Chapter 14

In further comparing the similarities between ancient Babylon and the “Babylon” of the New Testament, Hislop next refers to the objects of worship by both Babylon and Rome. He writes: “In those countries of Europe where the Papal system is most completely developed... all appearances of worshipping the King Eternal and Invisible is almost extinct, while the Mother and Child are the grand objects of worship. Exactly so, in this latter respect, also was it in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names Isis and Osiris [called most frequently Horus]... in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter... the boy; in Greece, as Ceres the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast... and even in Thibet [Tibet], China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself.

“.... That son, though represented as a child in his mother’s arms, was a person of great stature and immense bodily powers, as well as most fascinating manners. In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. 8: 14) under the name of Tammuz ...‘ The Lamented One. ’ ” (The Two Babylons, pp. 14, 20, 21). Now let us turn to Ezekiel 8: 12- 14 and see this information applied to Israel in Scripture: “Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? For they say, The Lord seeth us not... He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.” Friends, Ezekiel’s prophetic words have a dual application, and apply not only to what had taken place in God’s sanctuary during ancient times, but also to what will take place in the church at the end of time when “Babylon the Great” will cause “the inhabitants of the earth” to be “made drunk with the wine of her fornication [false doctrines].” (Rev. 17: 5, 2). Since a woman represents a church, then the church here is “the house of Israel,” weeping for the god of Babylon in shameless apostasy; but this sad course is to be repeated again, worldwide, at the end of time. In other words, such blatant idolatry is in the church today in the form of objects of worship— Saints, Baby Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. Had I been praying to Semiramis and Tammuz all those early years of my life? It sickens me today to think that I had been praying to the dead! And what about the reports of the weeping statues of the Virgin Mary? Is Semiramis still “lamenting” for her son Tammuz? Hislop tells us that “the lamented one,” who was adored as a child, “seems, in point of fact, to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified ‘The Son’.... Now, this Ninus, or ‘Son, ’ borne in the arms of the Babylonian Madonna, is so described as very clearly to identify him with Nimrod.... of whom the Scriptural account is, that he first ‘began to be mighty on the earth, ’ and that the ‘beginning of his kingdom was Babylon ’ [See Genesis 10: 8- 10; see margin for verse 10 ].” (Ibid., p. 23). As to how Nimrod died, Scripture is silent. Hislop continues: “His wife Semiramis, who from an originally humble position, had been raised to share with him the throne of Babylon. What, in this emergency, shall she do? Shall she quietly forego the pomp and pride to which she has been raised? No. Though the death of her husband has given a rude shock to her power, yet her resolution and unbounded ambition were in no wise checked. On the contrary, her ambition took a still higher flight. In life her husband had been honoured as a hero; in death she will have him worshipped as a god, yea, as the woman’s promised seed, ‘Zeroashta, ’ who was destined to bruise the serpent’s head, and who, in doing so, was to have his own heel bruised.” (Ibid., pp. 58, 59). Utterly amazing! The counterfeit of Genesis 3: 15 began in Babylon.

Hislop proceeds to show how this blatant idolatry has spread all over the world. Another feature of these “Mysteries” was magic , which Hislop calls the “twin sister of idolatry .” It was through the magical arts, and their “various tricks” and “strange and amazing objects” that Tammuz, the great god, the central object of their worship, was “revealed to them in the way most fitted to soothe their feelings and engage their blind affections... Tammuz, who had been slain, and for whom such lamentations had been made, was still alive, and encompassed with divine and heavenly glory.... Thus the whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man ; and when once the worship of one dead man was established, the worship of many more was sure to follow .

“.... The scheme, thus skillfully formed, took effect. Semiramis gained glory from her dead and deified husband; and in course of time both of them , under the names Rhea and Nin, or ‘Goddess- Mother and Son, ’ were worshipped with an enthusiasm that was incredible, and their images were everywhere set up and adored.... This son, thus worshipped in his mother’s arms, was looked upon as invested with all the attributes, and called by almost all the names of the promised Messiah. As Christ, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, was called Adonai, The Lord, so Tammuz was called Adonis. Under the name of Mithras, he was worshipped as the ‘Mediator. ’ As Mediator and head of the covenant of grace, he was styled Baal- berith, Lord of the Covenant (Judges 8: 33).... Thus daringly and directly was a mere mortal set up in Babylon [as has been the Virgin Mary in spiritual Babylon] in opposition to the ‘Son of the Blessed. ’ ” (Ibid., 67- 70, 73, 74).

Friends, can you not plainly see how popery is baptized paganism? Hislop continues: “If the child was to be adored, much more the mother. The mother, in point of fact, became the favorite object of worship . To justify this worship, the mother was raised to divinity as well as her son, and she was looked upon as destined to complete that bruising of the serpent’s head.... The Roman church maintains that it was not so much the seed of the woman, as the woman herself, that was to bruise the head of the serpent. In defiance of all grammar, she renders the Divine denunciation against the serpent thus: ‘She shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise her heel. ’ The same was held by the ancient Babylonians, and symbolically represented in their temples [and in the book The Thunder of Justice].

“... As time wore away, and the facts of Semiramis’s history became obscured, her son’s birth was boldly declared to be miraculous: and therefore she was called ‘Alma Mater’ [explained in Hislop’s footnote, page 76, from its ancient meanings to have the meaning of ‘the Virgin Mother’ ].” (Ibid., 75, 76).

Table of Contents
1 - My Early Adoration of the Virgin Mary
2 - The First Lie– Man’s Immortality
3 - Modern Day Spiritualism– a Masterpiece of Deception
4 - The Thunder of Justice and the Marian Movement
5 - The Woman of Genesis 3: 15 and Revelation 12: 1- 6
6 - The 1260- day Prophecy and the Papacy
7 - The Deadly Wound Was Healed
8 - Other Characteristics of the Little Horn of Daniel 7– He Blasphemes God
9 - He Thinks to Change Times and Laws
10 - Satan’s Gradual Change of the Fourth Commandment
11 - The Seal of God
12 - The Origin of “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots”
13 - A Personal Testimony in Regard to the Sacraments
14 - The Mother and Child– the Grand Objects of Worship
15 - The Counterfeit Seal of God
16 - The Madonna of Rome Is the Madonna of Ancient Babylon
17 - The Mark of the Beast and the United States’ Role in Bible Prophecy
18 - The New Eve of the Coming New Age
19 - The Crowning Act in the Drama of Deception– Satan’s Personation of Christ
20 - Epilogue– The Three Angels’ Messages

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