What if God is using raging mobs of evil, lawless people to tear down idols that other people have elevated to a place of worship above Him?
As the deep rot that’s been spreading under the surface of our culture for generations finally gives way to the open chaos and carnage that it was designed to promote, we should be careful not to allow spectacular convulsions of rage and destruction to distract us from big picture truths that we desperately need to notice. If the coming years of pain and struggle are going to lead to a better, brighter place on the other side of this mess for our children and grandchildren, we’d better get serious about honestly assessing and addressing reality right now.
That’s the context in which I offer the question: What if God is using mobs to tear down our idols?
What if, after generations of openly and proudly rejecting Christ as King in political, economic, and educational practice, we are finally getting what Psalm 2 always made plain would come our way unless we repented and submitted to King Jesus? What if King Jesus is serious about His Gospel command to repent and our multi-generational rejection of His command to repent is now catching up with us?
That sure seems to be at least a real possibility right about now, doesn’t it?
Antifa and BLM are evil, to be sure, but they are also something else: His property. They belong ultimately to Him and He will use them as He sees fit, as He has every Pharaoh, dictator, king, queen, and wannabe tyrant before them.
He will use them to accomplish, among other things, the tearing down of idols.
Both figuratively and literally.
It’s important to remember that idols are often good things that have been made bad by virtue of the fact that they’ve been elevated above their station. We can make idols of anything – our own families, spouses, careers, businesses, works of art…the list is endless. We can pervert almost anything into an idol.
For example: When we elevate the Founding Fathers above King Jesus as the ultimate in law givers and the Constitution above the Word of God as the gold standard in law, we build idols.
And King Jesus will tear those idols down.
All of them.
None will be left standing, even if they are wrapped in our favorite flags and accompanied by our favorite patriotic tunes.
They all inevitably get ground under His foot.
Which leads us back to what might be going on right here and now in the land currently known as the United States of America.
As Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other explicitly anti-Christian, pro-Marxist mobs do their thing, we have to face and confront the brutal, ugly truth that many of our most cherished/idolized “all-American” approaches to things like pop culture, children’s education, business, and economics were (and continue to be) the engines and factories that produced them, and not by accident, but by design.
When we insisted on educating our children in perfect harmony with the serpent’s pitch first recorded in Genesis 3 (See: Take Tim Challies to School Day), we were destined to produce the generation of anti-Christ, pro-Marxist gangs ravaging the culture now, and the much worse that will come next (especially since even now many “conservative Christian” parents are still hell-bent on getting their little ones back into government-run programming factories).
When we insisted on elevating the “laws” of the United States above the unbreakable Law of the God who made, defines, and sustains everything in His creation, we were destined to experience ever-increasing lawlessness, chaos, and looting (at every level – but especially at the top).
When we rejected the Person of Christ as King in economic practice, we were destined for the fiat-currency fueled bondage and slavery system that enables a tiny elite to effectively own and control everyone and everything beneath them through the counterfeit wealth that they effortlessly craft out of thin air. (See: Fiat $lavery: We have been bought and paid for…with nothing.)
When we rejected the Person of Christ as our King in political practice, we charted a path away from the Life and Light brings true peace, prosperity, and liberty; and into the darkness and death that we feel creeping up and around us now.
It all boils down to this: King Jesus is not optional.
He’s not ornamental, either. We can’t truly love Him by simply saying “I love Jesus!” and emoting passionately while simultaneously ignoring His crystal clear and life-defining Word on things like economics, children’s education, and…idolatry.
He hates that approach.
And He will deal with it as promised in Psalm 2.
Which again brings us back to the point (sorry for rambling there).
Back in early 2015, in an article entitled The America Idol: How Christians Worship and Enable the Anti-Christ State, I explored the extremely unpopular topic of America worship among professing Christians in the United States. I followed it up in 2019 with another post entitled What does King Jesus think of “The Apotheosis of Washington”? (Spoiler Alert: It’s not good.).
In order to promote what I hope will be helpful clarity on this subject, I’m going to take the somewhat odd approach of quoting both articles, with a clip from the latter including a large portion of the former. I trust that you will see why I’m going this route if you read all the way through.
That said, away we go…:
“In order to get a better sense of the significance of this situation – a situation unfolding daily under that dome in DC – we should dive into at least some relevant details of the artwork in question, formally titled The Apotheosis of Washington.
