And I hear the sarcasm in your last sentence there.
I understand this........ that Baal, et al, aren't ALL the embodiment for Satan (aka Lucifer). But it may be easier to pose it that way for the common man to understand.
So, another analogy so that (at least some) common men can understand is that of Trump draining the swamp of corruption in Washington.
But then, it brings me at least to another question or two. Okay. God is God. He created the angels, Lucifer being best and first created. Then Lucifer became dissatisfied with being just Number One (First Officer) and wanted to be Captain. He saw the mistakes that Captain had made and thought he could do better. Does that automatically make him "Evil"?
Lucifer is god of prosperity and power (as well as greed and carnal desires).
Yahweh is God of creation and righteousness.
Is it Good vs Evil? Or just Creator vs Createe?
Does Lucifer have a place where Spirits go after their bodies die? And is it as reported - a place of horribleness?
And what is our place in the whole thing?
We truly don't see through the veil that separates the dimensions and we can't see and we shouldn't see. But........... I want to get it right. I believe I have made the right choice, but I do want to know. I am curious.
This is the area of scripture that drives sane ministers into insanity. I'm going to try and give my understanding, but there simply are no words that suffice, it is very hard to write it down; and that's what drives so many misconceptions, because the prophets were faced with the same dilemma... how do I say this, how do I put it in words?
God is all in all; so if some part of God is suffering in the lake of fire, that is God suffering in the lake of fire. If some part of the throne rebels against the throne, if some part of God is evil, it is still the multifaceted God doing all of this. There are verses in the OT where one book says God's anger performed this or that, and in another book, the exact same act was performed by Satan. Or as Jeremiah put it, "God was an enemy". Although there may be countless molecules of air in the atmosphere, there still is just one atmosphere, we are all connected.
So first of all; as concerning the creation (the angels) ... how did God create them? He breathed them out, same way he created man. So you have a spirit and it breathes out spirits... isn't that separation? A part of God separated from himself. Just like when God took some of the anointing off of Moses and placed it upon the 70 elders appointed to administrate the law.... it is a separation of the spirit. Think of humans as vessels of water; I have this water (life) in my vessel, but then I die, the vessel is broken, and the water returns to the main pool. While I was alive, the life was separate from God, but all along it is still the spirit of life, it still is part of God, and God is all along the sum total of all life, the all in all. What I am trying to show here is that the creation and the creator are both one, we are all manifesting the determined imaginations of the great Spirit, and as this theater plays out, we try to find word pictures that can describe what we are going through... so if it helps to think of sulfur as something that hurts us in this life, then punishment happens in a lake of fire, burning with sulfur... in a spirit realm where there is no hot or cold and there is no sulfur or any other physical element on the periodic table of elements; but there is punishment and there is suffering for some parts of God.
Modern satanism is creating the devil as they worship him. Lucifer means light bearer, perfect in beauty and wisdom; the light was the wisdom... nothing evil about the name Lucifer. Look at the book of Job; the devil comes before the throne of God and they chat as if Lucifer was a cup-bearer for a king; who wrote the book? No one knows. It is the inspired imagination of ancient wisdom, it embodies the wisdom of its times; there is a law there and an understanding of how God works among the children of men. There is a manner of worship, and this we could call a relationship between God and men of those times. I always wondered why Noah built an altar to God and sacrificed some birds? That was long, long, long before the law of Moses.... what was he doing there?
Our understanding of God and our relationship with the spirit has been shaped by the various religions that grew up down here. Since God is the sum total of everything, we could say our growth in understanding changed who God was; to Solomon he was a stern judge to answer to, but to Jesus he was a loving father... I often wondered where Jesus came up with this loving father; you sure can't find him in the OT, traces, but not really; you could say Jesus changed who God was. Ministers would argue that Jesus merely revealed who God was, but in practice, and if you look at God as the sum total of interaction between himself and all his parts (the creation), then it is undeniable that Jesus changed who God was, what's more God keeps changing all through the church age. The Bahaii of Islam did the same to the law of Mohammed; all of a sudden at the end of the 19th century we have a religion that teaches Muslims to accept all the faiths on the planet, and that we are all worshiping the same God. So then the faith was altered, and with it, God was changed. Very soon, the old common faith of worshiping all the gods is going to be attacked by the political leader we call antiChrist or the Beast. As these changes take place on earth in our worship, God himself is changing, the spirit is changing, and certainly this war going on in heaven between the angels is changing things, and all these changes are in fact, changes to God... changes to his spirit. It is like the smoke from a giant forest fire... the smoke is added to the atmosphere, and it changes the atmosphere. Likewise, in the spirit realm, the smoke from the lake of fire rises up from it and it is added to the whole... so we look upon those burning there, because it is part of the whole, we are all connected; a part of us is burning there, and as it burns, we are being changed, and we grow, and we go forward, and eventually, all the parts are rejoined... and when that happens, it is just the same as it is now; because there is one God, one spirit, one experience of God, we are all in this together and we all belong to the one consciousness running the show.