Worship of 'false gods' can take various forms
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President David O. McKay said that in the early 1800s when people heard that a young man, Joseph Smith, claimed that God had revealed Himself, they mocked him, and in doubt turned away from him just as, in the beginning of the Christian era, wise and able men in Athens turned away from Paul.
In the April 1962 general conference, President McKay said that Paul challenged much of the wise men's philosophy as false and their worship of images as gross error. "Yet," President McKay said, "the fact remained that [Paul] was the only man in that great city of intellectuals who knew by actual experience that a man may pass through the portals of death and live - the only man in Athens who could clearly sense the difference between the formality of idolatry and the heartfelt worship of the only true and living God. By the Epicureans and Stoics with whom he had conversed and argued, Paul had been called a `babbler,' a `setter-forth of strange gods.' "President McKay quoted Acts 17:19-23, which records the incident in which Paul, in the midst of Mars' hill, accused the men of Athens as being "too superstitious." Paul told them that he had "found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship."
President McKay added: "Today, as then, too many men and women have other gods to which they give more thought than to the resurrected Lord - the god of pleasure, the god of wealth, the god of indulgence, the god of political power, the god of popularity, the god of race superiority - as varied and numerous as were the gods in ancient Athens and Rome.
"Thoughts that most frequently occupy the mind determine a man's course of action. It is therefore a blessing to the world that there are occasions such as this [general conference], which, as warning semaphores, say to mankind: `In your mad rush for pleasure, wealth, and fame, pause and think what is of most value in life.' "
