Roger Marsh: Hello and welcome back to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the broadcast ministry of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh, and today we are bringing you the second half of Dr. Dobson's recent conversation with one of his all-time favorite guests, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. Rabbi Cahn is a messianic Jew and a New York Times best-selling author of several books, including The Harbinger, The Oracle, and The Harbinger II: The Return. Rabbi Cahn serves as president of Hope of the World Ministries and is also the Senior Pastor and Messianic Rabbi of the Jerusalem Center, Beth Israel in Wayne, New Jersey. He is an internationally sought after speaker having most notably appeared before the US Congress and the United Nations. He and his wife, Renata, have three sons.
Today, Dr. Dobson and Rabbi Cahn will continue their conversation about the rabbi's brand new book called The Return of the Gods. In his new work, Rabbi Cahn explains that America's turn from the one true God has opened the door for the return of the ancient little G gods, specifically three spirits that Rabbi Cahn calls the dark trinity made up of Baal, Ishtar, and Molech. Yesterday, Dr. Dobson and Rabbi Cahn only had time to discuss Baal. The little G god of apostasy. Today, they'll give an overview of the other two spiritual forces and how they have been waging war on righteousness in the United States. Let's join our own Dr. Dobson and his esteemed guest right now on Family Talk.
Dr. James Dobson: Well in our program yesterday, we talked about the dark trinity. There's these false gods that are now operative even in the Western world, and maybe particularly here in America. And the first one we talked about was Baal and how he functioned in ancient Israel. Let's take the second one now and take it one step further.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yeah. If you've noticed something about when the Bible speaks about Baal, often right after Baal comes the next god or goddess, which is the goddess, the Bible calls Ashtoreth or Ashtora. And this is so crucial to what is happening right now. And that is in some of the Canaanite mythology, she's spoken about as the wife of Baal, but this principality was everywhere. And as we said, behind the gods are these spirits. In ancient Babylonia, Ashtoreth was called Ishtar. When she went to Greece, she became Aphrodite, that's where it comes from. When then in Rome, she became Venus. But it's a very dark thing behind this principality and God speaks about this principality. And so it's one of the most universal of gods or goddesses, and it's all over. It came to Israel, but this one was all over.
In The Return of the Gods, I call her the enchantress because she's known as that. The focal point of this one was sexuality, the sexual realm. And she was actually known as the prostitute goddess or the harlot goddess. And so what this would mean is, we said Baal was the first or the spirit of Baal coming into America. And by the way, these things don't stop in the 1960s, they continue to right now, they just get worse or they get deeper and they reveal themselves.
Dr. James Dobson: They do.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: But so, what it means that if Baal comes then the next one is Ashtoreth or Ishtar, the goddess. And this spirit is going to come into America. And so it's amazing. What would we expect to happen? We would expect something to happen in the realm of sexuality and we would expect to be an overturning of biblical morals concerning sexuality. And that is exactly what happens like clockwork. First, you have the spirit of Baal, you have the turning away, the driving out of God's presence. Then you have the sexual revolution. That's exactly what you'd expect. And you have the overturning of biblical values. Fornication replacing marriage, you have adultery and it keeps getting worse and worse. This is the next spirit. And it's no accident that whenever a culture turns away from God, this spirit always comes in and you always have a repercussion in the realm of sexuality, and this has been affecting us to this day.
Dr. James Dobson: That's breathtaking in its implications.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: And this one, Ishtar, was a prostitute goddess. So what does that mean? A prostitute takes sexuality out of marriage, out of the family, and puts it into the culture, puts it into the marketplace. And so what has happened to sexuality in America? Exactly that. It's been progressively divorced from marriage, from the bonds of marriage and the protection of the family. And it's been taken into the culture. The entire culture has become sexualized. Why? Because it's been taken out of marriage at the same time it's been weakening marriage. So, this goddess was not only a prostitute, she's against marriage. She worked against family, worked against husbands, wives, the covenant of marriage, and that's what's happening. So if the spirit of Baal coming in was working to paganizing a Christian nation, this one, Ishtar, is specifically working to overturning Christian values concerning sexuality, marriage, husband, wife, the covenant, and turning it into a pagan sexual morality. And that's exactly what we have watched.
What we're seeing in many ways is not new because what we're seeing is the reawakening of pagan morality concerning sexuality. In the pagan world, marriage was not the way we know it in the biblical world. The entire culture was sexualized. We are witnessing that, and this is one of the most powerful, I would say, the most seductive forces because you transform sexuality, you transform marriage, you transform family. And then you transform the whole civilization, that is what's happening. And it started in the 1960s, it has continued to this day.
