04-CHAPTER FOUR - BATTLE OF THE TITANS
CHAPTER FOUR -
BATTLE OF THE TITANS
Nimrod was "a mighty hunter" of wild beasts, and he was "a mighty hunter" of men. His name itself has this two-fold meaning 1
Nimrod, as I pointed out last week, had been brought up from his cradle to hate Shem, and to equally hate the GOD of Shem. And in the exact proportion as he hated Shem and Shem’s GOD, Nimrod was determined that he himself would be the great one prophesied in Genesis 3:15.
"Mighty hunter (whether of men or beasts) before the Lord,’ to express his notoriety for boldness and wickedness, as something ever before the divine presence; so bad, that GOD could not take his eyes from it. Compare with Genesis 6:11, the whole earth corrupt." - Taylor Lewis (Comment on Genesis 10:9, Lange’s Commentary, Vol. I, p. 345).
"As the grandson of Ham, Nimrod inherited the hatred of the family; and in him the mighty hunter, the fierceness of the tribe, found its proper expression." - Pressel (in Schaff-Herzog, 4 vol. edition, Funk & Wagnalls Company: New York, 1891).
"The Bible says that Nimrod was ’a mighty hunter before the Lord.’ The Targum of Jonathan interprets this to mean that he was ’a mighty rebel before the LORD, the mightiest rebel before the LORD that ever was in Earth’." - J.A. Seiss (The Apocalypse, p. 389. Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan).
As the hunter of wild beasts Nimrod has become the greatest man on earth. He has organized an army. Being a hero, "the people" are with him. "The people" have always been against GOD; they have always followed any man who would lead a rebellion against GOD and His CHRIST and His Book. "The people" demanded that Aaron "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him" (Exodus 32:1). "The people" repudiated the reign of GOD Almighty over them and demanded that Saul be crowned in His stead. "The people" stoned and murdered all the prophets from Abel to CHRIST. "The people" preferred a confessed murderer to the Son of GOD.
- "The people" made the New Deal that Roosevelt made.
- "The people" have chosen the United Nations to rule this country instead of the Congress of the United States
- "The people" have demanded that the law of the United Nations supercede the law of the Constitution of the United States.
Whenever righteousness and unrighteousness meet, "The people" sustain unrighteousness. When Anti-christ appears "The people" will fall down and worship him as the Grand Deliverer promised in Genesis 3:15.
Yes, Nimrod has "The people" with him. He has a majority vote.
And Nimrod, like Napoleon, already feels that he is not like other men, "I am not a man like other men; the laws of morality and decorum could not be intended to apply to me." 2
What a speech Nimrod is making! "I believe in freedom. I believe in progress. I believe in having a little Heaven down here in this earth, and not having to wait to have it in some ’Sweet By and By.’ I don’t think it’s a sin to investigate, to reason, to live like an intelligent man instead of living like a serf and slave.
"You are a happy people. You are a prosperous people. You are a courageous people. The Shemites would have you believe that your prosperity and happiness are due to a GOD whom nobody has ever heard or seen. I reject this stupid Shemite doctrine. I tell you that your progress is due to your own brawn and muscle, to your own sweaty brows and aching backs. I tell you that you are happy, not because some GOD up there in the sky is ’smiling’ upon you, but because you have got sense enough to know how to live.
Let the Shemites, like a gang of serfs and slaves, go on talking about living by ’faith’, I tell you, you go on living by sight.
"What has this Shemite GOD ever done for you? I’ll tell you what He’s done: He has drowned the whole world, and to make it even worse, Shem and his crowd tell you that He drowned the world because He couldn’t do any better with what He had created. I could do a better job than that myself.
"And who is this Shemite GOD’s ’great man of faith?’" He is my old great-granddaddy, Noah. Old Noah hadn’t hit the ground until he got so drunk that he thought the ark was a field mouse.
"And I’ll tell you another thing: this GOD of Shem is going to drown the world again if He can. You have known me all my days. My love for you and my toils and labors in your behalf have long since become a household proverb. I slaughtered the wild beasts, and I made it possible for you and your children to live in security, comfort, and peace.
"And now I tell you, you follow me. We’ll build a civilization. We’ll build a tower such as the world never dreamed of. Let Shem and his crowd have their bloody GOD, I defy Him. I hate Him." 3
Those who saw Adolf Hitler, with just such oratory, turn the most scientifically advanced nation of the modern world against GOD and everything associated with His name, should not be surprised to learn that such talk as that by Nimrod turned the ancient world against GOD.
The rebellion is now on full steam. He means business, and "The people" are cheering the very mention of his name. Shem, and his followers, like the Jews in Hitler Germany, are marked.
It was the first open rebellion against GOD since the world began. Before the Flood there was no open rebellion against GOD, and no idolatry. The great sin of the antediluvian days was, mostly, negative. That world rotted because it lacked moral salt. Its sins were the sins of the slums. The backwaters of corruption were the inevitable result of the flood of vice produced by Cain’s denial of holiness, sin and redemption. And Cain was the founder of that civilization. He was the founder of Unitarianism.
