Sabbath 8/4/40/120

Dear Friends,

We are issuing Surah 6 this week.  The Surah is a reprimand to the people of Mecca and the half converted Arabs and a warning of that which is to come. Whilst they made a later pretence, they are yet to face the nexus of the Law of God under the Witnesses and the wrath of the Messiah and the Councils of the Church of God to come.

Mecca and the pagan Arabs never got rid of the idolatry at Mecca, which was in the hands of the Arabicised Arabs of Ishmael. Nor did the Baal worshippers of Israel and the Mother goddess system of Easter ever eradicate their idolatry from the lands to which they moved all over the world. Their Ditheism or Binitarianism has now penetrated the Churches of God under Armstrongism.

The god Hubal most prominently appeared at Mecca, where an image of him was worshipped at the site of the Kaaba (or Kaabah). According to Karen Armstrong, the sanctuary was dedicated to Hubal, who was worshipped as the greatest of the 360 idols the Kaaba contained, which probably represented the days of the year.[1] The Wikipedia record.

The shrine reportedly contained many idols internal to it. Hubal as a name is associated with Baal worship.  Philip K. Hitti, who relates the name Hubal to an Aramaic word for spirit, suggests that the worship of Hubal was imported to Mecca from the north of Arabia, possibly from Moab or Mesopotamia.[8] Hubal may have been the combination of Hu, meaning "spirit" or "god", and the Moab god Baal meaning "master" or "lord". Outside South Arabia, Hubal's name appears just once, in a Nabataean inscription;[9] 

Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi's Book of Idols describes the image as shaped like a human, with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand.[2] According to Ibn Al-Kalbi, the image was made of red agate, whereas Al-Azraqi, an early Islamic commentator, described it as of "cornelian pearl". Al-Azraqi also relates that it "had a vault for the sacrifice" and that the offering consisted of a hundred camels. Both authors speak of seven arrows, placed before the image, which were cast for divination, in cases of death, virginity, and marriage.[2]

The deity seems to have originated in Iraq at Hit and the process of using arrows for divination, a practice followed by the pagan Arabs was used in the Second and First millennia BCE.

The Ka’aba (or Kaabah) is to this day used for the pagan practice of the Seven circumambulations of the shrine used as the axis mundi or centre of rotations according to the mystical rites of the animist pagans of Arabia posing as Islam (cf the work Cox W.E Mysticism CCG Publishing 2000).

According to Ibn Al-Kalbi, the image was first set up by Khuzaymah ibn-Mudrikah ibn-al-Ya's' ibn-Mudar, but another tradition, recorded by Ibn Ishaq, holds that Amr ibn Luhayy, a leader of the Khuza'a tribe, put an image of Hubal into the Kaabah, where it was worshipped as one of the chief deities of the tribe.[3] The date for Amr is disputed, with dates as late as the end of the fourth century AD suggested, but what is quite sure is that the Quraysh later became the protectors of the ancient holy place, supplanting the Khuza'a. The prophet himself was of the Quraysh.

A tale recorded by Ibn Al-Kalbi has Muhammad's grandfather Abdul Mutallib vowing to sacrifice one of his ten children. He consulted the arrows of Hubal to find out which child he should choose. The arrows pointed to his son Abd-Allah, the future father of Muhammad. However, he was saved when 100 camels were sacrificed in his place. According to Tabari, Abdul Mutallib later also brought the infant Muhammad himself before the image.[4]

After defeat by Muhammad's forces at the Battle of Badr, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, leader of the Quraysh army, is said to have called on Hubal for support to gain victory in their next battle, saying "Show your superiority, Hubal".[5] When Muhammad conquered Mecca in 630, he removed and had destroyed the statue of Hubal, along with the other 360 images at the Kaaba(h), and dedicated the structure to Allah.[6]

There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Amr travelled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses ʻUzzāʼ and Manāt, and had combined it with that of Hubal, the idol of the Khuza'a.[7] According to Al-Azraqi, the image was brought to Mecca. 

