Millions of Spanish-speakers pray to Dios every day. Are these Christians just as Christian as those who pray to God? They read the same Bible, they keep the same observances; can you really say they are different, simply because the Spanish word for “God” is “Dios”? Of course not! (Acts 2:5-11, Acts 10:34-35).

This fact forces us to radically revise the way we look at mythology. Because Dios evolved, like most of the rest of the Spanish language, from Latin. And the Latin word for Dios is Deus. It’s the only word there is in the language for “God”.

So did someone who prayed to Deus really pray to a different God than you do?

Deus in turn comes from an earlier proto-indo-european word deiwos, meaning “celestial” or “shining”. You are already familiar with this word Deus, without realizing it, from the name Jupiter. In Latin, this breaks down into Dieu-Pater, or Shining-Father.

Similarly in Greek, the full name of Zeus – recognizably similar to Deus – is Zeus Pater, with the same meaning of Shining-Father. So did someone who prayed to Zeus pray to a different God? There is a direct etymological link from Dios, to Deus, to Zeus. At which point does He become a false God?

Now if you were to go to ancient Sumeria, say to the city of Ur where Abram came from, and talk to someone, you’d have had to speak Sumerian, because that was their language! So when Abraham lived there, and talked to them about their false beliefs, he would have had to translate the word “God” into their language – just as the Hebrew word El was translated into your language!

And so in Sumerian, he would be talking to them about Anu, for that that is their word for God, deity, heavenly, you name it. There is no other word that simply means “God”. And most of the Gods had names – Anu Enlil, Anu Ninurta, etc.

But the problem is, there is also a deity in Sumeria called by the sole name of Anu – father of the gods, lord of the heavens. So is this Anu a false God?

Don’t be too sure you know the answer!

EL-YAH

Yes, Anu was worshipped in many ways contrary to the Bible, but in how many unbiblical ways is Dios worshipped today? How many people worship “God” in ways that are clearly not what our God commanded? Does that mean their “God” is a false God?

Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists – they all worship God very differently, and whomever you believe is right, others are certainly wrong. So just because they worship Him wrongly, does it necessarily follow that their God is false?

Is Dios a false God, just because many of His followers don’t obey the Bible they believe He wrote? Is Anu a false God, just because Sumerian priests made up bad ways to worship Him? Is Ptah, the Egyptian creator God, a false God? What about Aten, the monotheistic God of Akhnaten?

What about “Sin”, the Father of the Gods worshipped monotheistically by Nebuchadnezzar after his humbling by the true God? Just because his name for God is different from yours, does it necessarily follow that his worship is directed at an enemy of the true God?

To take a more modern example, the names for God and the Lord in the Bible are “El” and “Yahweh”, or sometimes simply “Yah” (Psalms 68:4). The names can be combined, such as Elijah which is literally “El-Yah”, or “Yah is God”.

Why that matters is that a huge chunk of the world today worships Elijah. Or rather, they worship El-Yah, which is more recognizable to us as… Allah! Is that a false God? If so, then so is El-Yah, since it’s literally the same word. And if El-Yah is a heathen deity, how can El and Yahweh from the Bible be holy?

You literally cannot go to an Islamic country and speak Arabic and teach them about the Christian God without using the name Allah for that IS the name for God in their language! Just as it is in your Bible! So… does it follow that the God of the Muslims is a false God?

Think about that.

MARS HILL

I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I’m forcing the facts to fit my beliefs, because arguing that, say, Zeus or Allah are basically just misunderstandings of the true God is pretty far out. I mean, Zeus is a pagan god, a false god, one worshipped in strange and sometimes horrible ways by people who were no more Christian than a tomato.

Like I said, if you think that, it’s fair. There’s just one problem. Paul said Zeus was the true God!

Acts 17:27-29 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device

Speaking on Mars Hill in Athens to highly educated Greeks, this meant something it doesn’t mean to us. Paul explicitly referred to “their own poets”. These poets were widely read and highly respected particularly by the stoics he was debating (verse 18). And fortunately, both of these quoted works have survived from antiquity. The first, from around the 6th century B.C. says…

“They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one, Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies. But you are not dead: you live and abide forever, For in you we live and move and have our being.” (Epimenides, Cretica)

Paul clearly appreciated the work of this pagan philosopher since he quoted him twice – one line here, and a different part in Titus 1:12. In this quote, the character Minos was addressing Zeus, king of the Greek gods, telling him – telling Zeus, just to emphasize my point – that “in you we live and move and have our being”, which Paul quoted without qualification to apply to the Christian God!

This is important, so I’m going to say it again; Paul didn’t merely say that their beliefs about their false God were applicable to the true God. Paul directly implied that we live and move and have our being in Zeus!

So somehow, Paul seemed comfortable comparing “the Lord Jesus” to “the king of the Greek gods”!

