Sons of Heaven & Atheists

In the first historic era of China, the Shang period, which began around 1500 BC, the Far East was still widely in the grip of the most original form of the Sumerian prototype religion, worshipping animal deities, earth goddesses and sacred ancestors, with all the lions and dragon-serpents of that Babylonian model. The distant sky god was called T’ien or T’ian ("Heaven"). This is the same god as An in Akkadia or Anu in Sumeria, the deified form of Noah who survived the torrential rain and flood when the firmament collapsed, the forefather of the human race who came down from the mountain as the water receded to repopulate the world and till the soil. The mountains in the most western part of China, north of India, were named the T’ian Shan (Celestial Mountains, Mountains of Anu) and regarded as holy. The chief of the gods was called Shang-ti (Zeus of Greece, Shango of Africa, Bel of Babylon, Baal of Canaan), the paramount fertility god.

"As a god, T’ian (or T'ien) is sometimes perceived to be an impersonal power in contrast to Shang-ti ("Supreme Ruler"), but the two are closely identified and the terms frequently used synonymously…T’ian originally referred to the sky while Shang-ti referred to the Supreme Ancestor who resided there…and it is thought that T’ien assimilated Shang-ti…The importance of both T’ian and Shang-ti to the ancient Chinese lay in their assumed influence over the fertility of the clan and its crops; sacrifices were offered to these powers solely by the king and, later, by the emperor. Chinese rulers were traditionally referred to as Son of Heaven (T’ian-Tzu), and their authority was believed to emanate from heaven." (Encyclopedia Britannica, T’ien, Std.Ver.1999)

This clone of Mesopotamian culture, with its own version of a divine king or zzar (in Chinese this became tzu, dzu, zhu and zi, having the compound meaning of master, seed and son) was eventually combined with both the nothingness of the philosophy of the late Vedic period of India and also the everythingness of Hindu religion in the form of Buddhism. There were also very significant parallel domestic developments. China was extremely sophisticated in many ways as a culture, and it put forth its fair share of philosophy during the middle of the first millenium before Christ. This period, in which Babylon fell to Persia and that empire in turn fell to Greece, was an era of enormous political upheaval accompanied by very influential developments in conceptual thinking.

At the same time that the prophets of Israel were spelling out the Word of God to their own wayward nation (and to the empires sent to punish them with captivity and exile), the foremost Greek philosophers arose in the West, Zoroaster appeared in Persia, Buddha  surfaced in India, and both Lao-tzu and Confucius  emerged in the East. Aristotle and Plato were mainly concerned with politics and civil ethics. So too was Kung-fu-tzu  (Master Kung, latinized as Confucius, 551-479 BC), essentially a prominent humanist and senior civil servant. His sayings, recorded in the Analects, were added to his compilations of the five classic books of Chinese literature from the Chou period of 1000-256 BC (Book of Changes, History, Poetry, Rites and his own Annals). His ideas greatly influenced Chinese political and civil life and earned him the title of “Perfect Sage.” Although some temples were built in an attempt to deify him along with his first followers, and ancestor reverence became a part of Confucianism, it is a philosophy, not a religion. Like communism, which later almost swept it aside, Confucianism was completely atheistic. So too was early Taoism.

Lao-Tzu (legend c.600 BC) simply means "Old Man" or old seed (son), a person for whom there is no real name and no historical evidence of his actual existence, and to whom the book, the Tao de Ching, is traditionally ascribed. His legend reads as a fable, right up to his ascension into heaven on the clouds. The book contains no references to gods or idols and probably had many authors. It is a collection of sayings regarding metaphysical harmony, in contrast to Confucianism, which dealt with social and civil harmony. There is significant similarity between the proverbs found in the Tao de Ching ("way of power") and the alleged sayings of the agnostic Buddha, with whom Lao-Tzu was sometimes confused. Some legends claim that Lao-Tzu met Gautama and was the source of his enlightenment. This is entirely speculation and myth, but the similarity in the doctrines is real. The Tao itself was regarded somewhat like Nirvana, as indescribable, otherwise it could not be the true Tao.

