Confronting Ba’al

My friend Cathy Helms gives us a timely reminder of what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote this:
Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. (I Thessalonians 5:1-6 NASB)
It is quite likely that very few people on earth are paying attention to the homage about to be done to Ba’al, that fertility god who appeared in many forms and by many names in the ancient world, and about whom YHVH has some unambiguous things to say. Those who are paying attention will know the spiritual significance behind the symbolic acts of installing replicas of the gate from the temple at Palmyra, Syria, in London and New York City in the name of archaeological preservation of our common world heritage.