Serpents In The Sea, Scorpions In The Sand Part II
art I of the present work emphasized the connection between the habitat seen as the metaphoric “sea,” in which the Antichrist kingdoms rise, and the allegorical “sand,” which hosts the power culminating in the False Prophet of Revelation.
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea….And I beheld another beast coming up out of theearth; and he had two horns like a lamb…” (Revelation 13:1, 11).
In earlier work, we’ve shown how the kingdoms imaged in Daniel’s epic seventh chapter, which elaborate on thelion (the British Commonwealth), the bear (the Soviet Union), the leopard (the Third Reich), and the diversefourth beast (America), are globally consolidated in Revelation 13’s first beast – the one which is seen rising out of the sea.
Conversely, the four kingdoms in Daniel’s crucially important second chapter, address the head of gold(Babylon), the arms of silver (the Persian Union), thebrass belly (Alexander’s Greece), and the legs of iron(Rome). These four, seen as a statue dream which is obviously on dry land, are antecedent to Revelation’s second beast – the one rising up out of the earth (or thesand as stated in Revelation 13:1).
There are additional layers of understanding embedded in these marvelous texts and, recognizing the wicked one is the source of confusion with a goal of obscuring the truth, we now know that secular historical accounts in certain Old Testament periods are grossly distorted. In this regard, the timelines of the Gentile empires is out of sync with the Scriptures by a period between four to seven centuries in many areas, as documented by the revolutionary historical revisionist Immanuel Velikovsky. This subject is exceedingly complex, and is only germane to the present probe relative to the neo-Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar.
It turns out this research work yields important data relative to the life of the famous king, and it tells usNebuchadnezzar was actually raised as an initiate into the mystery religion of Ishtar. The impact of goddess worship, frequently seen as the “queen of heaven” in parallel Scriptural accounts, is not readily apparent in Daniel’s portrait of Nebuchadnezzar. However, it is during the Babylonian dominion that goddess worship is at its apex, as seen in Jeremiah:
“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger” (Jeremiah 7:18).
A very few students of prophecy are aware of the fact that in the adjacent religious records dating from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, a writing attributed to Nebuchadnezzar himself included the following:
“...Ishtar, my Lady, appeared in a dream…” (The Autobiography of Nebuchadnezzar, Ramses II and His Time, Immanuel Velikovsky, page 117).
Although the King James Version of the Scriptures deals with Nebuchadnezzar’s statue dream in language indicating the image was male (“his breast and his arms of silver…” – Daniel 2:32), the underlying manuscript language is actually gender neutral, as seen in a lexicon. Since adjacent records concerning Nebuchadnezzar, preserved for many centuries, were stored in a temple of Ishtar, we conclude the great dream of a statue was female.
Further, since the very next chapter of Daniel speaks of a great statue which Nebuchadnezzar constructed ondry land in the “plain of Dura” (Daniel 3:1), in an eerie foreshadowing of the worship of the image of the beast, it is difficult to see how the famous statue would not be female.
This adds a rarely seen dimension of understanding in the similitudes of Scripture. For example, when the trio of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego refuse to worship the image, their high risk revulsion is even more understandable when we consider it was an image of Ishtar. In fact, the issue of Spiritual gender, although frequently veiled, is seen throughout the Biblical texts. For example, it is self evident this goddess motif repeatedly shows up in Revelation, alternatively as a woman riding a scarlet coloured beast, or as the mother of harlots:
“And upon her forehead was a name written,Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth” (Revelation 17:5).
The fact that the harlot figure is actually named after Babylon is hardly coincidental. It is a given that religious bodies are usually referred to in feminine terms, from the harlot “wife” of Jehovah (Jeremiah 3:8), to the chaste bride of Christ (Revelation 21:2), we see this imagery employed, but it goes much deeper than most realize.
I have previously connected the word-pictures of the Spirit of the False Prophet with a consistent thread that is Spiritually feminine. For instance, in the ancient heathen mystery religions, which trace all the way back to Genesis and the forbidden worship of the Sun, Moon, and Stars (Deuteronomy 4:19), we learn the fallen ones known as the Nephilim were deeply engaged in practicing goddess worship.
The star goddess Ashteroth (note the root word star in the many variations on her name), who shows up throughout the Scriptures, was worshiped by theRephaim giants in a place called “Ashteroth Karnaim” (Genesis 14:5), which has a literal rendering ofAshteroth of the Two Horns. I remind the reader the figure of the False Prophet in Revelation, the one who comes up out of the earth, had “two horns like a lamb” (Revelation 13:11).
When we factor in this identification in our efforts to discern the true Spiritual nature of the symbolism involved in the prophecies of the end, a more accurate understanding of these twin spiritual powers, imaged as the Antichrist/Political/Serpent beast, and the False Prophet/Religious/Scorpion beast, is available to all who have ears to hear. Unfortunately, further elaboration on this important theme will have to wait for our next installment.
-- James Lloyd