“Parents, exercise discipline in your homes, or your children shall be victimized outside their doors. Because of the laxity in the highest places of lawmakers in your country and countries throughout the world, sin has become a way of life! Murders and all manner of foul deeds are being committed!
“Discipline in government . . . The words are emblazoned: ‘In God We Trust’, but who is the god they trust? Man has become their god!”

[NOTES]: The most popular false god in the world today is not money, power, fame, materialism, nor sex (though these are all vying hotly for second place); the most popular false god in the world today is self. The false god of self can be found in just about every corner of the world, every society, and every culture, and it knows no bounds. Even in the church of Jesus Christ, the false god of self often raises its ugly head. If we take a serious look at our post-modern, information-age world, we can easily see that selfishness and satisfying self is the most popular false god in the world today.

In fact, self has been the most popular god ever since the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first sinned, giving in the temptation to “…be as gods…” (see Genesis 3:5). Ever since that day, self has been on the throne of peoples’ lives, replacing God, and ruling the life of the individual with dictatorial and tyrannical power. If one were to look at the majority of crimes today, it would be easy to see that all of these crimes were undertaken to please the false god of self in one way or another.

The Bible has interesting names for self. Regularly in the Bible, we see the false god of self called the inner man, the old man, the carnal nature, and (possibly the most popular name) the flesh. Whatever the name, the false god of self is ultimately sinful, destructive, and controlled by someone else.

God’s Answer: Romans 1:21-26, 28-29: “because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers,

1 Corinthians 10:19-21: “What say I then? that the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”