THERE IS A LOT OF TALK ABOUT “THREE KINGS” coming up this week, in some countries more than others. In any case, I’m sure you know the Christmas carol, “We Three Kings of Orient Are”. The claim is that three kings brought presents to Jesus the Christ after he was born. Is this correct? Here are some truths which you may find surprising:

THESE GUYS WERE NOT KINGS

Firstly, there is no mention of “Kings” visiting the Christ in the bible. There IS, however, a mention of “Magi from the East” visiting Him. Those were not kings at all but were religious bigwigs from Babylonia. Magi was the name given by the Babylonians, Medes and Persians to the priests and astrologers who were the religious leaders of those peoples. In his book, “Earth’s Earliest Ages & their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy”, George Pember writes:

“Originally the Magi were a Persian religious caste; but their influence was subsequently extended to many countries. They acted as priests, prescribed sacrifices, were soothsayers, and interpreted dreams and omens. Origen affirms that they were in communication with evil spirits, and could consequently do whatever lay within the power of their invisible allies. Certainly — if we may trust the statements of early Christian writers — they were well acquainted with mesmerism and every practice of modern Spiritualism”.

So these characters visiting Christ as a new born baby were not Kings bringing gifts to Christ but they were sorcerers whose visitation was for very different reasons than is understood by most people today, about which more will be said below.

THERE WERE NOT NECESSARILY THREE OF THEM

Secondly, there is no mention in the Bible that there were only three of these Magi. Certainly, three gifts were mentioned, but there could have been more or less than three sorcerers in the entourage. The account in the Bible (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 2) does not mention that there were specifically three Magi. The idea of ‘three’ goes back to a 12th century tradition. This just shows how myths develop over the years which we now see in all those soppy nativity scenes which are played out in schools by kids with proud parents looking on with stars in their eyes. But what does the Bible really show about them?

These Magi were coming to pay homage to the Christ. We’re told that they were “Magi from the East”, not kings. But how did these sorcerers from the East know about the coming Messiah, the promised Redeemer? We know that they followed some strange astronomical appearance in the sky, referred to as a star. (They were big on astrology). But they must have known something in the first place which made them be on the lookout for portents in the sky — signs from God that he was doing something extraordinary; otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered following it.

HOW DID THE MAGI KNOW ABOUT THE IMPENDING BIRTH OF JESUS?

There is only one place in the world where the coming Messiah was revealed and that is in the prophecies of the Bible. These men from the East must have seen the Bible — the Old Testament. But how? And where? Well, East of Israel, we find the land which is now known as Iraq. In Old Testament times this land was known as Babylonia. The capital of Babylonia was Babylon. So how would the Bible have got there? Some 550 years before the birth of Christ, the original people of Israel were taken captive by the Babylonians and carried off to Babylon. (You may have heard the Rastafarian pop song, taken from Psalm 137 in the Bible, by Boney M: “By the Rivers of Babylon”). The various written prophecies will have gone with them. Not only that, among those taken, there was the prophet, Daniel. He was highly thought of in Babylon; and he wrote a very important book of prophecy, which we have in the Bible. In chapter nine, one of the prophecies he receives via an angel says that the city of Jerusalem would be restored in 49 years from then, and that in 434 years’ time after that, the Messiah would be “cut off”, that is, killed.

Daniel’s book of prophecy is so astonishing in its content — so clear in its predictions — that these men will have been utterly enthralled by its content, as we should also be today! So, at around that appointed time more than 2000 years ago they journeyed to Jerusalem, then, upon discovering also that Bethlehem had been prophesied in the Bible as the appointed place for the birth of the Messiah (Book of Micah, chapter 5, verse 2; see also Gospel of Matthew, chapter 2, verses 1-6), these sorcerers from the East of Israel went to find Him.

WHY BRING GOLD, INCENSE AND MYRRH?

But why did they bring those particular gifts of gold, incense and myrrh. Is there any significance at all in those gifts? Well, everything in the bible has a significance to it — symbolic, poetic, allegorical or historical. It is filled with symbols. GOLD is a Bible symbol of that which is divine, pure, incorruptible, lasting and glorious. The Ark in ancient Israel itself was laid with Gold. It basically represented the divine aspect of the Christ. The MYRRH speaks to us of Christ insofar as He was a man. Myrrh was used to anoint the bodies of the dead: Jesus the Christ himself was anointed with it after physical death by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (Gospel of John, chapter 19, verse 39). Also, when he was being crucified he refused a mixed-drink which contained myrrh which was used as a kind of anaesthetic, because he wanted to undergo the full extent of the experience in atonement (Gospel of Mark, chapter 15, verse 23). So, myrrh speaks to us about the death of Christ, about His sufferings as a man. He was no more than a babe-in-arms and this myrrh brings us a glimmer of His future death. INCENSE symbolised true prayer and meditation from the heart rising up to God as a sweet-smelling aroma (e.g. Psalm 141, verse 2). This symbolises the way that Christ the Light, through conquering death and rising from the dead, defeated the forces of darkness (especially their power over death) and thus paved the way for spiritual Light to be dispensed by God in great measure across the world in the run-up to the end of this aeon and the birthing of the new aeon. Gold and Myrrh (God made flesh) like an Incense wafting through the created universe, spelling the end for the forces of darkness.

WHAT REALLY LAY BEHIND THE VISIT OF THE MAGI?