In essence, the Tao de Ching is an attempt to describe the way of metaphysical harmony through suppression of desires, self-effacement, orderliness, non-interference and quietness. It describes the universe as amoral and impersonal, and yet in the final outcome Taoists rivalled Buddhists in their descent into polytheism, deifying Lao-Tzu as the omnipotent and omnipresent origin of all life. The Tao de Ching itself was venerated as having supernatural powers, and a priesthood was created with all the attendant superstitious charms, amulets and incantations. This mostly took place in the first two centuries AD. Taoism was Chinese and homegrown, but the Buddhist religion that overshadowed it in importance, and spread across the entire Far East, came from India.

Buddhists believe there are a number of Buddhas (Enlightened Ones), just as the Persians believed there were multiple Zoroasters (Seeds of the Woman). In this section, we look at the one from whom the whole Buddhist package is derived, not those who were invented later, who supposedly came before him or are yet to come. This Buddha came from India, near the border with Nepal, but today he is mostly worshipped outside of India, from Tibet to Bali, China and Japan. Scholars disagree as to when he was born, by hundreds of years, and nothing was written down about him or what he said for centuries. Just reflect on that staggering fact for a moment, because there are millions of people today who would entrust their souls to his supposed teaching as dharma (truth). The earliest stone inscriptions mentioning Buddhism date around 250 BC, but the "golden age" of Buddhism that produced the scriptures in Pali and Sanskrit occurred between 100 BC and 400 AD, and that is 400 to 900 years after he lived, if he did exist.

At first, Buddhists were not concerned with his actual historicity any more than Hindus cared about the non-history of Krishna. All their divine beings were mythical, and they called them real while viewing this life as the illusion. It was only later, when the story was labelled a myth, especially in comparison to the eyewitness accounts of Christ, that the scramble for shreds of reality took place. The dates of the "historical" Buddha’s life most commonly accepted today are 563 to 483 BC. He is known by various names such as Gotama, Gautama, Sakya, Shakyamuni and Siddhartha. Like one of the Zoroasters, Gautama Buddha was possibly a real man, but in that case he was most certainly inflated to superhero and god-man status by blending him with the Mesopotamian and Vedic deities.

According to Hindu myth, Buddha comes after Krishna, as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. Buddha was conceived and born to Mahamaya after a white elephant visited her womb, and he came into the world on a perfect full moon, beautiful to look at, sublime in complexion…and so on. This is classical Hindu story telling, no different from the epics of Greece invented at the same time. Fairy tales do not need the historical “ring of truth” or the nitty-gritty of documented reality. Compare this with what the apostles (eyewitnesses and companions) of Jesus recorded as “the true light,” the real Son whom Isaiah prophesied would “have no comeliness.” At first, his mother was almost rejected by her husband-to-be, Joseph, who mistook her pre-marital pregnancy for unfaithfulness. Now she had to deliver the child in an animal shelter. He was born in a stable because there was no room in which to lodge when his parents came to the town of Bethlehem to be registered in a population census as required by Roman law. That is history, and the opening chapter of Luke is sometimes used in university courses as an excellent example of how to write it down. In Buddha’s case, we do not have history; instead there are literally hundreds of fluffy tales of his arrival, including being born from a lotus bud. So was Horus, the rising sun of Egypt and son of the black-skinned Osiris, another Sumerian clone.

