Richard Hollerman

In my reading, I have come to know again that idolatry is all around us and, actually, is part of society. Civilization (if we may call it in this way) is rampant with this worship of false gods.

As we go back in history, idolatry goes with us. The first people who came to the “new world” apparently came by means of the Bearing Strait, during the “ice age” which would have been before the time of Jesus our Lord. From this influx, we have idolatry spreading in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean Islands. (I recall reading a book by a Norwegian—I think—in which he built a water craft and went the opposite direction, to “prove” that people could have come to the New World across the Pacific Ocean!) Idolatry, the world of false gods came as found in the Western Hemisphere.

Back in the “old world” (of Europe, Africa, the rest of the Near East, and Asia, etc) the story was the same. Whether we speak of the Norsemen or Vikings, of Germany and Scandinavia, with their gods and goddesses, such as Odin and Thor, and their relationship to the Celts, or others, they all were pagans and idolaters.

We also refer to the Africans, with their various idolatrous elements, the peoples of the Near East, or the advanced areas of China, and eventually Japan, as well as India, or elsewhere, we find the worship of a multitude of gods and goddesses. There was a idolatry with the worship of thousands of gods. And of course, we know that Hinduism (of India), begun very early, now has perhaps 330 million different “gods” involved.

In Europe, we find the Etruscans, the Romans, the Grecians, and the Cretans.  They all served a wide array of false gods. Wherever we look and whatever we examine, there will usually or always be false idolatry!

Some of the gods and goddesses (so called) that they made images to and worshiped where definitely false. Consider Aphrodite and Venus, Diana and Artemis, Demeter and Dionisius, and many others. They all have their origin in Scripture but they are all false. They are wrong.

They were false gods in the form of human beings, or animals, or serpents, or other creatures. (See especially Romans 1:18-23.) And the strange thing about all of this is that they all had different names. For instance, there was Jupiter who also had the name of Zeus, and this happened perhaps hundreds of times.

In the modern era, there would be Abraham about 2,000 years B.C. and there would also be the period of Jews, from the time of Moses about AD 1440, and onward. Then comes the “Christian” age from the time of Jesus (about 5 BC or 7 BC until His death about AD 30). And then comes the Muslim period (AD 570 until AD 632), with the false prophet, Muhammad, whose religion spread from Spain in the West to India toward the East.

These groups, whether it be Judaism, with its four different groups and perhaps 14 million adherents, or Islam (scattered across the face of the earth, especially in the Near East) and its nearly two billion adherents, and the different forms of Christianity (with several billion adherents), they all are found on earth and some of them would be idolaters. These groups mainly would believe in Monotheism and adhere to a form of worshipping a single god, thus they would repudiate idolatry.

Sadly, even though Christianity would generally be a form of Monotheism, we know that Catholicism holds to a belief in one God while they also hold to Mariology and the worship of many Catholic “saints” and the same would be true of Orthodoxy, and although they reject the image-worship of Mary and the Catholic “saints,” they do hold to Icons of various kinds.

Idolatry is the way of life of the world. When will the world learn?  Whether we speak of the thousands upon thousands of false gods, headed by a false prophet or leader, or others, When will people come to see that there is only one true God and He is to be worshipped and served (Matthew 4:10).

Idolatry, although followed by people for thousands of years and taking the form of thousands of gods and goddesses, and served in the form of idols over the years, makes no sense. Where are they now? History tells us that after a century or a few centuries, they all either disband, or disintegrate, or just end with some sort of warfare. No, this doesn’t make sense at all.

We find that these gods in various cultures and in various geographical locations, have different names and do different things. But with all of this confusion, we know that the true God, Yahweh, will be with us now and forever. Let us learn and go on with His help and leadership.