ERM - Egyptian Religion

 

Report By E.R. Mast

 

EGYPTIAN RELIGION By Sir Wallis Budge

 

 

Where did the Christian Religion come from? Yes, I know that we are told that it came from Judaism, but that is not quite true. In this book --Egyptian Religion it places before the reader an account of the principal ideas and beliefs held by the ancient Egyptians concerning resurrection and the future life. And we are also talking about the ancient Egyptians back in the days of say 4,445 B.C. We have always said that unless you go back to the very beginning and get your dates lined out we say that you cannot understand your own scriptures.

Dr. Budge quotes from the Celebrated book ---"The Egyptian book of the dead,” which he helped translate from the Egyptian hieroglyphics Dr. Budge was the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum for years.

Now; the literature from Egypt is large, and the product of different people which taken together covers several thousands of years. It is difficult therefore to find any works where this is all correlated but we find that this great central idea of immortality has existed for thousands of years, and it has been unchanged and forms the basis of the early Adamic Egyptian religion and social life. From the beginning to the end of the Adamic Egyptian life as first established with the coming into that land of the Adamic man the thought was always of a life beyond the grave. Thus going back to that early time of about 4,500 years, B.C., we see the burying of the physical body, and the expectation of life after death, thru the belief of Resurrection. Oh, this was not of this worn out physical body but of the elements which made that body connected with the spiritual body which death released.

The ancient book known as the "Egyptian book of the Dead,” thus covers a period of more than 5000 years. It reflects faithfully the sublime belief and the high ideals of the noble aspirations of the Educated Egyptians, but also the various superstitions and childish reverence for Amulets, and Magical rites and charms which grew up around this belief. Perhaps inherited from their pre-dynastic ancestors, and regarded as essential for their salvation.

We have heard over the years that the text of the "Book of the Dead" is utterly corrupt. But the finds over the years in Egypt have resulted in recovery of valuable texts. And we have the translations of today by wise men of our race, and these may be further uplifted by discoveries of tomorrow. Yet it is also now known that the Egyptians possessed over 6000 years ago a religion, and a system of morality which when stripped of all corrupt accretions stand second to none among those which have developed by the great nations of the world. Yes, the ancient Egyptians believed in God Almighty. This belief was of ONE God who was self-existent, immortal, invincible, eternal Omniscient, and Almighty, and inscrutable; the maker of the heavens and the earth, and yes even the underworld. He was the creator of the sea, of men and women, animals, and birds, fish and creeping things, trees and plants. And the incorporeal beings who were the messengers that fulfilled his wish and word. Their whole belief of these early Egyptian, (Adamites) was based upon this, and no matter how far back we follow this literature we never seem to approach a time when they were without this remarkable belief. All of this is in picture characters and thus must be interpreted. Thus we owe much to this man of our race, Dr. Budge who spent his whole life studying and trying to interpret what went before of our destiny. He worked with the fundamentals of Sanskrit and other Aryan analogies. And in the process we learn the word Ra which was connected with the Supreme Being. That this sun-god was a type and symbol of God, and refers also to Osiris, the oldest of our records is no older than 2500 B.C.

There is no argument about this. Rack when the Great Pyramid was a new building, these precepts were held by these ancient Egyptians. You will understand them when you review their buildings and their way of life. We understand then that these talks of gods are only forms, manifestations and phases of Ra --the sun-god, who was himself the type and symbol of God Himself. Later people would suppose these people worshiped the sun. But in this they have missed the true meaning of their language.

Dr. H. Brugsch collected a number of the epithets which are applied to the gods, from texts of that period. And from these we may see that the ideas and beliefs of the Egyptians concerning God were almost identical with those of the Hebrews and the Muhammadans at a later period. When classified these epithets read thus:----

God is ONE and alone, and none other existeth with HIM. God is One. The One who made all things, and God is a spirit, a hidden spirit, the spirit of spirits. The Great Spirit of the Egyptians, the Divine spirit. He hath been from the beginning. He hath existed from of old and was when nothing else had being. He Existed when nothing else existed. And what existed He created after He came into being. He thus is the father of the beginnings. God is the Eternal One and endureth forever. He is the hidden being, but no man hath known his form. (Except perhaps Adam). He is a mystery to his creatures. He is truth, and He liveth by truth. He resteth on truth, and He executes truth thru out the world. HE is life, and thru HIM only, man liveth. He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. He begetteth but was never begotten. He begat himself and produced Himself. He createth but was never created. HE is the maker of his own form, and the fashioner of His own body. Thus on and on goes their explanation of just who is God. Then their texts show their thoughts as the sun rises and sets every morning and evening for without the sun, supplied by God there would be nothing growing. The sun is also thought of as that great boat, or ship which we see in the ancient Star Bible, known as Argo, which takes the pilgrims home.

