Tearing Down the Altars of Baal

Tearing Down the Altars of Baal

Below is email communication between Marilyn Carroll, Flip, and Father Francis McClowskey in Saratoga Springs, NY. Operation Save America will be joining Father McClowskey in August, 2003, to hold a regional event. You are all invited!

This email is from Father McClowskey:

Marilyn:

Much thanks for the selections from Times Square Church Pulpit Series. Yesterday and today I studied David Wilkerson's TEARING DOWN THE ALTARS OF BAAL. I selected this first since I wanted to see if he told his readers just where the Altar of Baal is found. I was disappointed.

Ten years ago I challenged a priest who was very prominent in the Charismatic Renewal. He was an excellent teacher and preacher. I was sitting in the kitchen at his rectory and saying "you know, in the charismatic renewal one gets baptized in the Spirit and within a short time one will hear a teaching - or maybe many teachings through radio, tapes, books, etc. - on spiritual warfare. The Spirit-baptized Christian will learn a great deal about spiritual warfare. But there's one thing he won't learn. With all the great teachings on life in the Spirit and how our struggle is not against flesh and blood, no one will tell him where the flashpoint is".

The Spirit-filled priest did not then say "and so where is the flashpoint?" That's because he already knew I went out to the flashpoint and he didn't. He was content to give wonderful biblical teachings about all sorts of things. But he didn't want to risk going to the flashpoint. He understood I was saying that preachers and teachers could wax eloquent about spiritual warfare as long as it was always waged in the spiritual world [in the heavenlies] and required no 3D. No personal risk of the body to go along with the soul and spirit. In other words, as long as it was non-incarnational.

Jesus too could have saved the world without 3D- without suffering, without bodily-risk. He could have asked his Abba for the 12 legions of angels. But He risked.

So while there is not a false word in David W.'s Tearing Down The Altars of Baal, it's too weak of a teaching. You yourself could have a given a better one. In fact you do give a better one in each of your reports where you show forth true spiritual warfare and simultaneously challenge all readers to join the battle, to take the necessary risks that win souls and lives.

I'm not sure if your church has adopted the three year Catholic Biblical cycle for Sunday worship, but most all the denominations have. So in most Christian churches of the U.S. today there was proclaimed Matthew 25:31ff (also Ezek 34: 11ff and 1 Cor 15:20ff) "the least of these". How many preachers will have added into the list "I was a child in the womb in Bridgeport [or one's own locality]. Did you try to save Me?" Or "I was a pregnant mom in crisis. Did you take Me in?"

David Wilkerson probably didn't, if his teaching on the Altar of Baal, is an indication. For him, the Altar of Baal is what is set up in the soul by the demon of unbelief. True but if left it at that, he has over-spiritualized it. It doesn't occur to him that the Molech, the Baal, is down the block and around the corner from him. How come when Gideon is instructed to "Tear Down Baal", he has to assemble an army and go up against the Midianites? Why can't he just do it David Wilkerson's way? Why does Gideon have to be 3D incarnational and Wilkerson doesn't?

What about Josiah tearing down the high places (and so fulfilling the prophecy of the man of God to Jeroboam)? 2 Kings 23:16-18 Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.

The king asked, "What is that tombstone I see?" The men of the city said, "It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it." "Leave it alone," he said. "Don't let anyone disturb his bones." So they spared his bones and those of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

That was what was behind my original question about whether David W. goes out to the Baal to try to demolish it incarnationally. On Christian radio I hear wonderful teachings from Adrian Rodgers and others on all aspects of the Christian life. I have yet to hear one of them identify the flashpoint and invite their listeners to go there and "Tear Down Baal". The only one I know who has done this and actually broadcast over Christian radio via cell phone from in front of the Molech is Richard Bucci of Catholic Radio of Syracuse (his 3 hour program is broadcast on the Christian radio station).

Imagine if all the preachers and teachers on Christian radio stations did their programs from in front of the Baals and Molechs, all the while exhorting listeners to "come on down and join us"... /frfr ><

This is Flip's response:

Marilyn,

Father Francis has a great point here concerning David Wilkerson's theology and praxis. Wilkerson is right on in his teaching about tearing down the altars of Baal. But who is going to go out into the streets of America and tear the most obvious of them (abortion altars) down. One cannot allow the murder of the weakest and, at the same time, proclaim Jesus is Lord!

I liked the way Fr. Francis addressed this issue, for he certainly did not gore David Wilkerson's ox. He simply asked, "Your theology is right, so where are you in allowing your theology to become biography on the streets of NYC?

There is probably not another person on this globe that has done more for the cleaning-up of Times Square than David Wilkerson. Drug addicts, thieves, rapists, murderers, et.al., have been set free through the Gospel of Jesus Christ that David has brought out on the streets. David Wilkerson is one of my absolute heroes. But he has done little or nothing in praxis (incarnationally) to deal with the slaughter of pre-born children at the altars of Baal in NYC.

The altars of Baal do need to be torn down and it is up to us, the Church of Jesus Christ to do it.

Please ask Father Francis if we can put on the web what he wrote?

In Christ,

Flip

This is Father Francis reply:

Come to think of it, I've been in both of David Wilkerson's churches, the AG church he left for NYC from - in central Pennsylvania [because I was visiting my CIM rep for Pa who was rector of the Episcopal Church in the same town] - and the Times Sq. Church, plus I read at least one of his books. Plus, as I said earlier, I learned from Gary Crowthers that the Times Sq. Church was doing bold outreach to homosexuals.

An old-time OpRescue gentleman, Chris Slattery, has opened 5 Pregnancy centers in NYC and is networked with the street counselors (I first met Chris on the streets and in jail with OpRescue) --- just in case Dave W. should ever need a contact in that desperate city.

And of course Flip can use my words any way he wants. I like his use of the Greek form "praxis". Combine that with the Greek prefix "Orth" for "Right" and you have the Scriptural double-edged sword that slays evil, i.e. Orthodoxa (Eng: orthodoxy = right teaching or doctrine) and Orthopraxis (Eng: orthopractice = right practice). The devil works to corrupt both but will generally settle for keeping them apart (keeping the sword single-edged). That's why it's not the liberals who bother me as much as the orthodox who lack orthopraxis. Which is another way of saying "talk the talk" but not "walk the walk". Praise the Lord! /frfr