WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT BEING RICH? 

Father Abraham ( 🎼 )is a classic. This just bought me back memories

What if this was a way to keep us poor?

Try a water fast. Praying for you. Stay strong.

The bible also speaks about being abundant and prosperous.

Creating Christ, There was a coin that showed the link between Christianity and the Roman Empire, The specific image that was used by the emperor Titus on his own coins, that image was the fish and the anchor, This image was never used before by any previous Roman emperor, And the early Christians began using that same image, in that same era, The symbol that is most famous is an anchor flanked by two fish, and both of these images are part of a family of symbols used by early Christians, which includes a fish on an anchor, This provided the first physical evidence of a link between the Roman Flavians and the early Church, if the Romans were that hated enemies, Why would Christians adapted Their symbol ? Why did Titus Flavius minted thousands of coins with a fish and anchor image on it ? And why did early Christians used this image in their earliest Catacombs ? The Catacomb of St Domitilla, What does this symbol mean, and how could it have been used at the same time in two such different contexts ? To answer this question, Let's look at the very first mention of this official visual symbol of Christianity, in the second-century, St. Clement of Alexandria, Whose full name is Titus Flavius Clemens, suggested That the following symbols be used by early Christians, A Dove, A Fish, A Ship, and a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, Or a ship's anchor which Seleucus used. Scholars know that sometime in the late second-century, St. Clement of Alexandria in his inventory of Christian symbols lists both the anchor and the fish, But he does not list the cross, And among those symbols that he offers are symbols associated with the pagan god Apollo, This is very odd, As we've been told that Christianity is anti-pagan, more than that, Clement of Alexandria specifies the pagan origins of the symbols, he refers to Polycrates, who was a worshiper of the pagan god Apollo, and Seleucus 1, Seleucus was a general in Alexander the Great army, in the fourth century B.C.E., Alexander the Great conquered what is now known as the middle east or near east today, and he brought Greek Culture, And Plato's philosophy to the entire region, So the era after Alexander the Great is widely known by historians as the Hellenistic era, it was the era in which Greek philosophy and Greek ideas spread throughout the middle east, And one of The conquered territories where Greek ideas were being spread was Palestine, which included Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, The origin of a fish wrapped around an anchor goes all the way back to Apollo, it was Apollo's symbol, it represent the pagan god Apollo who had transformed himself into a fish, This symbol is many centuries older than Jesus and Christianity, After Apollo, it was Seleucus 1 Nicator who first used an anchor with fish wrapped around it, and he did so, to make is own claim to being The son of the god Apollo,

Creating Christ; continuation, Apollo was the Greek god of the sun and light, the creator god, the source of life and healing, and the most loved deity in the pantheon of gods, So Seleucus used Apollo's symbol to claim his own divine lineage, Roman emperors looked to Alexander The Great, The very first successful imperialist as a model, As a template ( for control and power over another country's territories for economic and political gain ) for how to conquer and rule the territories of others, So this is Why the Romans also used Apollo's symbol of the fish and the anchor, But Why would St. Clement of Alexandria, A Christian Theologian recommended Apollo's symbol As A Christian symbol ? Another clue, is that the Romans also looked to the Alexandrian Conquerors for how they might integrated Greek Culture , with the local cultures they had conquered, The kings that came in the wake of Alexander The Great, such as the Ptolemies in Egypt, were trying to integrate the local Egyptian Culture, with Greek Culture, And in the process of doing that, The Ptolemies created a new Greek-Egyptian god called Serapis, developed by The Greek king of Egypt ( Ptolemy 1 Soter, or saviour ) Serapis is a hybrid god, deliberately created by the Egyptian priests under duress from Ptolemy 1 soter, in order to unify the constantly warring factions within Egypt, which were The Egyptian, the Greeks and the Jews, That is why the god Serapis was a blend or mix of Apollo, Osiris, Zeus, Asclepius, and Hades, The Afterlife god, As well as the Egyptian god Osiris, The god who was killed and was said to be resurrected, Making Serapis also a resurrection god. The healing and the salvation part of Serapis, were clearly borrowed and included into Christianity, in fact, There was A Statue of Serapis with long curly dark hair, with his Greek counterpart, the god Asclepius, And Asclepius was also the god of medicine, The two of them were kind of a hybrid gods, Asclepius wear the white robes, they are pretty much The same figure, just re-worked, Christianity then took the face and the hair and the overall impression of Serapis and Asclepius and then turned them into Jesus Christ basically, and that's not strange, because all of the middle eastern empires had done exactly that, for hundreds of years, The Persians and others did it, in the Bible itself we read that king Artaxerxes gave Ezra the priest, Who though Jewish was a court official in Persia, in ( Ezra 7 : 11--14 ) King Artaxerxes told Ezra, you go back there to the community of the Jews in Jerusalem with my authority, And Ezra went back with the Torah, the first five books of Moses also known as the Pentateuch, The Laws, And they imposed this, on the people, from that point on in history, Judaism looks a lot like Persian Zoroastrianism, Rome in effect, borrowed and created our Christianity from this and others, It is not so different than what the Persians did with Judaism, or earlier middle eastern religions or empires, This is another piece of the puzzle that is important for seeing and understanding the whole picture, it was quite common in that era for rulers to engage in religious syncretism and experimentation, and improvisation for ruling their subjects, The first centuries of the common era were perhaps the most religiously dynamic period in the history of western Civilisation, it saw the emergence of so many new and innovative religious ideas, There is an effort to combine Judaism and Christianity, with pagan religions, Before the last two centuries, There was no separation between religion and politics, back then, every political movement needed to have a religious justification, The Roman Empire, And before the Roman republic, They were all considered by Romans to be sanctioned by the gods, and was thought to be religiously significant sacred political institutions, The Jews Themselves saw this era as important, They saw it As the fulfillment of their own messianic prophecies, They saw it as the coming of a deliver, who would lead them to Victory against Rome, So both sides saw this era and this conflict in religious terms, and that is what created such A-religiously Fertile moment.

