I am intrigued by the History channel program Ancient Aliens and the History channel’s Secrets of Skin Walker Ranch as well as the growing curiosity with UFOs, UAPs and paranormal activity. Why all of a sudden? Why the fascination with the idea that another realm may be attempting to interact in our realm? Does the mystery of ancient megalithic structures, strange gods that seem consistent with civilizations around the planet, and theories about visitors from space leaving early humans incredible knowledge have merit? It does, if you believe that there is another realm.

I have been reading and re-reading books addressing the decline in America that we are witnessing now on a daily basis.  The world is collapsing before our eyes.  What I have found captivating is how  the three books I am currently studying relate to each other. It is uncanny.  Three separate authors addressing the decline in the world.  I am certain that they did not collaborate in their research and writing.  I am also certain they do not know each other personally.  And yet, their take is remarkably consistent.

In the last blog I highlighted the book “Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and The Dark Age to Come” by John Daniel Davidson (Regnery Publishing, 2024) In this blog I have excerpted three chapters from Jonathan Chan’s book, “The Return of the Gods” (Frontline, 2022)  I will add a third entry from the book, Magic Soup, Typing Monkeys, and Horny Aliens from Outer Space: The patently absurd, wholly unsubstantiated and extravagantly failed Atheist Origin Myth” (Evan Sayet, 2023).

I recommend all three books for your reading.  I believe you too will find them provocative and riveting.  The excerpts I have chosen provide highlights of each work.  Reading them in their entirety is worth the time.

Jonathan Cahn in his book “The Return of the Gods” begins by  referencing a parable from the Bible.  

     “Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man it passes through waterless places,

      seeking rest, and does not find it.  Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I 

      came’ and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept and put in order.  Then it goes

      and takes along seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live

      there; and the last state of man becomes worse than the first.  That is the way it will 

      also be with this evil generation.”  Matthew 12:43-45

Cahn masterfully proceeds to interpret this prophetic parable of Jesus by comparing the present day with the ancient pagan world.  From the Cananites that perpetually harassed the Jews in the Old Testament to the pagan societies of Greece, Rome, and dozens of  others. Cahn focuses on the three ancient Gods of all the Pagan cultures.  Baal, Molech, and Ishtar.  All three gods are in reality demonic spirits that possessed both individuals and entire cultures.  

Jesus death and resurrection and the gospel that followed forced the demons and their hords out of the human realm during the first three centuries following Jesus death and resurrection.   The power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel has held the demonic world at bay for now two thousand years.  They have returned.  And as the parable predicts, they have returned with other spirits more wicked than the first, and they will go into the empty house and the last state of man will become worse than the first.

For me 1973 is the pivotal year.  Cahn points to a number of events in the 1960s and 70s as the opening of the door to the ancient demons.  He then compares the writings and words of the ancient pagan spirits with the transformation of the world and specifically the United States in the last 50 years.  Baal, the spirit of materialism and greed. Ishtar, the goddess of sexuality and violence, and Molech, the god of death and human sacrifice.  These were the names attributed to the  gods by ancient Canaanites.  The ones that for centuries  the Jewish people into worshiping them at their peril.  You will find these three spirits in all of the pagan cultures.  Different names, same Satanic spirits.  The three have returned and as Wyatt Earp says in Tombstone, “And they are bringing hell with them.”

The parable is being fulfilled in our day and time.  The gospel is being eliminated, the house emptied and in  it’s place seven times greater are the ancient gods of Satan.  The book is a very fast read and it is frightening in its scope yet incredibly positive in the hope that remains in the cross and gospel of Jesus Christ.  I recommend it highly.  Here are the three concluding chapters of the book.

Every Knee Shall Bow  Chapter 50

The gods had come back not only to exact vengeance but for dominion.  They had returned to reign.

In ancient times they reigned over the cultures in which they were enshrined.  But when those cultures turned to God, they were forced to abdicate, to leave their thrones and go into exile.  Having returned, they would again lift their scepters and aspire to mastery and dominion.

