The First or the Second Adam?
By Noah McHugh
Matthew 5:28
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Job 31:1
I have made a covenant with my eyes not to gaze lustfully upon a young woman.
Proverbs 25:28
He that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.
It is time to break the silence on the long-tabooed subject of lust, pornography, and adultery within the Church. This subject should be a great unifier, as all sects of Christianity and Judaism ascribe to the same writings, written by the same God who has very specific things to say about men, women, and the proper biblical relationship between them.
As with all things, I like to start back at the beginning, and dissect the intentions behind the commands that our Creator gave to our forefathers. Let’s start with some context. God created the heavens and the earth with His spoken Word, commanding all of the universe to bring forth life after its kind. He commanded life from all corners of the universe and centered His focus into the Garden in the east, making a paradise from which to work outward from. We are told that “a river flowed out from Eden and from there it split into 4 rivers which went forth to water the earth.” This is one of the innumerable facts of Scripture and holds literal truth on one level, but also holds a deeper esoteric meaning. In a literal sense, it is clear that the Garden of Eden was on a high mountain, where the rivers began, descending down onto the fertile plains below. Looking at the esoteric meaning, this was referring to the first of humanity. Bloodlines in a Hebraic sense were likened to rivers, with the mountain being a reference to the man, and the woman was referenced by the springs and rivers coming up out of the earth from below and bursting out into the world to spread life. The concept of bloodlines, and Eden in general, is a thread that ties the entire Bible together, but is a bottomless study in and of itself that I could write endlessly on. It is just a picture of the concept of man and woman and their relationship, and not pertinent to dive into the esoteric definitions of Eden entirely. For more information of the esoteric definitions of the important symbols found in the Garden of Eden, see below.
The Hebraic concept of a mountain, masculine
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Eden.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/he/he-r.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Aaron.html
The Hebraic concept of a spring or well, feminine
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Beersheba.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Bathsheba.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Elisheba.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Elizabeth.html
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Sheba.html
Many of the allusions are self-explanatory, but to risk oversimplification, men were given the seed to bear, and women were given the “plot of land” so to speak, with which to grow the next generation with. Men and women were created “in God’s image” in a myriad of senses. In this particular sense, they were given the command to create human offspring, the greatest and crowning achievement of God’s creation. He created the first pair, and then he handed the command off to Adam and Eve as the first King and first Queen of the earth. Eve was not lesser than Adam either before or after their sin. If God wanted to paint the picture that woman was to be subservient to man, He would have made Eve out of the same dust that He made Adam out of, showing her as a separate and younger creation. He did not do that. He took a piece out of Adam (intriguingly enough, the rib is the only type of the bone in the body that has stem cells within it, and will completely re-grow if one is removed.) God took a CUTTING off of Adam’s body, and he made that cutting grow as an equal and opposite partner in order to carry out their one primary duty which is encapsulated in the first and second commands given to the first rulers of the earth.
The first command “Go forth and multiply” was an order that would make the command “Go out and take dominion of the earth.” possible. When you study the transaction that God made with mankind at our conception in its fullness, the jealousy of the Serpent makes perfect sense, being an older, “higher” being than these strange dirt-people. He was conceived in heaven, and considered the birthright of earth to be his for the taking. However, God chose to do something profoundly interesting. He chose to submit to the rule of Adam or his heirs, and go along with any decision that Adam made relating to his “kingdom.” This is proven by the naming of the animals. God did not name ANYTHING (except for Adam). Adam was responsible for naming Eve, the animals, and everything else on earth. When we gift our children a stuffed animal, do we name that stuffed animal? No! We find joy in what our children name that teddy bear because it shows an aspect of their character and ingenuity. We are told that God brought each of the animals before Adam “to see what he would call them, and whatever he called them, that was their name.” This is complete ownership. God built the house, and then he gifted the entire house to Adam and Eve, with only one string attached. They were to submit to nobody in their kingdom, except to each other as co-laborers, and the command of their Father. “Take dominion of the earth and subdue it.” They were to “work the soil” and “tend to the animals.”
I will prove this concept further in a later discussion, but there are hints and proofs of this concept all the way through the Scriptures from the Beginning to the End. This is one of the many reasons Yeshua had to shed His divine body for that of a man. In order for God to restore the kingship of the world to man, a perfect heir, “The Second Adam”, had to walk the earth and take dominion over death and sin in order to replace the Serpent’s reign (for Adam gave his kingship away in submission to the Serpent). Now, heirs of Adam and Eve can submit to the Kingship of Yeshua, and become a spiritual heir to His Kingdom.
The earth was mankind’s house, and God himself respected and validated Adam and Eve, and their future heirs, as the kings and queens of their realm, binding Himself to the decisions they made in partnership with the Father (Only relating to the earth, heaven was singularly owned and commanded by the Father.)
So how does all of this relate to the subject at hand, you ask? It has everything to do with it. The primary reason for our current lack of self-control, the modern wave of hedonism, and lack of intimacy in all one’s relationships, is because we have forgotten what these principals mean. We have lost mankind’s purpose, and we do not know what is worth defending and what is not. Hopefully by the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of the concepts and contracts at play. That knowledge will arm you to go out and do battle against the Enemy when he comes into your garden to deceive and tempt you.
PLANTING THE SEED OF WHICH ADAM
It should be noted that the two primary transgressions at the fateful incident at the Tree of Knowledge were lust primarily, and pride secondarily. The same spiritual problems emerge in the physical and tangible world; we just live in a world of computers and electronics now, as opposed to a garden full of trees, animals and flowers. The principles are the same and the results are the same, but the fruit will look different due to the different environment we now live in.
In the Garden of Eden of Genesis 3, the Snake spoke to Eve first. He questioned Eve much like he questioned Yeshua in the wilderness. He was looking for an error, a mistake to exploit in relation to the command of the Father to his image bearers. We are not told how many times the Adversary tried before he eventually found the mistake. “Is it true that you cannot eat from any of these trees?” he asked the woman.
