{"id":159679,"date":"2023-03-12T09:21:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T13:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=159679"},"modified":"2023-03-13T06:02:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T10:02:06","slug":"attn-all-christian-jewshave-the-ancient-gods-returned-we-think-she-means-the-hebrew-war-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=159679","title":{"rendered":"

ATTN All Christians & Jews: Have the Ancient Gods Returned?<\/i><\/b> (We think she means the Hebrew war gods)<\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have the Ancient Gods Returned?<\/h1>\n

Is a Seemingly Far-Fetched Premise, Unfolding After All?<\/em><\/h3>\n

By Dr. Naomi Wolf<\/p>\n

These days, to my surprise, people want to talk to me about evil.<\/p>\n

In a Substack essay last year, and in my book\u00a0The Bodies of Others<\/em>, I raised a question about existential, metaphysical darkness.<\/p>\n

I concluded that I had looked at the events of the past two and a half years using all of my classical education, my critical thinking skills, my knowledge of Western and global history and politics; and that, using these tools, I could\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>explain the years 2020-present.<\/p>\n

Indeed I could not explain them in ordinary material, political or historical terms at all.<\/p>\n

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Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This is not how human history ordinarily operates.<\/p>\n

I could not explain the way the Western world simply switched from being based at least overtly on values of human rights and decency, to values of death, exclusion and hatred, overnight, en masse \u2014 without reference to some metaphysical evil that goes above and beyond fallible, blundering human agency.<\/p>\n

When ordinary would-be-tyrants try to take over societies, there is always some flaw, some human impulse undoing the headlong rush toward a negative goal. There are always factions, or rogue lieutenants, in ordinary human history; there is always a miscalculation, or a blunder, or a security breach; or differences of opinion at the top. Mussolini\u2019s power was impaired in his entry to the Second World War by his being forced to share the role of military commander with King Victor Immanuel [https:\/\/www.nationalww2museum.org\/war\/articles\/fascist-king-victor-emmanuel-iii-italy<\/a>]; Hitler miscalculated his ability to master the Russian weather \u2014 right down to overlooking how badly his soldiers\u2019 stylish but flimsy uniforms would stand up to extreme cold. [https:\/\/www.defensemedianetwork.com\/stories\/hitlers-winter-blunder\/<\/a>]. Before he could mount a counter-revolution against Stalinism, Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City in his bath. [https:\/\/www.historytoday.com\/archive\/months-past\/leon-trotsky-assassinated-mexico<\/a>]<\/p>\n

But none of that fracturing or mismanagement of normal history took place in the global rush to \u201clockdowns\u201d, the rollout of COVID hysteria, of \u201cmandates\u201d, masking, of global child abuse, of legacy media lying internationally at scale and all lying in one direction, of thousands of \u201ctrusted messengers\u201d parroting a single script, and of forced or coerced mRNA injections into at least half of the humans on Planet Earth.<\/p>\n

I reluctantly came to the conclusion that human agency alone could not coordinate a highly complicated set of lies about a virus, and propagate the lies in perfect uniformity around an entire globe, in hundreds of languages and dialects. Human beings, using their own resources alone, could not have turned hospitals overnight from having been places in which hundreds of staff members were collectively devoted to the care of the infirm, the prolongation of human life, the cherishing of newborns, the helping of mothers to care for little ones, the support of the disabled, into killing factories in which the elderly were prescribed \u201crun-death-is-near (Remdesevir)\u201d at scale.<\/p>\n

Also look at the speed of change. Institutions turned overnight into negative mirror images of themselves, with demonic policies replacing what had been at least on the surface, angelic ones. Human-history change is not that lightning-fast.<\/p>\n

The perception of the rollout, the unanimity of a mass delusion, cannot in my view be explained fully by psychology; not even as a \u201cmass formation.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been other mass hysterias before in history, from \u201cblood libel\u201d – the widespread belief in medieval Europe in the that Jews were sacrificing Christian children to make matzah\u00a0[https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/blood-libel<\/a>], to the flareup of hysteria around witches in Salem, MA, in 1692, [https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/first-amendment\/article\/1098\/salem-witch-trials<\/a>], to the \u201cirrational exuberance\u201d of Tulipmania, also in the 17th century, in the Netherlands [https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland], detailed by Scottish journalist Charles MacKay in his classic account of group madness,\u00a0Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds<\/em>\u00a0(1841).<\/p>\n

