Acts 7:43

“You took up the statue of Moloch and the star of your god Remphan, images which you made, to worship them; and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.” Moloch is the Tyrian word and Remphan the Coptic for the Hebrew word Baal, all meaning the sun-god, which was so extensively and extravagantly worshipped by the polytheistic idolaters of that day. They would heat the hollow brazen image of Moloch and lay an infant in his arms, thus offering human sacrifices, which continued till the days of Josiah, during the periods of apostasy and idolatry in Israel. Here Stephen certifies that Israel practiced these idolatries, carrying with them the little images throughout all of their peregrinations in the wilderness. When they crossed the Jordan, Joshua required an abandonment of all this idolatry, administering to them the rite of circumcision, symbolical of their right to sanctification, during their great holiness campmeeting held at Gilgal, immediately after crossing and before they set upon the conquest of the land. Unfortunately, after arriving in Canaan they never did utterly expurgate the land of idolatry, hence the surviving Canaanites proved a snare to them, leading them into idolatry and superinducing the sad and mournful downward trend of four hundred and fifty years of backsliding, recorded in the book of Judges, developing long-established alienation from Jehovah and culminating in their awful Babylonian captivity. Nothing but entire sanctification saves people from idolatry. That is the distressing trouble in the churches of the present day; they are full of idolatry. They worship water-gods, day-gods, creed-gods, sect-gods, money-gods, gods of wood and stone in the form of a fine edifice, and gods of flesh and blood in the form of big preachers and other phases of human leadership. The Holiness Movement is God's call to the people to forsake idolatry. Oh, how perniciously the popular clergy fight for their sectarian gods! As we see here in Israel the awful ultimatum of persistent idolatry was Babylonian captivity, even so this day the masses of Christendom are captured and enslaved in spiritual Babylon.