Recounting what he saw in vision, Ezekiel wrote:

“So [Jehovah] brought me to the inner courtyard of the house of Jehovah, and, look! at the entrance of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of Jehovah and their faces to the east, and they were bowing down to the east, to the sun. And he went on to say to me: ‘Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it such a light thing to the house of Judah to do the detestable things that they have done here, that they have to fill the land with violence and that they should offend me again, and here they are thrusting out the shoot [twig] to my nose?

There these Israelite men were, in the inner court of the temple dedicated to Jehovah. They were near the entrance of the temple itself, in the space between the porch and the altar of sacrifice at the center of the inner court. But, shockingly, they were not worshiping Jehovah at that place, nor were they bowing to his altar of sacrifice that was to the east of them. They should have been facing west, toward the temple. Why?

Well, there in the temple’s innermost compartment, the Most Holy, was the sacred Ark of the Covenant. Above it was the miraculous Shekinah light that symbolized the presence of Jehovah. But rather than look toward this symbolic dwelling place of God those twenty-five men turned their backs toward the Divine Presence and faced east. Ignoring the God they claimed to represent, they were bowing down in worship to the sun in the sky! This was in direct violation of God’s command at Deuteronomy 4:15-19.

Not satisfied with this flagrant disobedience, those men added insult, for, “here,” said Jehovah, “they are thrusting out the shoot [or, twig] to my nose.” (Ezek. 8:17) This shoot or twig was used in idolatrous worship and may have been carved to a certain shape to represent the human male organ. At least it must have been something very offensive or obscene to be held out to Jehovah’s nose, as if he would find pleasure in smelling it. Such idolatrous sun worship on the part of those twenty-five men was accompanied by their filling “the land with violence.”

MODERN-DAY INSULTERS OF GOD

Has Christendom really, actually, done things as bad as those Jewish men did? Is there a modern-day parallel? Yes.

Modern science has come to be treated like a “sacred cow,” that must be viewed with reverence and that must be considered ahead of the Bible and of God. The scientists’ supposedly “advanced” intellectuality, with all its theories, has been treated as the up-to-date form of enlightenment that has made the Bible “out-of-date,” “obsolete.” In reality their technology is able to delve into God’s laws only to a limited extent and can operate only within the framework and limitations of those laws. But news channels nearly always honor the technology rather than the God who made it possible. They speak as though man is great, ‘wresting nature’s secrets’ away and becoming master of the universe.

Is this attitude something new, this focusing of all attention upon the human creature, this giving of all credit to man whom God created? No, the tendency of humans to do this was described centuries ago by one of the apostles, who wrote: “Although asserting they were wise, they became foolish and turned the glory of the incorruptible God into something like the image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed creatures and creeping things.” The difference and the extreme seriousness of the matter, however, is that now the time has arrived for the issue to come to a head and to be settled forever.​—Rom. 1:22, 23.

Christendom’s infection with the worship of false gods, including the idolizing of modern science, betrays itself very slyly. For instance, on July 20, 1969, when for the first time a human astronaut set foot upon the moon, who was glorified thereby, according to the way that the scientific group responsible for it named things that were involved? Certainly not Jehovah, the Creator of the moon. It was the mythological sun-god that was honored. How so? Because the man-made spacecraft used on that occasion (as on successful moon landings since) was named “Apollo.” Out of all the possible sources of names, idolatrous Greek mythology was selected. Phoebus Apollo was the sun-god of the ancient Greeks and was the twin brother of Artemis (or, Diana), the moon goddess.

Why should intelligent men use the Creator’s laws to accomplish a feat and then advertise and make prominent the name of an ancient sun-god, who is actually no god at all? It is evident that the importance of men is being put ahead of God. Furthermore, Christendom’s general acceptance of the unproved theory of evolution is one of the evidences betraying her as a worshiper of the “sun” of scientists.