Identical Life Experiences
(1) Mithra was born on December 25th as an offspring of the Sun. Next to the gods Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, Mithra held the highest rank among the gods of ancient Persia. He was represented as a beautiful youth and a Mediator. Reverend J. W. Lake states: "Mithras is spiritual light contending with spiritual darkness, and through his labors the kingdom of darkness shall be lit with heaven's own light; the Eternal will receive all things back into his favour, the world will be redeemed to God. The impure are to be purified, and the evil made good, through the mediation of Mithras, the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Mithras is the Good, his name is Love. In relation to the Eternal he is the source of grace, in relation to man he is the life-giver and mediator" (Plato, Philo, and Paul, p. 15).
(2) He was considered a great traveling teacher and masters. He had twelve companions as Jesus had twelve disciples. Mithras also performed miracles.
(3) Mithra was called "the good shepherd, "the way, the truth and the light, redeemer, savior, Messiah." He was identified with both the lion and the lamb.
(4) The International Encyclopedia states: "Mithras seems to have owed his prominence to the belief that he was the source of life, and could also redeem the souls of the dead into the better world ... The ceremonies included a sort of baptism to remove sins, anointing, and a sacred meal of bread and water, while a consecrated wine, believed to possess wonderful power, played a prominent part."
(5) Chambers Encyclopedia says: "The most important of his many festivals was his birthday, celebrated on the 25th of December, the day subsequently fixed -- against all evidence -- as the birthday of Christ. The worship of Mithras early found its way into Rome, and the mysteries of Mithras, which fell in the spring equinox, were famous even among the many Roman festivals. The ceremonies observed in the initiation to these mysteries -- symbolical of the struggle between Ahriman and Ormuzd (the Good and the Evil) -- were of the most extraordinary and to a certain degree even dangerous character. Baptism and the partaking of a mystical liquid, consisting of flour and water, to be drunk with the utterance of sacred formulas, were among the inauguration acts."
(6) Prof. Franz Cumont, of the University of Ghent, writes as follows concerning the religion of Mithra and the religion of Christ: "The sectaries of the Persian god, like the Christians', purified themselves by baptism, received by a species of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected from a Lord's supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December.... They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situated in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons, situated in the bowels of the Earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe" (The Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 190, 191).
(7) Reverend Charles Biggs stated: "The disciples of Mithra formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ (The Christian Platonists, p. 240).
(8) In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship. It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts.
(9) He was buried in a tomb and after three days he rose again. His resurrection was celebrated every year.
(10) McClintock and Strong wrote: "In modern times Christian writers have been induced to look favorably upon the assertion that some of our ecclesiastical usages (e.g., the institution of the Christmas festival) originated in the cult of Mithraism. Some writers who refuse to accept the Christian religion as of supernatural origin, have even gone so far as to institute a close comparison with the founder of Christianity; and Dupuis and others, going even beyond this, have not hesitated to pronounce the Gospel simply a branch of Mithraism" (Art. "Mithra").
(11) Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected. His sacred day was Sunday, "the Lord's Day." The Mithra religion had a Eucharist or "Lord's Supper."
(12) The Christian Father Manes, founder of the heretical sect known as Manicheans, believed that Christ and Mithra were one. His teaching, according to Mosheim, was as follows: "Christ is that glorious intelligence which the Persians called Mithras ... His residence is in the sun" (Ecclesiastical History, 3rd century, Part 2, ch. 5).
"I am a star which goes with thee and shines out of the depths." - Mithraic saying"I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright morning star." - Jesus, (Rev. 22:16)
The Mithraic religion is estimated to have started some 600 years before Jesus was supposed to have been born....
There are other problems as well..... Paul who appeared in the 40 years after Jesus's death and basically (allegedly) founded the early Christian church, makes NO MENTION in his letters or writings of any of the things Jesus did in his life, such as turn water into wine (this harks back to an older story about Bacchus or Dionysus who has similar parallels with Jesus and his life by the way) or walking on water, trashing the temple, Pontius Pilate etc....NOTHING... that all starts with Mark some 70 or 80 years after Jesus's supposed death..... and the four gospels after Mark which are quite obviously based on Mark's writings..... There have been many "Dying Gods" in the past.... it's all very formulaic, they couldn't even be original.....
I'd also look up Emperor Constantines involvement in the early Christian church,
and the Pagan philosopher Sopater who really hacked off Constantine saying there was no forgiveness from Mithra for what he'd done to his family (boiling his wife in her bath, poisoning his eldest son etc)..... So Constantine had Sopater put to death ..... The Christian Church jumped at this chance opportunity and told Constantine that it didn't matter what he'd done he'd be forgiven by their Christian god ...... He was a believer in both Mithra and Jesus to his dying day but hedged his bets and only got baptised in the Christian faith a few days before he died......During his reign he also stopped the church from being taxed..... Kerchingggggggg !!!!!!
More shocking is the history of Sakka who.....as the "son of god" (devaputra), which is simply an expression that means "born among devas" (demigods, deities, "gods," extraterrestrials who are more like angels in JudeoChristian conception)..... is said to have cast out the "fallen angels" (Asuras) (ring any bells ?) from Tavatimsa heaven. But an avatar ("incarnation of God" reborn on Earth in human form to help humans) is an age old Hindu concept in Brahmanism and Indian philosophy, which pre-dates Christian religion by thousands of years....
You see if you actually "think" about the Christian (in fact ANY) religion nothing very much of it makes sense..... and that is the problem to be a Christian you have to give up thinking and just believe.....They don't want you to "think" .....In much the same way as a child you're told about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy....until you think about it ........
