Phallic symbols long predate Christianity and originate in ancient pagan fertility rites, in which the male symbol of fertility was represented by an upright stone, pillar, obelisk, or slender tower. Edward Carpenter notes that the lingam, a stylized phallic symbol, occurs all over the world. McClintock and Strong's Biblical Cyclopaedia states that even the spires of churches are symbols retained from old phallic worship, and Thomas Inman likewise traces towers or spires before churches, and minarets before mosques, to ancient fertility rites and phallic worship. This is held to be sufficient evidence that churches should not be adorned with such symbols and that they should have no connection to the worship of God.

The source mentions phallic symbols only in passing, near its close. Warning that idolatry remains a present danger, it observes that not gathering in the Valley of Hinnom to worship phallic symbols and burn children does not mean believers will fare well before Christ's judgment seat. Such open, ancient forms of Baal worship, which joined ritual sex with child sacrifice, have given way to idols that are less visible, such as the modern worship of climate change, cancel culture, and women's rights. The point is that the absence of overt pagan ritual does not prove a person is free of idolatry, since hidden idols come between believers and God. Only conviction built on Christ the Rock, rather than on "sandcastle virtues," will stand when the storm comes.

The source mentions phallic symbols only briefly, in describing Canaanite religion as part of the iniquity of the Amorites. On certain high places, the Canaanites erected a stone pillar to represent the male deities, which the source identifies as phallic worship, and beside it they placed a wooden pole, tree, or image to represent the female goddesses. This worship belonged to a fertility cult of ritualized sex and cult prostitution, aimed at securing human, agricultural, and commercial fertility. It is cited as one of the abominations that made the Canaanites corrupt and profane, so that grain grown by them could never be accepted in the wave sheaf offering to a holy God.

In the context of idolatry, the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, stands as a prominent phallic symbol recognized globally. Such stone idols or wooden pillars, imbued with phallic symbolism, were historically viewed as mystical sires of offspring or even of the people themselves within certain religious climates. This imagery reflects a deep association with fertility cults, where idols represented nature gods and goddesses like the Baals and Asherahs, believed necessary for ensuring the productivity of the earth through ritual practices. These practices often included sexual excesses, which the prophets likened to the unfaithfulness of a wife abandoning her husband, mirroring a nation forsaking its God for foreign deities. Thus, the phallic symbol, as embodied by structures like the Washington Monument, underscores the pervasive and historical nature of idolatry as a form of spiritual infidelity.

The Asherah, the twig that Judah's worshipers held to God's nose in Ezekiel 8:17, was an upright phallic symbol, though the verse has been corrupted in translation; the Hebrew reads "to My nose." Such symbols belonged to the Baal and Asherah worship that Israel absorbed from Canaanite and Egyptian adaptations of ancient Babylonian religion. Baal's presence was marked in groves and fields by naked pillars or tree stems stuck upright in the ground, and fertility rites imitated sexual acts, with Baal sometimes pictured as a phallus with a god's head. In II Kings 17 the sacred pillars set up on every high hill and under every green tree are likewise identified as the phallus, alongside wooden idol images. These practices lay behind the state religion Jeroboam established, and they were part of the idolatry that provoked God to anger and led Israel into captivity. God links this idolatry directly to violence in the land: when people turn from Him, they lose their fear of God and their respect for law and order.

The concept of the phallic symbol appears within a broader discussion of how pornography functions as an extension of ancient idolatry rooted in humanism. Pagan religions of antiquity incorporated obelisks, identified specifically as phallic symbols, alongside temple prostitutes and fertility rites as central features of their worship systems. These elements were not peripheral but intricately woven into religious practice, serving as tangible expressions of a worldview that elevated the human body and human sexuality to the status of the divine. This connection between phallic symbolism and idolatry is presented as evidence that pornography, in all its modern forms, whether photographs, videos, statuary, paintings, erotic literature, or performance art, represents nothing more than a contemporary adaptation of this age-old idol worship. The underlying principle is that such symbols and practices constitute a form of humanism, defined as man attempting to be God through the adoration of the human form. This worship of the human body and mind is described as a polite term for atheism, wherein man sets himself up as the object of worship rather than acknowledging the Creator. The historical pattern draws additional support from the account of the golden calf at Mount Sinai, where the children of Israel, after Moses delayed on the mountain, ate, drank, rose to play and danced in idolatrous celebration, with some suggesting this involved ritual prostitution. This pattern continued in the worship of Baal and Astarte among the Israelites, which commonly involved lewd and sexually explicit behavior, and reached further expression in Corinth, where the Temple of Diana employed sacred prostitutes, requiring young Corinthian virgins to serve for a time before marriage. The ancients believed sexual intercourse re-enacted the fertility cycle of nature and pleased the gods, ensuring blessings of abundant crops and herds. This historical trajectory, anchored by the specific mention of phallic symbols as obelisks within pagan worship, establishes that perversions of the flesh either accompany or follow idolatry. The connection ties directly into Paul's warning in Romans that when people changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, God gave them up to uncleanness and dishonor, allowing them to pursue debased minds and unfitting practices. The phallic symbol thus serves as a concrete historical marker demonstrating that today's proliferation of pornography is not a novel modern phenomenon but rather the continuation of an ancient spiritual rebellion, one that substitutes worship of the human form and its sexual expression for the worship of God, ultimately identified as deserving the judgment Paul pronounces upon those who practice such things.

