The Day Rome Traded Obedience for Power

Very little of substance is known about the life of Iamblichus, and what we do possess comes primarily from the late fourth-century sophist Eunapius, whose portrait is deliberately reverential and often vague. Nevertheless, when his account is read carefully and supplemented with other evidence, a coherent picture emerges; one that helps explain why Iamblichus’s writings are so significant for understanding the spiritual logic of late pagan religion.

Iamblichus was born in Chalcis in Coele Syria, almost certainly Chalcis ad Belum (modern Qinnesrin), a strategically important city linking Antioch, Apamea, and the eastern provinces. He was born not in the late third century, as once assumed, but probably closer to the middle of it; likely no later than around 240 C.E.; making him nearly a contemporary of Porphyry rather than a younger successor. This matters, because it explains the tension between them: Iamblichus was not merely a student correcting his master, but a rival articulating a fundamentally different vision of philosophy, ritual, and divine presence.

He was born into a wealthy and prominent family, one that conspicuously retained a Semitic name at a time when many elites had adopted Greek or Roman ones. According to later testimony, his lineage likely traced back to the priest-kings of Emesa, a dynasty that combined political authority with hereditary priesthood. Whether or not every detail of this genealogy can be proven, the point is clear: Iamblichus came from a milieu in which religion, ritual authority, and political legitimacy were historically intertwined. This background helps explain his lifelong insistence that philosophy must be grounded in ancient sacred traditions and ritual practice rather than abstract reasoning alone.

His formative years unfolded during a period of severe instability. Northern Syria was devastated by Persian invasions in the mid-third century, and it is likely that his family experienced displacement or upheaval. This was not a sheltered intellectual environment. It was a world in which cosmic order, divine protection, and ritual stability were existential concerns, not academic curiosities.

Iamblichus studied philosophy under Porphyry, the most important disciple of Plotinus, and for a time was closely associated with him. The relationship, however, was strained. While Porphyry emphasized intellectual contemplation and was sharply critical of ritual practices, Iamblichus moved decisively in the opposite direction. His later writings repeatedly and explicitly challenge Porphyry’s positions, culminating in De mysteriis, a systematic rebuttal of Porphyry’s attack on theurgy. This work is not peripheral; it is a manifesto for a ritualized metaphysics in which divine powers are accessed through correct rites, timing, symbols, and hierarchical mediation.

After leaving Porphyry, Iamblichus returned to Syria and established his own school, probably in Apamea, a long-standing philosophical center. There he gathered a large circle of disciples, taught a structured curriculum in Plato and Aristotle, and developed a comprehensive system that fused Platonism, Pythagoreanism, and ritual practice. Under Iamblichus, Platonism ceased to be merely a philosophy and became explicitly a religion; one that required ritual action, priestly mediation, and alignment with cosmic powers.

This development proved decisive. Before Iamblichus, mystery language in Platonism was largely metaphorical. With him, ritual became literal. Prayer, sacrifice, timing, and invocation were no longer illustrative symbols but necessary conditions for divine presence. It was this seriousness about ritual that later enabled Julian to attempt the construction of a pagan “church,” confidently laid upon what was assumed to be a firm foundation; though the rock in question was ritual technique and cosmic alignment rather than the God who sanctifies and sustains.

This transformation made Iamblichus’s thought immensely influential. It shaped the later Athenian Platonists such as Syrianus and Proclus, inspired the pagan revival under Julian, and ultimately passed; ironically; into "Christian" and Byzantine thought through figures who inherited his metaphysical hierarchies even while rejecting his gods.

Iamblichus acquired a reputation for miracle-working, but even hostile or credulous accounts agree on one thing: he denied that any power belonged to humans. In his own writings he insists relentlessly that all power belongs to the "gods" (fallen angels/demons) alone and that any attempt by humans to command or display power independently is impious. His sharp distinction between legitimate theurgy and illegitimate magic is central to De mysteriis. Ritual does not coerce divine powers; it aligns the practitioner with powers already present and already operative.

This is why Iamblichus matters for our purposes. He is not an eccentric mystic or marginal philosopher. He is the clearest, most systematic expositor of a worldview in which time, ritual, hierarchy, and spiritual mediation govern access to divine power. His work gives us direct access to the metaphysics that undergirded Roman religious life, imperial cult, ritual calendars, and the logic by which sacred time was controlled.

To understand why the Sabbath could not coexist with such a system, one must understand Iamblichus.