"For homage unto thee, O thou who risest in the heavens, as RA, and sitteth upon Maat (the unchanging and unalterable law.) Thou who as a great light, who shinest in the heavens. Thou art glorious because as thou sittest thou dost not die."

The Egyptians of every period in which they are known unto us believed that Osiris was of divine origin. That he suffered death at the hands of evil, and that after a great struggle with this power of evil HE rose again. And became once more king of the world, the underworld as well and judge of the dead. That because He had conquered death, the righteous also might conquer death. And they raised Osiris to such a high position in the heavens, that in certain cases, he became superior of Ra, called the sun-God, and they ascribed unto him the attributes that belonged to God himself. AS far back as you want to go, we find the view of Osiris in the Book of the Dead.

We have to study to find the meaning and position of Isis, and Typho (the serpent) and Apollo, and of course Osiris and later Horus. As the Greeks then wove them into their myths. From the Egyptian papyrus the stories are told. Always this was to remind people of their mortality and thereby excite them freely to make use of and to enjoy the good things, which are set before them, seeing they must become such as they saw in the papyruses'. In other words soon they would be expected to go forward in their destiny. About 3800 B.C., King Men-kaw-Ra (Mycerinus of the Greeks) is identified with God. On his coffin not only is he called Osiris, king of the south and of the north, but the genealogy of Osiris is attributed to him and he is declared to be ---born of heaven. The Priests of Heliopolis noted the widespread worship of Osiris, the God of the Resurrection. He typified to the Egyptians in all ages as the being who by reason of His surrendering and death as a man could sympathize with them in their own sickness and death. It was believed that what Osiris did, they also could do, with His help.

As HE became ruler of the underworld, it was believed that he could then rescue all those who had gone before. And that HE must in the end enter His kingdom, and they with HIM. And they were to live there as long as there were stars in the heaven, and the sun remained. The ceremonies thus of the Egyptians was this, that they were to help Osiris perform all of his work and thus find His rest in His kingdom, showing them the way which is also their destiny.

In chapter 17 of the Book of The Dead, it says of Osiris---I am the soul which dwelleth on two plains. Thus as Osiris meets Ra the soul of Osiris preserves the human face, the sign of His kingship with men.

Osiris is also identified with the Great God of Heliopolis and Memphis where shrines of the Sun-God existed in almost pre-dynastic times. And finally is declared to be Eternity, and Everlastingness, immortality united in the same Divine Being.

It was also in Egypt where the little gad Amen had his beginning. This little god did the work of the Antichrist, or the devil. And as the great god of the underworld spoke then this little god would say Amen. In this way he came into the picture and later would be worshiped as the influence of the ancient Aryan people of Egypt decreased. But in Egypt also, the place of Osiris was filled by the position of Christ. Never did Christianity find elsewhere in the world a people whose minds were so thoroughly prepared to receive its doctrines as the Egyptians (Aryans), whom were said to have worshiped many gods, but when understood we stand in awe as we see that the religion of Christianity had its beginning in Ancient Egypt. And admitting that then you must stop and think. What religion did the Adamic people bring into earth that finally developed into this so called Egyptian religion?

This is why we have said to you that you must go back to the beginning of this race to understand your bible. Thru the years it is also a stated fact that there has been a battle between 'the sons of light' and the sons of darkness to hold the line between good and evil. And now you must surely agree that this ancient religion of the Egyptians came from those invaders who made their way across Arabia, and the Red Sea and the eastern desert of the Nile. They brought with them the idea to preserve their bodies as they died. In the 5th dynasty about 3400 B.C. it is stated definitely:--- “The soul to heaven, the body to earth." Then 3000 years later but with different words:-- “Heaven hath the soul and earth the body.” And the Egyptians looked forward to the time when they to would sail in the great boat of Ra thru the sky. But they also knew that they could not do this in the mortal body. And then went so far as to claim that their incorruptible body formed the dwelling place of the soul, in the heavens just as the physical body had been its dwelling place in earth.

The Egyptian people did not believe that their physical bodies would rise again, but because they thought that this spiritual body would be in the form of the physical body. And in this way the dead would rise, to life Eternal. Every prayer thus touched on the belief of the Resurrection. For they believed they would eventually live in a transformed body. And this ancient religion will be seen to possess a consistence of aim, and a steadiness of principle which to some, it at first appeared to lack.

 

End.