The world has taken a dark turn. My father, Philadelphia Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, wrote about this dark turn at the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in an article titled “A Dangerous New Age of ‘Worshiping the Will.’” He highlighted several examples of radical leftists adopting insane ideas without evidence and forcing them on the public with sheer willpower. Then he warned, “Following a human will really means following Satan’s will! Satan and his demons reject God’s authority. They do not believe in absolute truth.”

Most people did not pay attention to this article like they should have, and now many conservatives are also adopting insane ideas and trying to force them on the public. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are prime examples of people who have abandoned sound-minded principles for evil, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Carlson has falsely accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and derided Christian Zionists as heretics that he dislikes “more than anybody.”

Meanwhile, Owens has minimized the Holocaust, calling Nazi medical experiments “bizarre propaganda,” promoted the anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the media, and repeated the claim that Mossad was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities. She has no evidence of these claims, but she hysterically repeats them until people believe her.

In the past, these and other voices have spoken out courageously for the truth, but now they are mixing the truth with increasingly worse evils. How can you know who—or what—to trust?

First, you must recognize that the spirit world is real!

The spirit world, including the spirit of will worship, affects how we think, our perception of good and evil, our relationships, our ideologies—everything. It also appears to be affecting people physically.

In a recent interview with Megyn Kelly, Carlson said he had a dramatic experience two years ago when he woke up in the middle of the night short of breath.

“I go into the bathroom,” he said, “I flip on the light, and I have claw marks on both sides, right and left side, on my ribs. They are bleeding and they are literally claw marks, four on either side. … My wife goes, ‘I think you were attacked by some supernatural being.’ And I was trying to be logical about it—I was like, ‘Yeah, I definitely was.’”

This is a weird story for Carlson to share. Yet he is not the only one in the Make America Great Again movement sharing such stories. Owens has been spreading wild conspiracy theories about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and now she is “backing them up” by claiming that the spirit of Kirk visited her in a vivid dream and told her that he was betrayed.

Conservative commentator Brett Cooper, a regular contributor on Fox News, has also admitted that her mother visited a medium and talked to the dead. She laughed about it on the Shaun Ryan Show and said that while she has never conversed with a medium, she kind of wants to. Her story was not nearly as spooky as Carson’s midnight demon attack story, but she is not taking the dangers of the invisible spirit world as seriously as she should.

The Bible records that Jesus had many encounters with demon-possessed people, so such people do exist, and they are a danger we should be aware of. These demons have not disappeared. In fact, they are increasingly active in people’s minds—and even physically—after having been confined to the Earth (Revelation 12:9).

Here is one of the main effects demons have on people: You can find it in Colossians 2:18, 23: “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels [demons, it should read], intruding into those things which he [has] seen [that is the correct translation], vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind …. Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship ….”

You could say that there are really only two things that exist: reality and will. God created you with free will. You can either submit your will to reality, or you can submit to—and end up worshiping—your will. That is exactly what Lucifer did!

These verses warn us that worshiping the human will ultimately leads to worshiping demons! Human nature is all about self is right. It’s about going your own way even if you’re wrong. It’s an attitude of, I do my own thing. We see it everywhere, and it’s important that we recognize it in ourselves as well. If we don’t recognize that attitude and fight it by submitting to reality, to the truth—even when we don’t like the truth—the self-is-right attitude only grows. Whether you’re a radical liberal, a patriotic conservative, a Christian or just the average person going about your day, if you exalt your will above the truth and become vainly puffed up, you are doing what Lucifer did and in danger of worshiping fallen angels!

You feel, for example, that you no longer need evidence to make wild claims. The human mind is so vulnerable to Satan’s broadcast, deception and influence. It is especially vulnerable when it is puffed up with vanity and self-righteousness, because it’s absorbing Satan’s attitude! That is exactly what he did and does!

“Satan and his demons reject God’s authority,” my father wrote. “They do not believe in absolute truth; everything is relative to their will. Christ said the devil ‘abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it’(John 8:44). When human beings reject God’s truth, they start worshiping their own opinions. They start thinking like Satan. When this type of thinking becomes entrenched enough, people stop even caring about the difference between true and false. … This thinking is taking over America’s political scene!”

Many of us can clearly see will worship in radical leftists who want to take over and force everyone to accept and support insane things that reject reality. But if you don’t recognize it in yourself, you’re being deceived, and you need to wake up and fight it! Accept reality. Submit to the truth, even when it reveals that you are wrong and need to change. Be rooted in the truth (see Colossians 2:6-8).

Recent events have proved that even conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are not immune to Satan’s devices. To withstand this evil, we must put on the armor of God daily and pray for spiritual, mental and physical protection. A sound, balanced mind filled with the Holy Spirit will dwell on praise and thanks for God.

Acts 8:9-10 tell us about a man named Simon who “used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest ….” In other words, he used the power of demons to deceive large numbers of people.

Historians have noted that something similar happened with Adolf Hitler in Germany. Hermann Rauschning recalled Hitler telling him at one point, “A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming, of interpretation in terms of the will and not of intelligence.”

That is exactly what “will worship” is! That’s what magic really is as well: the idea of bending reality to the power of will.

Satan is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), broadcasting in moods, attitudes and impulses that make us reject facts, reason, reality itself. Recognize the danger of will worship in your own mind. Become rooted and built up in Jesus Christ and, as Colossians 2:6-8 admonish each of us, “stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”