Modern Idolatry Foreshadowed
GOD’S Word, the Bible, is ‘a lamp to our feet and a light on our path’. (Ps. 119:105, AT) As time goes on that light increases true to God’s promise: “The path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn, that shines ever more brightly till the day is full.” This is what we should expect, for, as the apostle Paul assures us, “All the things that were written aforetime were written for our instruction, that through our endurance and through the comfort from the Scriptures we might have hope.”—Prov. 4:18, AT; Rom. 15:4, NW.
Among the things written aforetime for our benefit are the series of prophetic parallels between Bible times and our day. For example, Jesus stated that just as it was in the days of Noah and Lot so it would be at the time of his second presence. (Matt. 24:3, 37-39; Luke 17:26-30, NW) The destruction of ancient Babylon foreshadowed the destruction of a modern powerful oppressive organization also termed Babylon. (Jer. 51:6-10; Rev. 18:4) And so we also find a parallel between an apostate people of God, Israel, and Christendom, which likewise has apostatized.
Because of the unfaithfulness of the nation of Israel Jehovah God purposed to end its sovereignty and to desolate its land for seventy years. Before executing that judgment, however, Jehovah sent prophets who rebuked them for their wickedness and warned them of impending disaster, even as he sent Noah to warn the antediluvians of the flood and Moses to warn Pharaoh of the plagues. One of the prophets thus sent to Israel with a message concerning her guilt and doom was Ezekiel. He was among the children of Israel that were taken captive together with King Jehoiachin in 618 B.C. (2 Ki. 24:10-16) In the fifth year of this captivity Jehovah commissioned Ezekiel to act as his spokesman:
“O mortal man, I appoint you a watchman to the house of Israel; and whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you fail to warn him—if you say nothing to warn the wicked man from his wicked way, in order to save his life—he being wicked shall die for his iniquity, but his blood will I require at your hand. If, however, you warn the wicked man, and he turn not from his wicked conduct and his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have saved yourself.”—Ezek. 3:17-19, AT.
One day, after Ezekiel had thus served as God’s watchman for a year and two months, a glorious angelic messenger was sent to him: “And lo! there was a form of the appearance of a man, from his loins downward of the appearance of fire, and from his loins upward of the appearance of a luster like that of shining metal.” This heavenly officer by means of visions brought Ezekiel to Jerusalem (he actually being in Babylon at the time) and there, on a tour of inspection, revealed to him the disgusting practices that were being carried on by his fellow Israelites, professed worshipers of the one true God, Jehovah.—Ezek. 8:1-3, AT.
THE IMAGE OF RESENTMENT
The first thing Ezekiel saw was the “image of resentment” standing “north of the altar-gate, at the entrance” to the inner court and which was being worshiped instead of Jehovah God. Being man-made, and replacing Jehovah as the one to be worshiped, it would provoke him to resentment and jealousy even as he had forewarned, and therefore would be appropriately called the “image of resentment”.—Ex. 20:4-6; Ezek. 8:4-6, AT.
This image or idol of resentment that Ezekiel saw was inspired by Satan the Devil and stood for or represented him as the very personification of jealousy and envy. He was jealous and envious of the worship that the first human pair gave to Jehovah God, and so he set out to estrange them from their Maker by means of slander. (Gen. 3:1-5) His offering all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus if he would do but one act of worship before him shows how greedy he was to be worshiped. (Matt. 4:9, 10, NW) And if he cannot get other creatures to worship him, he conspires to at least draw them away from the worship of his rival, Jehovah God.
To be like the Most High, Satan the Devil schemed to bring low the typical theocracy, Israel, which had its headquarters in Jerusalem. When he succeeded in causing the downfall of that nation he felt he had realized the ambition he had nursed in his heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”—Isa. 14:13, 14, AS.
In his ambition to rival Jehovah, Satan, in these last days, has raised up a substitute for God’s kingdom, which substitute arouses Jehovah, the true God, to righteous resentment. Jesus identifies this image for us in his great prophecy regarding his second presence, which, according to Bible prophecy, began in 1914. Therein he speaks of this image as “the disgusting thing that causes desolation, as spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in a holy place”.—Matt. 24:15, 16, NW.
This substitute, the product of Satan’s jealousy, which is a disgusting thing in God’s sight, which arouses resentment in Jehovah God, which desolates the people’s faith in God’s kingdom and which will eventually cause their destruction, is none other than that scheme of modern man, a world association of nations, first making its appearance as the League of Nations and then as the United Nations organization. How disgusting it must have appeared to Jehovah, and how it must have filled him with resentment to note men pushing aside his kingdom and hailing these man-made instruments as “man’s only hope”, the “only light there is” and as “the political expression of the kingdom of God on earth”!
These claims by the clergy certainly have caused the people to look to human schemes and agencies and to lose sight of God’s remedy for mankind’s woes. By extolling, serving and giving their allegiance to these man-made things they have become guilty of idolatry, worshiping the work of their own hands. And those clergymen claim to follow Christ Jesus, who refused to have anything to do with the kingdoms of this world!—Isa. 2:8.
MODERNIST AND FUNDAMENTALIST
The angelic messenger next bade Ezekiel to dig a hole through the wall of the temple court, and doing so, Ezekiel came upon a door. Entering, he saw to his amazement “all sorts of loathsome forms of reptiles and beasts, together with all the idols of the house of Israel, depicted upon the wall all around. And there were seventy of the elders of the house of Israel, . . . standing in front of the pictures, each with his censer in his hand, from which rose the odor of a cloud of incense.” (Ezek. 8:10, 11, AT) Here were men claiming to be worshipers of Jehovah God and at the same time desecrating the walls of his temple with pictures of unclean animals and idols to which they burned incense. What parallels this in our day?
