We have to worship Baal because he makes the crops grow.
And we like to eat, and our cattle like to eat,
and we eat the cattle too. So like if it doesn't rain, we're all going to die.
Baal is a wonderful guy because he makes it rain and gives us life.
And the prophets are like, no.
So to this point, you have God as man in the Old Testament,
transmitted to you by some isolated verses that sort of hatched the idea,
at least did historically in the Jewish community.
But when you drill down into the text, you've got the Word of the Lord,
you've got the Angel of the Lord,
you've got the Name of the Lord.
And now you've got the One Who Comes on the Clouds.
Now, I'm showing a passage here from the...excuse me, from the Baal Cycle,
religious texts from Ugarit.
Right here at the top, this is the Baal Cycle,
and I'm showing you this for a reason.
We have a line here about Baal and he is called 'the charioteer of the clouds'.
Now in Ugaritic material, this was a stock description of Baal.
You say, so what?
I want to make the point that no one in the ancient world
would have thought Baal was less than deity, full deity. Baal was a deity.
Baal worship was ubiquitous in the ancient world.
Baal is not looked at as like two thirds deity or half deity,
or like an angel who's not really a deity. No, Baal is deity,
no mistake about that. Why is it important?
Because the Old Testament writers on five occasions,
you notice I only have four listed here because I'm holding the fifth one back.
On five occasions, Old Testament writers will lift this epithet,
this description of Baal, the one who comes in the clouds,
the one who rides the chariot through the clouds, you know,
the one who comes on the clouds.
They will lift this language out of the Baal Cycle,
because it's familiar to their readers
and they're trying to get the readers to not worship Baal,
but to worship Yahweh instead.
They'll lift this title of Baal and attributed to the God of Israel, to Yahweh.
Again, for sake of time, I'm not going to go through all these,
you can look them up on your own. But four times, I'll look up one of them.
Let's go here, "O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God; sing praises to the Lord,
to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens;
behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice."
Sing to God, okay? It's the God of the Bible, the God of Israel.
One more, can't resist, Psalm 104;
"O Lord (Yahweh), O my God, you are very great!"
(Here's a description, you get down here)
He makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind."
Four times they do this, and they say, No, it isn't Baal, who's the cloud writer.
And you say, Well, why is it important anyway?
Because clouds are where rain comes from. Baal was a storm deity.
He was the giver of rain, which means he's the giver of life.
Because it's Baal, in Canaan,
"we have to worship Baal because he makes the crops grow.
And we like to eat, and our cattle like to eat, and we eat the cattle too.
So like if it doesn't rain, we're all going to die.
Baal is a wonderful guy because he makes it rain and gives us life."
And the prophets are like, no. No, Baal isn't the one in charge of this.
Is Yahweh of Israel.
I mean, this is the backdrop for Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal
about, you know, fire from heaven.
Who really controls the lightning and the thunder.
It ain't Baal. Is Yahweh of Israel.
Again, this is Baal thinking.
So, in four occasions they use this again to disbaal, to disabuse their readers
that Baal is the one who gives them life.