The Return of the Gods with Jonathan Cahn

Part 2: Jonathan Cahn Interview

Tim Moore: Our guest today will pull back the curtain on Satan’s nefarious activities and alert us to the ancient demonic beings growing in influence in our midst.

Jonathan Cahn is the Messianic Rabbi—or lead pastor—of Beth Israel, the largest Messianic congregation in the United States. He is also a bestselling author. His books, including The Harbinger I and II, and The Book of Mysteries, have offered tremendous insight and encouragement. Jonathan, welcome to Christ in Prophecy today.

Jonathan Cahn: Great to be back.

Tim Moore: We’ve said that you may be one of our most frequent guests over the years, and that’s a blessing to us and our viewers. But we want to jump right in talking about your book, The Return of the Gods. And let’s be very frank, there seems to be a rise in optimism right now in America, and we don’t want that to delude people to the reality that there are great spiritual forces opposing those who would stand for a biblical worldview. And that’s a point you make very clear.

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, there is optimism and that actually, with the whole election of Donald Trump and what that means, it’s not about a person, but what that means, and I actually speak a lot about that in The Paradigm. There’s a whole mystery to that. But that hasn’t yet stopped the warfare that we are in. You know, because Donald Trump was president before and it did not stop basically the transformation, some of the things like what you just read at the beginning.

So the thing is we need revival. Without revival, we’re still going to be dealing with this. These are big forces we are dealing with. And we pray for revival, you know, and that’s what we pray for the next few years. But that’s what’s going to be needed to deal with what I speak about in The Return of the Gods.

Nathan Jones: You know, American society tends to be secular, so we kind of say, “Well, anything with gods or goddesses, that’s ancient history.” But your book makes the case that the ancient pagan deities are back and they’re behind the spiritual attack today. Why do you make that claim?

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, well, yeah, The Return of the Gods is revealing a mystery from the Bible and it’s actually an, it’s like an ironclad law of the Bible that we are now experiencing that concerns spirits or gods. And to set the stage of this, the Bible, when it speaks about the gods, we know there’s only one God, but there were many false gods and the nations worshipped them. In fact, everybody worshiped them except for Israel.

And the thing is that the Bible says in the Old Testament and the New Testament that behind the gods are entities. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it says they are called the shedim. Means the entities, means spirits. In the Greek, it’s translated into the word daemonia, which we get the word demon from. So it’s saying, the first thing is that it’s saying that behind all these things, there are actually spirits. That’s number one.

Secondly, you had a parable that Jesus gave, and people hear it and they take it in a very small way, but they don’t look at the big picture. He says when a man is delivered of a spirit, the spirit goes out looking for a place to dwell, doesn’t find it, goes back to the man, he calls it his house, goes back to the man, finds the house clean and empty and swept, but there’s nothing in there. He goes back, gets seven other spirits, they come back, they repossess the man. Jesus says, “The latter state of the man is worse than the first state.”

Now people think, “Okay, that’s about someone who’s been possessed and delivered and repossessed.” It is, but ultimately it’s about something else. He says, “So it will be with this generation.” He’s not talking about just one person.

So here is the warning. The warning is that any nation, any civilization, any culture that has known God, in a sense, been cleansed of paganism, which is basically Western civilization, if it should ever turn away from God, ever empty itself of God, become an empty house, you know, drive out the Gospel, the spirits that were cast out of it will come back into it.

And so the thing is that this is a gigantic warning, a gigantic revelation, and that is that this is exactly what we are witnessing in America. You see, when the Gospel came, the Gospel drove out the gods of the world. It drove out Jupiter, Zeus, and Osiris. And they’re all, it all ended. It was like the entire civilization was exorcized of the spirits. The Bible says there are spirits behind it. So it was an exorcism. That’s Western Civilization. That’s why it’s so different.

But the warning is that America’s part of that civilization. If America ever, and we already have watched it happen, if it turns away from God, we’ve been watching that for about half a century, then these ancient spirits or demonic spirits are going to come back into it. We’re going to witness a culture being repaganized or a culture being repossessed. And if you want to understand what’s been happening to America and much of the world in the last, say, half a century, we are watching a repaganization. We’re watching a repossession.

