And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If Yahweh1 be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. (1 Kings 18:21)
Identifying Baal
Historically, Baal is the name of the chief god of the ancient Canaanites and Phoenicians. But, more importantly, what is Baal?
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. (Psalm 115:4-7)
[W]e know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. (1 Corinthians 8:4)
In reality, there is no such thing as a living, breathing god known as Baal. Baal, like all false gods, exists only in the minds of its adherents:
Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. (Isaiah 2:8)
[T]hese men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face…. (Ezekiel 14:3)
And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err…. Thus saith Yahweh of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of Yahweh…. How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart.” (Jeremiah 23:13, 16, 26)
Identifying Baal Today
If idols such as Baal are nothing, why then does Yahweh consider them such a “threat”? The danger in idolatry does not come so much from the idol as it does the idolater:
Whenever man begins by establishing his own approach to God, he ends up by establishing his own will, his own lusts, and finally himself as God.2
The issue is not what idols are, but who they represent. Baal is nothing more than what its adherents have made it—a representation of themselves, resulting in a competing ethical code of their own invention. In other words, Baal is merely an ancient form representing what today we know as humanism.
For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God … and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen…. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree…. And they left all the commandments of Yahweh their God, and … served Baal. (2 Kings 17:7-16)
Identifying Baal Today in America
George Bernard Shaw reportedly said, “The art of government is the organization of idolatry.” Robert Ingram warned, “The other gods about whom we must be concerned are, as they ever have been, to be found in the seats of temporal, or human, government.”3
…[Yahweh’s] law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth…. …their judgment [justice, NASB] and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. …imputing this his power unto his god. (Habakkuk 1:4, 7, 11)
The New American Standard Bible renders Verse 7 more accurately: “…their justice and authority originate with themselves.” This should sound all too familiar:
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Preamble4 of the United States Constitution is arguably the most brazen human claim to sovereignty ever written. If you stop and think about its presumptuous claims, you will see this Constitution is humanism (Baalism) of the rankest sort.
The Preamble declares that “WE THE PEOPLE,” for various reasons, do “ordain and establish this constitution….” In other words, constitutionalism is a collective, agreed-upon form of humanism.
Authority, and thus jurisdiction, is at the heart of idolatry. In one of his many arguments on behalf of the Constitution, James Madison revealed the ultimate authority in the United States Constitutional Republic:
As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power … it is from them that the constitutional charter under which the [authority of the] several branches of government … is derived.5
Alexander Hamilton stated it similarly:
The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.6
This emphasis on the people (by both the federalists and anti-federalists alike) is evidence that they had lost sight of Yahweh and His ultimate authority. George Washington (who presided over the Constitutional Convention) confirmed this self-originating sovereignty in his “Farewell Address”:
This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed … and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and support.7
James Monroe, the Constitutional Republic’s fifth president, concurred:
The people, the highest authority known in our system, from whom all our institutions spring and on whom they depend, formed it.8
John Adams confessed to the same humanism regarding the States’ Constitutions:
It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [the establishment of the States’ Constitutions] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven … it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses…. Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone….9
Such human sovereignty cannot be found anywhere in the Bible. Instead, the Bible is replete with condemnations of such humanism:
In those days … every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25)
It is better to trust in Yahweh than to put confidence in man. (Psalm 118:8)
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 16:25)
According to Habakkuk, not only did the Chaldeans’ authority originate with themselves, but so did their justice. And so does the justice of WE THE PEOPLE: “WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice….” What an audacious assertion. Only Yahweh is just, and only He can establish justice:
Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy [Yahweh’s] throne…. (Psalm 89:14)
Establishing justice implies the ability to create laws in order to legislate moral behavior. Yahweh never delegated this duty to man or to any government created by man.10 Any time autonomous man attempts to establish justice outside Yahweh’s moral laws, the result is always injustice. In Isaiah 5:20, this transposition is depicted as calling good evil and evil good. Instead, Yahweh expects man to instate and enforce His justice as codified in His commandments, statutes, and judgments.
The word “autonomous” comes from two Greek words: auto meaning self and nomos meaning law. The word, which literally means “self-law,” is just another way of describing humanism and, in this instance, constitutionalism. We the People is therefore a contemporary expression of Baal. Constitutionalism is just a modern form of Baalism.