But all of these examples of mass frenzy had dissidents, critics, and skeptics at the time; none of these lasted for years as a dominant uninterrupted delusional paradigm.<\/p>\n

What we have lived through since 2020 is so sophisticated, so massive, so evil, and executed in such inhumane unison, that it cannot be accounted for without venturing into metaphysics. Something else, something metaphysical, must have done that. And I speak as a devoted rationalist.<\/p>\n

I concluded that I was starting to believe in God in more literal terms than I had before, because this evil was so impressive; so it must be directed at something at least as powerful that was all good.<\/p>\n

At the time I wrote my initial essay, I knew that \u201cSatan\u201d was, at least for me, an insufficient explanation for the evil I saw. One reason that I felt that \u201cSatan\u201d was an insufficient name for what we were facing, is that I am Jewish, and we don\u2019t have the same tradition of \u201cSatan\u201d that Christian Western culture inherits and takes for granted.<\/p>\n

In Jewish tradition, this entity\u2019s role is not that of the rather majestic adversary of God who appears fully- fledged in the Christian tradition \u2014 an elaborated character who was developed subsequent to, as some scholars point out, the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, and then on Christianity, in the years leading up to and after Jesus\u2019 life and death.<\/p>\n

In the Old Testament, in contrast, \u201cthe Satan\u201d or \u201cha-Satan\u201d \u2014 \u201cthe accuser\u201d makes a number of appearances; but \u201cha-satan\u201d is an opponent, rather than being the majestic villain of the New Testament, and of Dante\u2019s and Milton\u2019s characterizations, that so influenced Western ideas of \u201cthe devil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way in which the Hebrew \u201cha-satan\u201d differs from the Christian Satan is important: \u201cLikewise, in Old Testament Hebrew, the noun\u00a0satan<\/em>\u00a0(which occurs 27x) and the verb\u00a0satan<\/em>\u00a0(which occurs 6x) are often used in a general way. If I \u201csatan\u201d someone, I oppose them, accuse them, or slander them. David uses it this way in the psalms, \u201cThose who render me evil for good accuse [\u05e9\u05c2\u05d8\u05df (satan<\/em>)] me because I follow after good\u201d (Ps. 38:21<\/a>). If I act as a \u201csatan\u201d to someone, therefore, I am their adversary or accuser, as the messenger of the Lord stood in the way of Balaam \u201cas his adversary [\u05e9\u05c2\u05d8\u05df (satan<\/em>)]\u201d (Numbers 22:22<\/a>) or as Solomon told Hiram that he had no \u201cadversary [\u05e9\u05c2\u05d8\u05df (satan<\/em>)]\u201d who opposed him (1 Kings 5:4<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Thus, in Hebrew, the noun and verb \u05e9\u05c2\u05d8\u05df (satan) can have the non-technical meaning of \u201cstand opposed to someone as an adversary.\u201d In the case of Balaam, even the Lord\u2019s messenger was a \u201csatan\u201d to him, that is, a God-sent opponent. That is the first point to keep in mind: unlike in English, where \u201cSatan\u201d always refers to a malevolent being, in Hebrew\u00a0satan<\/em>\u00a0can have a generic, non-technical meaning.\u201d [https:\/\/www.1517.org\/articles\/the-devil-in-the-details-of-the-old-testament-is-satan-in-the-hebrew-bible<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Because our (Jewish) tradition of Satan is more impressionistic than the character who appeared later under Christian narratives, I felt that \u201cSatan\u201d was not sufficient to explain fully the inexplicable, immediate mirror-imaging of what had been our society, from ordered at least on the presumption of morality, to being ordered around death and cruelty. But I did not at that time have a better concept with which to work.<\/p>\n

Then I heard of a Pastor named Jonathan Cahn, who had written a book titled \u201cThe Return of the Gods.\u201d [https:\/\/www.christianbook.com\/return-of-the-gods-jonathan-cahn\/9781636411422\/pd\/411429<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The title resonated with me.<\/p>\n

