Baal's Front Door (How Jesus Humiliated The Fallen gods at Mt. Hermon)

  Jesus deliberately leads his disciples to Caesarea Philippi, right at the base of Mount Hermon, and rocks the disciples with one of the most important questions in the Bible: “Who do you say that I am?”

  This isn't your normal "church-ey trope" sermon or mainstream Christian echo chamber stuff.  In this episode let's take a walk through Matthew 16 in its original setting. Look at moment of Peter’s confession—“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—and Jesus’ bold declaration that on this rock he will build his church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

  So Mt. Hermon is an ancient site tied to idolatry, spiritual strongholds, and cosmic conflict in the Old Testament. See how Jesus confronts the powers of darkness on their own ground, what the Transfiguration on the mountain reveals, and how the cross becomes a triumphant rescue mission.

   This is really a  look at spiritual victory, the true meaning of the “rock,” and what it means for believers to live as part of Christ’s advancing kingdom. 

Full length videos here https://youtube.com/@archivedrift1?si=Fpm2cuvpVCQ42-fr

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hey guys, tonight I want to get into some really supernatural stuff. We have to cross a massive divide. As I have said before, we usually approach the text, the biblical text, through a modern Western lens, which is a is a it's a problem. So we we view normally the physical world as entirely separate from the spiritual world and treating the geography of the ancient atmosphere as incidental background information. It's it's a convenient stage for moral lessons and theological dialogue, but the ancient Israelite experienced reality much differently. The physical dirt of the earth held the memory of ancient cosmic conflicts. Okay. The landscape was a topographic map of spiritual jurisdictions, territorial strongholds, and battle lines that were drawn between the creator and hostile spiritual powers. So the geography was inseparable from their theology. And when we read the Gospel of Matthew, for example, in chapter chapter 16, we encounter a specific journey. So Jesus gathers his closest followers and marches them to Caesarea Philippi. And to understand why he chose the precise coordinate, he we have to reconstruct the ancient cosmological framework. And so that means that we have to build the worldview of the first century Jewish mind from the ground up. So without this foundation, the sheer aggression of Christ's actions remain entirely hidden, and we reduce the climax of the gospel to um a quiet retreat in the woods, essentially. So um, so this is the division of the nations, okay? So like the biblical worldview operates on a paradigm of cosmic geography. It's huge. Long before the incarnation of Christ, a pivotal fracture occurred in human history at the Tower of Babel. So the story of Babel recorded in Genesis 1, um Genesis 11, excuse me, is frequently reduced to a myth about the origin of different human languages. And the ancient text reveals a far more severe reality. So humanity functioning in unified defiance attempted to construct a ziggurat. And this was not merely a tower or a tall building, it was a sacred artificial mountain that was designed to pull the divine realm down to earth on human terms, which asserted absolute autonomy from the creator. Now, the the judgment of at Babel fundamentally altered the architecture of the unseen world. So we find the art the theological key to this event in Deuteronomy 32. The Most High divided the nations, he disinherited humanity and a lot allotted the peoples of the earth to the jurisdiction of the sons of God. Now, these sons of God were members of his divine council. Um, these were spiritual beings created to serve and administer to the cosmos. Now, these lesser divine beings were appointed as regents over the 70 nations that were listed in the table of nations in Genesis 10. They possessed real authority, was not fake. And they eventually rebelled. They accepted the illicit worship of their human subjects and demanded allegiance and establishing themselves as the uh as the pantheons of, say, like Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Canaan. And then later, Psalm 82 captures the divine indictment against these corrupt powers. So God He presides in the great assembly and condemns these low low G gods for ruling with injustice. They showed partiality to the wicked and plunged the world into darkness at that time. So he he declares that although they are divine beings, they will eventually die like mere mortals for their treason. Now, following the disinheritance of the nations at Babel, Yahweh immediately initiated a countermeasure. And he called a single man, uh, Abraham, and began the slow process of building a new distinct family from scratch. Okay, Israel was established as Yahweh's personal portion, and they were a subversive element planted within hostile territory. So this they were it was designed to serve as the as a beachhead for the eventual reclamation of the disinherited world. The entirety of the Old Testament is the is the history, the historical record of this one nation fighting against the human proxies of these rogue spiritual beings. This was the first incursion. So the watchers um at Babel explains the division of the world, but the ancient Jewish mind held an even darker memory, which regarded a specific geographic location in the north. Before the flood, the catastrophic spiritual rebellion took place. And this was recorded in Genesis 6. And this was and heavily expanded upon in the second uh second temple Jewish literature, like the book of Enoch, which is not canon. However, it's important, the biblical writers expected their audience to know this history. And a group of divine beings known as the Watchers abandoned their