8:8. Then said He unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall, and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.—The wall was the wall of secrecy, misrepresentation and deception, by reason of which the pagan practices and beliefs of various classes of professed Christians were hidden from publicity and consequent popular judgment. A little was known about them, represented by the little hole in the wall. It is the work of the Ezekiel class to dig through the wall and throw the light on these hidden things. The time has come for judgment, and for everything that is done in a chamber to be proclaimed from the housetops. (Luke 12:3.) Once the wall of secrecy is dug through, the door is open to see whatever transpires.
8:9. And He said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here.—The court typifies the condition of faith—tentative justification. The chambers [pg 412] surrounded the court. They symbolize the condition of those who profess faith and justification, but whose lives and beliefs contradict their professions.
8:10. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.—To the Egyptians, artistic portrayals of creatures had a religious significance. All kinds of living creatures were worshipped. Chief of these was the bull Apis, which symbolized life and especially the power of procreation. The devotees of the antitype are never so happy as when giving life to new spiritual offspring. The children thus begotten are mostly tares. But few of them have the life that comes from consecration to the Word of God. The revivalist and the clergy care little for any begotten of the Word of God and do little to help them grow up in Christ. They grow, if at all, like starved, neglected children. As the service of this worship could be conducted only by the regular priests of Egypt, so the antitypical work can be done only by the man-made clergy class of the world (Egypt) and those “ordained” by them. Among the creeping things, objects of worship, was the fly—the evangelist. (Rev. 16:2.) The prince of the flies was Beelzebub. Flies breed in and feed upon the “dung hill of Popish decretals” and other “traditions of men.” They never get far above earthly things, but circulate in the lower strata of the air—ecclesiasticism. They bite and annoy both worldly people and the Lord's people, as did the plague of flies in Egypt, and are specially persistent in the humid condition of a rain—a downpour of Truth. These, like all clergy-approved workers, are looked up to, worshipped by the people of Christendom. Other creeping things that fly signify degrading of forbidden beliefs and practices, attractive, garbed in the cloak of religion, under church auspices, as typed by their flying in the air, ecclesiastical powers; but they are displeasing to God and tending toward death.
8:11. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.—Worshipping the pictured images were the elders, or ancients, appointed by and representing all the people of Jerusalem. Jaazaniah was a Levite, typical of a believer in Christ. The word Shaphan means “sly”, and suggests the slyness of the adherents of wrong beliefs. Jaazaniah means “God is listening,” and signifies the fact that whatever “Christian” sinners may say, God is actually paying attention. The censer was used to carry the fire in which [pg 413] incense was burned. (Rev. 8:3.) It types the bearing of the fiery trials signified by the fire. The devotees of error suffer in its behalf, as Truth people suffer for the Truth. Incense types the heart's best endeavors, here wrongly directed by many professing Christians in the service of Satan, as were Saul's in persecuting Christians. (Acts 22:3, 4.) Tares are often more devoted to their errors than are the Lord's people to the Truth. “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” (Luke 16:8.) It was unlawful for a Hebrew to burn incense, except as in the regular temple service. It is an abomination for a professing Christian to put forth his heart's best endeavors except in the service of God.
8:12. 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; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.—These departures from true Christian belief are carried on “in the dark.” (John 3:19.) Every tare, imitation Christian, has his own peculiar beliefs and practices in “the chamber of his imagery,” his mind. Because God knows how to defer retribution until the Day of Judgment (2 Pet. 2:9), these unwise ones delude themselves that the All-Seeing One does not see. Those not familiar with the Divine Plan of the Ages, seeing the conditions of savage war trending into worse things, apparently have the delusion that the Lord has forsaken the earth.
8:13, 14. 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.—Tammuz means “perfect (tam) by burning” (muz). He was a heathen god whose death was lamented annually by women idolaters. He was the god of fire worship, the same as Molech, to whom children were burned alive. He types the eternal-torment-purgatory God, who perfects (supposedly) by the fires of purgatory. The women weeping for him typify the once-virgin churches, who honor the alleged hell-fire god and lament the ones in the fire. There is a unity of heathen religions with apostate “Christianity” which stamps them all as pagan. The original heathen god was Nimrod, “the mighty hunter” of Gen. 10:8-14, where is related the origin of Babylon and Ninevah. Nimrod led men and women from the true religion of devout Noah into gross sensuality and neglect of the worship of Jehovah. He was beloved by fallen women. For his iniquitous influence, Nimrod was condemned to death by the council of judges; and his dead body was [pg 414] cut into pieces, which were sent to all parts of the inhabited world, with the threat of death to any who practiced his evil ways. Nimrod married his own mother, Semiramis, so that, in a sense, he was his own father and his own son. Here was the origin of the Trinity doctrine.
