The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

"born from the Are "--Zero-ashia, the "seed of thrfiren--and as such he was revered as the great sungodBaal. Theophilus of Antioch informs us thatKronos, which as we have seen was one of the titlesof the deified Nimrod, was in the East worshippedunder the names of Be1 and Bal (Clericus, De PhilosophiaOrientali, lib. i, sect. ii, cap. 37).Nimrod was the first Babylonian king, and thereforethe title hlolech is primarily applied to him, for" Molech " means " king." We thus perceive why theScriptures indicate Molech (or Moloch) to be the terriblegod of fire, the earthly representative of Baal thesun-god. In Jeremiah 32:35, we read: "And theybuilt the high places of Baal, which are in the valleyof the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and theirdaughters to pass through the Are to Molech ; which Icommanded them not, neither came it into my mind,that they should do this abomination, to cause Judahto sin." It was claimed that the act of passing throughthe Are was for the purpose of purifying, and thisprobably reconciled the parents who sacrificed theirchildren to IvIolech. They were under the delusionthat the Are that consumed the little ones also perfectedthem, and made them meet for the future life. Thegod Tammuz, who is identified with Nimrod, and forwhom the women of Israel lamented annually (Ezek.8:14), is really connected with Are-worship and withthe thought of purification therefrom, for the name -Tammuz is derived from tam, "to perfect," and mug,"to burnM--t.o make perfect by burning. This, nodoubt, is the origin of the imaginary place calledPurgatory, the Are of which is supposed by Papacy tobe necessary to perfect men's scruls, and to purge awaythe sins the carry with them into the unseen world 1The error, orcourse, naturally arose throu~h errdulou~