Even the way the Buddha sits came from Mesopotamia; numerous idols have been found demonstrating this. The way he holds his thumb and finger in a circle as he meditates in yoga position is the same old sacred zero seed and circle of life held in the hands of the Akkadian divine kings. The eightfold wheel and sun-disk behind his head is Shamash. "Certainly even in primitive Buddhism, Sakyamuni had come to be identified with the sun-god, and in his nativity likened to the rising sun…The bull (Nandi) is of course an emblem of Siva; the lion of his consort Durga. The epithet Sakyapringara, meaning bull, hero, eminent person, is sometimes applied to Buddha." (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, pp.278-9)

That Buddha  was equated with the Vedic sungod Vishnu  is obvious, appearing as the head of that ancient “trikaya” (trinity) which included Indra  the storm god and Brahma  the creator. “Time and again in the legend of Buddha’s life, Indra and Brahma appear as subordinates waiting upon the Enlightened One.” (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, p.32) And where did this god-man receive his enlightenment? Under the sacred tree, of course, the ancient Mesopotamian symbol found beneath the eightfold solar god Shamash, the magic tree beside which sat the divine seed of Sumeria or Akkadia, holding the zero. Add to this that Buddha was very often portrayed as black, like the cowherd Krishna, and with the distinct peppercorn hair of a Cushite, and sitting exactly like the black Vishnu on the serpent throne. This is a clone, meditating and drawing inspiration from the darkest source of all. But before we look further at Buddha’s Babylonian connections, let us examine his teaching as it was developed from the Hindu Upanishads, with Nirvana replacing the ultimate nothingness of Brahman.

"The Buddha, a designation which means the ‘Enlightened One,’ died in northeastern India between 500 and 350 BC. According to tradition, his family name was Gautama; later sources call him Siddhartha, which means ‘He Who Has Reached His Goal’…Discarding the teachings of his contemporaries, through meditation he achieved enlightenment, or ultimate understanding. Thereafter, the Buddha instructed his followers (the sangha) in the dharma (Pali dhamma, ‘truth’) and the ‘Middle Way,’ a path between a worldly life and extremes of self-denial. The essence of the Buddha’s early preaching was said to be the Four Noble Truths: (1) life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering; (2) suffering is a result of one’s desires for pleasure, power, and continued existence; (3) in order to stop disappointment and suffering one must stop desiring; and (4) the way to stop desiring and thus suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path – right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration. The realization of the truth of anatman (no eternal self) and pratitya-samutpada (the law of dependent origination) was taught as essential for the indescribable state of release called nirvana (‘blowing out’)." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Buddhism, Std.Ver.1999)

The “noble” half-truth concerning craving is significant, because it does partly correspond to the Scriptural command to avoid coveting, that key transgression which opens the door to the breaking of any of the other nine commandments of the LORD. But now we are talking about a Person, the Creator who lays down the law to distinguish Himself from the counterfeits. Buddha was at best an agnostic (the label some give of atheist is too strong) and aimed for bliss in an impersonal nothingness. In his correct attempt to erase selfishness he erroneously did everything he could to obliterate the self, the image of the Creator in which he was made. To do this he, or rather whoever refined this story, made up a series of four “truths” and eight “rights.” The numbers cleverly matched the four faces of Brahma, the four arms of the sungod Vishnu with whom Buddha had merged, and the eight sacred spokes of the sun-wheel.

It is simple to make up any "right" if you do not specify exactly what it means, just as it is easy to make anything "wrong" by putting the term "too much" in front of it. Too much food. Too much sleep. Too much automatically makes something wrong without even specifying how much is too much. This is a classic Hindu ploy of vagueness that passes for wisdom, and it is used by millions of "gurus" who simply tell you not to have or do "too much" of anything. Early Buddhist writers might just as well have included "right eating" and "right resting" and made it a tenfold path. But that would not have matched the sun-wheel. Try adding another commandment to the LORD’s list that is not already covered in his ten. And those commandments get specific. When the Word of God tells you not to covet it also speaks in the same breath of material possessions and desiring other peoples’ spouses. Buddha strove to obliterate all desire, but there are things to be rightly desired, such as meditating on the Word of God day and night. (Psalm 1:2) That is the correct focus of meditation, not your belly button. The truth, like the real heaven, is tangible and describable. Nirvana is indescribable precisely because it is the language of nothingness.

