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.