Dr. James Dobson: That is profound. I lived through the sixties. I'm old enough to have experienced the whole miserable decade. I often write about it because it had such an impact on me and such influence for the universities at that time. But it was characterized by sexual revolution, and that's really what was going on then. It's interesting, it leads to perversions of all types too, doesn't it?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yes, yes. Something else that has affected everything. And this is kind of very close because this is what we've been trying to stand against, you've been standing for all these years. Many names, but the most famous in Mesopotamian incarnate was Ishtar. Ishtar. In the Bible, similar word, Ashtoreth, Ashtoreth, we get that. But again, when she went to Greece, she became Aphrodite. And that's not just that Aphrodite was like her. This was an incarnation. So was Venus, same thing. But it's very dark, she's actually a goddess of, she destroys. She has the sword. You see all the broken homes, that's the sword of this spirit. When you take sexuality out of God's sacred vessel, you get destruction.
The other thing is that the word for prostitute in the Greek, actually in the Bible, is the word pornai. We get the word porn from her. The first pornography in the world was her writings, was the writings about her. Pornography means the writings about the goddess. So even pornography, the explosion of pornography that has been so destructive to marriage, to Christians, to lives, this is linked to this goddess. In her day, or the ancient times rather, there are images of naked women in clay and in stone all over the culture and pornographic literature. It came from her. We talk about erotic. The whole culture's becoming eroticized. Well, the word comes from Eros. Eros is a Greek word. In the Greek mythology, Eros was born a child of Aphrodite. So the goddess gave birth to Eros. And so we are now dealing with all that. And even the destruction or weakening of marriage comes from this. And there's another thing about her, in The Return of the Gods, she's called the enchantress. She would seduce her worshipers and she was also the goddess of intoxication or taverns. She would cause people to become intoxicated.
Well, what else do we see in the sixties? We see an explosion of drugs, drug culture. America has become more addicted in this period when it turned away from God, became more addicted than any other time, so even drug use. And she's also the goddess of spells of the, occult. So also in the 1960s, what else do we see? A revival of the occult and new age and Eastern mysticism, all this is part of the same thing. It's part of her casting her spell over a nation.
Dr. James Dobson: I frequently hear people remark about how the country, our culture is drifting into crazy things that we would've never have thought of before, including the transgender movement and other things. But Romans 1 talks about that perversion, doesn't it, and all of its form to the point that He finally says, I'll give them up to a reprobate mind. That's what you're describing.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: And we're seeing this, and it's not only Christians that see this. People who don't even know God are saying, this is craziness. This is about a culture being possessed. When you try to understand why is it not even rational? Well, that's what it does. And when you look at also another sign of possession is self-destructiveness, that is what we are dealing with. But you know what, that's what the apostles dealt with. They dealt with a culture that was basically possessed. The only thing is that, according to that parable we spoke about, it's going to be worse now, because this is the one who turned back, and this is repossession. So this is what we are dealing with. And also believers have to know, you are not dealing with natural things. We are not dealing with a natural culture, not even a secular culture. We're dealing with a possessed culture. Our war is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.
Dr. James Dobson: I served on the pornography commission many years ago, and it was very clear that even then America was the porn capital of the world. We were promoting it and selling it and distributing it. And it's become even worse, we are still the porn capital of the world.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: And here's the nation that was called to be a city on a hill and to spread the gospel to the world. Now we are spreading all these things. Actually, when you look at, we talked about the dark trinity, every one of these things, we have been spreading it to the world. And if a nation ever turns away from God, this is what it becomes. This is exactly what happens. And so this was the second of the dark trinity. If it's okay, I'll give an idea of the third, if that's okay.
Dr. James Dobson: That's Molech, isn't it?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yes. I think you must have written the book, but this is called the destroyer. And this is what happens that it goes right in order. First, the turning away from God, then the sexual revolution, sexual immorality, that's always going to lead to the next one, which is the destroyer or Molech. And again, we can take for granted, because we've lived in an exorcized culture, but all around the pagan world, they had human sacrifice. This was a common thing. And you had the sacrifice of children, this was all over. And when Israel turned away from God, what did they turn to? They actually offered up their own children to Baal and Molech, the Bible says. And in fact, as you said, that's why they were destroyed. And you said, there's one thing God hates are the false gods because this is what it leads to. And this is why they were judged.
