Since ancient times we see man forgetting the true Creator of the heavens and the earth and having a desire which tends to go seeking after an object or being to worship, began to look about for such an object or being. Their choice rather than the Creator came to rest on the biggest and brightest thing their eyes could see. They chose the sun as god as it presented itself as in control of light, it caused earthly life to bud, blossom, and bring forth what sustained them.
Thus we find in history sun god’s in every area. They are pictured on temples and monuments of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Ra, Isis, Osiris, Baal, Mithras, Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter all are heathen gods of the sun. Even in the Bible, sun worship is mentioned. In Job 31:26-28, we see the following.
Job 31:28
26 If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness;
27 And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand:
28 This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.
Again in Ezekiel 8:16 we find the following.
Ezekiel 8:16
And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.
The pagans had many gods and besides the sun, they worshiped the moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. And they bestowed upon the days of the week the names of their gods. The sun, whence come the first day of the week was given over to this first and foremost of all gods, and called the sun’s day, or Sunday. Historians have documented this pagan sun worship and what happened with the paganism that was allowed to come into the church. Here is some of what historical scholars tell us.
“Two dominant elements brought into Christianity from paganism by Rome were Sun worship symbols and the religious practices of ancient Babylon] “The solar theology of the Chaldaeans [Babylonians], had decisive effect . . . [upon the] final form reached by the religion of the pagan Semites, and following them, by that of the Romans when [the Roman emperor] Aurelian, the conqueror of Palmyra, had raised ‘Sol Invictus’ [the invincible sun-god] to the rank of supreme divinity in the Empire”–The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11, pp. 643, 646-647. From Palmyra he transferred to the new sanctuary the images of Helios [the sun-god] and Bel, the malaise patron god of Babylon–see Cumont, The Oriental Religions In Roman Paganism, 1911 edition, pp. 114-115, 124.
“In short, sun worship, symbolically speaking, lies at the very heart of the great festivals which the Christian Church celebrates today, and these relics of heathen religion have, through the medium of their sacred rites, curiously enough blended with practices and beliefs utterly antagonistic to the spirit which prompted them.” -Sun Lore of All Ages, Olcott, p. 248.
“The [Catholic] Church took the pagan philosophy and made it the buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan Roman Pantheon, temple of all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday. She took the pagan Easter and made it the feast we celebrate during this season . . . The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom . . . The sun has worshipers at this hour in Persia and other lands . . . Hence the Church would seem to say, ‘Keep that old pagan name [Sunday]. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.’ And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder [another name for BAAL], became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus”–William L. Gildea, “Paschale Gaudium,” in The Catholic World, 58, March, 1894, p. 809 [A Roman Catholic weekly].
The symbols of sun worship include the solar wheel dating back to the Chaldeans, halos, various pagan crosses, lightning bolts, hand-signals from sun worship cults, tridents, fleur-de-lis, sexagesimal triangles with the eye of Hathor, coptic shells which in paganism served as a symbol of the cosmos, astrological signs, globes as symbols of rulership of the universe, sacred hearts as used in many sun cults, sacred animals (many of them mythological such as dragons, the serpent, unicorn and the phoenix), fertility symbols such as pine cones (pagan deities wore the pine cone on their crosier), sacred trees (symbols of the suffering and resurrected sungod) and prayer beads for repetitive prayers even though the Bible admonishes:
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7
"The Babylonian system of worship has essentially been maintained even is hidden as mysterys or ceremonies or otherwise to modern day and can be seen in some form or another. The ancient Chaldeans worshipped a pantheon of male and female gods representing the sun god and there were largely three aspects to this system of sun worship, representing the father, mother, and the son. These were the god Bel or Merodach, Ninus the son, who was also worshipped as Tammuz, and the female goddess Rhea who was also worshipped as Ishtar, Astarte, or Beltis representing the mother. She was also referred to as the ‘queen of heaven’, and the ‘wrath subduer’.
The Greeks had pick up and adopt the Babylonian gods and the Greek Doura (the Greek temple in Mesopotamia) freely admitted the gods of Babylon. The foreign gods were given or take Greek names" (Tarn, ibid., pp. 301, 302).
Speaking of this Babylonian system, Dr. Cumont remarks:
'The native religions retained all their prestige and independence. In their ancient sanctuaries that took rank with the richest and most famous in the world, a powerful clergy continued to practise ancestral devotions according to barbarian rites, and frequently liturgy, everywhere performed with scrupulous respect.. (Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 22).
These 'traditions' of the church of Rome can easily be traced to the source. The Collegium Pontificum in Rome came from ancient pagan religion in Babylon and was the priests who served the public rites of the State religion and controlled both the public rites and the priesthoods themselves. Its leader was the Pontifex Maximus (Greatest Pontiff) who acted as the speaker for the Collegium Pontificum, and oversaw the various priesthoods and the Comitia Curiata and the Vestals. The Flamines were the priest orders that served specific deities such as the Flamen Dialis (priests of Jupiter), the Flamen Martialis (priests of Mars) among the many orders.
"In the early dawn of the fourth century, Constantine, a Roman general, ambitious for the throne, adopted Christianity as a matter of political advantage. He saw paganism declining. In reality, it was being absorbed by the church. Merely as a measure of popularity, he proclaimed himself a Christian. The fawning bishops acclaimed him. Constantine faced this situation: More than half the people worshiped on Sunday—pagans. The others observed the Sabbath—professed Christians. He conceived the idea of cementing the two factions.
Though professing Christianity, he did not want to conflict with the prejudices of his pagan subjects. Artfully balancing himself between the two, he allayed the “fears of his subjects by publishing in the same year two edicts, the first of which enjoined the solemn observance of Sunday, and the second directed the regular consultation of the aruspices” —a pagan practice. (Gibbon’s Decline and all of the Roman Empire,” Chapter 20)
So we see where it is rooted and its origin is not of God.
