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Rise of “The” God

God took the fallen angels, rebellion “gods,” by surprise with His act of self-sacrifice at Calvary.
Paul put it this way: “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory.” 1
The Greek word translated “rulers,” archontōn, could refer to the Jewish and Roman
officials who sent Jesus to the cross, but in context, it’s more likely that Paul meant principalities
and powers—the supernatural sons of God who’d been in a state of rebellion against their
Creator for more than three thousand years.
The beauty of this spiritual jujitsu move is that Jesus telegraphed it with the Parable of
the Tenants:
And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence
around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and
went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to
get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and
sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck
him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed.
And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other,
a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those
tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance
will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What
will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the

vineyard to others.” (Mark 12:1–9, ESV)

The priests, scribes, and elders assumed that Jesus was talking to them. He was, of
course, but on a deeper level, the parable was directed at the spirits behind the Jewish religious
authorities. The tenants in Jesus’ story were the “sons of God” (Hebrew bene ha-elohim) placed
over the nations after the Tower of Babel incident. The servants sent by the vineyard’s owner

were the prophets, none of whom lived easy lives. The son and heir, of course, was the Messiah,
Jesus.
Even though He told them exactly what would happen, the “cosmic powers over this
present darkness” could not resist sending Him to the cross.
Things didn’t go the way they planned. Jesus took the opportunity of His physical death
to explain a few things to the first generation of rebels, the Watchers who’d been locked up in
Tartarus for the Mount Hermon rebellion.
He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey,
when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah. (1 Peter 3:19b–20a, ESV)
The Greek word translated “proclaimed” is sometimes rendered “preached” in English
Bibles, but the sense of the verse is more forceful than just preaching. In a nutshell, Jesus visited
the Watchers in the abyss to explain what had just taken place in Jerusalem: He was dead in the
flesh, and that was exactly what He wanted to happen.
In other words, to paraphrase Dr. Michael Heiser: “Thank your minions for helping me
complete that part of my mission. By the way, I’m getting out of here at dawn of the third
day—and you’re still dead.”
World history suggests that the gods of the nations have been at war as much with each
other as they’ve been with their Creator. The shock of the Resurrection and the improbable
survival of the early church despite efforts by Rome and Jerusalem to stamp it out forced the
pagan gods to admit they’d been completely outplayed. The clock was ticking and their backs
were against the wall. It was time to try something desperate—setting aside differences for a
joint effort to build a counter-religion to the growing faith in Jesus Christ.

Let’s meet the colleagues of the moon-god as they were described in the texts left behind
by their followers, from the time writing was invented through the period of the early Christian
church.
One of the oldest gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon has a name that’s led to a lot of
confusion over the years about who he is and where his cult began. That’s because the name of
this deity became a generic word for “god” in multiple languages, including some still spoken
today. We’re referring to “the” god, variously known as El, Ilu, Enlil, Dagan (later Dagon), and
Assur in the ancient Near East.
Among the earliest Amorites who came into contact with the Akkadians and Sumerians,
the two most popular deities were the moon-god and “the” god. This is easy to document; we just
need to look at the Amorite names that appear in records archaeologists have found and
translated from ancient Sumer and Akkad.
If we then take a look at the 43 most popular Amorite names (in this case: Amorite
names occurring three times or more). We can see immediately the moon-god Erah
[Note: alternate spelling of Yarikh] and El (‘God’) are the two most popular (and only)
theophoric elements in these early OB Amorite personal names. This is a striking
parallel with the Akkadian personal names. This parallel pleads against the “Amorites”
as newcomers, because such a phenomenon is typically the result of long-term contact

and/or acculturation. 2

The period covered in that study is the time of Abraham and Isaac, texts dated to between
1900 BC and 1791 BC. 3 Considering the number of gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, it’s
significant that Amorites in Akkad and Sumer during the lifetime of Abraham only honored two
of them.
Why these two? Since we’ve already discussed the moon-god in some detail, let’s deal
with his father, “the” god.

First, just like the moon-god, the deity called El was known by a number of different
names over the centuries. A trilingual god list from the Amorite kingdom of Ugarit, which comes
from the time of the judges, offered this handy equation: Enlil = Kumarbi = El. 4
Kumarbi was a god of the Hurrians, an Indo-European people who lived in eastern
Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, roughly the area occupied today by the Kurds in Iraq, Syria,
and Turkey, extending as far north as modern Armenia. His name may derive from an ancient
town in northern Syria, meaning “he of Kumar,” a site identified with modern Kīmār about
twenty-five miles northwest of Aleppo. 5
The Hurrian myth also locates Kumarbi in the western part of the Khabur River triangle,
near the river along the border between Turkey and Syria, and the ancient city of Tuttul, which
was near the modern city of Raqqa. Tuttul was a major cult center of Dagan, 6 providing evidence
that the first-generation gods of the ancient Near East, from east to west, were one and the same:
Enlil = Dagan = Kumarbi = El.
This is an important link in our chain, because connecting El to Enlil helps untangle the
etymology of the Enlil’s name.
Scholars used to believe “Enlil” was a combination of the Sumerian words en (“lord”)
and líl (“air/wind” or “storm”). 7 That’s too simple. Analyzing texts about Enlil doesn’t yield any
of the characteristics you’d expect from a wind- or storm-god. 8 Based on his identification with
El, Kumarbi, and Dagan, Enlil should be understood as “a universal god who controls different
spheres and domains, different areas without any defined specialization” 9 —in other words, Enlil
was “the” god.

That makes the etymology of Enlil’s name easier to grasp. Rather than Sumerian en + líl,
it’s more likely derived from a Semitic (i.e., non-Sumerian) language, il-ilī, meaning “god of all
the gods.” 10
That certainly fits the character of Enlil, El, Dagan, and Kumarbi in their respective
pantheons. All of them were considered creators of the world, described by epithets like “father
of the gods,” “great mountain,” “ancient one,” and so on.
All of them, to people in the ancient world, bridged the gap between time immemorial
and the present day. In each case, “the” god had assumed kingship over the pantheon by
replacing a primordial deity who represented the sky or heaven. El, Kumarbi, and Dagan
supplanted Anu, while El took the place of Šamêm (“Heaven”). 11 In the case of Kumarbi, the
confrontation with his father, Anu, was particularly violent; in the fight for control of the
universe, Kumarbi castrated Anu—with his teeth.
This detail links Kumarbi to Kronos of Greek mythology, who likewise castrated his
father, Ouranos, although Kronos used an adamantine sickle. In turn, the king of the Titans was
identified by Greek and Roman historians with Saturn and the Phoenician god Baal-Hammon,
who was infamous for the tophet at Carthage, a burial site for very young children sacrificed and
burned as offerings to the god—which suggests a connection to another Semitic god, Molech.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s recap: It appears that the same entity, called by
different names, occupied the same slot in the pantheons of multiple civilizations. Specifically,
Enlil (Sumer/Akkad), Dagan (Amorites of Syria), El (Canaan), Kumarbi (Hurrians and Hittites),
Kronos (Greece), Saturn (Rome), and Baal-Hammon (Phoenicians) were one and the same.

Recent discoveries point to northern Syria, especially the region near Aleppo, Antioch
(modern Antakya), and the mountains and valleys around them as key to the history of “the” god.
Baal-Hammon, Saturn, and Kronos were the names of this god in the western Mediterranean,
and they emerged in the first millennium BC after the time of David. The older names are found
farther east.
Kumarbi of the Hurrians was linked to a town between Aleppo and Antioch; El was
probably worshiped at Mount Zaphon before it became Baal’s mount of assembly; 12 the name of
their Phoenician equivalent, Baal-Hammon, means “lord of the Amanus,” 13 which are the
mountains just north of Zaphon; Dagan was the chief deity along the middle Euphrates in what is
now Syria; and since the name “Enlil” appears to be Semitic rather than Sumerian, it’s possible
that he, too, began his career in this part of northern Mesopotamia.
In other words, rather than emerging from Sumer in the south as Mesopotamian
civilization is assumed to have done, “the” god Enlil may have been imported to Sumer from
lands far to the northwest. In a very broad sense, that includes Jebel Bishri, the origin point of the
Amorites (and Jebel Diddi, apparently named for the Ditanu tribe that gave its name to the
Titans), Mount Hermon, Mount Zaphon, and the Amanus range—all mountains connected to the
rebel gods.
Why? What made that area a hot spot for two of the most important rebel gods,
Enlil/El/Dagan (“the” god) and Hadad (Baal), the storm-god? We can only guess. But the flow of
history from north to south makes sense from a biblical perspective—that’s the direction the
descendants migrated as they moved south from the mountains of Ararat in present-day Armenia
and Türkiye.

1 1 Corinthians 2:8 (ESV).
2 Rients de Boer, “Amorites in the Early Old Babylonian Period.” Dissertation, Leiden
University (2014), 69. http://hdl.handle.net/1887/25842, retrieved 11/8/18.
3 Ibid.
4 Lluis Feliu and Wilfred G. E. Watson. The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria. (Leiden:
Brill, 2003), 299.
5 Michael C. Astour, “Semitic Elements in the Kumarbi Myth.” Journal of Near Eastern
Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (July, 1968), 172.
6 Feliu, op. cit., 303.
7 Lluis Feliu, “Concerning the Etymology of Enlil: the An=Anum Approach.” Aula
Orientalis-Supplementa 22 (2006), 229.
8 Ibid., 246.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 230.
11 Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the
Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 41.
12 Lipiński, op. cit., 64.
13 Cross, op. cit., 26.

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“Between Borders”, my personal movie review!

This extraordinary film brings you the true story of an Armenian family and their struggle to find a country that would embrace them. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the newly freed countries experienced violence and turmoil. They had little love for one another. Russia still ruled it’s people with an Iron Fist! Poverty and starvation was a way of life and communism controlled their world.

“Between Borders” gives us a glimpse of what life was like and why people flee to America for asylum and freedom.

The Petrosyan family, Ivan, Julia, Olga and Violetta face discrimination every where they go. Ivan (played by Patrick Sabongui) who was a rocket scientist does anything to provide for their family, from cleaning floors to repairing buses. Wherever he goes he is always looking over his shoulder and sometimes running from the real threat of violence.

Violetta (played by Elizabeth Tabish) is the perfect mother under the most harsh circumstances. She protects and nurtures their children in all kinds of situations while dealing with fear and anxiety. When she goes for a job interview the racial indignation and humiliation goes beyond human dignity. Elizabeth Tabish (The Chosen) does a stellar performance as the mother!

In Russia they are introduced to a small church that was started by a church in West Virginia, USA. Even though Ivan was not interested he would attend and listen from a distance. God moved on his heart and soon the Petrosyan’s were invited to come share their story in America.

This is where the story takes us, and the real fight for freedom and a new beginning battle takes place.

The children do a brilliant job bringing realism to the screen and do it in a way that pulls your heart out.

This movie will open your eyes to how racism is all around the world and how only God can deliver His people from it!

What “Between Borders” does is delivers the hard message of what communism does to people, the pain, anguish, suffering and hopelessness, but it also brings the message of hope, love, salvation and victory! The movie takes you from heartache and despair to genuine freedom and how God still works His miracles to those who have faith!