The prophet said, you're actually offering up your children. I can't even imagine it, but they were doing it. What stopped the offering of children, the offering of human beings, only the gospel did. It was the gospel. Everywhere the gospel went, human sacrifice ceased. The sacrifice of children ceased. In the pagan world, children were treated horribly because the pagan world looks down on the weak and looks down on the elderly, looks down on women. It was dangerous to be a child in a pagan world. Well, we've gone away from that for almost 2000 years, but now if we turn away from God, Molech is going to return and the sacrifice of children is going to return. And this is a pagan, totally pagan sacrifice. So look like clockwork, what happens. First, the turning away from God, Baal, then the sexual revolution, Ishtar. Then what does it lead to? Abortion, the offering up of our children, the return of Molech.
Dr. James Dobson: Shirley and I had an opportunity to visit Israel in 1993 and it never got away from us. It had a profound effect on me. And when I read the Scriptures now, I remember recalling places and things that occurred at that time. And one of them was we visited, I think it was the town of Megiddo, ancient ruins of Megiddo. Wasn't that where Armageddon will be fought? Right near there. And never forget it, we walked in there, the area where you first entered the city had a huge altar, circular altar. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yes.
Dr. James Dobson: This is where they burned children alive. It was awful. I stood there just aching inside thinking of what happened to those children. But then something else happened, the border of that town was made up of rocks and I walked over there to it and I looked down and there were little tiny bones, ancient bones there. I brought a sack full of them home and I took them to a pathologist. I asked him if these were human bones. And he said, they very well were. And they somehow had survived all this time, these dried out bones. And you could just imagine the scene of what took place at that horrible moment.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: And if anything shows the evil of this it's that, and that is how could a nation that knew God, Israel, that had the prophets, had their law, how could they end up offering their own children? But that's what the prophets said. And that reveals is because you have done this, that you're going to be destroyed because this is a sin that God actually, He answers with destruction. But the thing is, we think, well, how could they do that? But we have done that. And America, if you turn from God, the same practice returns. They won't call it child sacrifice, but that's what it is. It is the return of this pagan or ritual of offering up your children. And so they say, well, how can you compare it? Well, they killed thousands of children. We have killed millions of children.
And it's interesting, because in the book I open up how they actually offered up the children and it's the same way. It's in modern terms. And that first of all, it was the parents that offered up their children to Molech. And so it's the parents that do it now. You had music playing to drown it out. So the whole culture couldn't really hear how horrible it was. We do that too. They actually offered up their children to gain prosperity. They thought they would gain money, their fields with prosper. Well, the thing is, that's the reason given for women to have abortion because it'll help your career, you won't be hindered. So all these things that were back then are happening now and that shows you how real this is and also how evil it is. So that is where we've been led to.
Dr. James Dobson: Abortion is a major part of it with 63 million babies being destroyed, torn limb from limb. But what's happening in the classrooms today is also extremely disturbing.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yes.
Dr. James Dobson: Because the parents are holding still, they're allowing this distorted mind to be taught to these kids, transgenderism and all the other perversions are being taught right there from kindergarten on or even before. It's the same thing, the same spirit.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yeah. The same spirit. And that shows you how demonic it is because it causes parents to destroy their own children. How self-destructive is that? How can it cause a mother to go against her maternal instinct to destroy her child or fathers to destroy in one way or another? Remember, the gods were always after the children, always after the children one way or another. It was never safe to be a child. They're either to change the children or to destroy them. And what you just brought up, this opens up the whole realm of what I was led to open up in the book. And that is that there there's a whole section called the transformer. And that is going back to this goddess, Ishtar, that same principality. There was something strange about her. And that is that she says in one of her ancient stones that have engraving says, "I am a woman." And then she says, "I am a man." And it says she has the power to turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man. So this is the deeper work of Ishtar.
First, the sexual revolution, but then it starts changing, transforming gender itself and everything we've been seeing all goes back to this.
Dr. James Dobson: That's breathtaking. This is profoundly wicked what we're doing to children, the most innocent among us. They'll believe anything you tell them. That child who's five years old will believe Santa Claus can go down the chimney of every house in the world in one night with toys in a bag, one bag. They'll believe it. You tell them, they believe it. And they're being manipulated and twisted and lied to, and nothing disturbs me more than that.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yeah. Yeah. And it's affecting more the children than anyone else, because as you said, they're the most vulnerable, but it's affecting everything. If she turns women into men, notice what's happened since the sixties, there's been a movement to de-feminize women, to make women more like men. Women, you have to be fierce. You have to be strong. You don't need a man. You're your own provider, your own protector. And so that's the one part of what this fear does. The other side of it, it says she feminizes men. She seeks to emasculate men. And actually there's in some ancient writings I found where it says she grinds away the masculinity of men. So that's why this culture, there's a spirit that wars against men, wars against male leadership and ultimately you war against the family because when you make women like men and men like women, you have no more marriage. You have no more family. So this all goes together.