And it is to De mysteriis that we must now turn.

Time is never treated as neutral in ancient religion. The modern assumption that days are interchangeable containers into which meaning is later poured simply did not exist in antiquity. Time itself was understood as active, differentiated, and spiritually charged. Certain moments were believed to be open to spiritual presence, others closed, hostile, or dangerous. Sacred time was never merely symbolic; it was the medium through which power entered the world.

Because of this, sacred time always reflects a theology of presence. It answers the question of how, when, and through whom spiritual power may act. Control of time is therefore never merely practical. It is theological and political. Whoever governs sacred time governs access to the spiritual realm.

This is why the Sabbath controversy was never about rest, convenience, or pastoral flexibility. It was not about which day was more suitable. It was about authority. The real issue was always this: who controls access to divine presence through time?

At this point a clarification is necessary. When we speak of “divine power” operating through ritualised time, we are not speaking of the God of the Bible. If the power being accessed were the God who sanctified the seventh day, His holy day would not have been displaced, negotiated, or replaced. The Sabbath would have stood, because God does not contradict His own sanctification. The fact that His appointed time was overridden is itself the evidence that a different power was being served.

In the Greco-Roman world, control of sacred time belonged to ritual specialists, priestly institutions, and ultimately imperial authority. Time had to be prepared, opened, activated, and maintained. Power did not simply arrive. It descended only when the correct conditions were met. This worldview is not speculative; it is articulated with precision in late pagan philosophy, especially in Iamblichus’ De mysteriis, which offers a full metaphysical defense of theurgy. In that system, no segment of time is holy in itself. Holiness does not inhere. It descends. Time becomes sacred only when aligned with cosmic hierarchies, planetary motions, and daemonic intermediaries. Presence is always mediated, always conditional, always regulated.

This stands in direct contradiction to the biblical understanding of sacred time.

In Scripture, the Sabbath is not activated by ritual. It is declared holy by God. It is an appointed time, a moed. Its sanctity does not depend on priestly action, sacrificial performance, astrological calculation, or political authorization. God sanctifies time directly. Human beings do not open sacred time; they enter it in obedience. The holiness of the Sabbath does not fluctuate. It does not respond to cosmic cycles. It does not require continual ritual motion to sustain it. It rests entirely on divine command.

This is precisely why the Sabbath was intolerable to Rome.

The Sabbath recurs automatically. Every seventh day, regardless of empire, priesthood, or calendar reform, it asserts itself. No emperor can authorize it. No bishop can regulate it. No astrologer can qualify it. No ritual expert can open or close it. It bypasses mediation entirely. It asserts that God alone governs time and that human authority is subordinate.

From a Roman perspective, this was not merely different. It was dangerous.

A day that is holy without ritual undermines the entire ritual economy. A time that is sanctified without mediation collapses hierarchical control. A command that does not require institutional authorization threatens both religious and political sovereignty. The Sabbath does not ask permission. It does not negotiate. It simply returns, bearing witness that time itself belongs to God.

Scripture repeatedly frames the corruption of sacred time as a mark of apostasy and imperial power. Daniel does not describe a ruler who merely persecutes believers or revises doctrine. He describes something more fundamental: “He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change times and laws.” To change times is not a minor adjustment. It is an act of theological rebellion. It is the attempt to relocate authority over sacred time from God to human systems.

Once sacred time is relocated, the old time must be discredited. Not because it is false, but because it is uncontrollable. This is why the Sabbath is later reframed as Jewish, legalistic, temporary, or spiritually inferior. These are not neutral interpretations. They are acts of displacement, designed to sever obedience from time itself and reattach sacred meaning to institutionally governed cycles.

Sunday succeeded not because it was truer, but because it was governable. It could be elevated gradually, justified retroactively, legislated, enforced, and aligned with imperial symbolism. It restored the principle that sacred time flows downward from authority rather than upward from divine command.

The result is a calendar that no longer witnesses to the God who sanctifies time by covenant, but to a system in which time is ritualised, mediated, and managed. The structure remains Roman even when the language becomes Christian. Sacred time becomes something administered rather than obeyed.

This is where the biblical warning about the doctrine of demons becomes unavoidable. Demons, in Scripture, are not myths or metaphors. They are fallen spiritual powers that operate through mediation, hierarchy, ritual technique, and controlled access. They do not sanctify time by command; they require time to be prepared for them. They do not rest; they demand continual ritual motion. They thrive wherever holiness is relocated from obedience to technique and from covenant to control.

