And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built. And the LORD said, ‘Behold, the people are one and they all have one language. And this is only the beginning of what they will do—now nothing which they have imagined to do will be restrained from them.
Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they cannot understand one another’s speech.’ So the LORD scattered them abroad from that place upon the face of all the earth. And they quit building the city.
Therefore the name of it is called Babel, because the LORD confused the language of all the earth there. And from there the LORD scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Gen. 11:1-9).
Wherever the people were scattered, they took their false religion with them. Since their one language was changed into many languages, we find in antiquity various names for the same false gods and goddesses (or demons).
In his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrote that because men did not want to retain the knowledge of God, He abandoned them to their own depraved imaginations: “And in exact proportion as they did not consent to have God in their knowledge, God abandoned them to a reprobate mind…” (Rom. 1:28-32).
Physical locations that had a history of violence were believed to be magnets for malevolent spirits, a concept similar to that of “haunted houses.” If one wanted to get along with the local resident ghosts, he needed to sacrifice to the ruler of the darkness, Hecate. A night owl was thought to announce the acceptance of these sacrifices, and those who gathered on the eve of the full moon perceived its hoot as a good omen. Hecate’s devotees left food offerings for the goddess (“Hecate’s Supper”) and sometimes sacrificed puppies and female black lambs.
Deformed and vicious owl-like affiliates of Hecate called “strigae” were thought to fly through the night feeding on the bodies of unattended babies. During the day the strigae appeared as simple old women, and such folklore may account for the myths of flying witches. The same strigae hid amidst the leaves of trees during the annual festival of Hecate, held on August 13, when Hecate’s followers offered up the highest praise to the goddess, communed with the tree spirits (earth spirits, including Hecate, were thought to inhabit trees—the basis for the modern radical ecology movement) and summoned the souls of the dead from the mouths of nearby caves. It was here that Hecate was known as Hecate-Chthonia (“Hecate of the earth”), a depiction in which she most clearly embodied the popular earth-mother-spirit—or Mother Nature.
Hecate was known by other names throughout the pagan world. Some people regarded her as Hecate-Propylaia, “the one before the gate,” a role in which she guarded the entrances of homes and temples from nefarious outside evils.
Others knew her as Hecate-Propolos, “the one who leads” as an underworld guide. Finally, she was known as Hecate-Phosphoros, “the light bearer,” her most sacred title and one that recalls another powerful underworld spirit, Satan, who appears as a messenger of light. However, it was her role as the feminist earth-goddess-spirit Hecate-Chthonia that popularized her divinity (Anderson, D., Happy Halloween? 2004).
Modern pagans perceive the earth similarly, often referring to the earth as Gaia—a living, caring entity. They believe that people are one of Mother Earth’s species rather than her dominators. She provides the living biosphere—the regions on, above, and below her surface, where created things, both physical and spiritual, live (Anderson, D., What Witches Do After Halloween, 2004).
The worship of the sun (symbolized by the sacred serpent), along with nature worship, has its roots in this rejection of God and His Word. In rebellion, mankind watched the changing of the seasons and observed the life and death of crops, perceiving such natural processes as mystic. They developed fertility cults with gods and goddesses who died and were reborn.
Thus the worship of the earth’s “spirit” as a mother and the incarnation of the earth’s fertility forces within dying gods and goddesses developed into one of the most widespread forms of pagan religion recorded in antiquity.
Whether it was Inanna of the Sumerians, Ishtar of the Babylonians, or Fortuna of the Romans, every civilization had a sect of religion based on the embodiment of the earth’s spirit as a caring mother-goddess. The Egyptians worshipped Hathor in this manner, as did the Chinese with Shingmoo. The Germans worshipped Hertha as the great Mother Earth, and the apostate Jews idolized “the queen of heaven.” In Greece, Gaia is Mother Earth, the creator of all things. Beneath her were many other earth goddesses including Demeter, Artemis (Diana), Aphrodite, and Hecate.
Hecate, the Titan earth mother of wizards and witches, was considered to be the underworld sorceress of all that is demonic.
Goddess Hecate: As the dark goddess of witchcraft, Hecate was worshiped with mystical rites and magical incantations. Her name was most likely derived from the ancient Egyptian word Heka (“sorcery” or “magical”), which may explain her association with the Egyptian frog goddess of the same name. This may also explain the affiliation of frogs with witchcraft.
we are seeing the social demise form it on scale unlike any other, are their consequences to come?? sure is
Wiccans (modern pagans) and witches acknowledge all of the so-called deities (demons) that ancient peoples worshipped. However, the primary deities are “the Goddess and the God,” the Great (Earth) Mother and her horned consort, the “Horned God,” the ancient god of fertility.
