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Trumpet 6 (Revelation 9)
13 The sixth angel sounded. I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had one trumpet, "Free the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates!" 15 The four angels were freed who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year, so that they might kill one third of mankind.
16 The number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million. I heard the number of them. 17 Thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those who sat on them, having breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of lions. Out of their mouths proceed fire, smoke, and sulfur. 18 By these three plagues were one third of mankind killed: by the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur, which proceeded out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents, and have heads, and with them they harm.
20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues, didn't repent of the works of their hands, that they wouldn't worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk. 21 They didn't repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their sexual immorality, nor of their thefts.
I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God
The voice comes from the horns. The golden altar is the altar of incense located close to the mercy seat representing the throne of God. This altar represents the main avenue of communication with God.
You shall put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with you. Aaron shall burn incense of sweet spices on it every morning. When he tends the lamps, he shall burn it. When Aaron lights the lamps at evening, he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before Yahweh throughout your generations. You shall offer no strange incense on it, nor burnt offering, nor meal offering; and you shall pour no drink offering on it. Aaron shall make atonement on its horns once in the year; with the blood of the sin offering of atonement once in the year he shall make atonement for it throughout your generations. It is most holy to Yahweh. (Exodus 30:6-10)
He shall bring the bull to the door of the Tent of Meeting before Yahweh; and he shall lay his hand on the head of the bull, and kill the bull before Yahweh. The anointed priest shall take some of the blood of the bull, and bring it to the Tent of Meeting. The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before Yahweh, before the veil of the sanctuary. The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Yahweh, which is in the tent of meeting; and he shall pour out all of rest of the blood of the bull at the base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the Tent of Meeting. (Leviticus 4:4-7)
Adonijah feared because of Solomon; and he arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar. It was told Solomon, saying, Behold, Adonijah fears king Solomon; for, behold, he has laid hold on the horns of the altar, saying, Let king Solomon swear to me first that he will not kill his servant with the sword. (1 Kings 1:50-51)
The news came to Joab; for Joab had turned after Adonijah, though he didn't turn after Absalom. Joab fled to the Tent of Yahweh, and caught hold on the horns of the altar. It was told king Solomon, Joab is fled to the Tent of Yahweh, and behold, he is by the altar. Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, Go, fall on him. Benaiah came to the Tent of Yahweh, and said to him, Thus says the king, Come forth. He said, No; but I will die here. Benaiah brought the king word again, saying, Thus said Joab, and thus he answered me. The king said to him, Do as he has said, and fall on him, and bury him; that you may take away the blood, which Joab shed without cause, from me and from my father's house. (1 Kings 2:28-31)
But I will declare this forever: I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. I will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. (Psalms 75:9-10)
Save us now, we beg you, Yahweh! Yahweh, we beg you, send prosperity now. Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yahweh! We have blessed you out of the house of Yahweh. Yahweh is God, and he has given us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks to you. You are my God, I will exalt you. Oh give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. (Psalms 118:25-29)
Thus says Yahweh: "As the shepherd rescues out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be rescued who sit in Samaria on the corner of a couch, and on the silken cushions of a bed." "Listen, and testify against the house of Jacob," says the Lord Yahweh, the God of Armies. "For in the day that I visit the transgressions of Israel on him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar will be cut off, and fall to the ground. I will strike the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory will perish, and the great houses will have an end," says Yahweh. (Amos 3:12-15)
Altar horns were associated with protection by God. From some of these stories we see that people hoped to find escape from impending punishment by clinging to horns of the altar (though that was likely the altar of sacrifice). God's power channeled through the intercession of His saints has to this point inhibited the full effects of sin in this world. This voice from the horns may be authoritatively announcing a major transition in this war.
What do horns represent in general?
Is that different when the horns are attached to an altar? What are the similarities and differences?
What about the phrase before God?
Could it be true that these horns could represent the counterfeit system of power implemented in Satan's kingdom in the name of justice? They are identified here as being before God.
