The Unseen Realm Week 15

Chapter 15

The Arch

BEYOND THE molten bull another sign of Baal appeared in America, and again in New York City. And on the day of its appearing, the city would hold a celebration in its honor.

Baal’s role in Israel’s fall was critical. The nation would be destroyed, but Baal would go on. He was worshipped throughout the Middle East up to the first centuries of the present age. In the first century, in the city of Palmyra, in what is now Syria, a temple was built for his worship. A century later a second temple of Baal was built in the same city, nearby the first.

The Temple of Baal

The first would be known as the Temple of Baal, or the Temple of Bel, after the god’s Babylonian name. The second would be known as the Temple of Baalshamin, referring to the god as the Lord of the Heavens, or the Baal of the Sky. Both temples would remain standing for nearly two thousand years.

Less than a hundred years after the building of the Temple of Baalshamin, a monumental arch was added, the Arch of Palmyra. It was built to connect the Temple of Bel with the city’s main colonnaded avenue. The arch was the gateway through which the inhabitants of Palmyra would enter in order to worship their supreme deity. It stood in between the two temples.

In the spring of 2015 the jihadist organization Isis invaded Palmyra. After gaining control of the city, its soldiers began the systematic destruction of the city’s ancient buildings and artifacts. After surviving nearly two thousand years of history, the two temples of Baal were destroyed, as was the arch between them.

The Mystery Object

In September of the following year, a mysterious object appeared in New York City, mysterious as it was shrouded in white cloth so no one could actually see it. It was massive, nearly eleven tons of Egyptian marble and rising nearly twenty feet from the ground. It was an arch, a massive recreation of the arch that led to the Temple of Baal.

It had appeared in London and would later appear in other Western cities, including Washington, DC. But the appearance of the arch that had served as the entranceway to Baal’s Temple in New York City was especially significant. For New York City had played a central role in America’s apostasy from God and, in many ways, served as the capital of that fall. It had functioned as a conduit for Baal’s entrance into American civilization.

City of Baal

And it was New York City in which stood America’s modern equivalents to the temples of Baal, its houses and monuments of materialism, increase, and gain. It could even be said that New York City was itself a spiritual Temple of Baal.

Even the location of the arch within the city was significant. It was erected in Lower Manhattan at the entrance to the city’s Financial District. Nearby was Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and the other sign of Baal, the molten Bull of Wall Street. As the Arch of Palmyra once stood as the entranceway to the Temple of Baal, the arch in New York City now stood at the entranceway to America’s temples of Baal.

And as the ancient arch had connected Baal’s temple with the city’s main avenue, the re-created arch stood by New York City’s most famous and main avenue, Broadway, the modern equivalent to the Great Colonnade at Palmyra. So too did the molten bull; the two symbols of Baal were joined.

The specific site chosen for the arch was also significant. It was erected on the grounds of City Hall, New York City’s central seat of government. And the city officials would take part in its unveiling.

The Unveiling

On the morning of September 19, 2016, New Yorkers gathered around the arch for a special event—its unveiling and presentation. By the arch stood a sign placed there by the event’s sponsors on which the name of Baal appeared. Among the speakers at the unveiling was the city’s deputy mayor, who described the erection of the arch as an “act of defiance.”

Providing the ambience for the event was a band playing Middle Eastern music evocative of the sounds that would have accompanied the music played in ancient times in the Temple of Baal. It was to those Middle Eastern sounds that the massive sheet covering the object was pulled away and the arch revealed to the applause of the gathered spectators.

Baal on Capitol Hill

One can find incidents of Baal worship in the earliest days of Israel’s history, as early as its entrance into the Promised Land. The incidents served as a warning of the greater apostasy that would come in later times. So too America’s relationship with Baal and even with his temples in Palmyra began long before the Arch of Palmyra appeared on its shores.

In 1753, after an expedition to the Middle East to Palmyra, the British scholar Robert Wood published The Ruins of Palmyra. The book would influence English and American architects of the era. It is believed that through that book the elements of the ancient Temple of Baal in Palmyra were incorporated into the US Capitol Building. It is also believed that from one of the drawings in that book, that of an eagle from one of the temples of Palmyra, came the Great Seal of the United States.