KINGSHIP OF THE GODS

Baal, the first of the dark trinity, was know as the “King of the gods” and “Lord of the earth.”  The name “Baal”—or “Lord”, “Owner.”  and “Master”—was not only his title but a description of his nature.  He would seek to master, to own, and to lord.  In his mythologies, he battled the Canaanite gods to gain or regain lordship and authority  The ancient “Baal Epic” reveals his ambition:

          Mighty Baal…desired the kingship of the Gods. 

And he would have it.  He would become the undisputed lord of the Canaanite deities.  The same spirit would war against the God of Israel.

THE DAYS OF BAAL

It was through a spirit of tolerance and openness that Baal gained entrance into the culture of ancient Israel.

     But once his worship and cult became widespread and established, once it touched the highest levels of authority, everything changed.  The tolerance of earlier days came to an end. It had served its function as a doorway through which Baal could enter.  Baal now reigned as the nation’s god, and there would be no room for the nation’s former God.  He would seek to achieve total domination.  Everyone would now be required to call him “Baal,” or “Lord.

     Anyone and anything that now stood in his way was to be eliminated.  He would war against God and His people and anyone who still upheld the former ways.  He would use all means at His disposal, the power of culture, the power of state, and the power of his cult.  Those who held to and upheld the ways of God would now be branded as troublemakers, agitators, and enemies of the state. Thus came the days when the righteous were persecuted and the prophets were hunted down—the days of Baal.

OPENING AND CLOSING

It goes back to the ancient parable. “The spirits seek to return to the house.”

     When one is trying to get into a house, one seeks openness. One pushes to open its door.  

So when the gods were seeking to get into the American house and that of Western civilization, the focus was on openness and tolerance.  It was never really about either.  Openness and tolerance were only the means of opening the door and to gain entrance. They were the way to cause a nation and a civilization to abandon the values they had long cherished for what was new and foreign  It was for that reason that the entrance of the gods was most dramatically seen in the 1960s, when openness and tolerance were sacred mantras.

     But once one gets through the door and inside the house, one no longer seeks openness.  If one’s aim is to stay in the house, then one now seeks to close the door.  So once the gods came into America and became established, once people started accepting their ways and authorities, the ideal or openness would now work against them.

     They had to consolidate their power.  They had to close the door.  So there was a change in the atmosphere.  A chill came over free speech.  The doors began to close. Any dissent from the new morality could now be met with punishment.  One was free to endorse the new ways of the gods, but one was not free to challenge them.

     Most people had no idea why it was happening or how it could change so dramatically.  But it was the logical conclusion to the entrance of the gods.

BAALS OF THE UNIVERSE

So as it was in the days of Baal in ancient Israel, it was in America.  The earlier tolerance would be replaced by a new “enlightened” tolerance.  It would manifest as political correctness, then wokeness, and cancel culture. Every word that could now be interpreted as expressing dissent from the newly sanctioned view was subject to judgment and censure.  Anything that could be interpreted as challenging or differing from the new morality had to be cancelled.

     In ancient Israel, Baal could use kings and queens, an Ahab and a Jezebel, as his vessels to stamp out dissent and cancel opposition.  But now, in addition to the powers of the state, Baal could employ technology, social media, the internet to stamp out dissent and cancel the opposition.  And with more and more communication taking place online, Baal and his fellow gods could control human speech, behavior, and thought in a way that was never before possible.

     It was no accident that in the last days before the destruction of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah was thrown into prison.  The gods had taken over the culture, and through the nation’s leaders, had sought to silence prophets and all opposition.  The tolerance for new gods had morphed into a culture of oppression—a cancel culture.

     In the modern case the leaders of Silicon Valley were more than willing to comply with the new directives of Baal.  That which challenged the authority of the new gods would, at their hands, be canceled.  Baal had been heralded as “Lord of the Earth.”  The leaders of Big Tech had been labeled the “Masters of the Universe.”  In biblical Hebrew the word master is Baal.  So the title could be rendered the “Baals of the Universe.”

