Remember how between Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita it practically became a fad among the TV people to talk about “Mother Nature this” and “Mother Nature that”?

You just wonder how many of them are even aware of the roots behind this so-called Mother who is at the center of pagan worship, including the invention of the Virgin Mary.

In the earliest days of Christianity, while the Apostle Paul was going about establishing history’s first independent, grace-oriented local assemblies of Believers, there was an organized worldwide church—the Church of Diana. She was called the “Queen of Heaven” (the same title Catholicism gives Mary!).

As Bible expert Gail Riplinger writes in her 1993 book, New Age Bible Versions, “God in his foreknowledge focused 18 scripture verses on Diana and inroads her image had made into Ephesus and ‘the world’ (Acts 19:24-41). ‘New International’ versions have dropped Diana, just as she is being picked up by a new international generation in need of undisguised truth.”

Riplinger quotes The Oxford Classical Dictionary’s info on Diana: “The Greek colonists identified her (the Ephesian goddess) with their own Artemis, because she was goddess of the moon and power of nature. . . But unlike Artemis, she was not regarded as a virgin, but as a mother.”

Just look at these references to Diana in the chapter 19 of the Book of Acts:

[24] For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;

[27] So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.

[28] And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

[34] But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

[35] And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?

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Now look at Riplinger’s great summary of the cult of Diana (hint: think Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code) that thrives today:

“The New Age movement has served as fairy godmother for Diana. As the goddess of nature, she has been adopted by its ‘back-to-nature’ wing; as goddess of the moon, she is worshipped by witches. Los Angeles Times writer Russell Chandler dispatches:

The great majority of people who call themselves witches . . . follow the nature-oriented polytheistic worship of the Great Mother Goddess whose names include Diana. . .

“ ‘Diana was chiefly worshipped by women,’ and consequently has become the ‘patron saint’ of the feminist and lesbian arm of the New Age movement. They call her the ‘living symbol of God’—just as the apparition in Belgium, who called for a mark, called herself ‘the Sign of the Living God.’ The New Age dictum reads:

She is the Queen. . . the chaste Diana. . .[T]he last initiated Father of the church [Origen] died, carrying with him into his grave the secrets of the Pagan temples. . . Diana, the One Mother of God having her place in heaven. . . [H]er occult aspects and powers are numberless.

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From my Barnes & Noble general educational book on Greek & Roman myth, Titans and Olympians (2003), it says Diana’s main temple at Ephesus was considered one the seven wonders of the ancient world!

“It remained an important religious site for centuries: in the first century AD Paul of Tarsus caused a riot in Ephesus by trying to preach the Christian faith there,” the authors of Titans write. “The statue of her in this temple showed her with many breasts and with other symbols connected with fertility goddesses.

“More usually, however, she was represented as young and tall, wearing a short, practical tunic, carrying a bow and arrow (Editor’s Note: We know from Revelations that this is the Antichrist’s calling card and explains the popular hand signals today either giving the “Peace Sign” straight up or horizontally) and accompanied by her hounds.

“Occasionally she drove a chariot drawn by two heifers or horses, each a different colour. In rural areas, her statue was sometimes set up at crossroads: this acknowledged her connection with Hecate, because in popular superstition crossroads were often considered to be haunted. As a result of this she came to be known during the Roman period as Diana Trivia—trivia being the Latin word for crossroads.”

In another passage that smacks of Catholicism and replicates what the Bible says about the Antichrist’s upcoming “Queen of Heaven,” it informs, “A complex ritual developed at Delphi (the important sacred site in Greece). Anyone who wanted to know their destiny made offerings of a sacred cake and a goat or a sheep, before consulting the Pythia, the priestess of the shrine.

“After careful purification she sat on a tripod, a bowl of three legs, and fell into a trance-like state in which she received answers from Apollo (the top God for whom the Greeks dedicated the complex). When she spoke, her words were copied down by a group of priests who then interpreted them and delivered the results to the supplicant.”

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About the pagan worship conditions that surrounded early Christianity, my pastor, Richard Jordan, explains, “The world of Paul’s day is known from a divine perspective as the Greco-Roman world. That’s what we call the culture of Paul’s day. Politically it was Roman, but Greek philosophy and Greek religion also ran the thinking process of the Roman Empire. The Gentile pagans had their material gods and immaterial gods. They had temples, the priesthood and priestcraft. They had a fully developed religious system.

“You’ve got to understand that the Dispensation of Grace began in the nighttime spiritually. It was a (global ‘winter period’) for spiritual understanding and Bible truth.

“The only nation in the earth God held relationships with was the nation Israel and they were fallen. They had joined hands with the Gentiles to crucify their Messiah. The Jews weren’t exactly the repository for great wisdom and spiritual insight. So the Dispensation of Grace was introduced to a world that sat in darkness. Israel was scattered and dispersed and after about 135 AD, there weren’t anymore Jews living in Palestine.”

Here’s another great summary passage from Riplinger’s book:

“The Ephesians remained undaunted in their zeal for the ‘Mother of God.’ Four hundred years after Paul’s rebuke these citizens declared ‘Mary’ the ‘Mother of God’ and the Council of Ephesus. They were led by: 1) Cyril of Alexandria, Egypt, a follower of ‘Sophia’ the Mother of God and 2) Egyptian Christians who believed the Trinity consisted of the Father, the Virgin, and the Son. Jesus Christ, speaking to the church at Ephesus, refers to men such as these saying, ‘[T]hou has tried them which say they are apostles and are not and hast found them liars.’ ”