Church of God News

Greek 2 Euro Coin Shows Europa Riding the Beast

COGwriter

The latest TW News & Prophecy from the Living Church of God has the following:

Europe encouraged to rediscover “Christian” values.

On June 11, 2012, Catholic Archbishop Dominique Mamberti addressed European ambassadors at a meeting ending Denmark’s six-month rotation in the EU presidency (L’Osservatore Romano, June 12, 2012). In his speech, the Archbishop made it clear that Europe needed to rediscover itself, in order to have a successful future.

He discussed the loss of cultural and social identity among Europeans as a people. In his address, he stated, “I am confident that even in the current difficulties our continent will be able to rediscover itself. The success of this undertaking will depend on the extent to which Europe can look with gratitude and recognition at its origins and, above all, at the ability to present anew constructively and creatively those Christian and human values such as the dignity of the human person, the profound sentiment of justice and freedom, hard work, the spirit of initiative, love for the family, respect for life and the desire for cooperation and peace, which are its characteristic features” (ibid.).

This “return to your Christian roots” message is one often repeated by Roman Catholic clerics in recent years.

Emperor Justinian I (527-565) also used religious values when he successfully united the Eastern and Western empires during his rule. “In the Byzantine Empire, church and state were indissolubly linked as essential aspects of a single Christian empire that was thought of as the terrestrial counterpart of the heavenly polity. It was therefore the duty of Justinian, as it was for later Byzantine emperors, to promote the good government of the church and to uphold orthodox teaching” (Encyclopedia Britannica, “Justinian I”).

End-time prophecies reveal that a powerful church will support a revived European Beast power and will influence its policies (Revelation 17:1-5). For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been a strong influence in Europe, and it will again play an instrumental role in uniting ten nations or leaders in the final revival of a European power with clear historical links to ancient Rome.

For more information on the Beast and its influence, read our eye-opening booklet, The Beast of Revelation: Myth, Metaphor, or Soon-Coming Reality?

As far as Europe’s religious roots, they precede Christianity.  Actually, the continent Europe derives its name from the goddess Europa.  Here is a version of the story of Europa from the San Diego State University website,

Zeus Lovers…One night Europa had a dream. In this dream two continents, which were in the forms of women were arguing over Europa. Asia maintained that since Europa had been born in Asia she belonged to it. The other continent, which was nameless, said that her birth was not important, that Zeus would give her to it. It was early morning, disturbed by the dream Europa did not go back to sleep. She summoned her companions, who were all daughters of nobility and of her age. It was a beautiful day and they went off gathering flowers by the sea. Zeus noticed this charming group, particularly Europa, who was the prettest [sic] of the maidens…Zeus appeared to the group as a white bull. A white bull more beautiful then any other…The bull laid down in front of Europa. She slid on to its back. Instantly, the bull charged off, plunging into the sea, and began to swim rapidly from the shore. Europa saw that a procession had joined them, Nereids riding dolphins, Triton blowing his horn, even Poseidon. From this she realized that the bull must be a god. She pleaded with him to pity her. Zeus spoke to her and explained his love. He took her to Create, where he had been raised. He promised that she would bear him many famous sons (Hunt J.M. Zeus Lovers. http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/scaffold/GG/zeusLover.html, 4/9/04).

Notice that the story claims that Europa was actually born in Asia (some accounts say Europa was raped, others suggest she was seduced, by Zeus).

Astarte, often called the ‘queen of heaven’, is widely believed to be of Asian origin. Ishtar/Astarte (from where the name Easter is derived) was a Babylonia goddess. This woman was probably originally Semiramis (the mother of Nimrod), who was considered the first queen of Babylon. Semiramis had herself deified as the mother of the god Damu and installed as the “queen of heaven” pictured in the constellation Cassiopeia. She is sometimes shown as a virgin with child, while she was widely believed to originally have been a harlot.