There is no connection whatsoever between the origin of the names of these pagan deities and the name of Allah’ which derives from the Eastern Aramaic and the prior Biblical Chaldean Elahh and the Hebrew Eloah from which the Western Aramaic originated (see the paper the Name of God in Islam (No. 054)). 

We see from the text that the One True God Eloah or Allah’ created the heavens and the earth (cf. Job 38:4-7) and the heavenly host of the sons of God and the Morning stars were present there.  Genesis 1:1 shows that it was The One True God that was creator but that the earth became tohu and bohu or waste and void (v 2). God says through Isaiah that God did not create it waste and void. It became that way.  The elohim were then sent to earth to reform it and create Adamic mankind.

Eloah or Allah’ was alone and singular and the name admits of no plurality and then he decided to create and He created the Sons of God as elohim and thus became Ha Elohim or the God as the centre of a plural entity as the family of God (see the paper How God Became a Family (No. 187))

He extended Himself and through the Holy Spirit He became Elohim as the central power as Ha Elohim or The Elohim or Yahovih (SHD 3069) and all of the elohim bore the name Yahovah when they became Messengers to mankind after their creation as “He causes to be” or Yahovah (SHD 3068).  They were named as Malak or “malaikat” meaning Messengers which became Aggleos in Greek and hence became termed Angels. This became a noun as a name for the Angelic Host. The Sons of God as elohim were created beings of Eloah or Allah’ as One True God who alone was immortal (1Tim. 6:16). 

Both Christ and Gabriel were created sons of God as was Satan or Iblis.  Iblis objected to the creation of mankind as the second element of the Host.  Iblis, Azazel or Satan interfered with the creation and condemned man to death and the Resurrection through the death and resurrection of Christ. These acts were predestined from before the foundation of the world.

In this Surah we see the sequence from the creation of the earth to the creation of mankind and the position of the Heavenly Host and the place of Christ and the sons of Adam as the “Sheep” or “Livestock” of the creation that proceed from the First Resurrection with the “Goats” of the world moving to the “Second Resurrection”.

These Surahs move from the Beginning in Surahs 1 and 2 under the Messiah and the Sanctification of the Elect and the Temple of God. It proceeds through the Reddish or Adamic Heifer and then Golden Heifer through the process we saw with Moses before the Angel of the Presence in Sinai who was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).  The text then goes to the sequence of the Priesthood at Surah 3 from The Family of Imram and then to the place of the church at Surah 4 in families. Surah 5 “The Feast” or “Table Spread” deals with the Sacraments of the church among the elect at the Lord’s Supper and Passover and the death of Christ.  In Surah 6 we proceed to the Unity of God that prepares us all to become elohim as we are shown in Psalm 82:6 and Zechariah 12:8 and John 10:34-36.  We are all to become elohim or the plurality of the sons of God, as gods or elahhin in the Chaldean, from which the Arabic is developed, through the Eastern Aramaic.  We are all enabled in this process by the Holy Spirit.  In this process we are all the Sheep of the Host as the body of Christ and the Surahs explain this process with its cross references to the Scriptures. 

Surah 7: “The Heights” then goes on to the opposition to God’s Will by Satan and then through the sequence of Creation. 

The outline of the plan of Salvation is also developed through subsequent surahs, such as The Ranks and those who set the Ranks.

The Hadith was designed to destroy this understanding and separate the Scriptures from the Qur’an. It was designed by the Jews and the paganised Arabs with the major attacks on the Pauline documents aided by the post-Exilic Jews and the Talmud and Hillel. It is about to be destroyed completely as a system.

So also the Gnostics and the Baal and Easter Sunday worshippers have done their best to destroy the understanding of the Faith and the Law of God and the Testimony. Anyone who says that they are Christians or Muslims (which should be interchangeable terms) and the law is done away and that when they die they go to heaven are not to be believed. They are neither Muslims nor Christian (cf. also Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, LXXX).

Wade Cox
Coordinator General