If the calendar that replaced the Sabbath were oriented toward the God of Scripture, it would have preserved the day He sanctified. The fact that it did not is the indictment. The system that emerged does not testify to the Creator who rested and made time holy, but to powers that require time to be opened, regulated, and governed.

This is why the conflict was never about rest.

It was about who governs time, and therefore who governs access to divine (demonic) presence.

The Sabbath proclaims unmediated divine sovereignty over time itself. Ritualised time replaces that sovereignty with controlled access, hierarchical mediation, and institutional authority. These two systems cannot coexist. One had to be removed.

That is why the Sabbath was not reinterpreted.

It was replaced.

Fragments of the Roman fasti, bearing witness to a world where time was governed.

The clearest expression of this is found in the Roman distinction between fasti and nefasti. Fasti were days on which divine and human action could lawfully intersect. Legal judgments could be rendered, vows could be made, sacrifices could be offered, and divine favor could be sought. Nefasti, by contrast, were closed days. On these days, public action was forbidden, ritual was suspended, and any attempt to engage the divine was considered invalid or dangerous. The issue was not convenience or piety, but legitimacy. An act performed at the wrong time was not merely ineffective; it was illicit.

This already tells us something crucial. Divine power, in Roman thought, was not absent or weak. It was regulated. The "gods" (the fallen powers Christ came to defeat) were understood to be real and active, but access to them was governed by cosmic and ritual law. Time functioned as a gate. Only when time was properly designated could divine presence be approached safely and lawfully.

This is why calendars mattered so profoundly. The Roman calendar was not a record of days; it was an instrument of authority. To mark a day as fastus or nefastus was to determine whether divine–human interaction was permitted at all. Whoever controlled the calendar controlled the terms of access to the gods. Sacred time did not exist by default. It had to be authorized.

This may help explain why pope Gregory XIII promulgated Inter gravissimas, erasing ten days from the calendar to restore the spring equinox—an act that unmistakably reaffirmed Rome’s claim to regulate sacred time itself.

This logic means that power does not belong to those who are spiritually sincere, but to those who can designate, regulate, and enforce time. Time becomes a mechanism of control rather than a gift to be received. It is not entered; it is managed.

At this stage, the significance should already be apparent. A religious system built on authorized time cannot tolerate a day that sanctifies itself without permission. A system in which time must be opened cannot coexist with a time that arrives already holy. A calendar that governs divine access cannot accommodate a recurring day that bypasses ritual authorization altogether.

And this ritual logic did not remain implicit or merely customary. It was later formalized philosophically. What Roman religion practiced through law and calendar, late pagan philosophy would articulate metaphysically. The assumption that time itself is hierarchically structured, differentially receptive, and dependent on correct alignment becomes explicit in the theurgic worldview defended by Iamblichus.

The ritual logic we have been tracing was not merely a matter of custom or priestly habit. In the late pagan world it was given a full metaphysical justification, most clearly in the work of Iamblichus. His treatise De mysteriis does not invent Roman religious assumptions, but it does something far more important: it explains why they must be true.

At the foundation of Iamblichus’s system is a sharp ontological distinction between different modes of time. Human life unfolds in what he calls genesis, the realm of becoming, change, and temporal succession. Divine reality, by contrast, abides in aiōn, eternity; unchanging, timeless, and complete. The "gods" do not exist within human time, and human time cannot simply reach up into the divine. There is an ontological gap.

Ritual exists precisely at the junction of these two orders. It is the point where temporal human existence is aligned, however briefly, with eternal divine reality. This is why Iamblichus insists that ritual is not symbolic or psychological. It is ontological. Something real happens, but only when the correct conditions are met.

This immediately explains why time itself must be differentiated. If the divine does not inhabit all moments equally, then not all moments are equally receptive. Certain times are closer to divine order, others further away. Ritual does not make a moment sacred by human will; it succeeds only when it coincides with a moment already disposed toward divine presence.

Crucially, Iamblichus is adamant that ritual does not coerce the gods. He is responding directly to Porphyry’s fear that theurgy attempts to manipulate divine powers. On the contrary, Iamblichus insists that all power belongs to the "gods" alone. Ritual works not because humans force anything, but because the gods have already established the conditions under which they may be present. Divine presence is pre-established. The rite merely aligns the soul with what already exists.