And the thing is, we can actually identify the principalities that the Bible speaks about that we are dealing with right now. And that is what The Return of the Gods opens up. I call it the Dark Trinity, we’ll get into it, I’m sure, but there are three primary gods or spirits that we are dealing with. It’s the same that Israel was dealing with, but it’s happening now and it’s specific, and every one of us, we’re dealing with it.

Tim Moore: I think Nathan is right when he says most Americans would scoff at the idea of a spiritual realm that impacts us today from ancient gods, but that is exactly what we are witnessing. And really, it’s the same thing, as you make the point, Jonathan, that the Lord warned the children of Israel against as they entered Canaan. Do not embrace those false gods. But sure enough, they strayed from the true and living God and did.

And so let’s dig into that, the Dark Trinity, as you call it. Who is this trifold god or the false gods that you call the possessor, the enchantress, and the destroyer? And what are some of the signs that they are possessing America even today?

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, well, the first one, yeah, in Hebrew, his name means the possessor or the master or the owner. And in Hebrew, the way you say that is ba’al, and we get the word Baal. And he’s always the first, he’s always the first of the gods, when it’s mentioned in the Bible, it’s Baal and the rest. He’s kind of like that first spirit that then brings his friends, you know?

And Baal, when you look at the, when Israel turned away from God, as you mentioned, when it turned away from God, there were three primary gods that represented its fall that were behind it and the first one is always Baal. Baal is basically the god who, or the spirit that turns a nation that has known God away from God. Baal was the false god. He was the anti-god. He was the substitute god for God.

And so what happened is, if we open the door, and that’s exactly what we did when in the early ’60s, America’s relationship with God took a dramatic turn. We started blatantly, brazenly driving God out of our public square, our public life. We took out prayer out of the school. We took out Bible out of the school. We took the name of God out. We started driving out. But the thing is, the warning is if you empty the house of God, and that’s what we’ve been watching in America, something else is going to come in, you know?

So we took God, we took God from the children, and the children are the future. You know, we took prayer out. We took the Bible out. That’s the future. So it’s not an accident what we’re witnessing today. This began then. And the thing is that if you take God out of the children or out of the schoolroom, the house is not going to stay empty. Others will come into the schools, others will come into the children, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

So when Baal was there in the time of Israel, what it showed is that there was a massive overturning of values. They overturned, they basically took out the 10 Commandments, took out the Law, and replaced them with pagan values. Well, we’ve been watching that in America. Progressively taking out the Word of God, the ways of God, the order of God, and replacing them with basically pagan morality.

And then the other thing is that Baal is a possessor. So what happens is that we start, basically, we don’t even realize it. We don’t call it that. But when God goes out, other gods come in. We may not call them gods, but we are running after idols. We are now more addicted than we’ve ever been. You know, the word Baal means master. So we have been more mastered than we’ve ever been before.

You know what the sign of Baal was in ancient times? It was a massive molten bronze bull. That’s what it was. That was the sign of Baal. He was shown by a symbol of power. Well, it’s interesting because if you go down to New York City and you go down where the harbingers are, you go down to the south, you’ll see a massive molten bronze bull, you know? And it is basically, you know, they didn’t mean it. They had no idea . But it’s basically the sign of a nation that has turned away from God and has turned to the gods.

And it’s interesting because Baal was the god also of prosperity, materialism, you know? And so what do we call our prosperous markets? We call them bull markets, you know, a bull economy. Well, that’s why they put that there.

So the thing is, this opens the door basically to paganism and everything we’re talking about because in the pagan world, what’s different is that with God, there’s God, there’s Heaven, there’s Earth. But in paganism, all the distinctions are blurred. And so when you have one God, you’ve got one truth. You got one truth. But when you have many gods, you’ve got many truths. So therefore, everybody now has their own truth, “wokeism.” You know, everybody has their unique truth.

