Today with Jeff Vines

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Trying to show you in the series the connection between
the eroding of the Jesus movement out of Western culture
and the ushering end of these demonic forces that had
been forced to the fringes by the Jesus Woman, so
that you'll be well aware when you see things happening.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines, pastor, apologist and
Bible teacher.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hello, and welcome to Today with Jeff Fines. My name is Bill,
and this week Pastor Jeff continues his series called Under
the Influence. The series is about culture and society being
under the influence of evil forces. In today's episode, Pastor
Jeff is talking about the correlation between the removal of

(00:50):
Jesus in areas of culture and the increase of demonic
forces around us. Turn to Ephesian six if you want
to read the relevant set in your Bible. Let's begin
this first part of the message with Pastor Jeff.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
To start this weekend, just two quick questions. Number One,
what you think about this? What is the greatest commandment?
What were we told? What is the greatest commandment? Love
the Lord your God with all your heart's, soul, mind
and strength. What's the second? Love your neighbor as yourself. Right,
So you're supposed to pursue and treasure God more than
anything else. And then if you're doing that, you're supposed

(01:36):
to pursue and treasure your neighbor and have the same
passion that you do for your own interest for your
neighbour's interest. So that means you want to take care
of him or her, You want to see them prosper,
you want to see them do well. Now, second question,
when Jesus in his ministry, if you've read any of
the Gospels, you'll know who did Jesus struggle the most with?

(01:57):
Was it sinnersh When he met a sinner, he said,
I'm gonna offer you forgiveness.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now he would say, go and stop sinning.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
But he did that because he knows that if you
violate God's design, destruction comes. So it was motivated out
of love. Stop doing that, that's not gonna work. But
who did he struggle most with? The self righteous people?
The people that thought they had no sin or somehow
that their sin wasn't as bad as.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Somebody else's sin.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Now, everything I'm about to say, if you don't keep
that in your mind, you're gonna interpret this totally in
the wrong way, and we're not gonna achieve the desired result.
Because what we're talking about is the Bible is very
clear in the Book of Ephesians. This has kind of
been our verse or our pastors throughout this entire series
that you and I are in a battle. Then you

(02:46):
listen to the news or you read what's going on
and you just get really frustrated. You're supposed to pause,
and you're supposed to not panic.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Ours is not the.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Spirit of timidity or fear, but of what a sound
mind self control. So you're supposed to know that our struggle,
our battle is not against flesh and blood. It's not
against your neighbor. It's against principalities, rulers, powers, and world forces.
And we described those in the very first sermon. We
broke them down and said there's a real battle going on.
There are two kingdoms dimetrically opposed to one another. And

(03:17):
so we started by saying that historically, we know that
the Jesus Movement now, not the Jesus Revolution, that's a
different sermon. Not when the hippies came to Jesus in
the sixties and seventies in southern California. But the original
Jesus Movement, when God sent his son to die for
our sins, we said that at that moment, the false
gods of hundreds and hundreds of years were pushed aside

(03:40):
and relegated.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
To the fringes.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
So wherever the Gospel traveled across the West, demonic forces
were forced out. Human rights and dignity typically followed the
trail of the Gospel.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
It was christ Followers who.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Put an end to dumping female children in the rivers,
to say, sacrificing children on Moulten alters, to relegating women
to second class citizens, and elevating the value of a
person based on wealth, birth, and skin color.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
The Jesus Movement put an end to all of that.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
And I like to remind young people today when you're
fighting for social justice, you got to remember it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
You're only doing that because you believe in the central
tenets of Judaeo Christianity. You believe that.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Humanity is valuable. See, whether you know it or not,
you've been influenced by Judeo Christian values. Now does this
mean that christ Followers have never messed up? Oh, my goodness,
because Christianity has often been hijacked by either ignorance people
who thought they knew what Jesus taught but had no
clue so started wars, or by power hungry people who

