For over three hundred years the rulers of the Roman Empire worshipped the god Mithras. Knownthroughout Europe and Asia by the names Mithra, Mitra, Meitros, Mihr, Mehr, and Meher, theveneration of this god began some 4000 years ago in Persia, where it was soon imbedded withBabylonian doctrines. The faith spread east through India to China, and reached west throughoutthe entire length of the Roman frontier; from Scotland to the Sahara Desert, and from Spain tothe Black Sea. Sites of Mithraic worship have been found in Britain, Italy, Romania, Germany,Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Persia, Armenia, Syria, Israel, and North Africa.

In Rome, more than a hundred inscriptions dedicated to Mithras have been found, in additionto 75 sculpture fragments, and a series of Mithraic temples situated in all parts of the city.

One of the largest Mithraic temples built in Italy now lies under the present site of theChurch of St. Clemente, near the Colosseum in Rome.

The widespread popularity and appeal of Mithraism as the final and most refined form ofpre-Christian paganism was discussed by the Greek historian Herodotus, the Greek biographerPlutarch, the neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry, the Gnostic heretic Origen, and St. Jerome thechurch Father. Mithraism was quite often noted by many historians for its many astonishingsimilarities to Christianity.

The faithful referred to Mithras (REMEMBER 4000 years ago) as "the Light of the World",symbol of truth, justice, and loyalty. He was mediator between heaven and earth and was amember of a Holy Trinity. According to Persian mythology, Mithras was born of a virgin giventhe title 'Mother of G-d'. The god remained celibate throughout his life, and valuedself-control, renunciation and resistance to sensuality among his worshippers. Mithrasrepresented a system of ethics in which brotherhood was encouraged in order to unify againstthe forces of evil.

The worshippers of Mithras held strong beliefs in a celestial heaven and an infernal hell.They believed that the benevolent powers of the god would sympathize with their suffering andgrant them the final justice of immortality and eternal salvation in the world to come. Theylooked forward to a final day of judgement in which the dead would resurrect, and to a finalconflict that would destroy the existing order of all things to bring about the triumph oflight over darkness.

Purification through a ritualistic baptism was required of the faithful, who also took partin a ceremony in which they drank wine and ate bread to symbolize the body and blood of the god.Sundays were held sacred, and the birth of the god was celebrated annually on December the 25th.After the earthly mission of this god had been accomplished, he took part in a Last Supper withhis companions before ascending to heaven, to forever protect the faithful from above.

However, it would be a vast oversimplification to suggest that Mithraism was the singlefore-runner of early Christianity. Aside from Christ and Mithras, there were plenty of otherdeities (such as Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Balder, Attis, and Dionysus) said to have died andresurrected. Many classical heroic figures, such as Hercules, Perseus, and Theseus, were saidto have been born through the union of a virgin mother and divine father. Virtually every paganreligious practice and festivity that couldn't be suppressed or driven underground waseventually incorporated into the rites of Gentile Christianity as it spread across Europe andthroughout the world.

The Lord's supper was not invented by Paul, but was borrowed by him from Mithraism, themystery religion that existed long before Christianity and was Christianity's chief competitorup until the time of Constantine. In Mithraism, the central figure is the mythical Mithras, whodied for the sins of mankind and was resurrected.

Believers in Mithras were rewarded with eternal life. Part of the Mithraic communion liturgyincluded the words, "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will bemade one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation."

Answer for yourself: Any of this vaguely familiar to the Christian who follows a JewishRabbi?

The irony of this whole mess is that a Jewish Rabbi would have nothing to do with suchthings.

Answer for yourself: Why do we?

The early Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Tertullian tried to say that Mithraism copied theLord's Supper from Christianity, but they were forced to say that demons had copied it sinceonly demons could copy an event in advance of its happening! Nice try!

They could not say that the followers of Mithras had copied it because it was a known factthat Mithraism had included the ritual a long time before Christ was born.

Answer for yourself: Where did Mithraism come from?

The ancient historian Plutarch mentioned Mithraism in connection with the pirates of Ciliciain Asia Minor encountering the Roman general Pompey in 67 BC. More recently, in 1989 Mithraicscholar David Ulansey wrote a book, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, in which heconvincingly shows that Mithraism originated in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. That this isalso the home town of the apostle Paul cannot be a coincidence.

Answer for yourself: Is it any wonder why the Jews, who know their Jewish Scriptures betterthan Gentile Christians, and who have been instructed by their Rabbis concerning suchdeceptions, reject the Pauline Yeshua as depicted in the New Testament?

Answer for yourself: What does this say about the "inspiration of the New Testament?"

