The male symbol of fertility in ancient pagan rites was often depicted as an upright stone, pillar, obelisk, or slender tower. According to historical sources, the lingam, a stylized phallic symbol, is found across various cultures worldwide. Additionally, it is noted that even the spires of churches trace their origins to ancient phallic worship, as do towers and minarets seen before churches and mosques, reflecting the architectural influence of ancient fertility rites.

In the context of ancient Israel's struggles with idolatry, the worship of phallic symbols stands as a stark reminder of how far the people strayed from God's commandments. Just because we are not gathered in a group in the Valley of Hinnom, worshipping phallic symbols and burning children, does not mean we will fare well before the judgment seat of Christ. Our modern idols may not be as visible as those of the past, but they can still separate us from God, lurking beneath the surface until a storm reveals the true nature of our foundation.

The iniquity of the Amorites encompassed a pantheon of idols and a highly ritualized religion that functioned as a fertility cult. On certain high places the Canaanites erected stone pillars to represent the male deities in phallic worship while setting up wooden poles or images to represent the female goddesses. These rites incorporated ritual sex and cult prostitution in which participants sought to secure fertility for themselves, their land, and their commerce by mimicking or performing sexual acts with priests and priestesses. The same corruption extended to associated death cults and ancestor worship conducted in tombs. Because the Canaanites remained unsanctified and profane, their influence rendered anything they touched defective. Consequently God could not accept an offering, such as the grain of the wave sheaf, that had been sown and grown by people whose iniquity included these practices, for the taint of their idolatry and immorality would profane what was presented to Him.

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 reference to a phallic symbol arises in the discussion of Ezekiel's vision of the abominations taking place in Jerusalem, where God shows the prophet the depth of Judah's idolatry occurring even within the precincts of the temple. In Ezekiel 8:17, the phrase describing worshippers "holding twigs to their nose" is noted as a corruption of the Hebrew text, which actually reads "holding twigs to My nose," indicating God's own revulsion at the practice. This twig is identified as the Asherah, described as an upright phallic symbol used in pagan worship. This detail is presented as part of a larger pattern in which God directly connects idolatry with violence and moral corruption in the land, showing that when people abandon the true God, they lose respect for law, order, and justice, inevitably descending into violence. This phallic symbol is tied to the broader worship of Baal and Asherah, deities whose rites, as described from historical sources, involved fertility rituals, sexual acts performed on housetops and in groves, and symbols of procreative power such as bulls and phallic images. Such practices are shown to have deep roots in ancient Near Eastern religion, particularly Babylonian worship, and were absorbed by Israel through Canaanite and Egyptian adaptations. The Asherah pole itself, described elsewhere as a "sacred pillar" or "wooden image," is explicitly identified as a phallic representation used in the high places and under green trees throughout Israel and Judah, as recorded in 2 Kings 17:10, where "sacred pillars" are clarified as the phallus and "wooden images" as idols. The broader point being developed is that Israel's repeated apostasy—beginning after the deaths of Joshua and the elders, continuing through the period of the judges, and culminating in the establishment of a full pagan religious and governmental system by Jeroboam I—was steeped in fertility worship symbolized by objects such as the Asherah. This idolatry, including the phallic symbol, is shown to be historically and theologically significant because it created the corrupted religious environment in which the true meaning and observance of Passover was eventually altered by the Jews. The connection between phallic worship, national violence, and covenant unfaithfulness serves as evidence of how far Israel and Judah had departed from God's commands, laying the groundwork for understanding why the Passover observance was later changed from its original biblical form.

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.