10 Religious Facts You Just Didn't Know

10 Religious Facts You Just Didn't Know

The world is full of strange and amusing facts which a lot of people are unaware of. I don't know how many of you guys have heard these things before. If this blog fails to fill some gaps in your memory, it will certainly refresh it. If you find something new, please don't forget to share it with other people.

1) Belteshazzar:

Daniel is a well-known biblical character. There is a book in Old Testament named after him. He is famous for being a dream interpreter and served at the court of Nebuchadnezzar.

According to Daniel 1:7, the Babylonians gave him a new name i.e. Belteshazzar. He was named along with three other Jewish people who were chosen for the King's special service when Jerusalem was besieged.

What else! Gabriel and Michael appeared many times in Bible but were named first in the Book of Daniel.

2) Melchizedek:

Jesus wasn't the only person who had no father and was called the Son of the God. Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who lived during the lifetime of Abraham, has some unique words dedicated for him in the New Testament. Hebrew 7:3 says:

"Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually."

This Melchizedek guy has been mentioned just a few times in the Bible but as a priest of great respect. Hebrew 6:20 insists that Jesus had become a priest of Melchizedek's order.

3) Vatican:

Vatican City State is currently located at the historical grounds where the Roman emperor Nero used to persecute Christians at his Circus, also known as the Circus of Caligula.

Do you know that Nero was the same Roman monarch who set Rome on fire. Legends say that the fat guy sat playing with his flute while the city burnt like hell! Some believe he did all that just to see what a city looks like when one sets in on fire. Rome was rebuilt soon by his own order, though.

Actually, he was just punishing Romans for their hatred of Nero.

4) Gandhi amd Jinnah:

Harilal Gandhi, a son of Mohandas Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation, had temporarily converted to Islam only to return to his old faith at his mother’s request. As a Muslim, he went by the name Abdullah.

Do you know that Jinnah, the father of the Pakistani nation, had two wives and only one daughter, Dina Wadiya? She died last year (2017). Instead of Gandhi's descendants, Jinnah's child refused to move to the state her father had built because she was married to a Parsee.

And I just want to remind everyone that Indra Gandhi is the daughter of J. Nehru, not of M. Gandhi.

5) Vanuatu:

There is a tribe that lives in the Pacific island of Vanuatu that worships Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and the consort of Queen Elizabeth, as a deity. They are called Kastom people and their cult is known as the Prince Philip Movement.

Want to know why they worship him? Well, they believed that a god would step on their shores with the most powerful lady on earth. Elizabeth II was a mighty queen, no doubt, and she visited Vanuatu with her husband Prince Philip. That made Duke a deity; absurdly simple for the Kastom folks.

6) Anti-Christ:

Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher, styled himself as Anti-Christ (in a 1885 publication). Being a strong critic of the teachings of Jesus Christ which he ridiculed as being unnatural, he also wrote a book entitled: "God Is Dead".

7) Lionman:

Hindus believe that there deity Vishnu once descended upon earth in the form of Narsimha (please don't speak the last a) - this word sounds just like "nursing" - to save his devotee's life from his infidel aunt Holika. Vishnu let that woman burn in a fire and that's why Indians celebrate Holi. The form their god took was that of a man with a lion's head. That's how he got that unique title: Narsimha.

Vishnu also took many other forms such as: Turtle, Whale, Woman, Rama, Krishna, Buddha etc.

8) Rhazes and Mansur:

Abu Bakr Zakariyah al-Razi, known by Westerns as Rhazes, was a Muslim scientist. But he wasn't a believing Muslim. Instead, he considered all prophets to be humbugs and claimed he could produce a better book than Qur'an. Historians suppose he was a freethinker.

Do you know that once a Sufi was executed for declaring, "I am God"? He was Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj and what he said was: 'I am haqq.' Haqq means "truth" but it's also used to denote God. So the Abbasid Caliphate issued death penalty for Mansur. Amazing thing is that the Muslims in India and Pakistan revere him as a saint because, according to them, he was still a Muslim.

9) Nanak in Mecca

Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, visited Mecca when he was enjoying a trip to Middle East. He even wrote an account of his visit to the Muslim holy city where no non-Muslim is allowed entrance.

10) Zeus:

Zeus, the supreme deity in the Greek pantheon, married his sister, raped a woman called Europa (for which he was banished by other gods) and got Hercules as the result of an affair. He had a huge statue of him constructed for Olympic Games by ancient Greeks. It is included in the list of seven marvels of the old ages.

Zeus and Hera were children of Cronus and Rhea. Zeus murdered his father just like he had killed his own dad Uranus. Europa was the mother of King Minos of Crete with whom Aegeus, the Greek emperor, besought animosity and then the Greek prince Theseus defeated Minos' son Minotaur. Hercules was born when Zeus met his mother's in the absence of her husband. So Hera became jealous and that's how Hercules had to live among humans.