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BET EMET MINISTRIES
Hebrew For "The House Of Truth"
"A Christian's religious belief system, when tested and exposed to contradictory facts from Biblical languages, Biblical history, Biblical culture, and archeology, must in the Spirit of Truth and Repentance, be flexible enough to change"...Craig M. Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div.
We have all heard that "all roads lead to Rome" but in reality, when dealing with Spiritual issues involving the Soul, all roads don’t lead to Rome; they lead to Egypt. This is especially true when one studies Christianity and Judaism and finds that these sister-faiths are nothing more than evolutionary Spiritual developments of the once great Egyptian Religion. Understand from the beginning that Judaism is a much more faithful picture of this Earth’s original understanding of the Divine realm than Christianity. For this to be your experience, however, one must move beyond the literal and historical approach to Judaism, to the study of the Kabbalah. The Kabbalah, for those who are not acquainted with this Spiritual concept, means “receiving” and a discipline, or better yet, a school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Judaism. It is a set of esoteric teachings that is meant to explain the relationship between an infinite, eternal and mysterious Creator with the finite and mortal universe of His creation. In solving this paradox, Kabbalah seeks to define the nature of the universe and the human being, the nature and purpose of existence, and various other ontological questions. It also presents methods to aid understanding of these concepts and to thereby attain spiritual realization. The Jewish people, cannot take credit for these Spiritual revelations, as they were taught for thousands of years before their existence, in the Ancient Egyptian religion.
As am ordained pastor, I am amazed where my religious studies have taken me and the things I have learned over these last twenty years in my pursuit of Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. Never did I expect to find what I have uncovered and consider myself fortunate to live in an age where Archaeology and Egyptology, plus other such disciplines, are giving back to mankind the Spiritual knowledge what nations like Rome destroyed, covered up, and took from mankind over the last two thousand years. The study of error is often a little less important than the study of truth. The history of the human mind, in its progress from ignorance towards knowledge, should tell us the mistakes into which it has sometimes wandered, as well as its steps in the right path. This is the goal of any true search for Spiritual truth. I set out after seminary in 1988 to re-examine Gentile Christianity as to its earliest roots and determine if what is considered "Christian Orthodoxy" today is a faithful representation of the earliest understanding of God by the Ancients since it is they who coined the religious concepts which we are told to adhere today in the primarily Christian Western Hemisphere.
When Jews and Christians shall at length acknowledge that many of their Religions doctrines, which together now make up this Christian orthodoxy, or the religion of the majority, as distinguished from the simple religion which Jesus taught and practiced in the Bible, when they shall acknowledge that many of them are so many sad and lamentable errors. Then, and not till then, will they seek to know their origin, and inquire from which of the several branches of the Ancient Wisdom religions they sprung. More so for Christians than Jews, since living in the shadow of Rome, only then will they then see that most of the so-called Christian doctrines reached Europe from Egypt, through Alexandria. To elaborate a little more fully and in summary fashion: when allegory, metaphor, simile, and myth which expressed both the identity and actions of the Creator as understood by the Ancients in grasping for understanding of God and His workings in the Cosmos, were altered and stripped of their symbolism and rendered for all time as if literal and historical, then not only then is Divine Truth lost forever. At the same time, such Spiritual delusion plunges its recipients into abject idolatry. Such is the plight of the primarily Christian Western Hemisphere as these Spiritual allegories and metaphors that once expressed Divine Truth were altered by Rome and "literalized" and applied to men's lives, especially the life of the New Testament Jesus.