Horned God: The Horned God is actually a modern term invented in the 20th century to link together numerous male nature gods out of such widely dispersed and historically unconnected mythologies as the Celtic Cernunnos, the Welsh Caerwiden, the English Herne the Hunter, the Hindu Pashupati, the Greek Pan and various satyrs—and even a Paleolithic cave painting known as “the Sorcerer” in the Cave of the Three Brothers in France.
The Greek god Pan is perhaps the most familiar form of the Horned God/Wild Man archetype. The ancient scholars of Alexandria believed that Pan personified the Natural Cosmos, and the word Pantheism is derived from this idea in which all Nature is God and God is All Nature. Arcadian Greece first recorded Pan’s worship.
The Horned One, or Cernunnos, is a Celtic god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld. His worship spread throughout Gaul and into Britain as well. Paleolithic cave paintings found in France that depict a stag standing upright or a man dressed in stag costume seem to indicate that Cernunnos’ origins date to those times. Known to the Druids as Hu Gadarn, he was the god of the underworld and astral planes and the consort of the great goddess.
The Horned God has cloven hoofs or the hindquarters of a goat with a human torso and a human but goat-horned head. The god’s horns are seen as phallic symbols, representing male potency, strength and protection. As a symbol of sexuality, the Horned God is complementary to female fertility deities known collectively as the Great Mother. In this context, he is sometimes referred to as the Great God or the Great Father. He impregnates the goddess and dies during the autumn and winter months and is reborn gloriously in the spring, while the goddess always lives on as Mother Earth, giving life to the Horned God as he moves through the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth. He alternates with the goddess of the moon in ruling over life and death, continuing the cycle of death, rebirth and reincarnation (Wikipedia, Horned God, 2005; Smith, Dr. A., Cernunnos, 1997, 1999).https://www.cbcg.org/booklets/occult-holidays-or-god-s-holy-days-which/chapter-two-the-occult-origins-of-halloween-heathen-gods-and-goddesses.html
And he (Manasseh) made his sons pass through the fire in the valley
of Ben‑hinnom; and he practiced witchcraft, used divination, practiced sorcery,
and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the
Lord, provoking Him to anger. 2 Chronicles 33:6
And when they say to you, "Consult the mediums and the wizards who
whisper and mutter," should not a people consult their God? Should they consult
the dead on behalf of the living? Isaiah 8:19
"Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I
will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and
against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner
in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien, and
do not fear Me," says the Lord of Hosts. Malachi 3:5
"But Elymas the magician (for thus his name is translated) was
opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith; But Saul, who
was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze upon him,
and said, "You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you
enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways
of the Lord?" Acts 13:9,10
Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and
disclosing their practices. And many of those who practiced magic brought their
books together and began burning them in the sight of all; and they counted up
the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. Acts
19:18,19
They “suppress the truth by their wickedness,” and it is against these people that the wrath of God occurs (Romans 1:18). The Greek word translated “reprobate” in the New Testament is adokimos, which means “unapproved, refused; by implication, worthless.”
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead [margin, divine nature], so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
There will be consequences , yep, we are living in some of those consequences now with more on the way and more to come !!!
Praying for those lost in it, those never found, those unable to think well enough to know the differences !!!
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate ( unapproving) mind to do those things which are not convenient (fitting)” ;. The Greek to English translation of the word reprobate is ‘adokimon’ – translated as unapproving. This comes from the Greek, ‘adokimon noun’. The word, ‘noun’ refers to the ‘mind, intellect, or understanding.’ The other word, ‘adokimon’ is a compound word made up of ‘a’ implying negation, and a form of ‘dokimadzo’ which means to ‘judge or examine with the intent of finding good. Hence, ‘adokimon’ means a mind or intellect that is incapable of discerning (or judging) with the intent of finding good.
GRACE IN CHRIST BREAK US FREE !!
ONLY iN CHRIST CAN THIS RELATIONSHIP BE RESTORED BY GRACE !!
GOD REQUIRES US THROUGH CHRIST THIS IS SATISFIED!!!
God's REQUIREMENT !!!
Above all, it takes the willingness and strength to claim and uphold God’s instruction as in Mark 12:30: And thou shalt (you, absolutely shall) love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. May you be blessed with the sound mind of Christ in you daily!
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