 

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The Last Night of Babylon

Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, was born in the north Mesopotamian city of Harran,
one of the two major cult centers for the moon-god in the ancient Near East, the other being Ur
in Sumer, present-day southeastern Iraq. As noted earlier, Nabonidus left his royal city and
settled in the Arabian oasis of Tayma for ten years, another center of moon-god worship, for
reasons scholars haven’t agreed upon yet. This is remarkable since his time in the desert
accounted for more than half of his seventeen-year reign.
Whatever his motivation, Nabonidus was not led to the oasis in northwestern Arabia
solely because of Tayma’s strategic importance, although its proximity to the caravan route used
by the lucrative spice trade was undoubtedly a factor. Politicians rarely miss an opportunity to It
may be that he was waiting for a message from the moon-god—a prophecy or sign of some sort.
While he stayed at Tayma, his son ruled as regent in Babylon. That was Belshazzar, the king we
know from the Book of Daniel.
Belshazzar was in a delicate situation. There were certain religious duties that the king of
Babylon was expected to perform. He played a key role in the annual spring akitu festival with
the god Marduk. If the king wasn’t in Babylon to “take the hand of Bel” (Marduk), the rites
couldn’t be performed, and the city, it was believed, wouldn’t receive the blessing of its patron
god. Remember, Nabonidus was out of Babylon for ten years, living at Tayma in the Arabian
desert.
Nabonidus didn’t seem to feel that this was a problem, lending credence to the belief that
his goal was to replace Marduk as the chief god of Babylon with Sîn, the moon-god. That plan

couldn’t have been popular with the ancient priesthood of Marduk or religious conservatives in
Babylon.
On that fateful night in 539 BC, recorded in chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel, Belshazzar,
the son and coregent of Babylon’s king Nabonidus, hosted a drunken party at the palace. During
the festivities, he ordered his servants to bring out the gold and silver vessels that had been
plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem more than half a century earlier, and he used them to
serve wine to the Chaldean nobles and his wives and concubines.
Then:
Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the
wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it
wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs
gave way, and his knees knocked together. (Daniel 5:5–6, ESV)
Daniel was summoned to interpret the sign. Bad news for Belshazzar.

You have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of
his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives,
and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods
of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or
know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways,
you have not honored.
Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed.
And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. This is

the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your
kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances
and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and
Persians. (Daniel 5:23–28, ESV)
All this you probably know. The story is popular with all ages, from Sunday School kids
to grownups. It’s an easy moral for a Sunday sermon: Don’t get too big for your britches. But
there’s a lot more to it just under the surface.
The timing of the fall of Babylon is key. The festival hosted by Belshazzar wasn’t
random event, some excuse for Belshazzar to show off in front of his friends. This party had
spiritual significance.

The tradition of the festivities might reflect historical fact. According to the
chronicle, Babylon was taken on the sixteenth of Tašritu. Accepting that
Nabonidus imposed new features of the cult of Sîn in the capital after his return
from Teima, it is conceivable that festivals linked with the cult of Sîn at Harran
were transplanted to Babylon, perhaps even the akitu festival. This festival started
on the seventeenth of Tašritu. As Babylon was captured on the eve of the
seventeenth, the festivities mentioned by Herodotus and the Book of Daniel may
have been those of the Harran akitu festival, as celebrated in the capital by the
supporters of Nabonidus. 1
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Babylonian calendar was tweaked so that the fall
akitu festival for the moon-god was specifically timed to coincide with either the Harvest Moon
or the Hunter’s Moon:

The seventeenth of Tašritu always fell during one of the two periods of the year
that the moon had an unusually prominent place at night. It should also be
remembered that the Harvest Moon and Hunter’s Moon, by a curious trick of
perception, are popularly believed to be unusually large and luminous. It is
therefore singularly appropriate that the akitu festival in honor of the moon god
Sîn should take place on the seventeenth of Tašritu, when the lunar deity, several
days after full moon, retained its sway throughout the night. 2
Because most of us Christians are not very familiar with the festivals of Yahweh, let us
point out that the last feast of the year, Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles), begins on the fifteenth
of Tašritu/Tishrei.
So, here’s the situation on the night of Belshazzar’s party: Babylon was ruled by a king
so devoted to the moon-god that he tried to overturn more than a thousand years of religious
tradition to elevate Sîn above Marduk in the pantheon. His son, the coregent, had just kicked off
the akitu festival to honor the moon-god, an annual rite in Mesopotamia at least two thousand
years old. Meanwhile, the most important annual festival of Yahweh, Sukkot, had begun two
days earlier. Then Belshazzar, for reasons unknown, decided to liven up the party for his god,
Sîn, by ordering the wine served in sacred utensils consecrated for use in the Temple of Yahweh.
Why did Belshazzar do it? What inspired him? (And why was he partying while the
enemy Medes and Persians were right outside the city walls?)
It’s impossible to say. Accounts of the last night of Babylon are somewhat contradictory.
Some say Nabonidus was at the battle; others say he wasn’t. It seems unlikely that Cyrus could
have marched an army into Babylonia without word reaching the king. If the account in Daniel is

accurate, and we assume it is, then maybe the akitu feast for Sîn was too important to postpone,
even for an invasion. Maybe Belshazzar’s decision to bring out the Temple utensils was to
demonstrate the power of the moon-god over the God of the exiles from Judah.
Big mistake.
Lights out. Babylon was done.
And that was the last time the moon-god threatened the people of Yahweh for more than a
thousand years.

1 Paul-Alain Beaulieu. The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556–539 B.C. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 150.
2 Al Wolters, “Belshazzar’s Feast and the Cult of the Moon God Sîn,” Bulletin for
Biblical Research 5 (1995), 201-202.

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“God’s not Dead, In God we Trust”, must see!

As I write this review of “God’s not Dead, In God We Trust”, my heart cry’s out because the turmoil that has embraced America and so many churches. At the same time I am extremely pleased to see the courage of the writer’s of this movie dive into the very heart of what is happening. The movie exposes the truth of where the two political parties that control our elections are totally opposite when you look strictly at them from a Biblical worldview. “God’s not Dead” demonstrates the struggles that Pastor’s have and the choices they have to make when it comes to politics and the church.

The writers have also masterfully embraced real life situations that churches/pastors face and the consequences if left, “to just take care of themselves”. I love how this movie shows that we must pray but we must also do our part. Young David in the Bible could have said to King Saul, let’s just pray about it. No, he knew God was on his side and said I will go and kill this uncircumcised Philistine, and he did.

“God’s not Dead, In God We Trust” is a message every Pastor needs to see! The second part of the name of the movie, “In God We Trust” may be the real question for each of us. Do we really trust God?

Pastors have been told you can not get involved with politics. If this were true half the Bible would need to be thrown out. (Look how the Apostle Paul was constantly dealing with rulers and government officials, Daniel was an advisor to Kings, Joseph led a nation, every prophet had a message or messages to the government leaders of the time.) You can be rest assured that every congregant you serve is impacted by politics and they talk about it constantly.

The movie opens the door to truth in America in a way that enlightens and encourages each one of us. “God’s not Dead, In God We Trust” is the latest version of the “God’s not Dead” series of movies to hit the big screen. It is in my judgement the single most critical movie of the series given the times we are living. “God’s not Dead” is written in a way to grab your attention from the opening scenes and keep you spellbound as the stories unfold. Pastor David Hill is confronted with challenge after challenge until he is questioning his own faith and God.

The movie opens where a congressional candidate running for office suddenly has died and the opponent Peter Kane gives a statement of grief publicly but steps behind the scenes and says, “religious superstition has no place in influencing our laws and government and so (lifting his glass) years to enlightenment, reason and reshaping our Nations core”.

Pastor David Hill is confronted by Congressman Darrel Smith about running against Senator Peter Kane as the replacement candidate. This is not what Pastor David wants to do, however often God asks us to do the hard impossible things and after much prayer and an unlikely counselor, Pastor David chooses to jump into the election and as a Pastor this opens him up to an onslaught of “separation of church and state”.  His political opponent is the seasoned veteran and knows all the tactics to discredit and wear down Pastor David as a Christian and a Pastor.

The message of “David versus Goliath” above, is truly the story here. It is much more than this, we see characters questioning the existence of God, the struggle of relationships of the past and a situation where the government shuts down (by stopping funding) the Church’s Women’s Center because of a prayer meeting. There are many personal stories within this movie that make it realistic and everyone can relate too. Many of the personal stories that are entwined are exactly what Pastors deal with every day.

This movie takes us on a bumpy ride inside and out of the political left and right. It shows behind the scenes scenarios of how they fight, using words like a prize fighter uses boxing gloves. The movie shows how Pastor David decided to follow God’s way and not the typical political strategy and ultimately to victory. Yes, there are many setbacks for Pastor David and Senator Kane puts up an intimidating fight but David had truth and history on his side.

The quality of script, the cinematic experience and the movie cast make this movie powerful and very engaging. It is beautifully made with great attention to detail. Every word has been carefully written to bring the message to life and make the movie goer feel a part of the movie itself. “God’s not Dead, In God We Trust”, is so compelling you will definitely get charged up!

Pastor, I want to personally invite you to watch this movie and see for yourself. Don’t take my word for any of this and you know, I have never steered you wrong!

“God’s not Dead, In God We Trust” should be seen by every true Christian who believes our freedom to worship is worth saving and we need to bring our country back to God!

Click Here to watch the Trailer: God’s not Dead, In God We Trust

We pray you will watch this and invite your church and all your friends! God gave you a special gift, watch the movie and near its ending you will see what it is and it is very powerful!

We are praying for you!

 

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REDEEMING THE DRY BONES THROUGH FELLOWSHIP: Chapter 6

By: Rev. Joshua Omolo (Gwara)

All men are spiritual being and spirits don’t work alone. God created men in His likeness and His Image
God; one of the most pronounced image of God which is clearly spelt in the Bible is that God is a
spiritual being and He exists in trinity as God the son and God the Holy Spirit, meaning three in one. The
moral lesson from this example given here therefore means that man will always need the fellowship of
another man for him to function to the optimal level. Human beings can only fulfil their purpose of
existence when we strive to complement one another and when we allow God to direct our values
system according to the dictates of His word. Everyone must learn to reach out to their neighbor and
seek to become a destiny helper to somebody.
Gen 1:27 – So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and
female he created them.
Our God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ loves fellowshipping not only with men but also with himself
in the council of God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit. The identity of trinity in one
qualifies the claim of divine fellowship as a kingdom value in the kingdom of God.
Genesis 3:8-9 – Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the
garden in the cool of the day …………
It is in the power of effective and divine fellowship that God purposed that divine exchange in both
spiritual and physical matters should take place. Empowerment takes place when we interact with other
people from different walks of life and that allows exchange of ideas and knowledge. Apostle Paul is
clear when he is writing in the book of Hebrews 10:24-25 – And let us consider how we may spur one
another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of
doing, but encouraging one another-and all the more as you see the day approaching. The above
example is the perfect example of horizontal divine fellowship between men and fellow men with the
objective to glorify God being the center of focus in all the activities here.

Horizontal fellowship
This form of fellowship focuses more on man to man but under the enablement of the power of the
Holy Spirit. God has invested heavily through the platform of fellowship so much so that the author of
the book of Hebrews cautions saints not to embrace the habit of ignoring fellowship. Hebrews 10:25 –
Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another……
Fellow man is no doubt one of the most important instrument you will need in this life and in the
accomplishment of the call in your ministry. Men are designed and wired to need each other. You are
designed to journey to the place of destiny in every aspect of your life but through another man’s
support. Many people today are hesitant to engage in robust fellowship with men because they have
been disappointed in the past. My word of encouragement to you is to stay put and do not let go the gift
of fellowship no matter the reasons you may hear. We need to remember that there are policies which

God has provided as a guide to every category of fellowship for you to enjoy the benefits that comes
with that cluster of fellowship. The God given protocols of handling effective fellowship is meant to give
birth to good relationship.
Embracing the advantage of home fellowship
The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom required to run a successful family. Many marriages do
not last long today because God has been locked out of the picture. Home cannot be home if it cannot
offer a conducive environment that can support permanent stay in harmony. The kind of relationship
between you and the immediate family members matters a lot in life.
Oxford Dictionary definition of a home
“The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household”
When a child is born in a family the parents have the sole responsibility of hosting and taking care of the
child. The home where the child is born must raise the child till he grows to become an adult who can
independently take care of himself. When you come into the world to accomplish your life’s’ mission,
you know no-one and you own nothing, therefore you must be hosted on earth for your residency here
to be legitimate.
Your parents or guardians take this responsibility of giving you legal residency on earth both spiritually
and physically. Your parents will take their tenancy or legal ownership of part of the earth and extend it
to you. You never worked for the inheritance but you are given based on the cordial fellowship of good
relationship existing between you and your parents.
Positive fellowship as a family plays a great role in cultivating a conducive environment fit for moral
upbringing in the life of every child. Home fellowship built on a Godly principles and values which are
coherent to the Christian faith provides a head start for leadership skills. Children are expected to
respect their parents while parents are expected to love and provide the basic needs for their children
and bring them up also in the ways of God.
Parents are supposed to lead by example based on their character on how they behave. Many parents
find it difficult to mentor their children because of having failed to fulfill their promises to their children
in assumption that they were too young to notice the lies. Parents can restore this gap by admitting to
their children the mistake of unfulfilled promises, then start a fresh by committing to fulfill every word
of promise.
Divine home fellowship is an instrument needed to facilitate inheritance. Every child has a right to
inherit the wealth of the parents. The Bible is categorical that a good man is that who is able to give
inheritance even to the children of his children. Proverbs 13:22 – A good man leaves an inheritance to
his children’s children
Some children however have never enjoyed this advantage of transfer of wealth or empowerment by
parents simply because either parties failed to establish a sustainable good relationship between the
two. God has established clear terms and conditions by which symbiotic relationship can be built in
order to enable this divine exchange to take place in a family based fellowship. Parents have their clear
responsibilities spelt out in the Bible and children equally have their fair share of responsibilities.