Samuel Sharpe stated: “All nations borrow from others; at least, from those who are before them in the race of civilization. They borrow from each of their neighbors in those branches of knowledge in which they think they can do so wisely, and what they have taken often shows itself in the language.”(1) I can remember my amazement when I discovered that the Hebrew word "Yahweh" finds its origin in Egypt; taken from one of the names for the sons of Ptah (one of the many Names given the Creator). This is only the beginning of knowledge and what you can learn if your studies progress far and deep enough to look at Egypt as the source for Judaism and Christianity. Sadly, today much of the beauty of this earliest Divine Revelation given to mankind through Egypt by the Creator is altered almost beyond recognition. The culprits of this dastardly deed was first accomplished by Alexandrian Essenes and later Rome as we find in the Christian faith today which is but, at best, a blurred photograph of the earliest understanding of God on this planet by those who knew Him best. The aim of my life is to show the extraordinary readiness with which these earliest religious beliefs and understanding of God were copied by neighboring nations and then tragically altered and corrupted from their original meanings, particularly by the Greeks and later Romans. Samuel Sharpe stated: “In matters of religion, the more ignorant part of those two nations bowed in reverence to the greater earnestness and seriousness of the Egyptians,”(2) who were at the same time so remarkably rich in understanding of the Divine and His message to them as seen in operation of His Divine Law in Heaven above, Divine Law operating in Nature all around mankind, and these same Divine Laws operating in their own physical bodies as well. Egypt understood these Laws of the Divine as the recurrent message of the God of all creation, a message speaking Order and Harmony to mankind through God’s Law. Early man came to understand their responsibility to manifest that same order in their own lives since being created in the image of the only God they could see who operated these same Laws of divine harmony and order not only above them, but below and around them. Hence the axiom: So Above, So Below.
Greece received from Ancient Egypt their religion, yet Christian Rome, from which our religious belief systems has chiefly sprung in this Western Hemisphere, would take and alter almost beyond recognition the simple Divine message of the Creator given originally to Ancient Egypt. In so doing, Spiritual allegory and metaphor became literalized and historicized, and limited to but one person, that being Jesus. With this Roman transformation of the Ancient Egyptian religion, Rome imposed upon all a promised damnation if one failed to accept Roman Orthodoxy. The monuments and hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt, as well as the Jewish people and nation with their Kabbalah, have protected and safeguarded this same Divine message in the absence of their Egyptian parents since their destruction and Hellenization by Alexander the Great. Ironically, when the literal reading of the Jewish texts of their Tanakh, the Old Testament as well as the Christian gospels, along with the Gnostic Pauline epistles are read esoterically, and not exoterically, we find again the Ancient Egyptian Spiritual truths regarding the evolution of the Soul in mankind. Read exoterically, literally, and historically, we never get a glimpse of these mystical and metaphysical Spiritual truths that further evolve man’s evolution into the stature of the fulness of Christ.”(3) Rome, however, in conquering Greece and owing to their own Sun Worship, will only further remove mankind from their earlier understanding of Ancient Egypt’s Divine message entrusted to them. Egypt today gets a bad rap by those who misunderstand its religion and many lacking such knowledge interpret Egyptian faith as idolatrous Sun Worship in its own right. Nothing could be further from the truth once you look into it for yourself and remember that allegory, myth, simile, and metaphor was only used to communicate these Divine Truths of the incarnation of Divine Mind, God, into “matter” and mankind; NEVER was this Cosmic message to be understood in a "literal" or historical sense.
Almost all Egyptologists we find today interpreted, and continue to interpret, the ancient Egyptian writings and other modes of expression (art, architecture, ...etc.) without trying to understand the Astronomical, mystical, and metaphysical thoughts and beliefs expressed in them. Hence, their explanations continue to be shallow, which reflects their pre-conceived inherited beliefs of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; all three world religions based upon a literal and historical Abrahamic faith. In concert, these Egyptologists look at the Ancient Egyptian religion as being primitive and inferior to the modern western world.
In spite of their short sightedness, the Greek historian Herodotus (500 B.C.) stated: “Of all the nations of the world, the Egyptians are the happiest, healthiest and most religious.”(4) Herodotus’ statement reflects the excellent conditions of people who didn't just theorize about metaphysics, but who practiced it to the fullest. Ancient Egyptians had a very sophisticated understanding of metaphysics and the laws which govern man and his universe. The Egyptian thinking was simple, coherent, consistent, logical, analytical and rational. Their main premise that one is all, and all is one, reflects their total cosmic consciousness, which Herodotus called “most religious”. The Ancient Egyptians did not have a word for religion in their language. For them, there was no perceived difference between sacred and mundane. They understood that man is a model of the universe. If man understands himself perfectly, he also understands the universe: Astronomy, astrology, geography, rhythm, proportion, mathematics, magic, medicine, anatomy, art - all are linked in a grand dynamic scheme. No aspect can be isolated from another and treated as a separate specialty or field without distortion and destruction.(5) You should find it rather interesting that this concept is embodied within Biblical Judaism but not Christianity.