But here, with Nimrod, we have a deliberate, premeditated, organized rebellion against GOD.
Nimrod’s rebellion was the greatest rebellion the world has ever known, or ever will know until Antichrist, whose prototype Nimrod was, organizes his forces against GOD and determines to succeed where Nimrod failed.
And it is so recognized by the great authorities who have investigated it. To digress for a moment, we know that mythology is based on historical fact. The myth, of course, is not fact; but it originated in fact. All the great myths are traced back to some historical fact or circumstance. This accounts for the fact that the intellectual toil of some of the greatest scholars has produced a vast literature on Mythology. What tremendous fact gave birth to the myth? Not the myth, but the historical fact behind it - that’s the important question.
And now, when a thing is so great that no other term will describe it, what do you call it? You call it "titanic." You all remember - at least you older ones - that great and mighty ocean liner, The Titanic, which went to the bottom of the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. "It couldn’t sink."
What would be one of the greatest battles the world ever heard of? It would be a battle between "titans." And there is such a battle described in mythology. It is called the "Establishment of the Regime of Zeus; the Titans." (Zeus was the greatest of the Olympian gods, father of gods and men, a son of Cronus, or Saturn, and of Rhea.) Here is the myth: 4
"Many children were born to Zeus and Hera, and they were the first to be properly called gods. They established themselves on Mount Olympus, which stood directly opposite Mound Othyrys, the seat of the Titans, who, being the older race (with the exception of Mnemosyne, Themis, and Prometheus), quite naturally regarded Zeus and his family as upstarts and usurpers. Bitter rivalry and strife arose between the two settlements, and for ten years they fought with no decisive results. A peace-parley held at the end of this period seemed only to add heat to the conflict, so that at length Zeus freed the three hundred-handed giants whom Kronos had left bound deep down within the earth, and enlisted them in his ranks, deciding now to reveal his full strength and to bring the tedious strife to a sudden end, with their many hands the giants hurled huge rocks at the foe until the sky was darkened, while Zeus cast thunderbolt after thunderbolt with their long tongues of flame.
"By this deadly assault the Titans were overwhelmed and driven into the depths of the earth. Down, down they went, a journey of giants, until they were as far from the plains of earth are beneath Heaven. There a brazen wall with brazen gates was built about them, and the three giants were placed on guard to prevent them from escaping."
What tremendous historical fact gave birth to this famous myth?
Professor Taylor Lewis was known, for a long time, as one of the ablest and most learned classical scholars of America. Here is what Professor Lewis said about the origin of this myth:
"The more carefully the peculiar language of this Babel history is considered, and especially its Heaven-defying look, the more probable will appear the view supported by Bryant, which regards it as the origin of the heathen fable of the war of the giants against the gods. The war of the Titans was probably the same, though it appears as a duplicate of the event in Greek mythology."
Who was Zeus, on Mount Olympus, hurling thunderbolt after thunderbolt, with tongues of fire (lightning), at the giants below? He was the GOD of Shem.
Who were the giants "hurling huge rocks at the foe until the sky was darkened"? They were Nimrod and his crowd.
Who were the "Titans," who "were overwhelmed and driven into the depths of the earth"? They were Nimrod and his followers.
And all of this is corroborated by Dante, and Milton, and Burns. In Dante’s "The Divine Comedy" (Canto XXXI) Nimrod is one of the great ones in hell. After a description, there follows this line: 5
"Nimrod is this, Through whose ill counsel in the world no more One tongue prevails."
And if you would read Milton again, you would come across these lines:
"Of proud, ambitious heart, who not content
With fair equality, fraternal state,
Will arrogate dominion undeserved
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of Nature from the Earth
Hunting (and men, not beasts, shall be his game)
With war and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his empire tyrannous.
A mighty Hunter thence he shall be styled
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heaven.
Or from Heaven claiming second sovereignty
And from rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of rebellion others he accuse,
He, with a crew, whom like ambition joins
With him or under him tyrannize,
Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find
The Plain, wherein a black bituminous gorge
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell."
And Burns correctly appraised Nimrod’s character. 6
"Sir Reynard daily heard debates
Of Princes’; Kings’, and Nations’ fates,
With many rueful, bloody stories
Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories:
From liberty how angels fell,
That now are galley-slaves in hell;
How Nimrod first the grade began
Of binding Slavery’s chains on man."
1 "He was known as ’the mighty hunter before the Lord’ - an expression which had probably a double meaning, implying at once skill and bravery in the pursuit and destruction of wild beasts, and also a genius for war and success in his aggressions upon men." - George Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, pp. 153-4 (Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.)
2 Napoleon. Quoted by Lord Roseberry (Napoleon, the Last Phase, p. 249. Arthur L. Humphreys: London, 1900).
3 "Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of GOD. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to GOD, as if it was through his means that they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured their happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of GOD, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on GOD, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on GOD for destroying their forefathers!" -Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews).
4 In Lange’s Commentary on Genesis, p. 359, note.
5Paradise Lost, Book XII.
6 "On Glenriddell’s Fox Breaking His Chain."
~ end of chapter 4 ~
***