“No, we may eat of any of the trees of the garden that we wish, but we cannot eat from, or TOUCH the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or we will die.”
God’s word is as unchanging as He is and He tells the beginning from the end. When He told Moses in Deuteronomy 4 to write down His commands with the note “You shall not add OR take away from this law that I am giving you..” , it is not hard to assume that Adam and Eve were under that same order. When Eve added the stanza regarding touching of the tree, the Snake found his mark. Pride. They had added to the Law. To add to the Law, is to make yourself the Maker of the Law. I have heard a myriad of intolerant men who love to pin man’s sin, including the very first sin of man, onto Eve and all her daughters with the remark that Eve was the first sinner. Blame casting is just the repetition of the First Adam’s sin. Adam disobeyed alongside Eve, but when she took of the fruit, he was standing right beside her and did not say as much as a word to dissuade her from her disobedience. You could infer, although not necessarily known, that he was waiting for her to take the first bite and see what her repercussions were before following suit. This is a pattern that men following the First Adam repeat continually. Are we, as men, called to follow the First or Second Adam? The Second Adam covered His Bride’s sins and took the burden of her mistakes onto himself.
Satan quickly doubled down and spoke venomous words about the intentions of the Father. The Serpent planted doubts of the faithfulness and good intentions of the Father, a pattern and trick he continues to play with God’s people. He tells Adam and Eve that God was trying to withhold His knowledge and mysterious ways from them. Nothing has changed. The Serpent has and continues to invite God’s people into contracts using doubt and ingratitude of the Father’s faithfulness, and causing man to forget what the Father has already given freely. “You will be like God.” This was a lie! Man was already made in the image of God. The Serpent invited both Adam at the Garden and Yeshua in the Wilderness into a contract. He promised Adam the astonishing insight and wisdom of God, and Adam accepted the contract and in submission of the Serpent, he gave his kingship of the earth to him. Yeshua already had the knowledge and wisdom of good and evil that Adam attained in his transaction with the Serpent, so the Serpent invited Yeshua into a contract tempting him with the kingship of the world that Adam lost to him.
After Eve was invited into this contract with the Serpent, she looked upon the tree and lusted after its beauty. We are told that she saw that it was very desirable and beautiful and that the fruit looked good to eat and for making wise. She stretched out her hand, while her husband stood by and watched, and ate of the fruit, and then gave some of it to him. When Eve submitted herself to the snake (one of the animals they were meant to take dominion of and rule over together) by submitting to his teaching and following his words, she made herself the daughter of the Snake. When she took of the fruit and gave it to her husband, she made him her “firstborn son” in rebellion, in a spiritual sense. Note how Paul called Timothy his “son according to the Gospel.” Satan could not get Adam to serve him directly, so he got the woman to submit to him, and then got man to submit to HER, and by proxy rule over them both. This is a skewing of the natural order. Man and woman were supposed to submit to each other and to God alone. All the spirits, and all the animals were meant to submit to the man and woman, the joint image of God, and to the needs of their offspring.
A look at the word structure behind the nation of Moab proves my point here.
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Moab.html
The spiritual realm is simple. Whoever you submit to becomes your father or mother. Whoever you lead becomes your son or daughter. This is what Yeshua meant when he called the rabbis and Pharisees “Sons of the devil”. They thought they could hold onto their physical lineage as descendants of Abraham and Yeshua reminded them that you are the sons of whoever you copy and submit to. Abraham was only given one heir, and he had to wait almost one hundred years before he was given that son. God didn’t need him to produce a huge amount of babies, he needed him to LOVE that child and TEACH him the covenant with love at the center. Any man can make babies, the vast majority believe that is what makes you a father. But a true father sees a child as the continuation of his life, and knows that if he trains and loves that boy or girl, love will come out of them, watering the garden of the earth.
You can either follow the example of the “First Adam” and inherit a seed that will whither and die, or choose to follow YESHUA as your benefactor who sows an everlasting spiritual seed that your heirs will be grafted into, as long as you sow the eternal seed to your children.
1 Corinthians 15:45-49
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I am going to take a minute to explain that whenever I am trying to solve a riddle or overcome something like lust, for instance, God showed me that if I can stop focusing on the side effects of the imbalance for a minute and begin digging at “the roots of the problem”, I can begin understanding it enough to refuse when temptation rises. If I understand the stakes and what man and God’s Kingdom have lost, and the extent of the promises for standing firm, then I am bolstered, armored, and much less prone to fall into sinful desires.
We need to start at the beginning by studying how many times our ancestors have chosen exactly the same sins that we are still choosing today, and that God has promised to restore and save us as soon as we understand our sin, repent from it, and begin the journey of walking out that repentance and overcoming the sins we are bound to.
This is what David meant when he asked God to search him and find any unclean way in him. The cycles of righteousness mean allowing God to shed light on the areas that you are ashamed to acknowledge and not hiding yourself from his insight like Adam and Eve did. They ran and hid from His Presence, and they used fig leaves (symbolic of sin and adultery) to attempt to cover their own sin, hoping to hide their shame. How wild is it that the Scriptures depict a DEMON POSSESSED man to invert that sin and show us the way out? When Jesus came to Legion, he ran to him, naked, defiled, and filled with a host of demons. When he asked Jesus to cleanse and cover him, Jesus did more than that he gave him his own cloak (symbolic of inheritance), sent the demons away, and met with him, restoring the man’s dignity and forgiving his past sins.
In no way, shape or form am I saying that the Serpent is the literal father of Adam and Eve. Nor that Eve is the literal mother of Adam. However, submitting to the doctrine and teaching of the snake gave Satan access to be one of the two authorities to all of Adam’s sons and their offspring. You can submit to the Serpent, or the one true Father.