As with Israel, so with America, the potential for national apostasy was there from the beginning, the shadow of Baal, embedded in the nation’s spiritual DNA. America had been conceived after the pattern of ancient Israel. And so if it turned away from God, in that day, the spirit of Baal would enter in. And now it had.

Portal to Baal

And so the nation that had turned to Baal received the sign of Baal in the form of a massive stone arch. The entranceway to Baal’s Temple was placed at the entranceway to American civilization.

And that the arch would appear in other Western capitals was also a sign. The civilization that had once identified itself with the faith of ancient Israel was now being marked with the sign of Baal, the god by which Israel had fallen away from its faith—the sign of a civilization now waging war against the ways of God.

The arch was the gateway to and from the worship of Baal. Its reappearance was the sign of a nation and a civilization that had given him a portal and welcomed him back—a sign that that nation and that civilization had now become a Temple of Baal.

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Could an ancient event that took place by a desert mountain contain a prophetic revelation and a critical warning concerning what is now taking place in America and Western civilization?

And could that revelation and warning be embedded in the walls of the American government?

Chapter 16

The Golden Calf Civilization

B EFORE WE move to the second god of the dark trinity, we must return to an ancient mountain for one more revelation.

The Prototype

The first case of national apostasy recorded in Scripture was that of Israel’s fall at Mount Sinai. While Moses stood on the mountaintop receiving the Ten Commandments, the people of Israel waited at the mountain’s base. Growing impatient at his delayed return, they decided to make a god of molten metal in the image of an egel, the bull calf. After creating the idol, they held a celebration in its honor. They feasted and drank with music and festivity, offered up sacrifices on its altar, and as the Scriptures record, “corrupted themselves.” Then came judgment.

What happened at Sinai was a prototype and template of national apostasy. The template is now replaying in America and Western civilization.

The central elements of that prototype have reappeared—the departure from the Word and ways of God, the rejection of the Ten Commandments, the process of deification, the worshipping and serving of idols, and the replacement of God with a flood of sensuality and licentiousness. And in the case of America, we may add in the actual creation of a molten image of the bull family and the actual striking down of the Ten Commandments.

The Face of Moses

There is another element from the apostasy at Sinai—the face of Moses, gazing down in anguish at his nation’s fall. There is on Capitol Hill, in the chamber where the House of Representatives convenes, a face. It is a unique face, the only full-faced representation in that chamber. In fact, all the other faces in profile are turned to it. It is the face of Moses. It gazes down at the speaker’s podium. It looks down at the chamber’s proceedings, voting, and passing of legislation, and, at the State of the Union address, on the president.

The face of Moses also appears on the walls of the nation’s highest court. The most prominent figure on the Supreme Court’s eastern side is that of Moses holding the two tablets just as he did on the mountaintop on the day of the Golden Calf. The tablets appear as well on the doors that lead into the Supreme Court Chambers.

So as Moses looked down on Israel’s apostasy from Mount Sinai, he now looked down from Capitol Hill and the nation’s highest court. He looked down on the House of Representatives when it sought to enact laws that warred against the laws of God. He looked down on the president when he sought to advance an agenda to overturn the ways of God.

Days of the Golden Calf

He looked down from the Supreme Court with the Ten Commandments in hand as the Supreme Court struck down the Ten Commandments in the public square. He looked down on the podium in the House Chamber when the officiant dedicated the new congress to the pagan god Brahma. He looked down on America as it descended into apostasy as he had looked down on Israel as it descended into apostasy on the day of the Golden Calf.

The nation that had been founded after the pattern of ancient Israel had now fallen after the pattern of Israel’s fall. It had turned from God and given itself to the gods. Darkness had become light. Light had become darkness. Sin was now holy, and holiness was sin.

Everything was inverted. And Baal, the god of inversion, had done it. He had worked his dark magic.

And the words of the prophets concerning ancient Israel now spoke to America and Western civilization: they had forgotten His name for Baal.

That which had been consecrated to God at its inception was now possessed by His enemy. For it could not be forgotten that the name Baal also meant the Possessor.

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Baal was the first. He opened the door. But he was not alone.

He had a wife, or mistress.

We now move to the next of the returning spirits, the second god of the dark trinity, and the mystery of the Enchantress.