The obelisk stands as a recurring image of national pride and rebellion against God, appearing within the discussion of Hosea 8:14, where God condemns Israel and Judah for forgetting their Maker and instead multiplying immense structures such as temples, palaces, and fortified cities. The underlying Hebrew concept behind these structures centers on spaciousness and immenseness, indicating that having forsaken the true God who alone was vast enough to meet their need, Israel attempted to compensate by constructing enormous monuments in His place. This ancient pattern is directly connected to modern society through the observation that obelisks, identified explicitly as phallic symbols, are found prominently displayed in cities such as Nashville, Baltimore, and Charlotte, functioning as visible expressions of humanity thumbing its nose at God. The new Freedom Tower in New York City is cited as another example of this same impulse toward building ultra-high, immense structures that defy God rather than honor Him. This drive toward immensity is presented as evidence of a deeper spiritual poverty. When people lose their relationship with God, they compensate by striving to construct grand achievements, whether skyscrapers, monuments, or even oversized church buildings and programs, in order to mask the emptiness and futility of a life disconnected from Him. The formula implicitly followed by such thinking, that immensity equals blessing or that size proves God's presence, is rejected as false reasoning, since true blessing flows from being called and sustained by God rather than from human effort to appear significant. The contrast drawn is between a nation or people content with whatever measure God provides, however small, and one that compulsively builds monuments to compensate for the absence of a genuine relationship with Him. This theme fits within the broader indictment of Hosea 8, which catalogs the sinful causes behind God's coming judgment on Israel, including the breaking of covenant, the choice of ungodly leaders, idolatry, alliances with pagan nations, and the construction of false altars. The obsession with immense buildings and monuments, epitomized by the phallic symbol of the obelisk, is shown to be a direct outgrowth of forgetting God, paralleling ancient Israel's downfall with the present spiritual condition of modern Israelite nations, which display the same preoccupation with grandeur as a substitute for true devotion and obedience to God.

The worship of Ashtoreth, one of the ancient iterations of the Babylonian goddess Inanna, employed Asherah poles or images, which Scripture explicitly condemns as abominable in God's sight (Judges 3:7; I Kings 15:13; 18:19; II Kings 21:7; 23:4; II Chronicles 15:16). These objects functioned as phallic symbols, and their significance lay in the fact that they directly mocked the order God Himself established in the Garden of Eden. This connects to a broader pattern traced back even before the time of Abraham, when the Babylonian priestess Enheduanna taught that individuals could overcome the constraints of Eden and mature in their personality by doing anything they wished, even to the point of usurping the prerogatives of God Himself. Enheduanna ascribed to her goddess Inanna the power to turn men into women and vice versa, anciently reflecting what the transgender movement advocates in the present day. Despite the myth holding that Inanna was married to a god named Dumuzi (Tammuz), she nevertheless took lovers whenever she pleased, refusing to be constrained by the divine order of marriage that God had instituted. A later iteration of Inanna appears in the goddess Venus, from whose name comes the term venereal disease; Inanna/Venus represented sex without boundaries. The phallic symbolism of the Asherah poles thus stands as a physical marker of this larger rebellion against the divine order established in Eden, a rebellion that also targeted the structure of the family itself. Part of that Edenic order was patriarchy, the principle that the husband and father serves as the head of the family. Yet "patriarchal" has become one of the most reviled epithets in the present age. This visceral hostility toward male headship in the family is explained as the ongoing work of an ancient, anti-God spirit that continues to motivate humanity to rebel against what God instituted at creation. This Babylonian influence extended culturally as well, evidenced by the account of Achan, who, despite having wandered in the wilderness for forty years, still recognized a garment as distinctly Babylonian. This shows that the pervasive trappings of Babylonian culture had so impressed themselves upon the Israelites that such cultural accouterments were enticing enough to lead Achan to defy God's clear instructions in order to possess the garment. This demonstrates that the same ancient spirit behind the phallic symbolism of Ashtoreth worship also worked through cultural allurement to draw God's people away from obedience, a Babylonian influence that Scripture prophesies will continue to hold sway over the minds of men until the return of Jesus Christ.

The material does not address the topic of "Phallic Symbol" as a distinct subject in its own right, but it does contain one direct reference relevant to this theme within its discussion of Ezekiel 8. In recounting Ezekiel's vision of the abominations occurring in the temple, the material explains that the elders of Israel believed their secret idol worship was hidden from God, reasoning that "the LORD does not see us" and that He had forsaken the land. God then instructs Ezekiel to witness even greater abominations, including women weeping for Tammuz and men turned with their backs to the altar, worshiping the sun instead of God. The culminating statement of this vision identifies "the branch" that the people put to their nose as the Asherah, which is described as a male sex figure—functioning as a phallic symbol. God declares that this act was tantamount to placing that object directly in His nose, or in His face, signifying deep provocation and offense. This reference serves a larger purpose within the broader argument being developed: that sin committed in secret is never truly hidden or without consequence, regardless of how insignificant or private an individual may believe their actions to be. The people assumed that because their idolatrous practices—including their veneration involving this phallic symbol—were performed away from public view, they carried no real weight or accountability. Yet the material stresses that this assumption reflects "a spiritual mind at an exceedingly low level," one that fails to recognize God's constant awareness of and involvement in human affairs. The consequence of this hidden sin was national captivity, illustrating the broader principle that individual actions, however secret, inevitably produce visible and often devastating effects, both for the individual and for the larger community. The phallic symbol, in this context, becomes emblematic of secret, provoking sin that ultimately cannot escape divine notice or its natural consequences.