Why The Mother of Harlots (Part Two)
By Brannon S. Howse
As I mentioned, another name for Semiramis, wife of Nimrod, is the Queen of Heaven, but in the overall context of our study, this name deserves far more than simply a “mention.” It’s important to understand what has become of this particular name and why so many people know it.
To begin with, let’s see how Scripture uses the name. We’ll find a pertinent reference in Jeremiah 7:16-18:
"Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger." (emphasis mine)
What is Jeremiah talking about here? In a nutshell: he’s prophesying against the children of Israel for fooling around with the pagan religions birthed at the Tower of Babel, particularly the mother-son cult. There may be a multiplicity of names, but they’re all based on the same beginnings and reflected in this woman, “the queen of heaven.” That’s why this theme crops up in paintings from India, Asia, and Egypt—essentially all over the world. This mother and son (Isis and Horus, Semiramis and Tammuz, or whatever name she has within the language or culture or religion that we’re speaking of) shows up everywhere. But the most ubiquitous use is found in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church of Rome started referring to Mary as the Queen of Heaven, but Mary is never referred to that way in the Scriptures. There’s no queen in heaven; there’s only a King. So who are Roman Catholics worshiping when they speak of the Queen of Heaven? It’s not Mary. I believe they’re worshiping Semiramis, the same pagan queen from the Tower of Babel. As a cross-reference, consider this description of aberrant Hebrew activities in Jeremiah 44:15-19:
[quote] Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”
The women also said, “And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make cakes for her, to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her without our husbands’ permission?” [end quote]
The men know exactly what is going on here, but it is clear that women are the ones leading the way. They’re worshiping Semiramis, also known as Ashteroth. This reflects a feminist religious system. The women do not want to worship a male, patriarchal god; they want a goddess. What make this so pertinent is that much of modern feminism has incorporated the false religions of the world, especially Eastern mysticism. Their goddess of choice is usually the feminine god Gaia, or Mother Earth.
Besides the confounding of language, another reason it can be difficult to trace the lineage of these gods and goddesses is that many of these entities appear as males one time and as females another. This interchanging of sexes is common within pagan religions (kind of fits with the transgender agenda of today, does it not?). The personas, though, remain consistent. The description of one god is often the same as another, and when you encounter that, you can generally be sure you’re talking about the same deity. That’s why research can be tricky. I have to be careful to present only what I can actually document. Other credible, biblical teachers recognize the same ungodly connections among these pagan deities. John MacArthur, for example, explained some of the connections in one of his sermons:
[quote] You know where Lent came from? There’s no Lent in the Bible—none. It never appears in the Bible. It has nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ, but in ancient paganism, in the instructions of Baal and Ashteroth, and the deities of the ancients, it was believed that Tammuz or Baal—he goes by a lot of different names, Cupid, many names—but that Tammuz or Baal was killed by a wild boar, and when he was killed by a wild boar, his mother Semiramis, the high priestess of Babylonian paganism, mourned for him and cried for him for forty days, and at the end of those forty days, he was risen from the dead. So the whole concept of the forty-day mourning and going without and fasting has absolutely nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ but as an imposition on Christianity from pagan mystery religions of Babylon.
The mother-child perspective, where you see in the Roman churches, you know, the virgin or you see the pieta, the carving, this whole mother-child thing, does not come, basically, from Christianity. There’s no sentimentalization of that in the Bible, but it comes again from paganism. Semiramis, it was said by the pagans, conceived her son Tammuz because she was implanted by a sunbeam. That would falsify what? The virgin birth. And after that she gave birth to her son without a human father. So that the mother-child cult really came through mystery religions of Babylon and in its pagan origin was superimposed on Christianity. And ultimately the confusion came out in the Roman Catholic system where you have Lent, which has no biblical basis at all. In fact that’s only one part of it.
