Nuggets from Countdown to the Second Coming—Creating Antichrist’s False Church (Part 5)

The world of our day is unquestionably being prepared for the one who “as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians:2:4Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
See All...). This prophecy will have its primary fulfillment when the Antichrist sits in the Jewish temple yet to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. There is, however, a secondary application. The body of a believer becomes the “temple” of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (“ye are the temple of God, and...the Spirit of God dwelleth in you” (1 Corinthians:3:16Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
See All...; cf. 6:19) and so it should be with all mankind. Instead, the religion of the Antichrist exalts self as “God” within the human “temple.”

Today, for the first time in history, not only a few yogis and gurus but increasing millions of ordinary people worldwide are mystically looking deep within themselves. There, in what ought to be the temple of the true God, they seek to discover that their alleged “higher self” is “God.” The practice of TM, Eastern meditation, and other forms of yoga is widespread. The goal is “self-realization”: to realize that one is “God.” It is the very same lie with which the serpent deceived Eve. Obviously the deification of self plays an important part in preparing the world to worship the Antichrist, giving us yet another indication that our generation could be living in the last of the last days.

One need not practice Eastern mysticism, however, to deify self. That philosophy is basic to humanistic psychology, which has gained prominence within the last 30 years. One of its leaders, Carl Rogers, renounced Christianity while in seminary and turned to the study of psychology. Rogers offered students a substitute secular “born again” experience of being “baptized in the fluid waters of your own self.” Declaring that “self in its unlimited potential is virtually a god,” Rogers defiantly demanded, “Who needs a God above when there is one within?”