Money is our substitute for God. The god of the United States is money.

Money cannot buy us love, joy, or peace. We think it can but it cannot. One only has to look about to see poor households where there is a loving, happy family and wealthy families where there is deep sorrow and tragedy. Of course, this is not always the case. But it does reveal that love, joy, and peace come from the Spirit of God and not from money.

We know this, but the pressures of our culture cause us to forget it.

God has promised to meet our needs if we put Him, His Kingdom, and His righteousness first in our life. He will do this even if all the economies of the world fail. We do not have to hoard gold in order to protect ourselves. Our gold idol will not save us in the day of God's judgment.

If we are accurate, if Antichrist is self-will in the governmental and social realms, if the False Prophet is self-will in the spiritual and religious realms, and if the Image of Antichrist is money, then let's see what the consequences of this position are.

We then would be saying that in the future self-willed religionists will make the nations of the earth worship a self-willed society. Is this something we can see going on around us? Is it true that Christianity has brought about democratic government? Are the leading democracies nations that have been influenced by Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity? Is the United States of America, a culture influenced by Christian thinking, attempting to force democracy on the rest of the world?

He [the False Prophet, self-willed Christianity] exercised all the authority of the first beast [Antichrist, self-will in the social order] on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. (Revelation 13:12—NIV)

Where would "great and miraculous signs" come from, in support of democratic thinking, other than self-willed religionists?

And he [the False Prophet] performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. (Revelation 13:13—NIV)

Would it be self-willed religious people, mainly Christians, who would deceive the nations and order them to set up a worldwide economic system with money as the chief element? When the faith-prosperity doctrines were at their highest point, a few years ago, there was much talk about the Christians becoming so rich through faith that the world would have to go to the Christians for money. It would not be such a great step, after the massive ingathering of people during the latter-rain revival, for the faith-prosperity doctrines (which are completely self-centered, having nothing to do with the Lord Jesus) to be revived and money to become the focus of the churches, even to the point of forcing some kind of monetary system on the world. This is why the Laodicean churches "are rich and have need of nothing."

To be continued.