All roads lead to Ancient Egypt as we will see and we live in an exciting time of rediscovery of long lost Divine Truth that helps us in our understanding of Whom God is and What His message originally was to this Planet. The Egyptian race has ceased to be a leading nation and its history has been neglected, and its very essence forgotten or misunderstood at best. Yet the Egyptian mind still has a most important influence upon our modern civilization and we fail to understand or recognize it. The shadow of Egyptian truth can be found today in Biblical and Rabbinical Judaism and their Kabbalah, and to a lesser extent in Christianity because of its rigid anti-approach to the Bible, reinforced by its solely literal and historical understanding of the Bible’s texts. This weakness will become very apparent as you read through this book, absorbing the knowledge that it contains.
In preparation for what will follow I would like to say that a quest into the fountainhead of modern man's religious beliefs and practices inevitably leads back BEFORE the path of the Judaic-Christian heritage and the Greek classic tradition. It leads us to the very dawn of civilization. Myths, symbols, and ideas cherished as our own in this primarily Christian nation will be found to have been fashioned many thousands of years ago by cultures sometimes labeled as primitive, crude, heathen or even pagan by Roman Christianity. I will let you decide if such designations are deserving of these ancient nations once you see such evidence for yourself. Only then can you decide if such labels are correct. Ancient Egypt, often called the cradle of mankind, represents a terminal point in this search for the origin of modern concepts. This ancient civilization, perhaps more than any other, can supply us with the clues to as understanding of many of the religious and Spiritual beliefs which have found their way into modern times. Much like the ageless pyramids, ancient Egyptian thought has withstood the assault of the ages and, merged with elements of other cultures, becomes absorbed by the mainstream of Western thought today. Only lacking is the proper hermeneutic for this material and great wisdom.
For the Christian more than the Jew, who is closer to this original thought and understanding of the Divine and God, this can be the most important study of one's life. The Egyptians, the parents of the Judaic-Christian faiths, were essentially a religious people. Their religion was composed of elements uniquely African and Ancient Egyptian, and those it shared with others ancient religions. But amazingly, ancient Egypt was familiar with such relatively modern concepts as the Big Bang, Immortality of the Soul, the Last Judgment, Messiah, Resurrection of the Dead, Hades, Heaven, the Unity of God, Prayer, Sacrifices, Logos, Millennium, Sabbath, Circumcision, Immersion, the Supper with God, etc. These religious concepts and their original Spiritual meanings have been tragically altered down through history from their original meanings as understood by those who first received them from God and left such teaching for mankind throughout history in their writings. It would do us good to understand these religious concepts in the same manner that the ancients received from God. Only then, can we compare them and their original meanings to the same things and dogmas we as Christians inherited down through time. Only then, when comparing what went before and what occurred later, are we able to see first hand the effects upon the earliest of all Spiritual dogmas by later succeeding and conquering nations, culminating with Rome. Our goal must be to see if these religious and Spiritual dogmas that we have inherited from Ancient Egytp, after being filtered and passed down through Judaism and Christianity through the centuries, today contain the same Spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical ideas of their founders or if they differ appreciably. If they don’t and if they differ substantialy, then we must ask ourselves: Why? This is for you, the reader to discern and decide upon examining the evidence as we read through this book. Let us as Christians and followers of the "Christ" ask ourselves if we are really following in the Spiritual concepts of God as the Ancients knew Him and recorded His works or, it is possible, we are ignorantly following the religious and political agendas of men who, for various reasons, departed and purposefully separated from these earliest Spiritual understandings of God, man, and Soul.
It is my hope to not over complicate this for our readers as I try to construct the ancient past. I will endeavor to present this information in an unbiased manner as possible as we draw together the facts concerning the ancient Egyptian religion. I will point to the parallels between ancient Egyptian beliefs on the one hand, and the Christian and Hebrew thoughts on the other. By relating ancient Egyptian civilization to modern Western thought, I hope to supply important keys to the reader to help in his understanding of our modern times and aid in the proper application of these Divine principles of Ancient Egypt and the earliest expression of Christianity to our lives as they existed before the rise of Roman Orthodoxy, also called by some Roman brainwashing. It would be then that Rome will alter, corrupt, and forge religious documents that go almost unnoticed today in our Churches; noticeable usually only to the Biblical scholar. Craig Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div.
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