Ishtar is Mythos

The chicken feet of the “goddess” Ishtar standing on two lions.

I’m a believer in the steadily increasing reveal of God in the Bible. I would use the word “progressive” if politics hadn’t given it a negative connotation. The concept is simple, our mysterious God has allowed Himself to be only fully revealed over a long period of His dealings with human beings. He created us for a purpose and He is taking His time seeing which of us suit His purpose to be His family. It all starts in Eden with the first man and woman.

Genesis is the “seed bed” for the intents and purposes of God that He steadily reveals throughout the scriptures. Yeshua, Jesus in His earthly ministry, as John put it, was “the Word made flesh.” I could spend hours continuing to develop how God’s intention was not just to bring forth a human being who embodied the Divine attributes and ways completely, but God’s purposes in Yeshua were that He was to stand as the measure, or example, for ALL of us human beings indwelt by the Holy Spirit giving us the power to transform into the likeness of Yeshua/Jesus. This is the steadily increasing reveal of Messiah in us – the hope of glory.

As I said, I could camp out on this theme for hours, but my intent this morning is to go back to the questions I have raised about Jonathan Cahn’s books depicting ancient gods and goddesses as demonic entities, and an ancient temple of Zeus as the throne of Satan mentioned in the book of Revelation.

I am not trying to flog Cahn, but I do believe this is an issue that is not just hair-splitting over theology.

Ishtar is Mythos continues

The demonic spirits that hold sway over people in every nation need to be understood by those who are walking in the power of God through faith in Yeshua/Jesus so we may take confident authority. To be confident we have to know we have authority to cast out demons, and we have to know exactly what we are casting out. We are casting out demons, not ancient gods and goddesses

We also need to know exactly why certain demons hold sway over people in a region or a nation. We can know this by the sins and beliefs of the people in a region or territory.

In researching, I was trying to understand why Jonathan Cahn might identify ancient gods and goddesses as demonic entities.

The first thing I found in answer to that has to do with Jonathan coming from a Hebraic tradition. Trust me: I do not discount Hebraic thought. I believe it is absolutely essential to all followers of Jesus, whose name is Yeshua in the Hebrew. But here is where the steadily increasing reveal of God’s Word comes into this matter.

First of all, in the Old Covenant, or the Hebrew scriptures I prefer to call it, demons are mentioned twice in relation to foreign idols.

In Deuteronomy 32:17 “They sacrificed to shedim (demons) not to God, to gods they had not known.”
and
Psalm 106:37-38 “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to shedim [demons]; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan…”

Sometimes – and I’m not saying this is true of Jonathan Cahn – but sometimes Jewish believers in Yeshua can be so dedicated to remaining true to the Hebraic understanding of faith, that they miss the steadily increasing revelation of certain things that are more developed in the New Covenant scriptures. It is also true that sometimes too much attention is focused on extrabiblical rabbinic interpretations and also Jewish folklore.

In the case for advancing understanding of demons from New Covenant writings, these are almost 100% written by Jews too, and under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Yet there are more layers of understanding added to the biblical foundation about demons that is found from the Gospels all the way to Revelation. Much more is revealed about demons and also idols. the false gods and goddesses of the ancients.

Both of the examples of the Hebraic use of shedim for demons in the cited Deuteronomy and Pslam verses explicitly equate pagan gods with deceptive demonic spirits. Is this what influenced Cahn’s thought? Christian apologists agree that false gods are backed by demonic spirits but demonic forces operate behind pagan idolatry, but the Bible defines those forces as deceptive spiritual entities, not the actual characters from ancient mythology.

The distinction, I don’t believe, has been made clear enough for many Christians adopting the view that ancient gods and goddesses are the demons we are fighting against today. This belief avoids the influences that modern people have made idols.

The word shedim is derived from an ancient Near Eastern root meaning “lord” or “territorial spirit”. It refers to malevolent spiritual forces that took advantage of human superstition. We are still superstitious human beings. We believe in ghost appearances, space alien kidnappings and all manner of superstitions as readily as the ancient people accepted myths of gods and goddesses.

But the “territorial spirit” is an important aspect of why demons are connected to certain regions, nations. They become the “lords” over the region because the people of the region have chosen belief in certain idols that are not of God. They believe their idols will protect them in their lives.

