I was in a discussion the other day that shook me. I will share the conversation with you, because it crystallized a danger that I see creeping at the edges of our fellowship. It is the old danger, the most ancient of temptations, repackaged for a new era. It is the lure of idolatry, not of graven images, but of feelings and experiences.
A person who once professed our faith told me they had "drifted away" from the movement. I asked why. Their answer was telling. The faith, as they understood it from a Concordant perspective, "felt so dreary," and they "didn’t feel any kind of strong urge to connect with it or with scripture." Their faith, as they put it, "felt kind of dead," so they turned to partial preterism which "made it feel more alive."
My heart dropped. It was as if a thousand alarms within my own mind had been activated by those words. This is the very core of the religious deception.
To understand why, we need to examine one of history’s oldest temptations: idolatry.
Why is idolatry so vehemently [intensely] condemned throughout all of Scripture? It is because the flesh craves an idol. When Moses was on the mountain, what did the people of Israel demand of Aaron? "Make us gods that shall go before us" (Exodus 32:1). They did not want to trust in an unseen God who had spoken from a cloud of fire; they wanted something tangible, something they could see and touch and feel. They wanted a golden calf. The flesh always wants a golden calf.
The religious system has so thoroughly sanitized the concept of idolatry that most Christians think it simply means bowing down to a statue of Buddha or some other ancient deity. They fail to see that idolatry is the very air they breathe. The condemnation of it in Scripture is so vehement because it is a fundamental betrayal of reality, and its consequences are catastrophic, both for nations and for the individual soul.
The core of idolatry is the craving of the flesh for something tangible. It is the desire to control and contain God, to reduce the infinite, invisible Creator to a finite, observable object that can be manipulated and understood on our terms. It is the refusal to walk by faith.
Scripture condemns this in the most absolute terms, not merely as the breaking of a rule, but as spiritual adultery. In Exodus 34:14, God declares, "for you shall worship no other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." This is not petty human jealousy. It is the rightful demand of a creator for exclusive allegiance. To give that allegiance to an idol is to lie about who God is. It is to say that the Creator is no different from a piece of wood or stone, a "thing that is nothing in the world" (1 Corinthians 8:4). This is the ultimate blasphemy. Isaiah mocks this absurdity with biting sarcasm: "He takes a part of it and warms himself... He also makes a god and worships it... The rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships, prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’" (Isaiah 44:15-17).
This brings us to the danger of idolatry, which unfolds in a cascade [series of events] of corruption according to Scripture.
First, it leads to a darkened mind and a debased understanding. Paul lays this out in Romans 1. It begins with a failure to glorify the invisible God. "Because, knowing God, they do not glorify Him as God or are thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Romans 1:21). The first casualty of idolatry is the mind. By exchanging the truth of God for a lie, their very capacity to reason rightly is corrupted.
Second, this intellectual corruption leads directly to moral corruption. Paul continues, "Consequently, God gave them up in the covetings of their hearts to uncleanness, to dishonor their bodies among themselves" (Romans 1:24). The long, grim list of sins that follows in Romans 1 is not the cause of God's wrath; it is the result of their initial idolatry. God "gives them up" to the natural consequences of worshipping the creation rather than the Creator. The danger is a spiritual and moral downward spiral.
Third, and perhaps most profoundly, idolatry makes the worshipper like the idol. This is the spiritual law of gravity. The Psalmist states it with chilling clarity: "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; eyes they have, but they do not see... Those who make them are like them; so is everyone who trusts in them" (Psalm 115:4-5, 8). If you worship a dead, mute, powerless object, you become spiritually dead, mute, and powerless. Your heart becomes as hard as stone, your mind as empty as carved wood. This is the danger that the person I spoke with has fallen into. They seek a faith that "feels alive," not realizing they are trading the living, invisible God for the dead idol of their own emotional experience.
Finally, the ultimate danger of idolatry is national and corporate judgment. The entire history of Israel in the Old Testament is a repeating cycle of idolatry followed by divine punishment and exile. "They forsook Yahweh, the God of their fathers... and they followed other gods... And the anger of Yahweh was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them" (Judges 2:12, 14).
This is why the warnings are so vehement. Idolatry is not a minor theological error. It is a fundamental betrayal that corrupts the mind, debases the body, deadens the soul, and brings down judgment. It is the root from which all other sins grow. And it is the very foundation of the Christian religious system, which has replaced the invisible God and His simple Evangel with a complex trinity of its own making, with rituals, with religious experiences, and with traditions of men that nullify the Word of God.
God, however, is the polar opposite of an idol in every conceivable way. Idolatry is the religion of the flesh because it is the religion of sight. The entire system of God, as revealed in Scripture, is built on the opposite principle: faith in the unseen.
First, the idol is visible; God is invisible.