appointed stations or place, as the Bible says. Um they descended to the earthly realm, they corrupted human bloodline, and they introduced illicit destructive knowledge to most of humanity. They didn't, they did not merely act as passive observers, they actively taught mankind the things like making of weapons, the art of making war, um, the seduction of cosmetics and the darkest forms of sorcery. They literally weaponized human potential against the creator. And this descent, this descent of the of the watchers was not an abstract event and happened at a specific set of coordinates. The watchers landed on the summit of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon, it looms over the northern region of Bashan. Okay, follow, follow me. It is a massive snow-capped peak visible from miles away. You can't miss it. Now, in the ancient framework, the mountain was ground zero for cosmic treason. It was the absolute epicenter of idolatry and human corruption. The Canaanites understood the spiritual weight of this location and they established the worship of Baal at the base of this mountain. Now, centuries later, the Greeks recognized the same spiritual frequency and they rededicated the area to Pan, who was the god of chaos, fear and like a bestial nature. The region immediately surrounding Mount Hermon, known as Bashan, it carried an equally terrifying reputation. So, like in the ancient Near Eastern texts, Bashan was universally recognized as the um the place of the serpent. It was considered, it was considered the physical entrance to the underworld, uh, to the domain of the dead, and also the headquarters of the Rephaim. And these were the giant clans from the Genesis 6 or from antiquity that resulted from the Genesis 6 incursion. Now, the Israelites carried deep generational trauma, if you will, regarding this region. Now, Og, the king of Bashan, was remembered as a terrifying remnant of these anomalous bloodlines. So this brings us to Matthew 16. Um, Jesus gathers 12 Jewish men, and these men carry centuries of ingrained cultural terror that regarding the region of Bashan and the towering peak of Mount Hermon. Okay. Now Jesus leads them directly out of the relative safety of Galilee. He marches them straight up into the heart of the enemy of enemy territory. He takes them to Caesarea Philippi, which was a city built into the southwestern base of Mount Hermon. He takes them to Baal's front door. When they arrive, they stand before a massive, massive sheer cliff face, which was built directly into the rock. It was an immense cavern. And from the mouth of this cave flowed a massive spring, forming it was the headwaters of the Jordan River. The pagans believed that this bottomless spring was a portal to the abyss. And they performed horrific, horrific sacrifices here. They threw the victims into the water to appease the deities of the underworld. So the locals, they um they literally called this cavern the gates of Hades. And um, so if you if if you'll visualize this exact moment, Jesus, he's literally standing in the dirt of Caesarea Philippi, and behind him is the gaping black hole in the rock face that the um the geographical represent representation of death, idolatry, cosmic rebellion, and looming high above that, above them is the summit of Mount Hermon, the landing pad of the fallen gods in Genesis 6. Surrounded, so surrounded by the architecture of the enemy, Jesus he asks the central question of human history. He says, Who do you say that I am in the text? Peter steps forward and he delivers the confession. He says, Uh, you are the Christ, the son, the son of the living God. Now Jesus responds with a total with a declaration of total war. He said this. He said, Blessed are you, Simon of uh of Jonah, uh, for to this this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I'll build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Now the debate over the identity of the rock often focuses it focuses narrowly on Peter's name or his confession, which entirely ignores the massive geological and theological reality that surrounded the immediate that was standing behind them. Uh Jesus is pointing at Mount Hermon. He's looking at the epicenter of the Watchers' Rebellion, the sanctuary of Pan, the gateway to the underworld. Um, he is staking his claim on the stronghold of the enemy. He's he's declaring his intention to take the mountain back. And we must also define the function of the gates of Hades. So gates in general serve like a singular singular architectural purpose. It's a defense. And gates stand still to protect a stronghold from an invading force. And so Jesus is outlining the fundamental dynamic of his kingdom. He says, um, so like the power of death, the rebel gods of the nations and the rulers of the darkness of this world have built a formidable fortress. They have enslaved humanity. Um they have they have distorted the image of God and claimed sovereignty over the earth. Now the church is designated as a battering ram. The followers of Christ are the aggressors in this cosmic war. And Christ is the is the conquering king who enters the domain of the strongman. He he what does he do? He binds them, he plunders his house, he authorizes his followers to march on the strongholds of darkness, to reclaim the captive human human agents, and to and also, I mean, like to kick the gates of the underworld at the hinges. Um so to fully to grasp the magnitude of this cosmic geographical warfare, you have to, or we have to critically examine the theological systems that we have inherited, especially in the Western church, specifically regarding what actually happens at the crucifixion. So for centuries, the the Western church, what we know as a church, has been dominated by something called penal substitutionary atonement. Now, this this um this framework posits a strictly forensic courtroom drama. Humanity broke the law and incurs