(04:47):
looked at the gospel and said, you know what, this
can be very advantageous for raising a lot of money.
And that has also been done. Remember what we said,
God is good, people suck. It's true, though, Oh isn't it?
God is good? But we're messed up, all of us.
The second thing we learned is that when the Jesus
Movement is forced out of culture, there is a heavy

(05:08):
price to pay. We should have learned our lesson by now,
because Jesus morality is good stuff forgiveness, reconciliation, love for
one's neighbor, equality, not thinking of yourself more highly than
you ought, to humility, which is the antithesis of pride.
These are all part and partial to the Jesus movement.
And when Jesus has pushed out, human life is devalued

(05:30):
and whenever necessary, eradicated. And then we started last week
by showing how the gods who were forced to the
fringes by the Jesus movement when they are forced out,
and they've been forced out, for hundreds of years. When
they come back in, they don't bring life, they bring death.
Jesus said in John ten ten. The thief comes only
to still kill and destroy. I have come that they

(05:52):
may have life and have it to the full, to
kill human life, to stial your identity, your meaning, and
your significance, and to destroyed, to bring everything to ruin.
The Greek word is appoloumi. It's a word that means
to smash something to ruin. Now, the gods we said,
these rulers' powers, principalities, were of forces. They're identifiable because

(06:15):
they've been around since the oldest civilization of Mesopotamia. We
actually have from the oldest written language of Mesopotamia. We
have records of the gods of the beliefs. The demonic
forces have been talked about, read about, and written about
since the earliest of civilizations, and they've taken on the

(06:38):
identity of pagan deities throughout every generation. So you've heard
about bel and Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite and Molech,
hundreds of more various avatars and idols, but the same
demonic forces identified from the beginning. So I'm trying to
show you that You may not see them visibly, but
you know their impact. And I'm trying to show you

(07:01):
in the series the connection between the eroding of the
Jesus Movement out of Western culture and the ushering in
of these demonic forces that had been forced to the
fringes by the Jesus Movement, so that you'll be well
aware when you see things happening, what's happening, and that
you would take heart. Now, can I just say something,

(07:21):
Even in the middle of a culture like this, you
do know as Christ followers you have God's favor.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
That you're ultimately going to win. But it doesn't mean
listen carefully.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
It does not mean that Christ will not ask you
to suffer and die for His purposes. Sacrifice has always
been the defining characteristic of Christ followers, and Christians all
over the world in Africa and Asia have been sacrificing
themselves for generations.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
We've been blessed, but it might be our turn.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
And you might be forced to really think about what
it is that you believe and are you willing to
pay the price to count the cost. Last week we
looked at demonic force number one. The ultimate anti god
is Bail, the god who inspires worship or gives ultimate
word to That's what worship means, to.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
The creation rather than the creator.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
So man, when bow returns, shifts his focus and passion
away from God. You shall have no other gods before me,
to the things God has created, towards the gift rather
than the giver. Jesus and Paul warned that these times
are coming. I mean second Timothy one tell me this
is not appropriate to where we are today.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
But mark this.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
There will be terrible times in the last days. People
will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy without love, unforgiving, slanderous,
without self control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceded,
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a

(08:56):
form of godliness but denying its power. In other words,
there's a spiritual reality, but you're not really following Jesus.
Now we turn our attention. I can't rehearse that. It
would take too much time. I need you to follow me.
I've got a short amount of time. The series could
go for months. We're trying to do it for four weeks.