Parents must deliberately engage in a process of building their children and raise them in the ways of
God. Intentional mentorship with intensive training the children in the ways of God is a primary
responsibility of parents as prescribed in the Bible
Vertical Fellowship
The most powerful form of divine fellowship is vertical fellowship where the faithfulness of God is
revealed through His call unto fellowship with His son Jesus Christ. (1Corinthians 1:9) God in His wisdom
in this arrangement of fellowship ensures that we are adequately supplied with all forms of spiritual
gifts. Mankind is a spiritual being in need of a spiritual power to solve spiritual challenges. Holy Spirit of
God is the facilitator of all forms of communication for effective dialogue that can lead to enriched
relationship with God.
The pillars of this fellowship are the spiritual gifts given by God to every individual for the purpose of the
edification of the body of Christ which is the Church. Holiness is the main ingredient required to ensure
that all the spiritual faculties in a man is in optimal operation, it is the element which will generate
sufficient power required to defeat every schemes of attacks from the kingdom of darkness.
The reason of persistent attacks aimed at saints by the kingdom of darkness is because the precious gifts
we carry as ambassadors of God. The devil is envious about the gifts God has given to His sons and
daughters, this is so because the gifts from God are operating like the application platform for the
manifestation of the power of God in the lives of believers. Anyone who is gifted by God is anointed and
set apart for a special functionality in the kingdom of God, therefore the church is not expected to lack
any spiritual gift as we eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ (1Cor 1:7). It is very dangerous to do
ministry without knowing the gift of God in you.
The book of Acts 3:2-8 – There at the beautiful gate was a man who had been crippled all his life. Every
day he was carried to the gate to beg, he would ask for money from people going into the temple. The
man saw Peter and John going into the Temple and asked them for money……….. Peter said, but what I
do have give you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Walk and he walked.
I would like to point out the two strength this man had that made him stand out and experience the
impact of vertical divine fellowship. The first was that he had friends who carried him on daily basis to
the gate. I can imagine that the man could not have been at the gate if he did not have some people
around him who used to carry him on daily basis. In life there will always be some destiny helpers whom
God has prepared to just carry you to the point where you can experience the divine encounter with
God. Once you have reached the place of divine encounter then it is your responsibility to ask God for
what you want. The lame man raised his voice and asked for money. Even though he asked for the
wrong thing still he got the perfect answer by the end of the day.
The biggest failure in life is failure to ask especially when you know that you are in need. God has
always done His part by supplying destiny helpers around us, but many people are always silent because
of ignorance. Majority of those who are silent are dying silently because they are wondering what will
people think of them when they ask probably because of pride. You would rather appear disorderly
because of asking but in the long run you receive what you needed. Let the people around you brand
you any name of their choice because you asked from the Lord but in the long run you will emerge a
head in the perk. It has always been said that every choice has consequences; when you chose to stay

silent or when you chose to ask both will have consequences. I would rather suffer the temporal shame
before men when asking from the Lord for His divine deliverance instead of suffering eternal bondage of
slavery in the kingdom of darkness.
Faith in Jesus Christ as the key to effective fellowship with God
In the book of Romans 1:16 – says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God
that brings salvation to everyone who believes” The first question you need to ask yourself today is, “Do
you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior of your life?” Without faith it is impossible to please
God. You need power to win every battles in life you are facing today. That thing which has kept you in
the same place and has made you to stagnate in one spot like the lame man at the beautiful gate for so
long can be defeated if only you believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and savior over your life. You simply need
to repent and ask God for forgiveness of your sins and He is faithful and just to forgive all your sins now.
The book of John 1:12 – But as many as received him, He gave them power to be made the sons of
God….
Forgiveness of sin is one of the many benefits of having faith in Jesus Christ and receiving him as Lord
and savior over your life. The power of forgiveness of sin brings forth the experience of freedom from
guilt. God in His divine plan intended to create a man in his image with all the powers of freedom in life.
Sadly, the freedom of mankind was curtailed after the fall of man in the garden of Eden. The fall brought
about the new beginning of slavery and limitations that still persist till today.
Many things that cause hindrance to freedom in life today are as a result of the fall. Increase in criminal
elements all over the world can be squarely blamed on the sinfulness of the world, many people today
are more attracted to the path of corruption, racism, infidelity, drug abuse, sexual immorality and many
illicit behaviors. Our value system in the world today is totally eroded so much so that a greater
percentage of our population today do not even believe in the existence of God. Our society has no
regard God, instead many have shifted their faith to scientific theories which are grossly limited and
short-lived.
When we believe in Jesus as our personal savior then it comes along with the benefit of life eternity, it is
important for people to know that there is life after death. Life beyond the grave has only two destinies
awaiting which is heaven and hell. Faith in Jesus Christ is a guarantee to eternal place in heaven with
God the father. The point at which we can determine the destiny with God is to start fellowship with
God here on earth when we are still alive. Everyone has the freedom to choose whether to surrender
their life to Jesus or otherwise.
Divine fellowship with God ushers in a season of rest. Many people are leading a life full of controversies
and troubles. Some of the reason behind the troubles in life is because of the sin of rebellion against
God. Mathew 11:28 – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. The reason why all mankind needs to discover this
secret of rest in the Lord Jesus Christ is because it was what God intended for all men to experience.
People are searching for rest in the pleasures of the world for instance in riches and wealth of the world
but to no avail. Without God it is impossible to find the true meaning of life. Only effective fellowship
with God can a man find satisfaction in life.

True friendship and a caring community can only be found in having faith in Jesus. God has a new family
tree for those who believe in Him. The dynamic family of God is where we call one other brothers and
sister, we live in unity and manifest the true love of God. God’s family is where the art of sharing is
projected in almost everything we own in life. Go Himself promises that in such fellowship where
brethren dwell together in unity he commands his blessings and life forevermore Amen. Our God can
give you a new family of God which you can trust, only believe in Jesus and you will find a powerful
fellowship of people around you of the same faith in a spiritual church near you and your life will never
remain the same again.
Faith in Christ can give us the opportunity to receive filling of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit makes us more
like Christ, we are able to regain the lost image of God in our life. Holy Spirit of God guides us in all truth.
Life here on earth can become very frustrating because of the lies and conman ship being peddled by
ungodly people around us. If you ask many ladies how they have been cheated by men that they will
marry them after they engage in sexual activity outside marriage, only to be dumped after they have
been used. The level of betrayal kind of feeling left in such persons is deep and paining. Truthfulness is a
very rare commodity in the world today but it can still be found in Jesus. If you put your trust in him he
will never let you down.
Holy Spirit reveals God’s word to us. The spirit of God knows all truth about the word of God. It is for this
same reason God promised that the Holy Spirit will come to all believers as a helper and guarantee to
the promises of God. The restoration of your lost glory can be guaranteed by the Holy Spirit of God such
that you can believe that everything God has promised shall come to pass.
Purpose driven life can only be achieved by having faith in Jesus. The word of God says in the Bible that
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father apart from Jesus (John 14:6). People
struggle a lot in life to make a statement just to show the world who they are. Some even struggle to
enter Guinness book of records to be seen but still it doesn’t make any impact. The only way we can find
a meaning to this life given to us by God is by having faith in Jesus Christ the son of the living God then
we shall experience purpose driven life in our day to day walk with God. There is no need for you to
struggle for your name to enter Guinness book of records, the best place your name should enter is in
the lamb’s book of life.
The power of healing came upon the blind man Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52. It was faith in Jesus that
made him to shout the more even when the people around him were telling him to keep silent. Radical
faith in Jesus Christ is necessary sometimes for you to attain extraordinary achievements in life. Do not
be silenced by men’s opinions when you know very clearly that what you are doing is in line with having
faith in Jesus Christ. Some will call you names but keep on trusting in the Lord. Others may call you a day
dreamer the way they called Joseph in the Old Testament, but finally Joseph prevailed and he became
the prime minister in a foreign land where he fed his entire family. You could be experiencing some
serious health challenges; some could be terminal in nature but the Lord says with Him all things are
possible including your divine healing in Jesus name. Do not believe any other report apart from the
report of the Lord. The report of the Lord says that your healing miracle is possible today in Jesus name,
only believe in Jesu Christ and you will receive it now.
The dynamics of vertical and horizontal divine fellowship

Divine fellowship is one of the most neglected things among believers today. Many believers prefer
private and lone ranger approach kind of life style. It is hard to find many who are in the reality of
fellowship. One major strength that cuts across and is commonly shared by many great men of God in
the Bible is the strength of divine fellowship. Vertical fellowship refers to the divine relationship
between man and God while horizontal fellowship refers to the divine relationship between men to
fellow men. Positionally, we all are in his fellowship, but in our daily living, very few of us are in the
reality of fellowship. We may have the matter of fellowship in name, but we may not have it in
practicality.
David as a young boy was known as an errand boy in their family, he was tasked with the responsibility
to take care of the sheep and he did it faithfully. The historic battle between David and Goliath was
never premeditated but it was until David went to supply food to his brothers who were in the battle
front that is when he stumbled upon the stalemate at the battle front; he looked and saw a great
opportunity to glorify God when he chose to face Goliath and indeed the power of God of divine
fellowship manifested and he defeated the giant Goliath.
We cannot experience vertical and horizontal aspects of divine fellowship if we are not ready to risk our
life or our resources for the sake of the kingdom interest, it’s important to acknowledge that we possess
plus ourselves belongs to God and as such must be used to the glory of God. The push to divine
fellowship sometimes will cost you your wealth or health for instance when God calls you to become a
kingdom financier. David accepted to risk his life when he dared to face off with the war veteran in
order to save his Nation Israel and in return God rewarded him generously when he got promoted from
a shepherd to a king. It is important to know that in every glory there comes a story. Where there is no
pain there is no gain; the price of the pain at the cross is what purchased gain of life eternal with Christ
Jesus.
Vertical and Horizontal Divine fellowship is a command from God
Divine fellowship is not man’s opinion but God’s kingdom principle which he uses to fulfill his kingdom
agenda. Our needs can only be met sufficiently when we appreciate the importance of divine fellowship,
no one can become self-sufficient in life without the other person nor can anyone become self-sufficient
without having fellowship with God. All the blessings God has ordained for men is transferable from one
person to another through divine fellowship.
Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity (Psalm 133:1) It is
encouraging to know that divine fellowship is the instrument that enables the power of unity to hold at
the center. God is affirming the He is pleased with such step of faith among brethren. The modern
church is unfortunately faced with the challenge of drought of divine fellowship. There are many factors
that are opposed to the aspects of divine fellowship. Technology is one of the killer of divine fellowship
in the modern world. Majority of people are more engrossed to having intimacy with their gadgets as
opposed to the fellow human beings around them. Church gatherings are diminishing day by day as far
as the numbers of attendance is concerned. Programs for fellowship is being curtailed in the name of
people are busy hence the need to reduce the time allocated for sermon and worship in general. God is
looking for those remnants who are ready to go against the tide and are willing to deliberately invest
more resources in enabling the growth of fellowship, this calls for quality time with one another and
with God in a physical meeting and virtual meeting as well.

