When some of us who are bent on questioning issues around us talk or write
that the early messengers of what is regarded today as the Good News
committed a lot of blunders against many nature-given purposes that were
working for peoples to institutionalise this News, some folks who are
abandoned to swallow everything as they relate to this belief line hook and
sinker see us as chauvinists and haters of their religion.
No. There is evidence too lengthy of many misinterpretations to certain
issues and words in this world of which one is Heathen.
Let’s not be blindfolded with unnecessary fear. I have observed that even
among the many so-called schooled persons, conversation stops when it comes
to the discourse of their religion. This is common among those who have to
read certain books before they invoke their God, because they see
everything in their religion, as a must be considered as literal truth.
This is our vulnerability.
Many people are sure of some things, but ignorantly. This is how they
erroneously see Heathen as an Idol worshiper. Propaganda. They will be
quick at telling you that a Heathen is a person who does not acknowledge
the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Are you hearing that? We shall
understand the true meaning of “God” as we go on.
The word “Good News” is an orchestrated brand to sell the religion. The
same way a beautiful lady is used for razor blade advert and you wonder
what a lady who is not bearded is doing with razor blade. Just glint,
glamour and glitz.
Anyway, there is nothing like “Idol Worshiper”. It is the art in religious
politics of those who wanted to sell their religion for lucre and usurpation of the beliefs of others.
Remember what a John Henrik Clarke once loudly said: “They laughed at your
clothes, and made you change your clothes; they laughed at your names, and
made you change your names; but most importantly, they laughed at your God,
and made you change your God.”
Because some of the people were instilled with fear in not to question the
Good News, it’s hard to such persons to go beyond the box to find out
things themselves and set many incorrect stories correct.
How many of us know that the Papacy struggled with the German Emperors to
maintain world supremacy during the Middle Ages? This was in a bid to
conquer the philosophies of peoples of other world and institute their
‘supremacy’ which Christianity is one of the (supreme) tools used to
achieve this feat. (Henry Binkley Stein; “Thirty Thousand Gods Before
Jehovah”). 1. The Germans complained of the Ultramontainism, the money that
passed beyond the Alps to build the cathedrals of Rome and never to return.
The Papacy inherited supremacy from the time of Constantine, but it was a
known fact that the supremacy was of the Amphictyonic League of Greece. 2.
Down memory lane, we know that what is known as the The League of
Amphictyon goes back to the time of Troy. And that before the time of Troy
the Pelasgi of Greece were settled by the Priests of Ammon. Priests
directed more than in the time of Marquette and La Salle.
I see it as crassness, although propaganda is a tool of those who do not
want the philosophies of other worlds to be known, when I hear people say
or write that Heathens do not know their Creators. But the same people
would not tell us that Osiris appeared as a local god in the city of Ded in
the Nile Delta, 3. and Isis was sometimes called the goddess of the west.
Electra was a Greek Goddess. And the ‘Ark of the Covenant’ was absolutely a
product of Egypt and the god Horus.
As history changes, people forget the foundation of what is regarded today
as norms. But they can purge themselves of believing some things, unless
they disabuse their minds to seek for the truth, than accepting what people
before ages, gave them as the truth.
There is also evidence too lengthy to quote in detail that the gods of the
Jehovah strain proclaimed an equity in the Israelites that required the
gods of Egypt to acquiesce to a removal. 4. And thus only certain lands
were offered, and the Israelites passed over some lands almost as
trespassers.
The “”Thirty Thousand Gods Before Jehovah” reveals” that: All the Devils of
Milton’s story [Paradise Lost] were the local gods mentioned elsewhere in
this book. Existing side by side they sometimes maintained control by
coalition, even as the wet and dry politicians of today sometimes swing
their forces together. 5.
Exposure was impossible for they all were practicing the same methods, and
for one god to expose the methods of the oracles of the opposing god would
be suicide for himself. 6. Thus the Jews consulted the oracle of Beelzebub
against the direction of Jehovah, yet Jehovah would not expose the methods
of Beelzebub, lest Beelzebub expose Jehovah.
It goes further to explicit that …circumstances indicate that Julius
Caesar’s main business in Egypt was to secure the consent of the Priests of
Ammon to his world rulership. Caesar himself was a high priest according to
Josephus. When the weakness of the organization became apparent Caesar’s
ambition mounted, ambition not to be king, but to be god. 7.
Indeed in the time of Augustus Caesar daily sacrifices were made by the
masses to Octavius as a god. Unlike Alexander, Julius Caesar preempted the
powers of Egypt and was directly assassinated as a result of a whispering
campaign of the priesthood. 8. Egypt and Rome warred under Antony and
Octavius and Rome won, but three hundred years later Constantine was won
over to the other side. Such fluctuations of power had happened often. The
seclusion of the Popes at Avignon is another example. The struggle between
the priests of Typhon and those of Osiris is a third. Milton has dramatized
this sublimated story in his Paradise Lost. Satan was the symbolized form
for the Priests of Sat in the temple of Sat in Egypt under Typhon.
It is very shameful when Christian dogmatists see people of different
beliefs as the ones who are ‘condemned’. But they forgot that what they
regard as Heathenism and Paganism prepared the ground for Christianity.
However, it did not just happen. Heathenism and Paganism were ploughed
under by those who saw Christianity as a tool to perfect their supremacy of
the world.
In “The Axe Was God”, Henry Binkley Stein exhumes how Heathen which
originally means farmer or a person from the heath, was tagged with
disparaging significance. He writes that this came about when Christianity
made its advent into Northern Europe.
