Last night, supposedly "moderate" evangelical leader Samuel Rodriguez appeared on Glenn Beck's television show to promote his new book. During the conversation, Beck and Rodriguez agreed that full-scale persecution of Christians is coming to American because the country is now engaged in modern-day Baal worship.
"I think people think that I'm nuts," Beck said, "and they think that if you think this way, there's something wrong with you. But let me ask you this, have you spent any time serious time considering, gosh, the time period we're entering in, I may have to make the same kind of choices that [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer did?"
Rodriguez assured Beck that he's "not crazy" because "many Christians have had conversations" about this very topic.
"There's a great probability that in our lifetime," Rodriguez stated, "that we may have to be imprisoned and suffer great persecution, prosecution, as a result of our commitment to biblical truth, to Jesus, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are there, my friend. That's not hyperbole."
The next election is vital, he continued, because "we may be voting in a Jezebel or an Ahab" who will force Christians "to sacrifice truth on the altar of Baal."
"If people would just look up Baal and Moloch from the Scriptures," Beck responded, "we are worshiping them right now, we just don't know it, just in a different way. You used to have to sacrifice your children; it was promoted to have sexual intercourse and if you got pregnant, you brought the baby to the altar and killed the baby. I mean, it's the same thing. It was worship the god of finance, the god of war and the god of the earth. I mean, we're there!"