Jonathan Cahn: How the Great Seduction Overwhelmed America

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Is it possible that ancient entities known as “the gods” have returned to our world?

If so, who are these gods? And could they be the hidden agents transforming modern culture?

Is it possible that in the mythologies of the ancient world are the clues that reveal what is actually happening at the present hour?

The answers to these chilling questions and more are revealed in Jonathan Cahn’s newest and most explosive book ever, “The Return of the Gods,” published by Charisma Media and released September 2022.

In “The Return of the Gods,” Cahn takes his readers on a journey that reveals the results of America turning away from God and the ways of God. It happened the same way to ancient Israel. As Cahn delves into the mystery of the gods returning to our modern world, he identifies three evil gods in particular, the dark trinity.

Particularly mind-blowing is the influence of one specific god that Cahn calls the Enchantress. In “The Return of the Gods,” he reveals what would happen if the spirit of this goddess took possession of a culture, and what would happen if it took possession of America.

Mid-Century Morals

One of the most critical transformations of American culture in recent years has taken place in the realm of sexuality. It has transformed marriage, family, morality, gender, and even law. Could there be an ancient mystery and ancient forces behind all these things? “The Return of the Gods” says “Yes.”

Looking back, the book reminds readers that in the American and Western culture of the mid-twentieth century, sexuality was seen as the sacred domain of marriage, and marriage as the sacred and lifelong covenant of love between a husband and a wife. These values were largely the same as they had been in ancient times at the advent of Christianity.

Sex outside of marriage, Cahn writes, was seen as sin. Divorce was frowned upon. If a woman became pregnant before marriage, she and the child’s father were expected to marry. The divorce rate was minuscule. So was the percentage of people living together outside of marriage, and the rate of children born out of wedlock.

Cahn also notes that prostitution existed but was illegal and confined to the underworld. Pornography was taboo and mostly kept out of mainstream culture and public view. Even those who broke such standards would, for the most part, keep their behavior private.

American entertainment and culture were expected to uphold the same values, Cahn writes. Beyond allusion and suggestion, sexual relations were generally not depicted on the movie screen. Hollywood followed an agreed-upon code of morality as to what could and could not be shown.

And then came the Enchantress.

The Deification of Sex

The Enchantress was the ancient goddess of sexuality, unbridled lust, and fornication. As America turned away from God, the goddess came in and launched the sexual revolution. Cahn reveals the dynamic of deification: When an individual, nation, or civilization turns away from God, that which is not God will become as God and will assume the aura of godhood—and one of these things that are not God is sex.

“When Israel turned away from God,” Cahn writes, “sex was deified. Sex became a god. Sex thus became an end and a goal to be pursued in and of itself. Therefore, it could now be divorced from marriage or any other context and be followed with no regard for context or any other thing.”

Cahn points out that when this same spirit—the Enchantress—came to America, the same dynamics began to replay. “Sexuality was deified,” he writes. “It became a god to be pursued as an end in and of itself and without regard to marriage, love, or even a relationship. That which was once the exclusive domain of husband and wife now spilled into the public sphere and popular culture.”

This began the progressive severing of sexuality from marriage. “As Israel worshipped and served the goddess of sexuality,” Cahn says, “so now America, indwelled by the same spirit and the same goddess, became increasingly obsessed with sex.”

The Destruction of Marriage

The deification of sex was not the only realm where the Enchantress exerted influence. Cahn writes that though she was involved in the ritualized marriage ceremonies of Mesopotamian religion, there was almost nothing about her that was conducive to marriage.

“Her nature and acts, her worship and cult, would undermine it,” Cahn says. “The Enchantress was never faithful. She was promiscuous. She pursued and seduced lover after lover. She pursued sexual relations apart from marriage and to the detriment of marriage.”

So the effect of the Enchantress’ return to the modern world was the progressive undermining and weakening of marriage. As sexuality was glorified as an end in and of itself, marriage was eroded. As the Enchantress had pursued relationship after relationship, so America began doing the same. Divorce became an epidemic, and America was filled with broken homes.

Passions of the Goddess

Cahn writes that the Enchantress was led only by her will and desires. She had no regard for the consequences of her actions. “The idea of denying her desires for the sake of a covenant was to her anathema,” he says. “She sought the immediate fulfillment of every impulse. She was the goddess of instant gratification.

“So with the return of the Enchantress, American and modern culture became consumed with instant gratification. Americans increasingly chose their desires over relationships, over preserving their marriages, or entering into them in the first place. A culture of hyper-individualism, self, and self-gratification proved to be toxic to marriage and relationships.”

Cahn notes that more and more Americans chose sexual pleasure and romance over commitment. “They slept with each other, lived with each other, but would not commit to each other,” he writes. “Marriage as a lifelong covenant was increasingly viewed as an unnecessary constraint. What was once fornication now became premarital relations and, in time, the norm. The number of Americans living together without marriage and the number of children born out of wedlock or without fathers would skyrocket.”

The Enchantress in Hollywood

As we have all seen, entertainment and popular culture have also become subject to this same spirit. “What was once forbidden, abhorrent, or taboo now filled movie screens,” Cahn writes. “And whereas the television industry once avoided showing married couples in bed, now it regularly portrayed unmarried people in bed and having sex with multiple partners. And whereas nudity was once never seen in public, it was now displayed on movie screens and piped into American living rooms.”

If Americans from the 1950s had turned on their television sets to see what now appears on the nation’s television sets, they would not have been able to process it. It would have appeared to them as something out of the apocalypse or a dark fever dream. That is how radically effective the work of the goddess has been.

The Taboo

Cahn notes that the Enchantress’ nature was to trespass boundaries, transgress convention, and break taboos. So American culture became possessed by a spirit of transgression and a drive to push the next boundary, to break the next taboo.

“What was once abhorrent now became a source of pleasure,” he writes. “And it was not only the taking of pleasure in sin but in the breaking of taboos and the overturning of the next standard. Not only did the Enchantress introduce, promulgate, and champion sexual immorality—she sanctified it; she declared it holy. Sexually immoral acts were part of her cult and worship, performed as rites in her temples and shrines. So in the grip of her spirit, the same thing began manifesting in American and Western culture. Sexual immorality was now not only accepted but treated as sacred.”

Sanctifying the Forbidden

As Cahn points out, the return of the Enchantress flipped everything. “Now it was the former standards and restraints that were seen as sinful, puritanical, repressive, and evil,” he writes. “And anyone who opposed the newly sanctified sins or failed to adequately revere them was now treated as something of a heretic.”

The work of the dark trinity was to bring about the inversion of civilization. “Doing her part, the Enchantress had inverted the realm of sexuality,” Cahn continues. “She had taken what was forbidden, unspoken, and taboo and, step-by-step, introduced it into the mainstream culture. The shock of each step would be followed by familiarity and numbness, then toleration, then acceptance, and then celebration.”

Cahn chillingly points out that Americans are now championing what they had once forbidden and forbidding what they had once championed. The workings of the Enchantress have produced the most profound of transformations in American, Western, and world civilizations. She would alter them beyond recognition.

Could that which now saturates the world of entertainment, drives major portions of the American economy, and floods the World Wide Web go back to a mystery contained in the tablets of ancient Mesopotamia? Find out the answer to that question and more in Cahn’s riveting new book “The Return of the Gods.” {eoa}

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The preceding was excerpted from Jonathan Cahn’s New York Times best-selling book, “The Return of the Gods” (Frontline, 2022). For more information, or to order the book, visit BooksByJonathanCahn.com.