WHO IS THIS ‘QUEEN OF HEAVEN’? ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 23

 

When we think of fairy tales, we think of happy endings. Growing up, “And they all lived happily ever after,” was the last page of many a bedtime story that brought with it peaceful sleep and sweet dreams. Often, kings, queens, princes, and princesses were the main characters in these tales, and we were consumed with wonder as our imaginations lingered on each page of the make-believe worlds of those living in faraway lands and kingdoms of enchantment.

 

As we grew up, we soon realized the world is no fairy tale. Even within kingdoms of modern-day kings and queens, princes and princesses, the world is full of heartache and struggles. Yet, somehow, the message of fairy tales was ingrained deeply within each one of us, and we have always wanted our fairytale ending. In fact, we may have grown up thinking we somehow ‘deserve’ it. What we deserve is eternal death for treason against the King of all kings. By God’s grace, the believer is assured of the promise that she will live happily ever after…but not in this life. She rightly longs for that faraway land in the Kingdom of all kingdoms, that future that is far beyond her wildest dreams and imaginations.

 

Every Christian has lived the same deliverance from the world that the Israelites knew when the Lord radically rescued her from Egypt (a picture of the world). She was in physical bondage there, just like we were in bondage to our sin, the world, and Satan. In make-believe fairy tales, we would be shocked if the princess in the story, rescued by Prince Charming, could not stay at home loving the one who loved her first. We would be appalled at a prostitute princess. What if she waltzed back into the palace each morning expecting her prince to take her back into his loving arms without any misgivings? We would say there was something wrong with that prince, right? What if she decided to bring her beaus back to the palace each night underneath the nose of the prince and then thinking he should have no problem with it whatsoever? We would be outraged at the ingratitude of this Jezebel, and we would expect that the prince would deal with the sin of his princess—for her sake and the reputation of the throne.

 

Spiritually speaking, Israel was a prostitute. Her sister, Judah, soon followed in her footsteps. God’s patience, grace, and mercy in dealing with her is astounding! We find it to be outrageous when it is directed towards Israel but sometimes expected when it is directed towards us!

 

We last looked at the reign of King Josiah, the last godly king of Judah. Josiah began to purge Judah in the 12th year of his reign, and the Lord began to speak to Jeremiah in the 13th year of Josiah. Jeremiah 1-6 is under Josiah’s reign. You can look at earlier blog posts for these six chapters.

 

Jeremiah 3:6-4:4 are the Lord’s words regarding faithless Israel, as warning to her sister, Judah. Learn from your sister! Jeremiah 3:6-4:4

Imagine this scene in Jeremiah 7. The prophet is standing outside the place of worship as the people are entering the temple. If we put it in terms we would understand, it would look like this: At your average church in Small Town, USA, people who have had a week filled with unrestrained hedonism of every sort are filing through the doors on Sunday morning. A man is standing there, not handing out bulletins, but woes. Their very attendance is the assurance they have that nothing this man says pertains to them. They are there; therefore, they are safe! In a sense, they believe they are within the ark of safety.

 

Just like those in Judah entering the temple, people today falsely believe they are safe even as they continue to live a life of rebellion towards God as long as they keep to the outward forms of religion. But theirs is a religion of lies! Instead of trusting in God, they are trusting in a building, a denomination, or an association with a religion. They actually believe that they can go through the motions of religion and their sin will be covered. It is the same spirit found in the unbiblical practice of indulgences in the Roman Catholic church. Like robbers who look for a hideout after committing a crime of theft, those who had robbed God of His glory in their despicable acts of idolatry also believed they had found shelter from judgment inside the temple.

 

“Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—that you may do all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 7:8-11)

 

WHO IS THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN?

 

In one of their worship rituals, whole families were involved. The Lord told Jeremiah in 7:16 not even to pray for this people. Because they were self-deluded by claiming their presence and association with the temple was what would keep them safe in their rebellion against the Lord and their in-Your-face idol worship, God said, “Don’t even pray for them. Do you see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?” We would say, “Can you believe it, Jeremiah? It has come to this! Look at it!” What were they doing? Their blasphemous idol worship had become a family affair. It wasn’t that they were secretly sneaking off to the groves to worship where they thought no one would see them. It’s now a normal way of life!

 

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. Do they spite Me?” declares the Lord. “Is it not themselves they spite, to their own shame?” Therefore, thus says the Lord God, “Behold My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and on beast and on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground; and it will burn and not be quenched.” (Jeremiah 7:18-20)

The phrase ‘Queen of Heaven’ only appears twice in Scripture, both times in the book of Jeremiah. In the Roman Catholic Church, Mary is often given this title. For the one who is familiar with the book of Jeremiah, this title used today should set off very loud alarm bells.

 

In Chapter 44 of Jeremiah, beginning in verse 15 we see that the idol worship began with the women, but the men stood by and condoned same. When confronted by Jeremiah, they replied, “As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.” “And,” said the women, “when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?” (Jeremiah 44:16-19)

 

Suddenly, the Israelites became self-righteous about morally fulfilling their vows to the queen of heaven. They couldn’t keep their vows to Yahweh, but according to their stubborn will they proudly asserted they would keep their vows to this goddess idol. In verse 25, Jeremiah speaks for God, ‘As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands, saying, “We will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.”

