Tammuz and the "Mystery of Iniquity"
As we go back into the dim twilight of History with scripture, we learn that the founder of Bab-el, or Babylon, was Nimrod, of whose unholy achievements we read in Genesis 10. He was the arch-apostate of the patriarchal age. He is described as "a mighty hunter before the Lord" (Gen. 10:9) - "a hunter of the souls of men," the rabbis said. Going out from the presence of the Lord, he impiously sought to gather a multitude about himself, and, in defiance of the express command of God to spread upon the face of the earth, he persuaded his associates and followers to join him in "building a city and a tower which should reach unto heaven" (Gen. 11:4). Not surely, as some of us were taught in our childhood, a tower by which they might climb up into the skies to escape another possible flood, but a tower of renown, rising to a greater height, to be recognized as a temple or rallying centre for those who did not walk in obedience to the word of the Lord. With all of the effrontery of our modern apostates, they called their city and tower Bab-El. "the gate of God;" but it was soon changed by divine judgment into Babel, "confusion." It bore the stamp of unreality from the first, for we are told "they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar" (Gen. 11:3). An imitation of that which is real and true has ever since characterized Babylon in all the ages.
Nimrod, or Nimroud-bar-Cush, as he is called on the monuments, was a grandson of Ham, the unworthy son of Noah, whose character is revealed in his exposure of his father's shame. We know that Noah had brought through the flood the revelation of the true God because he was a preacher of righteousness, and his utterances on more than one occasion show that he had the prophetic gift. Ham, on the other hand, seems to be too readily affected by the apostasy that brought the Flood because he shows no evidence of self-judgment but the very opposite. His name, as spelled out upon Egyptian monuments, is Khem, and this agrees with the literal sound of the Hebrew word rendered Ham in our Bibles. It means "swarthy," "darkened," or, more literally, "the sun-burnt." And the name indicates the state of the man's soul. For what is a sun-burned person? One who is darkened by light from heaven. Ham had been granted wonderful mercies; he was saved from the Flood because of his father's faith, but he abused his privileges and "(turned) the grace of God into lasciviousness." He was actually darkened by the burning rays of the light that God caused to shine upon his soul. Thus, his conscience became seared as with a hot iron, and he became the founder of a race that departed from the living God and led the way into idolatry, worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator.
We know something of what this means. We speak of people today who have become, as we say, gospel-hardened. They, too, have been darkened by the light, and they are often the ringleaders in apostasy: If "… the light that is in thee [become darkened], how great is that darkness!" (Matt. 6:23). Many people in the world tonight used to listen with tears in their eyes to the story of the matchless grace of God as revealed in the Cross of Christ, but we are unmoved now though that story be told ever so tenderly; they have become hardened in their sins, and their seared consciences no longer feel the Spirit's breath. It is a most dangerous thing to trifle with the light of heaven.
But to proceed with our theme. Ham became darkened by the light. We know his failure and sin. But when Noah had recovered himself and knew what his son had done unto him, he pronounced, by the spirit of prophecy, a curse upon Canaan, not on Ham. Do you wonder at that? I did until I saw that God had already pronounced a blessing upon all three of the sons of Noah - Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So Noah passes over his unworthy son and utters a curse upon Canaan, who we can well believe was, as we say, "a chip off the old block." Ham begat a son named Cush, "the black one," and he became the father of Nimrod, the apostate leader of his generation.
Ancient lore now comes to our assistance and tells us that the wife of Nimroud-bar-Cush was the infamous Semiramis the First. She is reputed to have been the foundress of the Babylonian mysteries and the first high priestess of idolatry. Thus, Babylon became the fountainhead of idolatry and the mother of every heathen and pagan system in the world. The mystery religion that originated there spread in various forms throughout the whole earth, and, as we shall see in a few minutes, it is with us today. It is identical to the mystery of iniquity that wrought so energetically in Paul's day and shall have its fullest development when the Holy Spirit has departed and the Babylon of the Apocalypse holds sway.
Building on the primeval promise of the woman's Seed who was to come, Semiramis bore a son, who she declared was miraculously conceived! When she presented him to the people, they hailed him as the promised deliverer. This was Tammuz, against whom Ezekiel protested in the days of the Captivity. Thus was introduced the mystery of the mother and the child, a form of idolatry that is older than any other known to man. The rites of this worship were secret; only the initiated were permitted to know its mysteries. It was Satan's effort to delude mankind with an imitation so like the truth of God that they would not know the true Seed of the woman when He came in the fullness of time.
