HOW TO LIVE IN A PAGAN CULTURE…TODAY!

“The good must bring evil to an end, or else it would cease to be good. And yet His mercy is still greater than judgment. His heart always wills for redemption. And therein lies the hope”
― Jonathan Cahn, The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America’s Future

So the rise of witchcraft, the occult religious doctors, it’s all part of the same thing.
The turning away from faith. These are all substitutes for God. They compete against God because they’re substitutes for God.
They chanted the names of Orishas or spirit gods of Africa and said they were empowered by them.
Or that liberal legislators in California are now trying to have the Children trained into praising the gods of the Aztec religion.
That’s, that’s human sacrifice. Do you know the House of representing Congress opened this year?
The first session with a prayer not to God, the God of the Bible, but to brahma, a pagan God.
So the rise of witchcraft, the occult religious doctors, it’s all part of the same thing.
The turning away from faith. These are all substitutes for God. They compete against God because they’re substitutes for God.
Look at the greatest evils of modern times, communism killed tens of millions of people, Nazism, genocide, world war, millions of people.
What do they have in common both rose up when the mainstream culture was falling away from the Bible.
In other words, when you take away Christians, you take away the faith. What happens?
This is what happens where it’s all leading we shall see. But those other things came in to replace God.
They would deny that their religion, but their religions and anybody who came against their doctrine, they would, they would persecute.
We live in similar times. You can watch it. Developing this madness has affected our culture.
It’s a direct result of falling away from God. A replacement. What does God say?
He says he gave them over to a delusion. It’s a replacement in many ways.
It’s a revival of the pagan, the pagan religions were watching the revival of pagan morality, pagan values, pagan culture.
On one hand, it’s bad news.
On the other hand, in many ways, we’re living in a day that is more like the days of the Bible than any other day we’ve ever lived in.
More like the world of the Book of Acts more like a civilization in which the Gospel first came.
Imagine you were living in the first century. You’re a disciple of Messiah, the world around you.
What’s it filled with God’s cults, religions, pagan morality, Roman Empire.
It’s a, it’s a culture where the weak were killed, Children were aborted.
They were or left to be exposed as infants to be, to die. Sexual immorality reigns.
Believers are marginalized, looked as intolerant looked on, persecuted, vilified a world filled with substitutes for God, substitutes for the Gospel and substitutes for the resurrection, the pagan world.
Had gods in their mythology that died and rose from death.
The Egyptian had the God Assir or Osiris evil brother of him was sex that God set who was jealous had a plot, had a banquet brought in a chest, said anybody who can fit in the chest can have it.
Osiris says, oh, let me look, puts him in. He gets sealed up, thrown in the Nile gets killed dead.
His wife Isis then then causes him to be resurrected or come back to life.
A land of Mesopotamia, Babylon Assyria. They worship the God Tamils. You’ve heard of him? He’s in the Bible.
Actually, Hebrew month is named after this. Tamil is loved by the goddess Ishtar a goddess who was very dysfunctional.
She ends up causing his death. He’s forced to descend to the underworld that he comes back.
So for time they started a morning in the Middle East for Tamils.
That’s what Ezekiel discovered the temple before judgment came there.
Actually morning for this God, Tam is all over the Middle East and then he comes back.
What about the Greeks? The Greco Phoenician mythology? They had a God named Adonis. You’ve heard the name Adonis.
Where’d you get that when they speak of some heart? A young man, a heartthrob star called Adonis.
Where’d it come from? He’s a God in this mythology who went out hunting was killed by a wild boar.
He descends to death every year. He’s mourned, comes back what does the donnas come from?
Take away the s and what do you get? I don’t, I it’s a substitute for the Lord.
And the Greeks had a God called Dionysus God of revelry, drinking rejoicing.
One day the other gods are jealous, they kill him, they tear him up.
He ends up coming back, resurrected by Zeus. And so they’re even the Germanic peoples had a God, Walton.
We get the word Wednesday from that God and he hangs on a tree, not crucified, but hung and he, he dies and comes back.