| Nation | Father-Husband | Son | The Woman |
| Asia | Decius | Cybele | |
| Assyria | Winged bull | ||
| Babylonia | Lord of Heaven | ||
| Babylonia | Ninus | Tammuz | Queen of Heaven |
| Chaldea | Bal | Ishtar | |
| Chaldea | Cahna-Bel (Cannibal) | The Seed | |
| Chaldea | Molech | Ashtaroth | |
| Chaldea | Zoroaster | The Seed of the Fire | |
| China | Child | Madonna | |
| Egypt | Apis bull | Cow of Athor | |
| Egypt | Osiris | Horus | Isis |
| English | The Devil | ||
| Greece | Bacchus | Rhea | |
| Greece | Capricornus | Astarte | |
| Greece | Kissos | Mother of gods | |
| Greece | Kronos | Aphrodite | |
| Greece | Orion | Babe | Ceres |
| Greece | Saturn | Venus | |
| Greece | Plutus | Irene | |
| India | Vishnu | Christina | |
| India | Tsi | Eswara | |
| Italy | Pope | Virgin Mary | |
| Japan | Child | Madonna | |
| Nineveh | Nimrod | Nimrod | Semiramis |
| Palestine | Baal | ||
| Persia | Sun | Moon | |
| Persia | Sun God | ||
| Persia | Child | Madonna | |
| Philistia | Dagon | ||
| Rome | Jupiter | Jupiter Puer | Fortuna |
| Scandinavia | Woden | Thor | Frieda |
| Thibet | Child | Madonna |
The practices of Nimrod were continued in secret by Semiramis; and as every caution had to be taken, the things done were veiled in mystery. Each act and person was represented only in symbols known to the initiated. Here originated the various secret societies, with their blood-curdling oaths of secrecy—Masonry, Oddfellowship, Jesuitism, Knights of Malta, and so on. These are lineal descendants of the “mysteries” of pagan sensuality, all of them abominations to God. Semiramis, to further her schemes, pretended that Nimrod, the father-son, had been raised from the dead in the form of the sun, which thus became an object of worship. She represented herself as the moon, which was also adored. This was the original Trinity—Nimrod the father, Nimrod, or Tammuz, the son and Semiramis the mother, the power, or spirit, back of all. As the people multiplied and scattered they took with them this heathen Trinity which appears in various nations in the partial list shown on the preceding page.
These under inspiration of the Devil, put the false seed of the woman—Nimrod, Tammuz, etc.,—in the stead of the true Seed, pushed Jehovah aside, then into the background, and then out altogether. The Devil, through the Pope of Rome, substituted forms of paganism for the simplicity of true Christianity. “Such things are,” says Cardinal Newman, “the very instruments and appendages of demon worship,” but “sanctified by adoption into the church.” Roman Catholicism is a heathen religion. Protestantism also worships Molech, the fire god, Tammuz, the deity of torture, whom popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, clergy, ministers, and laymen unite in honoring and worshipping under the delusion that they are worshipping Jehovah, God of Abraham, the true God of the Bible. However, ignorantly, “they worship devils.”—1 Cor. 10:20.
8:15, 16. Then said He unto me, Hast thou seen this, O Son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these. And He brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.—In the court itself (1 Ki. 6:36), in the very presence of the blood-bought sacrifice, these men were gathered. Only priests and Levites might be in this court. They typified the believers and spirit-begotten ones of the Christian Church. They were divided into about twenty-five courses or sections and served in rotation. These typed the divisions of Christians into about twenty-five principal denominations. [pg 416] In the United States these are Adventists, Baptists, Brethren (Dunkards), Catholics (Greek), Christian, Churches of Christ Scientist, Churches of God, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, Evangelical, Friends, German Evangelical Protestant, German Evangelical Synod, Latter Day Saints, Lutherans, Scandinavian Evangelical, Menonites, Moravians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Protestant Episcopals, Reformed, Salvation Army, and United Brethren. With their backs toward the Temple of the Lord (Jer. 2:27), these treat with contempt and scorn the little company of God's true saints, rich in faith, “the Temple.” To turn the back is a gross insult. Their faces are toward the east. (Jer. 8:2.) All these denominations worship the fire-god, the sun, the heathen god whose identity with paganism appears foregoing.