Muslims acknowledge Jesus as one of the great spiritual leaders. their views on Allah-God would vary according to the particular version of Islam. Like most Christians, they may not understand that the early roots of Christianity lay in persia with the worship Mithras.

The most important of the many festivals of Mithras was his birthday, celebrated on the 25th of December. He was considered a great traveling teacher and had twelve companions. Mithra was called "the good shepherd," "the way, the truth and the light," "redeemer," "savior," "Messiah." He was identified with both the lion and the lamb.
        
        
The worship of Mithras influenced early Rome, where the mysteries of Mithras, which fell in the spring equinox, were famous even among the many Roman festivals. followers purified themselves by baptism, received by a species of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected from a Lord's supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December.

They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situated in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons, situated in the bowels of the earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe.

Reverend Charles Biggs stated: "The disciples of Mithra formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ.
        
In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship. It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts.

Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected. He was buried in a tomb and after three days he rose again. His resurrection was celebrated every year.His sacred day was Sunday, "the Lord's Day." The Mithra religion had a Eucharist or "Lord's Supper."
        
freda