Christian Family Services Ministry

4-11-2022 – A Word to the Wise – WARNING SEXUAL ORIENTED MATTER read no further if upset by this type of material

ZAREPHATH

I have wanted to do this project for some time. For the most part all I am doing is taking scripture and adding some color to the passages. The ‘color’ is strictly mine in an attempt to make the text clear. The text I am using is the WEB translation since this version is not copyright.

1 Kings 17

Elijah the Tishbite, who was one of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.”

2 Then Yahweh’s word came to him, saying, 3 “Go away from here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, that is before the Jordan. 4 You shall drink from the brook. I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 So he went and did according to Yahweh’s word; for he went and lived by the brook Cherith that is before the Jordan. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook. 7 After a while, the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

8 Yahweh’s word came to him, saying, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you.”

First let’s look at the town of Zarephath and see if it produces some ideas about why the great prophet Elijah traveled from a small dry creek bed and came some hundred miles by foot to get here. We place the time about two years into the famine that Elijah had called for and five years before the contest on Mt. Carmel around 874 B.C.

Zarephath is about 50 miles North from Mt. Carmel which may be important when Elijah confronts idolatry in about 5 years.

What is most significant is knowing that Zarephath is a principal city for the promulgation of the worship of Tanit-Astarte. Here in this town were both metal works and other materials used to make these popular idols. The major elements of this idolatry involved child sacrifice, and males practicing self-castration and homosexuality and females involved in cult prostitution.

Whereas Elijah was very familiar with the Baal worship of the day I suspect in this town he received an education about different forms of idolatry. We will return to this momentarily.

10 So he arose and went to Zarephath; and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her, and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.”

11 As she was going to get it, he called to her, and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

12 She said, “As Yahweh your God lives, I don’t have a cake, but a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jar. Behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

Reaching the city Elijah immediately finds who he is looking for. It would appear that this woman lived right outside the city itself because that is where she is gathering firewood. Something else Elijah asks for water, which the woman immediately respond to which leads us to believe that the lack of rain had not yet affected this area. The woman is a widow who cares for her only son. Moreover, she is very poor in fact on the brink of starvation.

Notice that she refers to Yahweh, knows that Elijah worships this God, and even recognizes that he is a prophet. Perhaps by his unique dress. This leads me to believe she was a Canaanite probably married to a Jew who was now dead.

13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go and do as you have said; but make me a little cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward make some for you and for your son. 14 For Yahweh, the God of Israel says, ‘The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that Yahweh sends rain on the earth.’” 15 She went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, and he, and her house, ate many days. 16 The jar of meal didn’t run out, and the jar of oil didn’t fail, according to Yahweh’s word, which he spoke by Elijah

“Go and do as you have said; but make me a little cake from it first,” This simple request spelled death for her and her child yet she was willing to believe. Notice Elijah did not enter her house at this point rather insisted she brings the food to him.

Just as evident in making the dinner she discovered the meal and the oil did not decline. Elijah stayed here probably the next three years until he journeyed to make ready the contest with Ahab on Mt. Carmel.

Elijah had two major tasks in ZAREPHATH. First, he was here to provide for and protect this woman and her son. No doubt by the time he left he had established the foundations of belief in the family and those associated with her.

The second task was far more difficult. This was the center of Tanit-Astarte worship which is about to spread like a wildfire through the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

Up until now Baal worship was the main form of idolatry practiced in these two kingdoms and confronted by the prophets of old.

However, Tanit-Astarte worship was far more radical and deadly. It was practiced in the earlier period of ancient history, in one form or another in the Old Testament period and characteristic of the goddess worshipped under the name of Artemis that Paul confronts. It is the chief form of religion practiced in every century up and including this century. The Shaman’s who practice this worship maybe found in every culture; Middle east, oriental, South America, and strongly among Navajo Indians of North America.

I am not going in detail about the form of worship because it is so sickening yet I need to show the link down through history.

The chief traits which Elijah discovered are three in number and one may find these traits either one or all three from inception until now. First, the belief or attempt to reduce a person to asexual or homosexual, second, the element of self-castration among the shamans, or priest. Third the murder of babies.

The first two are obtained through homosexuality and cross dressing. The death of babies was a core issue in the early centuries and is now being brought about by abortions.

I realize this is very brief but to go into detail is beyond our purpose.

I will admit three or four yeas ago my son dragged me to a special Hebrew seminar in Colorado, the focus was I Kings 18-19, which just happened to be the chapters I struggled with in graduate school under Dr. Lewis. My does the Lord make sure we learn important lessons.

Sorry about the distraction but notice please I Kings 18:28. What was the custom? These were the self-castrations practiced in Tanit-Astarte. Elijah learned of this in Zarephath the center of this worship.

Notice verse 18:40 has Elijah killing the 450 prophets of Baal. The text does not say it but I believe it also included the 400 Shaman or prophets of Tanit-Astarte since I Kings 19:1 says he killed all the prophets and the ones most important to Jezebel were the Tanit-Astarte worshipers.

I have often heard the phrase ‘all sin is equal’. It is not. There are some sins on the Lord’s list which are absolutely terrible.

In Exodus 17 we learn of a nation that the attack Hebrews leaving Egypt. They attack the helpless, weak, sick, the young and very old. The Lord said for their behavior the whole nation was to be destroyed.

Amos 1 gives a brief list of other terrible sin, a people involved taking captives and using them for slave labor. This very sin is going on today in America.

Some would say that homosexual behavior is the same as any other type of immoral behavior. It is not true. The reason is homosexual behavior has its roots in the worship of Tanit-Astarte. That does not make other immoral behavior acceptable it does not. It is just not the same. Jesus, himself expresses this when he says if you hurt one of my little ones you would be better off to have a huge millstone hung around your neck and cast into the sea.

All sin is not equal except all but one is forgivable, but the consequences of sin that is a different matter.

So what is the bottom line? I suspect those who practice homosexual behavior would be surprised to learn that this behavior is the key form of worship in these religions. Any study of Tanit-Astarte, Artemis, the Mystery religions, Gnosticism, even Jung a Swiss psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology brings out this form of behavior and espouses it.

Yet today so many worship at the feet of this man and he is treated like an idol in the field of psychiatry. I remember a conversation with my mother years ago saying the Lord blessed this man with special insight and then he turned it against the Lord. There is a lesson in all that for us with that. Do you misuse God’s precious gifts?