In the beginning, within Eden, the very garden of God, walked a brilliance arrayed in every precious stone. This being, the anointed guardian cherub, held a position of immense trust, a protector and custodian appointed over God's pristine creation, tasked with upholding its divine order. Yet, like a vassal king harboring ambitions above his station, pride swelled within him. He ceased to serve the true King, choosing instead to usurp authority. In this act of cosmic treason, he rebelled, shattering the celestial harmony and becoming the first fallen Elohim, the original adversary – Satan. Cast from the heights, his dominion became terrestrial, no longer reflecting God's nurturing order but defined by its opposite: chaos. His essence intertwined with the untamed, the disordered, the primordial sea of confusion. From this fallen state, he embarked on his long game: to relentlessly sow disorder and inflict unnecessary misery upon creation, twisting truth, fostering strife, and seeking always to deflect the glory due to God towards himself. He became a collector of ages, watching civilizations rise and fall, ever seeking opportunities to inject his venomous chaos.
Wandering the early world, this fallen cherub, now often known by the title Baal ('Lord'), found fertile ground for his malice among the burgeoning peoples of Canaan. Here, Melqart fostered the most grotesque perversion: the sacrifice of children. This practice, attested by numerous sources among Canaanite groups spanning over a millennium, became a defining feature of the cultures under his sway. He twisted parental love into terror, demanding the ultimate offering – sons and daughters passed through fire in horrific rituals, particularly in the valley shrines known as Tophets. The cries of sacrificed innocents rose as a stench against Heaven, sealing the fate of those nations devoted to this fallen Elohim.
It was into this very context of widespread, deity-demanded child sacrifice that God initiated His revolutionary counter-plan. He called Abraham, testing his fear of God to the absolute limit by asking for his beloved son, Isaac. Abraham, in profound faith, prepared the altar, bound his son, and raised the knife. But at the final moment, the Angel of the Lord intervened: "Do not lay a hand on the boy... Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." As highlighted in the contrast drawn later, this was not the beginning of a divine demand for child sacrifice, but its definitive rejection. This pivotal event forged a new way, establishing a people distinct from their Canaanite neighbors not by race, but by a radically different relationship with the divine – one founded on covenant faithfulness, not appeasement through the unthinkable. God stopping the sacrifice was the foundation stone for Israel.
God nurtured this chosen line, Israel, into a multitude during their sojourn in Egypt, shielding them until the time was right. Then, with mighty signs and wonders, Yahweh brought Israel out of bondage, leading them not merely to a promised land, but commissioning them as His instrument of judgment against the very evil personified by Baal-Melqart. Their explicit purpose upon entering Canaan was to dispossess the nations steeped in idolatry, to tear down the high places of Baal, and to utterly eradicate the perverse practice of child sacrifice that God had so dramatically forbidden in their own founding story. Israel's calling was a direct declaration of war against Melqart-Baal and the culture of death he cultivated.
The Heavenly Father versus the Melqart-Baal Satan. They are in competition for dominion in our world. The Baal aspect of Satan asked his worshippers to sacrifice their children. What did the Heavenly father do? The exact opposite. God sacrificed His own Son to bless His worshippers.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life.
One might not fully appreciate John 3:16 without seeing the dramatic opposite in the evil of Baal’s call for humans to sacrifice their children.
Having established this dark dominion on land, Melqart turned his attention also to the waves. How fitting that the Serpent cast from paradise, embodying the chaos of the deep, should find his primary instrument for global reach in a people drawn to the sea's embrace – the Phoenicians, heirs to the Canaanite culture he had already corrupted. To them, he revealed himself, sometimes as a sky-robed god with fiery eyes and a beard like scattered stars. He became Melqart, the 'King of the City', embodying the very spirit of Tyre that the prophet Ezekiel would later address (Ezekiel 26-28). He declared in his heart, "I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas." He guided their hands to build mighty ships, taught them the secrets of the stars and currents, turning the very chaos of the open ocean, his symbolic domain, into pathways for immense wealth and influence. The trade Ezekiel described – reaching Tarshish, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Dedan, and beyond – was built upon Melqart's mastery of the sea's chaotic power. His magnificent temple at Tyre, rumored by some ancients like Herodotus to hold a tomb, became the epicenter of his power, built on the trade that swelled his pride.
