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Death on a Cross or Upright Pole.

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markn902:
another great discussion on BT forum. Thanks Samson for bringing this up I love stimulating conversation and get plenty of it here!  :)
I want to chime in on why I hesitate to imagine Jesus on the Cross as it were. and that reason is Egypt and other ancient Babylon religions. We already get so many of our "doctrines" from them I am afraid we get some imagery too. Like the Ankh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh  

"The cross in the form of the 'Crux Ansata' . . . was carried in the hands of the Egyptian priests and Pontiff kings as the symbol of their authority as priests of the Sun god and was called 'the Sign of Life'."

and this

More on the pre-Christian history of the cross symbol

Scandinavia: The Tau cross symbolized the hammer of the God Thor.
 
Babylon: the cross with a crescent moon was the symbol of their moon deity.
 
Assyria: the corners of the cross represented the four directions in which the sun shines.
 
India: In Hinduism, the vertical shaft represents the higher, celestial states of being; the horizontal bar represents the lower, earthly states.
 
Egypt: The ankh cross (a Tau cross topped by an inverted tear shape) is associated with Maat, their Goddess of Truth. It also represents the sexual union of Isis and Osiris.
 
Europe: The use of a human effigy on a cross in the form of a scarecrow has been used from ancient times. In prehistoric times, a human would be sacrificed and hung on a cross. The sacrifice would later be chopped to pieces; his blood and pieces of flesh were widely distributed and buried to encourage the crop fertility.

So all of that doesn't prove anything one way or the other on what exactly our Lord was killed on, It just makes me hesitant to accept what the church is portraying.

I think Ray said it best when he said "if the church is teaching it it's probably false"
                                  
                                Mark

Samson:
Thanks for the information Mark,

                                            The Carnal Mind seems to desire the making of Idols out of inanimate objects: Wood, Metal, plastic, etc, but they cannot see, hear feel, think or give us Life(Physical or Spiritual). Also the Sacred Pole was used in Idolatrous Worship, too. So, the Pagan aspect of the use of the Cross, although significant, is not in itself the final determining factor regarding the instrument of Christs Death. Certainly, the evidence of the primary meanings of "Stauros" (Pole, Stake or Pole); "Xylon" (Tree); "Crux" (Pole, Cross) and "ets"(Hebrew) add weight that the instrument of Christs Death wasn't the "traditional" Cross. And as you stated: " If the Churches teach it, it's probably wrong." Below I copied and pasted a quote regarding the usage of the Greek Word Stauros to add to this thread.

The Book; The Non Christian Cross(pp. 23,24) By John Denham Parsons states: " There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the Stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary Stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted , not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a Cross." " It is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to translate the word Stauros as Cross when rendering the Greek documents of the Church in our native tongue, and to support that action by putting Cross in our lexicons as the meaning of Stauros without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become it's primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all, only because, despite the absence of corrobative evidence, it was for some reason or other assumed that the particular Stauros upon which Jesus was executed had that particular shape."

      Just some more food for thought, Samson.

Duane:
SAMSON--I can't help but MARVEL writings, especially you knowledge of the "dead languages"!  My father was a Baptist minister all of his life, having graduated from Moody Bible and excelling in Greek--and I NEVER HEARD in ANY of his messages the term "eon, ionian,
hades, sheol etc. as explained in Ray's/your work in my lifetime!  Eon/ionian -never~! 
Now how could one read the greek and see the words mis-translated and just accept it, OR WORSE YET, skip over it! 

My father was no dummy--working full-time and taking a full-time work load for three years and graduating with honors!  It wasn't until he joined the army and was tested that he learned that his IQ was just shy of "genius"!  They wanted to commission him immediately as an OFFICER, with all it's military priviledges,  but rather my father went in as an enlisted "nobody" because he felt that he could better reach "the common soldier" for the Lord in that diminished capacity.  And, he tried his best--ending up with national recognition for starting a food kitchen /orphanage for the homeless Japanese children that he found eating out of the thrown out dumpster food of the GI mess hall.
I wonder HOW my father would feel-- now now that I have CHOSEN to up-end all of his teaching by accepting Ray's Foundational Truths as (HA HA) "gospel fact"!

I need not tell you how many days/weeks/months I struggled before I said "ya know--right is right no matter what"!  I must admit that
when I was introduced to Ray's Web-site by a friend, I read Ra's letter to Dr. Hagee/Kennedy for 14 STRAIGHT HOURS!  I WAS/AM TOTALLY MESMERIZED BY THE FINDINGS!  But what a spiritual struggle I went through znd then to TELL MY FAMILY/FRIENDS gsve me a firsthand feeling what a converted Jew must go thru in saying that he is now a "Christian Jew"--then looking t his families scorn over the news!   Believe me, I have a lot of Christian friends "Praying for me" as they fear that I have been "led astray".
 

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