Thus we find in history sun god’s in every area. They are pictured on temples and monuments of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Ra, Isis, Osiris, Baal, Mithras, Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter all are heathen gods of the sun. Even in the Bible, sun worship is mentioned. In Job 31:26-28, we see the following.
Job 31:28
26 If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness;
27 And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand:
28 This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.
Again in Ezekiel 8:16 we find the following.
Ezekiel 8:16
And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.
The pagans had many gods and besides the sun, they worshiped the moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. And they bestowed upon the days of the week the names of their gods. The sun, whence come the first day of the week was given over to this first and foremost of all gods, and called the sun’s day, or Sunday. Historians have documented this pagan sun worship and what happened with the paganism that was allowed to come into the church. Here is some of what historical scholars tell us.
“Two dominant elements brought into Christianity from paganism by Rome were Sun worship symbols and the religious practices of ancient Babylon] “The solar theology of the Chaldaeans [Babylonians], had decisive effect . . . [upon the] final form reached by the religion of the pagan Semites, and following them, by that of the Romans when [the Roman emperor] Aurelian, the conqueror of Palmyra, had raised ‘Sol Invictus’ [the invincible sun-god] to the rank of supreme divinity in the Empire”–The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11, pp. 643, 646-647. From Palmyra he transferred to the new sanctuary the images of Helios [the sun-god] and Bel, the malaise patron god of Babylon–see Cumont, The Oriental Religions In Roman Paganism, 1911 edition, pp. 114-115, 124.
“In short, sun worship, symbolically speaking, lies at the very heart of the great festivals which the Christian Church celebrates today, and these relics of heathen religion have, through the medium of their sacred rites, curiously enough blended with practices and beliefs utterly antagonistic to the spirit which prompted them.” -Sun Lore of All Ages, Olcott, p. 248.
“The [Catholic] Church took the pagan philosophy and made it the buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan Roman Pantheon, temple of all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday. She took the pagan Easter and made it the feast we celebrate during this season . . . The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom . . . The sun has worshipers at this hour in Persia and other lands . . . Hence the Church would seem to say, ‘Keep that old pagan name [Sunday]. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.’ And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder [another name for BAAL], became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus”–William L. Gildea, “Paschale Gaudium,” in The Catholic World, 58, March, 1894, p. 809 [A Roman Catholic weekly].
The symbols of sun worship include the solar wheel dating back to the Chaldeans, halos, various pagan crosses, lightning bolts, hand-signals from sun worship cults, tridents, fleur-de-lis, sexagesimal triangles with the eye of Hathor, coptic shells which in paganism served as a symbol of the cosmos, astrological signs, globes as symbols of rulership of the universe, sacred hearts as used in many sun cults, sacred animals (many of them mythological such as dragons, the serpent, unicorn and the phoenix), fertility symbols such as pine cones (pagan deities wore the pine cone on their crosier), sacred trees (symbols of the suffering and resurrected sungod) and prayer beads for repetitive prayers even though the Bible admonishes:
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7
"The Babylonian system of worship has essentially been maintained even is hidden as mysterys or ceremonies or otherwise to modern day and can be seen in some form or another. The ancient Chaldeans worshipped a pantheon of male and female gods representing the sun god and there were largely three aspects to this system of sun worship, representing the father, mother, and the son. These were the god Bel or Merodach, Ninus the son, who was also worshipped as Tammuz, and the female goddess Rhea who was also worshipped as Ishtar, Astarte, or Beltis representing the mother. She was also referred to as the ‘queen of heaven’, and the ‘wrath subduer’.
The Greeks had pick up and adopt the Babylonian gods and the Greek Doura (the Greek temple in Mesopotamia) freely admitted the gods of Babylon. The foreign gods were given or take Greek names" (Tarn, ibid., pp. 301, 302).
Speaking of this Babylonian system, Dr. Cumont remarks:
'The native religions retained all their prestige and independence. In their ancient sanctuaries that took rank with the richest and most famous in the world, a powerful clergy continued to practise ancestral devotions according to barbarian rites, and frequently liturgy, everywhere performed with scrupulous respect.. (Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 22).
These 'traditions' of the church of Rome can easily be traced to the source. The Collegium Pontificum in Rome came from ancient pagan religion in Babylon and was the priests who served the public rites of the State religion and controlled both the public rites and the priesthoods themselves. Its leader was the Pontifex Maximus (Greatest Pontiff) who acted as the speaker for the Collegium Pontificum, and oversaw the various priesthoods and the Comitia Curiata and the Vestals. The Flamines were the priest orders that served specific deities such as the Flamen Dialis (priests of Jupiter), the Flamen Martialis (priests of Mars) among the many orders.
"In the early dawn of the fourth century, Constantine, a Roman general, ambitious for the throne, adopted Christianity as a matter of political advantage. He saw paganism declining. In reality, it was being absorbed by the church. Merely as a measure of popularity, he proclaimed himself a Christian. The fawning bishops acclaimed him. Constantine faced this situation: More than half the people worshiped on Sunday—pagans. The others observed the Sabbath—professed Christians. He conceived the idea of cementing the two factions.
Though professing Christianity, he did not want to conflict with the prejudices of his pagan subjects. Artfully balancing himself between the two, he allayed the “fears of his subjects by publishing in the same year two edicts, the first of which enjoined the solemn observance of Sunday, and the second directed the regular consultation of the aruspices” —a pagan practice. (Gibbon’s Decline and all of the Roman Empire,” Chapter 20)
So we see where it is rooted and its origin is not of God.