This is where the concept of sympathy becomes central. Efficacy depends not on intention, emotion, or moral sincerity, but on correspondence. When ritual actions, symbols, and timing correspond to divine rhythms, participation becomes possible. When they do not, nothing happens; or worse, something disordered occurs. Time, in this system, is not neutral. It is either sympathetic or resistant.

From this follows the importance of cyclical, kairotic time. What matters is not linear history but recurring cosmic patterns: planetary motions, inherited sacrificial cycles, and established ritual intervals. A moment is effective not because it occurs at a meaningful point in human history, but because it participates in the correct cosmic cycle. There is no concept of a universally holy day that stands apart from cosmic differentiation.

And this brings us to the decisive point.

In the metaphysics of Iamblichus, no moment of time is sacred by default. Time does not carry holiness within itself. It becomes receptive only when activated by divine presence through ritual alignment. Sacred time is never given; it is disclosed selectively. It must be opened.

This is not a minor philosophical detail. It is the backbone of the entire ritual system. It explains why calendars must be regulated, why timing must be precise, and why authority must reside with those who can determine when alignment is possible.

And it also explains why a day like the Sabbath; holy in itself, recurring without authorization, indifferent to cosmic cycles, and binding by divine command alone; could never be assimilated into this system.

In Iamblichus’s world, time is never sacred on its own. It must be activated.

That single assumption is enough to place Roman theurgy and biblical Sabbath holiness on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide.

Against the metaphysics of ritual time articulated by Iamblichus, the biblical understanding of sacred time is not a variation but a contradiction. The two systems do not answer the same question differently; they answer different questions altogether. Where Roman-theurgic religion asks how time may be made receptive to divine presence, Scripture begins from the claim that God Himself sanctifies time by command.

The Sabbath is not presented in the Bible as a ritually activated interval. It is an appointed time, a moed. Its holiness does not emerge from human action, priestly mediation, cosmic alignment, or ritual correctness. God declares it holy. That declaration is sufficient. The sanctity of the Sabbath (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) is not contingent, fluctuating, or conditional. It does not depend on whether the correct rites are performed or whether the correct intermediaries are engaged. It exists because God willed it to exist.

This immediately places biblical sacred time outside the logic of theurgy. In the biblical model, no mediation is required for time itself to be holy. There is no priestly act that opens the Sabbath and no ritual failure that closes it. Its recurrence is not negotiated. It arrives bearing holiness already conferred. Human beings do not authorize it. They obey it.

The theological implications are decisive. If the Sabbath is holy by divine declaration, then time itself can be intrinsically holy. Holiness is not something that descends intermittently into time; it can inhabit time as such. Sacred time is therefore not cosmic, astrological, or cyclical in the Iamblichean sense. It is covenantal. It belongs to a relationship between God and His people, not to a hierarchy of cosmic powers.

This means that sacred time in Scripture is not governed but given. It is not activated but received. It is not mediated but direct. It does not vary according to cosmic conditions but remains fixed by divine word. Human beings do not manage access to it; they submit to it.

At this point the incompatibility becomes unmistakable. Roman-theurgic time is activated by ritual; biblical time is declared by God. Roman time is mediated; biblical time is unmediated. Roman time is variable and responsive to cosmic cycles; biblical time is fixed and recurring. Roman time is governed by those who control ritual and calendar; biblical time is given by God and binds all equally.

These are not two religious expressions that can be harmonized. They rest on opposing assumptions about where holiness resides and who has authority over time. In the Iamblichean system, time is never sacred on its own. In the biblical system, at least one day is.

That single fact is enough to explain why the Sabbath could not be assimilated, adjusted, or absorbed. A day that is holy without ritual does not merely challenge Roman religion; it renders its entire metaphysical structure unnecessary. And a system built on mediated access to "divine" presence cannot tolerate a form of sacred time that bypasses mediation altogether.

What confronts us here is not difference, but contradiction.

Once the metaphysics of ritual time are understood, the problem the Sabbath posed for Rome becomes obvious. It was not controversial because it was strange, but because it was ungovernable. It could not be absorbed into the ritual economy without dismantling that economy altogether.

The Sabbath does not need to be initiated. It recurs automatically. Every seventh day it arrives without consultation, without authorization, and without reference to cosmic conditions. It does not depend on planetary alignments, auspicious signs, or inherited ritual cycles. It is indifferent to astrology. It does not wait for the correct moment to be opened. It simply returns, bearing holiness already declared.