God in His wisdom had apportioned special blessings associated with fellowship alone. The Bible says
that in the environment of divine fellowship characterized with unity in place God will pour His blessings
and life forevermore (Psalms 133:3). The blessings of both spiritual and physical impartations can only
take place in a place of divine fellowship. Many brethren today are time barred in finding their marriage
partners because they skipped the fellowship where God had purposed to create a divine connection
through divine fellowship. We need to allocate quality time to socialize together alongside people we
share faith together. Whenever you see anyone around you just try and go an extra mile and want to
know what they are doing for a living, what their hobbies are and just be kind and be a bit generous.
Avoid raising too high walls around you, allow certain accessibility into your territory with some
precaution.
In the book of Hebrews 11:6 – the Bible says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he
who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”
this scripture implies that we can only access God by faith. The substance of the things hoped for is
embodied in the faith we have in God. We must believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he came
and lived among men as a man and died and on the third day he resurrected from the dead and now he
is sited at the right hand of God the father.
Fellowship as a kingdom principle
All human beings are created in the likeness and in the image of God, we are therefore spiritual beings
just like God the father. One of the kingdom principle states that spirits do not work alone. Fellowship is
therefore one of the main enabler created by God to facilitate the functionalities of the spiritual beings
here on earth. There is need to appreciate the relevance of the people God has deposited around you.
Everyone is very unique in their form of creation hence the reason why you need them.
The first ever correction God ever made in the garden of Eden during creation time was when God said
that, “it is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Then God in the fellowship of God the father,
son and the Holy Spirit went ahead and decided to create Even as a compliment to Adam. We all agree
that this powerful idea is what brought about the great human population we can see in the world
today. Family foundation began as a result of this till today children are still being born because of the
unique gender created by God.
There is such a divine supernatural power that produces great miraculous power when divine fellowship
is harnessed among brethren of faith. Deuteronomy 32:20 – One shall chase a thousand and two shall
chase ten thousand. The power of two is multiplied beyond what one person can accomplish alone. We
need to learn to appreciate the power of unity created by this kingdom principle of divine fellowship.
The power of trinity is what created everything visible and the invisible.
Fellowship as an image of God
The first introduction we see in Genesis at the time of creation is the identity of a triune God, He is God
the father, son ad Holy Spirit. Where two or three gather in the name of the Lord then the presence of
God comes in automatically. Mathew 18:20 – For where two or three gather together in my name, there
am in the midst of them. Anything that can attract the presence of God is worthy embracing for where
God is there is liberty. God is always happy to associate Himself with gatherings in a fellowship where He
is the subject matter. The nature of God is that He is a God who loves fellowship.

When the presence of God comes down in the midst of the fellowship of His children then it comes with
His glory. The power of sickness and diseases cannot withstand the shekinah glory of God. Healing
power and salvation power will always be found in the midst of the shekinah glory of God. Some of the
chronic illnesses which are stubborn can only be cured by this shekinah glory of God. Family curses that
makes people remain barren in so many areas of their life needs the power of shekinah glory to
neutralize their effects.
The Benefit of Purity in fellowship with God
The permanent cure for loneliness in life is eternal fellowship with God. In Deuteronomy 31:8 – The
Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Going by the
above scripture I can boldly confess that I do not need any other assurance in life about my fellowship
with God. Jehovah Himself is promising that he will never leave you. Friends and colleagues can leave
you during seasons of challenges in your life, your brothers and sisters born together can betray you and
forsake you , but God can never leave you once you put your trust in Him.
John 1:6-7 – “If we claim to have fellowship with him, and yet we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live
out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and
the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin.”
When we make a choice to walk in the ways of God through confession of our sins then we receive the
power of forgiveness and we are counted as the righteous of God. Sin breaks fellowship with God hence
we get disconnected from the benefits of the kingdom wealth. Our power of inheritance of God’s
kingdom benefits is solely connected to our walk in purity. The power of grace that allows forgiveness of
sins is the gateway to starting a fresh life of salvation and complete divine fellowship with God.
The ultimate benefit above all the other benefits connected to living a pure life is eternal life in heaven.
The word of God says to all men, “what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world and loose his
soul?” Indeed, the best gift God has given to all mankind is the opportunity to repent so that our sins are
forgiven through the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus Christ.
David was counted by God as a man after God’s own heart not because he was flawless but because
David mastered the art of humility mixed with repentance. A broken heart and a contrite spirit God
cannot despise. Whenever we approach the throne room of God we don’t need to argue our position,
instead we need to demonstrate brokenness before God and high level humility in prayer of repentance
and the Lord is faithful and just to forgive all our sins.
1John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from
all unrighteousness.”
This the true meaning of being in fellowship with God. To stay in fellowship, we need to ask for
forgiveness when we sin. This is the way he has given us to get back in right standing with Him. Through
forgiveness of sins we become sons of God and are counted together with Christ Jesus as co-worker
with God. There is no other greater assurance of salvation apart from the being borne again in the Lord.

We become fruitful in fellowship with God

Barrenness is one of the weapon Satan is using to frustrate many people in the world today. Many
organizations aren’t experiencing growth because of this same challenge of spiritual barrenness.
Businesses can remain stagnant without growth due to the same problem no matter how hard you
work.
Jesus is very clear in the book of John 15:4-5 – Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear
fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the
vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you
can do nothing.”
The word of Jesus himself is confirming here that when we engage in divine fellowship with him we will
not only have the capacity to bear fruit but also we will bear much fruit. It is such a great thing in life to
move from just being fruitful to bearing much fruit, this depicts of being in a state of experiencing
multiplication.
The life God has given us requires that we need to access a state of much fruitfulness, this is the state of
abundant living. Only effective fellowship with God can empower believers to experience abundant life
in Christ Jesus. There are things around us that requires capacity to increase abundantly for us to
recover the years that the cancer worms and the crawling worms have eaten. Your blessing will start
flowing to you in double portions and in triplets. When the time for Elisha to pick the mantle from Elijah
had come he needed a double portion and he got the double portion.
The secret which was applied by Elisha was simply to leverage on the divine fellowship with God and
the servant of God Elijah. One powerful word Elijah told Elisha was that, “even though you have asked
for a hard thing nevertheless make sure that you stay around, if you see me taken away by the horses of
fire then the mantle will fall upon you” Elisha could not have seen Elijah being taken away if they didn’t
have a close fellowship. Elisha served Elijah faithfully till the end and finally God honored his prayer and
fulfilled his dream of a double portion.
God can make you to experience a supernatural increase if you can make a choice to work on your
fellowship with Jesus. It does not matter how long you have been waiting on God, the same God is able
to turn around your story, He can turn your test into testimony and your scars into stars if you can draw
closer to him. You can prayerfully seek his face and purpose to become an effective member of a
spiritual church near you and become an active member to that fellowship because God uses people.
Let the word of God dwell in you richly by meditating on the word day and night. Then determine
yourself to do all that which is written in the word of God. Trust in the word of God and let the word
dictate the value system in your life. Let every decision you make in life be guided by the word of God.
Some of your close acquaintances will reject you when you make these radical decisions, my
encouragement is that the space created by those who leave will be filled by more genuine friends who
will add value to your life.

Victorious life through fellowship with God.
When we enter into covenant with God through salvation then our battles are taken over by God. Every
opposition that we face in life now belongs to God. All those who put their trust in the Lord through the

divine fellowship are given veto power to undo every demonic and evil scripts in the spiritual realm.
Some of the challenges you are currently facing is determined by scripts which were authored in hell,
your issues and matters around your life are always hitting a snag just when you are at the edge of
breakthrough and you wonder what is not happening.
In the book of Luke 10:19 – the Bible says, “Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and
scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you” God is simply
giving assurance of sweeping powers over every powers of darkness to those who believe and trust
upon his name here. The hard things we face in life are spiritually based including sicknesses of which
some are strange in nature, hence the need to counter them from the spiritual perspective. You need
God for you to overcome that challenge of fear.
Some people live in fear of even of the unknown. Whenever they go to bed they have a feeling like they
will not wake up the following day. The challenge of persistent fear has made you not to trust anybody
around you. God is promising that you can have power and authority to live a victorious life if only you
believe in Jesus. Your faith in Jesus will grant you access to have reliable and sustainable fellowship with
God where your security can be guaranteed.

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A Supernatural Shift in the Book of Judges! (For the serious Scholar!)

There was a shift in the supernatural wind about the time of the Judges in Israel. Followers of the moon-god faded into the background as worshipers of Baal became more of a problem for Israel.

What caused this change in the supernatural threat? Was it simply a swing in demographics, an example of diversity in action? Maybe. The Amorites from the east, who occupied lands that were mainly mountains, steppe, and desert, lived very differently than their city-dwelling cousins along the Mediterranean coast. From a naturalistic view, you can understand why the moon-god was more important than the storm-god where rainfall was rare. Amorites in the east lived where rain-fed agriculture wasn’t possible. Sure, the storm-god, called Ishkur in Mesopotamia, was a violent, dangerous deity who could flatten your crops in a single day, but he didn’t visit the desert all that often. So, in ancient Sumer (southern Iraq today), the storm-god was a junior member of the pantheon. The storm-god, under the name Addu or Hadad, called Baal in the Bible, only rose to kingship in the west—modern Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel (and later, Greece and Rome as Zeus/Jupiter)—where people could farm without irrigation canals.

Did this apparent transfer of power from the moon-god to the storm-god reflect a political change in the natural realm, tracking with the rising power of Baal-worshiping Arameans after about 1200 BC? Or was this a supernatural conflict between the Fallen?

There is evidence that these rebel gods don’t always get along. In chapter 10 of the Book of Daniel, the prophet is told by an angelic messenger that he’d been delayed for twenty-one days by “the prince of the kingdom of Persia.”[1] The angel only broke free to deliver his message when the archangel Michael arrived to take up the fight with the prince and the “kings of Persia.” In that context, the angel can only have been referring to supernatural entities, what the people in Daniel’s day would have called the gods of Persia, and rightly so.

The point is this: A number of nations that were enemies of Israel—Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome—fought more with each other than they did with God’s chosen people. Why would they do that if the principalities and powers behind those kingdoms were hell-bent on destroying the bloodline that would someday produce the Messiah?

God wouldn’t have allowed it, of course. But consider this: If the Fallen had hubris enough to rebel against the Creator of the Universe, why wouldn’t they fight one another to become the supreme ruler? It’s like the premise of the supernatural television series Highlander—there can be only one. That is precisely the goal of the rebellious sons of God.

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star [KJV: “Lucifer”], son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:12–14, ESV)

Lucifer, the divine rebel from Eden, didn’t just want to knock Yahweh off His throne, he hoped to elevate himself and his “mount of assembly” above the stars of God—a poetic way of saying that Lucifer wants to be supreme above everything and everyone.

So, the Book of Judges appears to mark a change in the main supernatural threat to Israel. Prior to the conquest, it was the moon-god, chief deity of the founders of Babylon and the occupants of Canaan. After the Israelites settled in the land, the forces arrayed against the people of Yahweh were more often than not worshipers of Baal and the other major gods of the western Amorites, such as El, his consort Asherah, and Astarte, better known as Ishtar (and later as Aphrodite and Venus). This seems to reflect division or competition between the rebel gods in the spirit realm. Imagine the power wielded by the fallen elohim who could claim victory over the people of Yahweh!

The story of Gideon and his three hundred is a perfect example of the changing times. This was around 1200 BC, a time called by scholars the Bronze Age Collapse. The Mediterranean world was in turmoil. The Trojan War had probably been fought about fifty years earlier on the west coast of what is now Turkey. For reasons still not completely understood, a wave of warlike peoples swept across the eastern Mediterranean, destroying the Hittite Empire and smaller Amorite kingdoms like Ugarit and Amurru in Syria. They even threatened Egypt itself, then ruled by Ramesses III, son of Ramesses the Great.

Scholars call this coalition the Sea Peoples for lack of a better term; the members of the league haven’t been positively identified, although it’s generally accepted that the Philistines were one of them. Other groups may have included remnants of the Minoan civilization from Crete, Mycenaean Greeks, Etruscans, Sicilians, Sardinians, or displaced Hittites fleeing the destruction of their civilization.