Though I don\u2019t agree with everything in his book, Pastor Cahn\u2019s central argument \u2014 that we have turned away from the Judeo-Christian God and thus we opened a door into our civilization for the negative spirits of \u201cthe Gods\u201d to re-possess us \u2014 feels right.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cahn is a Messianic Jewish minister. He is the son of a Holocaust refugee. Formerly a secular-atheist, Cahn had a near-death experience as a young man that led him to accept Jesus \u2014 or, as he refers to this presence by the original Hebrew name, Yeshua \u2014 as his Lord and Savior. Pastor Cahn has a ministry based in Wayne, New Jersey, which brings together Jews and Gentiles. [http:\/\/bethisraelworshipcenter.org\/about%20Us\/AboutJC.php<\/a>]<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Return of the Gods<\/em>, his improbable, and yet somehow hauntingly plausible thesis is that ancient dark and metaphysically organized forces, \u201cthe Gods\u201d of antiquity, have \u201creturned\u201d to our presumably advanced, secular post-Christian civilization.<\/p>\n

Pastor Cahn\u2019s theme is that, because we have turned away from our covenant with YHWH \u2014 especially we in America, and we in the West, and especially since the 1960s \u2014 therefore, the ancient \u201cGods\u201d, or rather, ancient pagan energies, that had been vanquished by monotheism and exiled to the margins of civilization and human activity \u2014 have seen an \u201copen door\u201d, and thus a ready home to re-occupy, in us.<\/p>\n

He argues that they have indeed done so.<\/p>\n

Pastor Cahn makes use of a parable in the New Testament to make this case. I cite the King James Version:<\/p>\n

Matthew 12:43-45<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c43\u00a0<\/strong>When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.<\/p>\n

44\u00a0<\/strong>Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.<\/p>\n

45\u00a0<\/strong>Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation\u201d. [https:\/\/www.kingjamesbibleonline.org\/Matthew-12-43\/<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Pastor Cahn makes the case that the ancient \u201cgods\u201d were initially, in essence, put on the defensive, as the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) recounts, first by Yahweh, and by the introduction of monotheism and the revelation of the Ten Commandments; and then that they were vanquished altogether and sent into outer darkness, by the arrival to humanity of the being whom he sees as the Messiah, Yeshua.<\/p>\n

One might right away resist such a phrasing; what do you mean, \u201cthe Gods\u201d? But Cahn is both careful and accurate in his translations and his tracing of four millennia of religious history through a set of phrases.<\/p>\n

Cahn rightly points out that the Hebrew Bible refers to what in Hebrew is rendered \u201cshedim\u201d or negative spirits (in modern Hebrew, this word means \u201cghosts\u201d). Cahn correctly points out that these spirits, powers or principalities were worshipped in the pagan world in many guises \u2014 from the fertility god Baal to the goddess of sexuality Ashera or Ashtaroth; to the destructive idol, Moloch. He rightly points out that the ancient world was everywhere consecrated to these dark or lower entities, and that worshippers went to the point of sacrificing their own children to propitiate these forces. He correctly reflects the central narrative of the Tribes of Israel as alternately embracing Yahweh and his Ten Commandments and ethical covenant, and finding it all too taxing, and thus falling away to whore after these pagan gods. He notes that the gods of the Old Testament world descended in updated guise into Greco-Roman life, taking on new names: Zeus, Diana, and so on.<\/p>\n

He correctly notes that the Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, rendered \u201cshedim\u201d as\u00a0Daimones<\/em>. This word is rendered also as \u201cspirit personifications\u201d; we receive this word in English today, as \u201cdemons.\u201d[https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/greek-mythology\/personifications.html<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Having accurately traced the lineage of pagan worship and pagan forces, Cahn makes the case that they were never overcome by the embrace in the West of Christianity; but rather that they were pushed to the margins of Western civilization; weakened by our covenant with YHWH, or with Jesus, depending on whom we are.<\/p>\n

He argues that these negative but potentially powerful forces have been dormant for two millennia, by virtue of the Western Judeo-Christian covenant. [https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/greek-mythology\/personifications.html<\/a>]. And that they have now taken this opportunity, of our turning away from God, and they have returned.<\/p>\n

We, thus, are the house that has been cleaned \u2014 by the covenant with the Judeo-Christian commitment. But we subsequently abandoned the house, he maintains, and left it vulnerable; open, for negative energies to re-enter.<\/p>\n

