Religions which have descended to the deification of
creatures, whether of men or of animals,
have degraded, enslaved and impoverished their participators.

That is an historic fact, and it would seem that those who
controlled such religions purposely established their
worship downward.
They focusssed the attention of their people on glorified
snakes, sacred symbols, bread and wine, and on pictures
and statues of men and women with haloes around their heads.

The purpose .. was, not to allow the common man a vision of
anything above him more exalted than the hierarchical
priesthood in power over him. The worshipper was never to
be allowed to contact directly and rise to the exalted plane
of God. For if this had been allowed, then the priests of
those religions would have been exposed for what they were --
mere men, wrapped in a nebulous cloak of sanctity.

With the exception of the Jews, all pre-Christian religions
imaged their gods and focused their worship on or below
the level of human nature. Even the Jews at times were led
to descend to worship of snakes and bulls. But not even
the Jewish religion could make it known that common man
could become a partaker of the very .. God and thus change
his slave relation, to God and man, for the relation of
rightful sonship of God.

Of particular significance is the fact that the female form
of a Goddess was used -- as today in big-business advertising -
as the greatest attraction to the worshippers of all pagan
religions. The names of such Goddesses are as numerous as
the religions of which they were made the top-ranking
attraction: ( . . ) and a host of others ..
[those] may have had a more or less high concept of God ..
eventually they all ended up by the image of that God as a
tiny, helpless babe on the breast of the Goddess. All pagan
religions developed in this way. .. The created being is
exalted and God is debased.

/

Only in true Biblical teaching is the sinner offered actual
sonship of God and encouraged to become a partaker in the
very nature of God Himself.
This exalted concept, whereby each individual is liberated
from the power of priests and tyrannical overlords
and made a rightful heir of God, is alone the heritage of
the biblical Christianity:
It puts an end to the need of human mediatorship, of priests
and Goddesses, of glorified snakes and animals, and points us
to Christ as the one and all-sufficient mediator and Saviour.
/

..the popes of Rome have gone so far in assuming the power of
God that they insist on being called "Holy Father", the name
used by Jesus Christ for Almighty God alone.