Plain Truth 1959 (Vol XXIV No 03) Mar - Herbert W. Armstrong

Pa~e 26 The PLAIN TRUTH
March, 1959
But it was not God's will that the tower would ever be finished-and it never was.
Nimrod Plans to Rule the Earth
With the passing of years, Nimrod built other cities on the plains of Shinar in
Babylonia. He spread his kingdom into Assyria, into the continents of Asia and Europe
and even down into the land of Egypt and Ethiopia in the continent of Africa. Everywhere
he implanted the evil custom of worshipping the devil in the form of a snake or
as the sun-god. Nimrod claimed that Satan the devil had secret knowledge which he
alone was able to open up to his fellowmen. Nimrod's followers therefore called him
"Peter," which means the "opener" in the language of Babylonia.
Meanwhile, many of Earth's inhabitants had little or nothing to do with Nimrod's
ways. Some tribes had traveled so far beyond Babylonia that they didn't even know
about the start of idol worship. Others didn't care much about God or about idols.
A small part of the people still chose to obey their Creator. Shem, one of Noah's
sons, was a leader among God's followers. For many years he worked against the wave
of idol worship that spread out of Babylon. Ancient writings in stone have shown that
Shem warned the Egyptians of Nimrod's evil plans. As a result Nimrod fled from Egypt
to Europe where he hid out at Rome until he was killed. And that is how the story of
Nimrod or "Peter" being killed at Rome began over four thousand years ago.
Nimrod's death was a shocking surprise to his followers. They conldn'r understand
how or why the high priest of the sun-god could be allowed to die. So many
subjects lost faith in their hero that Nimrod's religious system started to crumble.
But Satan had no idea of giving up his struggle to turn man against his Creator.
He worked in a very shrewd way to use Nimrod's death to shock men into going on
with their worship of idols. Satan had a plan to make pagan religions something that
would not only become more and more popular at the time, but which would cause
them to last for thousands of years!
Nimrod's Wife
To understand how this happened, we must know something about Nimrod's wife,
Ishtar. Many people called her Semiramis. When her husband was killed, she became
the ruler over his kingdom. But because many of her subjects believed that Nimrod
wasn't the god-like being he had claimed to be, Semiramis feared that she might lose
control over them. She knew that she must think of something that would appear to be
a great miracle-something that would fi 11
the people with awe and show them that
Nimrod was really a god.
Some time after Nimrod's death, Semiramis gave birth to a baby boy. This was just