Nor does it require priestly maintenance. There is no class of ritual specialists who sustain its sanctity through continual action. No sacrifices are needed to activate it. No rites are required to keep it open. No failures of performance can render it void. The Sabbath does not degrade if mishandled, nor does it intensify if expertly managed. Its holiness does not fluctuate.

From the Roman perspective, this was not merely unusual. It was dangerous.

A sacred time that requires no ritual motion undermines the assumption that divine presence must be mediated. A holy day that functions without hierarchy denies the necessity of priestly control. A recurring sanctity that does not originate in imperial authorization threatens the calendar itself as an instrument of power. The Sabbath does not ask to be sanctioned. It does not derive legitimacy from civic decree. It answers to no institutional gatekeeper.

In a system like the one defended by Iamblichus, where divine presence is accessed through carefully regulated alignment, the Sabbath represents a rupture. It bypasses sympathy. It bypasses ritual correctness. It bypasses the entire metaphysical apparatus that justifies control of time. It asserts that holiness can enter time directly by divine will alone.

This is why the Sabbath could never be left untouched. A day that sanctifies itself collapses the logic of authorized time. If one day is holy without mediation, then the principle that all divine access must be regulated is exposed as false. And if that principle falls, the authority built upon it falls with it.

When Scripture speaks of the “doctrine of demons,” it is not engaging in mythological speculation, poetic metaphor, or mystical fascination. It is issuing a warning. Demons, in the biblical sense, are not alternative divine beings or misunderstood intermediaries. They are fallen, deceptive powers whose defining characteristic is that they usurp what belongs to God while pretending to offer access to the divine.

They have no creative authority. They sanctify nothing. They give nothing. They only occupy, redirect, and corrupt.

The doctrine of demons, therefore, does not refer to personal awareness or intention. It refers to systems that normalize mediated access to spiritual power in ways God has not authorized. Scripture consistently treats such systems as false, even when they appear orderly, philosophical, or religiously serious.

This is why Paul can speak of doctrines of demons without accusing individuals of consciously worshipping evil. The deception works precisely because it does not announce itself as demonic. It presents itself as wisdom, order, hierarchy, and access. It replaces obedience with technique.

In the Roman world, this took the form of ritualized mediation. Spiritual power was assumed to exist, but it was never direct. It had to be accessed through timing, ritual precision, symbols, sacrifices, and hierarchical authorization. This is exactly the framework defended by Iamblichus. His “gods” are not personal, redemptive, or holy. They are impersonal powers operating within a rigid hierarchy, incapable of covenant, mercy, or moral transformation. They do not save. They do not speak. They do not sanctify. They merely act when conditions are met.

This is not neutral spirituality. It is a counterfeit order.

The issue of embodiment must be stated without mystique. When Roman emperors were described as receiving divine presence, this was not some elevated mystical state. It was a political theology of possession. Power was legitimized by claiming spiritual inhabitation. What Scripture calls possession, Rome reframed as authority. What Scripture treats as corruption, Rome treated as sanction.

The Bible does not admire this. It condemns it.

This is why Revelation describes Babylon as “a dwelling place of demons, a prison of every unclean spirit, a cage of every unclean bird.” Babylon is called a cage because it contains, houses, and organizes unclean spirits. Birds are associated with spirits because they move between realms, but “foul birds” are not mysterious or symbolic curiosities; they are unclean, parasitic, and defiling. Babylon does not commune with them; it imprisons and traffics in them.

Nothing about this is admirable. Nothing about it is powerful in itself. It is described as a cage precisely because it is a system of containment and exploitation, not divine life.

People can be sincere inside a false system. But sincerity does not sanctify what God has condemned. A system that replaces God’s direct command with mediated access, ritual control, and institutional authority is not serving the living God, no matter how refined its philosophy or orderly its calendar.

And this is where the Sabbath becomes decisive.

The Sabbath allows no possession, no mediation, no activation, no hierarchy, and no institutional control. It does not invite spiritual power. It does not host it. It does not embody it. It simply bears witness that God alone sanctifies time and that His presence is not accessed by technique but received by obedience.

Julius Caesar did not merely honor Venus as a symbolic ancestor. According to Suetonius, Caesar publicly identified Venus as the divine power acting through his body, life and rule. He traced his lineage to Venus Genetrix, dedicated a temple to her in his forum, and consistently presented her favor as the source of his extraordinary success. This was not literary myth-making. In Roman religious terms, it was a claim of divine indwelling and authorization.