For those unfamiliar with the 4,664 square foot fresco painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and featured in the eye of the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, we took an extensive look at this brazen bit of American-flavored idolatry in an article published back in early 2015, where we catalogued some of its more troubling aspects:
“Okay, so we all know that Barack Obama is openly and quite religiously worshipped by many folks on the Left. Tales of the ridiculous and blasphemous extremes to which his followers often go to express their adoration have become tragically common. As such, they’ve provided fuel for countless jokes and condemnations aimed at Obama & Friends for many long years now.
Most of the humor and many of the critiques are more than valid on many levels.
Obama worshippers have literally crafted, recorded, and distributed hymns of Obama praise and worship.
They’ve painted pictures, written poems, and constructed various religious apologetics advocating his messianic role in promoting the Progressive vision for America.
They’ve chanted, wept, fought, and bled for his “fundamental transformation” of our culture.
So yeah, they’ve got problems. Serious problems.
Now that their problems are our problems, we are well served to take the time to seriously ask and explore why and how this has happened.
How vulgar and twisted must a mind be to make a man into a god that way?
How warped and perverted must a worldview become in order to allow for the open, public exaltation of a man in such a flagrantly blasphemous manner?
How far removed must a person and culture be in order for such rank idolatry to take hold and define a land and its people?
If we’re serious about finding solid, helpful answers to those questions (especially the last one), and we’re not just lazy, hypocritical, self-serving noise makers looking to crack another Obama joke or take another cheap and easy shot at “the Left”, then a great place for us to start in our consideration of this subject is with…George Washington.
Yep.
George Washington.
More specifically, George Washington as depicted in The Apotheosis of Washington, a ginormous, worshipful, and rather flagrantly blasphemous bit of art adorning the dome in the rotunda of our very own United States Capitol Building since its completion near the end of the Civil War, when the supremacy of the State was being cemented into place using any and all available forms of propaganda and idolatry.
Before I go any further, let me present here a few close-up sections from this gigantic display of American idolatry. As you look through them, please keep one question front and center in your mind:
What has the one true God said about this?
Okay then, with that in mind, away we go…
In the “Science” panel of The Apotheosis of Washington, we have Minerva, the Roman goddess of crafts and wisdom, with American scientists and inventors Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Morse, and Robert Fulton looking on. How cool, right? Yay, America!
For the “Marine” portion of our presentation, we see Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Also depicted is Venus, goddess of love (who was, of course, born from the sea). They are apparently helping to lay the transatlantic telegraph cable. Isn’t that just awesome! We have not one, but two gods helping us out here! Oh yeah! [insert “U! S! A!” chant here]
For the “Commerce” section of this worship-loaded display, we are treated to Mercury, the Roman god of…what else?…commerce. He is shown here giving a bag of gold to American Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris. Cha-ching!
In the “Mechanics” wing of our presentation, we see Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge. The man at the forge is said to represent Charles Thomas, the supervisor of ironwork during the construction of the Capitol dome. No wonder that dome turned out so good, right?!
Here in the “Agriculture” section, we have Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. “Young America”, in a liberty cap, holds the reins of the horses, while the goddess Flora gathers flowers in the foreground. Another two-fer on the gods front here; America has truly been blessed with a “double portion” in the realm of agriculture!
There’s so much that could (and perhaps should) be said here (and I haven’t even gotten to the specifics of George’s radically unbiblical portrayal yet), but I want to keep it relatively short and simple:
God has spoken. He hates this. It is flagrantly evil…and most modern day Christian Americans love it!
And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.” ~ Exodus 20:1-3 (emphasis added)
Remember: When God commands that there be “no other gods before me”, He’s not even remotely suggesting that it’s just fine and peachy to have or allow other gods in the land, so long as they’re not ahead of Him in line or above Him in status. No, that’s not what the language here conveys at all.
Its plain, crystal clear meaning is that there are to be no other gods in His sight within the land of His obedient people.
No other gods are to be tolerated, much less openly worshiped.
Even in paintings.
Even when escorted by (or escorting) George Washington.
Such displays of worship are always fundamentally evil and destructive to any people who would have (and adore) them.
So the next time we roll our eyes or proclaim our “shock and horror” at the latest repulsive public proclamation of rank idolatry and man-worship from the Left, let’s remember that they’re just following the long established lead of the professing Christian church in America.
The Orwellian totalitarian American State that we are now watching emerge all around us has come our way first and foremost because professing Christians have allowed and encouraged it to do so through proud, open idolatry of America, Americans, and patriotism itself.