Through Phoenician sails, Melqart's consciousness spread. His fleets charted coasts unknown to others, reaching the tin isles of Britain, navigating the treacherous route around Africa to the riches of India and Southeast Asia, perhaps even brushing the shores of Brazil. Tyre, and later Carthage, became repositories of global knowledge – currents, winds, resources, peoples. This vast network, born of Melqart's corrupted wisdom and command over the sea's chaos, brought immense riches but also violence, fulfilling the prophecy: "Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned." The Serpent, the fallen Cherub, the self-proclaimed god-King of Tyre, was weaving a web to encompass the world, his heart lifted high because of his beauty and corrupting his wisdom for the sake of his splendor.
But the designs of fallen Elohim do not go unnoticed. Heaven's judgment, foretold by Ezekiel, loomed. "I am against you, Tyre," the prophetic word declared. The first wave crashed with Alexander, fulfilling the prophecy of its utter destruction – stones and timber cast into the sea, the island scraped bare like a rock. Melqart's primary seat of power was broken, his influence momentarily checked.
Yet, even in the actions of a worldly conqueror, a deeper divine purpose unfolded. Alexander, though driven by his own ambitions, became an unwitting instrument. His vast conquests shattered old boundaries and forged a new, interconnected world – the Hellenistic Age. Critically, his empire spread a common tongue, Koine Greek, which became the language of commerce, culture, and administration across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. God's chosen people, the Jews, dispersed throughout this new world, embraced this lingua franca. It was in Koine Greek that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into the Septuagint, making God's revelation accessible to a wider audience than ever before and preparing the vocabulary for a new covenant.
This Hellenistic framework, later solidified and expanded by the Pax Romana imposed by Rome, created an unprecedented era of relative peace, stable governance, extensive road networks, and maritime routes. It was into this precisely prepared world – unified by language, law, and infrastructure – that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, would be born. The stage, set by divine providence working through the rise and fall of empires, was perfectly arranged for the rapid dissemination of His Gospel message along the very trade routes and social networks Melqart had once sought to dominate solely for his own dark purposes. God was preparing His counter-offensive on a grand scale.
Centuries passed since Tyre's fall. Carthage rose, inheriting Tyre's maritime legacy and Melqart's potent, shadowed blessing, representing the fallen cherub's next major attempt to assert his dominion. The conflict with Rome intensified, culminating in Hannibal Barca. Deeply devoted, Hannibal journeyed to the ancient Phoenician port of Gades (modern Cádiz) in Spain – one of the oldest cities in Europe, and a place whispered by classical authors to hold the translocated Tomb of Melqart itself. There, at this potent western sanctuary, Hannibal sought Melqart's favor through prayer and sacrifice. Returning to New Carthage, his spirit fortified, Melqart granted him the vision recorded by Livy. A youth of divine beauty appeared to Hannibal in the night, claiming to be sent by the supreme deity to guide him.
“Follow me,” said the ghostly visitor, his beauty masking an ancient power, “and see that thou look not behind thee.”
Hannibal obeyed, walking behind the luminous guide. But the primal curiosity, the echo of Eden, overcame him. He turned his head. What he saw was not merely destruction, but the raw essence of his god, the chaos Melqart embodied:
...Hannibal saw a serpent, immense and terrifying, crashing through forest and thicket, leaving utter ruin in its wake. It moved as a black tempest made manifest, a vortex of shadow alive with claps of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning coiling behind the monstrous form. It was the desolation of primordial chaos unleashed upon the land.
Shaken, Hannibal asked the meaning of the terrifying spectacle. The beautiful being replied, its voice cold and clear, revealing the nature of Melqart's blessing:
“What thou beholdest is the desolation of Italy. Follow thy star and inquire no farther into the dark counsels of heaven.”
Hannibal marched, carrying the vision of serpentine chaos and promised destruction, the power of his fallen god surging through him. Italy trembled. Yet, the divine check held firm. Rome endured. Carthage, Melqart's second great vessel, faced utter destruction, its fields sown with salt. The King of the City saw his millennia-spanning plan for maritime dominion shattered once more by direct confrontation.