Answer for yourself: Would the real Jesus (Yeshua of history) both believe and practice, letalone follow as his religious belief system, once knowing these facts..the pagan religionmodeled around him in the New Testament? If not, will you continue?

Answer for yourself: Knowing this, should you not possibly seek the Jewish roots of yourfaith and follow a more Biblically centered life-style by rejecting such lies and accepting theTorah of Sinai and learning about the meaning of "Gentile in-grafting into Israel" instead oftheir "in-grafting into the Gentile church"?

Simply said, because of the corruption of the oral traditions about Yeshua given to us by theGentile heritage of the Church, along with the alterations of existing documents surrounding theevents of Yeshua's life, which would later become the New Testament, we have accepted such as Ipresent here as "truth" concerning a Jewish Rabbi named "Yeshua"? What we fail to realize isthat Yeshua spent his entire life teaching repentance as did Moses and the Prophets and wouldhave nothing to do with such false religions as Christianity has become today. The informationpresented in this article is a short summary from The Paganism in Our Christianity by ArthurWeigall, the Knickerbocker Press, 1928.

During the first three and a half centuries A.D. the increasingly powerful rival ofChristianity was the religion known as Mithraism, that is to say, the worship of the solar godMithra or Mithras which had been introduced into Rome by Cilician seamen about 68B.C., andlater on spread throughout the Roman world, until, just before the final triumph ofChristianity, it was the most powerful pagan faith in the Empire. What we must not lose sightof is that it predated Christianity and will serve as the foundation of many false teachingsattributed to Yeshua and affixed to his life. It was suppressed by the Christians in 376 and377A.D.; but its collapse seems to have been due rather to the fact that by that time many ofits doctrines and ceremonies had been adopted by the Church, so that it was practically absorbed by its rival, Jesus Christ supplanting Mithra in men's worship without the need of any mental somersaults. At this point we at Bet Emet Ministries call you to study these facts for yourself and return to ?THE? faith once given to the saints. It was not Mithraism, but rather true Sinai faith where both Jews and non-Jews stood before the G-d of Israel and said "we will do all that you say."

Originally Mithra was one of the lesser gods of the ancient Persian pantheon, but he came tobe regarded as the spiritual Sun, the heavenly Light, and the chief and also the embodiment ofthe seven divine spirits of goodness; and already in the time of Christ he had risen to beco-equal with, though created by, Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda), the Supreme Being [J.M. Robertson,/Pagan Christs/, p. 290.], and Mediator between him and man [Plutarch, /Isis et Osiris/, ch.46; Julian, /In regem solem/, chs. 9, 10, 21.]. He appears to have lived an incarnate life onearth, and in some unknown manner to have suffered death for the good of mankind, an imagesymbolizing his resurrection being employed in his ceremonies [Tertullian, /Praescr/., ch.40.]. Tarsus, the home of St. Paul, was one of the great centers of his worship, being thechief city of the Cilicians; and, as will presently appear, there is a decided tinge ofMithraism in the Epistles and Gospels. Thus the designations of our Lord as the Dayspring fromon High [Luke, i. 78.], the Light [2 Cor. iv. 6; Eph. v. 13, 14; I. Thess. v. 5; etc.], the Sunof Righteousness [Malachi iv. 2]; and much used in Christianity, and similar expressions, areborrowed from or related to Mithraic phraseology.

Answer for yourself: What can a Jewish Rabbi, especially one such as Yeshua in the firstcentury and following the creation of Mithraism, find in common with such pagan elements?

Mithra was born from a rock [Firmicus, /De errore/, xxi.; etc.], as shown in Mithraicsculptures, being sometimes termed ''the god out of the rock'', and his worship was alwaysconducted in a cave; and the general belief in the early Church that Yeshua was born in a caveis a direct instance of the taking over of Mithraic ideas. The words of St. Paul,"They drank of that spiritual rock ... and that rock was Christ'' [I Corinthians x. 4.] areborrowed from the Mithraic scriptures; for not only was Mithra "the Rock'', but one of hismythological acts, which also appears in the acts of Moses, was the striking of the rock andthe producing of water from it which his followers eagerly drank. Justin Martyr [Justin Martyr,/Dial. with Trypho/, ch. 70.] complains that the prophetic words in the Book of Daniel [Danielii. 34.] regarding a stone which was cut out of the rock without hands were also used in theMithraic ritual; and it is apparent that the great importance attached by the early Church tothe supposed words of Yeshua in regard to Peter --- "Upon this rock I will build my church"[Matthew xvi. 18.] --- was due to their approximation to the Mithraic idea of the /Theos ekPetras/, the "G-d from the Rock''. Indeed, it may be that the reason of the Vatican hill atRome being regarded as sacred to Peter, the Christian "Rock'', was that it was already sacredto Mithra, for Mithraic remains have been found there.

