Page 55 - Attractive Deception - The False Hope of the Hebrew Roots Movement

or the city of Saturn, the great Chaldean god had in the days of dim and distant antiquity been
erected. Some revolution had then taken place - the graven images of Babylon had been abolished
- the erecting of any idol had been sternly prohibited,* and when the twin founders of the now
world-renowned city reared its humble walls, the city and the palace of their Babylonian
predecessor had long lain in ruins.
* PLUTARCH (in Hist. Numoe) states, that Numa forbade the making of images, and that for 170
years after the founding of Rome, no images were allowed in the Roman temples...

The deadly wound, however, thus given to the Chaldean system, was destined to be healed. A colony
of Etruscans, earnestly attached to the Chaldean idolatry, had migrated, some say from Asia Minor,
others from Greece, and settled in the immediate neighborhood of Rome. They were ultimately
incorporated in the Roman state, but long before this political union took place they exercised the
most powerful influence on the religion of the Romans. From the very first their skill in augury,
soothsaying, and all science, real or pretended, that the augurs or soothsayers monopolized, made
the Romans look up to them with respect. It is admitted on all hands that the Romans derived their
knowledge of augury, which occupied so prominent a place in every public transaction in which they
engaged, chiefly from the Tuscans, that is, the people of Etruria, and at first none but natives of that
country were permitted to exercise the office of a Haruspex, which had respect to all the rites
essentially involved in sacrifice.

Wars and disputes arose between Rome and the Etruscans; but still the highest of the noble youths
of Rome were sent to Etruria to be instructed in the sacred science which flourished there. The
consequence was, that under the influence of men whose minds were molded by those who clung to
the ancient idol-worship, the Romans were brought back again to much of that idolatry which they
had formerly repudiated and cast off. Though Numa, therefore, in setting up his religious system,
so far deferred to the prevailing feeling of his day and forbade image-worship, yet in consequence
of the alliance subsisting between Rome and Etruria in sacred things, matters were put in train for
the ultimate subversion of that prohibition. The college of Pontiffs, of which he laid the foundation,
in process of time came to be substantially an Etruscan college, and the Sovereign Pontiff that
presided over that college, and that controlled all the public and private religious rites of the Roman
people in all essential respects, became in spirit and in practice an Etruscan Pontiff.

Still the Sovereign Pontiff of Rome, even after the Etruscan idolatry was absorbed into the Roman
system, was only an offshoot from the grand original Babylonian system. He was a devoted
worshiper of the Babylonian god; but he was not the legitimate representative of that God. The true
legitimate Babylonian Pontiff had his seat beyond the bounds of the Roman empire. That seat, after
the death of Belshazzar, and the expulsion of the Chaldean priesthood from Babylon by the
Medo-Persian kings, was at Pergamos, where afterwards was one of the seven churches of Asia.
There, in consequence, for many centuries was "Satan's seat" (Rev 2:13). There, under favor of the
deified kings of Pergamos, was his favorite abode, there was the worship of Aesculapius, under the
form of the serpent, celebrated with frantic orgies and excesses, that elsewhere were kept under
some measure of restraint...

Saturn and Mystery are both Chaldean words, and they are correlative terms. As Mystery signifies
the Hidden system, so Saturn signifies the Hidden god...