The most condemned sin in the Bible is idolatry. In his short, but stupendously significant epistle, which is all about confidence in Christ, John concludes with this abrupt warning, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). It is though John saw no more formidable threat to the Christian’s confidence in Christ than idols. 

An idol is anything you put in the place of Christ or that comes before Christ in your life. According to the book of Revelation, an end-time world possessed with the spirit of antichrist will be populated by unrepentant idolaters; that is, by people who worship at the altar of other things rather than at the feet of Christ.

Undoubtedly, our world today is populated by idolaters, people whose passion is for other things besides Christ. Yet, so many of these idolaters see themselves, as well as are seen by others, as moral crusaders rather than worshippers of false gods. For instance, race is the idol of members of the Black Lives Matter Movement and sexual perversion is the idol of members of the LGBTQ+ community. To these people, nothing comes before their idol—their particular race or sexual preference—and nothing or no one is acceptable to them who refuses to bow and pay homage to their skin pigmentation or sexual perversion. More merciless and militant than the Spanish Inquisitors, these modern-day religious dogmatists are hellbent on burning at the stake of public opinion every heretic who refuses to recite their mandated creed .

A final scriptural truth about idolatry must not be overlooked. According to the Bible, behind every idol and false god is the “god of this world”; that is, the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4; Deuteronomy 32:17). Therefore, all who bow to other things besides Christ are actually bowing to Beelzebub. This explains how the end-time world, as the Bible predicts, will be populated with idol loving devil worshippers (Revelation 9:20). A spirit of antichrist possessed end-time world will not be filled with Satanists, but with indirect worshippers of the devil who love and live for other things bedsides Christ. So the next time you hear a militant BLM protestor or a militant homosexual call for the head of a Bible believing Christian, who refuses to prostrate themself before the color of their skin pigmentation or their sexual perversion, just remember who has taken them captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26).