IDOLATRY & �The Last Days

The Last Days – Types and Shadows from the Bible

and the Book of Mormon

Share and Learn Together – Isaiah Institute Book Club

The Great Sin of our Generation

• All is not well in Zion
• Wicked politicians
• Wicked religious leaders
• Three (3) great tests
• Our state:
• Drunken
• Blind
• Cursed
• The cure – Righteousness
• Repentance
• Covenants

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• The Nature of idolatry
• Coexistence of true and false worship
• Images
• Violence and sex
• Rock music
• Organized sports
• Human idols
• Imaginations of the heart
• Nature cults
• Mammon
• Babylon
• The arm of flesh
• Elitism-Pharisaism
• Pollution of the temple
• Conclusion

All is not well in Zion

• What does God tell us about nations and their leaders in the end-time?
• Wicked Politicians:
• As Isaiah depict them, human policies, laws, and legislations, such as those of the United Nations and the nations of the world, which leave God out of the discussion, and of the cabals that manipulate finances for personal power and gain, are putting the direction of the world affairs at variance with God’s will for humanity.
• Wicked Religious Leaders:
• Isaiah describes them as gluttonous dogs, and insatiable, such indeed are insensible shepherds. They are all diverted to their own way, every one after his own advantage.

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Drunken, Blind & Cursed

• Drunken
• These too have indulged in wine and are giddy with strong drink: priests and prophets have gone astray through liquor. They are intoxicated with wine and stagger because of strong drink; they err as seers, they blunder in their decisions.
• Blind
• Their watchmen are altogether blind and unaware; all of them are but dumb watchdogs unable to bark, lolling seers fond of slumber. As the job of Jehovah’s watchmen is to report to his people what they see and hear, those who are blind and unaware see and hear little of consequence and fail to warn his people: “Who is blind but my own servant, or so deaf as the messenger I have sent? Who is blind like those I have commissioned, as uncomprehending as the servant of Jehovah – seeing much but not giving heed, with open ears hearing nothing?” The final fate of the blind watchmen, literally and figuratively, is to be devoured by wild beats – a covenant curse.
• Cursed
• But the people do not turn back to him who smites them, nor will they inquire of Jehovah of Hosts. Therefor Jehovah will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm top and reed, in a single day; the elders or notables are the head, the prophets who teach falsehoods, the tail. The leaders of those people have misled them and those who are led are confused.

Three (3) great tests

• (1): An arch-tyrant who conquers the world and demands all peoples’ allegiance in the pattern of the ancient king of Assyria and Babylon.
• (2): An end-time equivalent of the ancient Babylonian empire, whose social-economic structure was founded in the manufacture and sale of idols or false gods.
• (3): Ecclesiastical leaders who excommunicate and dis-fellowship God’s servants for their zeal and love of the truth.

The Cure: Righteousness

• What glorious promises does God extend to those who are righteous?
• 32:16-18, 20: The results of righteousness an assured calm forever,
• 51:3: Covenant curses reversed – ruins, wilderness, and desert – joyfully reversing into covenant blessings.
• 54:11-14: You shall be firmly established through righteousness
• 54:11-12: Ascending to higher spiritual levels.
• 54:12-14: You shall be far from oppression and have no cause to fear
• 54:12-14: Jehovah enhances the blessings of (the righteous’) posterity by personally teaching them.

The Cure: Righteousness

• How can I become righteous the way God defines it, not self-righteous?
• First step toward becoming righteous is to repent of doing evil and to continue in this state of repentance at all times and in all places.
• Second, it is to make and keep covenants with God by keeping his law and word without fearing social and societal consequences.
• Third, it is to serve humanity, offering your service and your trials and afflictions in life as a freewill offering to God.
• Fourth is to participate in divinely instituted temple ordinances designed to bring one into God’s presence.

