The Jewish sect called the Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees, may have actually been in a “secret society” cult that today is known as “Kabbalah.” Those two sects comprised the Sanhedrin which falsely condemned our Lord to death!
These practitioners of Kabbalah were instrumental in giving up Christ to Rome to be crucified. So, what exactly is Kabbalah? A website explains,
“Kabbalah is practiced in Israel by many Jews. There are Kabbalist Rabbis – highly respected in the community. Kabbalah is mystical and very New Age. Kabbalah teaches Eastern meditation, reincarnation, astrology, channeling spirits, etc etc. It is New Age on steroids! And you don’t have to be Jewish to join the movement. Madonna is a Kabbalist – does that not speak volumes?
From Kabbalah.com
ABOUT THE KABBALAH CENTRE:
We teach Kabbalah, not as a scholarly study but as a way of creating a better life and a better world.
The Kabbalah Centre is a non-profit organization that makes the principles of Kabbalah understandable and relevant to everyday life. The Kabbalah Centre teachers provide students with spiritual tools based on kabbalistic principles that students can then apply as they see fit to improve their own lives and by doing so, make the world better. The Centre was founded by Rav Yehuda Ashlag in 1922 and now spans the globe with brick-and-mortar locations in more than 40 cities as well as an extensive online presence. (Can you say “Your Best Life Now?”)…
Defining The Link
“Jesus
said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I
proceeded forth and came from God. You are of your father the
devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” (John 8:42,
44)
It’s at this point that we’re going to look at a concept that will go a long way toward explaining Christ’s ongoing war with the Pharisees and other religious authorities that ran throughout His earthly ministry. What we observe is Jesus reaching out in love and compassion to Jews, Samaritans, Romans and the poor, – and even the Pharisee Nicodemus and others of that party that would listen. For the Pharisaical hierarchy however he reserved His most biting commentary and attacks.
It seems there was something more going on here. Now previously we’ve documented the infiltration of Christ’s Church by pagan forces and the adoption by some Christian branches of practices that had their origins in the worship of pagan gods. The same happened to Israel through the Pharisees. Over the centuries they had let the influence of the occult sneak in. They had turned to mysticism colored by an association with Gnosticism that served as the forerunner of Kabala.
That by the way, is the same Kabala followed by some Jewish sects today and adopted by such Hollywood types as Madonna. As such, the ancient Pharisees plugged into the system of secret societies that began in Babel/ Babylon, then migrating to Egypt and across the world. It survives today in Free Masonry, Rosacrucianism, Skull & Bones, The Bildebergs, etc ad infinitum. So though the term was not yet in use, the 1st century Pharisees were the forerunners of today’s kabbalists with all of their New Age / occult baggage. That’s our starting point.
Getting Started
To understand this at all perhaps we should begin by talking just a little bit about Kabala and its relationship to both Biblical Judaism and early Christianity. Now Kabala is at its root a mystical Jewish theology that can be traced back at least to one, Isaac the Blind, considered to be the Father of Kabbalah. It was considered a search by the mystics to reach the “higher throne” of the Almighty. Its practitioners believe that it reveals the deeper and truer meaning of the Torah, the Jewish Law as contained in the first five books of Moses. As such it is “a revelation to the Sages from a remote past, and preserved only by a privileged few.” It comprises and gives meaning to the Oral Law, such as that which was enforced by the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.
It was and remains, a religious system of secret knowledge‟ about God. Thus it was intimately entwined in the 1st century with Gnosticism, – with each influencing the other. Gershom Scholem, the leading modern scholar on Jewish mysticism confirms the occult roots of the Kabbalah. “From the beginning of its development, the Kabbalah embraced an esotericism closely akin to the spirit of Gnosticism, one which was not restricted to instruction in the mystical path, but also included ideas on cosmology, angelology, and magic.” He goes on to describe how over the centuries, this developing Jewish thought took in “the mystical, speculative elements from the occult and especially magical elements.” These later developed into “secret doctrine” and “initiation rites” that have existed “up to modern times” in Jerusalem.