What I hope and pray we might see through the honest, serious examination of many displays like this one from throughout our history is that we have great sin and idolatry to repent of…and we have been graced with the undeserved opportunity to do just that right here and now.
So will we repent…or will we be destroyed?”
Sadly, we don’t seem much closer to repentance now in mid-2019 than we were back in early 2015 when that article was first written. We seem more pride-focused than ever.
Even so, by God’s grace we’ve been given more time. Lord willing, we’ll use it wisely to repent before we land on (or under) the last part of the “repent or be destroyed” scenario presented so vividly in passages like Psalm 2 (which we dove into in an article entitled Want to see America in Scripture? Try Psalm 2).
The unavoidable and unbreakable bottom line is this: Jesus is Lord.
He has all authority over all of creation, including the United States (see: Matthew 28:18-20).
All nations, rulers, and people are subject to Him.
All are commanded to repent of their rebellion against Him.
All are commanded to submit to His lordship over every area of life.
He will break all unrepentant rulers and nations into pieces, as He makes plain in Psalm 2.
He hates idolatry.
He destroys all idols. (Even if they wear red, white, and blue while singing “God bless America”.)
Sometimes in an instant.
Sometimes over decades or even centuries.
But make no mistake: He destroys them all.”
Just to be clear, I’m not defending any of the mob activity raging from sea to shining sea in 2020. Far from it. I’m repulsed, angered, and deeply saddened by what’s going on.
I’m just trying to point out some things that should be glaring and obvious, but instead seem to be shrouded in a kind of willful ignorance inspired by a warped sense of patriotism – a patriotism that cannot allow serious acknowledgment of questions like: What if God is using mobs to tear down our idols?
That approach sure smells like idolatry.
Rank idolatry.
And King Jesus doesn’t tolerate that sort of thing.
May we all repent accordingly…while there is still time.
If you’ve benefitted from the work done at Fire Breathing Christian, we ask that you consider financially supporting the cause. You can do this in one of three ways:
You can drop a few bucks in the tip jar by making a one-time donation through PayPal.
You can also donate using cryptocurrencies at the following locations:
- Bitcoin (BTC) at 1Mu4a75yjroSLrMZiQFLoD66JhumVvH6E1
- Ethereum (ETH) at 0x7Be44b19C1ADDC2322AFD18cad206D9DcD37dB27
- Litecoin (LTC) at LN9AMhvasWRHhw25DCxvR9XtuySceKrs87
To sign up for your own cryptocurrency wallet (and receive $10 free bitcoin with your first $100 purchase), please click here.
You can make a regular contribution by joining our monthly support team.
You can use our Amazon.com affiliate link every time you order anything at Amazon.com.
We depend on God’s provision through His faithful people.
Thank you for supporting Fire Breathing Christian!
Please check out our video channel and our news satire site.
You can also help support the Fire Breathing Christian mission by checking out these books:
Stupid Elephant Tricks – The Other Progressive Party’s War on Christianity takes a painful but much needed look at how Christ-less “conservatism” has captivated Christians and co-opted them into helping march the culture ever deeper into darkness:
_____________________________________________________
The Beginning of Knowledge: Christ as Truth in Apologetics is an approachable, easy to read introduction to Christ-centered apologetics:
_____________________________________________________
Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity explores the tragic true horror story of all-American dead religion masquerading as Christianity:
_____________________________________________________
On Education is a compilation of some of the most provocative and compelling Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of children’s education:
_____________________________________________________
There Is No “God-Given Right” To Worship False Gods is a compilation of some of the most provocative Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of America’s embrace of a satanic approach to religious liberty:
_____________________________________________________
Fire Breathing Christians – The Common Believer’s Call to Reformation, Revival, and Revolution is the book that first presented the FBC mission to apply the Gospel-fueled Great Commission in every realm of God’s creation:
_____________________________________________________
An alternate white cover version of Fire Breathing Christians is available:
_____________________________________________________
There is also an alternate black cover version of Fire Breathing Christians:
Finally, here are a few good intro/reminder links for those of you who are new to Fire Breathing Christian and curious about exactly what’s goin’ on ’round here:
What are you, some kind of [insert label here] or something?!
What’s with that shark-fishie graphic thing?
Intro to Fire: The Power and Purpose of the Common Believer
When the Bible gets hairy. (Or: Is it right for men to have long hair?)
And especially this one: Never forget that apart from God’s grace you and I are complete morons.