The Cure: Righteousness - Repentance

• Repenting of worshiping idols. . .constitutes an integral part of returning to God (42:17-23; 55:22,7)
• Parallel verses in Isaiah show that his people giving up the things they covet that money can buy defines repentance itself.
• When Jehovah’s people repent of idolatry and banish their idols, the spiritual blindness and deafness they caused likewise disappear.
• Isaiah states: In that day men will throw away to the moles and to the bats their idols of silver and gods of gold which they have made for themselves to adore…then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

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The Cure: Righteousness - Repentance

• Righteousness assures God’s divine protection
• Repenting of transgressions; waiting for and trusting in God to deliver you in the time of trouble; proving faithful to him through every kind of adversity; fulfilling the laws of his covenants; and willingly suffering trials and persecution in his name – all assure…his divine protection (for) ourselves and our loved ones.
• We will not be alone in our journey toward righteousness: I, Jehovah your God, instruct you to your good, guiding you in the way you should go.
• Your ears will hear words from behind you saying, This is the way; walk in it!
• You will discards as unclean your graven idols plated with silver, your cast idols gilded in gold; you will eject them as a menstruous woman (her impurity) and say, away with you!
• In that day every one of you will despise your idolatrous silver and gold by which you have incurred guilt. (31:6-7)

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The Cure: Righteousness - Covenants

Laws pertaining to each covenant correspond to the blessings God promises those who keep them. Not only do all covenants that God makes benefit those who keep their laws, but he deals with all of humanity only within the framework of his covenants.

The Cure: Righteousness - Covenants

• Repent & Be Baptized (Covenant)
• Receive Holy Ghost
• Exercise Obedience (Covenant)
• Learn to Sacrifice (Covenant)

• Exemplify Gospel of Love (Covenant)
• Be Chaste (Covenant)
• Consecrate all things to God (Covenant)
• Pray with righteous intent

Participate in divinely instituted temple ordinances and covenants designed to bring (us) into God’s presence

You will then be prepared for the reception of the 2^nd Comforter & to enter the presence of the Father

The Nature of Idolatry

• In essence, idolatry comprises any activity that diverts a worshiper’s attention from the true God and his law to a counterfeit.
• True worship exists within a narrow compass – We must offer all of our heart, might, mind and strength.
• God ultimately destroys and dispossesses people who indulge in idol worship

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Coexistence of True and False worship

• People often worship the true god alongside the false gods.
• Laying stress on outward observances…People feel the need to scrupulously preserve the exterior of true worship…actively attend(ing) religious meetings, multiply(ing) sacrifices at the temple.
• The appearance of true worship persists in every stage of apostasy.
• They maintain a careful equilibrium in order to preserve an identity with the God of Israel..., but at the same time they follow their own gods as they please.
• Worship of the true God and false gods becomes fused.
• The concept of the true God gets distorted while the false gods assume the authenticity and endorsement that belongs to the true God.
• For God’s people, syncretism lies but one step away from severing their spiritual roots. It forms the final stage of apostasy before God brings on his judgement.

Images

• The scriptures teach that Israel must not make for itself graven images or statues, nor make likenesses or pictures of anything in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, or in the waters below the earth.
• The purpose of this prohibition was not to inhibit the creation or enjoyment of art but to ensure that no one’s heart “turn away” from God to the images.
• A strong suggestion here is that (images) could become a huge distraction if people began focusing on things created instead of on the creator.
• Whatever people work at, spend time and resources on, that is what they serve.
• God is no longer central to their thoughts: They have taken something worthy of reverence out of context and destroyed its value by overemphasizing it.
• Anciently (Israel) doted upon images of the elite of Babylonian society, images in color of people in splendid attire.
• They became Infatuat(ed) (with) the image…rather than reality…an obsession with unreality lies at the heart of idolatry.

Images

• To idolaters, something tangible or corporeal, such as an image, possesses more appeal than something intangible and incorporeal.
• Images may not necessarily be evil in themselves, people’s partiality toward them and their negative effect on behavior have become causes for concern.
• (Images have) power, somehow, to deflect our entire attention. Upon these images (they) dote, preoccupied for hours. Our behavior toward one another become colored by what our images dictate.
• There exists an element of competition…Those who invest more resources than …neighbors will enjoy bigger and better images.
• The effects of television, movies, and video games, to name but a few instances of modern imagery, parallel those of ancient image worship, turning people’s minds and hearts away from God, alienating them through a diet of permissiveness, carnality, and service to a false moral code.
• We justify…investment (in images) on the basis of personal enjoyment. When we invite others to view the images with us, it reinforces us to know that they share the same interest. It normalizes an abnormal pastime.
• According to Isaiah, in the end-time only persons who, on pain of death, resist worshiping the antichrist’s image will merit salvation.

