Ed and Patsy now live in Athens, Alabama and are members at the Pepper Road church. As administrator of this blog, he enjoys sharing thoughts about spiritual maters. Not only his thoughts but good articles from other authors. He is also thankful to have been able to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ for over sixty years.
God told Gideon to “throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it And build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place . . .” (Judges 6:25-26). Gideon did just that, to the displeasure of the men of the city. They demanded that Joash, Gideon’s father, bring out his son that he might die. It is interesting to note that the scriptures do not say that they objected to Gideon’s building an altar to God, but to his tearing down the altar of Baal (v. 31). It is at this point Joash asked, “Will ye plead for Baal?”
I fear that brethren may at times “plead for Baal” in principle. They insist on building up the church without attacking the doctrines of denominationalism and or false brethren. If Gideon had had the wise (?) counsel of some of my brethren, things might have been different. He could have found a nice clean spot that would not be in the way of those coming to the altar of Baal and there built his altar to God. That way, they could have gotten along so nicely together, and who knows, they might could have worked out some kind of union sacrifice upon some heathen feast day. If the worshipers at the altar of the Lord had just played it smart (?) and ignored the altar of Baal, some of the folks in town who believed that one altar is just as good as another might come over and worship at the altar of the Lord. Then the men of the city would sit up and take note of the growth (?) of Gideon’s crowd. But, if Gideon kept running down folks altars he would have to be moved on because things like that just cause trouble.
Paul wrote, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Jesus, His apostles, and early Christians went about casting down all forms of error. It is almost the unanimous verdict of historians that the reason early Christians were persecuted by the heathen public was not their teaching a new system of religion — but their aggressive opposition to other forms of religion. For example “Heathenism was hospitable to new forms and objects of worship, while Christianity was exclusive. Where gods were already counted by the hundreds, even by the thousand, one more god would make no difference . . . One emperor wished to place a statue of Christ in the Pantheon, a building in Rome, still standing, where all the important gods were worshiped. But the Christians rejected the offer with scorn. They would not have their Christ recognized merely as one of many dieties”. (The Story of the Christian Church, J. L. Hurlbut, p. 50)
We hasten to add that when one tears down the “altars of Baal,” that he should not leave the space bare, but erect the “altar of God.” Truly, there is a time to break down, and a time to build up” (Eccl. 3:3).
Brethren, let us not “plead for Baal.”
(This was among the first articles that I wrote for a church bulletin many years ago -Ed)