If a man says, “I’m not a man, I’m a woman,” well, that’s his unique truth. Or, “I’m a dog.” That’s his unique truth. You know, that’s paganism, but that is what happens when you take God out. So Baal is the first, but then he’s going to bring his other, the other two. And I’ll just tell you and we can get into it, the next one is a goddess called the enchantress.

Nathan Jones: You know, when my kids were growing up, they’re adults now, but for the last decade or so, you’d go to the young adult section of any bookstore and it’s 90% new age satanism, cultism. I mean, the youth of today are just inundated with the cultism. And that’s where, Baal, where we get the term Beelzebub, right? Beelzebub, another name for Satan.

Tim Moore: And I find it interesting that one of the things Baal requires of the people who are submitting to them is that they give him, give over to him their most precious possession, their own children. And we’ve seen that in our own culture as well. But let’s turn to the second of the trinity.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, the enchantress.

Tim Moore: So who is the enchantress?

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, yeah, the Bible will talk about Baal and then it will say, often the next one is a goddess, and it’s often Ashtaroth. So you have Baal and you have Ashtaroth. Now, this one is called, in ancient times, she was called the enchantress. This one is one of the oldest entities or deities on the planet. And in Sumer, she was called Inanna. In the Bible, Ashtaroth. In Babylon, Ishtar. In Greece, Aphrodite. But this is a dark principality. And this is the principality of unbridled sexuality, sexual immorality. And this is, actually, she was a prostitute, a prostitute goddess.

And so what happens is, well, think about it. You know, you got Baal. The number two is this Ashtaroth or Ishtar. And so look what happened to America. We turned away from God and what’s the next thing that happened? The next thing that happened in the 1960s was the sexual revolution. It’s not an accident. This is the principality that seduces a nation, that turns the nation away from God using the realm of sexuality.

And so what does a prostitute do? A prostitute takes sex out of marriage, puts it into the culture, into the marketplace. Well, that’s exactly what happened. We’ve watched as sexuality has been taken out of marriage, actually weakened marriage. And that’s what a prostitute does. But also she sexualizes the culture. You know, pagan culture was sexualized. And so that’s exactly what we have, and by the way, the sexual revolution has not stopped. It’s just gotten worse.

So it’s like clockwork. It’s amazing. And one of the things is that in ancient Greece, when they worshiped her, they called her the sacred prostitute. Well, the word they used for prostitute, for her, is the word porne, or porn. So, literally, and this is the goddess of pornography. This is the goddess that basically, the first pornography on planet Earth were the writings of this goddess and images of this goddess. And so what would we expect to happen? An explosion of pornography. And that’s exactly what we have witnessed. And that’s how this one seduces the nation.

And you mentioned just before about the occult, and this is also the goddess of casting spells. So one of the other things we’ve seen, and you’ve alluded to it, is that it wasn’t just an explosion of sexuality or immorality. It was an explosion of occult. The occult happened at the same time. And also addiction. This is the goddess of addictive substances. So all these things began particularly in the ’60s and they are still unfolding to this day.

Tim Moore: So who is the third in this trinity you refer to as the destroyer?

Jonathan Cahn: Well, you alluded to this, Tim, and that is the third one and it kind of goes like clockwork. So first you turn away from God, then it affects the Creation, it affects sexuality, affects marriage, family. By the way, the destruction of marriage and family, that is the fruit of this principality, of the enchantress.

But it leads to the next step, which is total destruction. And what happened is when the Israelites, when they fell away from God, they got into sexual immorality. Well, that leads to the next thing. You know, one of the signs of paganism is human sacrifice. It was actually common. It wasn’t uncommon. It was actually common. And the sacrifice of children, because children couldn’t fight. You know, so they offered up their children all over.

Do you know what it was that ended child sacrifice around the world? It was the Gospel. It was the name of Jesus. That tells you how right our faith is. And the thing is that, but if you turn away from God, then what was cast out will come back in.