ISHTAR UNLEASHED

But Baal was not the only god seeking dominion.  As the name Baal means lord, the name Molech means king.  Molech would seek his own kingdom.  He could use the abortion industry and the extreme and the radically woke as instruments. 

     Then there was Ishtar.  She too sought dominion.  She craved it, even if it meant taking over the dominions of other gods.  She stold the powers of civilization away from her father.  She attempted to take control of the underworld from her sister. And she was believed to have taken over the Eanna, temple of the sky god, An.

     Ishtar would accept nothing less than the total submission of her subjects.  If they refused, she would respond with fury.  In one of her myths, she rages against a mountain that failed to show her reverence:

           As I, the goddess, approached the mountain it showed me no respect…Since they 

           showed me no respect, since they did not put their noses to the ground for me,

           since they did not rub their lips in the dust for me, I shall personally fill the soaring

           mountain range with my terror. (2)

     Since Ishtar was the goddess of war, her response to any perceived lack of homage or submission could be especially calamitous and deadly.  She would seek to destroy any who did not reverence her.

     Her return to the modern world came, as it die for the other gods, through the doorway of tolerance.  And upon gaining power, her focus would turn to dominion.  Anyone who refused to pay her homage, anyone refusing to go along with her altering of sexuality, marriage, and gender, would suffer the unleashing of her fury.  She would vilify them, portray them as haters, incite the culture against them, and seek to deprive them of their livelihood, their speech, and their freedom.

THE TOTALITARIAN

It was a strange transformation.  Cultures that had for so long espoused the virtues of freedom and tolerance would suddenly begin espousing the virtues of intolerance.  Nations that had long venerated free speech as a sacred pillar of their democracy now venerated its suppression.  But it was all part of the mystery ushered in by the returning gods.

     The “open” culture that welcomed them in began closing up.  In place of tolerance and freedom of speech came ideological conformity and the crushing of speech and thought.  They were signs.  The gods were consolidating their hold on American and Western culture.

     One now had to watch every word that came out of one’s mouth, every comment posted online, even one’s own thoughts.  If one spoke or wrote in a way that violated the new dogmas of the gods, they were to be punished or were forced to publicly confess their sins.  It was a new totalitarianism, birthed of the god’s new dominion.

     But even liberals who were not radical enough now found themselves under siege by the more radical new guard.  Liberal professors now found themselves attacked by their students for upholding free speech and in danger of losing their jobs.  Old school feminists now came under fire for upholding the existence of women against the campaign to abolish them.

     But they had all been used by the gods.  And now the agenda was moving to another stage and passing them by.  They could be disposed of.  The revolution the gods had inaugurated was devouring its own children.

EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW

And though it was now dressed in modern clothing, the phenomenon was as old as Baal.  When he had gained dominion in Israel, every knee was to bow before him. Those who refused to bow were risking death.  So too in Babylon, the Jewish peers of the prophet Daniel were commanded to bow down to the golden idol.  They would not and so would be sentenced to execution.  In Rome the Christians were compelled to worship the gods of Rome.  Those who refused did so at the risk of imprisonment and execution.

     In each case the persecution was connected to the gods and to the act of bowing down.  it had always been their nature to force every knee to bow down in their presence.  It was this that lay behind the new totalitarianism.  In their newfound dominion, the gods moved upon government and corporate organizations to force their employees to attend indoctrination sessions into the ways of wokeness and the new codes of ethics, expelled students from schools and universities for affirming the existence of male and female, forced parents to transition their children, brought lawsuits agains shopkeepers for refusing to violate their faith, and compelled others to give homage to the sign of the rainbow.

     Many were mystified by the transformation overtaking their culture.  But the phenomenon was ancient.  The gods were doing as they had done in ancient times.   They would not rest until every knee had bowed down before them and every tongue confessed that they were the new and undisputed lords,

DOMINION

The gods had promised that, in exchange for abandoning God, they would usher in a culture of freedom.  But instead they had ushered in a culture in which every knee, word, and thought was forced to bow down in their veneration.

