Only 20 years after more than 1 million Christian men gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the “Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men” event organized by the Denver-based group Promise Keepers, another religiously themed event took place.
The Catharsis on the Mall festival featured elements of devil worship.
Breaking Israel News, or BIN, reported representations of “Lord Shiva Natarja,” a Hindu god, a massive seven-headed dragon representing Satan, were present at the three-day event.
It’s evidence, in the opinion of one prominent rabbi, that “an ancient sin … is creeping back into the world.”
WND has reported recently on the repeated appearances of a reproduction of the historic Temple of Baal.
The arch has risen in London and New York City, the latter only a few steps away from Ground Zero. It was placed outside a global summit in Dubai. More recently, it was even constructed for the G7 Summit in Florence, Italy.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the messianic rabbi and prophetic teacher, reveals a pattern that explains world history, in “The Paradigm.” Makes a great gift! Available now at the WND Superstore.
It’s a replica of a Roman triumphal arch originally built in Palmyra, Syria. Destroyed by the terrorist group ISIS during the current Syrian civil war, the Institute for Digital Archaeology used 3-D printing to rebuild the arch. Since then, the arch has been on a world tour, appearing near global summits and in important cities.
But the arch isn’t just a Roman ruin. It was originally an arch for the Temple of Baal, a pagan god repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. The rites of Baal were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. And many Christians find it strange that such a god keeps being honored or invoked repeatedly at global summits.
Jonathan Cahn, who rocked American Christianity with his New York Times bestseller “The Harbinger” and produced a revolutionary new kind of devotional with “The Book of Mysteries,” told WND he finds the developments ominous.
“When looking at this phenomenon, we have to understand the nature of the god involved,” he explained. “Baal was the god that Israel turned to after it turned away from the God of Scripture. He was the substitute god, the replacement god, the anti-God god – the god of their turning away, their fall. Baal was the god of the apostasy.”
Cahn argues what happened to ancient Israel is now happening to the post-Christian West.
“We are now witnessing a massive apostasy taking place all over Western civilization, a large scale falling away from the God of Scripture,” he said. “So to see the sign of Baal manifesting throughout the modern world is stunning. It is the sign of a civilization rapidly turning away from its faith and falling away from the knowledge of God.”
BIN reported that there were art, music, lecture, exhibit, meditation and other events at the Catharsis Nov. 10-12.
“We sought a local experience that integrated the best of our … values with the immediate desire for political and cultural change that brings people to D.C.,” the organizers stated on their website.
“The event featured a 70-foot long, seven-headed, red metal dragon on wheels. The dragon, named for the ancient Egyptian god Abraxas, was clearly intended to reference Satan as described in the Christian book of Revelation. The dragon, like many elements of the event, was previously used at Burning Man, a yearly festival held in the Nevada desert that attracts tens of thousands from around the world,” the report said.
Among the other pagan elements BIN noticed: A 30-foot tall wooden temple that was burned and a Hindu god made of paper mache.
One proposal fell through.
“Organizers were issued a permit to erect a 45-foot tall, 16,000-pound, steel sculpture of a naked woman titled ‘R-evolution’ in front of the Washington Monument, deliberately facing the White House. The organizers initially intended for the massive piece to stand for four months, but the permit was later revoked by the National Parks Service on the grounds that the crane required to erect the statue might damage the grass and concrete in the Mall,” the report said.
“There’s a deeply spiritual side to what we’re trying to do,” Adam Eidinger, an organizer, told BIN. “Having sacred fire on the mall is a very religious thing.”
But it was nothing but a “lightly disguised pagan feast,” Rabbi Yosef Berger of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion believes.
“Even secular Americans are turning to idols without really thinking about it. They can even say it is not serious or intentional, but it certainly is,” he told the publication. “Religious people cannot just sit back and think they are safe. We must fight this rise of paganism in every corner of our lives.”
The Washington Catharsis shares multiple elements with the Burning Man Festival held in Nevada each August, a series of quasi-religious ceremonies that suggests forms of worship in “micro-temples.”
“The week-long festival culminates in the eponymous ceremony in which a large wooden effigy of a man is burned. This ceremony, referred to among Druids as the ‘wicker man,’ is almost universal amongst pagan cults and evolved as a replacement for human sacrifice,” BIN explained.
Cahn said “Ba’al means lord, or master, or owner. ” Switching to the more common pronunciation of “Baal,” Cahn explained the pagan god has a symbolic meaning that goes far behind its actual historical importance.
“Baal’s importance, or his dynamic, is that when a nation has known God, as Israel knew God, and then they turned away from God, they turned to Baal,” he said. “Baal is the anti-God. Baal is the substitute god. Baal is the god of apostasy, of the turning away from God.”
Cahn linked Baal with the practice of idolatry, or the worship of a human-created god.
“Once you create your own god, you can create your own truth,” he said. “Once you create your own truth, you can overrule everything, call good evil and evil good. … Idolatry is linked to relativism, because you’re creating truths. Once you change your gods, everything else changes. It starts with that.”
Cahn further explained the characteristics of Baal are uncannily linked to the sins of the modern world.
“Baal was the god linked to materialism, the pursuit of increase and gain,” he said. “He was linked to sexual immorality, carnality and licentiousness. He was also the god upon whose altar babies were lifted up as human sacrifices.
“So perhaps it is a striking phenomenon to see the sign of Baal in the modern world as we are again being given to materialism, sexual immorality, carnality, licentiousness and the offering up of babies to destruction – not thousands as in the case of Israel, but, in the case of abortion, millions – sacrificed on the altars of self-obsession.”
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the messianic rabbi and prophetic teacher, reveals a pattern that explains world history, in “The Paradigm.” Makes a great gift! Available now at the WND Superstore.