As part of his visit the other weekend to New York City, Pope Benedict traveled via the Popemobile to Ground Zero to bless the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Today, spiritual leaders of all different stripes in the so-called ‘Christian evangelical community’ are into blessing physical property.

Jordan recalls watching on Channel 38 in Chicago a TV preacher who was offering to come over to a couple’s house and anoint it, thereby casting out demons from the previous homeowners.

“Somebody had this problem, saying, ‘Well, there used to be these old pagan Indians on our place and their spirits are still haunting it,’ ” explained Jordan. “Now, you think, ‘Kuckoo, kuckoo!’ I mean, what kind of superstitious nonsense do people buy into on Christian television in Chicago, the nation’s second city?! Enlightened 21^st century American Christians, that’s who!

“It’s all the biggest bunch of pagan nonsense you ever heard in your life and yet it isn’t so funny because up and down the streets right here (near Addison and Harlem) you’ll see residents who’ve invited black-robed, teraphim-wearing priests called ‘fathers’ to come over and bless their place.

“So it’s all part of the same system, whether it’s the Catholics or the men from the ‘good godly evangelical ministry’ downtown at Channel 38. It’s all the same kind of stuff. It’s the same system.

“And you know what you’re to do whenever you see this stuff? Paul said, ‘Run! Get away!’ You say, ‘Well, maybe I can convert ’em.’ He said, ‘Run!’ That’s Paul’s advice. You identify them, see what they are and then high-tail it the other way.”

*****

Mark 12:38-40 is just one of dozens of passages in the Gospels demonstrating a clear connection between the Pharisees and Israel’s Baalite priests of earlier generations.

In these verses, Jesus Christ warns the “common people” seated in the temple, “Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces,
[39] And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:
[40] Which devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.”

*****

The bottom line is Baal worship today doesn’t just exist in the Roman Catholic system; it is represented by Christians of all denominations who follow Israel’s prophetic program found in the Four Gospels and the first part of the book of Acts.

As Jordan explains, “Satan’s always the Great Counterfeiter, so when God takes the kingdom program, and the ministry in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and early Acts, and sets it aside to start a new program with the Apostle Paul, what do you think Baal worship would have done with the old program?

“Could it be that since God isn’t doing that anymore, ‘Well, we’ll just make like He is and assimilate it’?

“Just like (the Baalite priests of Israel) picked up Old Testament Judaism and corrupted it, when the Lord Jesus Christ interrupted the prophetic program and began the ‘dispensation of grace’ and ‘the mystery’ program, the religious system reached back and took up what God had set aside, resurrecting it to use as what God’s doing today.

“Do you know the thing I’m worried about more than the church down on the corner that calls itself the Queen of Heaven? Paul writes in Galatians 3:1, ‘O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth.’

“What it is to be bewitched? I’m not talking about Samantha on TV. You remember when Saul went to the witch of Endor, what’d she try to do? ‘Bring up Samuel for me so I can see him and talk to him.’ And when Samuel appeared, it scared the britches off of her.

“Witches were mediums to communicate with the dead. When God takes the law program and Israel’s program and sets it aside, you know what the Adversary does? To be bewitched, folks, is to try and go back and resurrect something and to be cast under the spell of believing that something God pronounced dead is resurrected back to life. And it’s the vain, apostate religious system.

“It’s another form of Baal worship that takes a Believer back to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as if it was where their ministry is in what God’s doing today.

“Under that (false system) they’re to go over to Hebrews through Revelation and take those books written for the nation Israel in the ages to come and say, ‘That’s what God’s doing today; there’s no difference,’ and make like it’s all the same.

“The scary thing about it is there are saved people—good, godly, wonderful, outstanding examples of manhood and womanhood and godliness and all the rest of it—caught up in that; just like there was in Israel.

“When Jesus told Israel, ‘Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees,’ He wasn’t talking about bad guys. He wasn’t talking about the people who ran the saloons in town, or the betting parlors, or the massage parlors, or the extortion rings.

“He was talking about people who could stand on the street corner and say, ‘I thank you I’m not like those guys over there.’ They were righteous in their conduct and their outward performance; they were good, godly people in a religious sense, but they were just plain lost.

“I Corinthians 6 compares with II Corinthians 6 and you need to understand the importance of this. You need to be able to identify what the (false) religious system is and how it operated so that now, in the dispensation of grace, when you see it operating out there, you know how to spot it.

“Some of it’s real obvious. Just look at what they did in the past—the priests called ‘fathers’, the sacrifices, bowing down to idols, the buildings, the Queen of Heaven. That’s all real obvious.

“But there’s an undertone in all of that you have to catch; they’re trying to counterfeit what God’s doing—trying to make it look as close to the truth as they could. They were willing to use the Bible and assimilate it with everything else.”