Whoever they were and whatever prompted the mass movement, evidence points to a tsunami of social upheaval around the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC, and Canaan was no exception.

This is the time recorded in the Book of Judges. Conflicts between the tribes of Israel and their neighbors are set against a backdrop of war and destruction from Greece to Babylon, where the Kassites, who’d ruled that land for four hundred years, were routed and sent into obscurity by Elam, a kingdom in northwestern Persia.

Things weren’t easy for the tribes of Israel. Although they had been in the Promised Land for two centuries, they weren’t exactly its masters. By the time we get to chapter 6 of Judges, the Israelites had already been oppressed by Aram, Moab, the Philistines, and Jabin, the Amorite king of Hazor, whose general Sisera appears to have been from the group of Sea Peoples called the Sherden or Shardana—possibly Sardinians who built the mysterious stone towers called nuraghe on that island.[2]

So, by the time of Gideon, two hundred years after Joshua led the people against Jericho, Israelites must have been growing weary of this cycle of oppression. For seven years, Israel had been dominated by the Midianites, Amalekites, and “the people of the East.” They’d arrive every spring, so numerous that they and their camels couldn’t be counted, and they would devour or steal all the crops. Things got so bad, the Israelites were forced to hide out in caves.[3]

They couldn’t say God didn’t warn them.

When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.” (Judges 6:7–10, ESV)

Catch that: “I am Yahweh your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” Apparently, the people of Israel had failed to understand that Canaan now belonged to their God, Yahweh. It was no longer the possession of the gods of the Amorite pantheon.

We need to detour for a moment to explain the concept of “holy ground.” This was more than just the place where God was physically present, such as when Moses encountered the burning bush at Sinai or when the captain of Yahweh’s host met Joshua at Jericho. Canaan was now Israel, ground holy and sacred to Yahweh, and belonging to Him alone among the elohim. Unfortunately, His people hadn’t learned that yet. Maybe that’s why they had drifted away from God despite the miracles they’d seen in the recent past.

Dr. Michael Heiser points out that belief in the rights of gods to specific geography was the norm in Old Testament days.[4] For example, when David was on the run from King Saul, he lamented that being chased from the land of Israel meant he would be separated from Yahweh:

Saul recognized David’s voice and said, “Is this your voice, my son David?” And David said, “It is my voice, my lord, O king.” And he said, “Why does my lord pursue after his servant? For what have I done? What evil is on my hands? Now therefore let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the Lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering, but if it is men, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods.’” (1 Samuel 26:17–19, ESV)

Another incident illustrates this point. Naaman of Damascus, the commander of the Aramean army, was healed of leprosy after following the instructions of the prophet Elisha. So, he made a strange request:

Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth, for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the Lord. In this matter may the Lord pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon your servant in this matter.” (2 Kings 5:15–18, ESV)

As with David, Naaman understood that worshiping Yahweh required being on holy ground—Israel. Since Naaman lived in Damascus, this was a problem. His solution was to haul some holy ground with him back to Aram. (By the way, Rimmon was an epithet of the storm-god, Baal. It means “thunderer.”)

Do you see now why Jesus devoted so much of His ministry to casting out demons? Yes, Jesus was relieving the misery of those possessed by the evil spirits, but in the supernatural realm He was doing battle with the sons of the Watchers who dared to occupy ground sacred to Yahweh. Jesus was kicking them off of His property!

Back to Gideon’s day: The people of Israel apparently still felt they needed to appease the gods of the Amorites, which included the two main deities God had specifically attacked during the Exodus and conquest of Canaan—Baal, the storm-god, and Sîn/Yarikh, the moon-god. This time, with Gideon, God would teach them, and Israel, a lesson.

Gideon was the son of a Baal worshiper. His father, Joash of the tribe of Manasseh, had his own altar to the storm-god and an Asherah pole to boot. Scholars aren’t sure what those poles were, exactly, but since Asherah was considered a fertility goddess, you can guess what it may have represented.[5]

The Angel of Yahweh directed Gideon to destroy the altar and the Asherah, raise an army, and, to prove to Israel that this victory was not the work of a superior human general, send almost all of it home again.

Over the previous two hundred years, God had delivered Israel through Caleb’s son-in-law Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, and Deborah (who practically had to shame Barak into leading the army). Still, the people turned from Yahweh to the gods of the Amorites. So, this time, God would make it obvious to everyone that the victory was His.

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’” (Judges 7:2, ESV)

Thirty-two thousand men answered the messengers Gideon sent throughout the territories of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali, the northern tribes. But even with thirty-two thousand soldiers, victory was no sure thing. The enemy army was four times bigger—about one hundred thirty-five thousand men were camped in the Valley of Jezreel.

Well, God was going to make it obvious that this victory was not the work of human hands. Through a series of tests, He reduced the size of Gideon’s army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred.

Then He lowered the boom.

[1] Daniel 10:13.

[2] Adam Zertal, Sisera’s Secret. (Haifa: Seker Publishing, 2016).

[3] See Judges 6:1–6.

[4] Dr. Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8–9 and the Old Testament Worldview” (http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/Deuteronomy32OTWorldview.pdf), retrieved 11/5/18.

[5] E. Tully, “Asherah.” In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

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God took this Personally!

All of this would be nothing more than an exercise in history if God hadn’t taken a personal interest in the moon-god and his worshipers—namely, the Amorites. Remember, God called them out specifically when He made his covenant with Abraham.

The moon-god, under various names, was of supreme importance to Amorites in general, and especially to those of Babylon and Canaan.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Amorites and their gods tried to interfere with God’s plan for His people right from the Book of Genesis. After God divided the nations at Babel “according to the number of the sons of God,” He chose Abraham to establish a new people as “His allotted heritage.”

So, the principalities and powers, who were no doubt watching Yahweh’s every move, took note when He directed Abraham to Canaan and miraculously intervened on behalf of his nephew, Lot—especially after Abraham and his 318 retainers successfully raided the army of the kings of the east who’d just defeated the Rephaim tribes living in the Transjordan.

They must have been very interested when God miraculously blessed the aged Abraham and Sarah with Isaac. Suddenly, now, the promise of offspring who would be “as the stars of heaven” was a real possibility.

Then things took a strange turn: God told Abraham to take Isaac to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

You have to wonder what was in the minds of the Fallen at this point—after all, human sacrifice was their turf. The detestable rite has been practiced on every continent except Antarctica, but Yahweh had made it clear to Noah that shedding human blood was forbidden. Sacrificing and burning children as an offering to the gods was even more offensive to God. Yet there was Abraham, with Isaac tied up on a pile of wood, ready to plunge a knife into his only son.

It was a test, shocking to us modern Christians. Why would Abraham even listen to a God who demanded such a thing? Well, the world was a lot different then. Human sacrifice was a reality in the world of the Amorites. Archaeologists have found children ritually slaughtered at a number of Amorite sites during the time of Abraham.

Their Sumerian and Egyptian predecessors likewise practiced it; “retainer sacrifice,” the ritual murder of the servants of kings and nobles who’d died, is well documented in the tombs of ancient Ur and the kings of Egypt’s First Dynasty. So, it wouldn’t have been unusual for a god to demand the sacrifice of a loved one in Abraham’s day.

Here’s another significant part of the story: Some scholars believe “the land of Moriah” was “the land of the Amorites,” with the name Amurru losing its first syllable over time the way English-speakers shorten “until” to “till,” a phenomenon called “aphesis.” Connecting Moriah to the Amorites was apparently in the minds of the Jewish translators of the Septuagint, who rendered it from Hebrew into Greek in 2 Chronicles 3:1 as Ἀμωρία—Amōriā.

Why does this matter? Because Mount Moriah, the Mountain of the Amorites, is where David bought the threshing floor of Araunah, upon which Solomon built the Temple. In other words, Mount Moriah is the Temple Mount—Zion.

Have you ever noticed that it was on the third day when Abraham saw the place God had appointed for His message to the rebel spirits? No Christian can miss the symbolic significance of that detail.

That’s where Armageddon will be fought. God staked His claim to that mountain in the nineteenth century BC when He stopped Abraham from harming Isaac in the heartland of the Amorites.

Yahweh telegraphed the coming battle for the land occupied by the moon-god’s followers sometime between 1840 and 1830 BC. Isaac was born around 1851 BC, but since Abraham asked his son to carry the wood up to Mount Moriah, Isaac wasn’t a small child when they traveled to the land of the Amorites.

Four hundred years later, when the Israelites were freed from their oppressors in Egypt, the battle was officially on.

They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. (Exodus 16:1, ESV)

It’s important to remember that there are no throwaway details in the Bible. The prophets and apostles didn’t add things for just for color, drama, or word count. So, what do we take away from this passage?

Elim is probably in the Wadi Gharandel, a normally dry riverbed in the western Sinai. The Wilderness of Sin must have been the desert that covers the center of the Sinai Peninsula. Now, why would Moses record the specific day of the month when the people entered this wilderness? And what’s the significance of the fifteenth day?

In the ancient Near East, the calendar was based on the cycles of the moon. The fifteenth day was the time the moon was full—meaning the moon-god was at full strength.

Does the name of the desert suddenly make sense?

Yes, the Wilderness of Sîn. That Sîn. The Wilderness of the Moon-god.

The reasons behind the name of the desert should be apparent. In a land where daytime temperatures in the summer average 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 Celsius), one travels at night whenever possible. Since the moon’s predictable changes coincide with fertility cycles, which were important to both humans and herds, the moon-god’s movement through the sky guided the lives of the pastoral nomads who traveled through the wilderness of Sîn.

Just as He did at the Red Sea, Yahweh led Israel on a specific route—in this case, at a specific time—to confront the small-g gods who’d rebelled against His authority.

Not surprisingly, the people complained.

And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:2–3, ESV)

Is it any wonder they grumbled? Moses led them into a land named for one of the most powerful gods of the Amorites on a day when the god was at full strength! They’d already learned how difficult it was to find water in this land; they were three days out from the Red Sea before they found the waters of Marah—and even then, divine intervention was required to make the water drinkable.

How did God respond? The morning after Israel entered the Wilderness of Sîn, when the moon-god was believed to be at full power, Yahweh caused bread to rain down from heaven.

Coincidence? No. It was another demonstration of His power over the supernatural realm, especially over the bene elohim who’d dared to set themselves up as gods. The manna fell from heaven for Israel until the day they crossed the Jordan forty years later.

Here’s another paradigm-shifter: Have you ever considered that Sinai, “the mountain of God” where Moses saw the burning bush, was named for the moon-god? Neither did I. But this isn’t a new idea; scholars have believed that the Mesopotamian moon-god was the origin of the name “Sinai” for more than a hundred years. So, this showdown between Yahweh and Sîn in the middle of the Sinai was more than forty years in the making.

Think about this: It was on the mountain of the moon-god where Yahweh revealed Himself to Moses and where He shared with Moses that His Name was Yahweh.

 

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” (Exodus 3:13–15, ESV) 

God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them.” (Exodus 6:2–3, ESV)

In other words, “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them.”

So, what does El Shaddai mean? Most probably, “God of the mountains.” Some scholars have assumed that this title was originally applied to the Canaanite creator-god, El. After all, his mount of assembly was Mount Hermon, the most impressive peak in the Near East.

The Amorites, who were considered uncultured mountaineers by the city-dwelling Sumerians, were represented in the Mesopotamian pantheon by an uncivilized god called Amurru. One of the epithets of Amurru was Bêl Šadê, which is Akkadian for “lord of the mountains.” Because you’re observant, you probably noticed the similarity between Bêl Šadê and El Shaddai right off. (The funny-looking š is pronounced “sh.”) Because of this, some scholars believe Amurru was the Amorite original on which the later Hebrews modeled Yahweh.

Of course, that requires believing Moses more or less invented Hebrew religion, an idea we reject. If Jesus, who healed the sick, cast out demons by His own authority, walked on water, and prophesied His own Resurrection, was wrong about Moses, then you and I are in a world of trouble.

