If you thought having “the harbinger of Baal” in New York City was bad, wait until you hear what they are doing in Rome. A reproduction of a winged bull from the ancient city of Nimrud, Iraq and a recreation of part of the ceiling from the Temple of Bel (Baal) are being put on display in the Colosseum in Rome, Italy. This exhibit has been entitled “Rising From the Ashes: Ebla, Nimrud, Palmyra“, and it is being sponsored by UNESCO. As I will discuss below, the statue of the winged bull from Nimrud and the Temple of Bel both have direct links to ancient Babylon and a very insidious character from the Bible known as Nimrod. Symbols have meaning, and to have these symbols erected at one of the most famous landmarks in Rome is more than just a little bit disturbing.
From ancient times, Nimrod and the various pagan gods that were based on Nimrod were often represented as human-animal hybrids. In this case, a bull with a human head that also has wings is known as a “lamassu”. According to Wikipedia, lamassu statues can currently be found “at the Gate of All Nations at Persepolis in Iran, the British Museum in London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Oriental Institute, Chicago.”
The lamassu statue that has been put on display in Rome is a full scale reproduction of one that was destroyed by ISIS in the city of Nimrud, Iraq. The following comes from an article about this exhibit in the New York Times…
A statue of a human-headed winged bull from the Northwest Palace in Nimrud, Iraq, that was bulldozed by the Islamic State last year to great outcry has been faithfully recreated using modern technology and put on exhibit at the Colosseum in Rome to spur discussion of the possible reconstruction of war-torn archaeological sites.
But it isn’t just the statue that has a link to Nimrod. The city where this lamassu statue once stood is actually named “Nimrud”, and as Wikipedia has pointed out, experts believe that the name “Nimrud” was derived from the Biblical character “Nimrod”…
Archeologists believe that the city was given the name Nimrud in modern times after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero.[5][6] The city was identified as the Biblical city of Calah (Hebrew Kelah (כלח), Greek Khalakh (χαλαχ)), also written Kalhu, first referred to alongside Nimrod in Genesis 10, by Henry Rawlinson in 1850 on the basis of a possible interpretation of the city’s cuneiform proper name as “Levekh”.
And if the original name of the ancient city was indeed “Calah”, then it is quite appropriate that the city has now been named after Nimrod, because he is the one that actually founded “Calah” in the first place according to the Bible. The following is what Genesis 10:8-12 says in the Modern English Version…
8 Cush was the father of Nimrod. He became a mighty one on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Even like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel,[b] Uruk, Akkad, and Kalneh in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, the city Rehoboth Ir, and Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).
Nimrod was the grandson of Noah, and according to tradition he played a major role in turning humanity away from God after the Flood. He founded many of the greatest cities of the ancient Middle East, and for a time he ruled over virtually all of the known world. In other words, he created the very first “New World Order” in the post-flood era. And according to Josephus, it was Nimrod that initiated the construction of the Tower of Babel…
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.
Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion …
In addition to “the winged bull of Nimrod”, other reproductions are also part of the exhibit in Rome. The following comes from an article in the Guardian…
Alongside the winged bull, the exhibition will feature a reconstruction of the Temple of Bel at Palmyra, which was considered Syria’s most important site, and a room of the State Archives of Ebla. All three have been rebuilt to their original dimensions.
Organisers said the purpose of the exhibition was to raise public awareness about the destruction of cultural heritage, and to promote the protection of sites and monuments from war and environmental catastrophes.
The article in the Guardian makes it sound like a complete reproduction of the entire Temple of Bel is going up, but the New York Times says that it is just a portion of the ceiling that will be displayed.
In any event, this is quite alarming as well, because this represents yet another very strong link to Nimrod.
In a previous article, I included a quote from Wikipedia that discusses how “Bel” is an ancient Babylonian term for “Lord” or “Master”, and that “Baal” comes from that original root word…
Bel (/ˈbeɪl/; from Akkadian bēlu), signifying “lord” or “master”, is a title rather than a genuine name, applied to various gods in the Mesopotamian religion of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. The feminine form is Belit ‘Lady, Mistress’. Bel is represented in Greek as Belos and in Latin as Belus. Linguistically Bel is an East Semitic form cognate with Northwest Semitic Baal with the same meaning.
The title of “Bel” or “Baal” seems to have originally been used primarily for the Babylonian god Marduk. Here is more from Wikipedia…
Bel became especially used of the Babylonian god Marduk and when found in Assyrian and neo-Babylonian personal names or mentioned in inscriptions in a Mesopotamian context it can usually be taken as referring to Marduk and no other god. Similarly Belit without some disambiguation mostly refers to Bel Marduk’s spouse Sarpanit. However Marduk’s mother, the Sumerian goddess called Ninhursag, Damkina, Ninmah and other names in Sumerian, was often known as Belit-ili ‘Lady of the Gods’ in Akkadian.
So where did “Marduk” come from?
Well, many scholars have traced the worship of Marduk all the way back to the historical figure of Nimrod…
Traditionally the Tower of Babel event has been associated with Nimrod, and Jewish commentaries as well as the Jewish historian Josephus both seem very emphatic on this point. Regarding the Sumerian name Enmer-kar, the suffix “kar” means “hunter,” and so “Enmer-kar” is in fact “Enmer the Hunter,” just as Nimrod is referred to as the “Mighty Hunter” in Genesis 10. Furthermore, Enmerkar is named on the Sumerian King List as “the one who built Uruk,” just as Nimrod is described in Genesis 10:10 as having a kingdom that began in “Babel (Eridu) and Erech (Uruk)… in the land of Shinar.” After Enmerkar’s death he became honored in Sumerian myth as the semi-divine hero Ninurta, and eventually this cult evolved into the great cult of Marduk, which became the state religion of Babylon after the conquests and religious innovations of Hammurabi.
Are you starting to see how everything fits together?
What makes all of this far more alarming for our day and time is the fact that a number of prominent scholars such as Tom Horn, Dr. Michael Lake and Peter Goodgame are convinced that there seems to be a very strong link in the Scriptures between the coming Antichrist and the historical figure of Nimrod.
So could it be possible that when we are erecting these symbols that we are laying out “welcome mats” for the Antichrist?
It is also very interesting to note that many scholars believe that Rome is the “Mystery Babylon” described in Revelation 17 and Revelation 18. One excellent work on this topic that I would highly commend is “A Woman Rides The Beast” by Dave Hunt.
So it is more than just a little bit odd that these symbols that have a direct connection to Nimrod have been put up in the exact city that many believe is the “Mystery Babylon” described in the Bible.
I know that I have covered some very deep stuff very rapidly in this article. What I have just briefly summarized would take an entire college course to fully unpack.
But you don’t have to be an expert to see that something very strange is going on. Monuments that have a direct link back to Nimrod and to ancient Babylon are starting to be erected all over the world, and I believe that is a very ominous sign for our future.
About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*