A connection between Astarte (the ‘queen of heaven’) and Europa was noticed long ago. The following account was written by one called Lucian in the second century,

In Phoenicia is another great temple which the people of Sidon keep. They say it belongs to Astarte, and Astarte…is Selene the Moon. The Emperor Elagabalus, being the Sun, brought Astarte the Moon from Phoenicia and wedded her. But she was not originally or at any time primarily the moon; and in Babylonia, as Ishtar, she had for Her emblem a star, the planet Venus. But one of the priests told me it belongs to Europa, sister of Cadmus. She was daughter of King Agenor; and after she vanished, Phoenicians honored her with that temple, and told a holy tale about her that says she was beautiful; Zeus desired her and transformed himself into the likeness of a bull, and then snatched her away and bore her on his back to Crete. That same story I heard from other Phoenicians as well; and the coinage which the Sidonians use depicts Europa sitting on the bull that is Zeus. Nonetheless, they do not agree that the temple is that of Europa. The temple itself contained, in later days at least, a painting of the Europa episode. The story was also localized at Tyre, where the house of Agenor and the bower of Europa were shown and where in the eighth century the people still mourned the abduction in a feast called the kake’opsin’. The name Europa is considered Greek; whether this particular myth is Cretan or Phoenician in origin the evidence does not seem sufficient to determine (Peri Tes Syries Theoy De Dea Syria Concerning the Syrian Goddess by Lucian of Samosata 2nd Century C.E., http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2938/deasyria1.html 4/08/04).

Here is another view of the story,

According to Greek mythology the chief Greek god Zeus fell in love with the human daughter of the Phoenician king, named Europa; in the shape of a white bull he abducted her, and had three sons through her. In order to ‘make up’ for his behavior, she was honored by naming a continent after her: Europa. This ‘love’ affair, though illegal, is ‘covenantal behavior.’ And giving names to territories is also ‘covenantal behavior’. Zeus can be identified as Satan (Rev. 2:13). Has he tried, by establishing a false covenantal relationship with this continent, to have a ‘legal’ claim on this continent?…As mentioned, Europa was a Phoenician princess. In Syria she was equated with Astarte, an adaptation of the demonic principality named in the bible as the queen of heaven. She is also known as Ishtar. One of Ishtar’s sacred symbols was the bull. At Knossos the queen-priestess represented the ‘mother goddess,’ the queen of heaven. Bulls were sacred; bull-games had a very important…Europe bore him three sons, one of whom was Minos. Then Europe married Asterios, the king of Crete (Bos, Helene. EUROPE, WHAT’S IN THE NAME? February 2004. http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:ercf9u3roXgJ:www.joelnews.nl/NameofEurope.doc+europa+consolation+continent+named&hl=en&i.e.=UTF-8 4/8/04).

Finally, here is another version of the story of Europa from the Greek government,

The final destination was Crete and in particular Gortyna where Zeus was joined in a “sacred marriage” with Europa, beneath a plane tree which has never lost its leaves ever since. It is interesting that the coins of Gortyna found had maintained the memory of this scene. One can see Europa seated on the trunk of the sacred tree, while on the other side of the coin the bull looks at her for one last time…She was worshipped with the name of Hellotis and at the celebrations, the Hellotia a celebration of joy for the blossoming of nature, people used to weave wreaths around her thighs as an indication of fertility. It was believed that Europa was initially a nymph, daughter of Oceanus. This version coincides with the myth of cosmogony in that the lands arose from the ocean. According to another similar version, Europa seems to be the personification of a brilliant meteor or a bright star. Europa, the daughter of Telephassa, “the one who shines from afar”, might have been a figure for the moon, each morning eloping with the solar bull and each night appearing brilliant on the dark sky (Hellenic Republic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.mfa.gr/english/greece/through_time/mythology/europa.html 4/10/04).

Apparently then, Europa was a nymph. It should perhaps also be noted that nymphs were unmarried semi-goddesses that frequently were involved in fornication in mythology. Many accounts of Europa also mention that she had a least two kingly husbands. And she seems to be tied in to “the queen of heaven.”  And the Bible itself warns about worship of practices associated with the ‘queen of heaven’ in Jeremiah 7:18-20 and 44:17-19–versions of which the Church of Rome now promotes (and it also now often promotes a non-biblical version of Mary as the Queen of Heaven (see Mary, the Mother of Jesus and the Apparitions).

Notice some passages from The Catholic Encyclopedia:

Whether Paganism made straight a path for Christianity may be considered from two points of view. Speaking from the standpoint of pure history, no one will deny that much in the antecedent or environing aspirations and ideals formed a præparatio evangelica of high value. “Christo jam tum venienti”, sang Prudentius, “crede, parata via est”. The pagan world “saw the road”, Augustine could say, from its hilltop. “Et ipse Pileatus Christianus est” said the priest of Attis; while, of Heraclitus and the old philosophers, Justin avers that they were Christians before Christ. Indeed, in their panegyric of the Platonic philosophy, the earlier Apologists go far beyond anything we should wish to say, and indeed made difficulties for their successors. Attention is nowadays directed, not only to the ideas of the Divine nature, the logos-philosophies, popular at the Christian era, but especially to those oriental cults, which, flooding down upon the shrivelled, officialized, and dying worship of the Roman or Hellenic-Roman world, fertilized within it whatever potentialities it yet contained of purity, prayer, emotional religion, other-worldliness generally. A whole new religious language was evolved, betokening a new tendency, ideal, and attitude; here too Christianity did not disdain to use, to transcend, and to transform. (Martindale, Cyril Charles. “Paganism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 14 Jul. 2012 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11388a.htm>)

