Ancient Astrological Motif on the Pope's Hat

The top frame presents an image that was produced on clay 1000s of years ago, produced when a stone cylinder having an intricately carved image was rolled over moist clay. The scene depicted is that of a devotee's audience with Ninurta, the Sumerian god of war and agriculture, whose counterpart as the god of agriculture was the god Saturn in Roman mythology. Take note of the figure of a 6-pointed star on the clay tablet; it was used as an astrological motif for identification of a depicted figure as divine, a god. The motif, as you can see, is found on the Pope's hat, too, along with jewels surrounding it for representing the stars of the Pleiades constellation -- the same motif as found on the Sumerian artifact. The star on the Pope's hat is formed by the interlacing of 2 triangles for production of the hexagram, the same as used for presentation of the Star of David, which comes into present-day Judaism as a revival from ancient astrological lore via the Kabbala, because it was also found earlier in Judaism apart from the later Kabbalistic literature, for it was found in the excavated ruins of a synagogue in Capernaum, built between the 2nd-5th centuries.

On Steeples, Ithyphallic Spires and Obelisks


Do steeples/ithyphallic spires and obelisks have an unclean origin? Consider the affirmative testimony of 3 scholarly sources that follows, as it relates to Christendom's Churches: 



No. 1. We read this in The Biblical Cyclopaedia, by McClintock and Strong: "Even the spires of churches are symbols retained from the old phallic worship" ("Phallus," vol. VIII, p. 55).


No. 2. Thomas Inman, in his book Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, writes that ancient fertility rites and phallic worship resulted in the setting up of various architectural structures so that "we now see towers or spires before our churches, and minarets before mosques" (p. XXII).



No. 3. Edward Carpenter, in his book Pagan and Christian Creeds (Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York) 1920; p. 255, writes: “As to the lingam as representing the male organ, in some form or other—as upright stone or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower—it occurs all over the world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a memorial of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem and instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken.“ 


Conclusion: The pagans used upright stones, (e.g., the lingam), pillars, obelisks, and slender towers as phallic symbols. Moreover, a little more reading of scholarly sources bears out that these fertility symbols, including the cross itself, came to be incorporated into Church architecture from Constantine the Great’s time. 


How does the God of the Bible view such paganish trappings? 



Exodus 23:24 states: “You must . . . smash their sacred pillars*.” 



Leviticus 26:1 states: “. . . you must not set up . . . a sacred pillar*.” 



Deuteronomy 12:3 states: “You should . . . shatter their sacred pillars*, burn their sacred poles# in the fire.” 



Deuteronomy 16:22 states: “Neither should you set up a sacred pillar* for yourself, something Jehovah your God hates.”



* “Sacred pillar” translates the Hebrew word matstsebah, a phallic image (usually made of stone) and used in Baal worship, the Canaanite god of fertility. 



# “Sacred pole” translates the Hebrew word ‘asherah, though the word is used also as the proper name of a Canaanite fertility goddess whose image was the “sacred pole,” a phallus, the (usually) wooden, stylized representation of a penis. 



So, the God of the Bible hated these fertility symbols/images, and forbade his covenant people the Israelites from erecting them in the land He had promised to Abraham’s offspring by Isaac. He forbade that anything emblematic of pagan worship (idolatry) should be mixed in with worship of Himself, although the Israelites very frequently violated that prohibition convinced they could do so with impunity, but nonetheless learned contrariwise, for they often suffered God’s punishing wrath. See how determined Jehovah was to bring punishment to the 10-tribe Kingdom of Israel for its erection of sacred poles: "Jehovah will strike Israel down like a reed that sways in the water, and he will uproot Israel off this good land that he gave to their forefathers, and he will scatter them beyond the River, because they made their sacred poles, offending Jehovah" (1 Kings 14:15). See also Jehovah's complaint that apostate Jews in the temple in Jerusalem offended Jehovah by, as Jehovah put it, their "thrusting out the branch [phallus] to my nose" (Ezekiel 8:17). Oh, they might have thought that, because they were in Jehovah's house, they were free to do according to their own ideas for sacred service to Jehovah, but Jehovah stated this: "So I will act in rage. My eyes will not feel sorry; nor will I feel compassion. Even though they cry out loudly in my ears, I will not hear them" (Ezekiel 8:18). 

We are in the last days of a wicked world of mankind alienated from God, and for sake of the preservation of pure worship of Himself by a great crowd of true Christians (see Revelation 7:9-17), our God Jehovah jealously guards against insinuation of idolatry into our midst. This means that the Churches of Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism, inter alia, are exposed in these last days as their not being the owners of pure worship established by Jesus Christ, which worship will last “forever and ever” (Micah 4:5). 

