Fig.4a. Map showing the 4 beasts (empires) of Daniel's vision and the progression of Satan's throne from Babel via Pergamon to Rome.

For an understanding of the important place that ancient Persia holds in the dark powers that bind it is necessary to look at the images revealed to the prophet Daniel in which he was shown an overview of world history in the form of four beasts. Daniel was in exile at the time, held captive in Babylon during the reigns of both Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, and he was there the day that the Persians conquered the capital city of Babylon, as foretold in his several visions. Daniel’s four beasts were first a Babylonian lion, second a Persian bear, third a Greek leopard, and finally the fourth beast of Rome, which was not only the last and final power but had also absorbed the characteristics of the previous three. (Daniel 7) We have already examined the first beast in considerable detail: Babylon, the prototype and source of all that would follow. Daniel’s second beast was Persia, first as a domain of three powers and then as the two-horned alliance of the Persians and Medes that came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Greeks led by Alexander the Great. (Daniel 8) An overview of these empires can be found in Chapter 17, Church Rapture? and also Harlot Babylon in the Addendum of The Truth Which Sets Free.

The second beast, Persia, is often overlooked by those who study this amazingly concise model of world powers, especially if they are looking at it from a western point of view because it seems to be obvious that Babylon, Greece and Rome are the greatest influence on western culture. At first glance even Egypt would seem to have had a greater impact in the west than Persia, especially in the distinct marks of Egyptian religion found in the Christian Church. Others wonder why such vast empires as China are not in the picture at all. The answer to that is simple; Daniel was a prophet of the LORD, and the beasts shown to him are the powers which most affect God’s elect in the course of history from beginning to end. China is a side story in this sphere, and size does not matter at all. But Persia is in the picture, so we would expect to find it as a strong influence in world beliefs in general, and represented as an integral part of the fourth beast of Rome, with many of its features consequently absorbed into Christianity. And that is exactly where it is found.

"Mithra, also spelled Mithras or Mitra, in ancient Indo-Iranian mythology, the god of light, whose cult spread from India in the east to as far west as Spain, Great Britain, and Germany. The first written mention of the Vedic Mitra dates to 1400 BC. His worship spread to Persia and, after the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great, throughout the Greek world. In the 3^rd and 4^th centuries AD, the cult of Mithra, carried and supported by the soldiers of the Roman Empire, was the chief rival to the newly developing religion of Christianity." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Mithra, Std.Ver.1999)

Hundreds of shrines and inscriptions for Mithra are found from the banks of the river Euphrates all the way to Britain. Several Roman emperors were initiated into his cult, and in 307 AD Emperor Diocletian consecrated a temple to Mithra as far away as Austria. Mithra was associated with the Greek sungod, Helios, and the Roman sungod, Sol Invictus, the god that Emperor Constantine deliberately blended with Jesus Christ when he endorsed Christianity in 312 AD. Mithra’s consort was Anahita, a fertility goddess, and he himself was believed to have been born beside a sacred stream, under a sacred tree, and was especially popular for having ridden and slain the cosmic bull whose blood fertilized the world. Sound familiar? Mithra is not at all Indian or Iranian in origin except for his name; he is the same old Nimrod and Dumuzi, and Anahita is Anath and Ishtar. This myth went eastward straight from Babel to the Indus valley, and echoed back to the west via Persia in the story of Mithra.

Mithra was held to be the son of the original sky god and his legend became a central feature in Greco-Roman art, and also in death and resurrection rites. "But at the very moment of the death of the bull, a great miracle happened. The white bull was metamorphosed into the moon; the cloak of Mithra was transformed into the vault of the sky, with the shining planets and fixed stars; from the tail of the bull and from his blood sprang the first ears of grain and the grape; from the genitals of the animal ran the holy seed which was received by a mixing bowl. Every creature on earth was shaped with an admixture of the holy seed. One Mithraic hymn begins: ‘Thou hast redeemed us too by shedding the eternal blood.’" (Encyclopedia Britannica, Mithraism, Std.Ver.1999) After this sacrifice and renewal, Mithra ascended into heaven in a chariot, the task being left to his followers to strive to release themselves from the shackles of an earthly body in order to join him amongst the stars in an unchanging realm. This is a classic concept from Babel, transferred and embedded into the ancient Indus Valley culture around 1500 BC. It would be revived a thousand years later and spiced with a distinct Hindu flavour in the myths of Krishna and Buddha, complete with bulls, cows, eight-spoked chariot wheels, halos and sun disks, eightfold paths and prayer wheels, sacred trees, sacrifices, surreal rebirths and imaginary resurrections.

