From childhood most Americans are taught to love two things most of all: God and Country. I’m willing to bet this is true in most other countries as well. Perhaps it isn’t said so crassly, but the effect is almost always the same. How else do you explain the French government forcing Muslim women to take their clothes off on beaches because their “burkinis” aren’t French enough, the Israeli government efforts to expel nearly 40,000 African immigrants, the Chinese government sending over a million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim minorities to concentration for “re-education,” the way South Africans, both through formal government and private mob action, have driven Nigerians from the country through oppressive anti-immigrant laws and mob violence, or the violence and racism faced by African immigrants and Afro-Argentinians in Argentina? I could keep going. Examples abound. But they all attest to the same idea- that through childhood people in these places, and all over the world, have been taught what it means to be a member of their culture, their nation, their country, their people. Further they’ve been taught, if not in exacting word then in thought and deed, that fitting this definition is so important that those who do not need to be either driven away or forced to comply. Raised this way, to “love your country,” you may try and apologize for these manifold evils while still maintaining that the idea itself is good. This is manifestly not true. Not only is it based on contention and creates discord in the human family, reasons enough to demonstrate its infernal origins, there is one other glaring, monstrous problem with it. “Loving your country,” is idolatry. Before we go any further, before we investigate the very monstrous truth of this matter, we must first determine what it is we mean when we say idolatry.
Idolatry Defined
The classic image of idolatry that comes to the minds of most people, and why they would first undoubtedly balk at being labeled an idolater themselves, is that of a person bowing before a golden image of some nature god, praying to it, offering sacrifices to it, etc. The picture they might conjure up would be something like the worship of the god Moloch in the Old Testament, which included burning children alive as sacrifices to the god by either casting them into a fire built into an idol of the god or by laying the babe into the superheated metal arms of the idol until the child burned to death:
Using this image and this definition they would comfort themselves. They do not do that, therefore they are not idolaters. The problem with this image is that it is only partially true. Modern prophets have helped us expand our understanding of what idolatry consists of and it is more than worshipping a statue. The manual prepared for the church for use in the Church Educational System defines idolatry this way:
Though in the Old Testament idolatry is associated with the worship of actual images, true idolatry goes far beyond the practice of bowing down to images and appeasing angry idols. The Lord has made it clear in all ages that whenever men place their full trust in such things as other men, nations, treaties, treasuries, precious minerals, armies, or armaments, their actions are a form of idolatry because such actions reveal a lack of trust in Jehovah. To be totally free of idolatry one must put complete trust in the true God.
The Bible Dictionary sums it up even more succinctly:
Idolatry
The worship of idols or an excessive attachment or devotion to anything.
Idolatry then is not only worshipping statues, it is putting your trust in anything that isn’t God; it is having any special attachment or devotion to anyone, anything, or any idea other than God. Notice that the manual specifically states that having trust in your nation is a form of idolatry and that we must put our complete trust in God alone. No President, potentate, king, or Prime Minister, no nation, no government, nor military are worthy objects of human trust, attachment, or devotion and to the degree that we give any trust, attachment, or devotion to these organizations, to that degree we are committing idolatry.
War as Human Sacrifice
If this seems excessive to you -Can trusting in the government to protect you and having such an attachment to it that you would kill your brothers and sisters to protect its rule really be idolatry?- President Spencer W. Kimball lays it out plainly:
I use the word idolatry intentionally. As I study ancient scripture, I am more and more convinced that there is significance in the fact that the commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is the first of the Ten Commandments.
Few men have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his blessings. Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of faith has always appeared to be more difficult than relying on things more immediately at hand, carnal man has tended to transfer his trust in God to material things. Therefore, in all ages when men have fallen under the power of Satan and lost the faith, they have put in its place a hope in the “arm of flesh” and in “gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know” (Dan. 5:23)—that is, in idols. This I find to be a dominant theme in the Old Testament. Whatever thing a man sets his heart and his trust in most is his god; and if his god doesn’t also happen to be the true and living God of Israel, that man is laboring in idolatry.