There are very many examples that show us that those Churches are polluted with paganish trappings, beliefs, and practices. (N.B. Judaism is famous for its aniconism, though it, too, has adopted the Star of David that “was inherited from medieval Arabic literature by Kabbalists for use in talismanic protective amulets (segulot) where it was known as the Seal of Solomon among Muslims . . . and was also used in Christian churches as a decorative motif many centuries before its first known use in a Jewish synagogue” (see Wikipedia; see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUPuH5_t_JM). But for sake of brevity and for focus on apostate, so-called Christianity, we are here rather narrowly focused on the sacred pillars (church steeples, ithyphallic spires) that are erected by those Churches named above, which “sacred pillars” God still hates. He hates the unclean origins so distinctive of churches' architecture.) 



May it be argued that God can accept those images because the Churches have repurposed them for, among other things, peculiar identification of Church buildings—that God can accept use of the images when they do not evoke paganish religious sentiment in the minds of professing Christians? No. After all, it is not merely that our own emotions and intentions be above reproach, but humility on our part is also required — humility here as our willingness to let God’s Word the Bible educate us as to how He feels about paganish trappings; He has told us that he finds them detestable. So, that He finds them detestable should cause us to conform humbly and meekly to His will, meaning that we should be happy that He has taught us in the Bible how we can make sure that we have quit touching whatever things He considers unclean (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:17). God has not given us license to “Christianize” paganish trappings.

IS THE HUMAN GENOME DETERMINATE AS RESPECTS THE HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE?

A scientific study of a Danish population of homosexual men and women (see: https://www.newscientist.com/…/2155810-what-do-the-new-ga…/…)
shows a significant statistical linkage with a gene called TSHR associated with certain thyroidal pathologies in homosexual men and women, notably, “in a genetic condition called Grave’s disease, which causes the thyroid gland to become over-active, accelerating metabolism and leading to weight loss. Grave’s disease is more common in gay than straight men, and some research suggests that gay men tend to be thinner — which might be the result of thyroid overdrive.” 



Other notable pathologies in that homosexual population linked to a higher hospitalization rate than is so for a straight population are: Hashimoto's thyroiditis, primary biliary cirrhosis, psoriasis, rheumatic fever, myasthenia gravis, and localized scleroderma (with an exception being Dupuytren's contracture).



So, we may conclude that a tendency for choosing the homosexual lifestyle may be  itself as much a God-disapproved, sinful aberrant in the human genome as are the God-disapproved, sinful inheritances of any of the other diseases afflicting humans, as for example, alcoholism. But just as we may rightly and Scripturally hold that alcoholics should respond to education for overcoming any tendency for being a drunkard, so also may we rightly hold that persons inheriting a predisposition to homosexuality should also refrain from practicing it. In fact, we rightly and Scripturally hold that all straight men and women should educate themselves to what is God’s will in order to refrain from premarital and extra-marital sexual relations, even though the natural, normative, and God-approved inheritance of heterosexuality can result in a powerful drive to engage in sexual relations with a member of the opposite sex.

Just the same, however, is the fact that the right kind of environment (parental nurture, and our free-will choice of friends/associates) is crucial as respects conformity to God’s will no matter whatever happens to be the inherited sexual tendency in any individual. The bottom line is that genetics is not determinate as respects the likelihood that the homosexual lifestyle may be practiced, for we are reminded that not even all men who have the “gay” variants of certain genes are gay! One group of scientists (Alan Sanders at North Shore University, Illinois, and his team) investigating homosexuality reminds us that many other factors play a role, including the environment. Also, says Sanders (see article in the NewScientist journal quoted above), “There are probably multiple genes involved, each with a fairly low effect . . . There will be men who have the form of gene that increases the chance of being gay, but they won’t be gay.” 



Another report (https://www.huffpost.com/…/lgbtq-genetics-study_n_5d692f62e…)

echoes the material presented above as follows: 

“The researchers said thousands more genetic variants likely are involved and interact with factors that aren’t inherited, but that none of them cause the behavior nor can predict whether someone will be gay.


”The research “provides the clearest glimpse yet into the genetic underpinnings of same-sex sexual behavior,” said co-author Benjamin Neale, a psychiatric geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


“We also found that it’s effectively impossible to predict an individual’s sexual behavior from their genome. Genetics is less than half of this story for sexual behavior but it’s still a very important contributing factor,” Neale said.


”The study was released Thursday by the journal Science. Results are based on genetic testing and survey responses.”



Jehovah God has not left us in ignorance as to what is his will for us irrespective of our sinful (imperfect) genome. The Bible puts it this way: “For this is the will of God, that you should be holy and abstain from sexual immorality. Each one of you should know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with greedy, uncontrolled sexual passion like the nations have that do not know God. No one should go beyond proper limits and take advantage of his brother in this matter, because Jehovah exacts punishment for all these things, just as we previously and strongly warned you. For God has called us, not for uncleanness, but for holiness. So, then, the man who disregards this is disregarding, not man, but God, who gives you his holy spirit” (1 Thessalonians 4:4-8).