This is the same counterfeit we encounter all over the world, reader, just one more of the "seeds" that Jesus described as the fake redeemers, false shepherds and robbers (of men’s souls) who came before the real Son of God. The dark lord cannot be underestimated in his subtlety or zeal to constantly reproduce this substitute. The very name Mithra or Mitra means "contract" or "covenant," and in both ancient Persia and later in Rome he was regarded as "the god of an oath" or promise. He was the divine representative and mediator of a mutually binding contract, especially between the god-king and the people, and such covenants were celebrated with a sacrifice and common meal of meat, bread and wine. His appearance in Rome came as an unexpected revival, "but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra. This renewal of interest is not easily explained. The most plausible hypothesis seems to be that Roman Mithraism was practically a new creation, wrought by a religious genius who may have lived as late as 100 AD." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Mithraism, Std.Ver.1999) Actually it is not hard to explain at all. This is exactly when the early Christians were blending such myths with the Word of God to produce yet another substitute, complete with mixed signals, right down to the sacrifice of the mass.

Persia was the land that lay directly to the east of Babylon and Assyria. We now know it as Iran. Being the second beast and directly adjoining and overlapping the first beast of Babylon meant that Persia received its ancient culture straight from Mesopotamia, from the sungod Shamash to the clones of Cush and his seed, Nimrod. The Mesopotamian section has already described how the people of Sumeria and Chaldea invented the veneration of the zero (seed) and made it such an important sign, associated with both son and sun, representing divine origin and perfection. We still use the zero for human seed today, with a cross or arrow added to denote male or female.

The Babylonians implanted the zero (also zoro or zara) into the names of their rulers, such as Nebuchadnezzar (Nebo is the king, or Nebo protect the seed) and Belshazzar (Bel protect the king). Roman and Russian emperors (caesars and czars) would do the same in their claim to divine rulership. To the southern Babylonians, the zero was considered a symbol so sacred that it could only be held in the hands of a god or god-king. This was the same amongst the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia, especially in the cities of Ashur, Nimrud and Nineveh, all originally founded by Nimrod (deified as Nebo). Assyrian kings wore the zero or eight-spoked sun-ring as a royal bracelet. In perhaps one of the silliest of all their inventions, some science fiction writers have claimed this disk to be a wristwatch worn by visiting aliens, similar to their alleging the halo to be a round space helmet. The disk is a fiction, but its source is not. Its origin is much more subtle and menacing, emanating from the father of lies, lord of the air himself. Ashur (also Assur) is not only the source of the name of the Assyrian people; it is also the name of their father god, based on Nimrod’s father Cush (deified as Bel). “It is almost impossible to tell the difference between Ashur of Assyria and Bel of Babylon.” (The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, Frankfort, p.66)

A religious change in Persia came about through the teachings of a man called Zoroaster (c.628-551? BC). Zoroaster, like Gautama Buddha (c.563-483? BC), may or may not have existed. The dates of their supposed lives vary by hundreds of years, and both were held to be one of numerous incarnations of zoroasters and buddhas. If there were real men behind either of these legends, then both their stories are obviously greatly embellished and rooted in the primal Mesopotamian myths. For a start, it is not credible that Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, was his given family name. The word literally means Seed of the Woman (Zero-Ashta, Zoro-Ishtar), and it is clear from everything we now know about this title that it is part and parcel of a grand strategy to substitute someone else for the LORD, be they man, god-man or complete myth. Zoroaster may have been given this name to identify him with Nimrod, or he may have chosen it for himself. The dark and powerful association would have been obvious to the people of his day, and others subsequently noted it. One of the Orphic hymns of ancient Greece, for instance, refers to Bacchus (Son of Cush) as Zoroaster.

It is thought that the man behind Zoroaster was probably a priest at the time when Persian religion was dominated by the Magi (origin of the word magic and magician), a priesthood similar to that of Egypt and reportedly endowed with miraculous powers. His role in Persian history was strikingly similar to that of Muhammed in Arabian history 1200 years later. Persia had first been inundated with a pantheon of Mesopotamian gods from the west and then by recycled Indus deities like Mithra from the east. Like Muhammed, who would reject the many deities of Babel in Arabia except for the moon god Allah, from whom he claimed he received a vision, Zoroaster shunned the gods of Persia, including Mithra, in favour of one, Ahura Mazda, from whom he supposedly had a revelation. This was nothing new. Akhenaten had chosen the sungod Atum as the sole god of Egypt around 1400 BC. But nevertheless Zoroaster’s monotheism was a significant change for Persia. Beginning with Darius (born 550 BC, king of Persia 522-486 BC), the Persian kings of the Achaemenid dynasty were Zoroastrians.