Creating Christ, Continuation; In the first two centuries C.E., creating entirely new ways of looking at, and combining these different religious ideas that came to be known as rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, and since there were no separation between religion and the state in those days, The Roman State had its own religious organisation, known as the imperial cult, This cult represent one of the most striking combination between politics and religion in the Roman world, its framework was based on Roman and Greek precedents, They actually deified their emperors after their death, in other words, They turned them into gods, This of course flew right into the faces of the Jewish religion and culture, it's very common for some contemporary minds to think of the ancient imperial cult as a sort of a political fraud, Or very superficial, Or something forced on the Roman people by their government, But back then, in that era of the Roman Empire, it was sincere religious belief to most Romans, Julius Caesar was the very first Roman deified ( turned into a god ) even before any official temple had been built for him, The people Themselves constructed a makeshift Alter, At The place of his Funeral, and started to worship him spontaneously, Roman emperors who were deified were admitted to the pantheon of all the Roman gods, They had temples and priesthood of their own, That lasted for centuries, This is strangely echoed into Christianity itself, The Philosophy of the imperial cult is based on Greco-Roman philosophy known as '' Stoicism '' and it had an ideology That expected a saviour to come and rescue The Roman world from times of crisis, and that is why deified Emperors was seen as divine figures, ( much like Emperor Haile Selassie is seen by many of my own countrymen and women As a divine figure today ), Saviour of the world, bringer of peace, very much like Jesus in the Christian Bible, The very first Roman emperor Augustus himself, in declaring that his adopted father, Julius was a god, would proclaim on his own coins, That he was the Son of god. So he was a saviour, a son of god, a bringer of peace, A man-god, The very innovation or changed That Christianity brings to Judaism, But all these religious changes from the Christians and the Romans, did not sit well with the monotheistic Jewish people, The Romans were quite open to accepting other cultures and religions from all of their conquered territories, in fact, some Romans were open to adopting the Jewish religion itself, However, The Jewish Culture and religion was far more exclusive, ( Unique and absolute ), it set up barriers for those wishing to adopt the Jewish religion, and this was a source of conflict in the Roman empire between the Romans and the Jews, What is interesting in the New - Testament therefore, is that these barriers seem to be removed or eliminated in the teachings of Jesus and Paul, All the various religions of the Roman Empire were allowed to exist, So long as those who followed those religions paid their tribute to Caesar, who was seen by the Romans As the divine leader or god on this earth, But the most devout Jewish factions would not do that, Although Today we think of Jews and Christians as definite believers in god, back then, to a polytheistic world like the ancient Romans, These people were seen as the Atheists of their day, They were so sectarian, They didn't respect anybody else's religion or their gods, and this created an ugly Anti- Semitism in the Roman World, many Romans came to resent the Jews and Judaism itself As hostile to the Roman Empire and its efforts to unify their Empire Culturally, The Jews always presented a very big problem to the governing Romans, because they were so distinctive, and just weren't playing the game that other religious subjects of Rome did, And This is The Context in which The Christian Gospels were written in Greek, and may probably have been written in Rome itself, Not only did the Jewish people have long standing religious conflict with the Romans, But They also had political conflict, The Jews wanted to Throw the Romans out of Palestine, And the more the Romans attempted to assimilate ( to take in ) Them into the greater Roman Empire, The more extremist and rebellious cretain factions became, Since the successful Jewish revolt of the second-century B.C., Against Their Seleucid Greek rulers, There had been a dynasty of genuinely authentic Jewish kings, The Hasmoneans, The descendants of the Maccabees who led that second century revolt, That is still celebrated by Jews in the Hanukkuh holidays, When Rome took over power in the area, They removed the authentic Hasmonean Jewish rulers, and put in their place The Herodians, Herod The Great, Who were not a born Jew but he converted to Judaism in order to become king and ruler of the region, However, The Jewish people never accepted them, As real Jewish rulers, The Jews regarded Herod and his dynasty As puppets of Rome, All of the populations had to worship Roman state gods, by Tipping their hats, a kind of gesture of politeness ( even if it wasn't genuine ) to prove Their loyalty to the empire, Jews, being monotheists and unable to worship idols or anyone else as divine, could not do that, And so the Romans actually made exceptions, exempting Jewish people from the worship of Roman State gods, But This wasn't sufficient, And they were certainly Not happy with the Herodian kings, Who have been placed over them, and the Jewish rebels thought that a continuation of the very militant Nationalism that had been so successful during the Hanukkah rebellion would also be successful in the first century, So the Jews said, we should have no ruler but god, We are going to Throw off the yoke of Rome,

Q

Creating Christ; continuation; The Jewish rebels were operating from a long held Jewish prophecy, that a warrior Messiah/Christ would come to defeat the Romans and deliver them from occupation, This messianic prophecy was handed down from generation to generation through their scriptures, The Romans saw the Jewish literature As very rebellious and subversive, and the Romans are probably thinking, What is instigating these people, what is the cause of all this behaviour, What is Their motivation ? We must find out, it eventually became obvious to the Romans That they could not point to a single figure or a god, So they decided to get Flavius Josephus a turncoat Jew to look at the Jewish scriptures,