When the Word of God tells you about right action and right thinking it spells it out, “You shall love the LORD with all your heart, mind and soul, and have no other god but Him, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Yes, your self, reader, the one God gave you. You cannot love a neighbour properly if you do not love your self. Jesus did not erase his Self. He laid it down for his elect, sweating blood at the prospect of separating his Self from his Father as he atoned for their sin, and he returned from the grave as his Self, by the joint will of his Self and his Father. (John 2:19-21; 10:17-18) Buddha  attempted to erase his self, died in the darkness, was cremated, stayed dead, and will be raised again, as his self, to face the true Light - in person, assuming that Gautama  was a real person, which is highly unlikely. When faced with this ominous reality, Hindus and Buddhists usually play a mind game, saying that Jesus was raised visibly and touchably to eyewitnesses while avatars like Krishna  or Buddha were reborn “inconspicuously.” That is still the same old language of nothingness, of myth, the same make-believe perfected in the “rebirths” of the first counterfeit sons: Tammuz of Sumeria  and Osiris  of Egypt. Buddha is merely one more clone of that dark lord, the son of Cush, embellished with Hindu jargon and philosophy.

Buddhists are divided as to when “pure” and simple Buddhism gave way to the usual “revival” of priests, saints, relics, temples and all the mumbo jumbo that accompanies a “great religion.” The answer is it happened at the very beginning. It was previously noted that even in primitive Buddhism, Sakyamuni  was already identified with the sungod and with the bull. The supposed sequence of there first being a hardcore sangha of disciples who held to the Hinayana  (Lesser Vehicle: the belief that he was an ordinary man who hit the jackpot in enlightenment) that was later followed by the Mahayana  (Greater Vehicle: the belief that he was an omnipresent spirit capable of saving others) is incorrect. These vehicles came out of the starting gate together, but were not fully refined until the first few centuries of the Christian era. It was all a parallel development.

Bodhisattvas (mini-buddhas or lesser enlightened ones) were created as fast as Christians could invent their "saints." Temples for the Buddha were built as rapidly as Christians could build their churches. Fantastic myths were added to the life of Buddha, and female goddesses added to the mix as quickly as Mary could be turned into the Perpetual Virgin and Mother of God. The contradictions became staggering, and remain so. A celibate Pope in the Dark Ages could fornicate and produce illegitimate offspring and yet be called "God upon earth," pronouncing infallible dogma from his throne which clashed with the previous Pope’s doctrine. His "holiness" the Dalai Lama (a bodhisattva) who ran away from the Communist invasion of Tibet could still receive worship as the supreme god. This is a classic characteristic of the religious mind, the denial and suspension of reality no matter how ludicrous the flaw. Priests in Mesopotamia knew just how to milk this weakness of the human soul. So did Christians and Buddhists.

Gautama’s statues and those of the bodhisattvas are as numerous as Christian effigies of Christ and the “saints” and they are all remarkably similar. Relic worship became a cornerstone of Buddhism, with huge stupas (burial mounds that became shrines and pagoda temples) built to house the remains of Buddha, his ashes allegedly divided into (but of course) eight portions. Miraculously, like the splinters from Christ’s “cross” which Christians reproduced faster than his own loaves and fishes, the relics of Buddha multiplied enormously in quantity. Each stupa that houses these venerated objects is not just a reliquary but also a kind of holy mountain similar to a pyramid, a symbolic refuge from another Flood as well as a model of the cosmos and burial place for a divine being. Many stupas are decorated with the sacred mandala, the circle and square, representing heaven and earth, and they are further proof that Buddha was intimately identified with the sun. “It is not surprising that some scholars have interpreted the whole of the Buddha story, as it appears in later texts, as a reworking of far earlier solar myths.” (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, p.31)

"The hemispherical form of the stupa appears to have derived from pre-Buddhist burial mounds in India…Worship of a stupa consists in walking around the monument in the direction taken by the path of the sun (pradaksina)…Miniature stupas and pagodas are also used by Buddhists throughout Asia as votive offerings. Stupas were also built by adherents of Jainism to commemorate their saints." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Stupa, Std.Ver.1999) Worshippers and pilgrims circle around these stupas, which are built in the shape of half an egg (anda) or bell (dagaba) containing a womb (garbha) in which the deity resides. The ritual is called circumambulation, a very ancient form of sun worship that took place around shrines and villages. The term “going round in circles” comes from this rite and is now aptly used to describe a person who is lost or in the dark. The words stupor and stupid almost certainly come from stupa via Rome’s stupere (Latin: dazed, confused).

