Mercurius Sobrius (“Mercury the Teetotaler”), a syncretism of Mercury with a Carthaginian god of commerce. The temple was regarded as a fitting place to worship a swift god of trade and travel, since it was a major center of commerce as well as a racetrack. He was the patron of travelers and the god of thievery as well. Mercurius Artaios, a syncretism of Mercury with the Celtic god Artaios, a deity of bears and hunting who was worshipped at Beaucroissant, France. In his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms; both gods share characteristics with the Greek god Hermes. His cult was introduced also by influence of Etruscan religion in which Turms had similar characteristics. Protestantism was first introduced by the Dutch in the sixteenth century with Calvinist and Lutheran influences. These men were the very first Evangelists of the WCG. In the early Roman Empire, a new religion, Christianity, was at first viewed as threatening or at the very least blasphemous, to the beliefs of the leadership. Because Mercury was not one of the early deities surviving from the Roman Kingdom, he was not assigned a flamen (priest), but he did have his own major festival, on 15 May, the Mercuralia.

He would also conduct many baptizing and evangelizing tours in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Africa. Weston has served congregations throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Due to declining health, in 2016 (aged 86), Meredith appointed Evangelist Gerald E. Weston as his successor and as President of the LCG. Upon Meredith’s death in May 2017, Weston became the LCG’s Presiding Evangelist. The Egyptians also believed in a place called the Duat, a mysterious region associated with death and rebirth, that may have lain in the underworld or in the sky. The Living Church of God (LCG) is one of several groups that formed after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong, when major doctrinal changes (causing turmoil and divisions) were occurring in the former Worldwide Church of God (WCG) during the 1990s. It was after its founder, the late Roderick C. Meredith, was fired by board members of the Global Church of God (GCG), that he went on to found, for a second time, a new organization in 1998. It is just one of many and varied Sabbatarian Churches of God groups that have sprung up from the former Worldwide Church of God, known today as Grace Communion International (GCI).

The church reported in 2011 that it had 330 congregations in 45 countries, and that over 8,000 members attended its annual eight-day festival of the Feast of Tabernacles and Last Great Day, at 46 sites in 31 countries on every continent (except Antarctica). In the subsequent years, Meredith would help start scores of WCG congregations throughout the United States. Following Meredith’s graduation from Ambassador College in Pasadena, California in June 1952, he was assigned by Herbert W. Armstrong (Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God) to set up and pastor WCG congregations in Portland, Oregon; San Diego, California; and Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. After Armstrong died, the WCG began to change many of its core doctrines; a process that brought the organization into the mainstream of Evangelical Christianity. The advent of British power and waning of centralized Mughal power brought about key changes in South Asian religious life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When the shortcomings of religion were once brought to the attention of the Hindu mystic Ramakrishna, he remarked that ‘Religion is like a cow.

Such movements have sprung up now and again when Christians feel like something important about Christ’s original teachings and church has been lost and needs to be recovered. I don’t like it. Similar to his Greek equivalent Hermes, he was awarded a magic wand by Apollo, which later turned into the caduceus, the staff with intertwined snakes. Although Lugus may originally have been a deity of light or the sun (though this is disputed), similar to the Roman Apollo, his importance as a god of trade made him more comparable to Mercury, and Apollo was instead equated with the Celtic deity Belenus. One becomes a Muslim by saying, “There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” By this declaration, the person announces faith in all of God’s messengers. In 2013, minister Rod Reynolds left and formed the COG Messenger. From the LCG organization, several additional split-off groups have resulted over the years, each one headed by a former LCG minister. In September 2020, minister Sheldon Monson formed the Church of God Assembly after he resigned. In late 2012, member Bob Thiel left and formed the Continuing Church of God.