The theme of my church’s summer Bible conference this year was, “Sermons You’ve Always Wanted to Hear.” Topics included water baptism, the pre-Tribulation Rapture and why Grace Believers “still feel guilty.”

The sermon, or Bible study, I keep waiting for someone to give is on the intricacies of Baal worship. I just don’t think there’s near enough said about it given the fact that it will be reconstituted into the official religion of the Antichrist, capturing the whole world’s allegiance.

From an article I found on the internet published by the Christian Research Institute’s The Voice, author Dennis Bratcher writes, “While we have no surviving Canaanite religious texts, the accounts of Baal worship in the Old Testament correspond closely to the existing versions of the Baal myth and what we know of religious practices in surrounding areas. The influence of this religious system on Israel can hardly be overestimated.”

Bratcher says the disobedient Israelites “had one God for crises and another god for everyday life. The actual worship of Baal was carried out in terms of imitative magic whereby sexual acts by both male and female temple prostitutes were understood to arouse Baal, who then brought rain to make Mother Earth fertile (in some forms of the myth, represented by a female consort, Asherah, Astarte).

“When crops were abundant, Baal was praised and thanked for his abundant rain. It is in this context that drought had such impact throughout the biblical traditions. Not only was lack of rain a threat to survival, it was also a sign that the gods of the Baal myth were unhappy. It is this context that the ‘contest’ between Elijah and the prophets of Baal carries such significance. The issue is really who controls the rain, Baal or Yahweh.

“The Israelites struggled with Baal worship until the time of the exile, especially in the more agrarian areas of the northern Kingdom of Israel (also due to some degree to its official establishment as a state religion in the North for a time during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, c. 850 BC). However, as Jeremiah makes clear, it was a recurring problem in the Southern Kingdom as well. Largely due to Jeremiah’s insistence that the nation would fall because of its lack of commitment to God exemplified in its dabbling in Baal worship, the problem faded after the return from exile in 538. While there were traces of it later, Baal worship was never again the problem that it was prior to the Exile.”

As Bratcher reminds, the practice of Baal worship “included cult objects like household idols, images, sacred poles, trees, and high places, as well as sexual practices of the fertility religion, which were all ‘abhorrent’ or ‘offensive’ to Israelites (Lev. 18:22, Deut 7:25, 1 King 14:24, etc).”

Referring specifically to the Baal worship of gentiles, he writes, “In several shrines long trains of priests, distributed into several classes and clad in special attire, performed the sacred function; they prayed, shouted to the Baal, led dances around the altar, and in their frenzied excitement cut themselves with knives and lancets, till they were all covered with blood. In the meantime, the lay worshippers also prayed, kneeling, and paid their homage by kissing the images or symbols of the Baal, or even their own hands. To this should be added the immoral practices indulged in at several shrines in honor of the Baal as the male of reproduction, and of his mate (Asherah, Astarte, Ashtaroth, and Ashtoreth).”

Given Catholicism, from its inception, is a take-off on Baal worship and represents the modern-day manifestation of it, it’s interesting to note that the bronze statue of St. Peter at the Vatican has a worn away foot from all the people touching it and kissing it over the centuries.

The definition given for Ashtoreth in The Living Bible Encyclopedia, published in 1968, informs that famed biblical critic Wilhelm Gesenius “related the name Ashtoreth to the Persian word ‘sitarah’ or ‘star’ and connects it with Venus, the goddess of love.”

Many Catholics aren’t aware of this but the worship of Mary as the “Queen of Heaven” has its roots in Baal worship.

In his new expose book called “The Apostasy of the Christian Church,” long-term Christian missionary R. Dawson Barlow, writes, “Just as the apostate Jews in the Old Testament days worshipped a false goddess whose title was the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, the same thing is true of apostate Christendom, for she too has been led astray in the worship, of a ‘Mary,’ but not the Mary of the Bible, but an invented, construed, manufactured Mary, who is designated as the QUEEN OF HEAVEN.

“The only time that title is used in Holy Scripture, it is never used to speak of Mary. It speaks of a female pagan deity that the children of Israel chose to worship when they fell into paganism. Note the inspired account of the only ‘QUEEN OF HEAVEN’ in the Holy Scripture (Jer. 44:17-19, 25). . .

“It is commonplace in many liturgical churches to hear Mary referred to as the ‘QUEEN OF HEAVEN,’ not only without one iota of Scriptural support, but actually in spite of clear teaching to the contrary. But now that title has been expanded and exalted even higher than the ‘QUEEN OF HEAVEN’ in some sectors. In Orlando, Fla., my wife and I passed by a magnificent basilica dedicated to Mary, whose title was ‘Our Lady Queen of the Universe.’ How are such conclusions determined and concluded? There is only one answer—BY ADDING TO THE WORD OF GOD. Once the floodgates of extra-biblical revelations are opened, there will only be more of the same to follow!”

Here’s another great passage from Barlow’s book:

“Just north of Dan (in Israel) was the place called Baal-Gad. It was from there that King Ahab married the infamous woman, Jezebel.

“Holman’s Bible Dictionary says of her: ‘His wife, Jezebel, was the daughter of Ethbaal, priest-king of Tyre (which is on the Mediterranean Coast line, just southwest of Baal-Gad) (I Kings 16:31). She was a devotee to the Tyrian god Melqart and gave open endorsement to the worship of Baal in Israel by supporting 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah (I Kings 18:19).’

“Following Ahab’s death, the notorious Jezebel continued to be a significant force in Israel for ten years as queen mother until at last she went to the dogs (literally--the dogs ate her except her hands).

“As the Danites settled near Jezebel, so has the professing Body of Christ. Concerning Dan, Herbert Lockyer, in his great work, All the Men of the Bible, says, ‘The history of the tribe of Dan is darker than the history of any other of the twelve tribes of Israel. When we come to the sealing of the twelve tribes of Israel (in Revelation 7) Dan’s name is left out.’

“It is interesting that the only tribe which had their own priesthood, who implemented idols in their worship, etc., was Dan. Even so, the divine prophetic record shows that there will arrive on the prophetic scene, a great (in size, not character) woman, a spiritual whore (actually apostate Christendom which will be left behind after the Rapture) who will deeply trouble the saints of the Tribulation.

“Listen to how she is described: And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Rev. 17:1-5)

“Would it surprise any reader to discover the name of that woman? It is given in an earlier narrative in the Revelation. Note the record: Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. (Rev. 2:20)

The great whore in the Old Testament was called ‘THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN.’ ”