The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

This antagonist system was, in respect to the attributes and prerogatives impiously arrogated by the great Adversary, and in respect to the leading features of its ritual, a bold, seductive, and imposing counterfeit of the revealed system taught and practised by Noah and his descendants in the line of Shem.

To substitute a false appearance, a deceitful imitation, a resembling counterfeit, a cheat, a lie, was as obviously expedient, and even necessary, in such a case, as it is in keeping with the craft and subtlety of Satan to deceive and beguile. He had to entice, allure, and impose on those who knew what the true system was, and by what miracles and wonders it had been sanctioned; who witnessed its effects in the lives of those who practised it, were familiar with its institutions and public observances; and whose understandings must have been more or less influenced by its inherent and its hereditary claims, and by its voice of encouragement and hope to the righteous, and of alarm and terror to the wicked. Under such circumstances, to resist and counteract the system divinely prescribed and established, it was necessary to impose on the understandings of men, as well as to enlist their feelings, give scope to their propensities, and gratify their passions. To have called on them to worship him directly in his true character, without disguise, or to worship him as a being of inferior claims to those of Jehovah, or by rites and ceremonials less significant and imposing, would not have been likely to secure their homage and allegiance. His own undisguised character would have been revolting; an inferior could not protect them against the superior Being; to dispense with public and visible rites and ceremonies would have been to disappoint and resist their propensities and passions; and no others but such as were already in use could be made to maintain a competition with them.

Accordingly, he arrogated the name, power, prerogatives, works, relations and government of Jehovah. He claimed to be god of this world: its creator, providential ruler, dispenser of benefits, protector of his followers, and rightful object of their homage and obedience, in opposition to Jehovah. He took the then current name in Babylon of the sun, Bel—or, as pointed and commonly rendered, Baal—Lord of Heaven, Supreme Ruler, like the sun in the visible heaven; afterwards, with the same import, the Egyptian name of the same object, On, (often rendered Aven.) Also, Moloch, (Melek,) King; Baal-Zebub, Lord of Hosts—Zebub being a corruption of Zebaoth, hosts, as in the formula, Jehovah Zebaoth, Lord of Hosts; and among the Phœnicians, Baal Samen, Lord of Heaven.

He arrogated the sun as his tabernacle or shekina, and the solar fire and light as his element: imitating, we may well believe, in respect to the first of these particulars, what had been exhibited in Eden, and from time to time prior to the age of Abraham, as it was afterwards, and especially to Moses in Midian, in the pillar of cloud, at the Red Sea, on Mount Sinai, and in the tabernacle. And in imitation of the tabernacle erected by Moses in the wilderness, the partisans of Baal created the tabernacle of Moloch, i. e., Baal under that name. Amos v.; Acts vii.

Prideaux, Part I., Book 3, treating of the origin of idolatry, and yet describing it at an advanced stage, when, in addition to the sun, the planets and stars had been brought into its service, observes: “That they took upon themselves to address the being whom they worshipped,” and whom he supposes they regarded as the true God, “by mediators of their own choosing. And their notion of the sun, moon, and stars being, that they were the tabernacles or habitations of intelligences which animated those orbs, in the same manner as the soul of man animates his body, and were the causes of all their motions; and that those intelligence were of a middle nature between God and them; they thought these the properest beings to become the mediators between God and them; and, therefore, the planets being the nearest to them of all these heavenly bodies, and generally looked on to have the greatest influence on this world, they made choice of them in the first place for their God’s-mediators, who were to mediate for them with the Supreme God, and procure from him the mercies and favors which they prayed for; and accordingly they directed divine worship unto them as such. And here began all the idolatry that hath been practised in the world. They first worshipped them per sacella, that is, by their tabernacles, and afterwards by images also. By these sacella or tabernacles they meant the orbs themselves, which they looked on only as the sacella or sacred tabernacles in which the intelligences had their habitations. And therefore, when they paid their devotions to any one of them, they directed their worship towards the planet in which they supposed he dwelt. But these orbs, by their rising and setting, being as much under the horizon as above, they were at a loss how to address to them in their absence. To remedy this, they had recourse to the invention of images, in which, after their consecration, they thought these intelligences, or inferior deities, to be as much present by their influence as in the planets themselves, and that all addresses to them were made as effectually before the one as before the other. And this was the beginning of image worship among them. To these images were given the names of the planets they represented.... After this, a notion obtaining that good men departed had a power with God also to mediate and intercede for them, they deified many of those whom they thought to be such; and hence the number of their gods increased, in the idolatrous times of the world. This religion first began among the Chaldeans, which their knowledge of astronomy helped them to. And from this it was that Abraham separated himself when he came out of Chaldea. From the Chaldeans it spread itself over all the East, where the professors of it had the name of Sabians. From thence it passed into Egypt, and from thence to the Grecians, who propagated it to all the western nations of the world; and therefore those who mislike the notion advanced by Maimonides, that many of the Jewish laws were made in opposition to the idolatrous rites of the Sabians, are much mistaken when they object against it that the Sabians were an inconsiderable sect, and therefore not likely to be so far regarded in that matter.... Anciently, they were all the nations of the world that worshipped God by images. And that Maimonides understood the name in this latitude is plain from hence, that he tells us the Sabians whom he spoke of were a sect whose heresy had overspread almost all mankind.... That which hath given them the greatest credit among the people of the East is, that the best of their astronomers have been of this sect, as Thebat Ebn Korrah, Albatani, and others; for the stars being the gods they worshipped, they made them the chief subject of their studies. These Sabians, in the consecrating of their images, used many incantations to draw down into them, from the stars, those intelligences for whom they erected them, whose power and influence they held did afterwards dwell in them.”