You know the term “queen of heaven”? I was reading a Catholic book the other day: Queen of Heaven—queen of heaven you can find in the book of Ezekiel. And the first queen of heaven was Semiramis the high priestess of Babylonian cults, the mother-child cult. Many of these features have come out of paganism and been superimposed across Christianity. [end quote]
Why should we be shocked that the Church of Rome has embraced the paganism from Babylonian cults? We shouldn’t be surprised at all because the Roman Church admits that it embraces paganism. In the Catholic Catechism, number 460 tells us so:
"The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature. For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."
The reality of this belief system pops up in many places. Catholic educators in New York and New Jersey, for instance, use a program that merges Catholicism with Eastern mysticism. At the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, one Catholic nun who is also a professor there specializes in promoting Buddhist and Hindu techniques for enhancing education in Catholic schools. And one of the most popular Roman Catholic writers today is Teilhard de Chardin. A Jesuit priest, he’s known as “the father of the New Age.” He once proclaimed, “The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future.” But the kind of “new” faith that is emerging today is not new at all. In truth, it dates back to the garden of Eden, when Satan tempted Eve with the thought, “You will be like God.” And the direct lineage of the gods and goddesses traces back to Genesis 11 and the mother-son cult of the Tower of Babel.
A Faith by Any Other Name Is Not the Same
You might think this sorting out of names is an interesting exercise but not especially relevant to your day-to-day life. That might be true except for the way these names and their current iterations play out in the worldviews of powerful people and organizations—foremost among them, the Roman Catholic Church.
Because of the nature of the church’s allegiance to the pope, there is a certain “anything goes” aspect of the church’s teaching. The church can become something of a law unto itself. One Church of Rome teaching I find especially troubling, for instance, is the belief that “Tradition as a source of faith would suffice without Scripture.” This suggests that the tradition of the Catholic Church is enough. No one really needs the Scripture because church tradition would suffice. They don’t believe in the authority or sufficiency of Scripture.
Another difficult Roman Catholic teaching is that both Scripture and tradition must be accepted with equal sentiments of devotion and reference. Tradition, it would appear, is just as important as—if not more than—the Bible.
Another place this aberrant fascination with the mother-son cult shows up is—of all places—the United States Post Office. A few years ago, the postal service issued a stamp of a painting by Raphael, a painting the artist describes as the King and Queen of Heaven.
The Bible, of course, tells us that Mary was someone we should have great respect for but not someone we should worship or pray to. There is no mediator between God and man but Christ Jesus, and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Mary was a person of great character and morality, but she was not sinless. In fact, she herself even said that she needed a Savior. Like us, Mary was conceived in sin, but the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t teach that. Their doctrine of the “immaculate conception” flies in the face of Scripture that tells us “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, emphasis mine).
The Church of Rome worship of the Queen of Heaven ties to the Babylonian religion started at the Tower of Babel. Although the disruption of language split Nimrod’s people apart, people will ultimately reunite under the Mother of Harlots described in Revelation 17—right there in Babylon where it all began. The world’s religions with most of their origins in Babylon will create “the great harlot” described in Revelation 17:1 and 17:15-16 and will come home to Babylon, the Mother of Harlots. But let me just point out a few of the key biblical roots to this ungodly influence:
Judges 3:7 mentions some of these same characters: “So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs.” Baal is another name for Nimrod, and Asherah is another name for Semiramis.
1 Kings 18:19 says, “Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” Here we find the children of Israel worshiping Baal and Ashteroth—Semiramis and Nimrod.
Leviticus 18:21 warns, “And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” Although I can’t prove that Molech is Baal, it seems significant that the people are passing through fire for this false god Molech.
Jeremiah 19:5 explains that “they [the Israelites] have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal.” It was common within these pagan cults to change the names of their deities, but we see in Scripture that all of these pagan ideas come out of the Tower of Babel, and yet the children of Israel still fooled around with them.
Nowadays, many of these pagan gods are hidden in plain sight, right here in America. Our most prominent pagan statue is our very own Statue of Liberty. If that surprises—and maybe even offends—you, please don’t stop reading just yet. The history of the statue is quite plain.