While God and God alone has claim to mankind and what we accomplish, the Snake has been beguiling mankind from the beginning, attempting to pervert our ways and thus creating spiritual consequences and imbalances that all stem from this transaction at the Garden. The religions of the surrounding nations of Israel all believed in a mother goddess who brought THE FRUIT OF WISDOM, fertility, and resurrection to mankind. This is a consequence of Eve submitting to the Serpent. As was the resurrecting male deity of the nations, specifically Tammuz, whom God departs His own Temple because of the worship of the male god there, who dies, loses all authority and is resurrected by his lover, sister and mother goddess on an annual basis. This is an obvious blaspheme of Messiah Yeshua, but also of the “First Adam” and a reveling in man’s death and separation from God.
The Serpent tempts man and woman throughout every generation to recreate this transaction of the Fall and perpetuate the curses of contention and strife between Adam and Eve, and between their sons and daughters.
If you as a man have come to this study and are filled with pride in your heart that I am bringing up the imbalance Eve had over Adam, you will sadly be disappointed. Womankind is not the culprit for both man and woman’s fall. The curses God presented at the Garden were consequences built into Natural Law. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This curse is a consequence of the unnatural transaction made with the Serpent in the Garden. It was not a command for men to rule over their wives as slaves. Do we just lie in our own filth? Absolutely not! God was explaining to Adam and Eve the newfound struggles they will have to overcome. Man perpetuating brutish dominance over women is living in the curse that Messiah Yeshua and His Word gave us the principles and insights to overcome. This is why it is crucial for both man and woman, for everyone of us to continually search the garden of our homes and hearts and examine where we have submitted to the curse and where it has authority over us.
2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? —unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
I read a book years ago, when I was trying to save my first marriage. My first wife had been requesting a divorce and permission to leave the marriage. I searched for any and all ways to save it and fight for her. I was quickly understanding what God had felt in Hosea. I was given a book on my quest to save my marriage called The Garden of Peace by Rabbi Shalom Arush. The concepts of the book state that every single home on earth is a microcosm of the Garden of Eden, at its best, and it’s a microcosm of hell at its worst. If you take dominion of the animals and emotions that are trying to rule over you and lead your house with love and empathy, your home will blossom and flourish, your wife will be the delight of your eyes, and your children will love and respect you. If you submit to the animal at the door, and let any set of emotions rule over you, it will lead you to sin. Imbalances will begin surfacing in your home and among your wife, children, and animals. When you begin to see members of your house exhibiting these emotional imbalances, it is the duty of a king and a priest to look at those family members as people who are living in your garden. They are the canaries in your coal mine, being used as a mirror to show you your own shortcomings. If you properly evaluate the source of the imbalance, you can put them right. This is walked out in repentance, and you gauge your progress in overcoming that animal slowly over time by watching if the efforts you’ve taken to heal the imbalance are improving the situation or worsening them.
Men taking ownership of the chaos and conflict in his house and tending to the garden of our homes and families is being the king or priest of your home. It is our duty as men.
Let me explain this another way. My first dog was a White German Shepherd named Joy. I raised that dog from 8 weeks old. I didn’t create that dog. I didn’t know her mother. It wasn’t even my species, yet I realized that I was the only person in the world who was going to be able to train her and teach her how to behave and not behave in order to protect her. I started reading books by Ceasar Milan and other trainers to try to understand dog psychology and read their emotional state so that I could train her in a way that benefited both her as the animal, and myself as the master. One of the topics that Ceasar Milan is so good at explaining, that I later applied to training my own children was that “as the alpha of the pack”, you create the nor. You set the dynamic. Your dog (and children) will read your energy and match it. The behaviors that you exhibit will become normal for them, and if the emotional energy that you are projecting is out of balance, the animals will be the first to respond negatively to that imbalance. Your children will be the next canaries in the coal mine. The longer these issues go without being dealt with, the greater the problems will become. They sense it and will mirror you. They don’t have moral compasses to judge you by, so they merely mirror. In an emotionally chaotic environment, the weakest creatures snap first, and they usually get the worst treatment as a result, even though it is not their fault in the slightest.
Children are the exact same way. If you have secret behaviors that you think you can separate and nobody will catch you, you are playing with fire. God hard wired everything: from the spouse, to the children, to the animals, will mirror the responses that you, as the kings of your home exude. Your spouse might not know every time you’ve betrayed them, but they can FEEL the energy that you put off, and so can the children. In a subtle way, choosing to walk out toxic and secret behavior patterns is a mirror of the child sacrifice rituals of Ben Hinnom, directly behind the Temple.
Israelite men would go to the Temple and worship God in public, and then, they would go to the pagan shrines and temples, engage in abominable acts with the women who were acting as priestesses of this child-murdering deity in direct opposition to the God who dwelled in the Temple. They would sacrifice their lust and their seed to that woman, the lust reserved for their wives, who would then take their seed and sacrifice the baby in the fire. We do the EXACT same thing today, in many varying scales, it just looks quite a bit different because of the different technology.
We, as Bible believing men, go to the churches or Sabbath groups. We publicly profess our love of God and our wives, our love of our children. Then we go off on our own after we have publicly shown our piety to the world and go behind the temple, in secret, and engage in all manner of unclean acts. Whether we copy them or not, we approve of them by giving our seed and extracting pleasure from them. It doesn’t matter if you are unaware of the transaction that is taking place in the pornography industry. It didn’t matter in the Garden, and it doesn’t matter now. You enter into a spiritual contract when you use porn. It is both an interwoven blend of spiritual adultery and idolatry and a participation in their occult rituals.
We have been told by our God not to devote ourselves, our eyes, or our seed to the abominations of the nations. Our technology has made it 100 times easier to commit spiritual adultery, not only to our Heavenly Father, but against our wives and our children as well. I hear religious men excuse their addictions away by saying, “well porn is a sin, but it’s not adultery.” They show that they have absolutely zero understanding nor discernment about the porn industry and the slavery that believers participate in.