So we can understand something about the Pharisees beliefs by looking at Kabbalah and can shed light on that by looking at Gnosticism. Gnostic beliefs would after Christ’s death and the founding of Church, rise up to influence and challenge early Christian doctrine. Now just like Kabbalah, Gnosticism was all about secret knowledge which only the privileged could know. Today’s Gnostic Apostolic Church tells us that “Mankind is moving toward the Omega Point” via the “Path of Transfiguration” returning to the “Treasury of Light.” Yeah, just like this sounds, these are all concepts of the New Age and Eastern religious systems, that have often just adopted the veneer of Biblically based religions as they advance their heresy.
The “Treasury of Light‟ for instance is a concept found in Zen Buddhism, the “root source of all Buddhas.” We are told “there is no ego in the treasury of light”. And as for the concept of a “Path of Transfiguration‟ – well that can be found in Rosacrucianism for one. It is a way that leads “humans back to their divine origin.” Remember, in all occult / New Age / and Eastern based systems, man is a part of the divine; – a little god, – if you will.
As you can see, these religious philosophies have much more in common with the occult than with the Bible on which they claim to be based. Modern Kabbalah for instance utilizes angels, magic and astrology as it attempts to influence the workings of the universe. According to Louis Berkhoff, the Apostle Paul was likely taking on these heresies in Colossians and 1st Timothy. This philosophy which had its roots in Judaism, “ultimately developed into a strange mixture of Jewish elements, Christian doctrines, and heathen speculative thought.” It was only a few years before Paul addressed these problems, that these Jewish-fermented ideas were infecting the likes of the Pharisees who opposed Christ.
This is not such an unnatural development. Over the course of their history, the Israelites had often fallen to the sin of worshiping the gods of the land. The worship of Baal and Ashtoreth was related to the religious practices of ancient Babylon and the mystery religions of old. It is a habit that the Jews seemed not fully able to break. Now when the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt they had rubbed up against the worship of Osiris and other ancient gods. These had originated in Babylon before being imported by the Egyptians. The incident of the Golden Calves; – when the Israelites rebelled against the Great God Jehovah, to set up idols of their own making; – can be viewed as an extension of this mode of thinking that they had been exposed to while in Egypt. Next the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, – but refused to obey God with regard to purging the land of all traces of their enemy. That opened the door to more pagan influences. So history shows that the Israelites repeatedly fell to that fatal temptation, adopting the native gods and grafting them somehow into some hybrid system. When they worshipped Baal, they sacrificed their children in a deadly form of Satanic ritualism. When they worshipped Ashtoreth, – knowingly or not, – they were paying homage to a very prince of demons.
Over time all of these religious compromises took their toll. The books of 1st & 2nd Kings chronicles a history of the Israelites in their split kingdoms of Israel headquartered in Samaria and Judah with its capital at Jerusalem. In each of these kingdoms, we find the kings alternately moving the population toward paganism and its practices or back toward God. In the end the evil triumphs and God banishes first the Northern Kingdom, or Israel and later the land of Judah from the land given to them by covenant. The Israelites had not held up their part of the bargain. Instead they had embraced the evil of these satanic pagan gods. Fast forward to the Babylonian captivity. The Israelites have been relocated to Babylon. We see in the Book of Daniel how the Babylonian system took in the vast number of Jews, moving them toward their own paganized religious system.
At the head of that Babylonian religion was a “sacerdotal caste” we call magi. In the words of Tom Stewart, these consisted of “priests, Chaldeans, physicians, philosophers, astronomers, astrologers, soothsayers, in short the brain trust of the kingdom”. The root word from the Greek magoi has been translated wise men, but also sorcerer, magician and specifically a member of the order of Zoroasterian priests coming mainly from the Medes and Persians. (However, the secret society that is the Magi has spread throughout the region and even as far as China.)
