod was a founder of false religion more so than we know the activities of Cush himself. Nimrod, per the Bible, openly opposed God's directives. It could be that Cush was merely married to the wrong woman, and she was more the culprit. It could be that Semiramis was innocent enough at first, and someone corrupted her. These sort of details seem to have been lost to the historical record.
Because Cush and Nimrod were all apparently alive, or only 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 about this Babylonian family. Summing up the aggregate myths and simplifying the storyline, it appears that the following is the basic way the accounts say 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 apparently his army was finally clobbered. (These 'Indians' would have been the descendents of Cush's close relatives. Cush lived a pretty long time we can surmise. We know from the Bible that Shem's first few generations of descendents were still very long lived at any rate. They lived around 400 years, at first, soon after the flood, but the length of their lives decreased as time went by, so that 350 or so years after the flood the Bible and the Torah record ages more like Abraham's 175 years.)
So, beaten back from 'India', Cush retreated, expanding no further eastward. This area he retained 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 two areas. Southern Asian land, as far east as, but probably including little of, today’s India. And to the south across the sea, part of East 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.
Somewhere during his life Emperor Cush eventually found a wife. She was extraordinary in her beauty - very extraordinary - and powerful in mind. She was ambitious, bold, and politically shrewd. She was said to be a seaside tavern owner or tavern girl originally, at an early stage of her life, though the Bible never mentions her existence by specifically using her name Semiramis even once. But she is mentioned in the Holy scripture. There are Biblical references to worship of her using her title Queen of Heaven in the Book of Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:17-25, for instance, where Israelite women regrettably are giving at least some of their worship to this female goddess. She is also Ishtar and Ashtoreth. She was linked to being the wife of Ba'al (or by another name, Molech.) And there are Biblical references to false gods (such as Molech, Artemis, Ashtoreth, etc.) who are identifies by some experts on the matter as 're-namings' of Cush or Nimrod or Semiramis. Already, in Biblical times, these existence of these literal historical figures (who had caused plenty of trouble during their actual fleshly lives by all appearances) had become spiritual snares to numerous subsequent generations because they were by then falsely and wrongly worshiped as 'gods' or 'goddesses'.
To move on, according to other old writings of various degrees of reliability, when she rose to power, first through marriage, then later through her apparently quite formidable personal abilities, she would sanitize her image somewhat. She would apparently associate herself with the sea, as if she had originated from the sea. She would reportedly 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 sought to supplant Him it seems. And her husband Cush was involved with this religion as well it appears. This woman’s name was Semiramis, certain old writings say. But she came to have a great many names after the languages were divided at the tower of Babel.
Here is an excerpt from the site http://aletheia.consultronix.com/7.html
Semiramis, who was both Nimrod's wife and Tammuz’ mother, was worshiped as the "mother of god" and a "fertility goddess" because she had to be extremely fertile to give birth to all the pagan incarnate gods that represented Nimrod. Where Nimrod is the "sun god", Semiramis is the "moon goddess'. She was worshiped throughout the world by each of the titles associated with Nimrod's worship, in addition to many titles unique to herself (see table below). For instance, the respective Greek and Roman names applied to the worship of Semiramis include: Aphrodite and Venus, the goddess of love; Artemis and Diana, the goddess of hunting and childbirth; Athena and Minerva, the goddess of crafts, war and wisdom; Demeter and Ceres, the goddess of growing things; Gaea and Terra, symbol of the fertile earth; Hera and Juno, the protector of marriage and women, who was the sister and wife of Zeus in Greek mythology, and the wife of Jupiter in Roman mythology; Hestia and Vesta, the goddess of the hearth; plus Rhea or Ops, who was wife and sister of the Greek horned-god Kronos.
End Quote/Excerpt
So 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 by some sources 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. 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 (his dad's wife) as his wife!! Yes, the woman who had been his dad's wife became his queen also according to various accounts, so there is certainly the suggestion of scandal there. The woman that had been some sort of mother to him - perhaps a real mother but more likely a step mother I would surmise - 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. Nimrod had apparently angered her by rejecting their flesh and blood son as the heir apparent...the next ruler. He seemed unfit to Nimrod, some accounts say, for ruling. And while Nimrod was disabled by the drugs his wife had given him, Semiramis 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, this son of Semiramis, apparently ruled for a time, but per some versions of the story proved to in fact truly be unfit for ruling, as Nimrod had discerned. So Semiramis, portraying herself to be partly divine, made herself ruler of the kingdom, and ruled it for over a hundred years (lives still being of fairly great length then so shortly after the flood. She warred against many, defeating most of her adversaries and expanding her kingdom. Then she made the same mistake as her father-in- law (and former husband) Cush when she decided to make war against the people of what we would today call India. Nearly her whole army was killed in a terrible and crushing defeat. It is said that after that she retreated, she 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 (ziggurats). And she built roads throughout her kingdom. And then, eventually, she died also.