So what else was really happening here with this visit of the Magi from Babylon — a journey which would have taken four or five months over mountain passes and deserts? Essentially, the sorcerous religions of old (which were largely under the power of Satan) were acknowledging the completion of spiritual fulfilment in the coming of the Christ the Messiah — a mystery which had been foretold in ages past, hidden in its execution from the powers of darkness, which has all been recorded in the New Testament so that the redundancy of all religion before Christ is made known. For all possible religious or spiritual notions converge in the finality of the Christ, who is the only contender for being the true Saviour of the world. All claimants of messiahship from before His coming and all those since (e.g. Muhammad) are false teachers. As He said Himself: “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers” (Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 8). Whatever religious element it is — Hinduism, Buddhism, Babylonianism, idolatrous worship, sorcery, New Age, etc. — it is all shooting in the dark. Once the Christ had come — the true Saviour of the cosmos — all obeisance should have been be given to Him. And this is precisely the significance of the journey of the Magi to Christ at His birth. It was as if they were saying, “All our religious systems and occult practices are redundant now that the truth has been revealed in the coming of the Christ”. This is all fully explained in another article I have written, entitled “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present” (see https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/10/17/book-extract-the-thread-of-satanic-religion-from-antiquity-to-the-present/ ). Here is a brief extract from that article:

“This is a difficult truth for many, but all the world’s religions are a warped external parody of genuine inner spirituality. Their robes, rituals, chanting, idols, rosaries, prayer beads, oblations, animal and human sacrifices, superstitions, hierarchies, temples, etc., are outward tokens intended to provide a whiff of spirituality to the dead husk of religion. There are very many lovely people in the religious scene all over the world doing good, often in dangerous circumstances. But that is not because of their religion but because of their varying levels of internal light. The stark reality is that all religious enterprise outside of the Christ is ultimately going to be satanic because it denies the centrality of the Christ to the existence and continuation of this creation, and rejects the fact that He came as God manifested in the flesh to transform the world. That is the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ right there. “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus has come in the flesh is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist” (First Letter of John, chapter 4, verses 2-3). In contrast to that ‘spirit’, the sacred texts say of the Christ: “All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” and “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form” (Letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 16-17; chapter 2, verse 9). All religious enterprise which operates outside of that knowledge nullifies human regeneration through the Holy Spirit, and it contradicts the Divine restoration of all things through a supreme act of recreation into a wholly new unfallen cosmos.

Until Christ was revealed, with few exceptions, darkness reigned over the earth in great measure, the legacy of the Fall. Since that Fall, initiated by the fallen archangel, Satan — as recorded in the Book of Genesis, chapter 3 — satanic religious pursuits came to be the dominant influence in the world. All the various kingdoms of the world — from Mesopotamian and Sumerian to Babylonian, Assyrian, Grecian and Roman — have been satanic in their predatory, plundering vision under corrupt self-deifying leaders, priests, generals and emperors; while their religious activities were full of superstition, idolatry, sorcery, temple prostitution, and even human and child sacrifice… Until the coming of Christ, Satan had been “the ruler of this cosmos” as usurper for an exceedingly long time — right from the Fall at the beginning of human history. Christ’s coming was to evict Satan from that position, which was why He said shortly before His death, “Now is the judgement on this world. Now the ruler of this world [i.e. Satan] will be cast out” (First Letter of John, chapter 3, verse 8b; Gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 31). Thus, the major religious and spiritual influences throughout history have been largely under Satan’s domain as humans sought warped ways to make sense of their alienation from the Divine in this world. All the idolatry, false gods, sorcery, human and even child sacrifice, priestcraft, temple prostitution, wacky mythologies through the ages across the globe, with vast war campaigns carried out in their name by emperors who even demanded divine worship of themselves, have plainly been under Satan’s instigation — avatars of Satanism posing as religion and empire — right through to the present day. All those idols! People made their gods as projected images of their own twisted fears, desires and superstitions. Or they deified themselves (as do all those today who follow in their footsteps). Satan’s perfect work. This is why serpent-worship has been so prevalent in so many ancient religions. That is the symbol of Satan and those religions were his babies.

All that satanic mess of religion has been continued today in the vast number of occulto-magical offerings in the spiritual scene — especially the New Age and shamanistic strains. In this sense, we can also include all religions (including the false-church version of “Christianity”) as varying forms and degrees of Satanism, for they fulfil Satan’s ambition to keep people ignorant about the true Christ while, at the same time, imagining they are becoming “enlightened” or, in the case of false disciples of Christ, deluding themselves that they are “loved by Jesus” or that they are “moving in the Spirit”.

Thus, the visit of the Magi — with all their philosophical and spiritual lostness, the deception and mesmeric attraction for the unwary and naïve — represents the complete subordination and submission of all false religion to the clean and truthful spirituality embodied in the Christ. So let’s not be taken in by soppy stories about three kings bearing gifts outside of any context whatsoever. The context is the capitulation of all religious enterprise to the Christ. Everyone, everywhere, must relinquish themselves of all other religious aspirations or practices and submit themselves to discipleship in Christ with a deep pledge to turn their whole lives around, to follow Him alone and then educate themselves about the true state of this world and its corrupted direction. This is where the visit of the Magi directs us. It is about the utter redundancy of satanic religion and the need for the deep spirituality offered by the Christ.

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© 2021, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]