Though it is unfashionable now to talk about our Judeo-Christian founding and heritage in the West, it should not be. This legacy is simply an historical fact. I do not think one needs to be dismissive of or insulting to Buddhism or Islam (which is also part of the Judeo-Christian lineage, but that\u2019s another essay) or Jainism or Shintoism, to acknowledge the fact that the West\u2019s civilization for the past two millennia has been a Judeo-Christian one, and that our Founders in this nation, though rightly establishing religious freedom, believed that they were consecrating a nation in alignment with the will of God as they understood him.<\/p>\n

Cahn cites Puritan Minister Jonathan Winthrop in warning that America\u2019s state of being blessed by God, will last only as long as we hold up our end of the Covenant.<\/p>\n

It is worth returning to Pastor Winthrop\u2019s famous speech and to his invocation of the covenant that undergirded the foundation of America:<\/p>\n

\u201cThus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.<\/p>\n

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.\u201d<\/p>\n

[https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/colliding-cultures\/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630\/<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Why do I share all of this? Because while it would be easy to dismiss Pastor Cahn\u2019s theory as wacky and fanatical, I have reluctantly come to believe that his central premise may be right.<\/p>\n

In the Old Testament, it is not \u201cha-Satan\u201d who is the most fearsome, treacherous, dangerous of figures. It is rather, \u201cthe Gods\u201d who are the seductive abominations \u2014 that is to say, the ancient, pre-YHWH, pre-Mosaic, pre-Christian gods: our old adversaries in the Hebrew Bible \u2014 YHWH\u2019s adversaries: Baal, Moloch (or Malek), and Astarte or Ashera.<\/p>\n

Those are \u201cthe Gods\u201d that traduced, lured, hounded, bedeviled, and seduced my people \u2014 again and again. Those are \u201cthe Gods\u201d about whom this extraordinary innovation in the human story \u2014 the monotheistic God of all – continually, specifically warns us; warns the Children of Israel.<\/p>\n

Those are \u201cthe Gods\u201d to whose sacrifice the Children of Israel constantly stray, disappointing and enraging our Creator. Those are \u201cthe Gods,\u201d with their child sacrifice and their graven images, against whom our father Abraham rebelled and taught his descendants to rebel. Those are \u201cthe Gods\u201d whose acceptance of child sacrifice – a real thing, a barbaric, culture-wide practice that continued for centuries in the tribes and civilizations surrounding the Children of Israel \u2014 was supplanted by animal sacrifice; this was an evolution in human civilization that is represented by the story of Abraham\u2019s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac, when the child on the altar is replaced miraculously by a ram provided, at the last moment, by the Lord God.<\/p>\n

The sheer amoral power of Baal, the destructive force of Moloch, the unrestrained seductiveness and sexual licentiousness of Astarte or Ashera \u2014 those are the primal forces that do indeed seem to me to have \u201creturned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or at least the energies that they represent \u2014 moral power-over; death-worship; antagonism to the sexual orderliness of the intact family and faithful relationships \u2014 seem to have \u2018returned,\u2019 without restraint, since 2020.<\/p>\n

There may well indeed be negative forces re-appearing, or emerging into daylight from out of their less visible domains, whom we, after two millennia of Judeo-Christianity, have literally forgotten, at least in Western civilization, how to identify. It may well be that these negative forces are highly complex, extraordinarily powerful, and stunningly well organized.<\/p>\n

It may indeed be the case that they have swept themselves back into our \u201chouse\u201d in the West, and emerged visibly in the past two years.<\/p>\n

I do believe that they were able to do so because we dropped our own end of upholding a basic covenant with God.<\/p>\n

After having gone back to the Old Testament, it is clear to me that YHWH warned us that this could happen \u2014 that we could easily lose his protection and break the Covenant.<\/p>\n

He warned us, indeed, over and over, in the Hebrew Bible, of this risk.<\/p>\n

I was taught in Hebrew School that we as Jews are forever God\u2019s \u201cchosen people.\u201d<\/p>\n

But God does not say that consistently in the Old Testament, at all.<\/p>\n

There are many times a \u201cCovenant\u201d is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. But when YHWH explains what He wants from this Children, in \u201cExodus\u201d, He is clear that certain conduct is expected from us, in order for us to receive his blessing:<\/p>\n

