What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER VIII

Egyptian Cult Menaces the True Worship

IN THE days of Abraham's grandson Jacob Egypt was already the first world power in Bible history. It came to be a symbol of the whole world after the Flood, so that even Jesus Christ was said to have been hanged on a stake there till dead. Revelation 11:8 speaks of the world as "Egypt, where their Lord was also impaled". (NW) From that early date till now the land of the Nile river has always played an interesting part in human history, but mainly in favor of false religion and in opposition to Jehovah God and the Seed of his "woman". At its beginning the people and government of Egypt were Hamitic the same as Nimrod's Babylon. It was called the "land of Ham", it being settled by a son of Ham named Mizraim, an uncle of Nimrod and a brother of Canaan. In fact, the land of Egypt was called Mizraim, which means "the embanker of the sea", referring to the embanking of the water so as to create a channel for the Nile river, especially in lower Egypt. It is suggested that Mizraim, Noah's grandson, was the first king of Egypt's dynasties. Her rulers were called by the common title Pharaoh. (Psalm 105:23,27; 106:22; Genesis 10:6,13,

14, Mo) Egypt followed the example of Babylon and became a mighty seat of apostate religion. Her course fits well the description of apostasy given us by Paul as follows:

² "Although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor did they thank him, but they became empty-headed in their reasonings and their unintelligent heart became darkened. Although asserting they were wise, they became foolish and turned the glory of the incorruptible God into something like the image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed creatures and creeping things. Therefore God in keeping with the desires of their hearts gave them up to uncleanness, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, even those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the One who created, who is blessed forever. Amen. That is why God gave them up to disgraceful sexual appetites, for both their females changed the natural use of themselves into one contrary to nature, and likewise even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense which was due for their error. And just as they did not approve of holding God in accurate knowledge, God gave them up to a disapproved mental state, to do the things not fitting." —Romans 1:21-28, NW.

³ Image-making and the worshiping of birds and quadrupeds and creeping animals ran riot in ancient Egypt. The sky was conceived of as a cow and was worshiped as the celestial cow, and as 'the queen of the heavens'. (Jeremiah 44:17-19; 7:18) The favorite Egyptian deity, Osiris, was pictured under the form of a young bull or calf called Apis, which means "the hidden one", the same as Saturn does. In the Nile delta the lioness was worshiped; at Bubastis the cat; at Hermopolis the baboon. The ram was sacred at various places, also the hippopotamus, the jackal, the ichneumon and the ichneumon fly. The crocodile was greatly feared and was kept well-fed and appeased. The smaller reptile, the serpent, was encouraged in houses, likely because of their driving away rats, which carried plague. Among the birds the sharp-sighted vulture was sacred and the falcon was supposed to represent the soul of the king Pharaoh. These animal gods were unified with the Egyptian human gods, who were then represented with the heads of such animals or birds.

⁴ There were triads or trinities of deities in that land of demonized religion. There was even a triple trinity or "ennead". One of the divinities of the Egyptian hall of the gods was the Osiris group, namely, the god Osiris, the goddess Isis, and her sister Nephthys. Osiris was the son of Nephthys but was adopted by Isis as her own son. As a result, the favorite triad came to be the two mothers and the son. Correspondingly, at one time in Babylon the triad was the two goddesses Hera and Rhea and the god Zeus. At Rome the like triad was the two goddesses Juno and Minerva and the god Jupiter. Generally the triad was formed by assigning to the chief god a wife and son. In the Egyptian trinity Osiris corresponded with Nimrod, and his name Osiris literally means "the seed". His mother's name Isis means "the woman". She was held to be both his mother and his wife, so that one of the titles of Osiris was "Husband of the Mother", or Kamut; and the melody which was sung to him actually ran the musical gamut or scale. The worship of Isis was carried to Rome and was freely practiced there when Christianity was brought in.

⁵ To such degradation did worship of human and animal gods lead that it was nothing for women to couple up with male animals, a practice Jehovah's law condemns. (Leviticus 18:23; 20:16) The ancient historian Herodotus tells of a case between a woman and a goat that took place while he was in Egypt. One of the things that contributed to the degradation was phallic worship. On the Egyptian sculptures and paintings we see with great frequency their sacred symbol, what is called the crux ansata. This looked like the letter T with an oval handle on top. Actually this represented the male and female organs of reproduction combined, and so was the "sign of life". It was borne by Osiris and all the Egyptian gods. Thus there existed cross worship in Egypt long before it was adopted in Christendom. Roman Catholic archbishops wear this phallic symbol, the pallium, over their chasuble at mass, the neckhole of it corresponding to the handle of the crux ansata.

