Russia, UN, Syria Rebuild Pagan Temple of Baal in Palmyra: Third Pre-Messiah Gateway

December 9, 2019

4 min read

The Russian government recently announced that it will partner with the Syrian government in reconstructing the ancient temple to the pagan god Ba’al in Palmyra. If successful, the project will necessarily mark the third incarnation of the Roman Victory Arch of Palmyra which an ancient Jewish source states must fall and be rebuilt three times before the arrival of the Messiah.  

The site, once a vital point on the Silk Road caravan route, contains archaeological remains dating back to the neolithic period. As such, it hosted many monumental projects including the Temple of Bel (or Ba’al). The temple was built on the site of a prior pagan temple dating back to the third millennium BCE. The most recent of the temples were dedicated in 32 CE. Converted into a Christian church during the Byzantine Era, parts of the structure were modified into a mosque by Muslims in 1132. It remained in use as a mosque until the 1920s. Its ruins were considered among the best-preserved at Palmyra, serving as a major tourist attraction. Before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Palmyra was a popular tourist attraction, drawing 105,000 visitors a year. The temple and much of the site was destroyed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2015.

Mentioned more than 90 times in the Bible, most notably when Elijah defeated the priests of Ba’al, also known as Moloch, in a contest to bring down fire from heaven to burn a sacrifice, Ba’al became the archetypical form of idol worship. Pantheistic, his adherents worshipped Mother Nature while denying the existence of a creator. Followers of Ba’al engaged in bisexual orgies and sacrificed human infants, burning them alive. Anthropologists conjecture that the child sacrifice was to cull the population after the inevitable outcome of wanton sexuality

Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, announced last week that his institution and the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences signed agreements in Damascus with Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) will begin restoring the ancient site. 

The Hermitage posted a statement on its website ten days ago saying, “Both agreements are a tangible step in the significant development of museum and research ties between Russia and Syria.”

The project will also be under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  UNESCO was involved in previous Palmyra projects that focused on idolatry. In November 2017, UNESCO teamed with the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) in the reconstruction of a statue of the pagan goddess Athena. The statue was presented at an exhibit “The Spirit in the Stone,” at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City. The exhibit described Athena as “synonymous with reason, refuge and the rule of law, all of the same values on which that historic institution was built,” but the spear lying at the statue’s feet belied her more common association as the goddess of war. Some scholars believe the Greek goddess was based on the Mesopotamian goddess al-Lat.

In 2016,  the IDA used 3-D printing technology to reproduce a 20-foot  full-scale replica of the Arch of Palmyra, a Roman victory arch that stood in front of the temple for 1,800 years. The first modern reappearance of the Arch of Palmyra was in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2016, when it was erected for UNESCO World Heritage Week. The unveiling coincided with the beginning of a 13-day period known in the occult as “the Blood Sacrifice to the Beast,” the most important holiday for those who worship the god Ba’al, celebrated with child sacrifice and bisexual orgies. The arch was unveiled on April 19th, the holiday of Beltane, the culmination of the 13-day period.

Also known as May Day, Beltane is an Anglicized reference to the god “Ba’al.”  An annual Beltane Fire Festival is held in Edinburgh and in other parts around the globe as part of ancient Gaelic culture. In an unfortunate misunderstanding of the festival’s roots, they are frequently billed as family events, with children being given special discounts.

In Jewish tradition, the Arch of Palmyra may be alluded to as a harbinger of the Messianic era.  An arch that is repeatedly built up and destroyed is described in the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 78a).

The disciples of Rabbi Yossi the son of Kisma questioned him, asking when the son of David (the Messiah) will appear. And he answered: I am afraid you will request me a sign as well. And they assured him that they would not. He then said to them: When this gate will fall, be rebuilt and fall again, be rebuilt again and fall again. And before it will be rebuilt for the third time the Messiah will appear.

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, a preeminent medieval rabbi known by the acronym Rashi, explained this section of the Talmud, stating that the arch described by Rabbi Yossi was “a Roman arch in a Roman city.” The arch in Palmyra was indeed a Roman victory arch built when Palmyra was a Roman city.

If the Russian-UN-Syrian triumvirate succeeds in recreating the Roman Victory Arch in Palmyra, this will mark the third incarnation of the arch; the original being the first, the IDA digital recreation being the second, and the soon-to-be creation being the third.

The arch also appeared in Washington D.C.during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. It is interesting to note that one of the methods of serving Ba’al was by sacrificing infants and one of the major objections to Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court was his anti-abortion stance.

The recreated Arch of Palmyra has appeared at several occasions connected with world government gathering

By advocating for reconstructing a temple of Ba’al, the UN is violating its Biblical mandate since the third Noahide law is a prohibition against idolatry. 

Palmyra was listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1980, which described the temple as “one of the best-preserved and most important religious edifices of the first century in the Middle East.” Palmyra is approximately 370 miles away from two other UNESCO Heritage sites listed as having Muslim significance: Jerusalem and Hebron.

 

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