We’re in a time of the separation: wheat from tares, wheat from chaff.
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| Wheat (left) and tares look similar in their early stages. image found here |
There are two churches only: the church of the Lamb of God,
and the church of the devil, called the great and abominable church, or the
whore of all the earth, or the mother of harlots.
There’s this description: “And she sat upon many waters; and
she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and
people.” 1 Nephi 14:11
That is strikingly similar to John’s description in
Revelation 13: “[I] saw a beast rise up out of the sea…. And the dragon gave
him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” A couple of verses later it
mentions that all the world worship this beast “whose names are not written in
the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” That is,
except for those who belon to Christ, the whole world worship this beast.
Rising up from the sea, and sitting upon many waters is
symbolic-speak for being spread over the whole earth. It’s everywhere.
The church of the Lamb is also all over the earth, although
the numbers are small.
There are two groups only: those large numbers who worship
this beast, and those, smaller in number but greater in power, who are
associated with the Lamb.
There are more tares—weeds that imitate wheat in their
beginning stages—than there are the fruitful grain.
In case you’re not familiar with these stories, we know the
ending. The tares get separated, then gathered up and burned, while the wheat
is safely collected into the garner.
While we can look and plainly see the beast, I don’t think
it’s clear how everything will look as it plays out all around us—but we are in
the days when it does play out. My best guess is, though, that there are going
to be a fair number of people survive the destruction. The ones who have the
most to worry about are those who worship devils and idols (Rev. 9:20), commit
murder, sorceries (worked with evil spirits), fornication (sexual sin), and
theft (Rev. 9:21).
A couple of weeks ago Glenn Beck had a conversation with Jonathan Cahn that I keep coming back to. I haven’t read the book yet, and I only know Cahn from a few podcasts. But this
is fascinating. His thesis is that, if there is an exorcism of evil spirits but
later they are allowed to return, they return with greater strength than
before.
He believes the evil spirits—the ancient pagan gods, if you
will—were exorcised from this nation at our founding, through the covenant, our
Constitution, that we made with God (capital G). The gospel idea of “no
respecter of persons,” i.e., equality before the law, was enshrined, and has
spread around the world because of what our founders did.
But there’s this thing that John Adams said of our nation:
"We have
no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions
unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry,
would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a
net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is
wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
We have to govern ourselves in order to have a limited
government. If we don’t govern ourselves, then despotic government will assert
rule over us.
We cannot be a secular nation. We need a critical mass of
people who serve God and govern themselves.
If we break the covenant with God, according to Cahn, the
spirits that were exorcised come back—with a vengeance. He’s not talking merely
metaphorically.
In our day we tend to think ancient peoples were primitive
in ways we are not. Who would bow down to a handmade statue and do ritual
sacrifices to that thing and expect results from the entity it represents? Cahn
is pointing out that we, modern as we are, are doing that very thing. I don’t
mean we, all of us—not the wheat, but the plentiful tares.
Cahn talks about three main ancient gods, a trinity: Baal, Ashtoreth,
and Moloch. There could be other names, depending on which language you’re
dealing with. Ashtoreth, the female of the three, also goes by Ishtar, or
Aphrodite for the Greeks. All of these gods require blood sacrifice, particularly
child sacrifice. All of them encourage sexual promiscuity and deviancy. All of
them promise financial reward for those who sufficiently worship them. Then
they additionally have their individual attributes, symbols, and worship rites.
Are there literally gods (little g) who are being worshipped? There are only two churches, remember: the church of the Lamb, who is Christ; and the church of the devil. There is a devil. He is an entity without a body, so he’s in the spiritual realm, and during the stage of the earth’s life that we’re in he is allowed to reign in the world. He wields power and influence here—among all nations and peoples. This trinity of gods are all simply aspects of the devil. Possibly there are fallen spirits under him, of those hosts of heaven who chose to follow him in the war in heaven. But anything such spirits do will be under his domination.
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| The Ishtar Gate, rebuilt in modern Iraq image found here |
So, with that said, let’s take a look at the attributes of
just Ashtoreth; we’ll call her Ishtar just because it’s a bit easier to say.
Here are some attributes of the ancient goddess, according to Babylonian—Sumerian—writings,
and maybe some other ancient sources that Cahn has used:
·
Ishtar is goddess of changing gender; women are made
masculine and men are made feminine.
·
Ishtar is goddess of child sacrifice.
·
Ishtar is goddess of prostitution.
o Greek
word for prostitute is porn, or pornay, which the word
pornography comes from.