Only a supreme being or god can generate a supreme law. By proclaiming We the People’s Constitution the supreme law of the land (per Article 611), patriots (including many Christians) have made We the People a god:
[The Christian test ban in] Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution closed the door judicially to any transcendent god beyond the political order itself. The Constitution is therefore an apostate covenant; a wholly new god is ordained in it, a god acknowledged by the Framers in order to ordain it and ratify it: The American People….12
The first three words of the Preamble disclose who created the United States Constitution. Because WE THE PEOPLE created the Constitution (the Supreme Law), man must be its Supreme Being.
Idolatry is not so much about statues as it is statutes. To make the Constitution the supreme law of the land is the epitome of idolatry.
Identifying Baal Today in America in Ourselves
Are you a disciple of today’s Baal? You are if you’re a champion of We the People and an advocate of the Constitution.
If We the People be god, then follow them; if Yahweh be God, follow Him:
[C]hoose you this day whom ye will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh. (Joshua 24:15)
Related posts:
Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
Chapter 4 “Article 1: Legislative Usurpation” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land”
1. YHWH, the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, is most often pronounced Yahweh. It is the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible and was inspired to appear nearly 7,000 times in the Old Testament. It was unlawfully deleted by the English translators. In obedience to the Third Commandment and the many Scriptures that charge us to proclaim, swear by, praise, extol, call upon, bless, glorify, and hold fast to His name, we have chosen to memorialize His name here in this document and in our lives. For a more thorough explanation concerning important reasons for using the sacred name of God, see “The Third Commandment.”
2. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) p. 65.
3. T. Robert Ingram, The World Under God’s Law (Houston, TX: St. Thomas Press, 1981) p. 33.
4. Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
5. James Madison, The Federalist, No. 46 (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888) p. 217.
6. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 22 (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888) p. 135.
7. George Washington, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols. (New York; NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892) vol. 13, p. 297.
8. James Monroe, “Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements,” 4 May 1822, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles20.html.
9. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865) vol. 4, pp. 292-93.
10. Chapter 4 “Article 1: Legislative Usurpation” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
11. Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
12. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989) pp. 528-29.
excellent.
I always thought of America as the PRIMARY Christian nation, only now in judgment, and invaded with foreigners trying to get a piece of the American pie because God has blessed it so much. I always thought “we the people” was only intended to give the people majority opinion and take authority away from govt.
Steven, thank you for responding.
If you haven’t already, you might want to check out Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt3.html.
While some colonies were set up as Christian, the United States as a whole has always been a secular state, with its philosophical origins coming from the enlightenment, not religion.
“…Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835: ‘They [the 17th-century Colonials] exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and, at the same time more instructive, than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social problem which the United States now presents to the world is to be found [in perfect fulfillment of Deuteronomy 4:5-8].
“Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little State of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and … they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ … copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy….’23
“America was exalted in the eyes of the world because of her applied righteousness, embodied in Yahweh’s perfect law. Since 1788, when the United States of America, as a nation, stopped following Yahweh’s laws and began following the laws of WE THE PEOPLE, our legislation has ceased providing righteous instruction to others. Instead, the rest of the world now holds America in disdain. If America hopes to regain her favored status in the eyes of the world, she must return to her original Constitution….”
For more, see online Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt3.html.
Connecticut was one of the most brutal theocracies. As late as the 1810s there was a case of a minister who had to flee for fear of his life as he was (correctly) accused of heretical views.
But Connecticut separated Church and State in 1818. The theocracy was over.
Rhode Island was the place to where people fled the theocracies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. It never had an official Church. Neither did New Jersey or Pennsylvania. All the other colonies did although they ranged from oppressive theocracies (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia) to a simple support of clergy with tax funds (New York, North and South Carolina, and Georgia).
As a non-Christian I am very happy that the US rejected theocracy in 1788.
TRUE Christianity (not false man-made traditions masquerading as Christian) IS enlightenment at the highest level.
Great article, and well articulated. Thanks, Pastor Weiland, for your diligent work. Yah bless.
Yes, Yes! Thank you, Pastor Weiland. You have articulated the problem and delineated the choices with clarity that is surely inspired.
What does it mean that “apart from the Law, sin is dead” (Rom. 7:8b)?
Pieder, thank you for your question.
