God's Truths Recovered
The Cross
THE CROSS
The “Christian Cross” is the preeminent symbol of Christendom. However, most are unaware
that the Greek word stauros traditionally translated “cross” actually indicates a simple upright
pole or stake.
Here are definitions for the Greek word stauros:
1. A stake or post. – James A. Strong
2. An upright pale or stake. – E.W. Bullinger
3. An upright stake or pale, without any crosspiece. – A.E. Knoch
4. An upright stake. – Joseph Thayer
5. A mere stake of one single piece without transom [crossbar].
6. Staurós, designated a pointed, vertical wooden stake firmly fixed in the ground. They were set
up as instruments of torture which serious offenders of the law were publicly suspended to die.
7. There is nothing in the Greek New Testament to imply two pieces of timber. Bullinger
8. Stauros denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such, malefactors were nailed for
execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, to fasten to a stake or pole, are originally to be
distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of the two-beamed cross. The shape of the latter had
its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as a symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape
of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt.
By the middle of the third century A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied,
certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate
ecclesiastical system, pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith,
and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its
most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered [t], was adopted to stand for the cross of
Christ.
1. James A. Strong, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, #4716.
2. E.W. Bullinger, A Critical Lexicon & Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament
3. Concordant Keyword Concordance, page 63.
4. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
5. The Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.
6. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 825.
7. E.W. Bullinger, The Companion Bible, Appendix 162: The Cross and the Crucifixion.
8. W.E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Vol. 1, p. 256.
We can see from these Greek language sources that the word “cross” is just another place where
religion has “changed the truth of God into a lie.” Our Lord Jesus Christ did not give His life for
us on a “cross.” He died on “a stake or post,” or what is elsewhere referred to in the scriptures as
a “tree.”
Who Himself carries up our sins in His body on to the pole (tree), that, coming away
from sins, we should be living for righteousness; by Whose welt you were healed. (I Peter 2:24).
Christ reclaims us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for our sakes, for it is
written, accursed is everyone hanging on a pole (tree) (Galatians 3:13).
The “cross” is not just something that religion has corrupted for its own purposes, but it is
something it injected as a replacement for our Savior’s “tree.” There is NOTHING Christian
about the pagan “cross .”
The garden in Genesis starts with a “Tree” of Life. Revelation ends with a “Tree” of Life. In
between our Savior provided Life for us on a “tree.”
References:
In the Egyptian churches, the cross was a pagan symbol of life borrowed by the Christians and
interpreted in the pagan manner. Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition, Vol. 14, page 273
It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one
piece alone. Crosses were used as symbols of the Babylonian sun-god. It should be stated that
Constantine was a sun-god worshipper. The evidence is thus complete, that the Lord was put to
death upon an upright stake, and not on two pieces of timber placed at any angle.
E.W. Bullinger, The Companion Bible, Appendix 162
This Pagan symbol, the Tau, the sign of the cross, the indisputable sign of Tammuz, the false
Messiah, the mystic Tau of the Chaldeans (Babylonians) and Egyptians – the true original form
of the letter T, the initial of the name of Tammuz, the Babylonian cross was the recognized
emblem of Tammuz. Alexander Hislop The Two Babylons, pages 197-205
The coins of Constantine show an even-armed cross symbol for the sun-god. Johannes
Geffcken; The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, page 319
It was not until Christianity began to be paganized that the cross came to be thought of as a
Christian symbol. It was in 431 A.D. that crosses in churches and chambers were introduced,
while the use of crosses on steeples did not come until about 586 A.D. In the 6th Century, the
crucifix image was introduced and its worship sanctioned by the church of Rome.
Ralph Woodrow; Babylon Mystery Religion, page 50
A tradition of the church which our fathers have inherited, was the adoption of the words “cross”
and “crucify.” These words are nowhere to be found in the Greek of the new testament. Why
then was the “cross” brought into the faith? Again, historical evidence points to Constantine as
the one who had the major share in uniting sun-worship and the Messianic faith. Constantine’s
famous vision of “the cross superimposed on the sun,” in the year 312, is usually cited. Writers,
ignorant of the fact that the cross was not to be found in the new testament scriptures, put much
emphasis on this vision as the onset of the so-called “conversion” of Constantine.
But, unless Constantine had been misguided by the Gnostic Manichean half-christians, who
indeed used the cross in their hybrid religion, this vision of the cross superimposed on the sun
could only be the same old cosmic religion, the astrological religion of Babylon. The fact
remains; that which Constantine saw, is nowhere to be found in scripture. As stated above, the
indisputable sign of Tammuz, the mystic Tau of the Babylonians and Egyptians, was brought into
the church chiefly because of Constantine, and has since been adored with all the homage due
only to the Most High. The Protestants have for many years refrained from undue adoration of,
or homage to the cross, especially in England at the time of the Puritans in the 16th-17th
centuries. But lately this un-scriptural symbol has been increasingly accepted in Protestantism.
The evidence for its pagan origin is so convincing that the catholic encyclopedia admits that “the
sign of the cross, represented in its simplest form by a crossing of two lines at right angles,
greatly antedates, in both east and the west, the introduction of christianity. It goes back to a very
remote period of human civilization.” It then continues and refers to the Tau cross of the pagan
Egyptians. “In later times the Egyptian christians (Copts), attracted by its form, and perhaps by
its symbolism, adopted it as the emblem of the cross.” Further proof of its pagan origin is the
recorded evidence of the Vestal Virgins of pagan Rome having the cross hanging on a necklace,
and the Egyptians doing it too, as early as the 15th century B.C.E. The Buddhists, and numerous
other sects of India, also used the sign of the cross as a mark on their followers’ heads.
The Final Reformation; Institute for Scripture Research
The “Cross” itself, long revered as the symbol of Christ’s crucifixion, actually originated in the
pagan cultures. The Aztecs who had never heard of Christ, had used the symbol of the cross
centuries earlier. The translators of the new testament mistranslated the Greek term which meant
“stake” into the word “cross.” It would be more correct to say that Jesus was crucified on a big
tree-like stake. It is reported, scholars and the Anglican clergy were aware of this in the
eighteenth century. The cross was not adopted until about three hundred years after the
crucifixion, and it wasn’t portrayed in christian art until the middle of the fifth century. The cross
was another pagan symbol adopted and claimed by the church.
Rightly Divide the Word of truth - 2 Timothy 2:15