From Babylon, this mystery religion spread to all of the surrounding nations as the years went on and the world was populated by the descendants of Noah. Everywhere the symbols were the same, and everywhere the cult of the mother and child became the popular system, and their worship was celebrated with the most disgusting and immoral practices. The image of the queen of heaven with the babe in her arms was seen everywhere, although the names might differ as language differed. It became the mystery religion of Phoenicia, and the Phoenicians carried it to the ends of the earth. Ashtoreth and Tammuz, the mother and child of these hardy adventurers, became Isis and Horus in Egypt, Aphrodite and Eros in Greece, Venus and Cupid in Italy, and many other names in more distant places. Within one thousand years, Babylonianism had become the religion of the world, which rejected the divine revelation.
Linked with these central mysteries were countless lesser mysteries, the hidden meanings of which were only known to only the initiates, but the outward forms were practiced by all the people. Among these mysteries were the doctrines of purgatorial purification after death; salvation by countess sacraments such as priestly absolution; sprinkling with holy water; the offering of round cakes to the queen of heaven, as mentioned in the book of Jeremiah; dedication of virgins to the gods, which was literally sanctified prostitution; and weeping for Tammuz for a period of forty days before the great festival of Istar, who was to have said to have received her son back from the dead, for it was taught that Tammuz was slain by a wild boar and afterward brought back to life. To him, the egg was sacred, depicting the mystery of his resurrection, even as the evergreen was his chosen symbol and was set up in honor of his birth at the winter solstice, when a boar's head was eaten in memory of the conflict and a yule-log burned with many mysterious observances. The sign of the cross was sacred to Tammuz, symbolizing the life-giving principle and the first letter of his name. It is represented upon vast numbers of the most ancient altars, and temples, and did not, as many have supposed, originate with Christianity.
The patriarch Abraham was separated from this mystery religion by the divine call. With this same evil cult the nations that sprang from Abraham had constant conflict, until under Jezebel, a Phoenician princess, it was grafted onto what was left of the religion of Israel in the northern kingdom in the day of Ahab and was the cause of their captivity at the last. Judah was polluted by it because Baal worship was but the Canaanitish form of the Babylonian mysteries; only by being sent into captivity to Babylon itself was Judah cured of her fondness for idolatry. Baal was the sun god, the life-giving one, identical with Tammuz.
When Christ came into the world, the mystery of iniquity was everywhere holding sway, except where the truth of God revealed in the Old Testament was known. Thus, when the early Christians set out with the great task of carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth, they found themselves everywhere confronted by this system in one form or another; although Babylon as a city had long been but a memory, her mysteries had not died with her. When the city and the temples were destroyed, the high priest fled with a company of initiates and their sacred vessels and images to Pergamos, where the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of the hidden wisdom. From there, they afterward crossed the sea and emigrated to Italy, where there, they settled in the Etruscan plain. There the ancient cult was propagated under the name of the Etruscan Mysteries, and eventually Rome became the headquarters of Babylonianism. The chief priests wore miters shaped like the head of a fish, in honor of Dagon, the fish-god, the lord of life - another form of the Tammuz mystery, as developed among Israel's old enemies, the Philistines. When the chief priest was established in Rome, he took the name Pontifex Maximus, which was imprinted on his miter. When Julius Caesar (who, like all young Romans of a good family, was an initiate) had become the head of the State, he was elected Pontifex Maximus, and this title was held henceforth by all of the Roman emperors down to Constantine the Great, who was, at one and the same time, head of the church and high priest of the heathen! The title was afterward conferred upon the bishops of Rome and is today borne by the pope, who is thus declared to be, not the successor of the fisherman apostle Peter, but by direct successor of the high priest of the Babylonian mysteries, and the servant of the fish-god Dagon, for whom he wears, like his idolatrous predecessors, the fisherman's ring.
During the early centuries of the church's history: the mystery of iniquity has wrought with such astounding effect, and Babylonian practices and teachings have been so largely absorbed by that which bore the name of the church of Christ - that the truth of the Holy Scriptures on many points has been wholly obscured - whereas idolatrous practices had been foisted upon the people as Christian sacraments and heathen philosophies took the place of gospel instruction. Thus was developed the amazing system that for a thousand years dominated Europe and trafficked in the bodies and souls of men, until the great Reformation of the sixteenth century brought in a measure of deliverance.
by H.A. Ironside
