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This below is part of a writing that I read a couple nights ago. It might well explain the reason for the great similarities with Christianity, found in all the ancient religions. This is something I have long wondered about and this explanation by my favorite author in his latest message really blessed me. I believe it will bless you also and I pray you sense the anointing as I did while reading this.
Jack
THE ORIGINAL TRUTH
In the book of Hebrews we read that our great High Priest, even Jesus, is set on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens where He is minister of the sanctuary, the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man (Heb. 8:1-2). In ancient times there was in every temple a god, an unseen god, among the pagans an idol god, concealed in the Holy of holies, to whom the temple was devoted. Religion is as old as the human race and religious systems and observances pre-date the oldest empires of antiquity such as the empires of Sumer, Egypt, and Babylon. As these religions spread over the world they developed into an expression in all lands and kingdoms with only a slight change in the names of the gods and slight variations in the rituals. The almost identical knowledge, stories, myths, gods, temples, priesthoods, sacrifices, and belief systems and observances of all kinds had their origins very early in human history. The question is, of course, where did all this come from? Was religion merely an invention of superstitious savages, or did it originate somehow as an integral part of man’s constitution, revelation, and experience from his very beginning?The evidence certainly suggests that religion had its origin from the dawn of history. Every religion shared similar characteristics even among the indigenous cultures of the Americas. The Mayan temples of Central America and the Aztec temples of South America were constructed, even to their holy of holies, along lines similar to those in Egypt and elsewhere. The evidence points to the fact that behind them all there was some ancient historical reality. There are no traces of evolution from simple to sophisticated. All theological systems stemmed from some common but exceedingly ancient source. This raises the question what was that common but exceedingly ancient source? The evidence unquestionably points to some meaningful design right from the earliest time of man’s appearance upon earth. This type of uniformity suggests a guiding hand at work. Oh, yes! There is the same supernatural design throughout practically all the ancient religious systems God, temple worship, sacrifice, priesthood, after-life, redemption, eternal life, resurrection, judgment, etc. Design from the beginning!
The Bible affirms that the worship of God originated with an original truth revealed to man by His Creator. Adam and Eve stepped forth from the garden with this original truth implanted firmly in their hearts. They knew of the tree of life, which was Christ as life. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Him was life; and the life was the light (illumination, inspiration, revelation) of men (Jn. 1:1,4). They experienced the presence of God and the glory of God, for the Lord God Himself walked with them in the Garden in the cool (Hebrew: spirit) of the day. They knew what it was to walk in the Spirit! They conversed with God and understood His will, His word, and His ways. The only government they knew was the life, spirit, and word of God! But then they came to know the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which indicates a living after human reasoning and law, instead of life. They knew about sin and death, for they both sinned and died. They understood conscience, for after partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they perceived that they were naked and were ashamed, hiding from God because of their shame. They tried the impotent route of religion by works, symbolized by them sewing their own flimsy aprons of fig leaves in a futile effort to cover their shame. They received the divine revelation of redemption by sacrifice, for God Himself slew a lamb (the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world!) and with it covered their nakedness. To be naked means to have your flesh exposed, that is your own carnal mind, will, and nature revealed for what it is, and this was covered by the life of the Lamb! They thus received the revelation of being clothed in the righteousness of Christ! They had the promise of a redeemer, and a restoration to life and glory. They were instructed that this redeemer would be known as the seed of the woman a manchild, Christ, Head and body, and that He would bruise the serpent’s head. They had been introduced to the god of this world, the serpent, who cunningly allured them into the living out of the natural intellect, reason, human conscience, and man’s own perverted sense of man-made law, instead of out of the living Spirit of Christ as Life. Let us now acquaint ourselves with the following important fact: All the so-called wisdom of this present world, yes, all the vaunted wisdom of the worlds of science, philosophy, education, politics, government, psychology, astrology, economics, religion, and a thousand more things that shape our world systems are one and all brought forth out of the illumination of the serpent-mind. For this reason we are admonished, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (I Jn. 2:15-17). In that long ago beginning our first parents were given the promise of redemption, reconciliation, and restoration of all things to God! They saw afar off their regained dominion by the wisdom, spirit, and power of God. Their first offspring knew about worship, sacrifice, offering, redemption, and living in the presence of God, and by the revelation of God, for Cain and Able brought their sacrifices out of a knowledge of the plan and purpose of God. But what happened was that as man moved farther and farther from Eden and the presence, life, and glory of God, that original truth was passed through the polluted corridors of time and human nature, becoming distorted, contorted, embellished, misconstrued, disfigured, and mutilated. This is what the scriptures call apostasy!
We see examples of what apostasy does to an original truth in our own age, the church age. Jesus and His apostles came and brought an original truth redemption and transformation of mankind through the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His kingdom in and by the Spirit. Now consider what happened to that original truth as it was filtered through time and human imagination! Look at the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and other ancient disciplines with their cathedrals, priests, vestments, traditions, holy water, candles, incense, altars, statues, icons, shrines, holy relics, ceremonies, confessionals, rituals, masses, rules, celibacy, monastic orders, and on and on. Do any of these even faintly resemble the original truth and the power and glory and experience of the early church? Not at all! The church world today is but a grotesque caricature of the gospel of Jesus! Yet the essence of that original truth is still present on some level in all of them! They all acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God who came and died for the salvation of mankind! And all their carnal-minded procedures seek in some way to illustrate that truth.