(09:18):
There is the second God. The demonic force takes the
form of a woman. She is often portrayed as the
wife of bel but she also takes the form of
a man when necessary. Yes, she claimed transgender all the
way back to the earliest of civilizations. She's the patron
of alcohol, intoxication, and prostitution. Her images were everywhere in

(09:42):
the ancient world. We have carvings from every generation. She
was an enchantress, a sorceress. She was able to possess
someone to the point of altering one's affections or behaviors.
She was notorious for making a woman desire a woman
and a man desire a man.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
This is nothing new.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
She moved and spoke through her priestess, who served as
a vessel, who prostituted themselves in the pagan temples. Now
here's a quotation from Herodotus. Herodotus is not a christ follower.
We're just quoting from history here, not the Bible. The
Greek historian says this, and I quote, every woman of
the land, in worship of this god or goddess was

(10:24):
compelled to perform the act of prostitution by having relations
with a stranger.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
In exchange for money at least once in her life.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
She is referred to as the seductress, the enchantress Ishtar,
and in the Bible she's called Asterith. In Mesopotamia, on
the tip day of the feast of Attika, the Babylonian
kings would perform ritual sex acts in honor of Ishtar
or Aquitu. This would take place to the goddess's high priestess,
who would act as kind of a surrogate. In Babylon

(10:54):
she was known as Istar. Among the Greeks, she was
known as Aphrodite. To the Romans, she was known as Venus.
But make no mistake, different names, same dark goddess. In
the Tablets of Summer, one of the oldest known written
languages from Mesopotamia, Istar is described as and I quote
again Hiramatu or karkid, translated prostitute. So, after thousands of

(11:19):
years of influence, when the Jesus movement began to see
the covenant of marriage and sexual intimacy as a gift
exclusively given belonging to that covenant of marriage, everything changed,
and everything changed in the West because the West was
primarily built maybe perhaps not on Judaeo Christian values, but
at least on the Ten Commandments. As the Jesus Movement

(11:40):
spread west, everything changed. Men were faithful to their wives,
people stayed in marriage. The two concepts were faithfulness in
marriage and chastity and singleness. Sex was between a man
and a woman and a covenant of marriage. But this
was the antithesis to the gods for hundreds of years.
Because of the Jesus Movement. The goddess is dedicated to

(12:04):
carnal desire and unbridal sexuality cannot be maintained, so the
Goddess has went into exile. That's why the temples that
you now see the ruins, started in decay. Around the
fourth century BC, the Jesus Movement was spreading.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
What's really interesting about the two.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Gods Bel and Asterith or Istar were commonly leaked together
in the Old Testament Judges two thirteen. They forslipped the
Lord and served Bel and the Asterisk Judges ten six.
Then the children of Israel again did evil in the
side of the Lord and served the Bels and the Asteriths.
They cried out, Lord and said, this is for Samuel twelve.

(12:41):
We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and
served beals and asteriths. Typically in culture, even in Israel,
Bel always precedes Ishtar or the asterith. Bel turns the
nation's heart away from God and has them pursue the
blessings of God rather than God himself. That then opens

(13:02):
the door for the asterith to come in with unbridled
sexuality and decadence. The god of apostasy ushers in the
goddess of sexual debauchery. And when Astith appears, a sexual
revolution occurs in history. So just quickly back to the
sixties we go again, because we said last week that
when the gods gained critical mass in American culture in

(13:24):
the sixties, after God was expelled, we expelled prayer, we
expelled the tank commandments. After God's expelled, that paved the
way for a sexual revolution, and a sexual revolution occurred.
But another sexual revolution occurred two thousand years earlier. It
took place in the Greco Roman world. It was the
revolution by which biblical sexual ethics, ideas, and morality replaced those.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Of the pagan gods. It happened at the same times.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
The gods were cast out of Western civilation civilization. The
two phenomenon occurred at the same time. You with me
so the Jesus Movement. When Jesus came and established his kingdom,
it forced the Goddess of Rome at Venus, the goddess
of Greece, Aphrodite, the goddess of Phoenicia, a Start, the
Goddess of Mesopotamia Ishtar to the fringes of society as