Disclaimer: Anyone who is actively struggling with a pornography addiction, know that none of this study is intended to direct shame. It is meant to begin shedding light on how these spirits speak and operate in their attempts to make you, the Adam of your house, think and operate with yourself at the forefront, instead of seeing yourself as the protector of your garden and all who live within it. Once you know how these spirits operate and cause you to inadvertently become the sword that attacks your household, you can begin to bolster your defenses, rally your strength and pick up your weapon when the Serpent slithers in. This study is made to stare your transgressions square in the face, and point the sword of Truth at yourself for repentance and freedom for you and your household. This study is to understand the fullness of your sin so you abhor it to the point where you cannot continue engaging anymore. That doesn’t mean that the battle will be easy or the transformation will happen overnight. It will be a slow process of failure, repentance, failure repentance, failure, repentance. Until one day, you will be completely set free. Hiding from yourself is not the answer. Look freely upon your suffering and struggle, so that you can turn away from its destruction. Be open with your wife and allow her to be a part of the battle. If you try to wage this war alone, you will destroy both of your spirits. In the end, the battle will be left for your children to fight if you refuse to accurately and truthfully challenge your sins.
An Ancient Fertility Cult
History’s Vanquished Goddess
Now that we all have little portals to whatever realm you want to look into (our phones), you do not have to go into a pagan temple to witness and participate in the sexual fertility rituals. You can bring the abominations into your home, right into your very own bedroom.
An article from Psychology Today did a study with 3,000 Christians and their relationship with porn use and addiction. They discovered that 57% of senior pastors and 64% of all youth pastors used pornography, and less than 1% recommended telling their home church.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minority-report/202001/pastors-and-porn
https://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/15-mind-blowing-statistics-about-pornography-and-the-church
It is important to note that there is no problem with having a struggle or addiction. The shame is that Christian men are wearing their fig leaves, in fear and refusal to learn the steps to repent AND overcome.
I have even heard many Bible- believing men have the audacity to emotionally neglect their wives for years and call HER the adulterer for leaving the destruction that their addictions has had on their home, lives and children.
The time and the energy that you, as a man or woman are devoting towards satisfying yourself, while degrading and devaluing not only yourself, you are also robbing that energy, time, and affection from your spouse and your children. You are setting yourself up as the god of the house, expecting them to serve your needs and keep you satisfied; completely missing the fact that YOU as the man of the house are meant to be tending your garden. The garden is not supposed to be tending you. If you, as a man, believe that it is your wife’s job to cook, and clean, and submit to you, and let you ignore her, both emotionally, spiritually, and sexually, you have already brought the curse into your home. You have followed the “First Adam” and are his heir to all his curses. It is possible to get the curse out of your home, but not unless you are willing to re-train yourself and renew your mind and submit to the “Second Adam” who gave His life up for His Bride.
According to Shalom Arush, a woman is a man’s mirror, as a man is a woman’s mirror. If you are hiding sins from her, and she is having emotional outbursts or yelling at you “for no reason”, you need to become aware to the fact that she is emotionally responding to something she knows in her spirit. She can feel your unfaithfulness and unavailability, and dismissing your wife is only going to amplify the problem. That anger is a result of Natural Law. If she emotionally acts out what she does or does not know, and begins convicting you of your sin, she is acting within her function and duty as your wife; the woman of your covenant, and the reflection pool God gave you to mirror how HE feels towards you. If your wife is not being emotionally cared for, God WILL NOT bestow His blessing onto anything that you do, and your whole household will suffer. The longer you, as a man gaslight and reject her, the more that energy is going to build up, and you only have yourself to blame for the volcanic eruption that results. If you have the job of protecting your wife and children and you make their lives hell instead, you yourself will face God’s wrath as a result, even if you had the best of intentions.
Purification of the mind
In many of Yeshua’s parables, he likened a house to a person’s body, explaining that whatever you put in your house becomes a part of you.
Matthew 12:44-45
“When the spirit comes back, it finds the house still empty, swept clean, and made neat. Then the evil spirit goes out and brings seven other spirits even more evil than it is, and they go in and live there. So the person has even more trouble than before.”
Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Whatever food you eat gets digested by the body. The energy and building blocks within gets used in repairing and healing your body. In essence, you are what you eat. The same is true of whatever you consume with your mind and your eyes, the gate to your heart. Whatever you watch, whatever you listen to, whatever you think about. What you consume will be what flows out of you, and this will be the spiritual fruit you bear.
I read a book a while back, called Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. One of the studies that the author brought to light is very poignant to this subject.
The study consisted of two groups. One group was told to stand in a basketball court and practice shooting hoops for 30 minutes. The second group was told to sit in a room and imagine shooting hoops for the same amount of time. Both groups were given an accuracy test before and after the experiment, and the findings were incredible. The people who did nothing but imagine shooting hoops had almost exactly the same increase in scores as the ones who had physically trained on improvement. The neurons in your brain do not care if you did something for real or if you just imagined it. Inside your mind, there is no difference. So as a man and a husband, what are you practicing? Is your mind set on learning how to be a better husband, a better father, a better teacher, a better priest for your house? Or are you engaged in imagining all kinds of elicit sexual encounters with forbidden women?
Matthew 6:22-24
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon (meaning whatever one affirms or supports with one’s eyes or actions).”
For more insight in the Greek word “Mammon” that has been mistranslated and oversimplified into money, see here:
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Mammon.html
There is a huge body of scientific study that further validates this concept, but it is enough for me that the Bible says it. Whatever you pour yourself into, you love. Whatever you spend your time looking at, you become. Whatever you spend your energy and strength on, you build up. If you try to hold to one way in secret and another way in public, your psyche will begin splitting over time and causing many side effects and issues as your mind and body try to rectify the multiple personalities and beliefs that you are housing.
Brands and Symbols
Many naive believers falsely believe that the pagan traditions and religions of ancient were vanquished by Christianity, yet, if you look around today you will find the symbols of the ancient gods and goddesses on every street corner, every store, every movie, even in the food you eat and the coffee you drink. The genius of what these spirits did is that they went underground and spent the last 2,000 years secretly building their forces, amassing their fortunes and planning their attack. Take a look at Starbucks for instance.
