Subtitle: THIS TITLE IS SHOCKING AND DEMONSTRATES THAT THE ORIGIN OF THE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN MARY IS PAGAN, NOT BIBLICAL
NEWS BRIEF: "Among all the women who have ever lived, the mother of Jesus Christ is the most celebrated, the most venerated... Among Roman Catholics, the Madonna is recognized not only as the Mother of God, but also, according to modern Popes, as the Queen of the Universe, Queen of Heaven, Seat of Wisdom, and even the Spouse of the Holy Spirit." (Time Magazine, "Handmaid or Feminist?", December 30, 1991, p. 62-66).
Most Roman Catholic adherents cheerfully refer to the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven and understand this term to one of endearment, love, and adoration. Is this title a Biblical term or a Pagan title? Is God pleased with this title, or is He mightily displeased? Let us look in Scripture.
1. "Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 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 7:17-18] In this section of Jeremiah, God is telling Israel why He is about to physically destroy them as a nation. God is acting much like a Prosecutor who is informing the accused as to the charges against them. Notice that God is very angry that these people are preparing to worship the Queen of Heaven. He is saying that this worship of the Queen of Heaven is "provoking" Him to anger!
2. "As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?"
[Jeremiah 44:16-17] Here, we see that the people are defiantly refusing to obey God, and are continuing to worship this Queen of Heaven.
3. "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying; Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hand, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows." [Jeremiah 44:25] We see that God has finally gotten the message, that the people are going to worship this Queen of Heaven no matter what He says. Therefore, God tells them to go ahead with their rebellion, because He is going to totally destroy them. You can read the full account of this Divine Judgment in Jeremiah 44:1-20-29, and we encourage you to read it, for God never changes, and He would be just as enraged today about this idolatrous worship as He was then.
The question, then, is, who is this Queen of Heaven which the Israelites were worshipping, that provoked God to such anger? Fortunately, Jewish historical records tell us exactly what this Queen of Heaven was that so angered God.
First, let us examine the ancient Queen of Heaven. Most of this information is taken from Alexander Hislop's book, "The Two Babylons", 1917. Hislop traces the Babylonian worship of the Queen of Heaven back to the days following the death of Nimrod. The dating of this event is not known exactly, but seems to date 400+ years after the flood. After Nimrod's death, his wife, Semiramis, was determined to retain her power and wealth. She concocted the story that Nimrod's death was for the salvation of mankind. Nimrod was touted as "the woman's promised seed, Zero-ashta, who was destined to bruise the serpent's head, and in so doing, was to have his own heel bruised." (p. 58-59)
We can easily see that this story is a counterfeit to the true prophecy concerning Jesus Christ. To enable the Babylonian people to better worship this child, a woodcut portrait was created, depicting him in his mother's arms. The mother obviously drew her glory from her deified son. However, "the mother, in the long-run, practically eclipsed the son" in worship. The original picture obviously was meant to merely be a "pedestal for the upholding of the divine son...But, while this... was the design, it is a plain principle in all idolatries that that which most appeals to the senses must make the most powerful impression." (p, 74) The mother obviously created the most powerful visual impression, both because she was an adult and because she was so magnificently arrayed.
Once people began to worship the mother more than the child, Babylonian priests felt forced to issue an edict deifying the mother also. After the passage of still more time, "her son's birth was boldly declared to be miraculous, and therefore she was called ...the Virgin Mother." (p.76) "The highest titles were then bestowed upon her. She was called the Queen of Heaven. In Egypt, she was styled Athor, i.e., the Habitation of God to signify that in her dwelt all the 'fulness of the Godhead'". (p.77) From this pagan beginning, the story of the Virgin Mother ( Queen of Heaven) spread throughout the world. In:
* Egypt, she was called Athor (p77)
* Tibet and China, she was called Virgo Deipara (p77)
* Greece, she was called Hestia (Ibid)
* Rome, she was called Juno, or Dove. (p79).
Thus, we can see that this ancient Queen of Heaven was a Pagan counterfeit of the Virgin Mary. She was a Divine Mother that had given birth to a Divine Child! Of special note is the connection in Rome with the Dove. Why?
In Ancient Babylon, both the worship of the Virgin Mother and her symbol, the Dove, "identified her with the Spirit of all grace ...the Holy Ghost." (p. 79). Thus, the Pagan Trinity is God the Father, the Son, and the Virgin Mother. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church has made this same claim, as Hislop noted, in the nineteenth century (p. 83). Hislop concludes, "The Madonna of Rome... is just the Madonna of Babylon. The Queen of Heaven in the one system is the same as the Queen of Heaven in the other." (Ibid)
If you cannot believe these facts, above, maybe you will believe the testimony of avowed Pagans in today's world. Listen to their testimony:
1) In his most blasphemous book, The Armageddon Script, Peter Lemesurier writes enthusiastically about the worship of the Great Mother Earth. He writes as though he is an astronaut in a spaceship in orbit around our planet. "As they rounded the barren lunar globe for the... last time, and the resplendent half-earth once again rose from behind that now familiar curved and rocky horizon, what they saw coming up to meet them was strangely familiar. An image straight out of the racial memory. A god out of the world of the archetypes. It was none other than the rounded form of the Great Mother, Earth herself, clad in the same flowering robes of shimmering blue and white that had been those of mother-goddesses of earth and sky throughout man's history - and not least his most recent mother-goddess, the Virgin Mary herself..." (p. 245-6).