A Statuary Depiction of Isis and Son, From the Egyptian Version of the Story
And somewhere during all of these happenings, before the time of his murder, Nimrod began influencing his people to build the tower of Babel, though God's word to men at that time (given in the Bible to Noah and his family just after the ark landed and was exited) was that they should disperse and populate the Earth, and this was God's command to those people according to the Jewish historian Josephus also. 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. But the Bible says it was because Nimrod wished to reach the heavens and make a name for himself. God became displeased with the building of 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?
If the accounts are generally true then 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 worshiping 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 2,000 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 what may well be one form or another of the actual historical figures who were Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod.
So, this saga concerns a now distant time, and the details are questionable, yet 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 and women, 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
Cush: Hea, Belus, Hermes, Saturn, Meni, Dagon, Oannes, Woden, Bhudda (an original Bhudda), and Beli
Semiramis: Aphrodite, Venus, Astarte, Ishtar, Isis, Artemis, Aurora, Rhea, Sacta, Juno, Urania, Ceres, Brittanica, Europa, Cybele, Terra, Vesta, Athor, Diana, Danu, Semeion. There are many more names. Some of her titles: Alma Mater (Virgin Mother), and “the Queen of Heaven” used much in Egypt, Baalti (related to her relationship to Baal, one of Nimrod's names) translating basically to 'My Lady', as if spoken to her by Baal, as an English speaker might say it. Mea Domina means "My Lady" to the Latin speaker, and in Italian (which as we know is a Romantic language related to Latin) it was changed slightly to Madonna.
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' 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. We are not under the Mosaic covenant any longer, but the 10 commandments tells us much about how to honor the Father.
Anyway, to finish, here are some of the additional 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. Some of these mutated names for all three of these people (Cush, Semiramis, and Nimrod) may be mistakenly applied. It's by no means a universally agreed upon list.
***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 these be Biblical hints that Zeus is the founder of a post flood civilization in Crete, but to us, that Zeus is the one known also known as Nimrod? Or would Kronos be a better candidate as Crete's founder? Just food for thought.
So, here for our consideration is this ancient example of many things. It is an example of why not to worship other gods, but only the real one; why to not make statues, and why not to worship statues. It is an example of why we are asked to lead simple lives. Look what can spring from those who envy and desire wealth, power, and empire. These three may have misled nearly an entire planet. They may have cost countless people their eternal lives!! It is an example of why not to engage in ancestor worship. (It is an example of why not to make war against India!) It is an example of why God felt that the divisions and confusions of introducing multiple languages into humanity was preferable to the situation humanity would find themselves in if allowed to unite under one great and awe inspiring (but evil and God opposing) world leader. This is an example also of how people somehow find it simpler to pray to a false god that they can see (in statue form, at least) than to a real God that they cannot touch or lay their eyes upon. This ancient history, obscure though it has become, tells us a lot about why some of the 10 commandments, which would come 500 - 700 years later, were necessary.
Praise our King Jesus, and our Mighty Father above Him, through the Holy Spirit. May all men come to see that we have been misled, by ourselves and by God’s enemies, but also that we can be redeemed and reconciled to the Maker of Us All. May we all come to see it, and to choose that great gift: the gift of eternal salvation through Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God. Hopefully we can repent and be baptized, and then follow the commands of God and the teachings of Jesus. If you can read this, it is not too late for you. For some who chose wrongly, it is probably too late, but it is not yet at all too late for you! Scripture lets us know that God takes no pleasure in the loss of human souls, and wishes greatly that we would all turn to Him full heartedly and be saved.
Do you think it's important for each generation to know the Deeds of God? They took God from our schools and the newer generations just aren't taught that God has continued to do great things up to and including in our time! Purchase the Book "Amazing Deeds of God" by Daniel Curry and Westwood Books Publishing from Westwood or major bookstores, and gift a copy or copies to those you love, or keep it around the house. It's available through most major book sellers, so you can just search the title. Over 30 accounts to stir the faith and inform the Christian mind!
Please share this account with family, friends, and co-workers. We can all help the prophecy come true: knowledge of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will fill the Earth! With social media and so much inter connection, this generation certainly has the means!
Hello,
I personally believe that realizing how many great deeds of God have actually occurred through out history will lead some people to be saved giving their life to Christ. If you agree, then please, take the time to be a 'missionary', to love your neighbor enough to care about their soul. Please mention and recommend visiting the Deeds of God website on any social media sites that you belong to. Tell a favorite account to your friends or family, and tell them where you read it. To know God is to stand in awe of Him, but too few people know Him today. Accounts like these are yet another way to come to know Jesus and the Holy Father, and the Spirit of Truth that helps us understand. Thank you. Dan Curry