The second quote in Acts 17:28 comes either from the poet Aratus, or the poet Cleanthes; both are from the 3rd century B.C., and both say effectively the same thing, so it’s hard to be sure which one Paul was referring to – he may have been thinking of both, since he said that their own poets, plural, said these things!

“Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken. For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus. Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity. Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus. For we are indeed his offspring…” (Aratus, Phaenomena 1-5).

“Most glorious of immortals, many-named, Almighty and for ever, thee, O Zeus, Sovran o’er Nature, guiding with thy hand All things that are, we greet with praises. Thee ’Tis meet that mortals call with one accord, For we thine offspring are, and we alone Of all that live and move upon this earth, Receive the gift of imitative speech.” (Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus).

This audience in Mars Hill who was dedicated to “hearing or telling some new thing”, would certainly have known these works by heart, as Paul clearly did to have them so readily available on the top of his mind.

So knowing his source material, let’s again note that Paul did not distinguish Zeus, “almighty, eternal, sovereign over nature” from the God of the Jews… which can only be because it wasn’t really a different God!

Around now I can hear you saying “But Zeus was an idol, he was worshipped by unbelievers, his followers didn’t obey the Bible!”… and that’s all true. But Jesus as worshipped by, say, the Catholics as an idol; is Jesus, therefore, a false God?

The idea of a supreme God, Lord of Heaven and Earth whatever you may call Him, however little you know about Him, ultimately points back to the same Being because, whatever your idolatrous, catastrophically disobedient beliefs about Him, He is HIM!

After all, the Greek poet openly admitted that this almighty God was “many-named”! Paul agreed with this, and that’s why he didn’t bother calling Zeus a false God because Zeus wasn’t really a false God, any more than the Catholic “God the Father” is a false God.

He is served wrong, and their worship is deceived, and the end of their worship will be death… but none of that makes God or Zeus a false God. It makes them false followers, who diligently worship a God whom they don’t know at all! (Acts 17:23, Matthew 7:23).

FALSE FOLLOWERS

The only way to tell whether God, Anu, Allah, Zeus, or Ptah is the true God or not is to do what our God, the God of the Bible, said to do in 1 John 4:1, Isaiah 8:20, Matthew 7:15-18, etc. After all, even in the Bible, some of God’s favorite people knew Him by different names (Exodus 3:13-16, Exodus 6:2-3, etc.).

And so when someone comes and says “Zeus is Lord” you should pause before you say “No, Zeus is a demon, enemy of God!” Consider those quotes above one more time; do you disagree with Aratus that “every street, every market-place is full of God”? Proverbs 15:3.

Do you disagree with Epimenides that “They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one… But you are not dead: you live and abide forever”? (Romans 6:9-10, Acts 13:33-37, Isaiah 53:8-10, John 8:35, etc.). If you judge the truth based solely on the source, then you are a respecter of persons! (Acts 10:34-35).

So think carefully before you answer… do you really disagree with Cleanthes that God is “Most glorious of immortals, many-named, Almighty and for ever, thee, O Zeus, Sovran o’er Nature, guiding with thy hand All things that are”? (Daniel 4:17, Exodus 6:3, Psalms 68:4, etc.)

When you think about it, Cleanthes’ work agrees quite nicely with Psalms 8; so then what could be so wrong about quoting a Greek poet, if the Greek poet spoke the same thing that David said about the same almighty creator God?? (Jeremiah 23:21-24).

So when someone comes and says, “The Lord laid it on my heart to tell you something”, pause and consider it; odds are, it’s a vision “of the imagination of their own heart” (Jeremiah 9:14). But then again, it can’t hurt to consider their correction like you should honestly consider ALL correction to see if there is merit to it.

Listen to them; is there truth in the words their possibly-false God said? Do they speak “according to the law and to the testimony”? Then repent and do good! And if not… it’s not because their God is a demon, but because their own hearts are corrupt (Jeremiah 14:14). But that doesn’t mean His NAME is the name of an unclean God!

So no matter the name of their God, judge their words on their merits. Whether they’re false Gods or homeless bums or little children, you should hear their correction, compare it to the Bible, and if it matches, thank them and repent! Because if you don’t, you’ll die in Armageddon.

Oh, I don’t mean that metaphorically… someone literally died at Armageddon for this exact reason!

2 Chronicles 35:20-24 After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Neco king of Egypt went up to fight against Carchemish by the Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him. But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, “What have I to do with you, you king of Judah? I come not against you this day, but against the house with which I have war.

God has commanded me to make haste. Beware that it is God who is with me, that he not destroy you.” Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and didn’t listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo. The archers shot at king Josiah; and the king said to his servants, “Take me away, because I am seriously wounded!”

And he died from his wounds soon after. Note that this happened in the “valley of Megiddo”, which in Hebrew is Har-Megiddo, which was transliterated into Greek as Armageddon!