Thwarted but not defeated, Melqart shifted tactics. If Rome could not be broken from without, perhaps it could be corrupted from within. Centuries after Carthage's fall, he focused his influence on another aspect of his ancient Baal persona – the Syrian sun deity Elagabalus, the 'God of the Mountain'. He found a perfect conduit: a young Roman emperor, also named Elagabalus, who hailed from Emesa, the cult center of the god. This emperor, of Phoenician and Arab lineage, had served as the hereditary high priest of Elagabalus before ascending the imperial throne. In 219 AD, the emperor brought the black conical stone idol of his god – Melqart in this guise – to Rome itself, building a lavish temple and attempting to subordinate the entire Roman pantheon to this Syrian Baal. For a brief, scandalous period, Melqart seemed poised to usurp the spiritual heart of the Empire he could not conquer militarily. However, the brazen attempt was too overt, too alien for Rome. The emperor's excesses and religious fanaticism led to his assassination in 222 AD after only a few years. The stone was returned to Emesa, and Melqart's audacious infiltration of Rome collapsed.
This failed gambit, following the destruction of Tyre and Carthage, convinced Melqart that direct confrontation or internal subversion of the established Greco-Roman power structure was too costly and prone to failure. His essence undiminished, the ancient Baal spirit associated with chaos shifted his gaze southward again, this time with a more patient, long-term strategy. The nascent Christian faith, spreading rapidly through the very Hellenistic world God had prepared, remained a primary target. He needed a counterforce, a barrier built outside the direct reach of Rome. He drifted into the arid lands of the Arabian peninsula, where echoes of his older forms persisted in local deities like Hubaal. Here, among the desert tribes, he found fertile ground for his new grand strategy.
Subtly, patiently, he began to weave his influence into the spiritual landscape, twisting existing beliefs, fostering a new, unifying revelation under a name that obscured his own – Allah. He guided the formation of Islam, shaping it into a powerful force. Its rapid expansion, fueled by a potent blend of faith and conquest, surged across North Africa, the Levant, and Persia. This expansion achieved what Tyre, Carthage, and the Elagabalus cult could not: it erected a formidable wall to the south and southeast of Europe. The old maritime trade routes to the East were severed for the Christian West. Europe found itself increasingly isolated, contributing to the ensuing "Dark Ages." Melqart, the Serpent, the fallen King of Tyre, master of chaos, now working through his new guise as Allah, had successfully flanked his adversaries, containing the spread of the Gospel eastward and southward, and casting a long shadow over the known world.
And the shadow lengthens still. In the modern era, the flanking maneuver evolved. The fiery destruction raining down on the towers of New York on September 11th, 2001, heralded a new phase – not just containment, but infiltration. In the decades that followed, waves of mass migration carried millions adhering to Melqart's Islamic guise deep into the heartlands of Europe, altering demographics and sowing societal discord. Ominously, the ancient adversary finds new, often unwitting allies in the very cultures he seeks to undermine. Groups like "Queers for Palestine" and fervent "Climate Alarmists," championing causes seemingly unrelated to ancient deities, yet all resonating as varying expressions of a death cult, find themselves aligning with forces ultimately serving Melqart's extinctionist agenda, echoing support for his proxies and furthering the erosion of the West's foundations of expansionist capacity through innovation and creativity. The Serpent's coils tighten, drawing strength even from those who would claim to despise him, as the final act of this age-old conflict unfolds.
Yet, in this grand, cosmic war, the ultimate irony belongs to God. Satan-Melqart, one of a host of fallen elohim raging against Heaven's design, instituted the horror of child sacrifice, demanding the blood of innocents to feed his chaotic dominion. God’s response, thundering through Abraham, was an emphatic "No! You shall not sacrifice your children to Me!" Then, in a move that would forever redefine sacrifice and power, God Himself offered His only begotten Son, Jesus. This was no offering to appease a bloodthirsty deity, but a voluntary descent into death to conquer it. Resurrected, this Son now wages an unceasing war for terrestrial and spiritual dominion, a direct assault on Satan's usurped territories. And Jesus holds the ultimate advantage over every fallen elohim, including Melqart himself: Jesus the Son of God alone possesses true, uncreated eternal life, and with it, the absolute authority to grant it, or to revoke even the borrowed, finite existence of the adversary. The Serpent may coil and strike, but the Son holds the keys to death and Hades, and the final victory is assured.
The Son will crush the serpent’s head.