So the charges made by those against the gospel to this day, the gospel is just borrowing this.
It’s copying this. That’s all it is. Are there similarities? Yes. How do you respond to that?
Well, the first thing is this, where are all those faiths today? What Egyptian worship so serious today? None.
What Iraqi worships Tamils today. None. What Lebanese worships Adonis, none. What Greek worships Dionysus.
None yet all across this planet today.
People are celebrating from every tribe and tongue, the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus. Amen.
You can’t compare that second. Who was it? Who first preached the gospel of the resurrection?
The apostles who were the apostles, they were Jews believing Torah observing Kosher keeping Jews.
In fact, what Jew in his right mind is going to take anything from pagan myth to them.
It was an abomination back then.
The Bible believing Jewish, the first believers, disciples were more orthodox than orthodox people are today.
Orthodox Jews Peter who’s held by the Catholic church is the first Pope.
He’s the one who told God he corrected God.
He said, no, I have never had an a NCO shirt thing in my life.
So remember God, we have to keep Kosher Paul speaks to the pagan world on Mars Hill in Athens and said, and he says, the Bible says he’s troubled.
He saw the idols and he was deeply troubled.
He says, he says to them, therefore, people of Athens, since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like silver or stone, an image made by man’s hand or skill in one sentence.
He exposes paganism totally idolatry mythology. And then he adds in the past, God overlooked this such ignorance.
But now he commands all people everywhere to repent for.
It is said, there will come a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.
He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.
So now coming into the pagan world is the resurrection of Messiah.
And what was their reaction when they heard about it? It says some of them mocked, sneered.
Others said, we want to hear more about this. So what does that tell you right there?
It disproves the entire charge right there. What did I tell you to each of them? It was something new.
There was something gigantically knew that some mocked it and others said we got to hear more about this that reveals that the resurrection of Messiah was something so new and so powerful.
It just, it just, it just blew everything away.
But let’s imagine for a moment that the Jews in the first century, they all go crazy and they say, okay, let’s take the myths of the pagan world and let’s get them into our faith.
Now, the gospel would be filled with mythology, with gods, fighting gods and people turned into, into frogs and you won’t find one iota of that.
Why? Because the gospel is real, which brings up another point.
The only way of Bible believing orthodox Jews gonna preach the resurrection to the pagan world is if the resurrection happened in Israel, because that Israel is the most anti mythological nation on earth.
And yet from that comes the resurrection.
And when you get beyond the superficial things between these things, the truth is there is nothing more different than them from the mythologies of the pagan world than the gospel of Messiah.
The mythologies are filled with God’s plotting against each other, poisoning each other, eating each other.
You can’t even put that in the same breath as the Gospel. There’s nothing redeemable in them.
There’s no morals, there’s no ethic, there’s no love, there’s no redemption. There’s nothing Osiris gets locked in a chest.
Not because he’s, he’s giving his life for his loving or because he’s stupid.
Thomas dies because the goddess who’s got problems fell in love with him.
Adonis is killed by basically a wild pig. Dionysus dies because other gods are justice. Nothing there.
It can’t even stand in the same universe as the gospel.
It can’t even stand near God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.
The love of God that changes lives the world. You know, you know, the world does.
You know, they can’t look at, they only see the superficial, the world looks at Jesus and Mohammad and Buddha.
And well, they’re all great teachers know they’re not, the resemblance is superficial. Islam is not about Mohammed.
Buddhism is not about Buddha. Mohammad taught Islam Buddha taught Buddhism, but Jesus did not teach Christianity.
Jesus is Christianity. There’s a big difference there.
And of course not to mention, you can go, you can find it somewhere in the world.
There’s a body of Buddha and a body of Muhammad, but there is no body of Messiah because the tomb is empty.
What about the one similarity about the rising gods and that they rose?
Well, according to the mythology of that, well, it’s very simple, very deep and simple.
Most of those gods were representing nature and particularly these gods had a thing in common.