Scripture tells how God showed the prophet Daniel, a member of the Magi caste, the King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and interpreted it for him. For that service he was promoted “chief of the governors of all the wise men of Babylon.” (Daniel 2:48) Daniel somehow became a member of this priesthood without being tainted by its pagan influences. In fact, Daniel‟s prophecies became part of the tradition for at least some of the Magi of succeeding generations. It was members of this class that looked to the Scripture for the timing and location of the coming of Messiah. They knew from the prophecy of the 70 Weeks found in Daniel 9, the approximate timing of the appearance of the Christ. Matthew tells how God gave them a sign in the heavens, “His star in the East” (Matthew 2:2) to show them the exact time and location of His entrance into the world.
Apart from Daniel’s influence this cult of the Magi was nothing more than another form of the ancient mystery religion which had spread across the region. Throw in the fact that the Northern tribes had intermarried with other ancient peoples after the Assyrian conquest, corrupting their already fragile system of worship, and leading to “the development of a syncretistic religion” that rejected everything that did not come from the Pentateuch, (the first five books of Moses). All of this had by Christ’s day begun to congeal, expressing itself in the fact that the Jewish religious leadership had been compromised by the teachings and practices of the Middle Eastern mystery religions.
(Source: https://grandmageri422.me/2017/02/07/were-the-pharisees-mystics-and-kabbalists/, underline mine)
Reading this, it’s no wonder Jesus, as well as his cousin, John the Baptist, had the hardest time with the Jewish religious elite! They were impossible to deal with because they thought that they knew all of the answers already. Even among Jesus’ very own disciples, arguments broke out about who was “the greatest.” I find it very possible that the Jews carried this “secret, occult knowledge” with them from Egypt (which really started in Babylon). A website explains,
“First, we need to
understand the definition of the term occult.
The occult is a
rather broad term that covers a lot of practices that are unholy to
our God. It comes from the Latin word occultus
and means "hidden,
or secret". In
its most simple understanding the
occult is any person, group, or organization that tries to gain
supernatural power, abilities, or knowledge apart from the Creator
God, Jehovah. At
its root is disobedience to God!
Let's
proceed ... According to a
website
which promotes the history of ancient Egyptian magic, the Egyptian
Pharaohs practiced witchcraft to empower men with means and methods
of making both demonic and friendly powers perform what they wanted.
And I found this very interesting: in
Egypt, the magical powers belonged exclusively to men of religion,
and one who was skilled in the art and science of magic, was
invincible. The
domain of Egyptian witchcraft and occult was divine; a person who was
an expert in this field of magic was considered
immortal, or "like
a god".
So, now consider Exodus 7:1-3,
"Then the Lord
said to Moses, “See, I make you as
God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You
shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall
speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.
But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My
signs and My wonders
in the land of Egypt", and verses 10-12: "So Moses and
Aaron came to Pharaoh, and thus they did just as the Lord
had commanded; and Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and his
servants, and it
became a serpent.
Then Pharaoh also called for the
wise men and the
sorcerers, and they also, the
magicians of Egypt,
did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw
down his staff and they turned into serpents.
But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs." Starting to get
the picture? While in bondage in Egypt for 400 years, the
Israelites would have seen the power of Egypt's occult.
So God sent Moses to confound their occultic system, proving that His
signs and wonders were greater. But did that stop the influence of
Egyptian magic among the Israelites?
Fast
forward to Solomon, the heir apparent to King David, a man whom 1
Kings 4:29-30 says, "God gave Solomon wisdom and very great
discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the
seashore. Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of
the east and all the wisdom of Egypt." I looked up the word
wisdom in
Strong's Concordance and found that it is the Hebrew word chokmah,
and it means
"wisdom, experience, and shrewdness". But among its many
connotations is that the one who receives wisdom is "to be
endowed with special abilities given to him by God; and that the
prerequisite for wisdom
is the fear of the Lord".