This can’t be an accident – the king of the south (Egypt) battling the king of the north (Babylon), just as the king of the north and south battle in the SAME VALLEY in the end times? (Revelation 16:12-16). So clearly, we were meant to learn something from this, and from how good king Josiah got caught in the middle and died.

Because you see, he didn’t have to die. He died because he was stubborn! Because he refused to listen to Pharaoh’s words “from the mouth of God” and meddled in strife that was not his (Proverbs 26:17). But when you read that story, put yourself in Josiah’s place.

Pharaoh, historic oppressor and frequent enemy of your people, came from Egypt; a land whose gods are reviled in a variety of scriptures that Josiah well knew. And this Pharaoh would have spoken to his ambassadors in Egyptian. It’s almost certain he wouldn’t have spoken Hebrew.

So he said to his ambassadors to tell Josiah that “God” was with him, and that “God” would kill Josiah if he got in his way. Which God would he have meant? Certainly not Yahweh Elohim! Because that was not HIS Elohim! The word does not even exist in his language!

Wikipedia says of this Pharaoh, identified as Necho II “His prenomen or royal name Wahem-Ib-Re means ‘Carrying out the Heart (i.e., Wish) of Re.’” So Pharaoh Necho’s “God” was, by his very name, declared to be Re, better known in English as Ra, the sun God.

Thus, when Pharaoh said “God” sent me to this war, he would have said, in Egyptian, that Ra sent him to this war. And Ra is a strange God, the Elohim of the Egyptians; and yet… Ra the sun-God was an all-powerful creator God. Is that really so different from Zeus? Or the Catholic Father God?

And didn’t Necho live up to his name and do God’s will – the will of Ra? For Pharaoh said that God had sent him to this war, and we know God does indeed do things like that on a regular basis. (2 Samuel 7:14, 2 Chronicles 16:9, etc.).

God validated all these claims of Pharaoh and the words of his God Ra, first by inspiring them to be recorded in the Bible and second by leaving us a clear moral: Josiah died because he didn’t listen to the words of Necho from the mouth of HIS God!

Can you honestly say you’d have done differently? If a Muslim came to you and said “don’t buy this house, Allah said you’ll die if you do” would you have listened? Or would you have brushed it off saying “MY God is stronger than Allah, I don’t fear YOUR God”?

But you see, Allah IS your God. Misunderstood, misworshipped, and misrepresented, perhaps… but the same God, called by the SAME NAME as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!

FALSE CLAIMS

On the other hand, when someone comes and tells you that the true God said you shouldn’t buy this house, you shouldn’t just take their word for it either, as the man in 1 Kings 13 learned too late. God had sent him to prophesy against an altar, and the king offered him a meal afterwards by way of reward, which he refused saying God had told him not to eat or drink. So far so good.

God had said “don’t eat bread or drink water”, so he resisted the king, and kept on fasting. Then another prophet heard about the prophecy (1 Kings 13:11-17). And this other guy, who was also a prophet OF THE TRUE GOD, no less, invited him to eat.

Again, he refused – so far so good. Then the prophet said “I am a prophet also as thou art” (1 Kings 13:18). But he lied. But not about being a prophet! The Bible confirms that, and God used him to prophesy again later in this story. No, he lied about what God had said to do.

It doesn’t say why, but later this man was very sad about what happened, so it doesn’t seem to have been spite (verses 24-32). Regardless, the man had credibility; he was a true prophet of the true God. So his credentials were impeccable.

There was just one problem: the first prophet didn’t “try the spirits, whether they were of God!” (verses 19-22). And he left on a donkey and was shortly killed by a lion. The moral was “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).

God had told this man, personally, that he was not allowed to eat or drink. This other man, offering no reasoning for why God might have changed His mind, told him to do something else. And even if an angel from heaven had indeed said so… he should have obeyed the original gospel he received FROM GOD, and not hearsay from someone else!

So try the spirits; when Josiah was told that Ra – God – was with Pharaoh, he could have said “Is Babylon evil? Is it likely that God would send Egypt to punish them?”; he could have said “is this my problem, or am I ‘taking a dog by the ears’ in direct contradiction to my own God’s scripture?”

He could have said “by defending Babylon, am I making a treaty with pagan nations like God forbade in Deuteronomy 7, among other places?”; he could have said “if I have to disguise myself to go to war, maybe I’m doing something wrong!”; but he did none of these things, and died for disobeying the God of Pharaoh, who it turns out was speaking for the true God because he WAS the true God!

On the other hand, the prophet in 1 Kings 13 could have said “why would God command me one thing, then contradict Himself?”; he could have said “Why would God give me a command personally, then send someone else to repeal it?”; he could have simply said “I’m not hungry”!

But instead of questioning the prophecy, instead of trying the spirits to see if they spoke according to the testimony, he simply accepted his word because the man was a true prophet of the true God! While, instead of questioning and considering the prophecy, Josiah ignored it because the man was a pagan king serving a false God.

Both were wrong. Both died. Mightn’t you have done the same in their shoes?