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From the latter part of the 14th chapter of Isaiah, through the 19th chapter, are conveyed Jehovah’s judgments against numerous nations surrounding Israel. However, it is noteworthy that Jehovah entered into judgment with his own nation first. This is in keeping with the axiom that judgment begins with the house of God.
Although the 13th and 14th chapters relate to the end of the executioners, namely Babylon and Assyria, the prophecy of Isaiah is not presented chronologically. Babylon went on to overthrow many other nations before God finally disposed of it.
So, after Jerusalem and Judah were crushed by Babylon, the tempest from out of the north, as described by Jeremiah, God next called Philistia to account: “And with famine I will put your root to death, and what remains over of you will be killed. Howl, O gate! Cry out, O city! All of you must become disheartened, O Philistia! For out of the north a smoke is coming, and there is no one getting isolated from his ranks.”
Also, it was the sea-faring Philistines that once captured the sacred Ark of the Covenant and placed it in the temple of their god, Dagon – the fish-headed idol.
Although Dagon is no longer worshipped, the war-minded demons that promoted false worship and fought against Jehovah’s nation thousands of years ago still exist today and are still worshipped, albeit under a different guise.
Back in the 1850’s Alexander Hislop published the first edition of the groundbreaking work called The Two Babylons. Here is what Hislop had to say regarding the modern manifestation of Dagon:
Dagon, the fish-god, represented that deity as a manifestation of the same patriarch who had lived so long in the waters of the deluge. As the Pope bears the key of Janus, so he wears the mitre of Dagon. The excavations of Nineveh have put this beyond all possibility of doubt.
The Papal mitre is entirely different from the mitre of Aaron and the Jewish high priests. That mitre was a turban. The two-horned mitre, which the Pope wears, when he sits on the high altar at Rome and receives the adoration of the Cardinals, is the very mitre worn by Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines and Babylonians.
There were two ways in which Dagon was anciently represented. The one was when he was depicted as half-man half-fish; the upper part being entirely human, the under part ending in the tail of a fish. The other was, when, to use the words of Layard, “the head of the fish formed a mitre above that of the man, while its scaly, fan-like tail fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed.”
Of Dagon in this form Layard gives a representation in his last work; and no one who examines his mitreA, and compares it with the Pope’s as given in Elliot’s Horoe, can doubt for a moment that from that, and no other source, has the pontifical mitre been derived. The gaping jaws of the fish surmounting the head of the man at Nineveh are the unmistakable counterpart of the horns of the Pope’s mitre at Rome.
As the modern priests of Dagon, it was as if the Catholic Church captured the Christian “ark,” in the sense that the popes claimed ownership of the Holy Scriptures and prevented their translation into the common languages of Europeans. Those who promoted the Bible as the sole authority were often tortured and murdered by the Vatican’s henchmen. Eventually, though, the Scriptures were delivered to Christians who would use it to promote the worship of Jehovah and the faith of Christ as a preliminary to the judgment.
In more modern times Catholic and Orthodox priests have incited mobs to attack Jehovah’s Witnesses in order to do Dagon’s bidding. The book Enemies certainly exposed the Catholic Church’s deep-seated hatred of the truth. Rutherford’s tactics against the clergy might be likened to the terrorism Samson employed against the Philistines, when he set their wheat fields in flames by lighting fire to the tails of foxes.
But in connection with the doom of the Philistine nation, Jehovah declared: “And what will anyone say in answer to the messengers of the nation? That Jehovah himself has laid the foundation of Zion, and in her the afflicted ones of his people will take refuge.”
Although Zion was destroyed by Babylon, Zion, or Jerusalem, was a place of refuge during the Assyrian invasions. In that respect, the prophecy relates to the ultimate coming of Christ’s kingdom – the heavenly Mount Zion. During that time of judgment and salvation all the demon-worshipping religions of the earth will be effaced by the eighth king, also depicted as the king of the north in Daniel.