“Directly opposite to these were the Magians, another sect, who had their original in the same Eastern countries. For they, abominating all images, worshipped God only by fire.” These, instead of branching off from the Sabians, doubtless preceded them. “Their chief doctrine was, that there were two principles: one which was the cause of all good, and the other the cause of all evil: that is to say, God and the Devil. That the former is represented by light and the other by darkness, as their truest symbols, and that of the composition of these two all things in the world are made.... And concerning these two gods there was this difference of opinion among them—that whereas some held both of them to have been from eternity, there were others that contended that the good God only was eternal, and that the other was created. But they both agreed in this, that there will be a continual opposition between these two till the end of the world. That then the good God shall overcome the evil god, and that from thenceforward each of them shall have his world to himself: that is, the good God his world, with all good men with him, and the evil god his world, with all evil men with him. That darkness is the truest symbol of the evil god, and light the truest symbol of the good God: and therefore they always worshipped him before fire, as being the cause of light, and especially before the sun, as being, in their opinion, the perfectest fire, and causing the perfectest light. And for this reason, in all their temples, they had fire continually burning on altars created in them for that purpose. And before these sacred fires they offered up all their public devotions, as likewise they did all their private devotions before their private fires in their own houses. Thus did they pay the highest honor to light, as being in their opinion the truest representative of the good God, but always hated darkness, as being what they thought the truest representative of the evil god, whom they ever had in the utmost detestation, as we now have the Devil.”

The author’s account of the origin and nature of idolatry is in most particulars undoubtedly correct. The exceptions, however, are of great significance. He seems to suppose that the system was contrived and adopted by men, without the instigation of Satan, and that their object was the worship of the true God, in opposition to that evil being. But the intelligence whom they called the good God was Satan himself, supposed to be in the sun as his tabernacle, and in fire and light as his element. And as to what they termed the evil god, it was obviously necessary to the success of his system, as a counterfeit of the true, that it should pretend to have a devil and a perpetual antagonism. It was probably as well known then, and perhaps more generally believed than it is now, that there was such an evil being; and that he was and would continue to be utterly opposed to the true God. And a false or counterfeit system, in which the false god was to arrogate the name and pass himself off for the true God, must provide also an antagonist, a competitor, a devil; and to carry out the cheat, assign to him darkness as his tabernacle, in opposition to light as his own.

It were superfluous to dwell on the imposing and plausible aspect of the scheme in the particulars above referred to, considered as addressed to the depraved hearts, corrupt imaginations, and evil passions of men; opposed to the purity, the requirements, and the restraints of the true religion, and willingly the followers and servants of the Evil One. While it imposed no restraint upon their corruptions, every point in the contrast must have had its effect. It excluded mystery, and appealed directly to their senses; presenting in the sun an object of homage, not only familiar to their view without causing fear, but apparently the beneficent and constant source of their daily comforts and greatest blessings; and by means of fire and light, artificially produced, enabling every individual to avail himself of the immediate presence and the beneficial influence and effects of that object, brought thus within their control, in their dwellings and on their hearths.

The ritual of worship prescribed the erection of altars, a priesthood, various offerings besides the sacrifice of animals, prayers, the burning of incense, feasts, celebrations, and other counterfeits of the revealed system. As a counterpart to the sacred oracle and the gift of prophecy, the worshippers of Baal had auguries, divinations, and pretended oracles in every country. Their prophets prophesied in the name of Baal. Jer. ii. 8; xxiii. 13. “Ahaziah being sick, sent messengers, and said unto them, Go and inquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease.” 2 Kings i. The responses of their oracles, which continued till after the destruction of the first temple and the cessation of true prophets, and more or less down to the Advent, when they appear to have ceased, were studiously contrived so as to admit equally well of different interpretations, and so as not to be interpreted with any confidence till after the event; and in this respect they were just what the great mass of learned interpreters and expositors of the Scripture prophecies have for ages taken them to be; imputing to them a double sense: to their literal language a figurative meaning, to their definite local references a symbolical import, capable only of being guessed at, and in general regarding them as enigmas—inspired indeed by Him who is head over all things for the information and preservation of his Church, but not intended to be understood, unless by those who survive the events predicted.

It would be easy to show, by tracing the parallel in numberless other and more minute details, that the false system was throughout a parody of the true; and to illustrate the ceaseless antagonism and rivalship which was carried on, in the face of the universe, by the conflict of the two systems, with their visible agencies, institutions, instrumentalities, and effects; occupying, directing and stimulating the attention and the energies, the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, and involving the temporal well-being and the immortal destiny of the whole race: presenting a scene which, whether considered in relation to one period or another, the past or the present, Paganism or Romanism, superstition or rationalism, can be accounted for, with or without the Bible, upon no assumption or theory but that of the enmity and opposition announced and commenced in Eden, which is still in progress and still has a future.