Osiris was the god of vegetation.
Thomas, the God of wheat, Adonis, the God of the harvest, Dionysus, the God of the vineyard.
All that’s linked to vegetation. Well, here is the mystery, the puzzle piece. What happens every year in nature.
Nature goes through a death every year and then in spring it goes through a resurrection every year.
So, so of course, the pagans and they say this God represents this, of course, if he dies, they say he dies every year comes back every year.
That’s basically what they did. But the Bible says something deeper.
It says all creation shows forth the invisible qualities of God.
So could it be that actually every day of every year of our life, we’re actually seeing a shadow of the resurrection.
Every year, everything dies every year, it comes back to life.
And when did Messiah come back in the spring, the time of Nissan?
Now on top of all of this is the Hebrew scriptures themselves centuries before the gospel.
All this, you have job saying my redeemer lives, I’ll die. My body will decay.
But I will again praise my redeemer. That’s the resurrection. And Daniel, it says, go your way.
Daniel sleep in the dust that’s called death.
But then you shall rise again at the end of the age that’s called resurrection. Isaiah 53 says he died.
But at the end of the three, guess what? He’s alive again? Did you notice that there’s a resurrection?
Isaiah 53 the scriptures are filled with things like arise. Oh Lord rise up.
O Lord, the Lord has to get up, rise.
Oh Lord in Isaiah, it’s written that day, the Lord will, will wipe away the veil that is over all nations.
He will wipe away the veil of death.
He’ll wipe away every tear, every tear and death shall be swallowed up. O death. Where is your victory?
O grave? Where is your sting? Where is it?
See, one of the reasons why the gospel came with such power into the pagan world is because it was the very opposite of mythology.
See, myth, mythological thinking is a certain way. But what? But it’s the Bible is the opposite.
Listen to this first John that which was from the beginning which we have heard we have seen with our eyes.
We’ve we’ve looked at, we’ve touched with our hands, we proclaim it, we’ve seen it, we testify of it.
We proclaim it. It’s appeared, we’ve touched with our hands, we’ve seen with our eyes. It’s real.
What’s it talking about? This is real.
The biggest difference between the gospel and the myths of the world is very simple. Myths are myths.
The gospel is the gospel. The gospel truth is the gospel. Truth.
Mythologies are characterized by the fact they never quite happen. They’re always repeating every year.
They go down and come up and go down. They happen, they never happen.
They’re always happening when Tamils rise from death. Never really always and never Adonis always. That’s mythology.
It’s all a circle. It’s always repeating. Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever comes new. It’s not real. It’s somewhere else.
Myths are anti historical. The gospel is entirely historical. Myths come from nature. The gospel overcomes nature.
The gospel took place in real time and real space in flesh and blood, dusty, dirty reality.
God came into this world. God alone. The gospel alone takes place in time.
Not in chaos, not in, not in Valhalla, not in a lesion fields.
It took place in the first century Judea real time under a real Caesar, a real governor, a real high priesthood with real flesh and blood.
Roman soldiers with real spares and the first century Jewish disciples real.
You cannot take a plane and go to the Netherworld or Valhalla or the lesion fields, but you could take a plane and go to Jerusalem.
You can take a car to Bethlehem from their messiah wasn’t born in the house of God somewhere.
He was born in the house of bread, Bethlehem. A real place in real time.
Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who walked the dusty roads of first century Judea when he died on the cross on Friday and cried out Ellie, Ellie Llamas, Bach Tani.
He was speaking real first century Hebrew Aramaic. He wasn’t put to death by a jealous, jealous gods.
He was put to death by a real historical tribunal called the Sanhedrin.
We’ve got records of them he didn’t die by a, by a spell putting on, he died by crucifixion, the very real means of execution at that time.
And he died on the exact Hebrew day of Passover and the coming of the Sabbath, his body wasn’t taken to the Netherworld.
It was wrapped in linen and buried according to Jewish customs of burial.
And when the women came to the tomb and they saw the stone rolled away.