And so the third principality or god was called Molech. And of course, when they turned away from God, they offered up their children on the altars of Molech. What a demonic act that is. But that’s exactly what happened. So as the 1960s gave way to the ’70s, now the third one comes in, and we call it abortion, but it is child sacrifice. And, you know, people could say, “Well, how can you compare?” Well, Israel killed thousands of children. We’ve killed millions, 60 million of them. But this is exactly what happens.

And I won’t go into the detail, but in the book I go through that there are signs. You know which children were offered up more than any other children in child sacrifice? The children of the poor. Well, which children are aborted more than any other? The children of the poor. And they would actually have, they would call it a sacred right. And there are radical feminists who call abortion a sacred sacrifice, you know? And so all these things are unfolding, and this is exactly what we would expect to happen.

So these are the, and there’s so much more to it, of course, we’re just giving a taste with The Return of the Gods. But then there is a whole other side which is affecting us to this day and that is the enchantress had another side. And the thing is that she was, in her ancient writings, it says, in the inscriptions, it says, she says, “I am a woman.” And then she says, “I am a man.” It says in her ancient hymns, “You are the one who turns a man into a woman and a woman into a man.” And so what would we expect to happen?

This is the other side, you see, it doesn’t come out at the beginning because it’s, but once she takes more possession of a culture, then this darker side comes out. And so we start to see, we’d expect to see this spirit of androgyny. She was the goddess who bent the lines of gender, confused them, mixed them, turned women into men, turned boys into girls, it says, and actually, this is what we are witnessing.

It says in her ancient inscriptions, she emasculates men. She grinds away their masculinity. Well, we’re watching this in America, I mean, in all sorts of ways. But she’s also the one who masculinizes women. So we have this thing. So the effect, now, think about this. All the way from the ’60s, but now it’s reaching a whole other level. But this idea that a man can replace a woman, a woman can replace a man, it’s been going on for, they’ve been saying this for decades, but now it’s reaching a point where they’re actually doing it. I mean, surgically, you know?

So this is all part of the same spirit. That’s what she does. And she had an ancient priesthood and there was a priesthood of men who dressed up as women and they would dance and perform and people would bring their children to see them in drag. And here’s another thing. She would not just do that, but she would also, this goddess, the worship of this goddess, would have men surgically mutilated, transitioned, to appear as women. In fact, one of the things I quote in The Return of the Gods is a quote that it says, “These transitioned men dance before the goddess with scalpels celebrating basically their transition.”

So what we are, and listen, here’s another thing. You know, the early Christians were dealing with this. Again, it was the Gospel that exorcized this, that cast them out. But this very thing was there in the early world. We think of the gender bending as something new. It’s not. It’s pagan and it’s demonic. So when you take God out, it’s all coming back. So this is exactly what Jesus warned about.

And think about it. Right now, our children, you know, this is why we need revival. You know, as we have the political change, we need revival because our children have been so brainwashed by this culture that right now, the young generation, almost now 30% of them say they are not male or female. They are not heterosexual. They are queer or something else. Almost 30%. This is unprecedented. But this is how real it is what we’re dealing with.

Tim Moore: It seems like, we talk a lot about Romans 1 here, and obviously the Lord calls out those in a society that suppressed the truth in unrighteousness, but that warning seems particularly aimed at those who knew God and yet turned away from God, just as you’re saying, to empty a society of God that lets those ancient pagan false gods who reflect actual spiritual entities in, and that is characteristic of all that we see playing out around us.

Well, a lot of people watching this today would say, “Well, what can I do about it?” Or, “Where is the hope?” Obviously there’s been a little window of hopefulness just in these last months, but the spiritual forces are still raging. And I think they’re doing so all the more, as is Satan, because he knows his time is short. So where’s the hope for someone watching today, Jonathan?

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, every book I do always ends with hope. You know, I never do without. Yeah, and a call, a challenge. Well, one thing, yeah, I think you’re saying this, right? This is a war. We’re in basically a war for dominion, you know? And the principalities are never okay with toleration. At the beginning, they get in the door by saying, “Oh, let’s be tolerated.” You know, that’s how you get into a Christian-based civilization with paganism, you know? But once they get a foothold, then it’s every knee shall bow, then it’s cancel culture, then it’s you will conform. So that’s exactly what we’d expect.