You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)
The following passage refers to horns of an altar that opens up another line of thought that may have strong implications many have never considered before. It also may offer a whole new perspective of how to look at this message given to the angel blowing the 6th trumpet.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of your altars; while their children remember their altars and their Asherim by the green trees on the high hills. (Jeremiah 17:1-2)
He set the engraved image of Asherah, that he had made, in the house of which Yahweh said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name forever; neither will I cause the feet of Israel to wander any more out of the land which I gave their fathers, if only they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them. But they didn't listen: and Manasseh seduced them to do that which is evil more than did the nations whom Yahweh destroyed before the children of Israel. Yahweh spoke by his servants the prophets, saying, Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations, and has done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols; therefore thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, Behold, I bring such evil on Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears shall tingle. (2 Kings 21:7-12)
[Josiah] brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, outside of Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust of it on the graves of the common people. He broke down the houses of the sodomites, that were in the house of Yahweh, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. (2 Kings 23:6-7)
I went searching for more information on this god called Asherim and found far more than I expected to find. First, Asherim is plural for Asherah, so both words are generally referring to the same idea, just one is singular and the other plural. Consider some of what my research discovered from a cursory view of evidence gathered by others.
Asherah, along with Astarte and Anath, was one of the three great goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon. In Canaanite religion her primary role was that of mother goddess. In mythological texts from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 b.c.e.) city-state of Ugarit, she is called “the creatress of the gods”; her consort at Ugarit, the god El, is called “creator.” El is also referred to as father and patriarch at Ugarit, as Asherah, likewise, is called mother. Their children form the pantheon of the gods, who are said to number seventy; a Hittite myth similarly mentions the seventy-seven and eighty-eight children of Asherah. On occasion in Ugaritic myth, Asherah performs the maternal role of wet nurse. Ugaritic and other Canaanite materials further associate Asherah with lions (indicating power), serpents (representing immortality or healing), and sacred trees (signifying fertility). Thus Asherah’s children at Ugarit can be called her “pride of lions”; the goddess is called “lady of the serpent” in second-millennium b.c.e. inscriptions from the Sinai; the late-thirteenth-century b.c.e. Lachish ewer dedicated to Asherah is decorated with images of sacred trees.
Archaeological discoveries from the late 1970s and early 1980s have further indicated that, at least in the opinion of some ancient Israelites, YHWH and Asherah were appropriately worshipped as a pair. From the site of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, in the eastern Sinai, come three ninth- or eighth-century b.c.e. inscriptions that mention YHWH and “his Asherah” (meaning YHWH’s companion [consort?], the goddess Asherah) or “his asherah” (meaning YHWH’s sacred pole that represents the goddess Asherah and that sits in his temple or beside his altar).
Unfortunately, our sources do not provide enough information to identify definitively which Israelites were particularly attracted to the worship of Asherah or the reasons for this attraction. One possibility is that in royal circles, especially in the southern capital city of Jerusalem, the cult of Asherah was particularly attractive to the king’s mother. Not only was the queen mother’s position in the palace generally paralleled by Asherah’s position as mother goddess in the heavens, but also the queen mother’s status as the wife of the king’s father suggests an affinity to Asherah’s cult. This is because southern royal ideology typically described the king’s metaphorical father as YHWH. For those ancient Israelites who saw Asherah as YHWH’s consort, this should suggest a correspondence between the queen mother, the wife of the king’s biological father on earth, and Asherah, the wife of YHWH, who was the king’s metaphorical father in the heavens. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/asherahasherim-bible
What might any of this have to do with a voice from the horns of an altar that we are studying. Well, some say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is exactly what happened when I began to peruse some pictures purporting to represent Asherah.
What strikes me are the obvious similarities seen in this picture to what altar horns might look like. I really am beginning to wonder if we are not starting to uncover a significant counterfeit being called out at this juncture of the war between light and darkness. Is it possible that one way of interpreting this passage could include the fact that maybe this golden altar and its horns might even be a false altar installed in God's temple just as the Asherah was placed into the temple in Jerusalem by Manassah?
What gives me pause regarding this is what I found in the piece written that used this illustration. There is a great deal more information about the goddess Asherah uncovered by the author of this article. And while I don't agree with her line of reasoning on many fronts, I also can appreciate why she feels the way she does and how it fits into the much larger picture when it is viewed from the perspective of the overall scheme of the war that involves a great deal of subtle deceptions in Satan's counterfeit system.
Let me share a few excerpts of what I found on source that includes this picture.
