Official Olympics Account Invokes Zeus and Apollo in Pagan Ritual at Olympia, Misses Key Point About Jesus Christ
The Olympic torch was lit Tuesday as an actress playing a Greek high priestess invoked the names of Zues and Apollo — neither of whom showed up for the ceremony, a reminder that neither of those famed Greek gods actually exists.
Mary Mina called out to Apollo in Greek, according to a translation posts on X to the account of The Olympic Games.
“Apollo, God of sun, and the idea of light, send your rays and light the sacred torch for the hospitable city of Paris,” she said.
However, that prayer was not answered, according to The Associated Press. (Shocking, I know.)
“Instead, she used a backup flame that had been lit on the same spot Monday, during the final rehearsal,” the AP noted.
🗣️ “Apollo, God of sun, and the idea of light, send your rays and light the sacred torch for the hospitable city of Paris. And you, Zeus, give peace to all peoples on earth and wreath the winners of the Sacred Race.”#Paris2024 | @Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/FHMEmJ134U
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) April 16, 2024
The AP also reported that, shortly after the torch-lighting ceremony, the sun broke out of the clouds. I’ll let you make of that what you will.
Whatever you make of it, it certainly didn’t bode well for the second part of the prayer recorded by the post to X.
“And you, Zeus, give peace to all peoples on earth and wreath the winners of the Sacred Race,” Mina said.
Prayers for peace are a good idea, of course. But they’re infinitely more productive when directed to a God who is Himself infinite, and not a figment of the fertile (and depraved) imaginations of a handful of dead Greeks.
Here’s a good example of one such prayer, directly from Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians: “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.”
Incidentally, that church, in the city of Thessaloniki (sometimes rendered Thessalonica), included a number of Greeks who knew nearly 2,000 years ago that the gods of Greece were not gods at all, and that Jesus Christ was Lord.
The International Olympic Committee is, apparently, made up of slower learners.
“International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the flame lighting combined ‘a pilgrimage to our past in ancient Olympia, and an act of faith in our future,'” according to the AP.
“In these difficult times … with wars and conflicts on the rise, people are fed up with all the hate, the aggression and negative news,” Bach added, according to the report. “We are longing for something which brings us together; something that is unifying; something that gives us hope.”
Hope is desperately needed today; I couldn’t agree more. But rather than turn to dead gods presiding over a dead religion, there is a source of hope available to everyone, just as Paul wrote to — you guessed it, the Greeks at Thessaloniki.
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope,” Paul wrote, pointing to the Source of all Hope: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Lord of the universe.
There is hope, my friends. For you, for me — even for Thomas Bach and Mary Mina, should they choose to avail themselves of it.
But it’s not going to be found through prayers to a dead god who can’t even manage to get a fire going on a cloudy day.
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