GODS OF THE UNIVERSE

      Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. (Book of Genesis 3:1)
     The word subtil is from the Hebrew word subtilis, which means sly, artful, cunning, crafty, deceitful, treacherous; as in how subtil heated water becomes steam or vapor, and the water eventually disappears.
     The serpent, therefore, and with his subtilty, has turned the minds of people away from the knowledge of God, or that God, like the water, has disappeared, or never existed at all.
     With his subtility, the serpent has also deceived people to believe that even the serpent himself does not exist.
     Moreover, the serpent has deceived people to believe that Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and Great Flood of Noah are nothing more than myths and fairy tales from a book (the Bible) that is also a collection, to them, of myths and fairy tales.
     For thousands of years, however, man has built enormous temples and shrines across the face of the earth for worship of his gods of the universe:  the sun, moon, stars, planets, and even the earth itself.  In this time, they ordained priests and priestesses, prophets and prophetesses, to administer rites and rituals in worship of their gods not made with hands, and the worship of earth itself is reviered as Mother Earth, as well as things of the earth such as birds, plants, frogs, rivers, and creeping things, including images, symbols, and relics.  He has enshrined dead people to the place of diety where even they are worshipped and offered prayers.  From time to time, men gave diety to certain men by the belief that these men are gods on earth, infallible and incapable of sin or wrongdoing as mortals, and even to offer humans as sacrifices on their altars of the temples to appease their gods of the universe, all of which is man's making of his own religions for himself and out of his own evil and continual imaginations.
     This doesn't sound like myths and fairy tales, does it?
     The serpent, therefore, has not only persuaded people not to believe in God, but, at the same time, he has persuaded people to believe:   in the gods of the universe!  This the serpent has done and the evidence of which is written across human history as well as in the minds of people, who believe the serpent instead of  God.
     As the apostles of Christ departed Jerusalem to take the Good News of Jesus to the uttermost parts of the world, the world they saw and entered was the world as described above:  to people who had no knowledge of God, and who worshipped creation and not their Creator.
    And the world they saw then is much like the world we live in today:  for even now the serpent knows that Jesus arose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven; but with his subtilty, he convinces people that Jesus was defeated on the cross and is still dead.  Therefore, the serpent's profile has never changed:  he is a liar and the father of lies.  But Jesus is alive for evermore!
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