(14:16):
biblical Christianity, and you can find this again in the
book by Rodney, Start and the Rise of Christianity. As
the Jesus Movement swept through the West, all the temples
started to crumble and prosper humanity. The Jesus Movement to
throne the gods and relegated them to the dark fringes
of society.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Now, if Istar was to return to.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
The West, the first thing is she would have to
do so incrementally. The West would first have to turn
away from God and start serving other gods, which it's done.
Bell would need to return first and turn the hearts
of men away from God under the blessings of God.
And then after that, after the precepts of the Jesus
Movement have.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Been ignored, then a new morality that.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Denounced biblical morality concerning marria and sexuality could take center stage.
So the question I have for you to stay with
me now has is star or asteristh returned to America,
think about it for a moment. In the mid nineteenth century,
the mid nineteenth not too long ago. In America and
in the West, sexuality was seen as a sacred domain
of marriage.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Marriage was a.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Lifelong covenant of love between husband and wife, and sex
outside marriage was a sin and something to be ashamed of.
Not because sex is something to be ashamed of it
or because it's a bad thing, but because the parameters
of a good thing had been violated.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
You know, I used the example a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
I hate walking out to the shed when I have
to hammer it now, so I'll just take off my
shoe and don't you do that, guys, And I'll just
hammer the nail in the wall with my shoe.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Of course, that works for a.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Few times, but the shoe was not designed to be
a hammer, so after a while it's destroyed. Humanity is
based on design, and God knows that design, and when
you violate it, it brings a destruction which motivates God to
give us the precepts of abundant life. When we stayed together,
when marriage was sacred. When sex was sacred, the divorce

(16:06):
rate was minuscule. The rate of children being raised in
broken homes also minuscule. And then around the fifties and sixties,
when the God bel returned to the western shores and
men turned from God and served the creating things rather
than the Creator, the digression began.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
You can read it like a map. For instance, talk
about the divorce rate.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
In nineteen fifty we had two divorces in one thousand people.
In nineteen eighty forty four, in one thousand and twenty
twenty two, we've had the lowest divorce rate since nineteen fifty.
Why because nobody gets married anymore. You only have divorces
when you get married. And now to show you how

(16:51):
the digression has progress, couples living together and unmarried. In
nineteen fifty one hundred thousand, unmarried couples living together seventy
five hundred and twenty three thousand, and nineteen eighty one
point six million in twenty twenty five million.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
This is only in America.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
And now you have claimed Christians, people who claim to
follow Jesus living together unmarried.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Do you know why, because they're not following Jesus.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
If I tell you follow me, and I start walking
this way and you go the other direction.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Are you following me?

Speaker 1 (17:30):
If Jesus says follow me, sex is sacred, reserved for marriage, and.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
You don't do that, you're not following Jesus.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
That's not a judgment that's delivering to you. The judgment
God has already determined. If you're a couple living together
and you're not married, and you call yourself Christian.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Stop it.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
The demonic forces have you. You can rationalize and justify it.
You can say, well it's cheaper this way, Okay, Then
money's your God, because when your two gods have tension,
you'll serve the one who's really your god. So you're
serving money rather than God. Prostitution. Before Judaeo Christian values
were eradicated, prostitution existed.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
I know that it was illegal, but it was confined
to the fringes.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Pornography was taboo and for the most part kept out
of the mainstream culture and public view. Those who broke
the standard would keep it private. Other than an illusion
or suggestion. Sexual relations were generally not depicted on movie screens.
Nudity of any kind was forbidden, and any reference to
sex outside of marriage was not portrayed in a positive light.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Those days are god Ishtar returned.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
When Israel turned away from God, sex in the form
of the goddess Asterith or Istar was deified. Sex became
the ultimate pursuit and the ultimate experience. Culture was possessed
with it. In the Old Testament in Israel, the asteristh
pole shape in the design of an unclothed female was
actually planted by the groves of trees and hoping that

(19:05):
the god Asterith would send abundance. And that's why Asterith
is often referred to as the wife of Baal, the
god of fertility and prosperity. So you went through the
wife Asterith to get to the husband. Some things never change.
But to receive the blessings, you also needed to worship
Asterith or Istar. How did you worship Istar, sensuality and

