EXCERPT – From Jonathan Cahn’s “Breathtaking” New Book ‘The Return of The Gods’
Excerpt from Jonathan Cahn’s The Return of the Gods
Part I:
THE
MYSTERY
Chapter 1
The Mystery
Is it possible that behind what is happening to America and the world lies a mystery hidden in the ancient inscriptions of the Middle East? Is it possible that the ancient entities known as the “gods” are more than fiction and possess an independent reality?
Is it possible that they have returned to our world?
Could these entities lie behind what we see on our television screens and computer monitors, what we find in our shopping centers, what our children are being taught in their classrooms, what our leaders announce and implement? Could they lie behind the current events, news, and move ments of our times, and behind what is even now influencing our lives without our realizing it?
Is it possible that one of these ancient entities once paid a visit to New York City and started a cultural revolution that is still transforming our world?
Who are the Possessor, the Enchantress, the Destroyer, and the Trans former? And what do they have to do with what is now taking place in our culture?
Could there be a mystery that lies behind and explains the sign of the rainbow and the reason it is now saturating our culture? And could that mystery go back to the temples of ancient Mesopotamia?
Could the mystery of the gods have actually determined the outcomes and timing of Supreme Court rulings down to their exact days? Is it possible that the dynamics of ancient mythology have actually played out in our public squares and on our city streets in real time? Could these gods, or beings, actually be the unseen movers and catalysts of modern culture?
Could they even now, at this moment, be at work transforming the modern world beyond recognition?
What is it all leading to?
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We will now embark on a journey beginning with the ancient entities known as the shedim. We will remove the veil to uncover the first and
most important revelation underlying the mystery of the gods. We will see the ancient transformation concerning the gods that changed world his tory. We will open up a two-thousand-year-old warning involving a house of spirits and what it foretells concerning the modern world.
We will then see how the gods of the ancient mystery have come into our world. We will uncover the dark trinity—and how it has changed our culture.
We will reveal how the gods are working and moving in all that is taking place around us, how they are initiating social upheavals and cultural rev olutions, indwelling our politics, transforming our world—and even our lives.
Finally, we will open up the meaning and significance of it all, what it portends, what it will lead to, and what we need to know and do in light of it.
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A warning: The mystery revealed in this book will touch the sacred cows of our culture and age. It will broach that which is deemed unbroachable, speak that which is judged as unspeakable, question the unquestionable, and reveal that which has not yet been revealed.
It will address the most radical and controversial issues of our time, the front lines of cultural upheaval, the catalytic forces that are now trans forming society, civilization, history, and life as these have been known.
As it progresses, the mystery will become more intense and more explo sive. Thus the latter part of the revelation will be even more so than the first.
At the same time, it will touch these sacred cows and issues in a way in which they are not normally touched, illuminated by the light of a mystery that goes back ages, to ancient times.
What one does with the revelations is in one’s own court. The purpose of this book is to reveal them.
Chapter 2
The Return of the Gods
The gods have returned.
They had been away for ages. The ancients had exiled them. They wandered the barren and desolate places, the deserts and wildernesses, the alleyways and ruins, the graves and sepulchres. They haunted the under ground, the dark realms of the forbidden, the taboo, and the dead. They inhabited the shadows of the outer darkness.
In their days of glory, they had reigned over tribes and nations, king doms and empires. They had subjugated cultures and mastered civiliza tions, infusing them with their spirits, saturating them with their images, possessing them.
They sat enthroned in marble temples and shrines of wood and stone, by hallowed trees and rivers, in sacred groves, and in mountaintop sanc tuaries. Their statues and carved images looked down at their worship pers who approached their altars with offerings and tributes, sacrifices and blood, even human victims.
Kings bowed down before them, priests sang their praises and per formed their rituals, armies set off to war and laid cities to waste in their names, and children, the rich and the poor, the free and the slave alike exalted them, worshipped them, entreated their favor, invoked their powers, danced to the drumbeat of their festivals, dreamed of them, loved them, served them, dreaded them, became entranced and seized by them.