·
She destroys marriage and family.
·
Ishtar is goddess of pride.
·
Ishtar is goddess of sexual parades.
·
Ishtar is goddess of ale houses, or drunkenness.
·
Ishtar’s month is June.
·
Ishtar goes into battle with her foot on the
head of a lion.
·
She is the goddess of the gate; two arches in a
gate are a symbol of her.
·
She is described as having rainbow eyes, so the
rainbow is a symbol of her.
·
She steals things from other gods and makes them
her own—example is the rainbow.
·
There’s a dance her followers do during a battle,
or a riot.
·
She grinds away the masculinity of men. (Rage
against the patriarchy.)
o Take
men away from marriage, men away from women, men away from being men.
o Her
priests dressed as women, spoke with women’s voices; people brought their
children to the men dressed up as women, to sexualize the children (such as we
see in drag queen storytime).
o Some
were castrated. Men danced before the goddess with their scalpels to celebrate
their self-transformation.
Some worship is conscious; some is not. But one way or another, those who do not worship the Lamb of God are worshipping the devil, whether they know it or not.
Let’s take a look at some fairly recent history. The
beginning of “gay pride month” was in New York City, at a raid of a same-sex bar
called Stonewall. All the signs of Ishtar were there that night. It had two
arches in front. It was next door to a bar called The Lion’s Head. There was a
bar fight at Stonewall triggered by a masculine woman (lesbian). The riot got
so bad, they tried to burn the place down with the police barred inside. During
the riot, the people broke out in a dance, speaking the words that go back to
the tablets of Ishtar. Weird.
This was the initiation of the return of Ishtar. After that
bar fight, gay pride spread around the world. People celebrate gayness and
pride for a whole month, with gay pride parades. Countries celebrate pride
month when they don’t even celebrate their own country’s founding day—which,
wherever that is celebrated is only a day, not a month. Rainbow flags flown on
embassies—never has any such flag or symbol been flown at embassies.
It's not natural.
If you’re using a rainbow to show your tolerance and
compassion toward LGBTQ communities, you are worshipping Ishtar, who stole that
symbol from God, who had given it as a covenant to Noah that He would never
again flood the earth.
Are you a wheat or a tare? It’s your choice.
Are all these signs and symbols just coincidence? One or two
I might wonder, but that list is getting pretty sizable. What are the odds?
Cahn gives a few more coincidences. There were these three
Supreme Court rulings:
·
2003 June 26
Lawrence v. Texas: outlawed anti-sodomy laws
·
2012 June 26
US v. Windsor: struck down Defense of Marriage Act
· 2015 June 26 Obergefell v. Hodges: struck down definition of marriage
After giving that list, with those coincidental dates, Jonathan
Cahn says, “The Supreme Court is not looking at the Babylonian calendar.” SCOTUS does release most of their decisions
by the end of June. But the exact day?
He explains that, on the Bible calendar as well as the
Babylonian calendar, what we call June 26 was the 10th day of Tamuz.
Tamuz is the month of the goddess Ishtar. (Tamuz was the name of one of her
lovers that she destroyed.) According to readings in the ancient Babylonian
calendar, “The 10th of Tamuz is appointed to cast a spell to cause a
man to love a man.”
After the 2015 ruling, Obama displayed a rainbow on White House—symbolically giving America over to the pagan goddess Ishtar, although of course that was not what he said it meant, only that it meant solidarity with striking down the definition of marriage to lift up gay relationships.
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| The White House lit with rainbow lights after the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell image found here |
The day Biden signed the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which enshrined gay marriage into law, he lit up the White House again with the rainbow. It was the 20th of Kislev, the day mentioned in Ezra that God said he couldn’t respect a marriage. [I couldn’t find the verse he’s referencing. In the KJV, it is spelled Chisleu (elsewhere Chislev); I found that in Nehemiah 1 and Zechariah 7, but not in Ezra. Cahn likely references chapter and verse in his book.]
There’s some hopeful news to follow. Cahn tells this story.
His associate pastor had a dream, didn’t know what it meant, but knew it was
meant for Jonathan Cahn, so he described it to him. There were altars, and they
began to break open, and all these spirits came out.
Jonathan knew it was about the book he was working on, Return of the Gods. He finished it on June 24, the very day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The altar (big altar of 60 million dead babies) was broken. As he put it, the word of God broke the power that evil had had.