…In spite of our delight in defining ourselves as modern, and our tendency to think we possess a sophistication that no people in the past ever had—in spite of these things, we are, on the whole, an idolatrous people—a condition most repugnant to the Lord.
We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)
Notice how President Kimball in the second paragraph lays out the classic definition of idols -statues of gods made of metal, stone, or wood- and then in the fourth paragraph connects the building of military armaments and defenses -ships, planes, fortifications- back to the classic definition by calling such military armaments fabricated “gods of stone and steel.” As if to destroy all doubt in the hearers mind that their attachment to the military as a means of protection or deliverance, President Kimball goes on to talk about how training a person for military service is a complete perversion of the teachings of Jesus Christ, which in turn means those who have such a devotion to their nation’s military are nothing but perverts. Why perverts? Because they have perverted and warped the Gospel of Jesus Christ and dedicated themselves to the worship and support of false idols and wicked ideals.
The idolatrous nature of war was taught by Elder Boyd K. Packer, who confusingly trying to justify his own pro-war beliefs explains perfectly how war is a perversion of Christianity:
I have worn the uniform of my native land in the time of total conflict. I have smelled the stench of human dead and wept tears for slaughtered comrades. I have climbed amid the rubble of ravaged cities and contemplated in horror the ashes of a civilization sacrificed to Moloch; yet knowing this, with the issues as they are, were I called again to military service, I could not conscientiously object!
Putting aside the utter nonsensical contradiction in Packer’s own arguments -that joining the military is to take part in the act of destroying civilizations, slaughtering people, and the worship of a false god and that is somehow okay for anyone who has dedicated his or her self to the service of God alone- we should nevertheless acknowledge the core truth he teaches here. Being in the military and going to war is not just to actively worship false gods as President Kimball taught, it is to actively take part in the worship of false gods by engaging in human sacrifice as Elder Packer makes plain by comparing his experiences to the worship of Moloch. And if we extend his teaching we have to ask ourselves, if the slaughter and destruction of war is comparable to the worship of Moloch, then what is the idol which is the object of such human sacrifice?
To answer that we merely have to ask, who or what does the military receive commands from and give obedience to? Is it not the government? It is; and thus the idolatrous nature of “loving your country” becomes plain. In the name of “serving,” “protecting,” or “loving” your country and the government which leads it you build mass idols of military warfare, you then offer yourselves or even your children as human sacrifices to kill and be killed as an offering to it, all of which is as much an act of worship to the nation and the government as sacrificing children was to Moloch of old. William Lloyd Garrison, then denouncing Northerners in the USA for loving national unity over God’s commandments but making a point that applies to those who worship the modern idol of government and country today, said:
With the North, the preservation of the Union is placed above all other things—above honour, justice, freedom, integrity of soul, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule—the Infinite God himself. All these she is ready to discard for the Union. Her devotion to it is the latest and the most terrible form of idolatry.
The Most Terrible Form of Idolatry
Make no mistake. Garrison was correct. Your devotion to your country, your nation, your government, is idolatry in its most terrible form, masquerading as virtue in the same way a whore masquerades as a lady. The core reason for this is the perversion that President Kimball explained and which I noted before: It convinces you to disobey the commandments of God as if that were a virtue to be celebrated and in turn seeks to attack, humiliate, or destroy any who would place God and His commandments first. There are multiple examples of this to demonstrate the point, but for brevity’s sake I will cite but two: first, military and police violence and, second, taxation.
It may seem odd to some that the military and the police may be discussed as if they were the same thing. This is because much has been done to blind us to the simple truth, the jobs of the soldier and the police officer are the same- to enforce the edicts and orders of those in government power by threatening everyone with overwhelming violence in order to ensure obedience and by using that violence to force submission upon the disobedient. The only significant difference is that soldiers generally operate internationally and the police violently enforce the orders of the government domestically. If an Iraqi resists an occupying American solder’s orders that Iraqi can be imprisoned but most likely will simply be labeled a “terrorist” and be shot. If you do anything that the police interpret as being a threat or you refuse to comply, even if you are innocent, you will be shot. You will be killed.