But there’s another possibility, and it supports our theory that the moon-god was far more important in the ancient world than we realize. Amurru, which refers to the Amorites as well as to the god of that name, may have been an epithet rather than a proper name.

Instead of “Amurru” being a god who shared the name of the Amorite people, it may have been a title of the moon-god: “Sîn, god of the Amurru-land.”

There is substantial evidence to support the identification of Bêl Šadê, the god of the Amurru-land, with a lunar deity, specifically with Sîn. (1) Harran, from at least the Middle Bronze period until the late Middle Ages, was regarded as a major sanctuary of the moon-god Sîn. And we know in particular that the Amurru-peoples concluded treaties in his temple during the Mari period. (2) There are a number of seal cylinders on which the god Amurru, recognizable by inscription, curved staff, and sacred gazelle, is shown standing under a lunar crescent. If this is felt insufficient to establish his lunar nature, the fact that he sometimes holds or stands before a cult standard atop which is a crescent certainly strongly suggests it. (3) Once we find the sacred staff of the god Amurru on the seal of a devotee of the god Sîn. The inscription reads: E-til-pi4-Ištar…arad dSîn. (4) Several individuals with theophoric names of the Sîn-type describe themselves on their seals as servants of the god Amurru.

We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that the god worshiped by the nomadic Amurru-peoples in the Balikh-Harran region by the epithets “Amurru” and “Bêl Šadê,” at the time of the Mari and Old Babylonian texts, was a lunar deity. Sometimes he is specifically named (or at least identified with) Sîn.

The Balikh-Harran region is precisely where Abraham began his journey to Canaan. Abraham came from a land where the moon-god was called “lord of the mountains.” Is it surprising, then, that Yahweh revealed Himself to the patriarchs as the true God of the mountains, El Shaddai, and that Moses would have his first encounter with Yahweh at har hāʾĕlōhîm, the “mountain of God”?

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Moses and the 70!

Moses met Yahweh at Horeb, the mountain of God. But which god? Elohim is a
designation of place, not a proper name. Based on the name Sinai and its location in the middle
of the Wilderness of Sin, it’s reasonable to conclude that in Moses’ day, this mountain was
considered the abode of the moon-god.
Yahweh brought Moses to Mount Sinai during his sojourn with Jethro and the Midianites
for a reason. And He brought the Israelites there right after springing them from Egypt for a
reason. What could that reason be?
Evidence suggests that from the last days of Sumerian rule over Mesopotamia through
the rise of Babylon, the moon-god, Sîn, was the most important deity of the Amorites. It wasn’t
Marduk, although he was the patron god of Babylon, or the elder god, who went by different
names across the Near East—Enlil in the east, Dagan along the Euphrates River (and, later,
Dagon of the Philistines), and El in the west. All across Mesopotamia, Amorites served the
moon-god, whether they hailed from Babylon, which preserved the traditions of Ur, the ancient
city of the moon-god; the north, where Harran was a major moon-god cult center; or from
Canaan, where the oldest city known to man, Jericho, bore the Amorite name for the moon-god,
Yarikh.
Although God’s first supernatural showdown on the way out of Egypt targeted the king of
the Canaanite pantheon, the storm-god Baal, it was to the mountain of the moon-god that
Yahweh led Moses and the Israelites. Imagine what must have been going through the minds of
the people when they realized where they were!
Yet that was where God led the Israelites immediately after their escape from Egypt. And
it was there He called Moses to receive the Law.

Then, God did something even more remarkable. He directed Moses to bring some guests
up the mountain.

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel
went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a
pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay
his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and
drank. (Exodus 24:9–11, emphasis added)
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this brief passage. All of history is about
God’s plan to restore humanity to His divine council. The council originally met in Eden on “the
holy mountain of God.” 1 We’ve been barred from the council because of the sin of Adam and
Eve, but the sacrifice of the Messiah, Jesus, paid the price for our sins and bought back the right
for us to enter the garden someday.
The point is this: The long war between God and the gods is for control of the holy
mountain—the har môʿēd, the “mount of assembly” or “mount of the congregation.” There at
Mount Sinai, Moses, Aaron, and the seventy elders of Israel became the first humans since Adam
and Eve to see God face to face on His holy mountain!
This was a message aimed right at the rebel gods: “My people are free. And someday,
they will take your place in My council.”
Remember—When God divided the nations after Babel, “He fixed the borders of the
peoples according to the number of the sons of God” 2 —angelic beings that He “allotted to all the
peoples under the whole heaven” as the gods of the nations. 3 Remember, too, that the Table of

Nations in Genesis 10 names seventy clans descended from Noah, representing all the people of
the earth.
Seventy nations. Seventy elders of Israel. Coincidence? No way.
By the way, there’s a chance you’re thinking that the story of dinner on Sinai must be a
weird translation. Haven’t we been taught that it’s impossible for humans to see the face of God
and live?
Yes, that’s in the Bible. Moses was in that story, too. That was different, and we’ll come
to that episode in a moment. God did appear to humans in the form of the angel of Yahweh, or
the Angel of the Lord. That was the pre-incarnate Christ.
Well, the moon-god didn’t just surrender. While Moses was up on the mountain for forty
days, the people coerced Aaron into creating an idol—the golden calf.

“Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of
him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of
your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the
people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to
Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving
tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who
brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a
proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” And they rose up

early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And
the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. (Exodus 32:1–6)
We should note that the Hebrew word rendered “play” here, tsachaq, is used in other
contexts as a euphemism for sexual activity—for example, Genesis 39:14 and 17, the encounter
between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. This wasn’t a day of celebrating the holiness of God. This
was a pagan party of carnal indulgence.
Now, it’s easy to empathize with Aaron to a point. It’s hard to stand up to pushy people,
especially groups, and particularly when they’re motivated by the fear that they alone among the
nations were without the protection of a national deity. But, come on—Aaron had personally
witnessed Yahweh supernaturally smack around the two most popular gods in the Amorite
pantheon. (Not that you or I would have done better in his place.)
The excuse Aaron gave to Moses when he came down from Sinai is comical:
Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on
evil. For they said to me, “Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this
Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what
has become of him.” So I said to them, “Let any who have gold take it off.” So
they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf. (Exodus
32:22–24)
“Out came this calf”?! Most parents have heard better excuses from seven-year-olds.
Some scholars interpret the golden calf as evidence that Yahweh was a bull-god, or at
least represented by a bull. To be fair, there are passages in Scripture that liken the power of God

to a bull, which was a common theme among gods in the ancient Near East. 4 But that’s not what
this was about.
Several years ago, I speculated that the golden calf represented the storm-god, Baal,
who was sometimes described as a bull. But that wasn’t typical; Baal was usually depicted as a
human in a smiting pose, with a mace in one hand and thunderbolts in the other. It’s more likely
that the golden idol represented “the frisky calf of heaven,” patron god of shepherds and
pastoralists, the god whose mountain the Israelites were camped in front of—the moon-god, Sîn.
God was not amused. His reaction was like His response after Babel: Yahweh told Moses
that Israel had better repent, and they could forget about God traveling with them into the
Promised Land because, as stubborn as they were, He’d probably smite them before they got
there and start over with just Moses.
Well, the people mourned, like children caught doing something they shouldn’t. Based on
future actions, the regret was more about being punished than about disappointing the Creator of
the Universe. (Not that we would have done any better in their place.) Moses, while pleading for
the people, asked Yahweh for a favor:

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my
goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’
And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom
I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not
see me and live.” And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you
shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of
the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will

take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
(Exodus 33:18–23, emphasis added)
Why the change since the meal on Mount Sinai? What about those verses that describe
Yahweh talking things over with Moses “face to face”? 5 These are hints of the Trinity in the Old
Testament. The personal encounters of the patriarchs—remember, Abraham ate a meal with God
and bargained with Him to try to save Sodom—was with a visible, physical presence, a form that
concealed His true, overwhelming glory. In a sense, Moses asked for a peek behind the mask.
That’s something Yahweh couldn’t do, not even for Moses.
In any case, God did send His “presence” (pānîm) with Israel to the Promised Land. This
is a concept that’s hard to wrap our heads around. What’s the difference between Yahweh, His
angel, and His presence? In some verses, none. Sometimes, the Angel of Yahweh is obviously
Yahweh, because He takes credit for things that Yahweh did and promised. 6
His “presence,” however, is a little different. The clearest example may be in the priestly
blessing that God taught Aaron:

The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face [pānāy] to shine upon
you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance [pānāy] upon you
and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)
It may be of interest that in Ezekiel 38:20, God promises that His presence will be on the
battlefield during the war of Gog and Magog, which concludes with the Battle of Armageddon.
We’ll dig into that in more depth later, but it’s safe to say that the one time you do not want the
Lord to lift up His countenance upon you is when He’s leading the army you’re about to attack.

Armageddon won’t be the first time somebody’s made that bad choice. That’s exactly
what happened about thirty-four hundred years ago in Canaan. And the forces lined up against
the host of Yahweh were devotees of the moon-god.

1 See Ezekiel 28:2, 13–14.
2 Deuteronomy 32:8.
3 Deuteronomy 4:19.
4 See my book Last Clash of the Titans for a more thorough treatment of the
connections between bovid imagery and pagan gods. The old gods of Greece, the Titans, derived
their name from an ancient Amorite tribe, which in turn appears to have been named for the
Akkadian word for “bison” or “aurochs,” an extinct breed of wild cattle that was huge—up to
72” at the shoulders—and very dangerous.
5 See, for example, Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:6–8; Deuteronomy 34:10–12.
6 For example, Judges 2:1–3: “I brought you up from Egypt.… I said, ‘I will never break
my covenant with you’.… But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So
now I say, I will not drive them out before you.”

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The American Story, The Beginnings

David and Tim Barton are the Founder and President of Wallbuilders. They have the largest private collection of original documents from the early years of America than anyone else. Their collection is over 200,000 pieces. When you want to know where and how did God fit in to the founding of America these two men are considered by most as the experts.

“The American Story” is their history book of early America. It contains 79 pages of endpoints and also is full of footnotes. Anyone who is serious about learning the Christian heritage of America has to go no farther than this historically accurate book.

It is easy to read and very captivating. They identify areas of controversy and without hesitation provide detailed documents explaining what the historical truth is.

As Pastors and ministers of the gospel we feel it is important that we should know the truth of our roots and learn with confidence how the Church was involved in the establishment of this country.  David and Tim dive right into slavery issue and the history as recorded by eye witnesses and legal documentation. They do not try to sugar coat it for anyone. They give startling facts about the relationship between settlers and the native Americans. (If you don’t believe everything you hear on TV then you will truly appreciate this wonderful book). Most people are unaware that the majority of land in early America was purchased upon an agreed price.

There is a saying “knowledge is power” but I say, “truth is more powerful”! What I liked about this book as I read through it was, it gave me “knowledge with truth”.

Ministry leaders and Pastors you need to know the truth about the Pilgrims and Puritans also. You need to know how they set up Civil Government based on Biblical principle. You need to see for yourself how the Bible and the Church has been the backbone of this country and still is, if we can keep it! You also need to know the sacrifices that were made for us to have this free country.

Did you know that The First Great Awakening has been historically recognized by honest historians as the most impactful event that brought the 13 colonies together? That great revival brought these independent colonists to a point where they realized they could be “One Nation Under God”!

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is seeking truth and knowledge. Every child should be taught this history. My people perish because of a lack of knowledge! Don’t let your children perish!

“The American Story” is available at Wallbuilders.com and wherever books are sold.

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Giants, gods Yesterday and Today!