Zoroastrianism nearly died out with the arrival of Islam in Persia, and the remainder of the cult moved to the Bombay area in India to escape Muslim persecution. They are still known as Parsis or Parsees (Persians) and worship Ahura Mazda. Their scriptures are known as the Avesta. They are often regarded as fire-worshippers, keeping alive a sacred flame in their temples, very similar to the Greek fires of Olympus (the Olympic flame that must not be allowed to die) and the fires of the goddess Vesta (kept alight by vestal virgins). They wait for a final zoroaster to appear, "the foremost of three saviours who are all posthumous sons of Zoroaster. One will appear at the end of each of the three last millennia of the world, miraculously conceived by a maiden…" (Encyclopedia Britannica, Zoroaster, Std.Ver.1999) Here we see the endlessly copied story of Dumuzi/Osiris coming back in a miracle birth as the son Damu/Horus. The name for this counterfeit redeemer changes repeatedly, but the Mesopotamian clone, born of a cosmic virgin birth, is exactly the same fake seed we find everywhere. Biblical prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel, in their exile in Babylon, would have known exactly who and what Zoroaster represented.

Zurvanism, which cultivated the worship of Time as God, was an interesting development in Persian beliefs, especially when compared with the worldwide religion of evolution. "According to Zurvanism time alone is the source of all things, limitless, eternal and uncreated…Zurvan, god of time and fate…is bound up with speculations about astrology and the world-year…perhaps a result of contact between Zoroastrianism and Greco-Babylonian astrological speculations. Zurvanism appears to have had its stronghold in western Persia, bordering Babylonia. Some scholars seek an origin for Zurvanism…in the worship of an ancient Median or pre-Iranian god." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Zurvanism, Std.Ver.1999)

Evolutionists are quite literally time-worshippers, putting their faith in and utterly dependent upon eons of time to explain their cherished myth that somehow all the species have come from a common ancestor. Adaptation within an already existing species is possible, usually to a miniscule degree, and much of that must take place with the outside interference of man, increasingly using his higher intelligence to "play God" in whose image he is indeed made. But that is not evolution. The evolution of one species into another is as unscientific as the belief in tarot cards and horoscopes, as impossible as self-conceiving life in a self-generated universe. Every book advocating this absurd "theory" has to make the constant excuse that it might work given enough time. Genetic laws, and all the fossils and species sorted and classified by taxonomists, plus the conspicuous absence of a single viable "missing link" (when there should be trillions) demonstrate that the account in Genesis, which repeatedly declares that "each was created according to its kind with its own seed," is in fact the true science (knowledge). The origin of the universe, and every form of life on earth with its own means of reproduction, is concisely affirmed in that amazing book. There was no "big bang" in the Beginning, but there certainly will be one at the End, when all myths shall be blown away along with those clinging to them.

Zoroastrianism may also be viewed as one of the earliest religions to distill and simplify Dualism, the belief in balanced and opposing forces, a concept recently revived and made immensely popular in modern times by movies like Star Wars. Somehow the dualist's concept of "good" wins in the end, a direct contradiction to the supposed balance that has no end. This is all fable, science fiction. Time is not a god, nor is it eternal; it is a creature of the LORD who alone is everlasting, uncreated, immortal and sovereign, completely in charge of every event he has destined to take place in time. God started the clock ticking, and he will be the one to stop it, wrap up time along with the universe like a worn out, badly stained cloak. Satan is not a co-eternal, balancing act on the dark side. He is a fallen angel, a creature, given a short lease as landlord on earth with power to deceive those who are destined to perish with him.

And this he does, as Lord of the Air, in every generation, by creating substitutes for the truth like Bel, Baal, Tammuz, Osiris, Assur, Mithra and Mazda. These myths are no more real than Gandalf of "Lord of the Rings" or Darth Vader of "Star Wars" but they are every bit as distracting and effective. They capture the vain imaginations of men and blind the eyes of a billion children when they should be focussing their hearts, minds and souls on the real Son, without whom their walk in the dark will become permanent. Then there will be no time left to stop; all will be without end, held in the eternal light or else sealed in the nether gloom.

This is a two-edged message, one of escape for those found obeying God’s Son and one of utter destruction for all others, the final outpouring of the LORD’s boiling anger on the counterfeits, no less terrible than the inundation of the world by The Flood or the incineration of Sodom. Christian goats will tell you otherwise, in a spineless and spongy message so cunningly mixed with world religion and philosophy, offering everyone a false son and father god whom they say “loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” That lord is a baal, a lie dressed in half-truth, just one more Persian Mithra except in much better disguise, an extremely subtle fabrication of Lucifer with his twisted promises made in God’s name.

Jesus Christ has no such design for the goats, who do not belong to the little flock that the Father gave to him before the world was founded. That means the vast majority, reader, the multitude who follow every fake “lord” and false “light” and head willfully for the wide gate, who reject the “true light,” who “know him not” and “receive him not.” (John 1:9-11) This is hardly the popular message of Christianity. This is the Word of God, and only a tiny number receive and embrace this truth with gladness, such a small portion of humanity that it is sometimes described in Scripture as no one at all. “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light...He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth belongs to the earth…he who comes from heaven is above all…yet no one receives his testimony…He who does not obey the Son shall not see life, the wrath of God remains upon him.” (John 3:31-36)