     Nations whose core identities were based on freedom and opposition to totalitarianism now discarded the first and freely adopted the latter.  Having turned away from God, they found themselves compelled to kneel before their new masters.

     The spirits now inhabited government chambers, corporate boardrooms, college campuses, courtrooms, television, movie and computer screens, music, popular culture, youth culture, children’s culture and virtually every corner of American and Western society.  The new totalitarianism was a sign that the gods had achieved their dominion.  They had successfully transferred a Christian civilization into a pagan one.

     And as for those who had defied their dominion and would not bow down their knee, the gods would pass the same judgment on them as they had on those who refused them in ancient times—there would be no room for them in the dominion of the gods.

What is the end of the mystery? To where does it all lead?  The answer was their from the beginning, in the valleys, in the groves, in their temples, and on the high places.  The answer lay on the altars.

ALTARS OF THE GODS  Chapter 51

The prophet walked through the ruins of the holy city and wept.  He had foretold its destruction.  He had warned the people against the gods.  But they rejected his warning.  They continued in their course, turning all the more from God and all the more to their gods and idols.  The gods had promised to give them prosperity, freedom, and fulfillment.  But they had now given them their gift—destruction.  Jerusalem now lay in ruins and burning ash, and the nation was no more.

THE ALTARS 

It was the inevitable conclusion.  It was the nature of the gods to bring destruction.  Their worship involved altars.  Their altars involved blood—even the blood of children.  That was the price of following them.  That was the demand of the spirits.

     It is no accident that those most closely joined to the gods were those most likely to engage in acts of self-destruction.  The priests of Ball slashed themselves.  The priests of Ishtar spilled their own blood in the goddess’s processions.  And the worshippers of Moloch offered up as blood sacrifices their own flesh and blood in the form of their children.

     The gods destroyed their own.  The gods caused them to destroy themselves and to celebrate their own destruction.

THE KEYS OF DESTRUCTION

How did they do it?  How did they cause their followers to destroy themselves?  They removed from the lives of their subjects purpose and meaning.  When life has no meaning, no purpose, no absolute value, it then proceeds toward death and destruction,  The lives of children can then be disposed of and sacrificed. If the gods can remove purpose from sexuality, it can be repurposed in any direction, and it will stop producing life.  Then it will give birth instead to death.  if the gods can remove man from manhood and woman from womanhood, it will bring about destruction, the disintegration of family, society, and lives.  If they can remove the purpose of marriage, then it too will disintegrate.  When purpose is removed, destruction follows.

     So they did to ancient Israel.  They drew the nation of God away from God and from the purpose for which it had been created.  The gods removed the nation’s reason for existing.  And it ceased to exist.

FILLING THE ALTAR

So when the gods returned to the modern world, they set out to do the same.  Sexuality was again removed from marriage, man from manhood, woman from womanhood, marriage for the state of marriage, humanity from humanity, and life from life.  Behind it all was the removal of purpose.  From that would come destruction.  And in destruction their altars would be filled.

     The purpose of life can only be found in the One who created it—GOD.  Therefore, to be separated from God is to be separated from one’s purpose and reason for existing.  And so the returning gods set their focus on separating all from God and each from its purpose.

JUDGMENT TIME

As the days of Israel’s destruction neared, the shadow of the gods deepened.  It was then that the prophet Jeremiah stood overlooking the valley where the Israelites had built altars to Baal and Molech and sacrificed their children.  It was then that he prophesied the nation’s destruction and smashed the potter’s jar to the ground.

     It was then that the prophet Ezekiel was taken in a vision into the Temple courts and saw the women of Israel, in the spirit of Ishtar, weeping for Tammuz.  It was then that he saw the elders of Israel in the Temple’s inner courts worshipping the sun.  And it was then that he hears the command given for the judgment to begin.

     The nation’s judgment was bound to the gods.  The nation’s destruction would come from Babylon and Mesopotamia, the land of the goddess and her fellow gods.  Those who carried out the destruction were the worshippers and servants of the Babylonian and Mesopotamian gods.