When the disciples heard the report, they didn’t say, oh yeah, that’s what happened. They were blown away by it.
It surprised them. I mean, they couldn’t come up with it. God came up with it.
They were the first ones to be shocked by it. He clearly died.
There’s no serious historian who doubts that it’s undeniable. He died and the whole movement was crushed.
I mean, it was all based on the crushed, demoralized in morning, broke in the Messiah died.
So then what happened? What happened to take this crushed, demoralized, broken, persecuted, powerless bunch of people and transform them into the most powerful people.
The world has ever known what happened, the resurrection happened. That’s what happened.
That’s the only thing that could explain it.
What happened that not only changed them, it changed the whole world.
It literally transformed the course of human history to this day.
It’s amazing even a world that rejects them in Marxist ways that they still say today’s Easter, they still dress up.
It’s not wishful thinking it’s some, not some vague story. This is the real resurrection of Messiah.
They saw him crucified, they saw the life go out of him, but something happened and that’s something that power, that event had to be something that somehow undid that death.
It had to be powerful, more powerful than death. So the Apostle Paul would write this.
Now I make known to you brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preach to you.
I handed it down to you. He Messiah died for our sins according to the scriptures.
And he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.
And then he appeared to Cephas Peter, then to the 12. Not so this is our witnesses here.
This is like in court, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of them are still alive.
They can bear it out there, still alive.
Paul says, then he appeared to James then to all the apostles and last of all, as to one untimely born to me.
The fact is he says, Messiah has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first fruits.
And so there he says, listen to what he says.
Now, next thing he says, all right, after he says, death has been swallowed up in victory, not just swallowed up in victory.
He says, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Yeshua, the Messiah Jesus.
Therefore, he says my beloved brethren, be strong and be a moveable. Don’t let anybody move.
You always excelling in the work of the Lord. This is not some nice story, nothing nice about it.
It’s so real. It transformed history.
It came into a world of pagan mythologies, the dark hopeless world of paganism and just blew it out of the water, blue the gods out of the water.
In fact, this whatever happened on Sunday morning, which we know was so powerful that it single handedly ended the pagan mythology of most of the world single handedly because it was so real.
The other things just couldn’t compare. Now, let’s bring it home. There are two hopes in this world.
One is the pagan hope and the pagan resurrection, which we talked about.
It’s mythological, it’s not real, it’s not new, it doesn’t change anything. It happens every year doesn’t transform.
It’s not connected to real life doesn’t have any purpose.
And for many people and even believers, even though they never admit it, that’s the resurrection they’re going on.
It’s a resurrection that’s not really real to them. It’s not really changing their life.
It’s just the life is the same thing. It’s a cycle.
It’s always there out there in that other realm of God and all, but it’s not really changing.
And that might be some of you, you have, you have the life you live and then they have the resurrection that’s in its own place and it doesn’t really change it.
So, the resurrections of victory. But you, are you living, are you living a victory?
Your, some of your living after you’re on the losing side? What’s what happened there? It’s a pagan thing.
It’s not connecting the resurrection of power and blessing, but you’re living in fear and anxiety as if it’s always the end of the world.
But you’ve got victory here now. I think that’s, that’s, that’s not, that’s the, that’s the resurrection of our faith.
It is not, this is not our, that’s pagan. You might say Jesus in it, but that’s the pagan way.
That’s not our hope. The hope we have is something else entirely.
The resurrection of Messiah is something else. Not only is it real? It’s more real than this life.
So compared to God and the power of God, this life is the myth compared to him.
That’s how real that is so that it took place in time and space so we could take place in your time and your space.
You understand, that’s why it’s so important.
And the power when you bring it together the power of the resurrection with the real resurrection to the real life or whatever you’re living, it could be dirty and dusty.
Doesn’t let it come into the real thing. Don’t, don’t, don’t pretend with God.
Let it come real, let the real thing come to the real you.
Hi I’m Jonathan Cahn and I hope you were blessed with the video.
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