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Violence and sex

• In comparing the Baal myth with stories in today’s culture, we easily recognize the basic plot that inspires so many movies and dramas of our media.
• Their very success lies in the amount of violence and sex they display. The hero and his cohorts get authorization to kill and do anything they please, so long as they subdue the enemy and restore order.
• Through the media that constitutes an everyday part of our lives, we let characters enter our homes and minds to perform acts we would abhor in real life.
• The pornographic images our media depict-the licentious manner of the characters, their distorted standard of values, their predisposition to murder and violence-all subvert and pollute our minds and hearts.
• Once they become part of us…indulging such images, we do the contrary of “stopping our hearts at the mention of murder, shutting our eyes at the sight of wickedness.”

Rock music

• Those whom God preserves. . .(must) not only abstain from wickedness but actively resist its influence.
• Music possesses the power to ravish people’s souls. . . (and inspire) all manner of lusts.
• Music can rob people of their self-control and thus of a measure of their agency.
• Today, as anciently, the younger generation of God’s people has yielded to the enticement of an immoral music.
• If you harbor doubts about pop music ravishing the souls, inflaming the heart, or setting passions on fire, just witness a concert by any well-known rock group. The spectacle they create-its fantasy, frenzy, and hysteria-appeals to the very basest of human emotions.
• Few deny that much of pop music today exemplifies what is carnal, sensual and devilish.
• (Music is) developing into a modern cult, with its attendant rituals of liquor, drugs, prostitution, and pedophilia, all attest(ing) to its satanic nature.

Organized sports

• Many historians connect the decline of Roman civilization to the inordinate disposition of the general populace displayed for brute sports.
• An idolatrous amusement – one that turns people’s hearts from the law of God to the law of the brute
• Participants executed such sports with all the finesse and sophistication civilization could bring to bear.
• Sports events followed set schedules on the yearly calendar, advertised…in every inhabited region accompanied with fanfare and pageantry
• Individual contestants often grew very popular. They became household names, whom people knew by their persona statistics and professional records.
• Women adored gladiators almost as gods.
• People made predictions on the outcomes of the games betting with one another on the results.
• Vast unruly crowds frequented the contests, waving handkerchiefs, shouting advice, approval and insults…
• They devoted exorbitant resources to the games, so much that the charitable programs rated a poor second.
• So all-consuming have today’s games become that they govern many people’s thoughts, moods and actions.
• Family life suffers to the point that we hear of “sports widows and orphans.”
• The next game becomes more important than our personal victories in working out our salvation.
• In the cause of sports, people desecrate the Sabbath

Human idols

• The idea of human idols flows naturally out of other forms of idolatry.
• Zechariah describes false prophets as idols who speak folly.
• Using subtle play on words, Isaiah identifies prominent figures in society as idols. By using terms that contain several levels of meaning, he implies that people idolize certain “celebrities” or “bigwigs”; the people are enchanted and captivated by them and exhibit “covetous desires,” “fawning adulation,” and “carnal lust” toward them.
• The (human) idols, on the other hand, exercise “immunity” from the law on account of wealth, power, or fame.
• Israel’s prophets predict that the ultimate human idol is the end-time Antichrist.
• The end time Antichrist is a composite of all evil world rulers who proceeds him. Like them, he commands people to worship him, and Satan lends him his power.
• With divine irony, God doesn’t let the Antichrist arise until the world is full of false gods. Worshiping this human idol is but an extension of what is already rampant.
• The Antichrist condemns to the fire the false gods of all people including the idols of God’s people.
• Under his tyrannical rule, all human idols now worshiped, exalted, extolled, glorified, revered, idolized, and adored will be things of the past.
• Pop stars, movie stars, sports stars, superstars, tycoons, barons, and bigwigs will be but “despised broken idols.”
• The Antichrist’s coercive worship will serve as a retribution for our present voluntary worship of man.