"Like the Mesopotamian ziggurat, the basic concept of the stupa was an architectural diagram of the cosmos…the world mountain rising from earth to heaven…These concepts of Mesopotamian and Vedic origin determined the form of the stupa mount, and the actual veneration may be traced to pre-Buddhist solar cults. A reminiscence of solar cults may be discerned in the prescribed ritual of circumambulation in which the worshipper, entering by the eastern gateway, walked around the mound in a clockwise direction, describing thereby the course of the sun through the heavens." "As an illustration of the survival or reworking of far earlier concepts in Buddhism, it may be pointed out that the Eightfold Path is no more than an analogy based on the Eightfold Path of circumambulation in the plan of the Indo-Aryan village." (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, pp.49, 278)

The walking devotee could also view events from the lives or avatars of Buddha. The Great Stupa in Sanchi, India (c.2nd Century BC), is decorated with these stories (jatakas) mixed with countless other mythological figures. Similar stupas are found in South East Asia where both Hinduism and Buddhism spread in the early Christian era, from Burma to Cambodia, Vietnam, Java and Borneo. In Borobudur, Java, the largest stupa (c.800 AD) has scenes portraying Buddha’s various lives and the "holy mountain" is crowned with his statues, the miraculous son of heaven sitting inside the womb of many stone bells, each sculpted in a lattice fashion so that he can be seen meditating inside. In the temples and pyramids of Angkor, Cambodia, both Hindu deities and Buddhas existed side by side to satisfy both the Brahmin priests and Buddhist monks.

As Buddhism grew, these monks appeared in cloaks and headgear that rivalled the priests of Pharaoh. Like the Babylonian priests who spoke in Sumerian, the Roman Catholic priests in Latin and Brahmins in ancient Sanskrit, Buddhist priests assumed the same use of "sacred" language and ritual hocus pocus to promise redemption to those in their flock. "The last phase of the religion offered salvation through the priests, recitation of unintelligible spells and magic formulas which would be neither understood nor recited by the devotees." (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, p.35) The wheel had brought them full circle, right back to the ambiguous religion of Nimrod, the confuser of language posing as the divine communicator.

Like the Vedic sungod Vishnu, Buddha assumed his yoga posture sitting on the throne of the great Serpent, "the naga or water spirit, described in serpentine form, though in later stages the naga is represented as a human with a cobra hood attached to the back of his shoulders. All these deities, so deeply rooted in the belief and superstition of the Indian people, came to be absorbed into the pantheons of both Hindu and Buddhist art." (The Art and Architecture of India, Rowland, Penguin, p.25) And it was as Buddha, not Vishnu, that the Son of Babel re-entered China to overlay the Mesopotamian heritage that had already existed there under T’ien (Anu) and Shang-ti (Bel). The lions and dragons of the Babylonian Ishtar became the favourite symbols in Chinese festivals, and the mother goddess rose to prominence in all the forms in which she appeared from Egypt to Rome, from chaste virgin to the mother with child.

Considering the fact that Buddha did not accept female disciples and forbade his male disciples to have anything to do with women (a source of unacceptable desire) the role of any goddess in Buddhism would be astonishing if we did not already know Buddha’s real origins. If the Gautama myth were true, it would have been far more logical that he merely created a religion of celibate monks, but his legend is rooted in the Sumerian prototype. And the dark lord knows that this is the blueprint that the natural heart adores. That is why Lucifer constantly repeats and reinvents it. Like the early Christians who said they believed in Christ but were unable to give up their cherished mother-worship, so too Buddhists had to satisfy their craving for the female from Babel.