 

Ur was not the only center of the moon-god cult in the ancient world, but it was the most important. As we noted above, the akiti festival, which was eventually celebrated for gods at cities all over Mesopotamia, probably originated at Ur sometime between 3000 and 2500 BC. Throughout most of that millennium, other cities dominated the Fertile Crescent. After the decline of Uruk around 3100 BC (in our view, probably due to the confusion of language at Babel), “kingship” alternated between cities in Mesopotamia, including Uruk, Kish, Lagash, Mari, and Ur, down to the time of Sargon the Great. Around 2334 BC, Sargon of Akkad established the first pan-Mesopotamian empire since the days of Nimrod, conquering and controlling an area that stretched from the Persian Gulf to the modern border between Syria and Turkey. The great king attributed his success mainly to the elder gods of the pantheon (except for Inanna/Ishtar, goddess of sex and war): Sargon, king of Akkad, overseer (mashkim) of Inanna, king of Kish, anointed (guda) of Anu, king of the land, governor (ensi) of Enlil. 1 But as with all kingdoms, the Akkadian Empire eventually collapsed. It was overrun by the Gutians, barbarians from the mountains of western Iran, around 2154 BC. Fifty years later, Ur-Nammu came to power in Ur. He ran the Gutians out of the land and then defeated the city- states of Uruk and Lagash. Ur-Nammu and his descendants, the Third Dynasty of Ur, controlled the entire Fertile Crescent for the next 150 years, apparently collecting tribute from as far away as Canaan. Ur-Nammu was a builder credited with the construction of a number of buildings in Sumer, most notably the Great Ziggurat of Ur for Nanna/Sîn, the moon-god. You’ve probably seen pictures of American soldiers visiting the reconstructed step pyramid after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein rebuilt the facade and the enormous staircase of the crumbling temple in the 1980s. Before the Gulf War erupted with “shock and awe” in 1990, it was widely reported that Saddam was rebuilding Babylon, perhaps seeing himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzar. 2 It wasn’t as well known that he also spent a lot of money reconstructing the ancient temple of Sîn. No wonder; as we’ve seen (pardon the pun), the spirit behind Babylon wasn’t Marduk—it was the moon-god. The ziggurat of Ur was immense, measuring 210 feet long, about 150 feet wide, and at least 100 feet high. Imagine that—a ten-story building made entirely of mud brick, still standing (though in disrepair) four thousand years after it was built. The temple was called Ekishnugal, the “House of Thirty, the Great Seed,” an obvious reference to the fertility aspect of the moon- god. The massive platform that formed the base of the temple was the E-temen-nì-gùru, which means “House-foundation That Is Clad in Terror.” Unintentionally prophetic. The brief renaissance of Ur came to an end around 2004 BC when the Amorites, probably with help from the Elamites and Gutians, stamped out the last Sumerian kingdom in Mesopotamia. After that, for our purposes, the important centers of the moon-god shifted north and west, to the heart of Amorite country. One of the reasons the moon-god is a focus of our study is the biblical connection between Ur and ancient Mesopotamia’s other major center of moon-god worship, Harran. That link is Abraham. Until about a hundred years ago, when the famed archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley excavated the fabulous Royal Tombs of Ur in the early 1920s, Bible scholars generally believed the patriarch of Jews, Muslims, and Christians had come from southern Turkey. That’s exactly where we find ancient Harran (spelled with a single r in the Bible), on the Balikh River about ten miles north of the Syrian border. In the early second millennium BC, after the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Harran was an important trading center on the caravan route between the Mediterranean coast and Assyria, in what was probably in a border zone between the Assyrians to the southeast, the Hurrians to the northeast, an emerging Amorite kingdom at Halab (Aleppo) to the southwest, and the Hittites, who were arriving in Anatolia to the northwest around that time. Close by Harran was Ura, a town known as a home base for traveling merchants, 3 as well as cities bearing the names of Abraham’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and brother—namely Serug (Sarugi), Nahor (Nahur), Terah, and, of course, Haran, the father of Lot. 4 Those cities are older than the time frame of the Bible. Working backwards from the Exodus, Abraham was born around 1950 BC. That puts the births of Terah, Nahor, and Serug around 2020 BC, 2049 BC, and 2079 BC, respectively. It’s probable that Abraham’s relatives were named for those cities instead of the other way around. At the very least, their names suggest a much stronger connection between Abraham and northern Mesopotamia than with Ur in Sumer, about six hundred miles to the southeast. Likewise, Abraham’s lifestyle as a tent-dwelling nomad is more consistent with the Amorite culture of the Levant than with Sumer. He was not a city-dweller, and neither were Isaac and Jacob. Based on Sumerian writings about the Amorites of the Syrian steppe, such a lifestyle would have been completely alien to someone raised in the sophisticated urban culture of Sumer. And this must be said: If Abraham’s father, Terah, really meant to go from Ur in Sumer to Canaan, he wouldn’t have ended up in Harran, not even by mistake. A map of the caravan trails of the ancient Near East makes it obvious. After following the Euphrates northward from Ur, Terah would have had to miss a left turn at Mari, near the modern border between Iraq and Syria. A well-known caravan trail there crossed the steppe to Tadmor (Palmyra) and Damascus before descending into Canaan by way of Bashan, the modern Golan Heights. Harran isn’t just a little out of the way; it’s ridiculously out of the way. Going from Ur to Canaan by way of Harran is like driving from Atlanta to Dallas by way of Chicago. It would not have happened like that. Most important, the Bible supports this theory. When Joshua called on the tribes of Israel to remember their origins, he said: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, “Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many.” (Joshua 24:2–3, ESV) The key phrase there is “beyond the River.” Ur in Sumer is on the west bank of the Euphrates River. Abraham would not have crossed it to get to Canaan. Harran, however, is on the far side of the river. As scholar Cyrus H. Gordon argued in 1958, “it is now clear that Abraham was a merchant prince…from the Hittite realm.” 5 Abraham was not from Sumer. He came from northern Mesopotamia and the pastoralist Amorite culture. The moon-god’s importance in Harran is no mystery; the city was founded as a trading outpost by the kings of Ur, city of the moon-god. 6 Harran, where the deity was mainly called by his Akkadian name Sîn, sat on the main east-west route between Antioch and Nineveh. From there, traders could follow the Tigris River south to Babylon, which, as we noted above, was just beginning its rise to power in the days of Abraham. The temple of Sîn in Harran was an important religious and political site for the Amorites of northern Mesopotamia. For example, Amorite tribes would meet at the temple of Sîn and sacrifice a donkey to ratify treaties. 7 That wouldn’t have been weird in Syria four thousand years ago. Donkeys were sacred animals to the Amorites, and they’ve been found buried after ritual slaughter at sites all over the Near East, like Mari, Jericho, and Avaris in northern Egypt. 8 In fact, Amorite kings rode donkeys, not horses. That tradition was still alive when Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a point not lost on the people or the local authorities. 9 It’s important to remember that there was no separation of church and state back then. As we’ll see, that hasn’t changed in that part of the world over the last five thousand years. Farther west, another moon-god center is famous for being the first city conquered by Joshua west of the Jordan River. You see, the Amorite name for the moon-god was Yarikh, which is similar to the Hebrew form, yareakh. (That’s where yerakh, the old Hebrew word for “month,” comes from.) Transliterating from Semitic into English turns the y into a j, and Yarikh becomes Jericho. We’ll have more to say about Jericho in a bit. Another site at the north end of the Jordan River Valley was also home to worshipers of the moon-god. At the southwest corner of the Sea of Galilee is Bet Yerah (“House of Yarikh” or “Temple of Yarikh”), an important center for pottery production throughout the Early Bronze Age, from about 3500 to 2300 BC. 10 Artifacts at the site and at Abydos, an ancient city on the Nile in central Egypt, confirm that Bet Yerah traded with the First Dynasty of Egypt between about 3100 and 2850 BC. 11 However, after 2850 BC, following an unidentified crisis that resulted in the abandonment of a number of sites in the Jordan Valley, Bet Yerah was resettled by migrants from the area of modern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. 12 Around that time, a megalithic, crescent-shaped stone structure longer than one and a half football fields was built eighteen miles (about a day’s journey) from Bet Yerah. Known locally as Rujum en-Nabi Shua’ayb, or “Jethro’s Cairn,” it was finally identified in 2014 as a monument to the moon-god. 13 So, during the Early Bronze Age, both ends of the Jordan River Valley, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, were anchored by sites occupied by worshipers of the moon-god. Although Bet Yerah had fallen on hard times by Abraham’s day, with nothing left other than a small potter’s workshop, it points to the popularity of Sîn/Yarikh among the people who lived in the region for more than a thousand years by the time the patriarch entered Canaan. And, as we’ll see, the fallen elohim who passed himself off as the moon-god was a target of God’s wrath very early in the history of Israel. 1 Inscription found at Nippur. Amélie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East C. 3000–330 BC: Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009), 49. 2 “Saddam Does Battle with Nebuchadnezzar.” The Guardian, January 4, 1999 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/04/iraq1), retrieved 2/7/19. 3 Cyrus H. Gordon, “Abraham and the Merchants of Ura.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan. 1958), 28–31. 4 Mark Chavalas, “Genealogical History as ‘Charter’: A Study of Old Babylonian Period Historiography and the Old Testament.” In Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 122. 5 Gordon, op. cit., 31. 6 Tamara M. Green, The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (Leiden; New York: E. J. Brill, 1992), 20. 7 Minna Silver, “Equid Burials in Archaeological Contexts in the Amorite, Hurrian, and Hyksos Cultural Intercourse.” Aram 26:1&2 (2014), 342. 8 Kenneth C. Way, “Assessing Sacred Asses: Bronze Age Donkey Burials in the Near East.” Levant 42:2 (2010), 214. 9 Jack M. Sasson, “Thoughts of Zimri-Lim,” Biblical Archaeologist (June 1984), 118–119. 10 Raphael Greenberg, Sarit Paz, David Wengrow, and Mark Iserlis, “Tel Bet Yerah: Hub of the Early Bronze Age Levant,” Near Eastern Archaeology 75:2 (2012), 90. 11 Ibid., 95–96. 12 Sarit Paz, “A Home Away from Home? The Settlement of Early Transcaucasian Migrants at Tel Bet Yerah,” Tel Aviv Vol. 36 (2009), 196–216. 13 “5,000-year-old Moon-shaped Stone Structure Identified in Northern Israel,” Haaretz, September 16, 2014 (https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/5-000-year-old-monument- identified-in-north-1.5301928), retrieved 3/18/17.

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Mt Hermon and The Watchers

Akiti is the Sumerian form of the word akitu, the name of the Babylonian festival celebrating the new year. It refers both to the holiday and the special building where it was held. Unlike the festival for the chief god Marduk in Babylon, which was held only in the spring, the akiti celebrated for the moon-god Nanna at Ur was also held in the seventh month, around the time of the autumn equinox. The celebration involved the image representing the god traveling by boat from the city to the akiti-house and then returning to the city with great fanfare.

The autumn festival was the more important of the two. Why? Nanna was the patron god of Ur, and the fall akiti, which lasted at least eleven days into the month, took place as the waxing moon grew larger and larger, symbolizing the god’s reentry into his city just as the days were getting visibly shorter and the moon asserted his dominance in the sky over Utu, the sun-god.

Similar festivals were held in many cities for their patron gods, from Ur to Babylon to Harran in northern Mesopotamia. The question is why the ritual required the patron god to travel from his or her city to the akiti-house and back. Scholars who have studied this festival report that “nothing unusually significant occurred” at the akiti-house. So, why bother?

The solution is the obvious. Perhaps the best-known children’s riddle is, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The answer to this riddle is the obvious: “to get to the other side.” Why then was the akitu-house built outside the city? The answer: “so that the gods could march back into the city.”

But why? We may never know for sure, but there’s a fascinating tidbit buried just beneath the surface of the historical record. It appears the akiti rites at Ur included a ritual procession around the fields outside the walls, presumably to call for divine protection of the crops. This circular march, or circumambulation, was combined with offerings to Nanna, a ritual purification of the gate to the moon-god’s temple, and of course tithing by merchants to the temple.

The significance of the circumambulation ritual will become obvious later in this series. And it may be much, much older than the city of Ur.

In September of 1869, British military engineer and explorer Sir Charles Warren climbed to the summit of Mount Hermon on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). The PEF was founded in 1865 under the patronage of Queen Victoria. The society included some of the giants in the field of archaeology, such as Sir William Flinders Petrie, T. E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”), Kathleen Kenyon, and Sir Leonard Woolley, who excavated Ur in the 1920s. But it’s no coincidence that many of those sent into the field had military training; by the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the great powers of Europe had their knives out, ready to carve up the carcass. While we’ve learned a lot about the ancient world from the work of men like Warren, Petrie, and Lawrence, the British government collected useful intelligence at the same time.