There
is a lot of extra-Biblical literature that suggests that Solomon
practiced the magic arts that came from Egypt. The Apocryphal Wisdom
of Solomon
(220BC-50AD) mentions Solomon praying & receiving the “spirit
of Wisdom”. Through Wisdom, Solomon knows of astrology and the
“forces of spirits” or “powers of spirits” in this
translation. Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a very fragmented
Apocryphal Psalms (11Q11[11Q PsAp]) that mentions Solomon in
connection with demons. It reads, "[Of David. Concerning the
words of the spell] in the name of [YHWH…][…] of Solomon, and he
will invoke [the name of YHWH] {to set him free from every affliction
of the sp]irits, Of the devils. [Liliths,][owls and jackals.] These
are the devils, and the pri[nce of emn]ity [is Belial,] who [rules]
over the abyss [of dark] ness…". Around 70 AD, Josephus
compiled his Antiquities and included an excerpt about Solomon. When
referring to 1 Kings, Solomon no longer speaks 3000 proverbs and
sings 1005 songs, Josephus writes that now he has authored 3000 books
of proverbs and 1005 books of odes. Solomon could also compose
incantations
to heal the sick and perform exorcisms.
The belief that the original Temple of Jerusalem was built
with supernatural help
also emerged with Josephus. Then there is The Epistle to Rehoboam, a
letter purported to have been written by Solomon to his son,
Rehoboam, explaining the benefits of gaining
power through the use of “plants, prayers, stones, but above all
else…the seven planetary gods.”
It contains a passage subtitled ‘Concerning Hygromancy’ in which
Solomon instructs his son, Rehoboam, on how to use divination and
astrology to secure sexual gratification, health, power, and wealth.
The basis of Solomon’s magic lies in a precise understanding of
astrology and cosmology. Finally, there is the Testament
of Solomon (TSol)
(2nd century AD), which describes Solomon building the Jerusalem
Temple with the aid
of demons. The text
claims that Solomon wrote the Testament in an attempt to record all
his wisdom after he had lost his powers…
So, how does all this tie into our understanding of the Kabbalah as a
mystical religion? Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629) a professor of
Hebrew, known by the title "Master of the Rabbis", defines
the Kabbalah [in his book Lexicon
of the Talmud] as
"a secret science, which treats in a mystical and enigmatical
manner of things divine, angelic, theological, celestial, and
metaphysical; the subjects being enveloped in striking symbols and
secret modes of teaching"…
But now, I'm
going to take a big leap and link the ancient Egyptian mysticism and
occult to the Kabbalah and to the secrets of Freemasonry. I am
astounded at the number of websites that promote these occultic and
mystic religions and organizations. In a fascinating article on the
website called Gaia
(named after the
pagan goddess, known as the Mother Earth goddess), Ancient Egyptian
history author, Alphonse Mariette, wrote of the Egyptian mystery
schools, “To the initiated of the sanctuary, no doubt, was reserved
the knowledge of the god in the abstract, the god concealed in the
unfathomable depths of his own essence. But for the less refined
adoration of the people were presented the endless images of deities
sculptured on the walls of temples.” The Christian Priest, Origen,
said that “The Egyptian philosophers have sublime notions with
regard to the Divine nature, which they kept secret, and never
discover to the people but under a veil of fables and allegories.”
If you've done any study of Freemasonry at all, you can
surely see the similarities in the teaching methods.
Freemasonry is performed by way of symbolism and allegory and never
revealed to the uninitiated (known as cowans). Masonic teaching
centers on its initiation rituals. Each of Freemasonry’s three
degrees takes the candidate through a journey steeped in history,
symbolism, and allegory to teach him lessons of how to raise his
divine spark, realize his relationship to a higher power (God, Grand
Architect, Supreme Being, etc) and live a life of moral rectitude.