⁶ To illustrate how Jehovah will demonstrate to the entire world of today that he is the Supreme God and Universal Sovereign, it became necessary for him to show ancient Egypt and her Pharaoh

that her gods were false demon gods and that Jehovah only is the Most High God. It came about in this way. To avoid the murderous designs of his twin brother Esau Jacob left home for his relatives in Paddan-aram or Upper Mesopotamia. On the way there God sent him a dream one night, in which at the top of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth stood Jehovah God, not to condemn Jacob as a thief of a brother's birthright, but to bless him. He said to Jacob: "Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, . . . and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." (Genesis 28:1-14) This assured Jacob that the Promised Seed would come through his descendants. Jacob procured his wives, Leah and Rachel and their servant girls, from his Shemite relative, and by these women he at length became the father of twelve sons.

⁷ On his way back to the Promised Land after twenty years of work among his relatives, Jacob was one night visited by a materialized angel of God. Jacob wrestled with him till daybreak for him to express the divine blessing. The angel then told him: "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed." His new name Israel means "He who strives with God". From then on his descendants were known as "Israelites". (Genesis 32:24-29; 35:9-15, AS) Thus we see that the line through which the Promised Seed was to come was the line that got the revelations

from God, and properly by it His true worship was carried forward in the earth.

⁸ By God's strange leadings Jacob's beloved son Joseph became the prime minister of the Pharaoh of Egypt to save Egypt from the disastrous effects of a seven-year-long famine in that part of the earth. In this prophetic drama Joseph was a picture of the Seed of God's "woman" who saves Jehovah's favored people from the death-dealing effect of the great spiritual famine in all the earth today. At Beer-sheba in Palestine Jehovah spoke to Joseph's aged father Jacob and said: "I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." (Genesis 46:1-4, AS) So Jacob or Israel moved down into Egypt with all his family and they were settled in the land of Goshen, alongside the Nile delta. Israel's house then numbered seventy souls. How many were they to become during the two hundred and fifteen years of their sojourn in Egypt? And would they be able to hold to the true religion amid all that idolatrous influence of Egypt? The great Serpent and his seed were determined that they should not do so, in order to block the coming of the Seed through them.

⁹ The Israelites in Egypt multiplied and became welded together as one people of twelve tribes

from Jacob's twelve sons. Now a feature of the sacred secret had to be cleared up: Through which of these twelve tribes was the Promised Seed to come? This was cleared up as Jacob or Israel lay upon his deathbed. He gave all his sons a farewell blessing, but it was to his fourth son Judah, whose name means "Praise", that he said: "Judah, thee shall thy brethren praise: thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; thy father's sons shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; . . . The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be." (Genesis 49:8-10, AS) This made Judah's the royal tribe, and it looked forward to the time when the Promised Seed would be called "the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah", the lion being rated as the king of beasts. (Revelation 5:5, AS) Israelites or Hebrews who from then on gathered around the tribe of Judah as the royal tribe from which the woman's Seed would come were called Judeans or Jews. —2 Kings 16:6; 25:25.

¹⁰ In time a Pharaoh rose in Egypt who ignored the saving benefit that Joseph had once brought to Egypt. He took up persecuting the Israelites, on the excuse that they were foreigners and were becoming more numerous than the Egyptians and hence a potential wartime internal-security danger to Egypt. Finally, acting as one of the seed of the Serpent, he ordered all Hebrew male babies to be killed right after birth. Without new male He-

brews growing up, the Hebrew nation or Israelites would die out. The devilish intent was to prevent the Promised Seed from being born, and thus let the false worship of the counterfeit seed and its mother go on.

¹¹ True religion was apparently in danger. Later testimony shows the Israelites were being contaminated by the impure worship of Egypt. Look at how they once took up the worship of the golden calf after they finally got out of Egypt. (Ezekiel 20:4-9; Exodus 32:1-26) Then Moses was born in the tribe of Levi to Amram and Jochebed. Out of faith in Jehovah they spared this pretty boy from death. They finally set him afloat on the Nile waters in such a way that Pharaoh's daughter found him, adopted him, called his name Moses, but arranged for his own parents to bring him up. Thus Moses was brought up in the faith of Jehovah God and not in the false cults of Egypt. Only after this fundamental education be became "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians". At forty years of age a powerful decision had to be made by him: Become a working part of this first world power and its false religion and sinful pleasures, or take his stand with his oppressed people the Israelites and suffer with them? He chose the course of faith in the God of the enslaved Israelites. The apostle Paul tells us of it:

¹² "By faith Moses, when grown up, refused to be called the son of the daughter of Pharaoh,

choosing to be ill-treated with the people of God rather than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin, because he esteemed the reproach of the Christ as riches greater than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked intently toward the payment of the reward." —Hebrews 11:23-26, NW.

