Anyone who doubted the reality of pure, Satan-induced idolatry in the United States has not been watching the news over the past few days. I grew up watching the masses idolize music legends, sports figures and actors. Thousands would throng the streets when these larger-than-life “stars” granted their adoring fans a distant, fleeting audience. I understand the individual’s gut reaction to these people. It was merely an emotional response to being in the presence of an international celebrity–a physical reaction to another physical entity which faded soon after the magical moment passed. It was a one-and-done situation having no lasting effects.

But what the world witnessed this past week was much more than that in that it involved the individual’s spiritual eternity. The endless display of idolatry served to prove to the rest of the world that America has become like her relative to things of the spirit. What we saw were hundreds of thousands of people bowing and scraping before a mere man. What we saw were masses of idolaters drunk on the product of the grapes of wrath. We saw a man, who calls himself Christ’s vicar, claiming to operate in the stead of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christ of the Scriptures has no vicar. He is Who He is and is the only One Who is–no one stands in His stead. Those who truly serve Him are His servants, not His replacements. Nowhere in Scripture do we find one of His true representatives calling himself or being called His vicar. This is pure heresy. And over a billion worshipers are guilty of it. Over the past ten years or so I have watched the Lord’s Biblical warnings come to pass over the airwaves and in person as Satan consumed billions of spiritual lives. I have watched and listened as God and His Word were dismissed by both the church and the world it desperately tries to appease and emulate. I have watch Satan use religious correctness to destroy the few vestiges of Biblical morality man has left. As a result I had grown so calloused that I thought nothing could shock me.

I was wrong. Day after day I experienced not only a spiritual reaction to the idolatry being displayed on every newscast, but a physical reaction as well. The staged sights and gushing verbiage grew so repulsive that I eventually stopped watching the news. From the spectacle being played out on t.v., one would have thought we were witnessing the Second Coming. Correction: Christ’s arrival will be anticlimatical to those who have seen the pope. The good thing about televised idolatry is that one can turn it off. However, I could not dismiss from my mind the visions of giddy idolaters fawning over a mere flesh and blood man–a man no different from any other man. Incredibly, HE NOT ONLY ALLOWED IT; HE ENCOURAGED IT AND REVELED IN IT! Realizing that he is incapable of shame, I am ashamed for him. I could almost hear the Lord calling out to the masses of adoring worshipers thronging the streets, desperately trying to get a glimpse of the leader of world heathenism: “I am.”

Thank God the embarrassing spectacle is over. The pope’s adoring fans can now go back to business as usual, content in the fact that they have seen HIM, albeit on t.v. Others were more blessed. Some were allowed to bask physically in the aura of HIS presence. Some were allowed to get close enough to actually be touched by HIM. And some, being allowed in the same room with him, even breathed the same air HE breathed.

And what did this supposedly infallible vicar say to the world? What did His Imminence use his global pulpit to speak about: the terrors of climate change, the wonders of Marxism and the evils of air conditioning. And one seventh of mankind couldn’t get enough of it. L.J.