     It would all begin in the month dedicated to the goddess and her lover, the month of Tammuz, (June present calendar), the time of the summer festival, the “June parades.” it was the ninth day of Tammuz when the soldiers of Babylon broke through the defensive walls of Jerusalem.  The city’s hedge of protection was removed.  Destruction would now be only a matter of time.  The ninth of Tammuz would be commemorated as a national day of sorrow and morning.  Centuries later the walls of Jerusalem would again be breached, this time by another pagan army, that of Rome.   The judgment would begin in the same month—Tammuz.  The Roman breaching of the city on the seventeenth day of the month would, as well, be commemorated as a national day of sorrow and mourning.

     In each case, the destruction began in the same month, the month of the god linked to Ishtar.  That the nation’s judgment began in Tammuz was significant as well since Tammuz was the month of the nation’s apostasy and judgement , starting with the golden calf.  So the judgment came in the days of the gods.  It was fitting, as it was the gods to which the nations turned that would bring about its destruction.

WARNING OF JUDGMENT

What about America?  The gods brought judgment and destruction to Israel.  Could America likewise be in danger of judgment and destruction? Both nations had been dedicated to God at their inception, both had turned away from God, both had followed the gods of Baal, Molech, and the goddess Ishtar.

     But America had gone further.  It had become the world’s primary vessel for the return of the gods.  It had become the world’s chief proponent of materialism, the worship of prosperity, and money, sexual immorality, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, transsexuality, and the alteration of gender.  America had singlehandedly resurrected the goddess’s midsummer festivals and processions, which now covered the world.

     America had hallowed and championed the sign of the rainbow, not only within its borders, but around  the world.  To take the sign given of God’s mercy in the wake of judgment and turn it against the ways of God is to call upon oneself a judgement with no mercy.

     So to America had chosen to strike down the ways of God in the month of the goddess and her lover, the month of gods and judgment.  And it was no accident that it struck down the biblical hedge of marriage on the ninth of Tammuz, the very day that Israel’s protective hedge was struck down and that opened the way for the nation’s judgment.

     The prophets warned Israel that to turn away from God to follow after the gods would lead to destruction.  America has turned away from God and now follows after the gods.  To what then will it lead?  It must as well, in the end, lead to destruction.

But judgment applies no only to nations—but to people.  It applies to each of us.  To partake in a nation’s war against God, to win in its defiance of God, to celebrate the destructions of His ways, to lead little children into confusion and alter their physical beings and thus to cause, in the words of Jesus, these “little ones to stumble,” to cause  these still more little ones to be killed, or to passively condone such things by doing and saying nothing to stop them, is to partake in judgment and to invoke judgment upon one’s own life.

    Then what are we to do?

     Is there an answer to the gods and judgment?

     Is there hope?

For that we must go further.  We must bring all things to their conclusion.  And we must take one more step beyond the gods—to another.

The Other God  Chapter 52

So what does the return of the gods tell us?

     It tells us that there is more to human events, to world history, and even to our own lives, more than we can imagine.  Behind the natural realm lies a more than natural realm.  And that which is more than natural can be good or evil.  We are largely unaware of how the other realm is affecting our world and lives.  But at times it manifests so strongly that it becomes hard to rationalize or ignore.

     Nazi Germany is one such case.  It is so extreme that any attempt to explain it without accounting for that which is beyond the natural is destined to fail.  it was not of the natural but of a realm that is more than natural.  And what is now happening to America and Western civilization is no less beyond the natural and of the other realm.

A MOST DANGEROUS THING

The mystery also tells us, as in the house of spirit, that for a nation or civilization that has known God and turned away from Him and, more specifically, that has known the gospel and turned away from it—it is a most dangerous thing.

     And it is this that lies behind the strange and disturbing transformations overtaking American culture and Western civilization—the rise of irrational ideologies; the nullifying of biology; the denial of reality; the emergence of quasi-religious “secular” movements; the deterioration and transmutation of marriage, family, and gender; the alteration of children; the abolition of man and woman; the murder of the most innocent; the disintegration of society as we have known it; the rise of a new and subtle totalitarianism; the silencing of all that questions such things.

