What is Religious Syncretism and how does it function?

Apostle Dr. Gariel Sanchez Velazquez with Pastors
Carlos Alonso and Juan Carlos Balderas

In Acts 3:21 it says, “Whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.” In this passage the key word is RESTORATION. In the Greek the term is APOCATASTASIS; WHICH MEANS:

         1. To give back to someone or something their original value.

         2. To put something back in its original state, or its original                                order. And…

         3. To restore to someone goods that for some reason had been                            lost.

There is a need for restoration when in something there has been a deterioration. For example, when a married couple is in crisis, it requires that the husband returns to give to his wife the original appreciation like in the days when he dreamed of going out with her and still pleased her with small details.

The Church has suffered a deterioration with the passage of centuries. This is what Joel 1:10 says, “The field is wasted, the land mourns; for the grain is ruined the new wine is dried up, the oil fails.”

The Church sprung up in the heart of God; He planted it on the Eternal Rock of all ages: JESUS CHRIST. On the Rock rise up three columns that sustain the whole building:

         1. The Word of God that is represented by the wheat.

         2. The experience of salvation which produces joy is                                  represented by the new wine and,

         3. The oil which represents the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

When the Church sprung forth in the first century, all of the leaders spoke the Word and they submitted to it; with the passing of time little by little empty subtleties, vain philosophies, and pagan religious customs were stirred into it. Until Joel 2:19 says: “The Lord will answer and say to His people, ‘Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, and you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations’.” Why did God have to send BREAD, NEW WINE AND OIL? Because in the deterioration of the Church they were lost.

WHAT IS RELIGIOUS SYNCRETISM?

Carefully reviewing the History of the Church we discover that during the first thousand years of Christianity at least the important branches of the Church were in continual deterioration. The best testimony of that is THE RELIGIOUS MIXING.

Since the first century of the Church, Christianity encountered face to face the paganism springing up from Babylon and impregnating the whole Roman Empire. The first Christians refused to have anything to do with the Babylonian practices at the cost of their lives. Therefore, they suffered persecution and death.

When Constantine the Great pretended to have converted, there was a radical change. And he pretended, because after having said that he converted to Christ, he continued to be the Sovereign Pontiff of Mithraism and killed his own firstborn son.

During this time many concessions were made to paganism, and the Church instead of separating itself from the world, became part of the world.

This mixing is what produced what is now the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Religion.

The days of apostasy arrived in which the leaders of the churches were no longer faithful to the Word, and they looked for arrangements adaptable to the religious customs of the pagan nations in order to please the people and therefore gain greater political, social and economic prestige.

Historians say that after the Roman Empire stopped the persecution against the Christians, and Constantine the Great issued decrees favorable to them, thousands of pagans daily lined up in the churches to be admitted in them as Christians. But in reality, they didn't have a conversion experience with Jesus Christ, they had a need to belong to the church because this gave them a certain security and prestige. But they came carrying their religious practices and refused to renounce them.

The figure of the emperor was replaced by the pope, the senate by the cardinals, the pastors were replaced by a sacerdotal caste (foreign to the biblical concept) in everything and robes like those from paganism, the gods of pagan polytheism were replaced by the saints and martyrs of the church, worship was replaced by the Mithraic  mass, the bread of the Lord’s communion was replaced by the Mithraic Host (wafer) that still today has the letters "IHS" (Isis-god the mother, Horus- god the son, and Seb-God the father of the Mithraic trinity).

How does the Religious Mixing Work?

It works with demonic trickery. The apostates have never required abandoning Christianity, but rather have succeeded in mixing Christianity with the religious practices of paganism. And this mixture is a spiritual mystery, since millions of Christians accept this mixture and don't see or discern it. What happened to the People of Israel happens to many Christians. Let us see some biblical examples:

Feast to Jehovah and to a calf.  Exodus 32:4-5 says, "And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!' So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, 'Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord'."

         1. A demonic power dulls the understanding of the leaders and the people in order to succeed in producing a religious mixing. In Exodus 32 neither Aaron or the Israelites could remember that he who delivered them from Egypt was Jehovah who, at the same time in Exodus 20, had prohibited them from making images for worship.

         2. In this complex spiritual process, one loses faithfulness and attitude. Although he who passed them through the Red Sea had been Jehovah, now they didn’t feel uncomfortable in turning their hearts back to the Egyptian gods, because the calf was an Egyptian god, in order to have religious practices.

         3. The One and Only God is confused with the “gods”. When they shouted: “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt,” their sound judgment was asleep, because they couldn’t draw a distinction between Monotheism and Polytheism. One God, and many gods,    now was the same to them.

         4. They did not renounce God. Aaron said: “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.” No Israelite proposed in this case, let us forget Jehovah or renounce him. No. Never! They only had to ignore his demand to be the only God, and annex there the faithfulness to the false pagan gods.

         5. God is only a pretext for the Idolatry. In the mystery of the                    religious mixing, the apostate leaders always will put God up front. In order to disguise the apostasy, they will say that they adore and serve One and True God, but they will share their heart and their loyalty to other gods of wood, bronze and gold.

         6. The religious mixing leads to moral disorder. Exodus 32:25-26 clearly says that when Moses was returning to the Israel camp, he encountered the people completely unrestrained. "Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, 'Whoever is on the Lord's side-come to me!' and all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him."  Now you can understand why the patron holidays always end in a moral unruliness and in tragedy. First they go to mass, then the alcohol and dances end in fights, robberies, rape of many virgin girls, and murders. Because there is a religious mixing.

         7. The religious mixing is abominable to the Lord.  Exodus 32:21: "And Moses said to Aaron, 'What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them'?"  In fact, God initially had determined to      exterminate the people, but by the intercession of Moses, the hand of God was stopped. At any rate, there was destruction after this religious mixing.

Today there are hundreds of leaders in the Christian Evangelical churches that proclaim the celebration of "the greatest holiday of Christianity". They strive to celebrate CHRISTMAS in the most extraordinary way. Can they not realize that the Christmas season is one of the greatest tragedies in humanity? There isn’t a country in which during the days of Christmas that deaths, accidents, robberies and rapes don’t increase. The religious mixing continues to give its natural fruit: Death!

When I originally wrote this small book, God had given me the conviction that celebrating Christmas was not pleasing to the Lord. When I made the second edition, I really did it in haste, I only added a commentary of another book that appeared in those days in favor of Christmas titled: An Answer to the Christmas Tree by Ricardo Zepeda, and now I comment about it more orderly in chapter VII titled: The Authority of the Bible Above Religious Leaders.

Now that I have written the third edition, seeking the direction of the Lord with more calm and care, with more effort of searching the Word; God has revealed to me, that in truth, CHRISTMAS, has become a barrier that impedes the moving of the Lord so that the restoration of the church advances. Every time I go to the Word, God gives me a greater and very profound conviction that it is something very serious.

The people of God will not be free to serve God as is pleasing to Him if they don't renounce a Satanic spiritual influence, because the Babylonian religion had a diabolic inspiration and has demonic support. In other parts of this book I support the preceding with examples from the Word of God.