\u201cGod established the Mosaic covenant just after a significant development anticipated in Gen 15 had taken place: the emancipation of Abraham\u2019s descendants from oppression in a foreign land (cf.\u00a0Gen 15:13\u201314<\/a>;\u00a0Exod 19:4\u20136<\/a>;\u00a020:2<\/a>). The focus at Sinai is less on what Abraham\u2019s descendants must do in order to inherit the land and more on how they must conduct themselves within the land as the unique nation that God intended them to be (Exod 19:5\u20136<\/a>). In order to be God\u2019s \u201ctreasured possession,\u201d \u201ckingdom of priests,\u201d and \u201choly nation\u201d (Exod 19:5\u20136<\/a>), Israel must keep God\u2019s covenant by submitting to its requirements (i.e., the stipulations set forth in\u00a0Exod 20\u201323<\/a>). By adhering to these and the subsequent covenant obligations given at Sinai, Israel would be manifestly different from other nations and thus reflect God\u2019s wisdom and greatness to surrounding peoples (cf.\u00a0Deut 4:6\u20138<\/a>).\u201d [https:\/\/www.olivetree.com\/blog\/discover-5-covenants-bible\/<\/a>]<\/p>\n

So He does not say that we are automatically set under His protection forever; rather He says, again and again, that\u00a0if\u00a0<\/em>we, the Children of Israel, act justly, love mercy, visit the sick and protect the widow and orphan,\u00a0then<\/em>\u00a0we will be \u201chis people\u201d and we will have His covenant – his blessing and protection.<\/p>\n

He also warns, directly Himself and also through His many prophets \u2014 that we can\u00a0lose\u00a0<\/em>His protection, by dropping our end of the Covenant; a Covenant that goes, as all contracts or agreements do, two ways.<\/p>\n

And God is very clear, at least in the Old Testament; He says in certain places: you left the paths of righteousness, so now I withdraw my protection from you.<\/p>\n

I always thought that many Jews, and indeed the education I had in Hebrew School, alarmingly misread what YHWH so clearly stated. I was taught that being \u201cchosen\u201d as God\u2019s people was a static, lucky status. All you had to do was to be born Jewish \u2014- better yet, to be born Jewish, marry a Jewish spouse, raise Jewish children, light Shabbat candles, go to synagogue on the High Holy Days, and visit the State of Israel. I was also taught that God bestowed the Land of Israel to the Jewish people unconditionally.<\/p>\n

We were not taught in Hebrew school what the Hebrew Bible really says \u2014 that we could indeed\u00a0lose\u00a0<\/em>God\u2019s favor and be \u201cun-Chosen\u201d again.<\/p>\n

What God tells us, again and again, throughout the Old Testament, is that He ask for a living, actual, organic relationship with us, the Children of Israel, in which we show our commitment to Him and our devotion to Him as \u201chis people\u201d \u2014 through how we treat Him every day; meaning, through how we treat those around us, as He asked us to, in His name.<\/p>\n

That is what he calls \u201cHis covenant\u201d. That is what he means by \u201cmy people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genesis 9:8, God promises Noah, after the Flood:<\/p>\n

8\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,<\/a><\/p>\n

9\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;<\/a><\/p>\n

10\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And with every living creature that\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.<\/a><\/p>\n

11\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.<\/a><\/p>\n

12\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And God said, This\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0with you, for perpetual generations:<\/a><\/p>\n

13\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.<\/a><\/p>\n

14\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:<\/a><\/p>\n

15\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And I will remember my covenant, which\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.<\/a><\/p>\n

16\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0upon the earth.<\/a><\/p>\n

17\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>And God said unto Noah, This\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that\u00a0<\/a>is<\/a><\/em>\u00a0upon the earth.<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.kingjamesbibleonline.org\/Genesis-9-17\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Though He promised an \u2018everlasting Covenant\u2019, that does not mean we get to do whatever we desire to do here on Earth. He never said He wouldn\u2019t ever, under any circumstances, give up on humanity as we are, in our current context on this planet. He promised, rather, he would not ever again do away with wicked humanity by water.<\/p>\n

He always, rightly, made clear to us that in a living partnership with Him, we are supposed to show our love and our recognition of the privilege of being wedded to His path \u2014 through our zealous, difficult, freely chosen, unending actions.<\/p>\n