     Even many secular observers and those of no faith have noted that it seems as if something has come to possess America and Western culture; something has taken it over.  But we should not be surprised at what is happening.  The mystery ordains it.  A house that has emptied itself of God cannot remain empty.  It will be seized and taken over by that which is not God.  And when a civilization expels God from its midst, it never ends well.

     What we are now witnessing is a momentous as the Christianization of Western civilization at the beginning of this age—only it is its opposite.  It is the casting out of the spirits in reverse,  It is their invoking, their conjuring, and their reentrance.  It is the repossession of the house. And according to the parable, when the spirit repossess the house, its last state will be worse that its first.

THE GREAT APOSTASY

It is as basic tendency of human nature to fail to realize what one has until it’s gone.  Rarely do we discern the danger from which we are being protected until the protection is removed.  When light is removed, its absence will always be occupied by darkness.  When God is removed, its absence will be occupied by evil.  It was the Word of God, the Judeo-Christian faith, that was protecting Western Civilization.  It should have been no surprise then that when these would be removed, the result would be the return of paganism and the gods.  There was no alternative.

     So the Bible foretells that in the last days there will be a great falling away from the faith, a great apostasy.  It is now taking place.  It also foretells that in the last days evil and immorality will increase and persecution will come for Christians, for all who hold true to the ways of God.

     The parable warns that the last state will be worse than the first, and the last state is not yet finished.  We can therefore expect the dark to grow darker still.  We have thus not yet seen the last or the worst of the gods.

AGAINST THE GODS

How then is one to live in the days when the civilization around us has become a house of spirits?  How can one stand against the darkness of the house, resist its intimidations, refuse its temptations, defy its powers?  How can one stand against the gods?

     One cannot stand against the gods and be serving them at the same time.  We must remember—that which we most serve, most dwell upon, most rejoice in, and most live for; that which most moves us, draws us, impels us; that which is our greatest joy and ultimate end—that is our god.  And if we serve any of the gods, we cannot stand against them.

     We must renounce any and all gods and any hold they have on our lifestyle.  Though in their house, we must not be of their house.  We must take no part in their ways, have no communion with their spirits, leave no gap for their entrance, and pay no heed to their commandments.,

     If the age is ruled by the gods, and our culture by the spirits, if its leaders are led by them, and the majority are impelled by them, then how does one stand?  By what power?  Only a power strong enough to resist them.  And there is only one.  There is only one antidote.

THE ELOHIM MYSTERY

The only answer to the gods—is God.  The powers of the gods can be overcome by the power of God.  In the Hebrew Scriptures the word for God is Elohim.  Elohim is plural.  It speaks of the one true God in His transcendence and limitlessness.  But the same word, translated as “God” is, in other contexts, translated “the gods”.  The strange property of the word reveals a profound truth. In the end, it will come down to one Elohim or the other—the Elohim of God or the elohim of the gods.

     We were each created with an emptiness that can only be filled by God’s presence.  our hearts possess a God-shaped vacuum.  So no matter what else we have, without God our lives and hearts remain empty.  But if we are not filled by Elohim, by God, we will end up being filled by the elohim—by the gods. The elohim of the gods manifests in many forms and appearances.  Whither it is the elohim of money, success, pleasure, acceptance, self-obsession, addiction, or any other thing, they are in the end, elohim substitutes for the absence of the One who is Elohim, God.

     We were each made to seek and find Him.  But if we do not find the Elohim of God, we will end up serving and worshipping the elohim of the gods.  The pagan world was filled with them.  But the center of that world was empty, darkened, restless, without peace, purpose, or hope.  So the apostle Paul described the condition of those living in paganism as

        …having no hope and without God in the world.

     Modern culture, having turned away from God and to the gods, is now marked by the same signs that once marked the ancient pagan world: purposelessness, emptiness, and hopelessness. And the answer to the modern world is the same as to the ancient, and all the more so—God.

