Jesus said Antipas is my faithful martyr! Antipas was the Bishop of the church at Pergamos during the reign of Roman Emperor Domitian. The Apostle John ordained Antipas as Bishop of the church at Pergamos. Antipas was burned inside an idol which was a bull shaped copper structure. His crime was casting out demons worshipped by the local population! Some of the hero’s of the Faith are listed in Hebrews Chapter eleven! Stephen was a faithful martyr listed in the Book of Acts! Antipas was most likely a Greek who converted to Christianity. Antipas is the shortened name of Antipater. Remember that was the name of one of Alexander the Great successful Generals. (397-319 B.C.). Remember Herod the Great was known by this name! Jesus will avenge the blood of the Saints! Why did Jesus call Pergamum Satan’s Seat? Even Ephesus with all of its advantages with the Great Temple and bustling port, could not match the importance of the once royal seat of the Attalids! Situated on a scenic acropolis Pergamum was embellished with the largest number of Greek and Roman Temples in the whole of Asia Minor! Examples are Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Demetia, Dionysis and Aphrodite. On another site was housed the largest Aesclepium of the Empire. Its library of two hundred thousand volumes rivaled the renowned library in Alexandria! The eminent Doctor Galen was among her favorite sons! Roman Emperors came to seek healing at the famous Aesclelpium! Aesclepium was honored as the god of healing in the classical world. When the cult of “Dominus et Deus”, was initiated at Pergamum, the great Basilica was erected, adding to the rostrum of numerous idol Temples! The visitor today Bergama (Turkish name of the present day city), will see the immense structure at the edge of the bustling center. Basilica became the monument of vice and cruelty! Every citizen was forced to burn a few grains of incense here and worship the Emperor of Deus. Then they would proceed to their preferred practice a common syncetistic act which never lacked its double-faced devotees! For anyone who refused to submit to this profane practice death was imminent! Where as the Temple of Zeus was referred by the early Christians as the “Seat of Satan”, the appellation was later transferred to this center where some Christians felt compelled to pay obeisance! Source: Thomas Cosmades Comment: Remember God’s church was established in the midst of all this evil! The venerable Polycarp followed Antipas in martyrdom! Christ and his Cross was raised up over “Satan’s Seat”, to defeat Satan the eternal enemy of man! This battle rages on today between the One True God and the millions of the gods of men! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Tag: temples
Psychics in America! Isaiah 8:19
Annual Psychic Industry Business Revenues in United States: $2.1 Billion Dollars. Source; Statistics of the American Federation of Certified Psychics and Mediums on the Profession of Psychics, the Business of Divinity Arts, and their clients. 2015-2016. Comment: What got my attention to research this is the flood of psychic adds on major cable news channels lately! This takes millions of dollars to run these ads! The 1-800 adds are on your screen for us to call about our future! It is obvious Americans are not taking the advice of Isaiah the Old Testament Prophet? How many Christians are visiting psychics? I shutter in my boots when I hear a Christian tell me, “Ya, but that is the Old Testament and the New Testament has done away with the Old Testament!” Then why did Jesus quote the Old Testament so much? Did He quote something He did not believe? Let us in brief cover the words used in Isaiah 8:19. A familiar spirit or spirit of divination is the act of trying to conjure up spirits from the dead to predict future events! This is an occult practice and sometimes is referred as sorcery. Wizards are of the same spirit and this word actually means to howl. These acts involve chanting, howling to try to call up dead spirits! Sometimes while living in India I would walk past Hindu Temples and Mosques and would hear this chanting and howling while beating drums and tambourines as these Hindu Priests would try to mesmerize their victims! Remember the witch at Endor that King Saul inquired to about his future? Israel was ready to go into captivity and Isaiah tried to warn them! Isaiah asked the Jews a simple question! Why would you seek the dead instead of the living God? The same question needs to be asked to America today! Why would you worship death instead of life? As Halloween approaches there is not a more appropriate question to be asked! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Resurrection! Matthew 27:52-53
The word resurrection literally means to quit one’s previous position and to rise up! We need a spiritual resurrection and a physical resurrection! Jesus said we must be born again! We had no control over our physical birth and no control over our physical death unless we chose suicide! Without Christ we wake up everyday in our previous position of sin! Nothing seems to change except things get worse! Through Christ we quit this position and move into righteousness! That is we are made right with God! We wake up with a spiritually resurrected body and the promise of a physically resurrected body! It is interesting that when Jesus died on the Cross the graves were opened up by an earthquake and many of the saints arose! Notice in verse 53, they came out of the graves after the resurrection! When sin has been paid for people get free! I spent a few years in India and learned some of the aspects of the Hindu religion! The Hindus suffer from many bondages and superstitions based upon their Theology of God! One particular destructive belief about God is the Doctrine of reincarnation! Not the incarnation but reincarnation! They believe if you sin or are a bad person in your next life you could be a bug, rat or a snake or something awful. There is no remedy and you are locked into this condition due to your sin! They have respect for bugs and rats because they could have been a former family member! If fact in the Hindu Temples they feed rats and snakes milk and give them respect! Lucky critters! So they believe their sin is punished forever into the next generations whom could be a bug, snake, cow or a human never to come up in life! They make no effort to improve their life because their lot is permanent! It was very hard to improve their life under these beliefs! The incarnation is very different from the reincarnation! God taking on our sin who was without sin to deliver us from evil. God becomes man to take the very sin that separates us from God! If reincarnation were true and Jesus was just another human and took on the sin of the whole world he would have been resurrected as Satan! But Jesus was God and only that sacrifice would have been acceptable to God the Father! His son was the key to redemption! When Jesus was raised from the dead the saints were raised with Him! The resurrection is probably the most important aspect of our Faith! It is also based on historical facts! The next time you see a bug crawling across your floor you have my permission to step on it! What we believe about God determines our outlook and attitude about life here on earth and after! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Do You Need a Vacation?
Have your heart right with Christ, and He will visit you often, and so turn weekdays into Sundays, meals into Sacraments, houses into Temples, and earth into Heaven! Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)