The biblical (and I believe correct) view of the origin of the pagan gods begins with Original Revelation. This means there was a perfect revelation from God to man at the time of creation. The first man Adam was at one with God and perceived divine knowledge from the mind of God. The human was "in tune" with the mental processes of God, and understood, therefore, what God knew about science, astronomy, cosmogony, geology, eschatology, and so on. After the fall, Adam was "detached" from the mind of God, but retained an imperfect memory of the divine revelation including a knowledge of God's plan of redemption. Two things began to occur in the decades after the Fall: 1) information from the original revelation became distant and distorted as it was dispersed among the nations and as it was passed from generation to generation; and 2) the realm of Satan seized upon this opportunity to receive worship, and to turn people away from Yahweh, by distorting and counterfeiting the original revelation with pagan ideas and "gods". This point of view seems reasonable when one considers that the earliest historical and archeological records from civilizations around the world have consistently pointed back to and repeated portions of the original story.
In their startling book, The Discovery of Genesis, the Rev. C.H. Kang and Dr. Ethel R. Nelson confirm that prehistoric Chinese ideographic pictures (used in very ancient Chinese writing) report the story of Genesis, including the creation of the Man and Woman, the garden, the temptation and Fall, Noah's flood, and the tower of Babel. In his book, The Real Meaning Of The Zodiac, Dr. James Kennedy claims that the ancient signs of the Zodiac also indicate a singular and original revelation—a kind of Gospel in the stars—and that the message of the stars, although demonized and converted into astrology after the fall of man, originally recorded the Gospel of God. He writes:
“There exists in the writings of virtually all civilized nations a description of the major stars in the heavens—something which might be called their ‘Constellations of the Zodiac’ or the ‘Signs of the Zodiac,’ of which there are twelve. If you go back in time to Rome, or beyond that to Greece, or before that to Egypt, Persia, Assyria, or Babylonia—regardless of how far back you go, there is a remarkable phenomenon: Nearly all nations had the same twelve signs, representing the same twelve things, placed in the same order....The book of Job, which is thought by many to be the oldest book of the Bible, goes back to approximately 2150 B.C., which is 650 years before Moses came upon the scene to write the Pentateuch; over 1,100 years before Homer wrote the Odyssey and the Illiad; and 1,500 years before Thales, the first of the philosophers, was born. In chapter 38, God finally breaks in and speaks to Job and to his false comforters. As He is questioning Job, showing him and his companions their ignorance, God says to them: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or
canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" (Job 38:31,32)
We see here reference to the constellations of Orion and Pleiades, and the star Arcturus. Also in the book of Job there is reference to Cetus, the Sea Monster, and to Draco, the Great Dragon. I would call your attention to Job 38:32a: "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?" Mazzaroth is a Hebrew word which means "The Constellations of the Zodiac." In what may be the oldest book in all of human history, we find that the constellations of the zodiac were already clearly known and understood....Having made it clear that the Bible expressly, explicitly, and repeatedly condemns what is now known as astrology, the fact remains that there was a God-given Gospel [universally acknowledged original revelation] in the stars which lays beyond and behind that which has now been corrupted. “
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