Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith—Self-Love and Self-Deification

Christ would never have said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” if we all disliked ourselves. His command to “love your neighbor as yourself” obviously assumes that we already love ourselves and is not intended to encourage but to correct self-love. It urges us to give to our neighbors some of the loving care we naturally lavish upon ourselves. Yet some evangelical churches hold seminars to teach members how to love themselves. It is like pouring gasoline on a fire already out of control. And once again the prophesied phenomenon has appeared for the first time in our present generation.

John also saw in his vision that not only the Dragon (Satan) would be worshiped, but that the Antichrist himself would be worshiped as God. Past generations would have thought it ridiculous to imagine that anyone, much less the entire world, would worship a man as God. In the last 40 years, however, the “god-men” from the East such as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, Baba Muktananda, Maharaji, and many others have come to the West and have been literally worshiped as God by thousands of their followers. While only a small minority of mankind currently follow the gurus, nevertheless worshiping a man as God has for the first time in history become commonplace in the Western world. Actors, actresses, sports heroes, and political leaders are among those now worshiping gurus.

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...; see also 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.