Follow the bouncing Baal

Guess who this passage from the “New York Times” (Nov. 10) refers to:

“They were particularly alarmed when he told a prominent Italian atheist in an interview published in October, and translated into English, that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil” and that everyone should “follow the good and fight the evil as he conceives them.”

Yes, it’s the “oh-so-humble” new Pope Francis. He went on to say in this same interview that “the most serious evils” today are “youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.” He called proselytizing “solemn nonsense.”

Catholicism, of course, is a form of Baal worship, something Jordan is focusing in on again for his Wednesday night studies:  

“In I Kings 18 you’ve got some people who have a ‘house of gods’ with priests called ‘fathers’ who wear long robes, use idols as aids to worship, love titles, love the greetings in the market, love to have people bow to them and kiss them and they sacrifice to calves . . .

“In their worship services, they’re doing penance with the mutilation; the cutting. If you’re familiar with the flailing and so forth . . . When the movie ‘The DaVinci Code’ came out, the Catholic order Opus Dei became widely known and one of things they do, and the guy did it in the movie, is they literally wear torture rings around their legs and around their arms and body to do penance to get God to think better of them. Where did they get that from? This stuff here in I Kings.

“You go into all kinds of religions in the world and you’ll see them flailing and beating their body. That’s what this religion does. Trying to demonstrate to God how serious you are.”

*****

In the chapter, Elijah calls Israel out for its worship of Baal. He says to them on Mt. Carmel in verse 21, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”

Jordan explains, “He’s saying, ‘Let’s fish or cut bait here, guys. If Baal’s God let’s follow him; if the Lord’s God, let’s follow him. Let’s try them out. We’ll see who’s God.’

“When you count attendance, who looked like they had the more successful ministry? They got him 450 to 1. I’ve told people for years, if you’ve got more than eight people, you’ve got more than Noah had. Poor Elijah’s by himself. Like I said, there still were 7,000 he didn’t know about. You never are alone; you just don’t think you got friends.

“Verse 24 goes on, ‘And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.
[25] And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.’

“He’s saying, ‘Put up or shut up.’ Notice from the passage the time of their services was ‘from morning til noon.’ In the Baal service, you had to get out by 12. Now the reason for that is they’re worshipping the sun and the sun’s going up in the morning but after 12 it starts going down. People today say, ‘Preacher you got to quit by 12,’ and that’s because they want to beat everybody to the restaurant, but that’s a hang over of this stuff in Kings.

*****

“In I Kings 19, Elijah’s bellyaching. He’s had the great day on Mt. Carmel, facing down all this crowd and he came down the mountaintop and Jezebel says, ‘Boy, I’m gonna do to you what you did to my preachers,’ and Elijah hits the road running, scared of her, and he’s all depressed now and God says to him in verse 18, ‘Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.’

*****

“Hosea 13:2 says, “And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.”

“The calves are going to turn out to be bulls and it turns out to be an ox. The calf goes back to Genesis 3 when Satan is described as a calf of the field. He’s an ox. You say, ‘Wait a minute, Satan was a serpent,’ but you see these are describing his nature, not his appearance.

“The dude that Eve faced in the Garden of Eden was not some slithering, scale-ridden, fork-tongued, armless, legless snake. What she faced was a handsome, good-looking, 33-year-old specimen of manhood who bowled her over. Tall, dark and handsome. Smooth-talking.

“But his character was that of a serpent. Subtlety, destructiveness. And when he bit, the poison of asp was under his lips. The words were lies. But in his identity he was a calf. He was an ox.

“You come along and put two fingers up like that behind somebody’s head, you don’t do that to compliment them. That’s the horns. That’s the symbol for Baal right there.”