The Statue of Liberty was built and designed by Freemasons from France, who gave it to America. The first small-scale model was made in about 1870. It took a number of years to raise the funds necessary to build the full-size version, but the Masons eventually managed to do it. The Masonic connection is important because one of the names for Nimrod is Osiris, and Osiris is worshiped by the Masons. Osiris’ wife is Semiramis, and quite likely also Libertas among the Roman gods. In his book Fast Facts on False Teachings, former Mormon and expert on the deviancy of Free Masonry Ed Decker further explains the Masons’ relationship with Osiris:
[quote] The grand secret of the Blue Lodge Masonry is the sacred name of the great architect of the universe. The Masons who go beyond the three degrees of the Blue Lodge learn the sacred name in the royal arch degree. It is here that the secret name of the deity of Masonry is revealed. That name is Jahbulon. “Jah” is short form of the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh, or Jehovah. “Bul” is a rendering of the name Baal. “On” is the term used in the Babylonian mysteries to call upon the deity Osiris. [end quote]
The Masons worship a god they refer to as Jahbulon, a composite of Jehovah, Baal, and Osiris.
To assure you that this is not just a “fringe” interpretation of the facts, I’ll point out a very public source that makes no bones about the source of the Statue of Liberty. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society website offers this background on the nation’s highest military honors:
[quote] In 1965, the Air Force Medal of Honor was created, and it replaced the Minerva portrait with the head of the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty has a pointed crown instead of a helmet, and she does stand for liberty, although she is derived from the imagery of Semiramis, wife of Nimrod and queen of Babylon. Semiramis was famed for her beauty, strength, and wisdom, and was said to have built the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. She purportedly reigned for 42 years after taking control from Nimrod. She is a mythical figure who might be somewhat based upon a historical figure. [end quote]
Many of us take these images for granted without seeming to care about their demonic origins. New Agers, though, recognize exactly the opportunity presented by such public displays as the Statue of Liberty. One popular New Age website extols the virtues of our nation’s most famous statue:
Now imagine that you’re standing at the foot of the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor. See this inspirational statue as a symbol of the soul of America. As you reach the crown of the statue, symbolic of the crown chakra. Now, visualize sending out rays of light and love to all the people of America, seeing the nation healed and reunited in common purpose.
And what is a “chakra”? According to Eastern mysticism, chakras are the elements of existence that devotees try to “get in line” so the natural world around them dissolves, and they enter into the spiritual world. This is done in kundalini yoga, regular yoga, transcendental meditations, and other such practices.
That New Agers would attribute these meanings to the rays coming out of the Statue of Liberty is especially interesting because of the teachings of the popular early twentieth-century New Age author Alice Bailey. She wrote two dozen books, totaling more than 10,000 pages, and I write extensively about her in my book Grave Influence. Two books—The Seven Rays of Life and The Seventh Ray: Revealer of the New Age—were among her most influential. The website run by Lucis (Lucifer) Trust, the foundation Bailey started, describes the significance of “rays”:
[quote] We are living through the period of transition between the outgoing Piscean age, governed by the Sixth ray of Devotion and Idealism and the incoming Aquarian Age, ruled by the seventh ray of Ceremonial order and Organisation. The Seventh Ray will dominate for some 2000 years bringing an ordered beauty and rhythm which will be demonstrated in all aspects of physical plane living. With this compilation we have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the nature and potency of the seventh ray and a recognition of new opportunities for group service. [end quote]
This is the seventh ray of the famous 1960s Broadway musical Hair, the age of Aquarius. “This Is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” was the play’s wildly popular theme song. Although many would have thought of it as faddish, I believe these people were completely serious about heralding a new era of pagan experience and activity. Perhaps it’s not surprising that there are seven rays coming out of the head of the Statue of Liberty—especially when you discover just how pervasive the influence of Alice Bailey actually is.
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