The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

The disciples of the reformed Magianism of Zoroaster ascribed the creation to the one supreme, invisible Deity, who was to be worshipped directly, not through images, nor through a Mediator, nor any intermediate agencies.

The Gentile Gnostics, in distinction from Cerinthus and other Judaizers, in their attempts to subordinate Christianity to their system—which taught that all evil resided in and proceeded from matter, and therefore that the world could not have been created by a good being—ascribed the creation to a created evil being, the evil principle, Satan. They therefore rejected the Old Testament as irreconcilable with this system. Prior to the Advent, they worshipped Satan as creator, and as having chief control in the whole course of things in the world, and being an over-match for the antagonist, good principle: and honoring him in this way, they held Cain, and his other most conspicuous followers and supporters, in the highest veneration. Yearning for some relief from the unmitigated and intolerable miseries which they suffered in their warfare with their bodies, which, as matter, they deemed the seat of corruption, they hailed the appearance of the good principle in Christianity, supported as it was by demonstrations of resistless power, as likely to defeat the antagonist evil principle, the Devil, to whom they still ascribed the creation of the world. Instead of longer worshipping him, therefore, they now taught that the Supreme Deity, the Creator of the Devil, was to be worshipped. This was the doctrine which undoubtedly had been lost to all idolaters, and which they now promised to restore.

Cerinthus, in his attempts to combine Gnosticism and Christianity with Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures, as he understood them, maintains, not that the world was created by the supreme, invisible Deity, for he did not so understand those writings, but that the Being to whom Moses ascribes the creation and government of the world (and whom he calls Jehovah) was a derived, begotten, created being, and therefore liable to degenerate; that though originally endowed with the greatest virtues, he fell; (he had forsaken the Jews, and they had renounced him;) that his Creator, the Supreme Deity, had therefore determined to destroy his empire, (the dominion and rule which he exercised, prior to his quitting the temple, and also after becoming, in their opinion, the enemy of the Jews;) that the Christ, so far from being the same person, Son of the Supreme Deity, and Creator, was a wholly different being in all respects, a created being, sent expressly to supersede and destroy the Creator and Jewish lawgiver; that, taking possession of the person of Jesus, he set himself vigorously to oppose Jehovah the Creator, who, in self-defense, contrived to induce the Jews to crucify the man Jesus, the Christ in the mean time having forsaken him. Accordingly, he taught his followers that they “should abandon the Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he looked upon as the Creator of the world,” i. e., the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and that they should worship the Supreme Deity as the Father of the Æon whom he called Christ, in conjunction with that Christ, or Æon, assuming him to be the same with him whom the Christians called the Christ and the Son; conformably to his notion that Christ, having entered the man Jesus at his baptism, withdrew from him before his death. He denied his resurrection, and was, very probably, a disciple of the false teacher referred to and refuted in Paul’s argument, 1 Cor. xv.

To show that the Oriental philosophy, which comprehended the leading principles of the false, in opposition to the revealed system of religion, and that the early heresies, which, being founded on the Oriental philosophy, passed under the imposing title of Gnosticism, ascribed the creation and government of the world to Satan, the following quotations are made from Mosheim’s Commentaries, Cent. I., sec. 60, 61:

“By none of its adversaries or corrupters was Christianity, from its first rise, more seriously injured; by none was the Church more grievously lacerated, and rendered less attractive to the people, than by those who were for making the religion of Christ accommodate itself to the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the Deity, the origin of the world, the nature of matter and the human soul. We allude to those who, from their pretending that they were able to communicate to mankind, at present held in bondage by the Architect of the world, a correct knowledge (gnosis) of the true and ever-living God, were commonly styled Gnostics. Intoxicated with a fondness for these opinions, not a few of the Christians were induced to secede from all association with the advocates for the sound doctrine, and to form themselves into various sects, which, as time advanced, became daily more extensive and numerous, and were for several ages productive of very serious inconveniences and evils to the Christian commonwealth.... It is by no means difficult to point out the way in which these people contrived to make the religion of Christ appear to be altogether in unison with their favorite system of discipline. All the philosophers of the East, whose tenets, as we have seen, were, that the Deity had nothing at all to do with matter, the nature and qualities of which they considered to be malignant and poisonous; that the body was held in subjection by a being entirely distinct from Him to whom the dominion over the rational soul belonged; that the world, and all terrestrial bodies, were not the work of the Supreme Being, the Author of all good, but were formed out of matter by a nature either evil in its origin, or that had fallen into a state of depravity; and lastly, that the knowledge of the true Deity had become extinct, and that the whole race of mankind, instead of worshipping the Father of Light and Life, and source of every thing good, universally paid their homage to the Founder and Prince of this nether world, or to his substitutes and agents: I say all these looked forward with earnest expectation for the arrival of an extraordinary and eminently powerful Messenger of the Most High, who, they imagined, would deliver the captive souls of men from the bondage of the flesh, and rescue them from the dominion of those genii by whom they supposed the world and all matter to be governed; at the same time communicating to them a correct knowledge of their everlasting Parent, so as to enable them, upon the dissolution of the body, once more to regain their long-lost liberty and happiness. An expectation of this kind even continues to be cherished by their descendants of the present day. Some of these philosophers, then, being struck with astonishment at the magnitude and splendor of the miracles wrought by Christ and his apostles, and perceiving that it was the object of our Lord’s ministry both to abrogate the Jewish law—a law which they conceived to have been promulgated by the Architect or Founder of the world himself, or by the chief of his agents—and also to overthrow those gods of the nations whom they regarded as genii, placed over mankind by the same evil spirit; hearing him, moreover, invite the whole world to join in the worship of the one Omnipotent and only true God, and profess that he came down from heaven for the purpose of redeeming the souls of men, and restoring them to liberty, were induced to believe that he was that very Messenger for whom they looked, the Person ordained by the Everlasting Father, to destroy the dominion of the founder of this world as well as of the genii who presided over it; to separate light from darkness, and to deliver the souls of men from that bondage to which they were subjected, in consequence of their connection with material bodies. To various articles propounded in the Christian code as essential points of belief, they utterly refused their assent: such, for instance, as that which attributes the creation of the world to the Supreme Being, and those respecting the divine origin of the Mosaic law, the authority of the Old Testament, the character of human nature, and the like: for it would have amounted to nothing short of an absolute surrender of the leading maxims of the system to which they were devoted, had they not persisted in maintaining that the creator of this world was a being of a nature vastly inferior to the Supreme Deity, the Father of our Lord, and that the law of Moses was not dictated by the Almighty, but by this same inferior being, by whom also the bodies of men were formed and united to souls of ethereal mould, and under whose influence the various penmen of the Old Testament composed whatever they have left us on record.” Again, “according to the Gnostic scheme, an absolute and entire dominion over the human race, and the globe we inhabit, is exercised by the founder of the material world, a being of unbounded pride and ambition, who makes use of every means in his power to prevent mankind from attaining to any knowledge of the true God.”

It is too plain to require a comment, that the fallen creature to whom, in this religious system, the creation of the world is ascribed, and to whom the nations universally paid their homage, was Satan; and that the genii, his subordinates, were the angels who fell with him. On the other hand, the Divine Messenger expected as the antagonist and conqueror of Satan, could be no other than the Messenger Jehovah, appointed and sent by the Everlasting Father.

Mosheim, in his Commentaries, Introduction, chap. 2, observes, that the Jewish religion, at the time of our Saviour’s appearance, “was contaminated by errors of the most flagrant kind; even in the service of the temple itself, numerous ceremonies and observances, drawn from the religious worship of heathen nations, had been introduced and blended with those of Divine institution; and in addition to superstitions like these of a public nature, many erroneous principles, probably either brought from Babylon and Chaldea by the ancestors of the people at their return from captivity, or adopted by the thoughtless multitude in conformity to the example of their neighbors the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, were cherished and acted upon in private.”

Again, “To the prince of darkness, with his associates and agents, they attributed an influence over the world and mankind of the most extensive nature; so predominant, indeed, as scarcely to leave a superior degree of power even with the Deity himself.”

“At the time of Christ’s appearance, many of the Jews had imbibed the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the origin of the world, and were much addicted to the study of a recondite sort of learning derived from thence, to which they gave the name of Cabbala. The founders of several of the Gnostic sects, all of whom, we know, were studious to make the Christian religion accommodate itself to the principles of the ancient Oriental philosophy, had been originally Jews, and exhibited in their tenets a strange mixture of the doctrines of Moses, Christ, and Zoroaster. This is of itself sufficient to prove that many of the Jews were in no small degree attached to the opinions of the ancient Persians and Chaldeans. Such of them as had adopted these irrational principles would not admit that the world was created by God, but substituted, in the place of the Deity, a celestial genius endowed with vast powers; from whom, also, they maintained that Moses had his commission, and the Jewish law its origin. To the coming of the Messiah, or deliverer, promised by God to their fathers, they looked forward with hope, expecting that he would put an end to the dominion of the being whom they thus regarded as the maker and ruler of the world.” Mosheim, Int., Com., chap. 2.

It would be alike tedious and useless much further to multiply citations from the history of Gnostic and other Oriental writers, to show that the nations represented by those writers regarded Satan as the creator of the world and god of their idolatry.