In fact, let me just, and I’ll get to our part, but just to notice up to this point where we have this change now in government, and you said it right, window—right now, but the thing is that how much this has taken over our government, do you know that, I mean, our whole culture, in ancient times, you know what the sign of this goddess was? One of the signs was the rainbow. The rainbow. That’s why you’re seeing the rainbow all over.

Do you know what she was the goddess of? Parades, where men paraded as women and women went through the streets as men and with colors. And you know, there was one month of the year, which she especially possessed the culture. It was the month called, in the Latin, identified by Saint Jerome as Junium, or the month of June, Pride Month. So all this thing is what we are dealing with. There’s so much more we can talk about.

But the thing is that, listen, the ultimate thing is this all came about because God was driven out of our culture. And so the only answer is bringing God back in. And as you said, and I use this a lot, right now we have a window. You know, we have a window because of what has happened. I mean, and actually, there’s been a rolling back of these things we’ve talked about, which has never been before, only in the last like few months, and especially in the last two weeks, you know? This is a window.

The window isn’t the answer and no person is the answer, but God can use the window for revival, for God’s presence to come through the window. We’ve got a window of time. We have to pray for revival as never before. We have to live in revival as never before. We have to proclaim Jesus as never before. And we have to live it in our own lives because when we choose revival, then revival begins now. And the thing is that we also have to be bold for God.

You know, one thing about Donald Trump is he’s bold. Whether he does the right thing or he does crazy things, it doesn’t matter. We have to be bold for the Lord. So let’s pray for revival as never before. And let’s also live in the power of God. You know, it’s the power of God, the Spirit of God, and in the name of Jesus that drove all these gods out. The name of Jesus is more powerful than all the gods of the world. So we have to live in authority and not live timidly, not on the defense. It’s time to move forward, advance the Gospel. It’s an exciting time and we are called to be on the winning side.

Tim Moore: Well, obviously we are strong advocates of your book, Return of the Gods, because it does warn, and that’s what we’re trying to do today for our viewers, is warn that even though there’s been a little light shed lately, there’s still very dark forces raging. Jonathan, you open our eyes and the eyes of our viewers, all who would get this book and read it, to the forces that are raging, but we know who wins in the end and that is Jesus Christ. How can our viewers connect with you and your ministry and find out more? Obviously we’re going to offer the book, but how can they connect with you there at Beth Israel?

Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, thank you, and I would just, and just I encourage people to write to you and get that not just for themselves, but for people in their lives, because people are getting touched and getting saved out of these lifestyles. So, yeah, as far as my ministry is called, my ministry I think is called Hope of the World, and we give out prophetic updates and free gifts and all that.

So if they just go on hopeoftheworld.org, you’ll get all sorts of free stuff and you get updates. And if they want to see special things that I put out, prophetic things, then you have Facebook—Jonathan Cahn and all that. But always a blessing to be with you.

Closing

Tim Moore: There you have it. A clarion call to stay grounded in Christ and reject the false gods of this age.

Nathan Jones: So many people around us are deluded and deceived. Their minds have been indoctrinated in the secularism and paganism that has been normalized in American society. This is the time for followers of Christ to be bold in proclaiming the truth, even as we express love and compassion to those who are misled.

Tim Moore: Nathan is absolutely right. They will know we are Christians by our love, but love does not wish someone well as they go along their merry way to hell. “Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

Nathan Jones: Well, if you want to get a copy of Jonathan’s insightful book, Return of the Gods, just visit our online store or call the number on the screen, and for only $25, we’ll be glad to send you a copy. That price includes shipping and is less than the published retail price.

Tim Moore: Jonathan Cahn will be back with us again next week. You won’t want to miss our discussion of yet another book that offers understanding to the spiritual battle raging against Israel and the Jewish people. The world is reeling under the deceptions unleashed by the return of ancient pagan gods. We rejoice in the truth and freedom offered by the true and living God and we know that He is coming again soon. In anticipation of that great and glorious day and on behalf of all of us here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, Godspeed!

End of Program