The Far Eastern partiality for ancestor worship created a Buddhist mother figure who echoed not only Ishtar but also Eve (whose Biblical name means "mother of all living"), often portrayed holding the fruit of the tree in her hand. This is traditionally a pomegranate, a fruit originally from Persia and India that it is entirely filled with seeds, representing not only fertility and the human race but also all the numerous little Zoroasters, Vishnus and Buddhas. We do not know the identity of the real tree in Eden or even that its fruit was inherently edible or poisonous. It matters only that it brought immediate spiritual death for disobedience ("you shall not eat it, for in the day you eat of it you shall die") followed by eventual physical death and decay. (Genesis 2:17; 3:1-20)

The Serpent had told Eve that the fruit was good and would make her wise "like God." She ate, and gave some to her husband to eat, so he blamed her, and she blamed the Serpent. The master of deceit, whom Jesus called "the father of lies" (and the father of the religious people in this verse: John 8:44), had snared the very first man and woman in a timeless spiritual ploy, promising enlightenment through something that the LORD had put off limits. This was no different a command than, "You shall have no other gods except me, otherwise you will perish." In the Far East, Buddhists seeking wisdom and enlightenment from the Serpent received any number of goddesses with open arms, particularly the Great Mother with the "fruit" of her womb (the counterfeit son) and the "fruit" of her wisdom, and they ate their fill.

"The appearance of a universal mother goddess in Indian Buddhism is not surprising and was easily rendered theologically acceptable. She appears in Mahayana Buddhism under two aspects, as the personification of Supreme Wisdom and as the Mother of all Buddhas, as manifest especially in Mahamaya the virgin mother of Sakyamuni. As universal mother, she is known as Tara the Saviouress…and thus far from pure and chaste." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropedia, Buddhist Mythology, 15^th. Ed. 1974) She also appears as Hariti, a woman whom in Buddha’s myth he converted from eating others by hiding one of her own 500 children under his begging bowl. Thereafter she assumed the identity of the original Sumerian fable, the divine Mother with her Child, goddess of childbirth and protection. In the Word of God, such deities are called abominations, particularly in regard to the sexual twists often associated with them. One of the Far East’s exceptionally fruitful, seedy and seed-filled abominations, transformed from the Hindu Kali, is called Cunti, the great mother of 700,000 Buddhas, and her name is the origin of the particularly vulgar four-letter word for the female womb. Another of these goddesses even had a sex change; a budding "Buddha-to-be" called Avolokiteshvara.

"During T’ang [the dynasty, 626-755 AD] the Buddhist god of Indian origin, Avolokiteshvara, gradually assumed feminine form and became known as Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. The cult of Kwan Yin was accepted by Chinese of all faiths…depicted standing on a rock, seated on an open lotus flower, rising from the waves or riding a mythical animal. Although her Madonna-like aspect, with a child in her arms, is claimed to have been a later development, there is [from the T’ang period] a small pottery figure of a seated mother and child." (The Golden Age of Chinese Art, Hugh Scott, Tuttle, 1966, p.86) This was 500 years before the Christians arrived in China with their own version of Isis and Horus, renamed Mary and Jesus, only to find that they were already there. In the Yuan dynasty (1206-1368 AD), "Kuan-yin, the protectoress of children, was often depicted. Consequently the Mother and Child brought to China at this time by the early missionaries were no surprise to the Chinese." (Chinese and Japanese Art, Jean Buhot, Anchor Books, 1967, p.163)

"Avolokiteshvara, Chinese Kuan-Yin, Japanese Kannon, the bodhisattva ("Buddha-to-be") of infinite compassion and mercy, possibly the most popular of all Buddhist deities, beloved throughout the Buddhist world…in Indochina and Thailand as Lokeshvara (Lord of the World)… His worship as Kuan-yin was introduced into China as early as the 1st century AD and had entered all Buddhist temples by the 6th century… Later images display attributes of both genders… Kuan-yin forms part of a ruling triad…Images of the three are often placed together in temples…The bodhisattva was introduced into Tibet in the 7th century, where he quickly became the most popular figure in the Lamaist pantheon, successively reincarnated in each Dalai Lama. He is credited with introducing the prayer formula om mani padmehum (frequently translated ‘the jewel is in the lotus’) to the people of Tibet." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Avolokiteshvara, Std.Ver.1999)