“Coming into the large cities first, then in the smaller, it received its
support from the fountain-head in Rome and Constantinople. The last to
become Christians were the farmers who were reluctant to forsake their
ancient rites. There is even today a vestige of this accursed method of
disparaging the farmer. He is looked down upon by the city dweller, not
knowing that the start of the downward push was given by Christianity in
placing a disgrace upon the Heathen. So much pressure was made, it is a
matter of record that in early Paris the Heathen or Farmer was boycotted
and failed to sell his produce unless he became a Christian and was
baptized.” — (Henry Binkley Stein; “The Axe Was God”).
As I know, propaganda is a dangerous tool. For example, again, to downsize
somebody today in the Islamized and Christianized Nigeria, when it comes to
religion, is by painting a non-adherent of the two Constitution-recognised
religions, as a person who does not know his or her Creator.
But if we must accep
t that there is a Creator, we must also accept that the
Creator is neither a member of any of these worldly sects that parade
themselves as being supreme to the other and with dangerous mindsets to
outsmart opposing views. “Good News”, indeed.
While many feel that we cannot be better persons except we embrace some
religious books, they have not come to realise that our Igbo forebears saw
Morality as a handiness and a training that must pass from one generation
to another, and is not a somewhat holy writ adaptation. So, the aboriginal
Igbo belief is neither Heathenism nor Paganism, using the nascent
definition of the words. Odi n’ala Ndigbo is symbolic in their ways of
life, and not a cosmetic game of fighting for supremacy and inventing some
Gods and want to sell the Gods to your neigbour. No. Ndigbo venerate their
ancestors as an act of showing love, and not the misleading story that we
worship the dead. Just propaganda, everywhere.
To understand this better, Henry Binkley Stein tells us consequently:
Beyond the history of Masonry there is unwritten evidence that the lodge is
the product of the religion of Bell or Baal. Scotland, England, Ireland
show evidences of the religion of Bell. Christianity and Masonry join up in
agreement on antediluvian mythology, yet Masonry differs from Christianity
in doing no proselytizing, in doing no healing, in avoiding many emotional
disturbances common to Christianity.
Before Emperor Constantine was converted to Catholicism (around 350 AD), it
is on record that theocracy went underground during the Roman ascendancy
and churches were held in secrecy for about three hundred years.
Constantine came ‘back’ with a force and by fire, and the Church came out
of hiding and took open secular control in Rome. (“Thirty Thousand Gods
Before Jehovah”). All the Oracles simultaneously ceased to speak… Power
had shifted to the control of the Emperor. The Pope took to himself the
prerogative of crowning kings. At this point Christian Scientists claim
that the power of healing was lost to the Christians. As worldly power was
gained, spiritual power was lost.
Christianity has never allowed peoples to exercise their rights to freedom
of religion, if we must use the word religion. (“Thirty Thousand Gods
Before Jehovah”). For example, Christianity pushed the religion of the Asen
gods [Els] to Norway and Sweden. From there was the Christian religion
moved in, a band of settlers moved to Iceland to have their freedom of
worship unhampered by the religion of Rome. It was here that the Eddas were
collected together and written down.
Hence Henry Binkley Stein delivers: They were already old at this time.
These Saga or Sayings combined with the oral myth of the northern Europe
are the source of the information relative to the prehistoric gods. It is
scanty indeed. The Greek and Roman material is one hundred times so
plentiful. Enough exists however to show that the Nordic Gods were the same
as the gods of the Levant. The Gardens, Halls, warfare, altars, sacrifices,
marriage and family life, were the same. Most of the stories are primitive
exaggeration, yet the raw material could not have originated sui generis.
The savages of the north could not have invented the civilization of the
halls and gardens of their own accord. The gods were agricultural pioneers
seeking a foothold on the continent. There was a partial failure.
Naiwu Osahon, the erudite writer/poet investigated what the world today
refers to as the ‘Most High God’ and found it was the Canaanite God “El”.
He said: “The Canaanites deity was El (or El Elyon), whose subordinates or
sons were spelt with small letters as in: el, eloah and elohiym. None of
these deities, not even El, was considered the Supreme or Universal Being.
They were all deities with El as their superior of Father or the only God
that could be spelt with the capital letter ‘G’. These deities were
actually super human beings who had at one time or the other lived on earth
and are now ancestors who took charge of several individual nations. El
Elyon (Black, Father or God of all gods), allocated the nations of the
world to the deities”.
Henry Binkley Stein orates that the ingredients of Christianity were
already prepared by the secret mysteries of the Illi gods, though they
contended among themselves very often. Such similarities and many others
are mentioned in such researches as The Golden Bough. They bring one to the
brink of wondering if, after all, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ were not
a “super colossal” miracle play, based on such secret rites as were given
at Eleusis and Samothrace, played on a grand and real scale in a large city
for the benefit of the secular public–or as Diodorus said, “What was done
in secret, later was done openly.” If so, for this drama Christ was
prepared and schooled from infancy. Stein cries.
It is, therefore, ruthless and dim-wittedness for any person to say that he
or she lives for Jehovah, to teach the Heathen the way to eternity. I see
certain use of language or comments among peoples as ‘mantra’. They use
anyhow comments anyhow, because somebody handed them the comments, without
them making any attempt to find out if such is reasonably.
If we must accept Heathen in the misinterpreted definition given to it, I
stand bold to say that Heathen morality is far better than the
hypocritically sermons of majority of the clerics in the church today. And
a spiritual and moralistic Heathen is one hundred better and appreciable to
me than one million or billion hoodwinking pastors unwisely christened Men
of God.