What I am saying is that the similarities in all ancient religions reveal an original truth from which they stemmed God, worship, temples, priesthoods, altars, sacrifices, forgiveness, prayers, salvation, resurrection, eternal life, judgment, future life, paradise all of this and more, though convoluted, twisted, distorted, misfigured, embellished, and even demonized still reflected something of that original truth! What becomes evident is that the Sumerians did one thing with that original truth, the Babylonians did another, the Egyptians another, and so on through all the pagan systems. All had temples, priests, altars, incense, sacrifices, gods, saviours, worship, prayers, etc. In the most powerful and enduring myths that man inherited from his beginning, the human race had retained a confused and perverted memory of the original truth.
Some years ago Lorain and I were privileged to take a tour of Egypt. At the many temples of Egypt I stood in several Holy of holies including the one in the temple of Luxor. There is no denying that Moses’ tabernacle in the wilderness was fashioned somewhat after the model of the temples in Egypt. The Egyptian temples each had their Holy of holies in which the only item present was the idol god. Superficial thinking might reason and conclude that since Moses was from Egypt, and learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, he simply modeled his tabernacle after the order of the Egyptian temples. But such reasoning misses the point altogether! All the ancient temples reflected the original truth of God tabernacling among men. Therefore, that Moses’ tabernacle would be similar should be self-evident! It would have been a blunder and an absurdity of momentous proportions if his tabernacle would have been completely different. Here is what happened. Religion, from the time Adam and Eve left the garden, had been on a steady decline, apostatizing into wretched forms and gross misrepresentations of the original truth. False and hideous portrayals of God sat in their temples grotesque idols of imaginary beings and animal gods. In the land of Egypt this pagan stupidity had sunk as low as man’s serpent-inspired imagination could carry it.
Oh that the darkening veils of ignorance might be torn from our minds that we might see that just at that point in history GOD GLORIOUSLY INTERVENED! The great difference between Moses’ tabernacle and the Egyptian temples was just this the Holy of holies of Moses’ tabernacle, for the first time since its type in Eden and its archetype in the heavenlies of God’s Spirit, now held THE LIVING PRESENCE, GLORY, AND POWER OF THE TRUE AND LIVING GOD not an idol! The bottom had been reached, religion had sunk as low as it could go, the point of return had arrived, and the ascendancy of the original truth back to its purity, fulfillment, and consummation had begun! The Exodus and Moses’ tabernacle was the turning point for God’s purpose among men in the history of the human race! That, precious friend of mine, is historical fact. God manifested Himself as a living reality in the midst of His called and chosen people there in the wilderness and eventually in the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. And now isn’t it interesting that temple worship survived only until Jesus came!
The ascendancy of the original truth came about this way. God manifested His presence and power in the midst of His people in Moses’ tabernacle. He established His throne there in the midst of Israel. Later His presence, power, and rule in the midst of His people was intensified when Israel possessed their land, through the prophets, judges, kings, and the temple of Solomon. Then the presence, power, and rule of God was intensified again even more as out of that nation God came in Jesus Christ and tabernacled among men! The ascendancy of the original truth reached a higher level yet when on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was outpoured from on high and God came and dwelt and walked and talked in men. Is it not significant that within that very same generation when the true tabernacle, the body of Christ, was raised up in the earth, the Jewish temple was violently and completely destroyed, never to rise again! And within a few generations all the temples of the ancient gods would stand empty and silent. The turning point came with the tabernacle of Moses! There is no idol god in the temple of Luxor today only because Moses came on the scene by the intervention of God to change the course of human history, beginning the ascendance of the original truth revealed in Eden, and the eventual consummation of God’s purpose in man. THIS IS THE TRUE MEANING OF HISTORY.
All God’s holy prophets since the world began prophesied that the coming One, the redeemer of the world, would banish all the gods of the nations, that He was the hope of all creation, that all nations would come and worship before Him, that all things and all men would be reconciled unto Him, and that all principalities and powers would be made subject to Him. Oh, yes! And history clearly records that in relation to all the mystery religions and the ancient gods of all the great empires of antiquity, THESE PROPHECIES WERE EXPLICITLY FULFILLED IN JESUS CHRIST! Of all the religions of earth only Jesus triumphed over the ancient gods! There are no temples or altars to Zeus today, nor to Athena, nor to Baal, nor to Diana, nor to any other of the ancient gods and goddesses. And He triumphed not only because those gods, by man’s imagination and manipulation, had become false gods, perverted representations of the original truth, but truly because HE BECAME AT LAST THE VERY EMBODIMENT AND FULFILLMENT OF THAT ORIGINAL TRUTH SO FAINTLY SHADOWED IN THEM! Jesus appeared right on schedule, by divine destiny, and accomplished all that the prophets had foretold and that the myths of all religions pointed to! Thus He is the fulfillment not only of all the types and shadows of the Old Testament, but even of the figures still set forth in all the pagan religions of antiquity! Oh, the wonder of it!
J Preston Eby
For any caring to read more of Brother Eby's writings, thirty years worth of messages can be found at the link provided below. This humble man of God has never charged a dime for his monthly writings and thus I believe there can be found rare special depth, purity and life to his messages. Eby is a man of faith not bought and sold by the apostate religious system of our day. If there be one worthy of the title "Prophet and Teacher" I know of no other more qualified than he.
http://www.kingdombiblestudies.org/index1.htm
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We cannot contain the overflowing cup of His love thus we share with you these messages of the Life of our Lord as lived out in His saints.