This is the foundational distinction. The golden calf was made precisely because the people could not endure a God who was merely a voice from a cloud. They demanded a god their eyes could confirm. But Paul defines our God as "the King of the eons, incorruptible, invisible, only God" (1 Timothy 1:17). He is the One "Whom no man has seen, nor is able to see" (1 Timothy 6:16).
This is why our entire administration operates on the principle that "we are walking by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith is the "conviction concerning matters which are not being observed" (Hebrews 11:1). To demand a visible, tangible, or even emotionally felt confirmation of God is to reject the very means by which He has chosen to relate to us in this age. It is to demand an idol.
God is not a golden calf. He is invisible. He cannot be contained in a temple made with hands (Acts 17:24). This is a direct affront to the desires of the flesh, which wants a sensory experience. It wants a "strong urge to connect." It wants a feeling.
The Christian religious system is a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to manufacturing these feelings. It is a golden calf factory. With its emotionally manipulative music, its impassioned sermons designed to produce a response, and its constant social activities, it provides a steady stream of spiritual highs. It makes people feel connected to God. But this is not the peace of God; it is the stimulation of the flesh. It is a "form of devoutness" that has "denied its power" (2 Timothy 3:5).
The Evangel of grace, the truth revealed to our apostle Paul, does not offer this. It offers something far more profound, and to the flesh, far more terrifying: it offers rest. It is the cessation of striving. It is the end of trying to feel our way to God. Our salvation is not based on our feelings or our choices, but on the finished work of Christ. When one truly grasps this, the frantic search for a spiritual "urge" ceases. For someone addicted to the emotionalism of religion, this quiet confidence can feel "dreary." This peace can feel like a "dead" faith.
Second, the idol is a creature; God is the Creator.
An idol is the work of human hands, fashioned from created materials. Isaiah mocks the absurdity of this: "Those who fashion a graven image are all of them futile, and their precious things are of no profit... Who has fashioned a god or cast an image which is profitable for nothing?" (Isaiah 44:9-10). The worshipper is, in fact, superior to the object of worship, for they created it. It is a reversal of the natural order.
God, on the other hand, is the Uncreated. He is the one Who "is operating all in accord with the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). He fashioned us; we did not fashion Him. The relationship is one of absolute dependence on our part. We are the clay; He is the potter (Romans 9:21). Idolatry is the clay attempting to fashion its own potter.
Third, the idol is mute; God speaks.
The Psalmist declares of idols, "They have mouths, but they do not speak" (Psalm 115:5). They are silent blocks of wood and stone. They offer no revelation, no wisdom, no comfort.
In stark contrast, our God is a God who communicates. "The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12). He spoke creation into existence (Genesis 1). He spoke through the prophets. He spoke in His Son (Hebrews 1:2). And He speaks to us now through the Scriptures, rightly divided. To turn from the written Word to seek a subjective feeling or an inner "urge" is to turn from the living voice of God to the silence of an idol.
Fourth, the idol is dead; God is living.
An idol is inanimate matter. It has no life in it and can give no life.
But Jeremiah declares, "Yahweh is the true God; He is the living God and the eonian King" (Jeremiah 10:10). He is not just alive; He is the very source of all life. It is in Him that "we live and move and are" (Acts 17:28). This life culminates in the great promise of the Evangel: "in Christ, shall all be vivified" (1 Corinthians 15:22). The idol is a monument to death; God is the author and giver of life.
Fifth, the idol demands; God gives.
This is perhaps the most crucial distinction for understanding grace. The entire system of idolatry is transactional. The worshipper must bring a sacrifice, perform a ritual, or generate a certain emotional state to appease the idol and earn its favor.
Our God is the polar opposite. Paul, speaking to the idolaters in Athens, declared, "[God] is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, Himself giving to everyone life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25). The religious system, with its demands for tithes, for service, for emotional fervor, is a form of idolatry because it treats God as a being who must be appeased through human works.
God is the perfect antithesis of an idol. Where the idol is visible, God is invisible. Where the idol is created, God is the Creator. Where the idol is silent, God speaks. Where the idol is dead, God is Life. And where the idol demands, God gives.
To seek a faith that is based on what we can see, feel, or experience is to reject the very nature of the God of the Bible. It is to turn back to the golden calf.
I understand the struggle. We live in an administration devoid of signs. God does feel distant at times. The flesh craves some visible proof, some emotional confirmation. But we are not called to walk by what the flesh craves. We are called to stand on the unshakeable foundation of the Word, rightly divided. Our connection to God is not a feeling; it is a fact, established by the blood of Christ and sealed by His spirit.
We must be vigilant. This desire for experience, for feeling, is the gateway to apostasy. It is the subtle whisper of the serpent, telling us that the quiet truth of God's grace is not enough. It is a lie. It is more than enough. It is everything.
Sorry if it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I doubt many noticed, since I don’t think my articles get much attention. Lately, I’ve been focused on learning more from Scripture rather than writing, there’s still so much I need to study and understand.