It is significant that Solomon thought about all that he could ask of God, and he chose wisdom. Because God liked his request and saw the goodness of his heart, He decided to give Solomon everything else as well. (We won't discuss the misuse Solomon made of these things later in his life.)
There is a difference between God giving wealth and prosperity to someone who is totally dependent on Him, and putting dependence on prosperity and wealth as an indicator of God's favour, or not.
Solomon did not ask for wealth, but God gave it to him as a bonus, in the same way that He will give abundance to those who depend wholly on Christ, as a bonus because He loves giving in abundance.
That is not praying to Baal.
But if a person depends on prosperity and puts that before Christ, or mixes that dependance with worshiping God, as Israel did, then that is praying to Baal. Because we worship what we are dependent on.
If I give money to my local church with the expectation of receiving a lot of money back, like a chain letter, and then getting all grumpy when it doesn't happen, this shows dependence on prosperity and an alliegance to the god of prosperity, namely Baal.
You see Oscarr, this post I can agree with. Nearly 100%. The fact is, for the most part (and I am sure their are exceptions, but I am talking as a general rule) those teachers in the WOF and/or prosperity movements don't teach that God is a vending machine.
What happens, is many who come to WOF
personally interpret the message as a get rich quick scheme. They are
only hearing the part they want to hear, and
ignoring the rest. Then, when they don't get rich quck, or get healed quick, etc., the leave the movement in bitterness, and begin to criticize it. Get into groups of others that also misinterpreted the message and wanted to get rich quick or get healed quick or become a successful minister quick and failed, and form
anti-WOF hate groups. Then they transfer their
personal misunderstanding of the message into theological and philisophical
sophistries that are nothing but collections of
false witness (a sin in itself, that was punishable with the same consequence as that which was being falsely accused), that are not battling WOF or the so-called 'prosperity' movements, but rather are battling their own
personal misinterpretation of a system that failed for them.
You can see the truth of this in what they post. They post only a one-sided view of sound bites and things taken out of context to support their
personal misinterpretations, and continue to claim that these movements believe things that the movements continually explain that they do not. These one sided sound-bites and comments taken out of their context
do not truly represent the WOF or so-called 'prosperity' movements, however, they
do represent what their
purveyors were looking for in the movements, and also explain why it failed for them.
If their is any comparison to BAAL worship here, I would have to say it is in the camp of those who
forsook the promises of God, because they
didn't come to pass for them fast enough, and then became critics of the movement. They were unable to compehend faith at all, could not accept that
faith is believing what you cannot see, rather than
experienceing what you can see. Becuase they
didn't see it, they chose to believe that it
wasn't Gods will for them, and missed the message of faith being
the evidence of what one cannot yet see.
Hope this helps.
Peace...
For those of us within the movement, we understand that all the promises of God are yes and amen, (even the ones about money, yes), but we believe them whether we see them or not, and we are willing to stand forever believing, even if we never see. That is what faith is.
Peace...