The great majority of clergymen in Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant, while professing to preach the Word of God, and though ordained, titled and paid to do so, teach the theory of evolution, that man is a blood relative of the lower animals, which theory flatly contradicts the Word of God. They deny special creation, that God made all creatures after their kind, even though all the evidence of geology and the operation of the laws of heredity support the Bible’s position in this matter.
So as to be considered wiser than the Bible and to gain the approval of this so-called modern, scientific, “brain-age” world, they speak disparagingly of the Bible accounts of creation, saying that Moses, in the first two chapters 1, 2 of Genesis, merely recorded the primitive, unscientific beliefs of his day, and that God had nothing to do with what he there wrote. These idolaters overlook that Jesus himself quoted from the first chapter 1 of Genesis, which he would not have done had he not considered it inspired. (Matt. 19:4-6) Thus, in their temples of religion the modern elders paint for their parishioners pictures of man owing all he has to the lower animals by means of evolution instead of to the Creator, Jehovah God, thereby engaging in a form of idolatry.
Telling Ezekiel that he would see still greater abominations, his angelic guide brought him to “the door of the northward gate of the house of the LORD. And lo! there sat women weeping for Tammuz”. (Ezek. 8:14, AT) Tammuz was a Phoenician god, one of the demon gods provided by the Devil in his efforts to turn all men away from the worship of the only true God, Jehovah.
Do we find a weeping class of women among those professing to be Christians, the modern counterpart of the Israelites of Ezekiel’s day? Yes, we do. There are many zealous church workers, particularly fundamentalists, who, seeking to bring God into business and religion, lament the decline in the power that their religious organizations are able to exert. Some of these agitate for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States whereby Christ Jesus would be recognized as the spiritual king of the nation; others would be content if only the name of God appeared in that document; as though such measures would make the nation God’s kingdom. While claiming to worship God, they put their religious organizations first.
These earnest church workers, while professing to believe the Bible, are not interested in any of its prophecies that show that God’s kingdom is at hand. They ally themselves with the modernists and evolutionists in their support of the governments of this world as the “higher powers”, mentioned at Romans 13:1-3, as though the beastly totalitarian governments and the corrupt democracies were ordained by God. In keeping with the picture, we find that the womenfolk are the strongest supporters of these religious organizations.
IDOLIZING INTELLECTUALITY
Continuing the inspection, the angelic messenger revealed to Ezekiel, and through him to us today, further idolatrous practices. “So he brought me to the inner court of the house of the LORD. And lo! at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the vestibule and the altar, there were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the LORD, and their faces to the east, worshiping the sun in the east.”—Ezek. 8:16, AT.
The sun is the source of light and energy for this planet. In Ezekiel’s day those who worshiped it overlooked the fact that the sun was merely an inanimate body and that it was Jehovah God who deserved the worship and praise for the blessings the sun brought to man. Those sun worshipers back there find their parallel in the modern clergy of Christendom and their parishioners who worship the light of materialistic worldly knowledge, science, intellectuality, and who ascribe to such the credit for man’s enlightenment and blessings. Thus we find clergymen preaching on “scientific” matters, psychology, philosophy, the arts, the UNESCO; all of which emphasizes worldly wisdom and is very flattering to man but is foolishness in the sight of God.—1 Cor. 1:18-31.
Commenting on this situation, a resolution adopted by Christian ministers at a convention held at Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 29, 1925, and entitled “Message of Hope”, among other things, had the following to say: “World powers, science and philosophy, commerce and religion, . . . claim to be the sunlight of the world, holding forth all the light that shines to enlighten and guide the human race. Intrigue, duplicity, and trickery are freely resorted to by the political and commercial powers; science and philosophy are marked by vanity and self-sufficiency; while the religionists, both Catholic and Protestant, are conspicuous by their arrogance, self-conceit, impiety and ungodliness. Therefore, it is apparent that the remedies offered by any and all of these aforementioned elements are vain, impotent and powerless to satisfy man’s desires.”
FRUITS OF IDOLATRY, AND ITS REWARD
In recent years there has been a great increase in lawlessness. Who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs? According to Jehovah’s Word the fault lies with the professed Christians who have turned to idolatry. “Is it too slight a thing for the house of Judah to do the abominations which they are doing here, that they must needs fill the land with lawlessness, and vex me still more?”—Ezek. 8:17, AT.
When the people note the lack of faith and conviction, the vanity, hypocrisy and greed for selfish gain on the part of their religious leaders, is it any wonder that they themselves are losing whatever regard for God’s principles of truth and righteousness they may have had, and that they have no more any fear of God before their eyes? The idolatrous practices of substituting the United Nations for God’s kingdom, and the theory of evolution for the inspired account of creation, of mourning for their man-made organizations and worshiping materialistic lights of the world, are no power of righteousness against the forces of evil visible and invisible nor against the tendencies toward sin in our mortal bodies.
Will Jehovah God always tolerate this state of affairs? Will he permit it to continue until it sinks from the weight of its own corruption, thus permitting “history to repeat itself”? No, he will not. Just as he called a halt to Israel’s wicked course in the year 607 B.C., so he will call a halt to present-day idolatrous and corrupt practices, even as he warned: “Therefore will I on my part act in fury. My eye shall not spare, nor will I pity; even though they call aloud in my hearing, I will not listen to them.”—Ezek. 8:18, AT.