Suetonius reports that Caesar attributed his victories, fortune, and inevitability to Venus’s direct involvement. This is not described as abstract patronage. It is described as divine presence accompanying and directing his career. Caesar accepted this framing, cultivated it, and used it to legitimate his authority. In Roman terms, this meant that a specific divine power was understood to be operating in and through his person.

In biblical terms, this is possession.

Rome did not use that word because Rome did not regard such inhabitation as corruption. It regarded it as sanction. The emperor’s body became a site of claimed divine action. Caesar did not resist this. He did not relativize it. He consented to it because it reinforced domination, inevitability, and rule.

Augustus continued and normalized this pattern.

Suetonius records that Augustus openly regarded Venus as a governing power over fortune and destiny. He famously considered himself “lucky” when Venus was rolled in dice, treating the appearance of Venus not as chance but as favorable divine intervention. This is not casual superstition. It reflects a worldview in which divine powers actively intervene in material events and signal their presence through outcomes.

Augustus did not treat Venus as metaphor. He treated her as an operative power whose favor manifested through success, luck, and political stability. This is why Venus, Apollo, and later Sol were woven into imperial ideology. These were not decorative gods. They were the spiritual engines of authority.

This matters because it exposes the mechanism at work.

Roman apotheosis was not a posthumous honor alone. It was the public recognition that a ruler’s authority derived from ongoing "divine" inhabitation. The emperor was treated as a living vessel of sacred power, surrounded by ritual time, festivals, and calendar observances that reinforced this claim. Political order was grounded in spiritual occupation.

Christians refused this system precisely because they understood it.

They did not refuse emperor worship because they misunderstood Roman religion. They refused because they recognized it as illegitimate embodiment of spiritual power. To burn incense to Caesar was to concede that a man could lawfully host "divine" presence. To confess Caesar as lord was to acknowledge that a spiritual power other than God ruled through him.

For this refusal, they were killed.

They were not executed for ignorance or obstinacy, but for denying the spiritual claims that sustained imperial authority. They denied Venus. They denied Apollo. They denied Sol. They denied the calendar that marked imperial holy days. They denied the entire ritual economy that normalized possession as governance.

This is why Scripture classifies such systems as demonic without qualification.

Demons, biblically, are not interesting intermediaries. They are parasitic powers that require embodiment because they have no authority of their own. They must inhabit what God created. They must rule through human ambition. They cannot sanctify time; they can only occupy it. They cannot give life; they can only borrow bodies.

This is why Revelation describes Babylon as “a dwelling place of demons… a cage of every unclean spirit.” Babylon is condemned because it houses and legitimizes spiritual occupation through political and religious order.

And this is why the Sabbath is intolerable to such systems.

The Sabbath permits no possession, no embodiment, no mediation, and no ritual activation. It declares that God alone sanctifies time and that no spiritual power may inhabit what He has made holy.

That is why Rome could tolerate many gods.

But not this one.

What survives today is not merely a calendar but an inherited theology. Calendars are never neutral instruments. They encode assumptions about where holiness comes from, how it is accessed, and who has the authority to designate it. When sacred time is reorganized, theology has already been decided.

The modern religious calendar inherits the Roman structure almost entirely intact. Weeks remain ritualized rather than appointed. Sacred time is governed institutionally rather than covenantally. Holy days are designated, adjusted, transferred, and enforced through ecclesial authority rather than received as divine command. The structure assumes that time becomes sacred through recognition, sanction, and communal agreement, not because God has declared it so.

This is not an accusation against individuals. It is an observation about continuity of form.

The structure presumes that sacred time must be managed. That it must be authorized. That it must be coordinated with institutional life. That it must be maintained by teaching, tradition, and enforcement. This is the same logic that governed Roman fasti and nefasti, the same logic defended philosophically by Iamblichus, and the same logic that required the removal of an ungovernable Sabbath.

What is missing is not reverence, sincerity, or moral seriousness. What is missing is intrinsic sanctification.

There is no day that is holy because God has appointed it and continues to appoint it, irrespective of institution. There is no time that stands sanctified by divine word alone. There is no recurring witness embedded in the calendar that testifies, week after week, that God governs time directly, personally, and without mediation.

Most decisively, there is no place in the Roman calendar for the God of the Bible;made flesh in Christ; to rule time by command. None of His moedim are honored. None of the appointed times He declared holy are allowed to stand on their own authority. Creation’s own testimony to its Creator has been silenced and replaced.