YOU AMONG THE GODS

The answer is even more specific.   When the pagan world was set free from its bondage to the gods, it was set free through a specific name, the name of Yeshua, Jesus.  The name stood out among the gods.  In Hebrew it means “The Lord is salvation.”  For the pagan world it meant that there was one God and only one who could actually bring freedom and bring redemption.

     Yeshua, Jesus, was unique among the gods in every way.  He did not exist in a mythological world of fantasy and imagination but in real time and real space, in the flesh-and-blood realm of historical reality.   He did not walk the mythical regions of the underworld, the fields of Elysium or the halls of Valhalla, but the dry and dusty roads of first-century Judea.  The gospel message of His death and resurrection was not based on a recurring mythological cycle but on the historical accounting of those who witnessed it and who neither expected it to happen nor understood it when it did—but whose lives were then radically transformed by it.

     In his song of praise to God, Moses asked “Who is like You O Lord, among the gods?”  There had never been one among the gods like Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth.  There had never been one among the gods with a message so wholly centered on so radical a love,  There had never been one among the gods who told His followers that they were to love even their enemies and forgive those who persecuted them.

     There had never been one among the gods who was called the”Friend of Sinners,” nor one who had so loved and reached out to the outcast, the rejected, the broken, and the lost.  There had never been one among the gods who could say to the world, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” and, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” and have such words ring true.   Not had there ever been one among the gods who not only spoke of so radical a love but who actually lived and died as its embodiment.

THE OTHER ALTAR

Where there were gods, there were altars.  The gods demanded sacrifices even if the sacrifices were the children of their worshippers, Yeshua also had an altar.  But there were none among the altars of the gods like His altar.  Nor had any god done what He had done.  Instead of  demanding that He be given a sacrifice, He alone gave His life as the sacrifice.  Instead of taking life, He gave His life—so that life would be given to the world, to all who would receive it.

     On the first Passover, it is written that the gods of Egypt were brought into judgment and the people of God were set free from their bondage.  it is no accident that the day on which Jesus died was Passover.  For it is by that that the powers and strongholds of the gods are broken.  And by that, those who were enslaved and under their bondage are set free.

     He was the opposite of the gods.  He was their antidote.  To Him belonged the power to cast out the spirits and set free the possessed.  it is no accident that it was He who cast out the gods of the pagan world and set free an empire and a civilization that had been possessed and ruled of them.

THE ANTIDOTE TO THE GODS

The uniqueness of Yeshua, Jesus was not confined to the ancient world.  His influence and impact on the world would exceed and outlast that of every other leader, ruler, power, nation, and empire.  He would become the central figure of our planet.  Every moment of human history, every event that took place on earth, would be marked and dated by its relation to His birth.

     Even two thousand years after His coming, even in the modern world there was still none like Him among the gods.  There was none so feared and hated by them.  He had cast them out of the ancient world, and upon their return, they would wage war against Him, against His word and people.  And so the persecution against Christians would be greater than in the days of the Roman arenas.

     But that fact revealed a critical truth: He was, in the modern world, as much as He had been in the ancient, the only antidote to the gods—the only answer.  As it was in the ancient world, so too in the modern—in Him alone was the power to break their chains, pull down their strongholds, nullify their spells and curses, and set their captives free.

THE INFINITE ANSWER

As the presence of darkness is dependent on the absence of light, so the power of the gods was and is dependent on the absence of God,  It was that absence in the ancient pagan world that allowed them to rule and thrive.  And it was the same absence in the apostasy of the modern world that allowed the gods to return.

     So in order to achieve dominion, the gods had to separate nations, cultures, civilizations from God—and also individuals.  If one is separated from God, one is subject to the gods, to the power of darkness.

     But the power of Yeshua, Jesus is the opposite.  It is the power to end the separation, to remove everything that has separated us from God, starting with sin—as all have sinned.  And a single sin is enough to create an infinite separation from the One who is infinitely good.  And an infinite separation requires an infinite answer to bridge the gap.  And so only an infinite life and an infinite love, the life and love of God given in Yeshua, in sacrifice on the cross, can fill the gap, end the separation, and bring reconciliation and redemption.