Peter Lemesurier, as a Pagan worshipper, has no difficulty recognizing the truth that the worship of the Virgin Mary is ancient Pagan idolatry. Therefore, non-Christian Pagans the world over will have little difficulty accepting the worship of the Roman Catholic Virgin Mother.
2) Another New Age writer, China Galland, a practicing American Buddhist, has written a very revealing book entitled Longing For Darkness. Galland enthusiastically establishes the commonality between the Virgin Mary and other Pagan goddesses.
"Durga, the warrior queen... was the only one who could restore harmony and set the world at peace... the gods sang her praises, called her the Queen of the Universe..." Remember the Time Magazine, quoted above, which reports that one of the names by which the Virgin Mary is known is the Queen of the Universe? Galland continues:
"I had come to find the Buddha Tara, but instead I found the goddesses Durgan and Kali...Kali, the death-dealer and life-giver, the end and beginning of time. She was a deity of such proportions as I had heard only God the Father in Christianity described. The fact that Kali is dark and female turned my Catholic upbringing inside out... Some say she is black because black is the color in which all distinctions are dissolved, others say she is black because she is eternal night." (p. 27) These two goddesses are Hindu.
The Buddhist goddess, Tara, was the object of Galland's search as she traveled the Far East. However, she was startled when she discovered that there are Hindu texts that describe Kali as Tara." (p. 30) This discovery links Hinduism with Buddhism.
D -- Later, back in the United States, Galland discovered another New Age book entitled Mother Worship, by author Tara Doyle. This book reported the phenomenon of the Black Madonna in Switzerland. Galland records, "I didn't recall that there were any dark female divinities in Christianity. I thought they were unique to religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. I could remember virtually nothing about a dark or black Madonna despite my years of Catholic upbringing... A brief entry in Newsweek magazine caught my eye. The Virgin Mary was reported to be appearing in the barks of trees in... Poland. I was intrigued... It seemed to be such a similar phenomenon to what had been reported about the Tara ..I wondered what was going on in the spritus mundi, the spirit of the world, that reports of female deities literally emerging out of rocks and trees were surfacing in both East and West. The simultaneity was symbolically important..."(p. 49-50).
Later, Galland asks a Buddhist Master Teacher about the connection between these appearances, "I showed him the magazine clipping on the reported appearance of the Madonna in the bark of trees in Poland...[he replied] it is very similar to what we are talking about here. We have many occurrences like this in Tibetan Buddhism. We call it rangjung, it means self-arising ...These things appear because of the power and blessings of enlightened beings. Such beings work through the power of mental substance and the power of concentration..." (p. 65-66) Galland recounts her later meeting with the Dalai Lama. When she asks him about the Blessed Mother appearing in the bark of trees in Poland, he agrees that this phenomenon is Buddhist rangjung. (p. 95)
We should not be surprised that Satan is now causing female deities to appear all over the world at this moment in history. If this is indeed the end of the age, then it is time for Satan to draw together his prophesied church.
We encourage you to read CE1008, "Virgin Mary And Pagan Goddess Worship" for more details on this phenomena. Do not be deceived: the Roman Catholic worship of their Virgin Mary, whom they call the Queen of Heaven, is a rebirth of the Pagan worship of various Queens of Heaven throughout history, by various names. In each of these various countries, the Queen of Mother is a Virgin Mother who has given birth to a Divine Child. Further, the worship of the Catholic Queen of Heaven is precisely the same as the worship of the Queen of Heaven in Ancient Israel, as recorded in Jeremiah above.
God's reaction will also be the same: physical Judgment, destruction. What are you to do now that you know the truth? Listen to Jesus' Words, spoken at the End of the Age.
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her [the evil system], my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities." Revelation 18:4-5
Just before Jesus' final destruction comes upon the evil system in the Great Tribulation Period Jesus calls one final warning to His people, to come out and be separate and ask forgiveness or they will be destroyed also. This warning applies to you if you are a practicing, believing Roman Catholic. Please carefully read all our articles, as we systematically seek to show you the total Paganism which comprises Roman Catholicism, a Paganism very cleverly hidden behind Christian concepts, words, and names. But, it is Paganism all the same.
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