Ancient Israel, having embraced the gods of her heathen neighbors and having turned away from her Creator, had forced herself into to a drastic change in morality.  The “god of gods” (Baal) insisted that Israel leave behind all vestiges of positive morality which honored human life and embrace his degraded view of human life and everything involved with human existence.  In the past human life had been sacred.  Under her new god, that concept, which Israel had embraced from her founding, had to go.  Nothing could be declared sacred.  All previous values had to be overturned.  Israel’s traditional concept of right and wrong had to be summarily rejected.  There could be no absolute right or wrong.  This meant that life itself was no longer sacred.  Man was no more than an animal, having no inherent worth.  Life was by nature debased and meaningless except for what pleasure could be wrung out of it.

As we look into the inner workings of a fallen and morally corrupt Israel, we will compare what we find there to modern day America, as well as all other Western nations which follow her lead relative to moral issues. In so doing one will see clearly that this so-called One Nation Under God in whom she claims to Trust is following lock-step along the path to destruction once trod by her ancestors. What we will find will be heart-breaking for those who love America as I do.  Being a student of both God’s Word and history, I have watched in horror as the sacred values that once defined this great nation were cast aside and replaced by their exact opposites.  The first subject we will examine concerns a basic human drive–sex–which, as Baal would have it, has become a god in and of itself in this nation once known as God’s “shining city on a hill.”  When God is cast out of a nation, anything can become a god.  Sex is one such god in modern America.

In the Biblical view that once permeated the Israelite society, men and women were created in God’s spiritual image and physical likeness.  Therefore males and females were deemed sacred.  And in that Adam and Eve were commissioned to replenish the earth “after their kind,” the marriage-defining union between males and females was also sacred and was designed to take place only within marriage, which made marriage sacred.  However, in the cult of Baal, neither sexuality nor marriage had absolute value, therefore they were granted no sanctity (sacredness) in the minds of the people.  If marriage and sex had no sanctity, they could be debased.  And in that the worship of and service to Baal was of a religious nature and a part of human life, and in that sex was a necessary part of human life, it was only natural that sex and religion come together.

In Baal’s places of worship his priests and priestesses officiated over, and often joined in, sexual acts of all kinds.  This practice took sex out of the privacy of the bedroom and placed it in the public arena.  Sex became a “spectator sport.”  Open and public sex acts became a part of Israel’s culture.  As did many heathen societies, the Canaanites had a female goddess who reigned in the realm of sex.  Hand-made idols of the Canaanite fertility goddess abound.  Today known as Easter in the Western world, her worshipers could be found not only among the Canaanites, but within many other societies and under many other names such as Diana, Ishtar and Aphrodite.  I have seen a picture of a clay replica of the goddess whose nakedness revealed her numerous breasts.  Later, in the West, the sexual “whore of heaven” would be associated with eggs and rabbits–symbols of fertility.  During my childhood one could buy baby chicks died various colots on the street during the “Easter season” in Campbell, Missouri.  Later came televised “Easter Parades” that took place in some of the nation’s larger cities.  Following “Easter Service” on “Easter Sunday” on which females wore their new “Easter dresses,” we had the greatly anticipated “Easter dinner on the grounds” followed by an “Easter egg hunt” for the enjoyment of the children.  I can still see the metal buckets filled with the best lemonade I have ever tasted and the sight of brightly colored eggs peeking out from under leaves and out of holes in the dirt.  But that was not the main part of the annual celebration.  The congregation had earlier attended the “Easter Sunrise Service” where, in worshipful silence, we watched the sun rise in the east.  Unknown to us, God condemned this practice in Ezekiel chapter eight.  Because we “knew” that the law had been “nailed to the cross,” we “knew” that very little of the Old Testament applied to us.  Sound familiar?

Baal, the Israelites’ new god, was not satisfied with destroying the marriage bed, he had even more religious tricks with which to fool God’s Chosen People.  His war against God’s order concerning sex went even further.  Because males and females were of no intrinsic value, and because sex was engaged in solely for its physical aspects, then the natures and distinctions of males and females were of no particular importance.  This meant that one could, by an act of will, change from one sex to another.  One could be whichever sex one wanted to be and express one’s gender accordingly.  It did not matter that absolutely nothing changed when one changed sex, the change had actually taken place, along with the appropriate gender (dress, hair styles, ornament adornment, voice inflections, physical mannerisms, etc.).  The sex changer’s natural biological characteristics were of no significance.  Such idiocy was demonstrated recently when a woman said that approximately 40% of the world’s males give birth.  One of the curses God promised to place on a nation that, having known Him, then turned away from Him, was to strike its people with mental confusion.

In the shrines and temples of Baal were found a class of people known as the kadeshotes.  “Kadesh” means holy.  These were female prostitutes whose “ministry” was to perform sexual acts with men in the temples and shrines throughout Canaan as an act of Baal worship–an expression of the holiness embodied in the temple whores.  Israel whole-heartedly embraced this practice.

There was another class of shrine inhabitants called the Kadeshim who also performed sex acts in the temples and shrines.  In many ways they were identical to the kadeshote.  Only these prostitutes were males who performed sex acts on males.  Today such males are known as homosexuals or queers.  In this way, males and females were alike.  One of the hallmarks of Baal worship was the confusion of the male and female sexes and the removal of all distinctions between the two.  Among the Baal-worshiping Israelites, sexual deviance became a holy rite, an integral part of their lives and their worship services.  God’s Chosen People, whom He had raised up to be a light to the world, proclaimed through their lifestyle that they had departed from Him and had become worshipers of a variety of heathen gods, especially the premier god–Baal.    L.J.