and the infinite debt of wrath from a perfectly holy God. And because God is just, that wrath must be poured out on someone. And and in this system, the Father pours out his terrifying, unmitigated wrath upon the Son, the Christ. And Jesus becomes the object of divine violence to balance the scales of cosmic justice, which appeases the father so that the father can tolerate looking at us essentially, and we can be forgiven. Um, if you analyze the internal logic of the system, it fractures the Trinity. It pits the wrathful father against the merciful son, turning the cross into an act of divine child abuse where God saves us from God. And it assumes that justice requires retributive violence and it entirely bypasses the cosmic rebellion of the spiritual powers that we just observed at Mount Hermon. I'm gonna put this together, it'll make sense. If the primary problem of humanity is um captivity to dark powers, sin, death, then the solution is not the father punishing the son. The solution is a rescue mission. So the early church understood the incarnation and the cross through uh a completely different paradigm. And we call this thing Christus Victor. And it pairs intimately with a recap with something called the recapitulation theory. Jesus did not come merely to act as a cosmic lightning rod for the father's anger. The father and the son are entirely unified in their motive and in their love. And Jesus enters into the human story to like recapitulate, to rehead the human experience. Where like Adam failed in the garden, he who plunged humanity into exile, and where Israel failed in the wilderness, which succumbed to idolatry. Christ then succeeds. He lives the perfect human life. He demonstrates the ultimate moral exemplar of the image of God, and he embodies exactly what humanity was always intended to be: a true image bearer ruling in partnership with the Creator. Now he's he exposes the violent, corrupt systems of the world by allowing those systems to crush him, and in doing so, he weaponizes his own death, his own death to destroy the power of death itself. Um it's really amazing. So Christ steps willingly into the snare of the enemy, and he and so like the principalities and powers operate in their which are operating in their own wicked volition, orchestrate the crucifixion. The rebel gods of the nations believe that they have secured their final victory by killing the author of life. And they they fail to understand the brilliance of the creator. And so this brings us to a crucial, it's I mean, it is, it's a theological distinction regarding the nature of God's knowledge and human freedom. Um where I go is like so, like we must reject the deterministic framework that suggests God prescripted the fall of humanity and the rebellion of the angels simply to demonstrate his own glory. If theological determinism, Calvinism, often found in Calvinist and reformed systems, is if that's true, then the cosmic war is a theater production. It means that God decreed the rebellion, he decreed the captivity of humanity, and he decreed the damnation of the majority of the human race. And this is all while claiming to be a claiming to be perfectly good. The biblical text presents a universe that are and it's inhabited by free moral agents. So God's omniscience is not static or deterministic, it is dynamic, absolutely. And God perfectly knows all possibilities, he knows the contingencies, he knows all potential outcomes, and he does not micromanage the evil actions or the powers or the or um sinful choices of humanity. He navigates them with absolute brilliance, and the future is an open landscape of moral choices, and so God outmaneuvers the dark forces at every conceivable turn. He and he allows the power to act in genuine rebellion, okay? But and they freely choose to execute the Son of God. And Paul explicitly reveals this tactical reality in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. He writes, none, he writes this, none of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. So the cross essentially is a cosmic ambush. So, like if the cross was a mechanism to appease the father's wrath, the dark powers would have never, ever, ever, ever participated in it. They would have stopped, they would have stopped it at all costs. But because they understood reality through the lens of power and violence, they assumed death was the ultimate end. That that was the gameplay for them. So like by descending into death as a sinless human, Christ shatters the excuse me, the jurisdiction of Hades from the from the inside out. And death could not halt him because he had Christ had no sin. So he enters the stronghold of the enemy and detonated it. He he disarms the powers and the and the authorities. And so, like in Colossians 2, um, it declares that Christ made a public spectacle of them. He triumphed over them by the cross, he then stripped them of their illegitimate authority and their power to hold humanity in the fear of death. Um so, like in the trans the transfer transfiguration and the subversion of the summit, that that right there brings us back to the geography of Mount Hermon. Six days after the confrontation of Caesarea Philippi, six days, after declaring war at the gates of Hades, Jesus takes Peter, James, John, and they they ascend a high mountain. And the geography of the text insists that this is Mount Hermon. They hike up the mountain of the fallen gods. They hike up to the exact coordinates where the watchers descended to corrupt humanity. And at the summit, Jesus transfigures before them. His face shines like the sun, and his clothes become a dazzling white, and he blazes with the uncreated glory of Yahweh. Moses and Elijah appear also, and they represent the law and the prophets. And this validates that the entire story of it of Israel has been leading to the precise, if you want to think of it this way, it's a tactical strike. And to