A gay pride parade in Tel Aviv, Israel

Genesis 1:27 Does not Give Basis for Plurality of Persons in God

We do not look at the created likeness of God in a man (the human being Adam) for a plurality of persons in Adam, do we? No, we should no sooner do such a thing as we might were we also to think that we should look at God's creation of "them" (the man Adam and the woman Eve) for indication that in God there is mixed gender. We do not read "God created them in his image, but rather, "God created the man [Adam] in his image, in God's image he created him [Adam]." The apostle Paul uses this very gender-restricting imaging of God in Adam in order to make his point that the man is better suited for the role of headship over the woman than were one of the marriage partner's headship over the other a thing vested in the woman (1 Corinthians 11:7-10). It is true that in the matter of the role for exercising headship in a marriage, God has given that role to the masculine gender; that gender in humans more closely resembles God's identity only insofar as the matter of one's having the qualities for exercising headship is concerned. It has nothing to do with mental or logical acumen, but has to do with the emotional makeup of the female gender.

A New Study Shows That Honeybees Can Do Basic Arithmetic

And now this about honeybees, which reinforces an earlier study that showed that honeybees can eventually extrapolate the multiple of a distance that researchers had been using by which they were increasing the distances between the deposits of nectar that honeybees got as a reward for their arriving at the different sites having the nectar. After a few forays for nectar, the honeybees were able mathematically to figure the multiple which they should use in order to find more quickly the next and correct site for securing their reward of nectar. Now, what naivety evolutionists betray in themselves because they assert that such an incredible ability became a honeybee's possession through countless, previous generations which incorporated countless random/purposeless mutations in the genomes of their ancestors so that natural selection finally engineered a genome able to do basic arithmetic. It is sheer foolishness in atheists who can suppose such a thing.

MASHABLE.COM

New study says honeybees can do basic math

The results of another study show us that bumblebees' brains are programmed with an algorithm that allows them to sort scattered locations of flower patches they had earlier visited, but will now account for newer locations the bees encounter in subsequent foraging flights. The sorting algorithm gives the bees a map of novel routes the bees will then traverse for optimizing their travel times to all locations on subsequent foraging flights, because the flights will include not only the locations of flower patches originally encountered, but will now account for locations of more flower patches not encountered on the maiden foraging excursion because they were subsequently, artificially added by the scientists.  Here is how the scientists report their discovery: 

"Bees optimized their flight distances by rearranging flower visitation sequences. This resulted in the development of a primary route (trapline) and two or three less frequently used secondary routes. Bees consistently used these routes after overnight breaks while occasionally exploring novel possibilities. We discuss how maintaining some level of route flexibility could allow traplining animals to cope with dynamic routing problems, analogous to the well‐known traveling salesman problem."

This algorithm and additional arithmetical feats are all stored in a brain about the size of a grass seed.

CHRISTENDOM IS DUE THE WRATH OF GOD

This plaque is in the Holocaust Museum. Its message is stark testimony that the vast majority of Europeans during years of the Holocaust were in one camp or the other when it came to "the Jewish question": 1) many of that majority were actively complicit with the Nazis for persecuting the Jews; however, 2) most of that majority were passively complicit either out of craven cowardice, or out of antisemitic prejudice. Christendom's influence throughout many centuries in Europe, and wherever else it held sway, was responsible for the abysmal moral and spiritual failure that cost millions of lives, including many of the lives of Jehovah's righteous Christian servants. Christendom's unrepentant masses and the unrepentant masses in the rest of false religion in the world will soon experience fulfillment of Revelation 18:4-8.

"The great majority of Europeans during the period of the Holocaust were neither killers nor victims. But whether or not they were involved in the ongoing genocide or understood the full extent of the "Final Solution," most could observe small events forming part of the catastrophe as it unfolded in their own communities.

"In France, the existence of numerous detention camps for Jewish refugees -- many established even before the German conquest -- was known to the public. In eastern Europe, Poles watched as ghettos were filled with deportees from foreign countries and nearby towns and villages. Like citizens of the Soviet Union and Baltic republics, Poles knew about the massacres taking place in nearby forests. From 1933 on, Germans watched in silence as their Jewish neighbors were isolated, dispossessed, and deported for "resettlement in the East." 

"Some bystanders sought to exploit the situation of the Jews for personal gain, but most merely stood by, neither collaborating nor coming to the aid of the victims. This passivity amounted to acquiescence, and the planners and executors of the "Final Solution" counted on bystanders not intervening in the process of genocide."