Worship of Ashtoreth and Baal Today

Ashtoreth was the goddess of war and fertility, called Ishtar by Assyrians and Babylonians, called Astarte by Greeks and Romans and called Tanith by North Africans. Molech or Baal represented the male principle of life and reproduction. In ancient Phoenicia, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Babylon, these gods were worshiped by ritual temple prostitution involving sodomy and burning infant children in the fire. While our Judeo-Christian culture doesn't outwardly acknowledge Ashtoreth and Baal worship, unfortunately, we are just as guilty as the ancients for the same degree of sin involving immorality and infanticide. Today, homosexuality and abortion have become common place and even protected by our laws. God warned ancient Israel against these sins, and promised severe judgements upon us if we do not repent individually and as a society.

The Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price addresses this very subject. Abraham speaks of the "blood of the Canaanites" as the reason God leads him away from Ur to a promised land. In Ur, Abraham own father worships a false religion. Abraham recognizes the incorrectness of the traditions of his father and seeks for the true gospel taught by the great high priests and patriarchs such as Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Noah. God leads him out of Babylon to find a promised land.

We see that Ur and Egypt were participating in the worship of Ashtoreth and Molech (Baal) and they killed virgins who would not submit to being sexually defiled as temple prostitutes to the "gods of wood and stone" and they offered their children to the fires of Molech (Baal). (Egyptians used other names) but it clearly says that Pharoah was the partaker of the blood (sins) of the Canaanites referring to the sins of sexual immorality and infanticide.

And we set up the issue of false relgion and priestcraft where the pharoahs were not given the birthright and rights to the priesthood authority but falsely claimed it. The rivalry of Jews and Muslims involves jealously over priesthood. And many Christians today make those same false claims and claim to be ordained by God and teach a counterfeit religion and are guilty of gainsaying and priestcraft. But Abraham has the writings of the the great patriarchs and together with the chastening of the Lord, Abraham says he and Lot were convinced of the incorrectness of their beliefs and traditions and many other souls that they had "won".