Imaginations of the heart

• Virtually every instance of the expression “imaginations of the heart” in the bible equates such imaginations with idolatry and following other gods.
• Paul…restates that imaginations, or reasoning's and rationalizations, are a kind of conceit or pretense that exalts itself “against the knowledge of God.”
• Moses…gives us to understand that self-deception, or “drunkenness,” follows a personal lack of “thirst” for the knowledge of God.
• God wont withhold his anger and jealousy from those who indulge vain imaginations.
• Fantasies or “imaginations of the heart” are nonetheless something each of us has to live with. They are an integral part of being mortal, expressing a person’s innate disposition to contemplate both good and evil.
• People retain a natural tendency to be proud, mischievous, and wicked…(and must) “make captive every thought in obedience to Christ.”
• Without identifying everything today that would qualify as fantasies or “imaginations of the heart,” it seems evident that what is worldly and subject to change – all things ”new,” novel, fashionable, or in vogue; all trends, fads, crazes, and gimmicks; in short, all that is not of God but concocted in the minds of men – God dooms to destruction along with those who love those things.
• Because imaginations of the heart vary constantly, those who follow them know no stability. Every wind of change, as it were, sweeps them away.
• By engaging in self-deception, basing our actions on false premises, we sell ourselves short of divine blessings.

Nature cults

• Nature worship deviates from true worship in that it seeks out a substitute for Paradise.
• Of course, outdoor recreation isn’t in itself idolatrous…people like hiking in the mountains as a means of communicating with God. Such experiences have little to do with idolatry.
• To Isaiah, a preoccupation with parks or gardens spells idolatry.
• Isaiah speaks of those who “choose” or “cherish” the nature experience in the act of forsaking their God.
• They spend nights in hideaways, among green trees and under the crags of cliffs and rocks…(where) they burn with lust and commit fornication with one another…pour(ing) drink libations as a toast to their cult and consume polluted beverages.
• Today’s proliferation of campers, dirt bikes, dune buggies, four-wheelers, skis snowmobiles, yachts, speedboats, gliders, and related accoutrements betoken a rampant and costly cult…that, more often than not, includes breaking the Sabbath.
• There exist many aberrations of the nature experience that are idolatrous…(such as) overemphasizing perfection in home gardens and landscaping while disregarding the needy who pass by in the street.
• When recreation becomes an end in itself, when promiscuity seeks out recreation as a means of self-expression, that is idolatry.

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Mammon

• God’s Word in all ages warns humanity what Jesus expresses so well, that “mammon of unrighteousness” - the riches of this world – have been and will be the downfall of countless souls; that we cannot serve God and mammon.
• Each is a master to be loved at the expense of hating the other.
• Being rich means possessing a surfeit when others lack. Such inequality alienates people from one another.
• Persons, for example, who “hasten to be rich have an evil eye”…they soon fall into temptations and snares, into foolish and hurtful lusts, which “drown men in destruction and perdition”
• They trust in uncertain riches, grow wise in their own conceit, and wax proud.
• The rich pass over the deeds of the wicked and don’t judge the needy’ s cause…they despise the poor and drag them before the judgement seats.
• They set their hearts on riches and the vain things of the world, scorning and persecuting those who don’t believe according to their will and pleasure.
• The rich can hardly enter the kingdom of heaven because they already have their consolation.
• The rich who do not give of their substance to the poor will lament in God’s Day of Judgement.
• If men do not learn how to administer the unrighteous mammon, how can God commit to their trust the true riches?
• The rich do good if they are ready to distribute their wealth to those in need and are willing to communicate with them.
• We can justify pursuing riches, therefore, but only within a narrow compass – for the intent to do good – to cloth the naked, feed the hungry, liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