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| Jonathan Cahn talks with Glenn Beck, screenshot from here |
Jonathan Cahn and Glenn Beck have a conversation toward the
end about the separation of darkness and light:
JC: When the
grays are disappearing, it’s time for the lights to get brighter. You know. And
it’s kind of like, if the dark is removing the gray to get even darker, the
light has to remove the gray to get even lighter. These are the times we have
to shine even brighter.
GB: I haven’t
told this for a long time. I grew up in Seattle; 310 cloudy days out of the
year. I moved to Phoenix; not a cloud in the sky ever. OK. And I remember one
of the first days I was there, I stood outside, and I just watched the shadow
that I was casting, because it was so dark and crisp. I had never seen it. I’d
always seen kind of just like a shadow here on the table, just barely there,
you know, because the sun wasn’t bright. And I’ve taken that lesson my whole
life as, only when the light is getting brighter is the shadow more defined and
seemingly darker. But the light is there.
JC: Yeah. And
that’s an encouragement that— You know, there’s kind of been a gray Christianity,
because when everybody’s Christian, it doesn’t necessarily mean something. Everywhere
Christian. I grew up in that culture. You….
But now it means something. It means more than it has ever meant. Now,
to follow God, to follow Jesus, it’s going to cost, but it’s gonna mean— It’s
more important than ever. You know, the candle in the daytime, you barely see
it; the candle at night, literally lights up the world. And that’s what we’re supposed
to be.
You said
something very interesting, because, as you said it, I thought, OK, well, the
light’s getting brighter. Well, the light’s coming. You know, we’re getting
closer to that. When Hitler, when all hell broke loose on the world, Israel was
coming. The prophecies were coming. All that was coming. So all hell breaks
loose. So it’s a good sign. You know, we— You know, Jesus is called the Lamb of
God. He’s also called the Lion of Judah. And he’s coming….
There’s another video I watched—never heard this guy, Pastor
Mark Driscoll, before; he was talking about Elijah and the priests of Baal,
overall, which is maybe relevant to today’s discussion, but I’m not going
there. In the introductory part, he’s talking about a study from the National
Library of Medicine, which came out recently (the video was posted two weeks
ago). He tells us:
Epidemiological
studies find a positive association between physical and sexual abuse, neglect,
and witnessing violence in childhood and same-sex sexuality in adulthood.” Here’s
this study, non-Christian study. Today, teens and 20-somethings that are
struggling with mental illness and gender confusion, it’s because many, if not
most of them, were abused and have trauma. They either were sexually abused,
physically abused, or they witnessed trauma and abuse.
And so, wouldn’t
the healthy thing to be say, well, if they have trauma and abuse, let’s get
them some help and some healing, and see if they’re doing better, and see if
they think differently? No, let’s seize their custody from their parents who
can no longer care for them, and let’s mutilate them.
It’s new days,
but it’s old demons.
Pastor%20Mark%20Driscoll.png) |
| Pastor Mark Driscoll, screenshot from here |
For those of you who resist because of your desire to
support friends who face same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, are you
really helping them by supporting the choices that move them away from the
church of the Lamb? Wouldn’t it be better to just keep loving them, but also
encourage them to get help for their trauma? (I wrote about this in more detail
here; there is help available in the way of standard, recognized therapy.)
We’re in a time in which there is a separation happening. We
were told the prophecy about the wheat and the tares, and we’re seeing it. But
we weren’t told this because there’s no hope; we’re told this so we can choose
to be wheat. If we’ve been deceived, we can get undeceived; we can repent. We
can miraculously change from a tare into wheat, because God does miracles within
us.
These symbolic things, as we can see from what is going on around
us, are also literal.
There are only two churches: if you’re not in God’s church—written
in the Lamb’s book of life—then you’re in the devil’s church. If you’re a tare,
you get separated out from the harvest of the wheat and destroyed.
Knowing we have a loving God, I believe He will give every one
of us as many opportunities as possible for us to choose Him. He is giving us
warnings. He is giving us invitations to come unto Him—and He asks us to pass
along these invitations to His lost children. Even after the destructions that
await the wicked, He will preach and offer opportunities. Those who want to
seek the Good but are deceived will probably find the Good at some point. But
those who rebel against God and hate the Good will never be forced into loving
God. They will, however, be forced to kneel and confess that He rules and
reigns.
All this is to say, be wheat; be fruitful and good. Choose
to belong to the church of the Lamb. If you’ve been deceived, come awake now
and repent. Today is the day to allow Him to change your inner makeup from a tare
into wheat, so you can be gathered in the garners rather than burned and
destroyed.
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