¹³ So Moses made an inspection of the affairs of his people with a view to delivering them. After killing an Egyptian slave driver in defense of his Hebrew brother, Moses felt obliged to get out of Egypt to escape Pharaoh's vengeance. He took refuge in the land of Midian where descendants of Abraham by Midian lived. There he married priest Reuel's daughter, became father to two sons, and served as a shepherd. Forty years passed. While he was pasturing his father-in-law's flock at Mount Horeb in the Sinai Peninsula, Jehovah's angel appeared to him in a bush that burned with lire and yet was not consumed. There Jehovah, by his angel, announced that he was sending Moses hack to Egypt to lead the Israelites out and to bring them to this mountain to serve the God of [heir forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM [Hebrew, Ehyeh] hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this

is my memorial unto all generations." (Exodus 3:14,15, AS) So now God chose Moses to bear witness to Egypt concerning God's memorial name Jehovah and to lead the Israelites into the free worship of God.

¹⁴ Moses, with his brother Aaron as his spokesman, appeared before the Pharaoh of that day and said: "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." If this was the name of the God of the enslaved Israelites, then Pharaoh disdained and defied him. "And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go." Moses and Aaron replied: "The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword." (Exodus 5:1-3, AS) Pharaoh's answer to these witnesses of Jehovah was to increase the hardships of the enslaved Israelites. His policy was one of genocide.

¹⁵ It now became a contest between the false gods of Egypt and the God of the Israelites. True religion in the earth was now at stake. The outcome of the contest is of interest to all the world today, for ancient Egypt the enslaver of Jehovah's chosen people was a type of the world of today which

is guilty of the same crimes and false worship. The outcome of the great controversy today will be the same as that in ancient Egypt. "And Jehovah said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: ... I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments: and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God, who bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. . . . And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them." Both the chosen people and the hostile Egyptians were to know by forceful proofs that Jehovah truly is God —Exodus 6:1-7; 7:1-5, AS.

¹⁶ Pharaoh had surrounded himself with wise men, sorcerers and magicians. To offset the miracles performed by Moses with his shepherd's rod these false religionists by their enchantments or secret arts turned their staffs into serpents, turned water into blood, and made frogs come up on the land. But when the test came to turn Egypt's dust into lice or mosquitoes, they were stumped, and had to admit that such a miracle "is the finger of God". They could no longer duplicate on a tiny scale the tormenting plagues that were striking all of Egypt in the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel.

¹⁷ By each of the plagues the demon gods of Egypt were put to humiliation and disgrace before Jehovah whom Pharaoh defied: first, their river god the Nile, by the turning of it and all waters in Egypt into blood; then the frog-goddess Heqt; then Watchit the god of the ichneumon fly; then by the deadly pest upon Egypt's livestock the cow-goddess Hathor* and her corresponding divinity Apis the bull; then by the plague of boils and blisters Imhotep the god of medicine; next by the plague of hail Reshpu and Qetesh the gods of storm and of battle; next by the plague of locusts the deities of providence responsible for Egypt's fertility and harvests; next by the three-day plague of darkness Thoth the counselor of Osiris and god of the moon as well as systematizer of sun, moon and stars; also Amon-Ra the god of the sun; and by the tenth and last plague the god Ra, who occasionally appeared as a male sheep and to whom all the firstborn were sacred, being dedicated to him from birth.

¹⁸ During the seven last plagues the Israelites were spared, to demonstrate that Jehovah could protect them whereas the gods of Egypt could not protect the Egyptians, call on their gods as hard as they might. Each time that Jehovah relieved Egypt of a plague at Pharaoh's entreaty, this servant of

Satan the Serpent would harden his heart against Jehovah's people. Why was Almighty God so long-suffering toward this seed of the Serpent? Before sending the seventh plague, that of terrific hail, Jehovah said to Pharaoh: "By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, so that you would have been effaced from the earth; but this is why I have spared you: to show you my power, and to have my fame [or, name] recounted throughout all the earth." (Exodus 9:15,16, AT; Mo; AS) These words addressed to the visible seed of the Serpent explain why God Almighty has let Satan the Devil live on in wickedness till now. It is to demonstrate the superiority of God's power over Satan and all his associate demon gods and also to make all men of this world, the modern Egyptians, know that he is the only living, true God, whose name is Jehovah.

¹⁹ And while Jehovah exercises this long-suffering toward this world, his witnesses have the opportunity to declare His name in all the earth. Ancient Pharaoh by stubbornly sticking to false religion and opposing Jehovah caused ruin to Egypt, the first world power. Today the stubborn practice of false religion is bringing ruin upon this world and will cause it to be destroyed at the coming universal war of Armageddon. Poor mankind!