Look at the image and the color scheme. A two-tailed mermaid, naked, with a star over her head, and the logo in the color green. Since ancient times, green was the color of the mother goddesses, as it was the “color of life and creation” and a nod to Eve. The star coupled with the mermaid is a signature. Even the evolution of the Starbucks logo aligns with the pagan imagery and customs of old. In History’s Vanquished Goddess: Asherah by Darlene Kosnik, the evolution of the Hebraic goddess Asherah is discussed. Asherah was, in her earliest images and representations, pornographic. As cultures began implementing modesty, her image also started to appear having more clothes.
Starbucks is, without a doubt, incorporating idolatry into their business and their products. And people sell this coffee (food sacrificed as idols) at their churches! We buy their food and put their “cleaned up logo” in our homes, and never even consider what we are inviting inside. The Starbucks logo is just the cleanest of modern day idolatry in our society; porn being one of the darkest, most defiling of all modern-day idolatry. Believers are completely naive to what that spirit symbolizes, and how many homes she has destroyed. What many have never considered is that these false images of the goddess were the pornographic material of ancient times and found in ALL the temples of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Porn, and these unclean images, were ALWAYS a foundational element to the pagan occult worship of the nations surrounding ancient Israel. The goddess is named Ishtar, Innana, Asherah, Ashteroth, Cybele, Isis, Diana, Nut, Hathor, and many many more. She (along her male counterpart, Tammuz, which we will get into later) has infiltrated every aspect of our modern society AND churches (Revelation 2), bringing us full circle to the prophecies of Ezekiel 10 and the other prophets warning Israel about the rituals they were unintentionally engaging in and the coming wrath of God if repentance does not come quickly.
When you begin to be able to see and recognize the symbols of these fertility goddesses for what they are, you will never be able to enjoy looking at porn ever again. The women who participate in selling their bodies off to be ogled at, almost without fail, have markings and tattoos with many of Ishtar’s symbols. The bunny, the star, the dragon, the snake, the lotus, the owl, the list goes on and on. These markings are not coincidental or by chance. These tattoos are symbols of obedience to their owner, the goddess. This subject is one that God has had me digging at for 15+ years, on and off, as He began teaching me to abhor the coping mechanisms and sins I inherited from my fathers. Every time He brought me back around to it, I saw it more clearly and became more disgusted with it. Below are the links to a 4 part video series my wife and I did relating the fertility cults, their rituals, symbols, and symbolic meanings as found in the Scriptures, if you’d like more information involving other modern day worship of the gods of the nations that Israel was commanded not to assimilate with:
https://youtu.be/c2uLT9eKzYs?si=n89p7Z11nj1_2dJw
https://youtu.be/L2VZwQUvR4I?si=an6jj-G5u-ijzJMy
https://youtu.be/tSvlNC9QGr8?si=INtSST4Vl2l_DUe0
https://youtu.be/RjYyn6gxWaA?si=CKy0kA_uHTY3hZAs
There is a command in Leviticus 19 to “Not make any tattoo mark on yourself in the name of the dead.” It begins to make sense in this spiritual context. These spiritual entities who represent ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Babylonian, Canaanite gods and goddesses, who God himself called demons (the offerings of the pagans are offered to demons) are all represented by unclean animals. When a man or woman permanently embeds these symbols into their body, their spiritual house, they become devoted to that entity. That spirit receives an invitation to enter their house, and they can be seen operating on behalf of each other. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that you should not interact with, nor associate with anyone who has tattoos like this. Most people do not consciously know these rules or symbols, and many people get these symbols tattooed on themselves completely innocently. But when you look at these symbols of marks of ownership and symbols of authority, you begin to understand why so many women who sell their bodies to the illicit trades (or have had their body sold against their wills) so often tend to have these markings. Most of these “stars” also call themselves “goddesses”. What fellowship can light have with darkness? If you are eating of the fruit of adultery and slavery that these women are selling, then you are showing your obeisance to their gods and their owners, NOT to the God of Israel who demanded that women be honored and respected. Certainly they were not to be bought and sold as sex slaves, and used for the viewing pleasure of Israelite men.
If you claim that you had no control over yourself, (which is what you do when you blame your lust on any woman for any reason) you reduce yourself to the status of an animal who cannot control its impulses and you set the Snake up as your god and leader, whether you realize it or not. Joseph remained honorable in the midst the temptation of Potiphar’s wife, yet he chose to hold his obedience to God at the expense of all else, even to the risk of his life.
Greece and Rome were not nations that honored modesty in the slightest. The apostles visited these locations to spread the Gospel to the four corners of the earth. They even went into their temples of idolatry and sexual misconduct and called people away from it! I dare you to look up the Temple of Ephesus. It is NOT pretty. Do you think these men believed it was the responsibility of the godless to keep their minds pure? No! That is following the “First Adam” and blaming your unclean thoughts on an unbeliever! What kind of coddled babies do you think Yeshua called us to be if the world is responsible for our transgressions? Instead, the apostles walked blameless, filled with the Holy Spirit, and called all to the Righteous Path.
This is the caliber of men God wants in His Kingdom. If you can’t control your urges, and think and act like an animal, you do everyone a favor by staying outside the walls of God’s people, and I hope you stay there until you learn how to conduct yourself as an heir of God.
When Balak, the king of Beor was unable to place curses on the tents of Israel, Balaam came up with a conniving plot. He got the women of the pagan temples and shrines to go in and tempt the Israelite men, removing their resolve, and defiling their lineages. They committed adultery with these women, and then Balak was able to attack Israel and pronounce curses over them because God’s fury was kindled at the men of Israel for submitting to this spirit of adultery and lust.
The promises of Israel hinged on spiritual purity and the purity of their heirs.
When they bent their neck to the adulterous inclinations of the nations, they became gradually more and more perverse, eventually becoming even more of an affront than the nations they were sent in to supplant. How much more so if we call ourselves spiritual sons of God, but we are diverting our lust, and our spiritual and physical energies are being coaxed and goaded by this spiritual entity who feeds on the souls of men who cannot say no to her?
