“You worship what you do not know …” (John 4:22, NKJV)
We are currently exploring the idolatrous worship of Baal as a typology of the New Testament believer who is in the process of establishing his/her high calling, and who becomes enslaved by idols, although in the third dimension. The overarching theme here is obtaining your spiritual mantle, and we are using Elijah as prototype of this. His confrontation with Ahab represents the confrontation with the Adamic carnal nature within you, and this is directed by Baals.
Eventually this exposure leads to enslavement on many terrains. It is absolutely necessary to understand who exactly these Baals are, and what they have in store for us.
An overarching study of Baal worship in the Old Testament points out four main typological aspects relevant to the New Testament believer. The context has necessarily largely changed as the community has become more sophisticated, but the age-old practices are just being offered in new packaging.
The first idolatrous practice is the sacrifice of children. In ancient times it was mainly the firstborn children who were sacrificed in fire, but today we experience an even greater onslaught on children. The World Health Organisation estimate that approximately 40-50 million abortions take place worldwide every year. This amounts to about 125 000 abortions per day. 65% of the mothers who abort their children profess the Christian faith. This number is increased by the immense amount of foetuses that are aborted through wrong oral and other contraceptives (see the teachings of Day 445-446), and thus one can understand that Baal worship has become an everyday practice. The spiritual destruction of children through human trafficking, molestation, rape and abuse is also of an endemic scale worldwide. (According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime more than 2 million children are abducted every year, and sold as sex slaves.)
If you are in any way sacrificing your children for the sake of comfort, lifestyle or pleasure, if there is blood on your hands based on abortions you may have had performed willingly or unwillingly, you are engaged in Baal worship, and this will most certainly keep you from the third dimension.
The second idolatrous practice is sexual immorality. Baal worship was originally a fertility cult, and over the ages it led to sexual perversion and addiction. Despite a very liberal perspective toward sexual exposure and activity, our society has become sexualised to a great extent. The consciousness of sexual freedom and hedonism, especially by means of digital media (through, for instance, pornography), enslaves millions of believers and prevents them from moving into the third dimension.
It has also established a secular sexual culture in which Christians lustfully engage. In fact, there seems to be no difference, in overarching terms, between the sexual behaviour, morality, modesty, dress, ethics, etc of Christians and secular individuals. The research of Mark Regnerus, in his book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers, points out how great the discrepancy is between what people profess and how they live their lives. This does not only pertain to the youth – they are often only modelling the promiscuous behaviour of their parents and role models.
Promiscuity is an explicit marker of the Baal cult. It is defined as “indiscriminate mingling or association, especially having sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis”. It is “the ‘dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure’ or ‘lacking legal or moral restraints, especially: disregarding sexual restraints.’”
Promiscuity prevents many Christians from moving into the third dimension of authority.
Thirdly: Baal worship, following Balaam (who is the Biblical signifier of this act) also involves “magic, interaction with evil spirits, incantations, and casting spells”. Joshua 13:22 (ABP) refers to him as “clairvoyant”. There are many things Christians are involved in that I think can be considered Christian clairvoyance. It has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, but are insights that are gained from sensory perceptions. Akin to the way in which clairvoyants operate, these believers do not operate from their rational faculties, but instead rely on “impressions”. This may even lead to dubious “in the Spirit”-behaviour, like laughter or falling in the Spirit, barking, rolling, shaking, etc, that people misinterpret as the working of the Holy Spirit. But alas these are often nothing more than “deceiving spirits” (1 Tim. 4:1).
The practices of Oriental religions that negate the rational faculty also expose the believer to spirits that are not the Holy Spirit.
A great problem brought on by Christian clairvoyance is that these believers are not really hearing from the Holy Spirit, but offer it as such. Over time these believers lose their prophetic gift.
This Baal worship has a wide basis in church practices – Rev. 2:14 warns against it: “But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.” We also find Jude 1:10-11 explaining this Baal worship in the church: “But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.”
Baal worship leads to carnality in believers. The Faussett’s Bible Dictionary explains it in etymological terms: “The apostle Peter (2 Pet. 2:15) says, ‘Balaam the son of Bosor’ (the same as Beor; Bosor is akin to basar, ‘flesh, and Balaam showed himself the ‘son of carnality.’” This extends further: “In 2 Pet. 2:15 Balaam’s example is used as a means to illustrate the pernicious influence of insincere Christian teachers. The author might have alluded to Balaam in the passage immediately preceding 2 Pet. 2:15 because of his abominable counsel. This is done in Rev. 2:14. Here, of course, Balaam is the type of a teacher of the church who attempts to advance the cause of God by advocating an unholy alliance with the ungodly and worldly, and so conforming the life of the church to the spirit of the flesh.” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia).
The fourth form of Baal worship is the worship of the earth, sun, moon and stars. The past twenty years has seen a strong focus on a green consciousness, foregrounding ecological concerns, and rightly so. Unfortunately it has also led to a form of esoteric earth idolatry. Thomas Berry, in his influential book: The Dream of the Earth, explains how “a new type of religious orientation … must emerge from our new story of the universe” (p. 87).
In his book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, former vice-president of the United States of America, Al Gore, has a chapter titled ‘Environmentalism of the Spirit.’ Within it Gore makes this far-reaching statement: “The religious ethic of stewardship is indeed harder to accept if one believes the world is in danger of being destroyed – by either God or humankind. This point was made by the Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin when he said, ‘The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future’. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth, identify it as God’s creation, and accept our responsibility to protect and defend it.” (p. 263).
Gore is referring to the Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s book Christianity and Evolution. Strictly speaking Chardin is not a Christian theologian, as he believers in a universal Christ, who is not a Person, but the “spirit” that resides in all matter. He thus presents a pantheistic worldview that is a fusion between evolution and the Christian faith, which believes that all matter contains God. He thus for instance purports that one can only be saved if you become one with the universe.
Alas – Gore’s Christian veneer does not hide the fact that he is suggesting Baal worship within an ecological context: “Our religious heritage is based on a single earth goddess who is assumed to be the foundation of all life…all men have a god within. Each man has a god within because creation is God.”
If one for instance reads Lynn White, Jnr’s article ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,’ [in Garrett de Bell, red.: The Environmental Handbook: Prepared For The First National Environmental Teach-In (pp. 21-25)] you realise that these perspectives, which are also propagated by the Emergent Church-movement), are not only pantheistic, but clearly also pagan. She suggests that “By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects … The spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated.”
The link to the cult of Baal is clear – it is for this reason that Elijah had to counter the god who, according to the Canaanites, was responsible for rain (1 Kings 17:1). Elijah had to lock the heavens to keep the rain from falling, so that the people of Israel could realise that Yahweh is the God who provides rain (Matt. 5:45).
We need to understand that salvation firstly comes through Jesus Christ, and that the earth will then be saved by the “sons of God”: “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (Rom. 8:19-23).
Recognizing the existence of the ancient cult of Baal in today’s contemporary manifestations thereof is not hard to do. Considered within the greater framework, Baal worship is a syncretic, polytheistic religion, or in simpler terms: there were various gods that were integrated into one, or existed closely together. Everything we discussed in earlier teachings about the mixing of the Christian faith with pagan practices, can also be applied to Baal worship. We genuinely do not realise what we are worshiping (John 4:22) …
- Selah: Please pray through the four contemporary manifestations of the Baal cult, and allow the Holy Spirit to convict you of the presence of any of them in your own life.
- Read: Mark 13; Matt. 24-25.
- Memorise: 24:34