The following two verses shed light on
Romans 7:8:
“…by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20)
“Whosoever
committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression
of the law.” (1 John 3:4)
The triune law of Yahweh (His
commandments, statutes, and judgments) reflect His everlasting
righteousness and immutable morality. Consequently, the law reveals sin
ourselves.
If your question was intended to allegedly negate the
law under the New Covenant, please note the immediate context of the
verse you inquired about.
“Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” (Romans 7:12)
“For we know that the law is spiritual….” (Romans 7:14)
And the following, also from the book of Romans:
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” (Romans 3:31)
“The law sends us to the gospel for our justification; the gospel sends us to the law to frame our way of life.” (Pastor Samuel Bolton (1606-1654)
For more, see free online book “Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/law-kingdomFrame.html.
Is the good news that “…by the law is the knowledge of sin” or is it that the Christian is NOT under the law (of sin) and that, as a consequence, “sin is dead” (Rom. 7:8)?
The latter, of course. However, the latter certainly does not do away with the law that defines sin.
Once again, “The law sends us to the gospel for our justification; the gospel sends us to the law to frame our way of life.” Pastor Samuel Bolton (1606-1654)
So then you agree that sin, for the Christian, is always dead?
Pieder, unless you can tie this back into what this article is addressing, you’re getting too far “afield” for this discussion.
Which law, that was added 430 years after the covenant, has Ted suggested that we implement?
Wow this was very enlightening. This article sheds light on why our money looks like it does and that the god in the phrase “IN GOD WE TRUST” is not the One True God,but a different god,one we should not be following.
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Mr Weiland, thank you for your insights.
1 Corinthians 6:19 says our body is the temple of God’s Holy Spirit.
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul refers to the “man of lawlessness” who is doomed to destruction because he has set himself up in the temple as his own god. Which also reminds me of the last verse in Judges, how men did what seemed right to them.
This describes humanism, when men deify themselves in the temple of their bodies and substitute sinful man’s secular law for God’s holy Law.
God in not mocked. He who worships himself, worships a fool.
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This accusation of “baalism” to the drafters of the US Constitution is inaccurate and misses the point, misses the context in my opinion.
The problem with the time was that the Anglican Church was The Crown, the British Monarch as head of the Anglican Church, and the drafters of the US Constitution were Christian men who wanted to break from that British control. The referenced “Heaven as counsel” by John Adams was a direct reference to the Anglican Church as just another human institution and therefore a non-authority above the Common Sense of a Christian People and their comprehension of God’s Law. The assumption was that God is the supreme authority, the Common Law or Natural Divine Law supersedes any civil law including the Constitution and especially His Majesty’s Church Hierarchy. Benjamin Rush made this clear. Rush emphasized the supremacy of God in all endeavors, Family as the most important temporal accomplishment upon which, and only upon which, Nation can be established; God, Family and then, and only then, Nation. “We The People” in this context merely means “We, Christians, God creatures, and not followers of an Invested Church With A Monarch as its Head.”
Hagop Nalbandian, [09.02.21 01:30]
This individual is overthinking the Masonic component, even accusing a known anti-Mason such as Madison of “Baalism”
Jack, thanks for responding.
When one ceases cherry picking the 18th-century founding fathers quotations, it’s evident that they were neither Deists in the purest sense of the word, nor were they Christians in the biblical sense of word. Instead, they were theistic rationalists.
Please carefully consider the following:
“He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” (Proverbs 28:9)
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'” (Matthew 7:21-23)
Christian men would never produce a government document such as the one the framers created.
Hopefully, you’ll agree that there’s only one standard by which everything (including the Constitution) is to be ethically evaluated: By Yahweh’s unchanging morality as reflected in His Ten Commandments and their respective statues and judgments. When the Constitution is actually examined by this standard (instead of a bunch of dead politicians’ cherry-picked quotations*), it’s found to be anything but biblically compatible. In fact, there’s hardly an Article or Amendment that’s not antithetical, if not seditious, to Yahweh’s sovereignty and morality.
For evidence, see free online book “Bible Law vs. Constitution: The Christian Perspective,” in which every Article and Amendment is examined by the Bible, at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/blvc-index.html
Then, find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/ConstitutionSurvey.html and receive a complimentary copy of the 85-page “Primer” of “BL vs. USC. ”
*Cherry pick his quotations and even Obama can be made to look Christian.