Instead, sacred moments are commemorated, celebrated, managed, and ritualized; but never declared holy by God in the present tense. Holiness is remembered, not spoken. Access is regulated, not given. Time does not bear witness to divine sanctification; it enforces institutional recognition.

This is not accidental.

How could an empire maintain spiritual and political control if time itself testified that God alone rules? How could people remain bound to systems of authority if every seventh day announced, without permission, that Christ; not priest, bishop, or emperor; is Lord of time? A calendar that obeys God directly cannot be governed by empire. So it had to be replaced.

This is why the question is not whether God can be worshipped within such a system. Of course He can. The question is what the system itself teaches, silently and relentlessly, every week.

And the answer is unavoidable.

The calendar does not point to the God of Scripture; it regulates access to sacred time. It catechizes its subjects into believing that holiness flows downward from authority rather than outward from divine command. It teaches that time becomes sacred through recognition rather than declaration. It trains obedience to yield to arrangement.

This was not achieved through open hostility to Christ, but through something far more effective: inheritance. A theology of time older than Christianity survived the change of language. The gods were renamed. The rituals were rebranded. The metaphysics remained.

And until time itself is allowed to testify again; without mediation, without authorization, without ritual activation; the conflict Daniel identified has not ended.

It has only been normalized.

This inherited theology of time is not only visible in weekly structure but embedded in the very names by which time is spoken. The calendar does not merely organize days; it confesses allegiance through language.

The months themselves are named after Roman gods and imperial powers. March bears the name of Mars, the god of war. May is named for Maia, a deity associated with generative force. June derives from Juno, queen of the gods. July and August were renamed to honor deified emperors, Julius Caesar and Augustus, whose authority had already been framed as divinely sanctioned. Time itself was made to remember them.

The days of the week follow the same pattern. They are named after planetary powers identified with Roman deities: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These were not neutral astronomical labels. In Roman religion, planetary bodies were living powers, intelligences believed to govern fate, influence events, and require proper alignment. To name days after them was to acknowledge their jurisdiction over time.

This is not incidental tradition. It is theology preserved in plain sight.

The calendar does not name days after covenant, creation, or command. It does not bear the names of God’s acts or God’s declarations. It bears the names of powers Rome believed governed the world. Even where later Christianity adopted the structure, it did not rename the time itself. The framework was inherited intact.

And the question must be asked plainly, without sarcasm and without exaggeration: where is Christ listed?

He is not named in the days. He is not named in the months. He is not named in the structure of time itself.

The calendar remembers Mars. It remembers Venus. It remembers Saturn. It remembers deified rulers.

But it does not remember the Lord of all creation.

This does not mean that those who live within this calendar consciously worship Roman gods. That is not the claim. The claim is structural. Time continues to be ordered, named, and regulated according to a worldview in which sacred power is distributed among cosmic and political authorities rather than declared by God alone.

In Scripture, naming is an act of authority. To name time is to claim it. The persistence of these names is not harmless habit; it is evidence of continuity. The metaphysics of time did not change when the language of worship changed. The calendar still teaches, week after week and month after month, that time belongs to powers other than the God who sanctified the seventh day.

A structure that does not testify to Christ does not become Christ-centered by usage. A calendar that does not confess the God of Scripture does not begin to do so because believers inhabit it.

The question, then, is not whether Christ can be worshipped within such time.

The question is whether time itself is allowed to bear witness to Him.

And as it stands, it does not.

What Iamblichus calls theurgy is not prayer in the biblical sense, nor is it simple devotion. It is ritual action designed to demonstrate supernatural power and to enact what he understands as the soul’s return to its divine source. In his own language, this process is described as hyper physin; “beyond nature”; a term he explicitly associates with the "gods" themselves and then applies to the ritual process. Theurgy, in other words, is presented as participation in causative power that transcends the natural order.

This distinction is central. Iamblichus is careful to separate theurgy from what he dismisses as mere magic. Magic, he claims, operates within nature, manipulating forces already present. Theurgy, by contrast, claims to manifest power from beyond nature, from the divine realm itself. But from a biblical standpoint, this distinction does not absolve the practice; it indicts it. Scripture does not condemn sorcery because it is crude or ineffective, but because it claims access to supernatural power apart from God’s command.

This is precisely why Revelation can say, without qualification, “for by their sorceries were all nations deceived.” The deception lies not in theatrical trickery, but in the claim that ritual technique can mediate divine power, restore the soul, and govern access to the unseen realm. Theurgy presents itself as holy work; god-work; yet it functions as a system in which power is accessed, demonstrated, and validated through ritual rather than obedience.