Even when we assume the best circumstance for soldiers and police killing people, say in actual self-defense against armed and violent opponents/criminals, it really doesn’t matter. Not to the Saint. This is because we know God’s will in the latter-days. The words of God as given through revelations through the Prophet Joseph Smith make it clear:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, nor do anything like unto it. (D&C 59:6)
In short, all killing is forbidden by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, without exception. If you are a Latter-day Saint the voice of the Lord is clear and He has forbidden you to kill another human being. And yet the government continues to urge us to kill in its name, for its power, to assert its dominance, and according to its glory. In its schools we are indoctrinated from childhood into this death cult and conditioned to think of killing in its name absolves us from God’s commandments that forbid killing. This is the hallmark of idolatrous religions, they teach us to disobey the one true God in favor of ideologies that promote and profit the cult leaders and its idol(s). Idolatry encourages wickedness as righteousness and teaches us to obey it and disobey God. As all governments on the planet do this, they are all idolatrous and obeying them is to be complicit in their idolatry, making you an idolater. It is the same as someone sacrificing their child to Moloch not because he or she necessarily believes in Moloch but because it is what everyone else is doing; in the end that person would still be an idolater. When you do the works of idolatry you become and idolater.
This same truth extends to supporting the system of taxation. Taxation is theft. There is no getting around this fact. Your money is your own property. When the government demands part of your money from you otherwise it will take it from you and imprison you, possibly until your dying day, as they did to Irwin Schiff, how could that be anything other than extortion and theft? That, of course, is if you don’t “resist” kidnapping and imprisonment and they don’t just outright kill you in the first place. When a person on the street puts a gun to your face and demands your money on your life we call him a mugger. When a group gets together and does the same we call that a gang or a cartel. That doesn’t change just because the thugs wear suits and say John across the street and Billy two doors down said they could come over and take your property. It is all still extortion; it is all still theft.
This extends to all cases of taxation. Even those who say they willingly consent to taxation do not actually do so. Consent can only be obtained when all parties to the agreement have the ability to reject it without being forced into it or being punished for their refusal by the other party to said agreement. Just as the difference between rape and consensual sex is the ability of everyone involved to say no and not be forced into it anyway, you cannot consent to taxation because you have no ability to meaningfully say no without being forced into it anyway. And taking another’s property without their consent is theft. Yet, what does the Lord say about theft? Let us revisit D&C 59:6 with a slightly different emphasis:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, nor do anything like unto it.
Again, if you go and read the full section you will notice that there are no exceptions. We are commanded not to steal. Yet the government can only exist by extortion, stealing, and carrying out mass and destructive violence against those who protect their inviolable rights to life, liberty, and property. Further, the government actively teaches that this theft is good and noble and that only the insane who would think otherwise. In this it actively misleads people, teaches ways in opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and convince people to enforce these violations of God’s commandments through terror and violence.
Pay your taxes or end up in a jail cell or a grave. That is the government’s modus operandi. And in encouraging people to obey it and threatening to destroy them and their families if they don’t it is teaching loyalty to it and devotion to it instead of loyalty and devotion to God alone. That is and ever will be idolatry. And as such, as Saints who have devoted everything we have or ever shall have solely to God alone through sacred covenant for the building up of His kingdom and have given ourselves to Him as our sole Master, we must completely reject such a vile, evil system for what it is- an idolatrous anti-Christ.
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The idolatrous nature of the government, and therefore the ideologies that encourage loyalty and devotion to it -whether those ideologies be labeled nationalism, patriotism, or something else- is thus revealed. But this is not all. This is merely the start.
Once the idolatrous nature of the State is understood we need to pull back the curtain on the system and show how it operates, we need to reveal the way it manipulates the religious and spiritual nature of humans to secure their reverence and ensure its power. Following the scholarship of the eminent historian Dr. Carlton J. H. Hayes, we will delve into how the government is its own secular religion and take apart the rituals and symbols it uses to manufacture mass subservience. This we will begin to do in The Modern Moloch, Part 2, which will be released next week.