But the days of their dominion came to an end. They were expelled from the high places, banished from the palaces of kings, driven out of the public squares, cast out of their temples, and removed from the lives of their subjects.
Their groves were neglected, their shrines abandoned, their altars left in disrepair, and their sanctuaries in ruins. No longer were they worshipped or feared. No longer were their hymns sung, their festivals partaken in, or their holy days observed. No longer were they believed in.
The gods were sent into exile. In time they became memories, echoes, and phantoms. And then they were forgotten.
In the days of their absence, kingdoms had risen and fallen, nations had disappeared, an empire had collapsed, and a new civilization had been born.
The world they had left had disappeared. In its place had risen another that was altogether foreign to them. In their absence, man had charted the earth, vanquished nature, dissected the fabric of life, and codified the uni verse. The forests were no longer enchanted, the shrines were no longer sacred, and nature was no longer magical. The scientist now wore the mantle of the prophet, and the garments of the priests had been replaced by lab coats. The world had been disenchanted.
It was then, having demystified the earth and awash in his newfound powers, that man decided he had no need of any god. And it was then and by that that the ancient door was set ajar. The long-locked portal of the gods was reopened. Thus was their conjuring, their invocation, and their return.
And so it began. They came back from the desolate places and from the dark and forbidden realms. They came up from the underground and from the dwelling places of the dead. They stepped out from the shadows.
They came slowly at first, as the door had, at first, only been slightly opened. Had their entrance been too rapid, it would have been repelled and the door would have closed. But by entering with measured steps, they were able to keep the door ajar and then open it still wider. And as the shock that followed each of their steps dissipated, the resistance to their return would be overcome.
The world they now entered was unlike the one they had left. In the former world, cities glowed with the light of oil lamps and walls were adorned with carved images. But in the world they entered, cities were illuminated with electrical currents and images of light moved across bill boards and movie screens, television sets and computer monitors.
The gods could not rule over the modern world as they had over the ancient, not in the same way. But they would rule over it. They would not return to the high places and groves or to their ancient shrines and temples. They would inhabit the new seats of power by which the modern world was led and make of them their thrones. They would come upon the movers and influencers of modern culture and make of them their instruments.
To gain dominion over the modern world, they could not appear as they had in ancient times. Though there was still a remnant of those who wor shipped them and who called them by name, they were of the fringe. To the modern mind the gods did not exist, and few would serve them if they believed they did. So the gods came back in disguise. They altered their appearances. They took on new identities and gave themselves new names. They came as spirits of enlightenment, freedom, and power; they came as
The Return of the Gods
secular gods, new gods, alternate gods, gods that granted godhood, gods that denied that they were gods, and gods that declared that there were no gods—they came as gods of the modern world.
And so the gods returned. And having returned, they began working their dark magic, prodding and impelling, tempting and seducing, drawing away, uprooting what was planted and planting what was not, overturning, transforming, moving the ancient markers, breaking down the ancient hedges, and forcing open the ancient gates. And as the seeds of their planting came to fruition, and their spirits infused more and more of the modern world, they grew still more powerful.
And so the gods now dwell among us. They inhabit our institutions, walk the halls of our governments, cast votes in our legislatures, guide our corporations, gaze out from our skyscrapers, perform on our stages, and teach in our universities. They saturate our media, direct our news cycles, inspire our entertainments, and give voices to our songs. They perform on our stages, in our theaters and stadiums; they light up our television sets and computer screens. They incite new movements and ideologies and convert others to their ends. They instruct our children and initiate them into their ways. They incite the multitudes. They drive otherwise rational people into irrationality and some into frenzies, just as they had done in ancient times. They demand our worship, our veneration, our submission, and our sacrifices.
The gods are everywhere. They have permeated our culture. They have mastered our civilization.
The gods are here.
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To begin the mystery of the gods, we must go back to ancient times and to the entities known as the shedim.