It is no accident, then, that when Emperor Julian attempted to revive the ancestral gods, it was Iamblichus’s doctrines he turned to. Less than a century after De mysteriis was written, theurgy provided the intellectual and ritual framework for a last pagan resistance to Christianity. Julian did not need mythology; he needed a system. Iamblichus supplied one; complete with hierarchy, ritual efficacy, and a theory of supernatural causation.

What is especially telling is that Iamblichus shows little concern with Christianity itself. Unlike Porphyry, who attacked Christians directly, Iamblichus appears largely indifferent to the new religion. His concern lay elsewhere: in preserving access to the ancestral gods and defending ritual as the only viable means of divine contact. Theology; god-talk; was insufficient. Only theurgy; god-work; could accomplish re-ascent.

From a biblical perspective, this is exactly the point at which sorcery becomes religiously sophisticated enough to deceive nations. It no longer looks like rebellion; it looks like reverence. It no longer appears as lawlessness; it presents itself as restoration. And it no longer denies the divine; it multiplies mediators.

This is why the warning of Revelation is not antiquated polemic but theological diagnosis. A system that claims supernatural power through ritual action, even when clothed in philosophy and ancient tradition, stands under the same judgment. The question is not whether the power is real. The question is who authorizes it; and by what means.

If time is not neutral, then neither is space. And if symbols retain meaning, then relocation does not erase theology.

I want to remind my readers what an obelisk actually is. It is not a decorative artifact or a generic marker of antiquity. The obelisk is the ritualized form of the Benben stone, the primordial stone associated with the manifestation of divine presence in Egyptian religion, bound to the cult of Amun-Atum and the Benben bird.

The Egyptian sources are explicit. In Utterance 600 of the Pyramid Texts we read:

“O Atum! When you came into being you rose up as a high hill, You shone as the Benben Stone in the temple of the Phoenix in Heliopolis.”

This is not poetic flourish. It is a prayer. It identifies the Benben stone as the place where divine presence appears, rises, and shines. The obelisk is the continuation of that theology in stone.

Which leaves a question that cannot be avoided.

Why does a stone explicitly associated with the manifestation of an Egyptian god stand today at the heart of what is called a Christian seat of power?

A symbol designed to mark divine descent does not become theologically empty by transport. It still bears witness to the system that produced it.

Just as the calendar still encodes a theology of mediated sacred time, so the stone still encodes a theology of mediated sacred presence.

Time is not neutral. Space is not neutral. Symbols are not neutral.

And systems that claim to be Christian while preserving the structures, symbols, and logic of older ritual powers deserve to be examined; not emotionally, but theologically.

That examination, not accusation, is the purpose of this work.

At this point, there is no ambiguity about who Atum is.

He is not the God of the Bible.

In Egyptian theology, Atum is the self-originating power who brings forth other gods from himself. He generates Shu and Tefnut, and through them the ordered cosmos. He then rises above his own creative activity and is identified, in later theology, with Ptah; the eternal, self-sufficient spirit presiding over all creation. In other words, Atum is presented as the source of divinity itself, the one who makes others divine.

That claim should sound familiar.

“Ye shall be as gods”—the first doctrine ever preached by the serpent.

It is the exact opposite of biblical monotheism, in which God alone is uncreated, unshared, and untransferable.

Atum is also consistently associated with the serpent; an image of self-generated life, cyclical power, and hidden wisdom. This symbolism did not vanish with antiquity. It persisted, was repurposed, and was carried forward into later systems of power. Even the heraldry of the House of Medici, a family that rose to the papacy itself, bore the serpent as its emblem.

None of this proves intent. But it does prove continuity of symbols, continuity of theology, and continuity of structure.

The God of Scripture does not emanate other gods.He does not share His being. He does not require symbols of hidden descent. He does not sanctify through mediation.

And He is never represented by the serpent.

When a system preserves the calendar of ritual time, the stones of ritual presence, and the symbols of self-originating divinity, it is not pointing to the God who said, “I AM.”

It is pointing elsewhere.

Basically Imperial Christianity preserved the name of Christ while subordinating His teaching and authority to priestly mediation and empire, producing a system that often functions in opposition to the God it claims to serve.

And that is the final question this work leaves with the reader; not as accusation, but as discernment:

Who, exactly, is being remembered?

_GR-EN - Dillon & Clark - De mysteriis, 2003 (2).pdf

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