For example, Feminist ideology will guarantee their careers, and abortions will not allow unexpected pregnancy to foil career plans. This is an idol many American women have taken up. Abortion has brought many curses onto our society instead. This is the deception of demons and no matter what the idolatry is set on, it opposes God’s ways in favor of the deceptive path. This is true whether people are sacrificing their babies before an idol of Molech or sacrificing their babies before the idols of Feminist ideologies. The demons impact the belief systems of human beings. They do not have to be physically attached to a statue of an idol; all they have to do is inhabit the belief systems that are in rebellion to the One True God.

When we get into the New Covenant reveal of what a demon is, Paul says quite plainly that “an idol is nothing at all in the world” and “there is none other God but one.”

This is from 1 Corinthians 8:4 and Paul goes on to call the idols “so-called gods” and says that people may worship many gods and have many lords over their lives. In contrast people of faith of Yeshua/Jesus and the One True, there is only one God. That is not what we just believe to be the case, that is the actual case that God Himself attests to, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God but me.” Isaiah 45:5

Paul was emphasizing how our faith makes the only “lord” over our lives to be Yeshua and the One True God. When we are trying to combine our faith in Yeshua/Jesus with allowing a territorial spirit to rule over us – whether it is the spirit of Feminist ideology of abortion, or the spirit of mammon, we are in deep conflict with God’s lordship. Do demonic spirits rule us or does the indwelling Holy Spirit rule us?

Our lives walking with God are a process of surrendering more and more of the “lords” we have allowed to stay in our hearts and lives. This is what being transformed in the likeness of Jesus is all about! In John 14:30 Yeshua told his disciples that “the prince of this world is coming. He has nothing in me.” That is the transforming process going on in us, that we would surrender our idols, and the spirits that influence the sins that so easily beset us, more and more throughout our lives toward that same end: that the enemy would have nothing in us either. Some people do not believe it is possible. I used not to either. But the older I get, the more I see it is what God wants from us – to be transformed people.

Paul clarifies in the 1 Cor 8 passage that eating food sacrificed to idols is nothing to us because the idol is nothing, and the food in itself is just food. BUT if we are being seen by those with “a weak conscience” such as those in that day when idol-statue worship was rampant, then if we took liberty to eat sacrificed food, it could encourage them to violate their own conscience about partaking food sacrificed to idols.

This was a specific point Paul was making about that, it is the same as considering our brothers when we know that drinking wine is not a sin. But if we are drinking wine among brothers who have or need to overcome alcoholism, then Paul is advising us not to put the temptation in front of them. We can’t let our liberty cause our brothers to stumble.

Generally speaking we have little to do with religions based around idol statues these days, although the influx of such religions in the US are growing. For the most part, American idols are not Ishtar or Molech, but the same demons who deceived the ancient idol worshippers are still operating in the modern American idols we do worship.

Celebrities in sports, movies, music and even in celebrity religious leaders have replaced the idol-statues of ancient times. Greed for money and sexual perversions from God’s intended purposes for male and female are what have become the “territorial spirits” and “lords” over many in Western nations. Sexual perversions have become a major principality over Western nations, including the United States.

These are the sins that cause Beast-principality nations like those under the Islamist false religion of Islamism to view us as “Big Satan” (USA) and “Little Satan” (Israel). Our national agreement with the Jezebel spirit is in conflict with their Beast spirit because of the rampant in-your-face spirit feminine sexuality they see in us. Their perversions for little boys and girls are hidden away from view, so that’s acceptable to them.

It would be wrong to identify the American abortion rate as influenced by the spirit of Ishtar or Molech. It is far more related to the demonic spirits that inspire Feminist ideology. Feminists are not seeking the equality they have inherited in the faith of Yeshua/Jesus; Feminists are in full rebellion against God’s vision for women.

Even though religious viewpoints from Judaism and from the misguided Church fathers on the lack of equality of women have misrepresented what God had in mind, the idol of Feminism has no intention of being defined by God’s Word.

With the rebellion from God of the Feminists of the 1970’s came an embrace of the ancient mythologies of Ishtar. Fanciful writers of LGBTQ also chimed in attempting to persuade their adherents that there was historical evidence of ‘sexual diversity’ dating back to the ancients. Sin is sin, and there is nothing new under the sun, but whenever homosexuality has come out of the closet, it is not long before Divine judgment reduces its practioners and it goes underground again. It has never remained an accepted part of society throughout history.

Of course there were such things practiced in the ancient days, but these are the rebellions from God that made Him chose a man Abram to call out to a land promised to him, and be transformed into a new kind of people – a people of God who were greatly different from those led by demons and false gods.