The "jewel" in this lotus is the same as Horus the sun-child of Isis and Osiris, but given a transgender twist. The immense popularity of this effeminate bodhisattva, particularly in monasteries amongst celibate priests and abbots like the Dalai Lama, should be obvious. The cloistered monks in Christian monasteries produced many similar fetishes in this unnatural and dysfunctional lifestyle inherited from the priests of Babel and Egypt. It is significant to note the power of this aberration. Avolokiteshvara not only crossed the sex boundary but also became the sole deity worshipped in Buddhist countries practising the "traditional doctrines" (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos) that do not normally recognize bodhisattvas at all. In Sri Lanka, for instance, he is known as Natha-deva and often confused with Maitreya, the Buddha yet to come.

The Chinese believe Kuan-Yin can assume any sexual form to help in the redemption of souls. This is not unlike the modern Christian movement that is attempting to neuter or make a she-male of the LORD. This is a very important development, so the point will be examined here and now. God is always referred to in male terminology in His Word. Christians have always worked on changing this. From the earliest centuries they invented the female co-saviour. Now some seek to neuter God entirely in "political correctness." The LORD is not going to care about political correctness on the Last Day. He sent his only begotten Son, not a daughter, and that is who is coming again to wrap up the Day.

Jesus said that men and women "neither marry nor are given in marriage" in heaven (Matthew 22:30) but he did not say that there was neither male nor female in heaven. Those neutered clones are the products of Far Eastern thinking. "It has not yet been revealed what we shall be," writes the apostle John, "but we shall be like him (Christ)." (1 John 3:2) Like Christ, the elect shall have new and imperishable bodies, but they will also take with them the selves they once were in this world, albeit purified from every blemish. The resurrected Christ was still a man, and though he pre-existed as the eternal Son of God he returned to heaven taking that body with him. He sat down again as the Son (not daughter) at the right hand of the Father (not mother).

There is no Mother of God, except in Christian cursing. Mary, who was indeed blessed beyond imagination as the vessel for the formation of Christ in the flesh, was simply that, a surrogate mother, miraculously set apart from the normal conception of human life to be the bearer of the child Jesus. She did not conceive God; she conceived a man, and was, in a truly extraordinary sense, the mother of that man, but not the Mother of God, Who is eternal and has no beginning or end. The neo-pagan cult of the Early Church gave the title “Mother of God” to Mary in order to continue the veneration of the ancient and immensely popular idol that was cherished by every nation around them. (See: Chapter 6, Early Christian Councils, The Truth Which Sets Free)

Nor is Mary the physical expression of the Holy Spirit, as some Christians like to describe her, or part of a trinity. The Holy Spirit is always referred to as a distinct person, as the LORD, and in male terminology throughout Scripture, including all references to him in Christ’s own words. Mother Worship and Mother and Child Worship are nowhere to be found in the Word of God except amongst the ethnic (from ethnos, meaning heathen) religions of Babylon, Egypt, Canaan and Asia Minor. It may form part of the basis for the great reunion gradually taking place right now as men and women move back toward the Mother Church in the final inter-denominational and inter-religious swarm. But this is not a reunion that any of Christ’s elect should be anywhere near, any more than Lot should have loitered around Sodom when the LORD was on his way to incinerate it.

The Divine Emperor, the "Son of Heaven," was regarded as the descendant of Amaterasu. The Imperial Family still exists and is traced to the lord of the ruling clan that lived in Yamoto, near the present city of Nara. There were countless shrines to nature spirits and individual deities, thus Shinto is sometimes considered a religion of shrine worship. The privileged priests alone were permitted to enter the "house of the god" while worshippers offered prayers from a distance. The area dedicated to each god was not enclosed with walls but approached through a freestanding timber archway (torii). Worship of the ancestors was similar to that found in China, and Fuji-Yama became the holy mountain or equivalent of the T’ian in China. It is actually a triad of volcanoes, the youngest one being Shin-Fuji ("New Fuji"). The original name of Fuji-Yama was Ainu (Anu, the Sumerian sky god, Noah deified) and carried the meaning "everlasting life." The people needed no monumental pyramid or stupa; Fuji-Yama provided a natural version of the sacred mountain reaching into heaven and eternity.