Can you, with one breath honor, your wife and your own daughters, and in the next, dishonor all women and degrade them by taking pleasure in viewing their humiliation? How can we view our wives and daughters as holy and then assist in degrading their kind? How can we also expect holiness from them?
The porn industry’s annual revenue is more than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. It is also more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Once you realize how much money the porn industry generates every year, and understand that what we are seeing today is exactly like the ancient context that made our Father so furious, it all starts clicking. The poems of Inanna and Ishtar from ancient Mesopotamia were the first pornographic writings, and the reliefs, paintings, carvings, statues, ect were all nude. The most beautiful women in the land were bought and sold, made to serve in the temples of these goddesses, and the art depicting the goddess was modeled after their forms.
Modern technology has advanced the realistic nature of these forms of worship, but that does not make it any better; in fact, it makes it WORSE. The Israelites who God sent into this land to overcome that spirit refused to give their lust over entirely to the Father, and each generation got successively more entrenched in the witchcraft, curses, and blood magic as the spell was woven over them. The spirit hijacked their emotions to serve this evil deity, all the while openly praising God while they engaged in abominations. Up to this point, we, as the new iteration of Israel, have failed the exact same test.
Our Golden Calf
The Golden Calf (mentioned in Exodus 32) was an Egyptian representation of this same fertility goddess, named Hathor; orgiastic rituals were performed in her honor in Egyptian tradition, corroborated by the account at Mount Sinai. When Israel was in Egypt, they began serving and following the customs and rituals of the gods and goddesses of Egypt. When God came to set Israel free from the bondage of slavery, He had to destroy their gods and sever the covenants that were legally keeping the Hebrews enslaved to them. Each of the Ten Plagues was a judgment on one of the gods of Egypt. At the end, once the gods had been stripped of all their power and authority, He took His people out of the land and protected them mightily against Pharaoh using many miraculous means. Yet, when Israel arrived at Mount Sinai (Sinai was named for Sin, the moon/fertility goddess) He had them encamp, He burned the top of the mountain with fire and called Moses to the top to carve out a covenant of marriage between Himself and the people of Israel. Moses and the elders ate of the covenant meal with the Father, and while Moses was going to get the requirements of the covenant, Israel prostitutes themselves to the goddess that God has JUST freed them from. They recreate the idols that they left behind and start a massive orgy. Some habits die hard, I guess. Once you have unified yourself to a woman who is in active covenant with this demonic entity claiming to be a goddess, you are, by proxy in covenant with that demon. This is why so many times, the Bible warns Christians not to eat food sacrificed to idols or to eat at the table of Jezebel. Partaking of her food is the first step towards partaking in her rituals, and her rituals lead down a path that openly destroys any hope of creating a healthy, safe, functional family unit.
The cornerstone of the covenant with Adam and Eve, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob up to this point is the partnership between God and His people. He guards and protects them from evil, and they partner with him to produce holy offspring, untainted by sexual impurity and defilement. One thing that all of these fertility cults from around the world have in common, is that all of them required that the worshipers engage in acts that make passing down heirs and inheritance impossible. The firstborn son, to name one, was to be special and set apart for God. He was the first of a couple’s strength and they were supposed to devote extra energy into raising him in the covenant, as the firstborn would set the precedent within the family unit that the other children would copy. When you serve the God of Israel who demands that you approach parenting with honor and respect, you cannot serve a master who tells you to sacrifice your children and kill them. Yet that is precisely what we keep doing as a people. At the golden calf incident, many of the Israelites defiled themselves, and engaged in a marriage covenant with this deity, making it impossible for God to enter into covenant to the degree of depth that he wanted to give them.
The Serpent’s Playbook
So why then, is sexuality so central to both a righteous walk and to the occult? Going back again to the first order mankind was given, was to be fruitful and multiply, and go forth and take dominion of the earth. The Serpent has many faces, and he has an entire playbook of fail-safe’s. Believers have chosen naivety to this fact for too long. We continually invite the Serpent into our homes with the faith that we are free for consequence, no matter what our behaviors. The Serpent’ first attempt is to keep man and woman separated from each other so that they never even come together to produce heirs. If he can keep you single, sleeping around out of wedlock, and wasting your sexual energy staring at a screen; he has defeated you. If you get past that phase, and you manage to find a woman of good character to marry, who will partner with you to create the next generation of God’s image-bearers, then he has backups on backups. He will try to separate you by causing fights, strife and enmity with you and your spouse. He will try to tempt you into desiring after other women that you are not in covenant with.
When my wife was pregnant with my first and second-born, I had several snakes in my circle that began trying to damage my relationship with my wife, trying to lead me into unfaithfulness to her. These people I believed I could trust actively tried to lead me into illicit relationships against her, and it took me far too long to identify their game and kick them out of our garden. Meanwhile, my wife was suffering emotionally, feeling unloved and uncared for, and wondering if marrying me had been a mistake. Whatever the mother feels while she is carrying that child, the baby feels also, and those insecurities can easily pass on to the child before they are even out of the womb. It was only through noticing the negative impacts on my wife and children, that I found the zeal and determination to overcome my addiction and association with people who encouraged or amplified it. In these realization, I learned that being the priest of your home means cleansing YOURSELF first. I had to point the sword of Scripture inward and replace shame for repentance and empathy for my family. The only way to overcome this transgression is love.
Many husbands use the period of their wife’s pregnancy or post-partum to indulge in pornography, and they convince themselves that it isn’t hurting anyone because their wife “just isn’t available right now.” And they are doing what they need to to take care of their own needs while forgetting about the pain and emotional turmoil their wives went through and continue to endure for their heirs. Do you hear the narcissism in these types of thoughts? The Snake whispers in your ear with all kinds of self-indulgent thoughts and ideas, excusing the behavior with a self-important quip. “Your wife isn’t meeting your needs.” “She’s not interested right now.” “She’s not available.” Ect ect. “I will go and meet my own needs on my own terms”, completely disregarding the commands of God and how she would feel if she were in the room with me.