Cardinal Baronius is fully prepared to grant, a certain amount of direct borrowing of pagan usages, this is no subject of reproach to the Catholic Church. “What”, he says, “is to prevent profane things, when sanctified by the word of God, being transferred to sacred purposes? Of such pagan rites laudably adopted for the service of the Christian religion we have many examples. And with regard more especially to lamps and candles, of which we are now speaking, who can reasonably find fault if those same things which were once offered to idols are now consecrated to the honour of the martyrs? If those lamps which were kindled in the temples on Saturdays — not as though the gods needed light, as even Seneca points out (Ep. xv, 66), but as a mark of veneration — are now lighted in the honour of the Mother of God? If the candles which were formerly distributed at the Saturnalia are now identified with the feast of the Purification of our Lady? What, I ask, is there so surprising if holy bishops have allowed certain customs firmly rooted among pagan peoples, and so tenaciously adhered to by them that even after their conversion to Christianity they could not be induced to surrender them, to be transferred to the worship of the true God?” (Baronius, “Annales”, ad ann. 58, n. 77).  (Thurston, Herbert. “Lights.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 14 Jul. 2012 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09244b.htm>.)

The basic position of the Church of Rome seems to be that the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses and the related religious practices were used to prepare Europe for Catholicism.  The Catholic Encyclopedia article titled Easter, for another example specifies many practices that those in the Church of Rome now endorse that specifically came from paganism.

Notice something from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”(Catechism of the Catholic Church. Imprimatur Potest +Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Doubleday, NY 1995, p. 243)

Essentially, the Church of Rome seems to teach that other religions have somehow been developed by God to lead people into Catholicism.  The Bible, however, teaches that Satan is the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4, KJV/DRB) and that he deceives the world (Revelation 12:9).

In his booklet titled Satan’s Counterfeit Christianity, LCG’s R.C. Meredith included the following:

As noted historian Will Durant wrote:

“Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind, dying, came to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the Church; the Greek language, having reigned for centuries over philosophy, became the vehicle of Christian literature and ritual; the Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity… and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed; there, too, Christian monasticism would find its exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps, the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god.… The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass that Christian fathers charged the Devil with inventing these similarities to mislead frail minds. Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world.… [The Eucharist] was a conception long sanctified by time; the pagan mind needed no schooling to receive it; by embodying the ‘mystery of the Mass,’ Christianity became the last and greatest of the mystery religions” (The Story of Civilization, Vol. 5, Durant, pp. 595, 599)…

What happened after Constantine? The widely read mainstream religious author Jesse Lyman Hurlbut explains:

“The forms and ceremonies of paganism gradually crept into the worship. Some of the old heathen feasts became church festivals with change of name and of worship. About 405ad images of saints and martyrs began to appear in the churches, at first as memorials, then in succession revered, adored, and worshiped. The adoration of the Virgin Mary was substituted for the worship of Venus and Diana; the Lord’s Supper became a sacrifice in place of a memorial; and the elder evolved from a preacher into a priest.… The church and the state became one when Christianity was adopted as the religion of the empire, and out of the unnatural union arose two evils, one in the eastern, the other in the western provinces. In the east the state dominated the church until it lost all energy and uplifting life. In the west [“Rome,” Ed.] as we shall see, the church gradually usurped power over the state, and the result was not Christianity but a more or less corrupt hierarchy controlling the nations of Europe, making the church mainly a political machine” (The Story of the Christian Church, pp. 79–80).

But this syncretic approach does not square with the Bible.  Not only does the Bible warn against the adoption of pagan practices (cf. Jeremiah 10), it also warns about a coming ecumenical religion (Revelation 13:4,8) that will be based out of Rome (Revelation 17) that God does not want His people to follow (Revelation 18:4).

All, Europeans and non-Europeans, need to realize what the real religious roots of Europe really are.  And why what is now being publicly proposed is not the religion of the God of the Bible.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2012 at 12:09 am and is filed under COG News, Religious News.

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