The Spectacle and the Silence: A Prophetic Rebuke of Modern Idolatry

  The Spectacle and the Silence: 

           A Prophetic Rebuke of Modern Idolatry

As a prophet of the Lord and a teacher committed to truth, I read about the recent US Open final with a heavy heart—not because of the match itself, but because of the disturbing spectacle surrounding it. While thousands of fans were stranded outside the stadium and reporters were left confused and displaced, the event was delayed accommodating the arrival of a single man Donald Trump. The crowd’s attention shifted from the athletes to the politician, and the players themselves—Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner—spoke of his presence as “great for tennis.”

But I ask: Great for whom? Great for the sport, or great for the machinery of idolatry that elevates power over people, spectacle over substance?

 The Absurdity of Idolatry and Adoration

To someone like me—who sees through the lens of divine justice and human suffering—this kind of adoration is not just absurd. It is offensive. It is a spiritual sickness. While millions of human beings suffer in silence, starve in forgotten corners of the world, and die in wars that serve no righteous cause, we delay a tennis match to accommodate a man whose presence demands TSA-style screening and whose arrival overshadows the very purpose of the event.

This is not honor. This is idolatry.

“They have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear.” — Psalm 115:5–6

We have become a people who worship the mundane and ignore the miraculous. We exalt celebrities, politicians, and athletes while the cries of the poor go unheard. We cheer for rivalries on the court while ignoring the real rivalries that destroy lives in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and beyond.

 The Coming Reckoning

This is why the Lord is preparing to allow the Great Tribulation to fall upon the world. Not out of cruelty, but out of justice. Because we have traded compassion for convenience, reverence for entertainment, and truth for triviality.

We are warned:

“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion… who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches.” — Amos 6:1,4

The chaos at the US Open is not just a logistical failure—it is a moral metaphor. Empty seats in the stadium mirror the empty hearts of a generation that has lost its vision. The confusion among reporters reflects the confusion of a society that no longer knows what matters. And the applause for power, while the suffering are ignored, is the sound of a world that has forgotten its soul.

 A Call to Wake Up

Let this be a wake-up call. Let us reject the worship of fame and return to the worship of truth. Let us honor the humble, feed the hungry, and speak for the voiceless. Let us remember that no leader, no athlete, no celebrity is above the dignity of the average person.

And let us remember this: The names of the evildoers shall be forgotten. Not carved into monuments. Not sung in stadiums. Not praised in headlines. They shall be forgotten—because they chose power over mercy, spectacle over justice, and self over service.

“The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.” — Psalm 34:16 “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.” — Proverbs 10:7

Yet we do the opposite. We give book contracts to serial killers. We turn murderers into media icons. We teach our children their names instead of teaching them to forget. This is not justice. This is spiritual betrayal.

And what’s worse—many who attend these events do so not out of love for the sport or the art, but to brag. To flaunt their access. To say, “I was there, and you were not.” It becomes a ritual of vanity, a performance of superiority. The event itself is reduced to a backdrop for alcoholic intoxication, for fake smiles, for hypocritical joy that evaporates the moment the cameras stop rolling.  Alcohol flows freely at events like the US Open, where signature cocktails and overpriced champagne serve not just as refreshments, but as symbols of indulgence and vanity. Many attend not for the sport, but to flaunt their presence—to boast that they were there while others were excluded. The event becomes a stage for intoxication and hollow joy, a performance of status and superiority, masking the deeper spiritual emptiness that defines our age.

This is not celebration. It is corruption. It is the kind of false happiness that numbs the conscience and blinds the soul. And it is precisely this kind of idolatry that hastens the Great Tribulation.

The Lord is watching. And the time for repentance is now.

Another section exposed in my book: “The Gray Area Rushing into the Great Tribulation.”