Babylon

• A feature of Babylon that corrupts people, namely the manufacture, promotion, and sale of idols – the works of men’s hands.
• Babylon’s mass of people, engaged in producing and selling idols, remain out of touch with their life source, rendering them vulnerable to catastrophe.
• Babylon’s destiny is to become a burned mountain, desolate forever, because Babylon corrupts and thus ultimately destroys all the earth.
• The essence of this sort of idol worship is not that people really believe the idols to be gods but that their manufacture, promotion, and sale provide them with a living. It becomes a social-economic system that affords urban dwellers a means of sustenance.
• People begin to measure wealth in terms of money and the idols money can buy rather than in terms of how much food or commodities can be produced.
• Idols represent something socially acceptable which people pour time and money into.
• The prestige the idols furnish make people protect the system of developing them.
• Real sources of subsistence – farming and husbandry – take second place.
• Babylon encompasses every kind of trade and merchandise – whatever the people’s souls lust after by way of material possessions.
• Idols that people invent, design, sketch, carve, forge, molten, cast, weld, plate, fit, hammer, rivet, and mass produce.
• The manufacture and promotion of contemporary works of men’s hands comprise a virtually unlimited enterprise.
• Technology of almost magical dimensions consumers us to the point of enslaving us to it.
• We set material things above god., and don’t recognize (and)/or take (Him) for granted

The arm of flesh

• The very act of God’s people turning to human strength for protection causes their hearts to turn away from their true source of strength
• By making treaties and alliances with foreign nations, God’s people only add sin to sin, rejecting God’s covenant and instead relying on the arm of flesh
• Relying on human helps to fortify against future disasters betrays a lack of trust in God who governs all affairs.
• Isaiah…reduces every kind of dependence on things human to a “Covenant of Death.”
• That covenant includes looking back on past victories and glories, believing human predictions of a bright future for humanity; relying on outward observances of worship, being guided by anything less than divine revelation, contriving secret schemes and contingency plans, plotting machinations and intrigues, and every other way of “taking refuge in deception and hiding behind falsehoods”
• Like all idolatry, relying on the arm of flesh blinds people to a higher purpose and providence – that God saves those who trust in him.
• God himself raises up adversaries, individual and national; and God disposes of them.
• At the last, human agreements and alliances will be held in contempt and come to naught.
• On the contrary, God grants salvation both temporal and spiritual to those who keep his commandments.
• When they truly make God their Judge, Lawgiver, and King, then God extends his promise to them.

Elitism-Pharisaism

• Elitism-Pharisaism simultaneously partakes of social pride and hypocrisy. It is idolatry because it puts the institution or peer group before the person – the individual serves the collective, not vise versa.
• Pharisaic persons display a form of Godliness that lacks the power thereof.
• They harbor a presumptuousness about being a chosen and elect people.
• They consider their humble brethren a lost and fallen people, to be despised as lesser mortals
• They cancel the good effect of God’s Word in people’s lives by overriding individual devotion with manmade conventions.
• Their religion consists only of what appears in public. They love men for personal advantage.
• Although they believe in (the) Messiah, their private thoughts and conversations tell another story.
• They care more for people’s praise than for God’s.
• Their fear of political repercussions outweighs their love of spiritual obligations.
• The righteous among them they will hate and betray.

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Pollution of the temple

• A kind of idolatry that causes God’s presence to depart from his people…was pollution of the temple.
• The pollution of churches and meetinghouses today with manmade objects and external stimuli creates distractions from the Spirit of God that might otherwise prevail.
• People’s hearts’ and minds’ preoccupation with their idols turns religious services into a façade of worship.
• While the worship of Jehovah goes on as if nothing has changed, its rituals have become substitutes for spirituality.
• (Isaiah tells us) the purpose of the temple – and the measure of one’s devotion to God – isn’t to multiply ordinances. It is keep(ing) the terms of his covenant that assures Jehovah’s people the same privileges enjoyed by ancestors who walked and talked with him.
• Jehovah’s people (must) attend the temple to see Jehovah. If they aren’t there for that purpose, then all else doesn’t count for much.

Conclusion

• Considering that these and many additional types of idolatry dominate the modern world, should we expect any result other than what happened to God’s people in the past?
• Wont the climate of political correctness that justifies every aberration from norms of behavior God laid down for his ancient people not lead to the same unthinkable fate today?
• Where, today, are the few who weep for the sins and abominations in their midst?
• Let us serve God with all of our Heart, Might, Mind and Strength by overcoming idolatry – the great sin of our generation.

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idolatry comprises any activity that diverts a worshiper’s attention from the true God