     And so the gospel message that came into the pagan world was this by death of Jesus of Nazareth, there is forgiveness of sin—every sin, redemption for every life, and the ending of every separation from God.  And by His resurrection from death, there is restoration of all brokenness, the nullifying of every curse, and eternal life—for all who will receive it.

GEHENNA AND HEAVEN

The generation of Israelites that followed the gods perished in judgment while sacrificing their children in the Valley of Hinton.  In Hebrew, the Valley of Hinton was called Get Hinton.  The name would become Gehenna.  Gehenna is another name for hell.  The gods had led them there. The gods lead to hell.  They are bent on death and destruction.  They are the spirits of hell.

     But the other God is bent on heaven and eternal life.  The message of salvation is that Yeshua, Jesus, bore your judgment so that you would never have to. And by that salvation, you are set free from all darkness, all sin, all judgment, and all hell and given life, here and now and forever—heaven. It is the power to nullify the past, to end the old life, and to begin anew, to be born of God, born of heaven, born again.

THE TRUE GOD AND HOW TO RECEIVE HIM

There is no life so far from God that His mercy cannot reach it.  There is no sin one has committed that is so great His forgiveness is not greater still; no bondage, no addiction, no chain so strong that it can withstand His power to break it; no past so defiled, so full of guilt and shame, that His power to redeem it is not still greater; and no darkness so dark that His love is not deeper still.  He is the light that drives out all darkness, the hope that overcomes all hopelessness, the grace that washes away all sin, guilt, and shame, and the way that breaks open every wall and barrier and makes possible what was not.  His arms are still open, and His love is calling one only has to say yes to receive it, to receive Him.

     How?  It is as simple as opening one’s  heart and life to the love of God, to give Him one’s sins and burdens, one’s all, to receive Him into one’s life, to let His presence come into one’s heart, His light into the darkness, His forgiveness, His cleansing, His Word, His peace, His Spirit into every part of one’s life, to turn away from all darkness, all sin, all idols, and all gods, to put one’s faith in Yeshua, Jesus, as one’s Lord and Savior, and to begin following Him as His disciple all the days of one’s life.

     It is as simple as making Him who is the only Lord the true Lord of your life and Him who is the only true God the true God of your life.

OVERCOMING THE WORLD

And so we return to the question: How then is one to live in a civilization that has become a house of spirits?

     The only way is by the power of God.  It is only by His power that one can stand against the gods.  It is only by His love that one can overcome all hatred,  Only by His grace can one overcome all sin. Only by His hand can one break the chains of all bondage.  And only by His light can one overcome the darkness of the age.

     And no matter how deep the darkness, the evil, or the odds, the light of God will be greater still.  For God is far greater than the gods. And in God is the power to overcome the power of the gods.  And in His Spirit is the power to overcome the spirits of the age.

     For in the days of the gods, one must never bow one’s knew to any idol, any darkness, or any evil.  In days of darkness the light must not waver or weaken but most grow stronger.  And it the dark grows darker still, then the light must shine all the more brightly into it.  And those who will not give up will, in the end prevail.

THE END OF THE GODS

The gods have returned.  They have ascended the thrones of the modern world. They seek to make every knee bow down before them.  But their kingdom is false, their authority illegitimate, and their days numbered.

     Their kingdom will end.  And those who have stood for the light who have lived their lives by  the light, and who have  believed in, hoped for, and waited for the light for them the Light will come, an in that Light they will arise and shine.  To them will come the kingdom in which there is no more darkness, nor more tears, no more sorrow, and no more death.

The gods have returned.  But their days will come to an end.  And evil will give way to the good, the falsehood to the truth, and the darkness to the breaking of dawn.  Then the illusions of the night, its dreams, and nightmares, will fade into the waking of the day, and the gods into the brightness of His coming, the coming of Him who is the only Light—and who alone is God.”

The Return of the Gods, by Jonathan Chan.  Chapters 50-52