A 50-foot replica of the arch forming the entrance to the Temple of Baal was installed in New York earlier this month, honoring the symbol of a pagan deity that the Islamic State destroyed in 2015. According to the New York Times, the 2,000-year-old Syrian town of Palmyra brought Muslims and Christians together for centuries. What the NYT won’t tell you is the Jewish history of the Temple of Baal and the abomination that it was for God’s people to be remotely connected to it.

Baal was a Canaanite god in Old Testament times. The Israelites grieved God by turning from Him and worshiping Baal, creating idols, participating in sexual immorality and sacrificing their children to the pagan deity. The Israelites’ unfaithfulness to God, even after He brought them out of Egypt, incensed the Lord, and on many occasions He gave them over to their enemies. It was their unfaithfulness and Baal worship that ultimately led to their captivity and displacement as a nation.

Jonathan Cahn, New York Times best-selling author of The Harbinger and well-known messianic rabbi, introduced the unveiling of the arch in New York via video on September 19. Cahn explains that, just as in ancient Israel, “harbingers,” or signs, are appearing in America, perhaps warning the nation of God’s impending judgment on the land. Also as in the case of ancient Israel, America continues to dig deeper in sin and “brazen defiance of God.”

“If America is following in the footsteps of ancient Israel away from God and to judgment, could there be a link to Baal?” Cahn questions. “Of course, no one in America would admit to worshiping Baal. But the truth is American culture is filled with other gods and idols. When a civilization turns away from God, it always ends up bringing in other gods in His place.”

Just after the unveiling, Cahn stood before the arch, and commented on the connections between ancient Israel and America. “And here, now on American soil, in back of me, is the manifesting of the sign of Baal,” adding that Baal’s presence in ancient Israel, as in America now, represented the sign of a nation that departed from its God, a nation in apostasy from God, a nation that once knew good and evil, but now calls evil “good” and good “evil,” a nation that offers its children as sacrifices and a nation that persecutes the followers of God. “And now, September, 2016,” said Cahn, “this harbinger has appeared to America.”

“Since 9/11, America has not only not returned to God — it has rebelled against Him in an ever deepening, ever intensifying and ever accelerating apostasy,” Cahn said. “It is eerily following the judgment template of the harbingers and the footsteps of ancient Israel as it headed to destruction.”

Roger Michael, Executive Director of Oxford University’s Institute for Digital archeology, discussed parallels between the violence in Palmyra, London and New York, reported the Guardian. “It is our hope that the arch, itself an icon of destruction and rebirth, will remind visitors of both the universality of suffering and the indomitable human capacity to rebuild what has been lost,” Michael said.

The ancient Israelites failed to repent when God’s warnings came, Cahn said, and vowed to rebuild. Isaiah 9:10 recorded their hard-heartedness towards repentance:

The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.

See Cahn’s introduction of the arch in New York City:

Video used with permission. You may visit Cahn’s website at HopeoftheWorld.org and visit him on Facebook.