Life After Ministry

Asherah and the Heavenly Mother of Mormonism

Jeremiah 7:17-18; “Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?  18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.”

Last week Melissa alerted me to an article in the Deseret News and boy was it ever an eye-opener.  The topic?  God has a wife.  Now for the Mormon this isn’t “big news” and shouldn’t cause alarm to anyone reading their daily dose of Mormon propaganda.  What is startling is how the Mormon Church doesn’t give the readers or members the truth of a heavenly mother or as the Bible says “queen of heaven”.

Mormons have long maintained the Mormon god is a polygamist and each person here on earth is a product of a sexual union in the pre-existence.

Orson Pratt, The Seer, pg. 37; “Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; indeed, there will be no end to the increase of his own children: for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply forever and ever.”

Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith’s Teachings, pg. 436; ““Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the Other Side?”…”Certainly you will,” was the instant reply of the Prophet. “More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.”…”And have I then a Mother in Heaven?” exclaimed the astonished girl…”You assuredly have. How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?””

 Ensign, November 1991; “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me. However, in light of the instruction we have received from the Lord Himself, I regard it as inappropriate for anyone in the Church to pray to our Mother in Heaven…The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her…none of us can add to or diminish the glory of whom we have no revealed knowledge” – Gordon B. Hinckley

These kinds of statements from the self proclaimed prophets of God make me physically and spiritually sick.  Why would you even entertain this idea?  The newspaper has an obligation to report truth; at least that’s what I was taught in my Utah high school journalism class.

Since they won’t report the truth about the queen in heaven or a heavenly mother, I will.

Asherah, Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth, Isis, Ishtar, are all derivatives for the same female goddess.  She had different names for each of the cultures she showed up in, but the common denominator was that she was a representation of sex and fertility.

This false goddess is also referred to in the Bible as the wooden altars in a grove of trees.

Deuteronomy 12:2-3; “Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.“

Jer. 44:16-19; “As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee.  17 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.  18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.  19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?”

Interestingly enough a grove in the forest is where Smith went to pray and supposedly received his first vision.  I find it interesting that he’d have a dark power envelop him as he went to the woods to pray.  Keep in mind Smith was already practicing in the occult with divining rods, mysticism and seer stones; these things being taught to him by his own parents.

Joseph Smith Testimony 1:14-15; “So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.  15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.”

And then in a 25 page article written by BYU Professor Daniel Petersen, we see another example of the heresy preached to people like my own mother.  In his article “Nephi and his Asherah” Petersen writes that Nephi may have thought the vision of the tree was actually a portrayal of the Virgin Mary.

“Why would Nephi see a connection between a tree and the virginal mother of a divine child? I believe that Nephi’s vision reflects a meaning of the “sacred tree” that is unique to the ancient Near East, and that, indeed, can only be fully appreciated when the ancient Canaanite and Israelite associations of that tree are borne in mind.” (1)

This is why the lies continue.  How sad for the average Mormon when their leaders go about writing these things.

I’ve always thought Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the best Bible studies I’ve ever done to help clear the confusion in my mind caused by the Book of Mormon.  It seemed that every single thing the Nephites did was exactly the opposite of what God told the Israelites to do.  Nephites had a holy land named Mulek, and in the Bible Mulek is an idol fire god; God told the Israelites not to leave Jerusalem, yet Nephi and family packed their bags and split.  There’s another twist and turn to every aspect of their story and this brings us to the story of Asherah.

Asherah or Ashtoreth is known as the moon goddess of the Phoenicians that represented a female deity who was frequently associated with Baal, the sun god who is their male chief deity.  She was Ishtar of the Accadians and Astarte of the Greeks.  King Solomon allowed her into his temple for worship (1 Kings 11:33).  In Jeremiah 44:25 she was referred to as the queen of heaven.  It is probable that Jezebel’s 400 priests were employed in its service.  (1 Kings 18:19)  See Holman’s Bible Dictionary.

The reason God allowed the Assyrians and then the Babylonians to destroy the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah was because of their sin.  As noted above, Solomon allowed his concubines to bring false goddesses into the Holy Temple and the Southern Kingdom of Israel was busily worshipping the trees and earth down in Jerusalem.

Israel went back and forth with God all the time.  We see numerous accounts of God’s blessing them with times of peace and then punishment because of their insurrection.  They promised to obey when Moses came down with the 2^nd set of tablets from Mt. Sinai and then fell into idolatry from the time of Judges to when Samuel liberated them from the Philistines in 1 Samuel 7:4.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, the everyday Israelite went ahead and followed in their leader’s footsteps by worshipping the female fertility goddesses brought into the temple by no less than Solomon himself.

Just a little bit of homework would show anyone that Asherah isn’t anything you want in your life if you’re a God-fearing Christian, plain and simple it is idolatry.  It takes honor away from God and takes away the amount of time that should be spent worshipping Him.  Instead, we see the Mormon people have been carefully groomed into believing the lies and their monolithic behavior is evident of their choices to not open their Bibles.

These are the things people like my mother know nothing about.  They listen to their prophet’s voice just like they’ve been told to do without even wondering for a moment why they need to listen to God.

I have one simple question for the Mormon:

What’s the difference between Asherah and a heavenly mother goddess wife who lives in the heavens and is eternally pregnant?

Joseph Smith’s polygamy problem and his introduction of a heavenly mother are just far too similar to be a mere coincidence.  What’s the phrase…if you don’t learn anything from history you’re bound to repeat it?

In the words of John MacArthur about Mormonism: “Mormonism is wrong in epic proportions.”  I have to say I couldn’t agree more.  Please, pray for my people with us won’t you?

With Love in Christ, Michelle Grim

 1.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=9&num=2&id=223