Most of us don’t realize it, but the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Lot’s day (Genesis 19) was not the first time God brought destruction on the area of Canaan where Sodom and Gomorrah are located. Certainly the territorial demonic lords influenced sexual perversions among the people. But before answering Lot’s vexation in prayers in Genesis 19, God stirred up forr kings from eastern kingdoms to make war against five kings in the region of Sodom and Gomorrah. That was Genesis 14. God was ‘cleaning house’ in Canaan long before Joshua would led Israel into the Promised land.

The ancient wars against demons are still going on and the same old demons that influenced the ancient pagan peoples are influencing modern idolators the same. Only the names of the so-called gods and goddesses have changed.

The behaviors in human beings that demons influence are the real point of spiritual warfare.

The Bible has named very few demonic spirits, one of the most mentioned is the Jezebel spirit, and this is primarily a control spirit. In the new covenant, the Jezebel spirit is seen in both Herodias and her daughter Salome, so Herod would be seduced by her youthful sexuality. Sexuality is only one tool a Jezebel spirit can use to gain power over others, but the motivation of the Jezebel spirit is power. This spirit is quite comfortable not using sex to get what she wants and so fits in nicely in church settings. False prophecies are a manipulation a tool in religious settings, and preying on people instead of praying for people is also found in intercessory groups.

The Jezebel spirit is mentioned in Revelation 20, which should be a strong clue to every serious believer that it is a major spirit we battle in the last days.

The only other “named” spirits are “Beelzebub” called the prince of demons in Matthew 10:25; 12:24–27; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15–19. “Legion,” a large number of violent, insanity demons that Yeshua cast out of a man into a herd of pigs. “Abaddon in Revelation 9:11 who rules the locust-like creatures and whose name means “Destroyer”. The three “Beasts” of Revelation 13 – the beast of the sea, the beast of the earth, and the beast that comes out of the abyss to kill the two witnesses. All these are named demonic spirits.

In the rest of the bible demonic spirits are not identified by names, but by the behaviors they influence in people. Personally I believe this is a much better way to identify demonic spirits instead of using names which are subject to include “so-called gods” as names instead of what demon spirits are influencing human beings to think, say and do.

To be spiritually ‘edgy’ it seems nothing quite fits the bill to excite people more than identifying a new demon name. It may be part of the “itching ears” syndrome spoken of in 2 Timothy 4:3-4

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto mythos: fiction or fables.”

Some of those demonic spirits in the Bible are identified as a

LYING SPIRIT in Kings 22:21–23; 2 Chronicles 18:20–22
SPIRIT OF DIVINATION in Acts 16:16
SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY in Luke 13:11
DEAF & MUTE SPIRIT in Mark 9:17, 25
SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST 1 John 4:3
SPIRIT OF WHOREDOM/HARLOTRY in Hosea 4:12; 5:4
PERVERSE SPIRIT in Isaiah 19:14
SPIRIT OF FEAR in 2 Timothy 1:7

MAMMON in Matthew 6:24 Jesus says one cannot serve two masters, either God or mammon. This would technically make mammon a lord or false god. Greed must be the spirit that influences those who have made money their god.

Also in researching these things I found it interesting that Feminists in the 1970’s also embraced Jewish folklore surrounding LILLITH to honor Lilith’s supposed insistence on equality. When I say Jewish folklore I am equating this to the made-up stories of gods and goddesses that the ancient mythologies.

In October 1976, an explicitly Jewish Feminist quarterly named Lilith Magazine was launched. “They sought to bridge the gap between mainstream second-wave feminism and the traditional Jewish community, which had historically sidelined women.”

Lilith Magazine is about to observe their 50th Anniversary on Oct 29, 2026.

“In the premier premiere issue, founding editor Aviva Cantor Zuckoff published a landmark essay titled “The Lilith Question”. The essay broke down how institutional patriarchy manufactured the “demon” myth of Lilith precisely because men feared independent, powerful women who demanded control over their own lives and bodies.”

Much like the demons that influenced the murder of babies to stop the deliverer when both Moses and Yeshua/Jesus were born, I see this as a parallel demonic attempt in our day. Abortion is not only to murder babies in the womb— and lately out of the womb too—but also to elevate the false idol of Feminism before women, especially among Jewish women right at the season that God is removing the veil from Jewish spiritual eyes as to Messiah’s identity.

It is the demonic spirits influence over people that is the critical issue in spiritual warfare. The naming of false gods and goddesses being demonic spirits can only confuse matters.

We must focus on what the Bible says, not what mythological folklore claim.