Occult scholar, Lewis Spence (1874 – 1955) tells us of the same
goal of initiation in Ancient Egypt: “The purpose of initiation is
a conventional attempt to realize man’s place in the universe and
in the divine scheme of things, and for this, I believe, the Egyptian
Mystery System achieved for the first time in an orderly and
philosophical manner … Have we no lessons to learn from Egypt? Aye,
the greatest in the world, the knowledge of that divine introspection
which alone can give man the likeness of the Divine.”
But the incontrovertible evidence that ties Freemasonry
to the ancient Egyptian occult is the use of Egyptian gods like Thoth
and Anubis; On, Osiris and Isis in the oaths they take. In the
mystery schools of Ancient Egypt, a chain was placed around a
candidate’s neck as part of his preparation for initiation. In
Freemasonry, a noosed rope (called a cable tow) is placed around the
initiate's neck. As in Freemasonry, the Egyptian candidate was also
blindfolded to represent a state of darkness before emerging into the
light of knowledge when the blindfold was removed.
When a candidate becomes a Freemason, he is presented
with a white apron consisting of a square overlaid with a triangle.
The apex of the triangular flap represents the divine spark we must
endeavor to recover. It is the part of us made in the image of our
Creator, and there’s no better geometric figure to symbolize this
than the triangle. After all, geometrically a triangle is the very
first shape that can be made by drawing straight lines. This is why
the number 3 was venerated by the ancients and still is to this day.
In Judaism, the triangle represents the past, present, and future. To
the Chinese: heaven, earth, and water. To the Hindus: creation,
preservation, and renewal. The three points of the triangle also
represent the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the
collective unconscious. The Ancient Egyptian ceremony of initiation
led the candidate to a door shaped exactly as a Masonic apron: a
triangle over a square, symbolizing his progression from an earthly,
material existence (square) into a heavenly, spiritual existence of
higher learning (triangle)…
The secrecy,
the magic, the sorcery, and the "mystic traditions" are
serious transgressions. Can you see the disobedience and rebellion
against the God of the Bible? It is as ancient as time and continues
to hold sway over mankind today, tempted by the Enemy to seek his own
divinity. The connection between secrecy and science is unmistakable
in the occult, whether in antiquity or the 21st Century. We must
expose it and uproot it at every turn!”
(Source: https://www.salvationandsurvival.com/2020/01/the-pharisees-kabbalah-and-ancient16.html, underline mine)
I know that was a lot to read. If you’re still with me, what have you learned? I’ve learned a great deal about these “mystery” religions. Perhaps this is what John meant by “mystery, Babylon” in the book of Revelation. May God have mercy on us for this most serious of transgressions! Mixing God’s Holy Law with the unclean, filthy false idols of Babylon is beyond outrageous! And yet, the Jews, especially those that were highly-educated, fell into this most heinous sin! Perhaps this is why Jesus preferred to be around prostitutes, thieves, liars and “sinners.” Besides knowing their place, these people were not “puffed up” with knowledge. Perhaps this is why Paul wrote, “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God” (1Cor 3:18-19, NASB). Amen, my Lord. You are ALWAYS right!
Babylon is the place where virtually all of our false doctrines come from. Hell, the “Trinity,” an afterlife directly after we die – ALL of it can be traced back to Babylon! It didn’t take long for it to infect Egypt. Take a look at what the ancient Egyptians believed and you tell me if it sounds familiar to you:
1.We see that the DEAD are STILL LIVING (Anything is possible in fables).
2.The dead Egyptians had IMMORTAL SOULS.
3.At the time of death, JUDGMENT took place immediately.
4.Good people were ushered into a place of HAPPINESS at death.
5.Bad people were: (a) Sentenced to ROAM AIMLESSLY, (b) were completely ANNIHILATED by being eaten by Ammut, or (c) they could be TORTURED as in fire.
(Source: Tom-Marianne Kapinos)
See, many (or even most) Christians today think that they are worshipping The Almighty. Yet, many of our “Christian” holidays are blatantly pagan – and therefore, Luciferian! All of this has the same source: Nimrod. We must insure that we don’t follow these same traditions.
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