(19:28):
ritual prostitution. You went to the temple of Istar, Diana, Aphrodite, Asterith,
Artemis and Ephesus and engaged with the temple prostitutes. That
was your form of worship, and it was incredibly erotic. Now,
those of you who went with me to Ephesus last
year in Turkey and Israel, you'll remember that we visited
Ephesus and the temple of artemas devotees from all over

(19:51):
the world came to participate in the erotic rituals to
honor the god Artemis or Istar. Her temple became one
of the seven Wonders of the world. She promised fertility,
long life, sexual fulfillment, protection during pregnancy. If you participated
in these seductive sexual experiences that were celebrated in the temples,

(20:12):
if you participated in the huge processions and the parades
that honored Istar Artemis with music and dancing. You think
the pride parades are new? Do you have any idea
where they came from? If you did all of these
things in honor of the gods, then all these things

(20:33):
were promised. Whatever form Istar takes, she is most definitely
the goddess of sexual prostitution and immorality, and she always
works her demonic whilesh through intoxication. Now you do know
where I'm getting this information right? Not from the Bible.
Some of it's there, of course, this is just history, folks.

(20:56):
Archaeological finds are amazing. They print out written it works
for us. We can know what other cultures were like.
All the way back to the days of Mesopotamia. And
so there's an ancient hymn in ancient literature that goes
like this and I quote, they cannot compete with you Ayanna,
which is is Tar as a prostitute. You go down
to the tavern, and like a ghost who slips to

(21:18):
the window, you enter there. I'll keep that in the
back of your mind for a moment.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Let's keep going.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
When Ishtar re enters the mainstream, sex is divorced for marriage.
It's pursued without regard for context or consequences. It is
stripped of the context of marriage and brought into the
larger arena of the marketplace, and it is sold as
a commodity.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's key from the earliest days and the.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Festivals and the rituals celebrating sex outside of marriage or
biblical parameters openly, pridefully and gainfully demonstrate Istar's lust.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
In the streets.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Now again, if you go to Israel, if you go
to Emphasis, if you go to Turkey today, you're going
to see all of these Bible lands and part of
the temple you had the agora, which was the marketplace,
and surrounding the agora where the temples and the priests
and priestesses, the pagan gods, and in those situations, sex
was always used to procure money.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
It was a good way to make a living.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Paul got in trouble because when he went to emphasis,
he preached against these statues and these gods. So let
me read it to you in Acts nineteen, this is
verse twenty three. About that time, there arose a great
disturbance among the way, that's the christ followers. A silversmith
named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, that's Istar,
brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there.

(22:36):
He called them together, along with the workers in related trades,
and said, you know, my friends, that we receive a
good income from this business. Now, the business he had
was making statues of Artemis and selling them. And you
see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and
led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and
then practically.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
The whole province of Asia.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
He says that gods made by human hens are no
gods at all.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
There's also danger, that is, there is danger not only
that our trade will lose its good name, but also
that the temple of the Great Goddess Heart of Us
will be discredited, and the Goddess herself, who is worshiped
throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be
robbed of her divine majesty. They surrounded Paul, they wanted
to kill him. Has istar returned. She has flooded culture

(23:21):
with sexual immorality.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
You've been listening to Today with Jeff Vines. Thanks for
joining us. Next time we'll bring you the rest of
this message from past to Jeff.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Are you're with me still? Can I finish? When the
Jesus movement entered Western civilization, the people walked away from
paganism and the gods and goddesses went into exile. When
is turn, demonic forces went into exile that their temples closed. However,
if the Goddess returned, the values and practices of her
cult and worship would also return. Society would once again
accept and celebrate these things that Christ had forbidden.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
You can listen to more messages like this US Search
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Speaker 2 (24:06):
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Speaker 3 (24:24):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff vines,