understand what is happening here in layman's terms, you have to look at what Jesus he's actively doing, what he's actively doing here. The transfiguration is the direct geographical reversal of the Genesis 6 rebellion. So thousands of years prior, the Watchers used Mount Hermon as a beachhead to introduce cosmic treason. They brought a corrupting, illicit knowledge down to humanity. I mean, this then they taught, like I said before, they taught mankind the making of weapons, sorcery, warfare, uh, and the ultimate goal was the total destruction and subversion of the human image or the image of God. And they wanted what they wanted to pollute the bloodline of humanity. Um, and this culminates in the anomalous uh giant clans, the Nephilim, the Rephaim, and they ruled the ancient world through violence, bloodshed, and terror. That was the plan. Now, when Jesus stands on that exact same summit and he transfigures himself, he's executing a cosmic eviction notice. So where like the watchers brought a counterfeit and destructive power down to earth to enslave humanity, Jesus then brings the true, pure, uncreated glory of God down to earth to like liberate it. And the watchers sought to destroy the image of God in man, and we'll get more into that later. But um, Jesus then stands on their mountain on their mountain and reveals the perfected, glorified image of God in human flesh. So he is, he's Jesus is showing his disciples what a human being in perfect, unhindered union with the Creator actually looks like. He is reclaiming the very dirt that the Watchers tainted. And he's looking at the spiritual powers of the air and and announcing their absolute defeat. So the Watchers tried to make gods out of men through illegitimate, dark, genetic manipulation. The result was a Nephilim and things like that. Jesus demonstrates that the true elevation comes through the incarnation, that God became man so that man might be united with God. And where the fallen gods birthed the giant clans to dominate the earth through fear and intimidation, Jesus is preparing to birth a new family, the church, that will reclaim the earth through self sacrificial love and the power of the resurrection. So Jesus plants his flag on the very peak of enemy territory and um. But the reclamation, the reclamation project of the disinherited nations, disinherited nations has officially begun. He does not take the mountain by violent military conquest, but by the overwhelmingly uh overwhelming presence of divine reality and um the impending impending subversion of the cross. Now, this divine reclamation project requires genuine human agency. Now we we have to recover a pre-Augustinian anthropology. So like in the in in the centuries following the early church, like theologians like Augustine uh introduced the concept of total inability, which is the idea that humanity is so entirely corrupted by the fall that we are completely incapable of responding to God without an irresistible, um, predetermined grace forcing us to do so. So this philosophy stripped humanity of its uh of its agency and turned salvation into a mechan uh mechanistic lottery in the early church living closer to the intellectual world of the apostles, then maintained a more robust defense of human freedom. Humanity is is of course bruised, it's battered, and borne into a war zone that are dominated by by dark powers. But we retain the capacity to respond to the grace of God. We are free moral agents invited into a dynamic, lived partnership with the Creator Yahweh. And we are not passive objects being moved around on a divine chessboard. We are called to be co-rulers, to restore the image of God in the world and to actively actively participate in the in the defeat of darkness. And this entirely dismantles the the modern concept of the whole one saved, always saved thing. Salvation is not a legal transaction that prints a ticket to heaven, allowing you to live as a passive consumer of religious goods until you die. Um salvation it's an active enlistment, it's it's a continuous lived alignment of our will with the will of the victor. So to be saved is to be rescued from the kingdom of darkness and then then drafted into the army of light. And it demands active, enduring participation. So, like a soldier who deserts the battlefield, he cannot claim the victory of the general. We maintain our free will even after stepping into grace, which means we um maintain the terrifying capability of walking away from it. So we are enlisted enlisted to push back the boundaries of the dark kingdom and to dismantle the structures of oppression, and to, of course, and to execute the victory of the cross in our present real reality. So the geographical march of Jesus demands a response from us today. And we are not called to build um fortresses and hide from the culture, we're not called to wait passively for an evacuation plan. We are called to step into the open reality of a of a universe at war, which is fully aware of our agency. And it carries the uncreated light and fully and fully empowered by the conquering king. We look at the fortified strongholds of our current age, like the political systems that are built on power, the economic systems that are built on greed, and and the spiritual systems that are many, many times built on fear. And we we recognize them for what they are, and they are defeated territory. The principalities have been disarmed. They're not as powerful as they used to be. And the gates of Hades have already been breached. So, like our mandate is I mean, it's pretty clear. We we march on the gates. We do well, we do well to listen to what God has commanded of us, and we follow and we keep his commands. We obey him, and that is the act of faith that you hear what God says through what you read in the scriptures, and then you follow it and you obey it. Um, God loves you, loves you very, very much. Never forget that.