Italian Souls for Christ

Sometimes deputation takes you near interesting cultural or historical locations. This was the case a few weeks ago after a Sunday morning service in Hillsboro, Ohio. Driving from Hillsboro to our next meeting in Jackson took us by the Serpent Mound.

There is a lot of information on the web to sort through and digest on the woodland cultures in the eastern United States and the mound builders of North American history. The bottom line is that the Hopewell culture (100 B.C. to 500 A.D.), the peoples most likely to have constructed the Serpent Mound, had a highly advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy and used the mound structures and earthworks in worship of the material world.

The Serpent Mound is the most famous of all Woodland Period mounds (1000 B.C. to 1400 A.D.). Visitors first approach the serpent from the tail section, which uncoils mysteriously from a near-perfect spiral to the undulations of a crawling serpent, terminating in a head that is over 1,200 feet away. The coils of the serpent, three in number, seem to be sized and spaced precisely, as if part of a predetermined pattern. The head also seems oddly small, and appears in profile with its mouth open, as if the viewer were meant to understand that the serpent was opening its mouth in order to swallow the oval mound in front of it. There are eight astronomical alignments found in the Serpent Mound. The most accurate alignment is to true north, while the next most certain alignment is through the oval embankment to the summer solstice sunset. Six lunar alignments were also found.

The Great Serpent Mound was apparently closely associated with the moon in the minds of the ancient Hopewell, its manifold curves clearly delineating the moon’s habitual haunts in the night sky. As such, it clearly fits in with the Hopewell’s obsession with sacred geometry, astronomy, and architecture. It is thought that the serpent may be representative of the “Great Horned Serpent of the Underworld” of Native American myth and legend, which also attacks and swallows the sun.

Why did the Serpent Mound builders choose the form of a serpent to symbolize the underworld? And why is the serpent shown apparently swallowing the sun?

There are indeed some interesting theories I found on the internet espoused by various scholars. However, I was most interested in the parallel to this particular effigy mound in scripture. It is there that the truth behind a devouring serpent is found unobscured…

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born” (Rev. 12:1-4)

Who was this “great red dragon?” We read a few verses later that the great red dragon was, “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Rev. 12:9).

Since the promise of a bruising seed was given to the woman in the garden (Gen. 3:15), the “old serpent” has sought every opportunity to destroy the seed-royal and prevent the coming of the Messiah. At the birth of the first woman’s man child the old serpent stood ready to devour him – Abel was slain by his brother. This murderous attempt upon the seed of the woman commenced then and continued down to the cross. Christ, the man-child of Israel (the woman in Rev. 12:1 typifies Israel), was the object of Satan’s murderous desire from Herod’s cruel edict (Matt. 2) to Pilate’s condemnation (Jn. 19).

James Knox noted in his commentary on Revelation, “What the devil did not know, or knowing did not believe, or believing did not comprehend, was that Jesus’ death would be the death of death. That the bruising of the man child would be the mortal wounding of the serpent’s head. As Goliath was slain with his own sword, so he that had the power of death would find his power broken by the death of the man-child (Heb. 2:14,15).”

As to the relationship or any similarity between the Hopewell’s devouring serpent effigy and the devouring serpent of Revelation 12, the following thoughts come to mind:

1. The Apostle Paul tells us that “the invisible things” of God “even his eternal power and Godhead” are clearly seen being understood by “the things that are made” so that mankind (including the Hopewells) is “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20)
2. The Apostle Paul tells us that even when mankind knew God, “they glorified him not as God… And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. 1:21,23)
3. Absolute truth regarding origins, the material world, and the spirit world are preserved without error in scripture (Jn. 17:17)
4. Myths and legends are sometimes corrupt accounts of the truth preserved through oral tradition and writings and embellished by peoples who do not know the God of the Bible
5. The Serpent Mound builders did not have a copy of Revelation chapter 12 nor did Christ appear to Native Americans as the Mormon-cult might falsely believe
6. Satan is the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4), the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2,3), the power of darkness (Col. 1:13; Eph. 6:12), that can appear as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) to deceive and keep mankind in spiritual darkness (2 Cor. 4:4)
7. God and the devil only know how Satan might have manifested himself and worked in the Hopewell culture, a people that “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25)