A replica of ancient Palmyra’s great Arch of the temple of Ba’al is currently making its rounds in America and Europe. It’s a bit spooky that Plainfield’s Bible lesson on Gideon should appear concurrently with the appearance of the Arch of Ba’al on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and that, without knowing this, I had been thinking about writing specifically concerning Gideon’s destruction of his father’s Ba’al grove.
The Ba’al Arch exhibit is meant to send a message of political/cultural resistance to ISIS, which destroyed the Palmyra ruins in 2015 (along with other significant Middle Eastern sites, including the tomb of Jonah). Be that as it may, Jonathan Cahn points out the significance of this occasion in more spiritual terms here: https://bit.ly/2RsO0Hh.
God’s call to Gideon was not in a “still, small voice,” but was accompanied by signs and wonders, along with God describing him as “thou mighty man of valor.” God’s purpose for giving Gideon these “mountaintop” experiences (Judges 6:11-24) was to prepare him for the trial of his life, his greatest and most difficult work, which was not defeating the Midianites ravaging his land, but rather to annihilate the enemy within.
In Judges 6:25, Gideon had most likely spent a good part of his day building an altar to the Lord; nevertheless, “that same night”, God commanded him to tear down and destroy his father’s altar to Ba’al and its grove, along with its Astaroth poles. Gideon obeyed and then, as a soldier under orders, built yet another altar to the Lord in place of the wrecked one.
Matthew 10:35-6 – “For I have come to turn a man against his father … [and] a man’s [worst] enemies shall be those of his own household.” Gideon, having worked all night with a bull and ten servants, now had to face, alone, the wrath of his father and other politically powerful people associated with the Ba’al grove. But Gideon successfully stood his ground against this collective, intimidating outcry of outraged personal sense.
After passing this challenging physical, emotional, and spiritual endurance test (especially with family and civil authorities), all the other victories that Gideon accomplished were more or less an afterthought.
As it was in Gideon’s day, so it is today: a time of apostasy, infidelity, idolatry, abuse and sacrifice of children on the altars of Ba’al: a time of night. To save civilization, First Things must come first, that is, First Love. This means building, in Spirit, two altars dedicated to God, one before and one after throwing down each altar dedicated to Ba’al — with dispatch, no excuses — even this very night.