Theocratic Aid To Kingdom Publishers

RELIGION

Lesson 72

HISTORY OF RELIGION

Immunity from death! Wisdom and dominion as extensive as God's! With such a lying claim religion was introduced to humankind. Eve really believed that slanderous offer of the Devil. The immediate price she paid for what she expected to get was disobedience to God; the ultimate price, extinction in death. In the meantime she was in bondage to the worship of demons, which is religion. The basis of Eve's religion was the adversary Satan's slander against Jehovah the Almighty God, the Creator, the Source of life and all blessings. She soon discovered she was cheated, because she got nothing that the lying serpent had offered her; instead, she got misery, woe, and death. All the counsel given by Satan and all the deeds of religionized Adam and Eve were contrary to God's expressed will. Therefore religion means everything that is against

doing the will of God. It is the worship given to a creature and is based upon the sayings of creatures in contradiction of God's Word and hence disannuls the Word of God and makes such of none effect. It is the fear of creatures rather than the fear of Almighty God, the Creator.

With very few exceptions the descendants of religious Adam and Eve continued in the snare of religion until Almighty God's power drowned them in the Flood. By the third generation it was organized to such an extent that it gained Bible comment, men being noted as 'calling themselves or other creations by the name of Jehovah'. They had no faith in Jehovah, but their use of the name was a religious practice and a religious screen for creature-worship. (Gen. 4: 26, margin) But during this interval the exercise of religion was not limited to earthly creatures. The opponent Satan succeeded in setting some superhuman invisible creatures against Jehovah God, thus ensnaring them into religion. His slanderous, lying offer to them was some share in universal domination.

For a time after the Flood religion was not exercised by human creatures, but all men obeyed God's law and worshiped Him. When God, through his worshiper Noah, called attention to the fact that the religion-destroying Seed He had promised in Eden (Gen. 3:15) would come through Shem, Noah's son and fellow survivor of the flood, Satan set about to reorganize religion upon the earth to ensnare man, destroy the promised Seed, and acquire world domination.

To get religion started anew among the human race Satan chose Nimrod. Nimrod gained the public eye as a "mighty hunter superior to and in opposition to Jehovah". By turning men from the worship and fear of Jehovah, and having them hail, exalt and worship Nimrod and the state, Satan re-established religion on the earth. Satan had Nimrod build a mighty organization made up of politics and commerce, with religion as its most important part. There began the union of church and state. He also had

Nimrod build a towering religious temple in defiance of Jehovah. The Devil held out the offer of world domination to Nimrod and his papal successors, as is corroborated by the title claimed by them: "King of the four quarters of the world."

God interrupted the self-styled world ruler by confusing the language of his henchmen and other subjects. No world-domination goals realized! Nimrod saw his temple-building cease and his subjects scatter. Though they left Nimrod's immediate control they remained under the control of Satan and his invisible subjects, whom men came to worship as demons. Wherever religionized men went they carried Nimrod-worship with them, which was Devil-worship.

The successors of Nimrod who remained in Babylon continued the basic religious doctrine of human immortality and its correlative doctrine, the transmigration of the soul (also called metempsychosis), and the claims of divine wisdom and world domination. The king of Babylon, who was also high priest of the Babylonian religion, claimed to be the chief interpreter and possessor of all wisdom.

These same religious doctrines were carried by Nimrod's erstwhile subjects to the Nile valley, where the kingdom of Egypt was set up. Its Pharaohs were regarded by religion-burdened subjects as gods. They and every beast and all the country were considered the personal property of Pharaoh. Those who approached him crawled to him on their bellies and addressed him as god, and then only in the third person. They believed his word could kill magically, could save and protect magically. So superior to other men was Pharaoh considered to be by the Egyptians that only his sons born him by his own sister were considered legal heirs to the throne.

Both the Nile valley and the Tigris-Euphrates valley are noted for their large temples and the fanatical worship the inhabitants gave to the demons under the symbol of stars. A large priesthood and an intricate ritual were developed by the demons. The introduction by the demons of

images of worship was a further violation of God's law. Some of the religious images worshiped in these valleys were enormous, such as the one on the plains of Dura which Nebuchadnezzar erected. (Dan. 3:1) Farther to the cast were other rich river valleys where the demons established their worship and commerce and political rule among men, the great valleys of India and China.

But not all the human families settled down in fertile valleys. Some lived in wide prairie lands good for cattle-raising, such as the grasslands of Europe and Asia. Such cattle raisers moved with their flocks according to the seasons and did not settle down in large cities; but they worshiped the demons just the same. They had no large temples, had no large images, but they did have portable images, and instead of a large priesthood they had what would correspond to the medicine man of the American Indians. All who abandoned the worship of Jehovah, whether city dwellers or farmers or nomads, were ensnared by religion. And they all failed to acquire immortality, divine wisdom and world domination.

Rome, the sixth world power, did what no world empire before it had attempted. It tried not only to bring within its borders all the civilized world at that time but to include in its religion all the religions of that time. This attempt continued for a long time and all the religions within the empire were amalgamated at Rome, but the amalgamation was a loose one. Then came the most audacious religious scheme until then —fusion religion. Its descendants, in myriads of sects throughout "Christendom", still reproach Jehovah and Christ Jesus in the name of Christ. In this fusion religion every known ramification or diversification of demon-worship has been fused in the one system called Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic organization continues the work of amalgamating and absorbing various forms of demon-worship.

So, whereas after Nimrod religion began to spread out, the Roman Catholic organization is gathering all together

again. It has brought within itself practically every type of demon-worship imaginable. Now it has even the corpse of Protestantism in tow. World domination and unification of religion seem nearer the grasp of religion than ever before. But instead of attaining to world domination, wisdom and immortality, religion will reap at Armageddon only defeat and eternal destruction.