The chief incident of Mithra's life was his struggle with a symbolical bull, which heoverpowered and sacrificed, and from the blood of the sacrifice came the world's peace andplenty, typified by ears of corn. The bull appears to signify the earth or mankind, and theimplication is that Mithra, like Christ, overcame the world; but in the early Persian writingsMithra is himself the bull [J.M. Robertson, /Pagan Christs/, p. 298.], the god thus sacrificinghimself, which is a close approximation to the Christian idea. In later times the bull isinterchangeable with a ram; but the zodiacal ram, Aries, which is associated with Mithra, wasreplaced by a lamb in the Persian zodiac [Bundahish, ii. 2.], so that it is a lamb which issacrificed [Garucci, /Les Myste`res du Syn. Phrygien/, p. 34.], as in the Paschal conceptionof Yeshua. That this sacrifice had originally a human victim, and that it later involved theidea of the sacramental death of a human being, is clear from the fact that the Churchhistorian, Socrates, believed that human victims were still sacrificed in the Mithraicmysteries down to some period before A.D. 360 [Socrates, /Eccles. Hist., bk. iii., ch. 2.].

Thus the paramount Christian idea of the sacrifice of the lamb of G-d was one with whichevery worshipper of Mithra was familiar; and just as Mithra was an embodiment of the sevenspirits of G-d, so the slain Lamb in the Book of Revelation has seven horns and seven eyes"which are the seven spirits of G-d'' [Revelation v. 6.]. Early writers say that a lamb wasconsecrated, killed, and eaten as an Easter rite in the Church; but Easter was a Mithraicfestival [Macrobius, /Saturnalia/, i. 18.], presumably of the resurrection of their god, andthe parallel is thus complete, in which regard it is to be noted that in the Seventh Centurythe Church endeavored without success to suppress the picturing of Christ as a lamb, owing tothe paganism involved in the idea [Bingham, /Christian Antiq./, viii. 8, sec. 11; xv. 2, sec.3.].

The ceremonies of purification by the sprinkling or drenching of the novice with the bloodof bulls or rams were widespread, and were to be found in the rites of Mithra. By thispurification a man was "born again" [Beugnot, /Hist. de la Dest. Du Paganisme/, i. p. 334.],and the Christian expression "washed in the blood of the Lamb" is undoubtedly a reflection ofthis idea, the reference thus being clear in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins". In this passage thewriter goes on to say: "Having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by anew and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh... let us draw near ... having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodieswashed with pure water" [Hebrews x. 19.]. But when we learn that the Mithraic initiationceremony consisted in entering boldly into a mysterious underground "holy of holies", with theeyes veiled, and there being sprinkled with blood, and washed with water, it is clear that theauthor of the Epistle was thinking of those Mithraic rites with which everybody at that timemust have been so familiar.

Another ceremony in the religion of Mithra was that of stepping across a channel of water,the hands being entangled in the entrails of a bird, signifying sin, and of being "liberated"on the other side; and this seems to be referred to by St. Paul when he says: "Stand fast inthe liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke ofbondage" [Galatians v. 1.].

Tertullian [Tertullian, /Praescr./, ch. 40.] states that the worshippers of Mithra practicedbaptism by water, through which they were thought to be redeemed from sin, and that the priestmade a sign upon the forehead of the person baptized; but as this was also a Christian rite,Tertullian declares that the Devil must have effected the coincidence for his wicked ends. "TheDevil'', he also writes, "imitates even the main parts of our divine mysteries", and "has goneabout to apply to the worship of idols those very things of which the administration ofChrist's sacraments consists".

In this rite he must be referring both to the baptismal rite and also to the Mithraiceucharist, of which Justin Martyr [Justin Martyr, /1 Apol./, ch. 66.] had already complainedwhen he declared that it was Satan who had plagiarized the ceremony, causing the worshippers ofMithra to receive the consecrated bread and cup of water. The ceremony of eating an incarnategod's body and drinking his blood is, of course, of very ancient and originally cannibalisticinception, and there are several sources from which the Christian rite may be derived, if, asmost critics think, it was not instituted as an actual ceremony by Yeshua; but its connectionwith the Mithraic rite is the most apparent.

Again, the "real Yeshua" would have nothing of such nonsense, for he called men to repenteverywhere and return to G-d by observing the Commandments of G-d, whereby if they obeyed them,they would then truly express with their lives a love for G-d and their fellow-man which wascreated in the Divine image.