Again, the enemy will whisper all manner of things into your ear, and will continue trying until you either cast him out or he finds your weakness and gets you to sin against your spouse. Then he will have grounds to accuse you and rob you AND your family of your blessings inherited and promised by the Most High. I find it ironic that most of the men who are secretly engaging in pornography are the first people to point the finger at women, and Eve, for being the source of all evil and sin while actively eating of that same fruit, and destroying the work that their wife is putting in to build and establish their home and lineage.
The attacks that the enemy sends are subversive and hard to detect, especially in a person who is tuned to see everything and everyone, but themselves, as the problem. Someone who is not able to self reflect and judge their own fruit is a prime candidate for becoming a tyrant in their own home, and instead of depicting the love of their inheritor. the Second Adam”, they depict the opposite to their children; the wrath and unfairness of Pharaoh, the slavery of a family system that is geared toward the needs and wants of one person, at the expense of all others. This is what pornography does to the mind. It makes you into a narcissist and a tyrant; instead of serving the needs of your house, you spend all of your energy and time trying to force others into meeting your own needs.
Pornography Destroys your Wife’s Spirit
Please, God fearing men, put yourselves in the place of your wives whom you mistreat, whether intentionally or not. You marry your wife who commits her life to you in faithfulness, loyalty and faith in who she believes you are and will become. She gives her body, time, future to you. She has your offspring, your eternal heirs. For nine months, she gives them her body, and even after pregnancy, she sacrifices her body for your children. It should be insulting to an honorable wife to be tested and proved faithful through all those trials and her husband cannot commit his spiritual faithfulness to her, the faithfulness of the mind and eyes. Come on, men. It is so cruel and unfair to your wives for you to just accept the logs in your eyes and carry on with your lives.
Malachi 2:14-16
Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless spring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”
When we commit spiritual adultery as men in Covenant with Yeshua AND our wives by lusting after priestess of Baal, and literal sex SLAVES, we are rejecting the wives of our youth. The wives who committed themselves to us and we have treated them as disposable and replaceable.
The Unclean Images of Baal and Asherah are False Versions of Reality
These images are not only unclean, they are FAKE, our own form of modern sorcery. If you need further evidence that we are living in the Last Days, check no further than the unclean images of today versus the ancient world. The ancient world portrayed a normal looking woman, with all the natural curves that are synonymous with childbearing. These pictures are distorting our minds and reality on what a natural, healthy woman looks like. Not to mention, most models inject poisons into their skin. They cut and nip and tuck their bodies in the name of beauty. The goddesses of all the ancient nations, but especially Greece and Rome, represented the embodiment of beauty. All the women of those nations emulated the goddess’ physical and seductive features.
A worldly, fleeting beauty that withers just like your spirit will when you submit to the Serpent as your king.
We are a Greek-minded, vain, beauty obsessed world. Obsessing over the geometric proportions of our bodies and throwing purity and honor to the wind.
And the consequences are vast and detrimental to your marriage and the health of the generations after you that you are responsible for. Women for at least four decades have not been portrayed with natural curves a woman has, particularly after motherhood, but fetishized into an unrealistic standard.
Porn, a Modern Sorcery
This brings me to the point that pornography, just like many other facets of today’s society, is witchcraft.
Manipulating one’s mind to control, pacify and separate you from holding to the moral and natural Law that God established IS SORCERY.
Porn manipulates your mind and contorts your desires to be for many and all other women BUT your wife, just as the spell caster intends. Men become greedy under the spell of pornography and desire every other woman but the woman you vowed to be united with. You leave the wife of your youth, the woman that you are allowed to lust after, to pursue go to the temple of Baal (which can now be living in your phone) and permit the unclean images to speak abominable things in your very home, bedroom and into the eyes of your spirit. All for the greed of seeing more priestesses. When you are staring at an image of fake perfection, the realness of a real woman will become unattractive to you. The spell digs its claws further into your souls and you will desire more and more of the unattainable. OH the ingratitude to your wife and God.
Our holy wives give up their bodies for your heirs. Women’s bodies change and adapt to a baby’s needs which is the beauty that God designed.
Men looking at highly altered pictures of these enslaved priestesses allow the spell to take root in your heart and house. To be jealous after the women you are not yoked to instead of the woman God commands us to be jealous after.
Another example of the sins we have inherited from our fathers in Malachi 2 is from the apocryphal text Jasher. Now, I only look at Jasher as purely contextual and historical, showing the spiritual truths of actual canon. Take it with a grain of salt, but from all the Scriptural evidence of this concept, it’s not a stretch to ponder the spiritual context found in Jasher 2:19-22
In those days the sons of men began to trespass against God, and to transgress the commandments which he had commanded to Adam, to be fruitful and multiply in the earth. And some of the sons of men caused their wives to drink a draught that would render them barren, in order that they might retain their figures and whereby their beautiful appearance might not fade. And when the sons of men caused some of their wives to drink…And the child-bearing women appeared abominable in the sight of their husbands as widows, whilst their husbands lived, for to the barren ones only they were attached.
I have personally seen this sin committed upon many women in our current day and age. In fact, I witnessed this generational stronghold in my own upbringing, the fruit it bore and the terrible impact that it already has had within just two generations. I grew up in a Hebrew Roots cult and I have seen, and continue to see, these behaviors by the men in this cult, as well many other cults. The women have no value other than childbearing. Most husbands and elders in this very strict community use pornography and then force their wives to bear a million children with no break or rest for their bodies. Animal breeders give their animals a break from having litters. Self-righteous men from these cults force their wives to bear many children with no break, or rest for their bodies. They over obsess over the modesty of women and young girls without paying any attention to the gigantic, heaping logs in their own pornography-obsessed eyes. The despise their wives and daughters, and then in secret show favor to the hyper-edited unclean images of the women they “love”. I have seen the fruit of rejecting the wife of your youth and it leads to nothing but selfish pride and madness. In all these actions, they take God’s name in vain by teaching and demonstrating by example the opposite of what He embodies.