Feed the hungry. Every day. Visit those in prison. Care for the orphan. Protect the widow. Do justly.<\/p>\n

So \u2014 the truth of God\u2019s requests of us, Jews, in the Hebrew Bible, is absolutely not \u201conce Chosen, always Chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Covenant is not defined as carte blanche for us to abuse our relationship with our Creator.<\/p>\n

Again and again, in the Hebrew Bible, we showed God that we were not up to that daily walk with Him that he requested of us. It\u2019s hard; it\u2019s draining. The ancient gods around us in the days of the Prophets were so very seductive. They were so much easier \u2014 sacrifice a bullock; pour some oil; pay a priest. Visit a temple prostitute.<\/p>\n

The ancient Gods did not demand daily acts of justice, mercy, charity, sexual self-restraint, as YHWH, so morally demanding by the standards of the ancient world, had done.<\/p>\n

If God\u2019s courtship of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament were a romance novel or a film \u2014 which it really is, if read properly \u2014 the well-meaning best friend would counsel the Lord of Israel: Give them up. Walk away.<\/p>\n

They are just not that into you.<\/p>\n

God never said, once I choose you as \u201cmy people\u201d \u2014 then you can do whatever you want. He does not want a codependent or an abusive relationship.<\/p>\n

He wants a real marriage.<\/p>\n

Today, we are in grave danger if we, as Jews, think that by honoring our ethnic heritage or even our religious traditions, even if we keep kosher and light the Shabbat candles, that we are doing what YWHW really asked of us.<\/p>\n

And the same could be said, and I say this with equal respect, of many Christian churches, books and media messages. I am in dialogue with devout Christians of many denominations, with whom I have shared these anxieties, who also feel that we are in a time of similar moral danger for their own coreligionists, and for similar reasons.<\/p>\n

Too few in either community, we agree, seem to understand how dangerous to a nation, to a civilization, abandoning God can be.<\/p>\n

There have been times that YHWH\u2019s warnings to us, as the Tribes of Israel, were borne out. A generation that was disobedient to God\u2019s instructions, that insisted on worshipping the Golden Calf, was allowed by God to die in exile from the Promised Land; a new, innocent generation had to be born before the Israelites could enter that land. Later, after due warnings from the Lord, and innumerable warnings from His prophets, ranging from Jeremiah to Isaiah, we\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>get deported; the First Temple\u00a0was\u00a0<\/em>destroyed; and we\u00a0were\u00a0<\/em>sent into exile in Babylon. We\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>weep by the rivers of Babylon, in our exile. [https:\/\/www.faithwriters.com\/article-details.php?id=164682<\/a>] After due warnings, including from a Rabbi Jesus, we all, Jews and Christians,\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0see the Second Temple demolished as foretold. [http:\/\/www.templemount.org\/destruct2.html] We were warned about the destruction of Jerusalem:<\/p>\n

\u201cLament over Jerusalem<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Luke 13:31-35<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

37<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,\u00a0thou<\/em>\u00a0that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under\u00a0her<\/em>\u00a0wings, and ye would not!\u00a038<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.\u00a039<\/a><\/strong>For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0he that cometh in the name of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

We Jews\u00a0were<\/em>\u00a0scattered around the world; our house\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0left to us desolate; we\u00a0were<\/em>\u00a0sent again into exile.<\/p>\n

I feel that many Jews and many Christians are at risk right now of unduly positive thinking \u2014 of thinking that everything is ok; that we will all be automatically be redeemed \u2014 when it manifestly\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>ok.<\/p>\n

Because Jewish history is longer than Christian history (not a value judgement, just a statement of fact), we have more experience of God\u2019s having indeed withdrawn His protection and left us to the fate about which he warned us.<\/p>\n

But even Christian history does not have a promise that God can never withdraw. Though these darker or more wrathful warnings seem less often taught from many pulpits these days than they used to be taught in our Puritan past, Jesus Himself warned His followers about the dire consequnces of amoral behavior \u2014- the serious dangers of being \u201cwhited sepulchers\u201d \u2014 of neglecting or hurting the poor \u2014 or of bringing children to harm. Matthew\u00a013<\/a>: \u201c<\/strong>But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in\u00a0yourselves<\/em>, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.\u00a014<\/a><\/strong>Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

