God’s Word shows that his kingdom is the only hope of mankind and that it will make an end of war and bring lasting peace. (Ps. 46:8-10; 72:1, 7; Matt. 6:9, 10) The clergy of Christendom, however, today look to the United Nations to accomplish this, even as yesterday they looked to its predecessor, the League of Nations.b By holding forth these man-made organizations as mankind’s hope instead of God’s kingdom, the clergy have placed them where they ought not to stand, in a holy place. Such presumptuousness is an insult to God and arouses him to jealousy, especially since these clergy claim to serve God. It is indeed a form of idolatry that is disgusting to God.

Because Jehovah God cannot deny himself he will not always tolerate this symbol that incites him to jealousy by posing as a substitute for his kingdom. At the rapidly approaching battle of Armageddon he will destroy both it and all those who have idolized it.

EVOLUTIONISTIC CLERGY

After boring a hole in the wall of the temple courtyard, in vision, of course, Ezekiel next saw “every representation of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the dungy idols of the house of Israel, the carving being upon the wall all round about. And seventy men of the elderly ones of the house of Israel . . . were standing before them, each one with his censer in his hand, and the perfume of the cloud of the incense was ascending.”—Ezek. 8:10, 11.

What could all this represent in our time? Animals in Jehovah’s house of worship may be said to find their counterpart in Christendom’s adoption of the evolution theory, which ties in all the lower animals with the “ascent” of man. The modern clergy of Christendom have substituted the principle of evolution for the Creator, the God of the Bible. The Bible says that the first man Adam was the “son of God,” but according to the evolutionistic clergy the first man was the son of some lower animal; just which one is a question upon which evolutionists cannot agree.

The evolution theory has destroyed the faith of countless millions, even as Darwin admitted that it had caused him to become an out-and-out agnostic.c By crediting evolution with the marvelous brain and organism of man and thereby robbing God of the credit, are not the clergy of Christendom guilty of idolatry? Surely!

THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Christendom consists primarily of two factions, the modernists and the fundamentalists. The modernists put the wisdom of this world above the wisdom of God as found in the Bible, preaching politics, social reform, higher criticism, which denies the inspiration of the Bible, and evolution. The fundamentalists profess to believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but when confronted with a conflict between their creeds and the Bible they put their creeds ahead of the Bible. They are not at all happy about the trend in Christendom toward modernism and worldliness. In particular do they mourn the decline of their institutions, if not always in numbers, then in quality and influence.

These seem well pictured by what Ezekiel next saw at the entrance of the gate of the house of Jehovah, ‘women sitting, weeping over the god Tammuz.’—Ezek. 8:14.

Women weeping for the god Tammuz was a distinctive feature of many ancient pagan religions. In the Scriptures religious organizations are repeatedly referred to as women. (2 Cor. 11:2; Gal. 4:27, Rev. 22:17) Further, it is well known that in most of the religions of Christendom the women are in the great majority; it is primarily their interest and support, financial and otherwise, that keeps these professedly Christian organizations going.

While the fundamentalists take the position that they use their religious organizations in their worship of God, yet when brought face to face with what God says in his Word, they prefer their dying organizations to God’s Word, thus convicting themselves of idolatry also.

THE SUN OF INTELLECTUALITY

In the final scene of his vision Ezekiel saw twenty-five men between the porch of the temple and the great altar, with their backs to the temple, worshiping the sun. (Ezek. 8:15, 16) What could this picture? We know the sun gives light, and light is a symbol of knowledge, because knowledge gives light to the mind even as the sun gives light to the body, the organism. The sun, however, is a creation, and in spite of its role in sustaining life upon the earth it does not deserve being worshiped, it being inanimate, merely following God’s laws.d

This worshiping of the sun therefore well represents the modern worship of knowledge, of philosophy, of psychology, of intellectuality as practiced by the clergy and their followers. It is a worship or valuing of knowledge per se. As one leading member of the Canadian Anglican Church expressed it, ‘God is being replaced by the intellect of man as the moving force shaping the world.’

This tendency has ever been a snare to the professed people of God. It ensnared the Jews just before the time of Christ and shortly thereafter. It ensnared the early Christian congregation after the apostles fell asleep in death, resulting in the great apostasy and the adopting of such teachings as the trinity and the immortality of the human soul. In modern times it also takes the form of discussions of ontology, the teaching of “being” and which is also known as the “first philosophy”; of existentialism, which is wholly man-centered wisdom, much of it even atheistic; of Zen and other current trends in religions Oriental and Occidental. All those who thus prefer the wisdom of man to the wisdom of God are showing disrespect to Jehovah God and therefore are guilty of idolatry.

Is Christendom guilty of idolatry? She truly is. In addition to the images that adorn many of her churches, her idols include the United Nations, the evolution theory, her religious institutions and intellectuality. What will Jehovah God do about this idolatry? He will wipe it out, even as he wiped out the idolatrous practices of the Israelites in the days of Ezekiel. At Armageddon Jehovah will again act in anger against all those who have offended him by worshiping idols instead of the one true God Jehovah, the only One who deserves our worship.—Ezek. 8:17, 18; Rev. 16:14, 16.

Those who are wise today will abandon all the idolatrous practices of Christendom and will ‘seek Jehovah, righteousness and meekness’ in the hope of being hidden in the day of God’s anger.—Zeph. 2:1-3.

Paganism in Greece

“The pre-Christian legacy, all over Greece, is never far from the surface. Among the Sarakatsans pagan magic survives in a yet more pronounced shape. . . . All over Greece, the army of saints has taken the place of the ancient polytheistic pantheon.”—The Atlantic, June, 1962.