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The story of Elijah’s confrontation with Baal worship is quite profound. It has many important lessons for us today. In 2020, I wrote a blog, Penal Substitution: Modern-Day Baal Worship, in which I document how, essentially, all branches of modern Christianity have been infected with the human-law lie that leads people to believe that God is the source of pain, suffering, and death as punishment for sin and that He is a being who needs appeasement through human sacrifice.
In that blog, I review the attributes of the Mesopotamian god Baal:
- The son of El—the father god (as in El-ohim, El-Shaadi)
- The god of weather, thunder, and rain—the one who brought the harvest
- Called the “mighty of the earth”
- Fought against the great serpent Leviathan
- Fought against Mot, the god of death, and in that battle, Baal died and rose again to bring life to the land
Do you see how close the cult of Baal counterfeits the truth? Don’t we worship Jesus, who is the Son of God, who is the God who made all things, from whom all things hold together, and, therefore, the God of weather, rain, and life, and therefore brings the harvest? Don’t we believe that Jesus is the child whom Isaiah calls “Almighty God”? Don’t we believe Jesus fights against Satan, the great serpent, and in His battle against Satan, Jesus died and rose again to bring us eternal life?
Then what made Baal worship wrong? Baal required appeasement, that offerings be made to him in order to pay for sin and to merit his blessing.
Baal became Zeus to the Greeks, Jupiter to the Romans, Thor to the Norse, and Jesus Christ to Christians who worship a punishing, wrathful god that must be appeased by the blood of a human sacrifice to keep him from killing us.
God knew that the issues Elijah was dealing with were the central issues in the cosmic conflict that began in heaven—and that they would keep rising up through history, all the way down until the final end of sin and sinners. And, thus, God had His prophet Malachi write:
See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5, 6 NIV84).
Malachi was not predicting that the individual named Elijah, who is now in heaven, would be sent. He was talking about a people who would rise up before Christ returns to do what Elijah did—call Baal worship false and call people back to worship God in truth. This requires we reject the lie that underpins the belief that God is the source of death and requires appeasement. That lie is that God’s law is imposed law like human law. And it also requires returning to worshiping God as Creator whose laws are design laws.
If we accept the lie of Romanism, that God’s law functions like Caesar’s imposed rules, then we teach that God’s justice is Him using His power to inflict punishment, including death on the wicked, and that God’s justice requires, demands, needs a payment of sinless human blood in order to not kill us. That is Baal worship!
When we return to worshiping God as Creator, we recognize that God does not have to use power to cause death, and that, as the Bible teaches, Satan wields the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), death comes out from sin (Romans 6:23, James 1:15, Galatians 6:8). But God, through Christ, destroys death and removes sinfulness from all who trust Him (Hebrews 2:14; 1 Corinthians 15:26; 2 Timothy 1:10). We realize that God is using power to destroy sin and death and to save all who trust Him, and that any person who dies at the end, dies not when God uses power to inflict harm but when He stops using power to prevent the destruction that sin brings (Romans 1:18, 24, 26, 28).
An Object Lesson for the Last Days
The real historical events of the life of Elijah also serve as powerful object lessons to the plan of salvation. As the Bible tells us, the stories of the Old Testament were recorded as examples to us (1 Corinthians 10:6).
These historical events also reveal that God cannot win the war with physical might and power. After the fire fell at Carmel, all the people shouted, “The LORD, He is God” (1 Kings 18:39 NIV84). But they did not stay faithful. They went back to pagan worship. This is evidence that confirms, along with other historical events recorded in Scripture, that God cannot win this war by using might and power. Also consider the Flood, Sodom, the plagues of Egypt, she-bears and Elisha, and more—none of the events in which Go used power resulted in people becoming loyal and faithful to Him. This is why Zechariah tells us, “‘Not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6 NIV84).
What God wants is our love, trust, loyalty, devotion, friendship, and faithfulness to Him—and none of that can be obtained by imposed law with law enforcement. It is only obtained by the living law of love and truth being internalized into the heart and mind of the believer. That is why God tells us the true covenant of salvation is when He writes His law on our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10). The true plan of God is achieved in us only when we are won back to trust in Him by the evidence of the truth of God’s character of love and are reborn with new hearts and new motives.
And, thus, the historical event at Carmel serves as a powerful object lesson in God’s plan to achieve this cleansing of our hearts and minds.
The two altars, one to Baal and one to Yahweh, symbolize two types of hearts and minds:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1, 2 NIV84, emphasis mine).
We are to present ourselves as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. And the two altars represent the two views of God, the true God and the false god, and, subsequently, what is brought represents the two types of people who worship them.
The water that Elijah had poured over his altar symbolizes the washing of our hearts and minds with the Word and the Holy Spirit:
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25–27 NIV84, emphasis mine).
The altar of Baal was not cleansed with water, just as the hearts of those who worship the dictator god do not have their hearts and minds cleansed from fear and selfishness by the Holy Spirit. Why? Because they reject the Holy Spirit; instead, they choose the spirit of fear and selfishness. The Holy Spirit cleanses by truth and love, and when the truth is rejected, people are refusing the cleansing of their hearts and minds.
Then fire falls and consumes the sacrifice and the altar—this is symbolic not of punishment, not of anger, not of wrath, but of the power of God to cleanse the hearts and minds of His people. When the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost, they saw two streams of fire, the streams of truth and love.
The physical fire called down by Elijah is the type; the Holy Spirit is the antitype who came down at Pentecost and will come down again on the Elijah people at the Latter Rain, which I believe we are going to experience very soon.
But the fire of the Latter Rain falls only on the altar, the hearts and minds, of those who have been washed by the water, the Word, to be cleansed from the lies about God and worship Him in spirit and truth. Elijah and the altar with physical fire is the object lesson; the hearts and minds of people being purified by the Holy Spirit is the reality.
The altar to Baal had no fire fall upon it because their worship was false, consistent with the object lesson that hearts and minds that internalize lies, distortions, fear, selfishness rather than truth, love, and trust are not cleansed and will not be empowered by the indwelling Spirit. They do not have the power of love to burn out the fear, guilt, shame, and selfishness and cleanse them, no matter how desperate the people claim they are for cleansing. Just like the prophets of Baal desperately cut themselves, those who reject the truth will desperately do all kinds of actions to try to get themselves saved, but their actions, because they are contrary to God’s design laws, are without love and trust in the heart; they ultimately cut themselves, injure themselves, harm themselves just like the prophets of Baal did—not necessarily literally, but they cut themselves off from God, cut their souls, wound their hearts and minds, with their refusal of the truth and their preference for lies and evil methods.
Just a few verses before Malachi prophesied about the coming of Elijah prior to the Second Coming, he wrote:
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings (vv. 4:2 NIV84, emphasis mine).
The Sun of Righteousness is rising today, with healing in the rays of light, love, and truth that stream out from Him. All who revere Him in truth, as Creator, as Designer, as Protector, Healer, and Savior, will worship Him in love and truth, in the truth that His laws are design laws, the laws life is built to operate upon. They will reject the false Baal version of a god who is the source of pain and death inflicted for “justice’s” sake. And in their admiration and reverence for our Creator God, they will be filled with every increasing light, truth, and life, healing, transforming, cleansing them so that they will soon receive the outpouring of the Latter Rain and will shine like the sun radiating the glory of God.
Be in awe of God and give Him glory by worshiping Him as Creator, for the hour in human history has come for people to make a right judgment about Him! (Revelation 14:7).
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