 

So who is this ‘queen of heaven’? The ‘queen of heaven’ was the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess Ishtar (also referred to as Ashtoreth and Astarte by other groups), identified with the planet Venus, who was probably introduced to Judah during Manasseh’s reign (2 Kings 21:3). She was the wife of the false god, Baal, a.k.a. Molech. Ishtar had the reputation of being a fertility goddess, the reason the women were so attracted to her. Bearing children, in that day, was highly desirable.

 

The people are seen to credit the goddess with the peace and prosperity they longed for, that same peace and prosperity that once belonged to them because of God’s grace and mercy toward them.

 

There is another hideous concept believed by some that the queen of heaven was the wife of Yahweh. This is what happens when goddess exalting paganism is blended with worship of the true King of heaven. Because the worship of Ashtoreth involved the sexuality of fertility rites and temple prostitution, the result to a depraved mind would naturally be one of a sexual nature. The idea that this queen of heaven is some paramour of the King of heaven is blasphemous and unbiblical.

 

According to Wikipedia, ‘Queen of Heaven’ is a title given to the Virgin Mary, by Christians mainly of the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The title is a consequence of the First Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, in which Mary was proclaimed “Theotokos”, a title rendered in Latin as Mater Dei, in English, “Mother of God”. The Catholic teaching on this subject is expressed in the papal encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, issued by Pope Pius XII. It states that Mary is called Queen of Heaven because her son, Jesus Christ, is the king of Israel and the heavenly king of the universe; indeed, the Davidic tradition of Israel recognized the mother of the king as the Queen Mother of Israel.

 

Pius XII explained the theological reasons for her title Queen in a radio message to Fatima of May 13, 1946, Bendito seja: He, the Son of God, reflects on His heavenly Mother the glory, the majesty and the dominion of His kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the…work of human Redemption as Mother and cooperator, she remains forever associated to Him, with a practically unlimited power, in the distribution of the graces which flow from the Redemption.

 

The Second Vatican Council in 1964 referred to Mary as Queen of the Universe. It is not a stretch to believe that the Queen of Heaven has been incarnated to Roman Catholicism under the name of ‘Mary’, also ‘Queen of Heaven’. Let’s think about this in light of all that we have looked at so far in this lengthy study. Rome, the greatest and longest-living human world-ruling empire assimilated religions from the many territories she conquered. Within all these religions were commonalities that came from Babylon. These pagan practices infiltrated the professing Christian Church which later was dominated by Rome itself.

 

Many pagan religions had mother and child worship, as we have seen. Each nation gave different names to essentially the same god or goddess. A mother goddess (the queen of heaven) was said to have given birth miraculously to a son. We have looked at many instances wherein ancient Israel adopted this false worship, always with disastrous results and judgment by God.

 

Even into the New Testament, Semiramis was worshipped at Ephesus as the great mother Diana, the grotesque, many-breasted goddess. There is no shortage of pictures of these images and statues to be found on the internet. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and it is easy to compare the pictures of all the ancient goddesses to see they are one and the same incarnated by each nation to make it their own. Acts 19:27, speaking about the above incident in Ephesus: Not only is there danger that this trade of ours will fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as worthless, and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence. Just like those in Jeremiah, pocketbooks (their own prosperity) were tied to their worship of the goddess.

Having once converted to Catholicism, and having interacted with many Catholics over the years, it usually comes up rather quickly in a conversation regarding religion that most Catholics believe that theirs was the first church, the oldest church that can be traced back to Peter (whom they falsely believe was the first pope), that the Roman Catholic Church gave the church the Scriptures, etc. None of these statements are factual. Similarly, the worship of Mary had no place in the early Christian Church. Unbelievably, even the Catholic Church admits that in the first centuries A.D., there was no trace of the worship of Mary. It was not until the fourth century, at that time when Constantine was emperor, that the professing church began worshipping Mary as a goddess and offering cakes at her shrine. Cakes are still made in honor of Mary typically on ‘May Crowning’ day and throughout the whole month of May.

 

It was the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431, that made Mary worship official. Diana of Ephesus was already worshipped as a goddess there, as Scripture affirms. By mixing (syncretism) the pagan beliefs of what was already being practiced with nominal Christianity, the so-called ‘church fathers’ falsely reasoned that they could gain more converts in this manner. Compromise never ends in purity of truth. Watering down or lowering God’s standards never results in growth of the true Church. It only makes religion more popular and acceptable to the masses. We will look more at this and more tomorrow.

 

THERE IS NO QUEEN OF HEAVEN! There never has been—only demonic deception used by Satan to continue to lead people astray from the truth. “The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God.” (1 Corinthians 10:20) There is only one God, the King of heaven who is the Lord of hosts! He, alone, rules in heaven.