And another thing, she was called the androgynous goddess. She was a woman, but she had male attributes. She had priests in her temple that were men that dressed up as women. They were her priests. And so now everything you had in the pagan world, you have now returning with the goddess. You have now men, again, dressing up as women taking center stage in the culture. You have androgyny to try to merge male and female. That's all part of this goddess. That's what she does. And so when you see the return of that, you have the return of her.
The other thing she had is, of her priests, not only do they dress up as women, but we know that many of them actually had relations, men with men. So you would expect to see a revival, a return of same sexuality. That's exactly what we have, and it all goes back to this goddess.
Dr. James Dobson: We've been talking to Rabbi Jonathan Cahn about his new book, The Return of the Gods. And I have a copy of it in front of me. Summarize it for us. We really need to go back to the beginning and talk about the dark trinity. Name them, say what they're there to do and give us the summary as we close.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: This is a warning of the Bible, of God, that if a nation or a civilization turns away from God that has known God, the gods or the spirits of the ancient world are going to return and the same spirits that came to Israel have come to America. The first one, the possessor, Baal, the second Ishtar, or the goddess who changes sexuality, alters gender. And the third, the destroyer is Molech that causes child sacrifice. It's all happening. Everything we're watching, this is what is behind what we are dealing with right now.
Dr. James Dobson: Today is September 2nd, and this book comes out what day?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: It comes out on September 6th, that's the official release. But you could pre-order it now on Amazon, everywhere where there are books, you can get it. And one special thing that Charisma, the publisher has a special site. If you go there and pre-order, it you'll get many of my other books for free. Just go to booksbyjonathancahn.com, but get it for others as well as for yourself.
Dr. James Dobson: To our listeners, let me say, this is the fascinating book. It may be the most controversial thing you've written. Is that correct?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Yeah, I believe so. I knew I had to do it.
Dr. James Dobson: What was that compulsion? What led you to feel like this was necessary?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: What is happening to our culture, what is happening, and it's like believers seem to be at a loss in so many ways of what's taking place around them. And so to number one, to reveal this, to open it up to strengthen believers, to arm them, to save people who are involved in this, but to open this up that ultimately because when God judges the gods, that's when revival comes. And in ancient times is when those altars were broken, so we have to deal with it. And so it's to strengthen and arm. And many people who are seeing this saying, wow, this explains it all. Well, it's true. We are dealing with exactly what the Bible said we would deal with and we need to be armed and we need to be aware of it and to be strong.
Dr. James Dobson: And to America you would say, there is no other hope.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: There is no other hope.
Dr. James Dobson: A revival is the only answer.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: The Bible is true. Everything we are dealing with is what the Bible said. There is no other way, but God. If you turn away from God, this is what you open the door to. And everything that's happening now is what the Bible warned against. The only hope we have, the only hope the church has, the only hope anyone has is God in the name of Jesus, who is our only hope in all things. And we must pray for revival. We must pray that God would deal with this and pray again that God would cleanse America by His presence. That's the only way and the only hope. And for God's people, it is not time to be timid. It's not time to be afraid. It's not time to cower and do not bow your knee to any other God. It is time to be strong against the gods like Daniel, like Elijah, like Moses, like the Apostle Paul, stand up for the one true living God. That is the only answer this world has.
Dr. James Dobson: And time is running out. Thank you Rabbi Cahn. We appreciate all of your books. This one has a certain prophetic element to it that grabs me by the heart. And I do hope that our listeners will get copies and pay attention to what you have to say.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Thank you, Dr. Dobson.
Dr. James Dobson: Thanks for being our guest again. Next time you come here to this studio.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn: Okay.
Roger Marsh: You've been listening to Family Talk and that was the conclusion of Dr. Dobson's two day interview with his friend and esteemed guest Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. Rabbi Cahn is a messianic Jew, a New York Times best-selling author, and a sought after speaker. Over the last two days here on Family Talk, Dr. Dobson and Rabbi Cahn have been talking about Rabbi's most recent book called The Return of the Gods. It's a fascinating read that will be released on Tuesday, September the sixth, and it's available pre-order right now. Visit drjamesdobson.org/familytalk to learn more about Rabbi Cahn and his latest book. That's drjamesdobson.org/familytalk.
Well as always, our time together goes by much too quickly. I'm Roger Marsh and I hope that you'll join us again next time for another encouraging edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. Have a nice holiday weekend.
Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.