My point being that our forefathers for both faith traditions, Jewish and Christian, understood that a Covenant \u2014 involving God\u2019s blessing and protection \u2014 took action from\u00a0both\u00a0<\/em>the Lord and from His people, to be in effect.<\/p>\n

It was not an eternal hall pass.<\/p>\n

We in this generation have forgotten this.<\/p>\n

But I think it\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>possible that for four thousand plus years \u2014 and then for two thousand \u2014 God\u2019s covenant\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0in fact largely protected the West, and that we have had His blessing for so long that we have taken it for granted; and that in the last few years, we have released our hold of God\u2019s covenant – and that God has simply, as He warned us in the Old Testament that he could \u2014 withdrawn; and left us to our own devices \u2014 so we can see for ourselves how we will do when we depend on humans alone. In the absence of God\u2019s covenant and protection in the West, great evil is flourishing.<\/p>\n

Pastor Cahn\u2019s premise resonated with me, because the energies that I have felt flooding into our world in the last two years, feel primally recognizable to me as a Jew, – ancestrally recognizable.<\/p>\n

These dark forces now freed into the world around us, feel like the way the world must have felt before Moses ascended Mt Sinai; before a baby was born in a manger.<\/p>\n

They feel again like the pre-monotheistic past; like the world the Hebrews confronted, when the Word of God was first revealed to them.<\/p>\n

It feels again like the ancient world that continually tempted the Hebrews away from the hard, rigorous, daily, demanding practice of morality and of adherence to the Ten Commandments. It feels again like the ancient world felt, being as it was under Baal\u2019s, Moloch\u2019s and Asherah\u2019s dark, inexorable, complex and antihuman rule.<\/p>\n

That is to say: it was \u2014 and now it is \u2014 a world in which humans did not, do not matter. It was – and now is – a world in which children can be slaughtered by their parents, or by the Authorities. It was – it now is \u2014 a world in which slavery had and now has no moral valence. Lust and greed were \u2014 and now are again \u2014 everything. God was not then fully present \u2014 and now I argue, as Pastor Cahn argues, God has withdrawn.<\/p>\n

The commitment to Judeo-Christian norms and values, which have been the hallmark of the West for two millennia \u2014 even when we fell far short of them \u2014 has fallen apart altogether.<\/p>\n

The great genius of America was not that it was consecrated to a\u00a0specific<\/em>\u00a0religion \u2014 the genius of our nation included\u00a0freedom<\/em>\u00a0of religion \u2014 but our distinction was that we were founded as a City on a Hill; spiritually; we were consecrated, via our ultimate organizational manifestation of human freedom, with its basis in free will \u2014 to God.<\/p>\n

If we withdraw our role in that covenant, perhaps Pastor Cahn is right and pagan entities, long held at bay in the West – are empowered, and rush back in.<\/p>\n

And so decency, human rights, human values, all of which we thought were innate secular Western values – turn out to be values that cannot be protected enduringly without the blessing of what has been in the West, a Judeo-Christian God. They are all being cleared out of our society, and almost no one \u2014 certainly very few people who are not people of faith \u2014 are standing in the breach as this takes place.<\/p>\n

Now look at our political leaders, our national structures in the West. They went overnight from ethically oriented, at least overtly, to purely nihilistic, organizations. Before 2020, Judeo-Christian norms had not entirely left the West, even though explicit religious language was no longer invoked in its public spaces.<\/p>\n

What I mean is that until 2020, Biblical belief systems structured our institutions even though we no longer explicitly invoked God.<\/p>\n

The Bible is all around us in the West \u2014 or it has been \u2014 even though we think we are living in a postmodern reality. We have been blind to its influence, for the most part.<\/p>\n

The idea that you should seek peace with your neighbors with whom you disagree, rather than trying to harm them or their children; the notion that a court should deliver impartial justice rather than hand over goods to the more powerful litigant; the idea that the poor and orphaned in a community should be cared for, rather than enslaved or left to starve; these were not the norms of the pagan world.<\/p>\n

These are, rather, Biblical beliefs, even though the explicit Judeo-Christian religiosity has been removed from public discourse.<\/p>\n