Dear child of G-d, this must be our quest if we call ourselves by the name of Yeshua. Tofollow such pagan beliefs introduced and mixed with truth, and identify them with Yeshua isblasphemy. We need to wise up for the facts are there, and by the miracle of media today, theycan be known by everyone. The only problem is that you have never been told the truth before.You have believed every thing written in the Gentile New Testament without questions. Well, asyou can see for yourself, it is time to question!

The worshippers of Mithra were called "Soldiers of Mithra", which is probably the origin ofthe term "Soldiers of Christ'' and of the exhortation to Christians to "put on the armour oflight" [Romans xiii. 12. Compare also Ephesians vi. 11, 13.], Mithra being the god of Light. Asin Christianity, they recognized no social distinctions, both rich and poor, freemen andslaves, being admitted into the Army of the Lord. Mithraism had its austerities, typified inthe severe initiation rites endured by a "Soldier of Mithra"; and the Epistle to Timothy,similarly, exhorts the Christian to "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ" [2Timothy ii. 3.]. It also had its nuns and its male celibates [Tertullian, /Prascr./, ch. 40.];and one of its main tenets was the control of the flesh and the repudiation of the world, thisbeing symbolized in the initiation ceremony, whereat a crown was offered to the novice, who hadto reject it, saying, as did the Christians, that it was to a heavenly crown that he looked.We hear, too, of hymns which could be used with equal propriety by Christians and Mithraistsalike [/Rev. Arch./, vol. xvii. (1911), p. 397.]. The Mithraic worship always took place incaves, these being either natural or artificial. Now the early Christians, openly and for noreasons of secrecy or security, employed those subterranean rock chambers known as catacombsboth for their burials and for public worship. Like the Mithraic caves, these catacombs weredecorated with paintings, amongst which the subject of Moses striking the rock, which, as Ihave said above, has a Mithraic parallel, is often represented. The most frequent theme is thatof Christ as the Good Shepherd; and although it is generally agreed that the figure of Yeshuacarrying a lamb is taken from the statues of Hermes Kriophoros [Pausanias, iv. 33.], thekid-carrying god, Mithra is sometimes shown carrying a bull across his shoulders, and Apollo,who, in his solar aspect and as the patron of the rocks [/Hymn to the Delian Apollo./], is tobe identified with Mithra, is often called "The Good Shepherd". At the birth of Mithra thechild was adored by shepherds, who brought gifts to him [/Encyc. Brit./, 11th ed., vol. xvii.,p. 623.].

The Hebrew Sabbath having been abolished by Christians, the Church made a sacred day ofSunday, partly because it was the day of the resurrection, but largely because it was theweekly festival of the sun; for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the paganfestivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance. But,as a solar festival, Sunday was the sacred day of Mithra; and it is interesting to notice thatsince Mithra was addressed as /Dominus/, "Lord'', Sunday must have been "the Lord's Day" longbefore Christian times. I may again mention here, in passing, a subject to which I havealready referred, namely, that of the origin of our Christmas. December 25th was the birthdayof the sun-god, and particularly of Mithra, and was only taken over in the Fourth Century asthe date, actually unknown, of the birth of Yeshua.

The head of the Mithraic faith was called /Pater Patrum/, "Father of the Fathers", and wasseated at Rome; and similarly the head of the Church was the /Papa/, or "Father", now known asthe Pope, who was also seated at Rome. The Pope's crown is called a tiara, but a tiara is a Persian, and hence perhaps a Mithraic, headdress. The ancient chair preserved in the Vaticanand supposed to have been the pontifical throne used by St. Peter, is in reality of paganorigin, and may possibly be Mithraic also, for it has upon it certain pagan carvings which arethought to be connected with Mithra [J.M. Robertson, /Pagan Christs/, p. 336.].

I could go on, but you now get the drift.

Answer for yourself: You must seriously ask yourself: Do the things referred to here andpracticed by the vast majority of Christians in the world reveal holiness and separateness fromfalsehood??

With all that is in me, I desire the return to the faith of the original disciples, theApostolic doctrine, pure and unadulterated which existed before the ascendancy of the earlyGentile Church which would draw off of its pagan heritage and mix such falsehoods with JewishBiblical truths. The result was Christianity as we know of today, but dear believer, such afaith did not always exist in such a paganized form. ?The? faith which was once delivered tothe saints was a manifestation of Biblical Judaism whereby both Jew and non-Jew could worshipG-d in Spirit and in Truth, and not in pagan lies.

(Written by CraigLyons)