Anyway, on top of Hermon, more than nine thousand feet above sea level, Warren visited an ancient temple called Qasr Antar, the highest manmade place of worship on the planet. It was probably built during the Greek or Roman periods, so it only dates to about the second or third century BC at the earliest.

But inside the temple, Warren found an artifact that had been overlooked by visitors for nearly two thousand years—a stela, a slab of limestone about four feet high, eighteen inches wide, and twelve inches thick, inscribed in archaic Greek:

According to the command of the greatest a(nd) Holy God, those who take an oath (proceed) from here.

Because the inscription is Greek rather than a Semitic language like Aramaic, Hebrew, Canaanite, or Akkadian, the stela probably can’t be dated earlier than Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Levant in the late fourth century BC. But it still connects Mount Hermon to the Watchers of Genesis 6, whose mutual pact on the summit is described in the Book of 1 Enoch:

Shemihazah, their chief, said to them, “I fear that you will not want to do this deed, and I alone shall be guilty of a great sin.” And they all answered him and said, “Let us all swear an oath, and let us all bind one another with a curse, that none of us turn back from this counsel until we fulfill it and do this deed.” Then they all swore together and bound one another with a curse. And they were, all of them, two hundred, who descended in the days of Jared onto the peak of Mount Hermon.

Since the “greatest and holy god” on Warren’s stela is linked to the Watchers, it almost certainly refers to the Canaanite creator-god, El, who was believed to make his home on Mount Hermon, which was essentially “the Canaanite Olympus.” The summit of Hermon has been scooped out like a giant bowl, probably to receive a drink offering, something scholars call “the rite of hydrophory.” This ritual was called yarid in Hebrew, based on a root that means “to come down,” which it shares with the names Jared and Jordan (since the river “comes down” into the Galilee from Hermon). This suggests that the Watchers did not descend to Mount Hermon in the “days of Jared,” but rather in the days when yarid was performed on the summit of Hermon.

The point is this: Warren noted that those bringing the yarid had to approach the summit in a specific way:

On the southern peak there is a hole scooped out of the apex, the foot is surrounded by an oval of hewn stones, and at its southern end is a Sacellum, or temple, nearly destroyed: the latter appears to be of more recent date than the stone oval…

The oval is formed of well-dressed stones, from two to eight feet in length, two and a-half feet in breadth, and two feet thick; they are laid in a curved line on the uneven ground, their breadth being their height, and their ends touching each other.

In other words, to reach the summit of Mount Hermon in ancient times, one had to circumambulate the peak, walking in a spiral with the summit always on the left—counterclockwise. 

That leads to this question: Is there a link between religious rituals on Mount Hermon and the oldest akiti rites for the moon-god at Ur?

Admittedly, this is speculation, another bit of circumstantial evidence as we build our case. There is smoke, but not exactly a smoking gun.

One more note, a hint at the importance of the moon-god in the ancient Near East: During the time of the patriarchs, which scholars call the Old Babylonian period, the moon-god Nanna/Sîn was, at least for some, the most important god in the pantheon.

Even though Enlil was still king of the gods at that point in history, a text fragment from Nippur written during the Old Babylonian period, only translated in 2011, explicitly describes the moon-god as ruling over the Mesopotamian divine assembly, which was called the Ubšu-ukkina. Anu and Enlil, whom we’d expect to be the presiding deities, are described as advisors, along with the other “gods who decree.”

“You, who stand before him to sit in the Ubšu-ukkina

An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Utu, and Inanna sat in assembly for the king

They advised him there.

Nanna sets the holy…in order.…”

The great gods were paying attention to….

Suen [Sîn], his assembly’s decision, his speech of goodness, abundance.…

for Suen, they implement abundance in heaven and earth properly(?)

The king suitable for holy heaven, the barge in the midst of heaven.

“The barge in the midst of heaven” is the crescent moon. Besides resembling the horns of a bull, it also looks like a reed boat sailing across the night sky. Even though bits of the tablet are missing, it’s clear that Sîn was “the king” in the Mesopotamian divine assembly, with the other “great gods” in subordinate roles. Marduk isn’t even mentioned. This supports the theory that the Amorite founders of Babylon, even though they hailed from the city of Marduk, considered the moon-god, Sîn, their patron.

It’s also important to remember that to Mesopotamians, the Ubšu-ukkina was a physical place. The assembly of the gods took place in Nippur, inside Enlil’s temple complex the E-kur, or “House of the Mountain.”

That’s important, too. From Eden to Armageddon, this long spiritual war is all about the mountain where the gods assemble. The prize is Yahweh’s har môʿēd (“mount of assembly”)—Zion.

Next up: The city of the moon-god.

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Chaos and Creation

The account of chaos—Leviathan—in Psalm 74 is a bit different from that in Genesis 1. We learn God is from old, working salvation in the midst of the earth (which again, at the beginning would have been only water). Then we learn God divides the seas (which, in Genesis, occurs in Genesis 1:6) and breaks the heads of the sea monsters, along with crushing the heads of Leviathan. Later, we learn God establishes the heavenly lights and the sun (which, in Genesis, doesn’t occur until the fourth day, described in Genesis 1:14–19).

            It is generally believed among biblical scholars Psalm 74 and Genesis 1 are likely polemics of the Baal Cycle. That is to say, they are attempts to take credit away from Baal for subduing chaos (Leviathan) and giving proper credit to YHWH for this and for creation itself. It is known from tablets found in Syria over the last 150 years that the Semites of western Mesopotamia, the Amorites and Canaanites, believed that it was their storm-god Baal who had subdued the chaos monster.

Thus says Adad, I brought you back to the throne of your father, I brought you back. The weapons with which I fought Tiamat I gave to you. With the oil of my bitter victory I anointed you, and no one before you could stand.[1]

            Adad is the actual name of the west Semitic storm-god we know in the Bible as Baal. (“Baal” is a title that means “lord,” not a proper name.) The excerpt above is from a letter from Adad through his prophet, Abiya, to the king of Mari, Zimrī-Līm. The god was apparently reminding Zimrī-Līm that the king had been restored to power by his divine favor, which included sending to Zimrī-Līm the clubs he’d used to defeat Tiamat!

            Another tablet found at Mari, which was located on the Euphrates River near the modern border between Syria and Iraq, confirms that the clubs had been sent from Aleppo, which was known as the “city of Adad,” to the temple of Dagan (the earlier spelling of the Philistine god Dagon) at the town of Terqa, south of Mari.

            While that’s a fascinating bit of history—think about that: the divine clubs of Baal were physical objects!—the point is that Zimrī-Līm ruled at the same time as Hammurabi the Great of Babylon, which is about the time scholars believe the Enuma Elish was composed, and at least four hundred years before the Baal Cycle. So, it appears that even between Baal and Marduk there was competition over just who defeated the monstrous god of chaos.

            We must remember, people in the ancient Near East would not have the type of scientific, literal, and material point of view we have today in the western world. Rather, their view would have been more symbolic. This doesn’t mean it is any less real or true, it is merely a different way of looking at the world. When we look at the sea, we think of ocean currents and marine biology. When they looked at it, they thought of Leviathan/Tiamat/Litanu, chaos, and death. Therefore, what we have in Genesis 1 and Psalm 74 is not a scientific description of how everything was created, but a symbolic polemic describing who gets the credit for creating everything. According to the Bible, it’s not Baal. It’s not Marduk. It is YHWH.

            One might wonder, if it is a polemic, where is the battle? It is true, we do not see an epic battle in Genesis 1. There is a description of a defeat in Psalm 74, but it is still quite different when compared against the Baal Cycle. The idea conveyed by the biblical writers is when YHWH of Israel started creation, these chaotic forces were already held in check. There was no need for a battle; Leviathan was already bound because the one true God didn’t need to fight.

This would have been considered a slap in the face to Canaanite religion and the inferior god Baal. It was saying YHWH is the God who is truly in control and always has been. YHWH restricts chaos, not Baal. If a Canaanite living at that time were to read the Genesis account of creation, he would understand instantly what the text was doing. It’s busting down Baal and lifting up YHWH as supreme.

            We see this same sort of thing in Psalm 89:

You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. (Psalm 89:9–11, ESV)

This idea is repeated as an apocalyptic idea by the prophet Isaiah 27:

In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. (Isaiah 27:1, ESV)

In Psalm 89, Rahab is a name for Egypt but is also equated with the sea beast Leviathan. In Isaiah 27, we read of a time in the future where chaos is not simply subdued but is destroyed forever. Consider what John N. Oswalt’s commentary on the book of Isaiah says about this:

Most scholars today are in agreement that while the exodus events are in the center of the writer’s thinking, they are not by any means all that is there. Rahab is clearly a term for Egypt (cf. 30:7; and Ps. 87:4, where Rahab and Babylon are paired); so also the monster (or “dragon”) is a term for Pharaoh (Ezek. 29:3). But it is also clear that those terms are not limited to those historical referents. As is known from Ugaritic studies, the twisting monster is a figure in the struggles of Baal with the god of the sea, Yam, as is “Leviathan,” which is equated with the monster in Isa. 27:1. Given these facts, and the evidence that the myth of the struggle of the gods with the sea monster was known in one form or another all over the ancient Near East, one has reason to believe that Isaiah is here, as in 27:1, utilizing this acquaintance among the people for his own purposes. It is important to note that the allusions to Near Eastern myths in the Bible all occur after 750 B.C., long after the basic antimythic character of biblical faith had been established. Thus there is an appeal here neither to some current Hebrew myth nor to some original one, now dead. Rather, just as a contemporary poet might allude to the Iliad or the Odyssey, utilizing imagery familiar to his hearers but that is hardly part of their belief system, so Isaiah uses the imagery of the well-known stories of creation to make his point. It was not Baal or Marduk or Ashur who had any claim to being the Creator—it was the Lord alone.[2]

            The idea coming out of this comparison of Psalm 74 and Genesis 1 is that by the time the actual creation starts, Leviathan/Chaos is already subdued. This would seem to indicate in the text, at least in the mind of the writers of these passages, there is a lot more going on with Genesis 1:1-3 than what we are typically taught in Sunday school. We learn in the very first verse God created the heavens and the earth. However, what was that process like? What were the conditions? How long did it take? We are not told specifically, but we are given clues if we think of this as a polemic on ancient Canaanite religion.

            Whether taken as literal or symbolic, the texts indicate a creation story unlike anything most of us were taught in the Church, but it’s one that biblical scholars are very familiar with. The sea represents chaos, yet as we see in Genesis 1:2, chaos is already subdued by the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. The battle was over before it began. Whether Leviathan is meant to be understood as a literal sea beast existing somewhere in spiritual existence or as a symbol for the very real chaos of nature is unknown. Perhaps it is both. In any event, the text allows us a little more freedom in understanding creation than what we may have previously been taught.

            There are other interesting things to pull from this idea as well. In Genesis, once the water was still and chaos subdued, God started to create order from disorder. This idea, order from disorder, is common throughout ancient near-eastern religious texts, yet the writer of Genesis gives proper credit to YHWH, the God of Israel. To the writer of Genesis, the other, lesser gods tried to usurp YHWH’s accomplishments and attributes, so he wishes to set the record straight.

            The main reason for reiterating this point is because there are occult/pagan circles today who follow doctrines related to “order out of chaos,” “as above, so below,” and others. Since, in our culture today, those are recognized as doctrines outside of Christianity, it is worth repeating the point of polemics here. It seems the writer of Genesis was dealing with a similar thing in his day, so to set the record straight, he gave credit to YHWH for these things instead of allowing the lesser gods to usurp and defile them.

[1] “A Prophetic Letter of Adad to Zimrī-Līm” (A.1968). English translations in J. J. M. Roberts, The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Collected Essays (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), ch. 14, pp. 157-253, “The Mari Prophetic Texts in Transliteration and English Translation,” and in M. Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East, with contributions by C. L. Seow and R. K. Ritner (ed. P. Machinist; Writings from the Ancient World, 12; Atlanta, GA., Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 21-22 (A. 1968).

[2] John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 341-42.

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