Our institutions in the West, thus, have been like vessels made with the \u201clost wax\u201d process; they have kept the shape of Biblical concepts and beliefs even though Biblical language in public is now against the law, or has fallen away from being a cultural norm.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t leave babies to starve \u2014 at least we didn\u2019t kill living babies before 2020 \u2014 for a reason; our courts at least ostensibly don\u2019t allow cheating or theft in our society, for a reason; we don\u2019t abandon the elderly to the modern equivalent of wild animals \u2014 for a reason; and the reasons derive straight from the Ten Commandments; and from both the Old and New testaments. These of course shaped our institutions for millennia even though we think these institutions now are secular.<\/p>\n

Though secular, in the West, until 2020, our institutions have retained a Biblical, not a pagan, shape.<\/p>\n

Congresses, Parliaments, nonprofits, were organized along what were basically Judeo-Christian ethical frameworks, even though the explicit religious language is no longer part of public discourse. Respect for human rights, the equal value of all, the cherishing of life, the seeking of a peaceful society \u2014 while our institutions were far from perfect, these were our institutional values, in the West, at least overtly, until 2020.<\/p>\n

All of that changed seemingly overnight.<\/p>\n

Pastor Cahn notes that Jesus identified Satan alongside the \u201cDaimones.\u201d Pastor Cahn refers to these ancient gods, powers, as well as the more modern \u201cSatan\u201d, together, as the \u201canti-God\u201d forces.<\/p>\n

As such, I do feel that this is with what we are terrifyingly grappling. Since 2020 the world, I feel, has been bathed, infused, bombarded even, with intensely powerful energies that are totally unfamilar to us in this generation, but that may derive from a pre-Christian, pre-solidly-Jewish time, a time when early Judaism was struggling with the seductive and oppressive entities that always sought to seduce the Children of Israel away from the monotheistic truth, the One God.<\/p>\n

The ancient \u201cshedim\u201d are the only \u201cprincipalities and powers\u201d I can imagine, that are capable of manifesting a national, and now a global, network of policy advocates, social workers, graphic designers, Members of Parliament, who are all on board with an escalating euthanasia death cult. The ancient \u201cdaimones\u201d are the only entities I can imagine powerful enough in just two years and a bit, to destroy families, to ruin sexuality and fertility, to make a mockery of human rights, to celebrate the end of critical thinking, to march us all in lockstep to worship of technocrats and technocracy; medical cultism and an orgiastic cult of self- and other-annihilation.<\/p>\n

And \u2014 I must notice \u2014 if these \u201cshedim\u201d or \u201cdaimones\u201d are powerless \u2014 why are their symbols reappearing everywhere? I used to see fundamentalist Christians who warned of Satan lurking in rock n roll, as fanatics. But what I myself am seeing around me, I cannot un-see.<\/p>\n

A Temple of Baal archway\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0in fact expensively reconstructed from its original in Syria, and moved to appear at a major thoroughfare in London, and was now unveiled in Washington DC and in New York. [https:\/\/www1.cbn.com\/cbnnews\/2018\/october\/arch-of-palmyra-in-dc-coincidence-or-pagan-invitation-nbsp<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

A bizarre opening ceremony in a new train site in Switzerland, at which European leaders were present, included a horned entity (\u201can Ibex\u201d), the upholding of a symbolic lamb, the appearance of a terrifying angel, and the writhing of nearly naked men and women in S- and M- themed and bondage postures. [https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/in-pictures-36428799<\/a>].<\/p>\n

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Katy Perry\u2019s performance in 2015, in which she performs astride a massive mechanical lion, directly echoed the symbology of Ishtar\/Ashera, down to her iconic stance.<\/p>\n

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Sam Smith\u2019s \u201cUnholy\u201d, bathed in lurid red light, with its Satanic imagery, takes the Grammys, and Billboard respectfully gets a quote from the Church of Satan while mocking the \u201cpearl-clutching\u201d of conservatives.<\/p>\n

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[https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/culture\/pride\/sam-smith-kim-petras-unholy-grammys-church-of-satan-reacts-1235250622<\/a>\/]<\/p>\n

A terrifying animated bull figure with glowing red eyes, is apparently worshipped by scantily-dressed male and female dancers, at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Birmingham, England in 2022. This is just bizarre.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

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