Asherah Epithets
Ancient texts contain many epithets for the Goddess Asherah. To mention a few:-
“Great
Mother Goddess”
“Creator
of Vegetation and Life”
“Queen
of Heaven”
“Lady
who Treads on the Sea”
“Mother
of the Gods”
“Holiness”
“Hebrew
Goddess”
“Vital
Force of Nature”
“Lion
Lady”
“Eve”
“the One of the Serpent.”
The Iron Age occupants of Israel have a reputation as the creators of monotheism, but objective biblical scholars (the ones without a religious motive behind their research) believe that archaeological and religious records indicate this development was slow in coming. To be blunt: most of the Israelites through most of their history were probably, as it turns out, polytheists. And this was not simply a matter of falling into the habit of taking on foreign religion. Rather, the Israelites were probably themselves Canaanites and their original gods appear to have been Canaanite gods. The Hebrew means “happy” or “upright” and some suggest “(sacred) place.” The term appears 40 times in the Hebrew Bible. Asherah appears as a Goddess by the side of BaĘżal, whose consort She evidently became, at least among the Canaanites of the south.
If there was a doctrine of rebirth in early Israelite religion, then perhaps the closest one may come to such a teaching would be within the cult precinct of the goddess or the grove. There is strong evidence that in first temple Judaism fertility was venerated, not under the auspices of Yahweh, but with his consort Asherah, the goddess of rebirth.
Let’s just pause here and reflect. Agriculture, the first and most important invention of humans, was strongly influenced by such things as a fertility goddess. Because crops were a life or death issue to everyone, Asherah was pictured as being equal to Yahweh and, in fact, his loving bride. An Oxford scholar has argued that the Book of Kings reveals the Hebrews worshiped Asherah and Yahweh in Yahweh’s Israelite temple.
By the time of the Babylonian exile she had been exiled from the religion and dropped from all the texts. Egyptian Jews, however, maintained a temple to the Queen of Heaven, and early Christian Jews, according to Margaret Barker, may have imported this tradition into the new faith, flowering in the cult of the Virgin Mary. This was about the time 586BC. Eventually only one male God—without a wife—was accepted and preached and believed by people of all the countries of the world. https://twiggietruth.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/asherah-the-divine-feminine/
In reading this article it is clear that the author is very sympathetic to the worship of this goddess. Yet many of the points she makes I find helpful and informative, especially as she ties it in to many things in our cultures today such as the May pole celebration and even the Christmas tree.
I am not insisting that this is the primary way we should interpret this verse. However, because Scripture clearly provides a direct link between horns of an altar and sins written on them along with reference to Asherah, I can't help but wonder if there is not something here to seriously consider. For instance: what if these horns do have something to do with the feature of prominent breasts associated with this popular goddess of antiquity that disturbed Yahweh so much? What if this problem is connected to an even larger issue that is still fought over fiercely even today, the issue of viewing only one gender in the godhead? Might that actually provide a vacuum in our thinking and perceptions about God that opens the door for seductive deceptions of the enemy to exploit our distorted views of God and how God relates to us?
This author asserts that Asherah is represented by the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, that Asherah is the same as the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation, and is the same as the personification of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs. We may rush to deny these things, and I would agree. Yet what it betrays us is the fact that we are so quick to deny that the God who is called 'us' at the time of our creation and that we are to reflect, is only depicted as being all male by most Christian theologians and teachers. This presents an opportunity for the enemy to exploit as he has confused millions and caused them to be receptive to doctrines of demons to fill this void.
I want to simply present a proposition, not an assertion. It might be possible that if this is even remotely related to a counterfeit notion of worship involving a queen of heaven that has infiltrated religion nearly throughout the history of the earth. In these last days this deception may be exposed in the final showdown when every deception is exposed by the light of truth.
The Asherah in the Old Testament was also assumed to be an altar where sacrifices were offered, including at times sacrifices of human beings. If this golden altar in the 6th seal is in some way associated with Asherah, then the voice coming from this altar could well be from some other source than from heaven. When we consider the message presented by this voice it gives me even further reason to find credence for this, for who would have the greatest vested interest in releasing angels blocked by heavenly agents from carrying out their intents and activities on earth?
