Just finished watching the Beautiful Strange video. The interview is pretty crappy, but I loved the live show especially "Come On" with the Doug E Fresh rap intro and the video with Prince as the old man! Anyway, in the interview Prince mentions "Nimrod's birthday" when asked to say the first thing that comes to his mind after hearing the word "Christmas". I'm sure I used to know what it meant but I can't remember anymore. Who (or what) is Nimrod?

A character from the bible. A Mighty Hunter. Supposedly founded Babylon. Possibly had something to do with the Tower of Babel.

Nimrod is pictured as the horned and cloven-hoofed SATAN, who is the DEVIL and hidden god of the underworld. Nimrod is referred to as the "hidden god" because priests of the Babylonian mystery religion "hid" the fact that Nimrod corrupted the teachings of the one true invisible God. They also "hid" the fact that all the pagan gods were representations of Nimrod.

According to tradition, Nimrod set out to establish himself an empire and began by conquering the cities which had become established in Mesopotamia. Among these were Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in Sumeria, and in Assyria the cities of Rehoboth, Calah, and Resen. Besides conquering these seven cities he also founded Ninevah. The Bible is specific in stating that he was the first man after the flood to become an emperor. He seems to have been impelled and empowered by super-human force and his onslaught was irresistible. Genesis 10 describes Nimrod as a "mighty hunter before the LORD." The term is not complimentary, but implies ruthlessness and a lust for power.

After establishing his kingdom in the Tigris/Euphrates region Nimrod consolidated his power by establishing a state religion. He constructed a religion that included deification and worship of the emperor (himself), worship of Satan and his demons, and star-worship (corrupted from a pure antediluvian astronomy). A key unifying factor in his religion was to be an astronomical/astrological observatory built upon the pinnacle of a pyramid, or tower, at Babel. It has been suggested that Nimrod spent some time in Egypt before moving up to Mesopotamia and that while in Egypt he studied the Egyptian mystery religion perpetuated there from before the flood by the wife of Ham, whom tradition takes to be a descendant of Cain.

The building of this pyramid (or ziggurat) was interrupted by God himself in order to prevent Nimrod from extending his sway over all of the inhabited earth, according to Genesis. God halted the work by confusing their language so they could no longer cooperate easily with one another, nor indeed easily inhabit the same region together. As a consequence the human race was dispersed, and as men scattered they carried with them remnants of primeval revelation from God, and Satan/hero worship which Nimrod had invented as well. This system of muddled half-truths is known today to Bible scholars as the "Babylonian Mystery Religion." From a biblical point of view this religious system is described as the well-spring for all subsequent false religion and endless mythological systems

above taken from this site: http://www.ldolphin.org/Nimrod.html





Basically Prince is saying that Christmas was created not as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, but as the birth of Nimrod. Christians adopted that day as their own. There is no evidence to show that Christmas is actually the true day of Jesus birth, and in fact it is believed that His birthdate is sometime during June or July. However churches teach that it is the actual day of Jesus birth and thus it is celebrated.


this was my favourite answer when i posted the same Q a while back

muirdo said:

In fairness, many churches do not teach that Decenber 25th is the actual day of Christ's birth - they simply choose to celebrate the birth as part of the religious year on that particular date, and openly acknowledge the original pagan festivities which took place at this time of year and that it is not known on which date (year, month or day) Jesus was born.

oh. i always thought it nimrod meant an idiot

Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only ones who don't celebrate Christmas. There are several Christian groups who teach basically the same things about the holiday and it's historical origins. Christmas is viewed as a form of syncretism.
I was part of a Charismatic Christian group for about 8-10 years of my life. I did not celebrate Christmas. Then I got older, questioned my blind adherence, and I realized that knowledge puffs up and love edifies. I was puffed up with knowledge and all I did was basically alienate my own loved ones from the Gospel, majoring on an issue that was, in the end, irrelevant. I came to some hard hitting conclusions based on my own reading of Romans 14- about how people view certain days. In my own search for freedom, balance and deliverance from a cult mentality,
I then came across former Jehovah's Witnesses who too found freedom from all the legalistic doctrine they had embraced and espoused.

http://www.freeminds.org/...lidays.htm

mistermcgee said:

thanks for mentioning romans 14.

Thanks people. I had forgotten all about that. I'm not a religious person at all, but I love all the qirky religious/historical messages he puts in his music (or in this case an interview). It makes you take the time to look up something you would never normally do on a day to day basis. As long as you take it all with a grain of salt then it's all just a bit of fun and education really!