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By Root 1288 0

Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament, and this scripture is one of the last in that book, which leads directly into the story of Jesus, who was indeed called by the Church fathers the "sun of righteousness." Malachi's sun of righteousness rising with "healing on its wings" is, in reality, the saving light that ends the gloom of night, the daily resurrection of sunrise, and the birth of the sun of a new age, who was carnalized and historicized in Jesus Christ. As "shamash," which is the Hebrew word for sun and the name of the Babylonian sun god, Malachi's righteous sun is also Solomon's Moabite god Chemosh, which is the same as shamash in Hebrew, an ironic development considering Chemosh was later demonized by the Christians.

Jesus's solar attributes are also laid plain by the story of his followers waiting to go to his "tomb" until sunrise, when "he is risen." In John 2, Jesus says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up"; however, as John relates, ". . . he spoke of the temple of his body," an admission of biblical allegory. In this statement Jesus describes his own solar resurrection, not that of the Jerusalem Temple, although the original "Temple of the Most High" is indeed the same Temple of the Sun that is Jesus's "body." In fact, Jesus is called the "son of the Most High God" (Lk. 8:28; Mk. 5:7) and a priest after the order of Melchizedek, who was the priest of the Most High, El Elyon, or Helios, the sun. At Acts 26:13, regarding his conversion Paul says, "At midday, 0 king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me," the light, of course, being Jesus. The words "at midday" represent the sun at its zenith, when it is doing its work in the Temple of the Most High, brighter than at any other time.

As expected, the early Christians were considered sunworshippers, like their "Pagan" counterparts, although "sunworship" is an inaccuracy, since the ancients did not "worship" the sun as the "one god" but revered it as one of the most potent symbols of the quality of divinity. For example, Krishna was considered not just the sun itself but the light in the sun and moon,25 making him, like Jesus, brighter than the sun. Like their predecessor temples, many early Christian churches faced the east, or the place of the rising sun. In fact, as Doane relates, "Tertullian says that Christians were taken for worshipers of the Sun because they prayed towards the East, after the manner of those who adored the Sun."26 Ex-Pagan and Bishop of Carthage Tertullian's actual words from his Apology are as follows:

Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you, many of you, also under pretence sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sun-day to rejoicing, from a far different reason than Sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed they are ignorant.

In his protestations and refutations of critics, Tertullian further ironically admits the true origins of the Christ story and of all other such godmen by stating, "You say we worship the sun; so do you."27 Interestingly, a previously strident believer and defender of the faith, Tertullian later renounced Christianity.28

Christ was frequently identified as and/or with the sun by other early orthodox Christian fathers, including St. Cyprian (d. 258), who "spoke of Christ as the true sun (sol verus)," and St. Ambrose (@ 339-397), Bishop of Milan, who said of Christ, "He is our new sun."29 Other Church fathers who identified Christ with, if not as, the sun include St. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c.