Among the "seven gods of good fortune," still enormously popular today, two often appear together as father and son: Daikoku, the "Great Black One," and his son Ebisu, the fish god. Ebisu is considered native to Japan but this is not so. He is merely the Japanese version of the Sumerian Enki and the Canaanite Dagon, both gods based on the black family of Ham and Cush. Even Ebisu’s hat is that of Dagon, often shown as prominently two-pointed. Today, Ebisu is a favourite of merchants, his image appearing in countless shops and on a popular brand of Japanese beer. Ebisu’s father, Daikoku, is a blend of a mythological hero (the son of a storm god) and the Buddhist deity, Mahakala (Sanskrit: "Great Black One," called Mgon-po in Tibet). He is sometimes depicted with three heads, like Cernunnos (the Celtic or Indo-European Cronus) and his symbols of the moneybag and rats are very similar to those of Cernunnos. "Daikoku, in Japanese mythology, one of the Shichi-fuku-jin (Seven Gods of Luck); the god of wealth and guardian of farmers. He is depicted in legend and art as dark-skinned, stout, carrying a wish-granting mallet in his right hand, a bag of precious things slung over his back, and sitting on two rice bags. Rats are sometimes shown nibbling at the rice, further emphasizing the theme of prosperity." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Daikoku, Std.Ver.1999)

Shinto has no Japanese founder or scriptures since it was a foreign import, but because it was the first to arrive it is considered indigenous. The term Shinto did not appear in Japanese literature until the 6th Century AD. It has a composite meaning, the "Divine Superior Way," to distinguish it from the other religions that were designated as foreign by comparison. The label of foreign generally meant inferior, and all foreigners were commonly referred to as barbarians. But both Buddhists and Christians poured through the gates to relegate Shinto to subordinate status. The worship of Buddha Amida and Shakyamuni and goddesses like Kannon rose to prominence. In the 16th Century AD, the Jesuits (Roman Catholic political and religious order particularly dedicated to promoting the Papacy and Mary) arrived with their version of the Virgin and Mother and Child. The "new" idolatry was absorbed into Japan’s own unique blend. But between 1624 and 1868 AD a strong nationalistic movement in favour of one Shinto nation under the Emperor resulted in persecution and expulsion of foreigners in a drive to purify Japan.

A critical development in this was Zen Buddhism, which abandoned traditional pacifism and appealed to the samurai mentality of a country that had been feudal for many centuries. The "bushido" warrior code of strict honour and dutiful martial service to a lord, no matter what the cost, blended perfectly with the individual self-erasure of Buddhism to produce an intense desire for the nation and veneration of its god-king, a fanaticism that eventually provided the suicide pilots of World War II. Thus, in the I9th Century, Shinto became the state religion, with all shrines under government control and ceremonies designed to encourage devotion to the Emperor of the Divine Way and the invincible nation. Japan became expansionary, looking to invade its Asian neighbours, and then joined the Axis with Germany in the Second World War. This came to an abrupt end with the dropping of the two atomic bombs, after which the Emperor disclaimed divine descendancy from Amaterasu. This terrible event actually foreshadows the End of the world, when a universal firestorm will forever convince all nations that all their gods and goddesses are counterfeit.

Shinto now appears as a collection of sects, some teaching traditional nature worship. Buddhism and Christianity have revived and some sects also follow Confucian and Taoist ethics. But the traditional overall sense of Shinto and the concept of Japanese superiority is still utterly ingrained in the national psyche and society, as any visiting worker or foreign resident can attest, and this will always play a part in the country’s development, including possible militarism and re-armament.