Many men, both religious and non-observant, in our generation use their child-bearing wife as their despised wife, just like the Jasher account. Then they use pornographic material to fill the spot of the beautiful, infertile wife (whom we know many porn stars are practicing abortion and watching is being an active participant).
All of these cults that perpetuate the abuse and slavery of their wives have many things in common, but the obsession with the role of a woman and their modesty and submission are all at the forefront. They pin all the blame for their lust on the women they lust after. Yeshua taught us very clearly that it is man’s responsibility what impure thoughts he has. Joseph remained pure and honorable through the temptation of Podifer’s wife. He took the responsibly on himself to remain pure in the sight of God, and did not cast blame on her and submit to sin. He walked in innocence and had the ability to cast blame on an actual tempter. Whoever you blame, you are in submission to. You have then given them control over your actions. Instead, Joseph was willing to die or be imprisoned with honor and purity trusting that God had the ability to restore his inheritance to him at the divine time.
Pharisaical men, whatever the sect or denomination of faith, also blame the wives of their youth, an actual victim that they are indebted to. I have seen many wives leave their slaveholders, their should-be husbands and protectors, and called adulterers and harlots. As a husband, when your wife sins, you should be covering her and being a priest who leads her in repentance and atonement. Blaming your wife, even if she is sinning, is following the First Adam who should have gone to God as a mediator for Eve’s disobedience but instead followed her into sin and blamed her and God for his own. When you blame your wife for your transgressions, you are only showing who your benefactor is. Remember men, if we are heirs to the Second Adam and truly in covenant with Yeshua, we should imitate Him.
Ephesians 5:21-33
Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it in water, in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty—pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection. Men ought to love their wives just as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself. (None of us ever hate our own bodies. Instead, we feed them, and take care of them, just as Christ does the church; 30 for we are members of his body.) As the scripture says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one.” There is a deep secret truth revealed in this scripture, which I understand as applying to Christ and the church. 33 But it also applies to you: every husband must love his wife as himself, and every wife must respect her husband.
Men, Repent and Turn from the Generational Curse we Inherited
Men, if this is how you treat your wife, I give you a promise: God will NEVER bestow His blessing upon you as long as you continue to repeat this sin. By giving into your lust instead of learning to rule over it, you become and emasculated priest of Tammuz (the love of the goddess) drying your family line up, and invoking God’s curse upon your house and your offspring. As a result of the generational sins my father passed down to me, I wrestled with the same sins from adolescence onward. It was not until I met my wife and began seeing the problem through the lense of love, grace, and mercy that I began learning how to turn this curse around and treating her with the respect and admiration she deserves. By all rights, my wife should have left me for the ways I betrayed her early on in our marriage, but she chose to extend mercy and grace, and I chose to put those sins of my youth to death, for the sake of my children and my wife. Only love can give you victory over shame and guilt. I saw first-hand, through the example of my father that if I loved my wife, I would not continue to hurt her and expect her to give me grace every time I failed.
Our relationship with God is exactly the same. He has immense mercy for our mistakes, and our struggles with overcoming the flesh. Mercy is given to overcome the guilt for anyone willing to take up their cross and begin the long process of overcoming that sin, continuing to ask for forgiveness every time you fail, and continuing on with the journey. A mikvah, known as a baptism in the New Testament, is a sign of our journey of repentance. Most Christians misunderstand the profound nature of a mikvah. It loses profound depth in modern theology because we have been deceived that Torah is slavery and not the path of righteousness that it is. A mikvah is a ceremonial washing that you were to do regularly. The Christian Church teaches that the baptism is this one and done symbol of obedience to Messiah, some have no idea that the baptism is even a ritual and command found in the Torah. In a mikvah, you are to wash any time you are found physically and spiritually unclean. We, as followers of Yeshua, are called to wash ourselves regularly. We don’t just wash one time when we first find the Messiah, and then we are done. No! A baptism, and especially repentance, is an on-going and regular part of our lives. In seeing that ridding ourselves of the sin is a continual process, the shame is lifted.
The Spirit of the Law is walking in paths of righteousness and repentance, a journey that is long and many times slow. Ironically, Torah which many find as slavery expects this process of cleansing rather than the theology that is taught in churches that you must be clean, or never to even care about repentance, after your allegiance to Yeshua. Continually cleansing ourselves from this unclean addiction passed down through generations is a process. Pruning out the impurities of our hearts bit by bit, and one moment, you will notice that it is not even a sin to wrestle with. This process of repentance is overcoming by the Blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
Psalm 23:3
He restores my soul. He leads me in paths (in Hebrew cycles) of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Before one could come to the Temple, a priest had to take them through the mikvah and give them clean robes to wear to enter the Temple and be near God’s Presence. If we as men, are unwilling to wash ourselves as priests, and wear the wedding garments that we are offered, how then can we wash our children and enter them into the Presence of God that He longs to graciously give? How can we be the priests for our children if we ignore our wives’w and children’s needs of our physical and spiritual presence within our temples, our homes? Men, as the priests of our home, we need to be washing ourselves in the Word and learning how to be the Second Adam, Yeshua, to our wives and children. Men, we should be serving and covering them in grace and righteousness. Our women should not be begging us to be emotionally or spiritually available, but rather we should be a deeper connection point to God’s Presence for our families.
Only love can overcome the Serpent. Only love can give you relationship with your wife and help you to overcome your own failures and sins. From this moment onward, you must make a choice: continue living in your sinful patterns, hiding them from your wife and God, and ultimately losing everything you ever worked for; OR taking accountability, asking for forgiveness, repenting of your failures, and rising to your feet again, ready to take another step in opposition of the wicked patterns that you have been sold to by your parents. This is the moment of surrender. Surrender to God, or surrender to your sin. Your fruit will reveal itself by which side you surrender yourself to.
The information presented in this article is the result of decades of seeking answers and help to overcome my own addictions, and the knowledge shared here, along with the help of my wife, has truly revolutionized and empowered my battle against lust. I pray that it helps to empower all of you in your own battle in the same way it has helped me and my home.
May God bless and keep you, until next time!