But some have been fixing themselves for a long time by a species of deception and misrepresentation and prevarication because they have not turned from their idols to serve the living and true God. Sister White is here saying a heart that is emptied of self is contrasted with a heart that is serving Baal. Manuscript Releases, Volume 18, page 246. This is speaking of a particular doctor. He has so fully established the idol of self in the heart and worshipped at its shrine, there has been no room for Jesus, no room for light, for love, for meekness and lowliness of heart. Self is magnified into wonderful proportions. His only hope is to die to self, crucify self. If not, he loses that life which measures with the life of God. It is life or death that is set before Dr. Burke. Choose this day whom you will serve. If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. I would give my own life if such a gift would save his soul, but it would not. Though Noah, Daniel, or Job were in the land, as I live, saith the Lord, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness, which is the imputed righteousness of Christ. Baal worship, brothers and sisters, in our day and age, is self-worship, self-exaltation. To eliminate Baal worship, to tear down Gideon's father's altar of Baal and Ophrah, is to crucify self. Those that do that, that Sister White here uses, are Noah, Daniel, and Job, those that illustrate that for us in this passage. She says they deliver their own souls, no one else's, by their righteousness. And then she tells us what their righteousness is, what the righteousness is that is contrasted with Baal worship, and she says it's the imputed righteousness of Christ. The imputed righteousness of Christ is the righteousness that comes from the experience of justification. The faith I live by, page 111. What is justification by faith? It is the work of God in laying the glory of man in the dust, and doing for man that which is not in his power to do for himself. When men see their own nothingness, they are prepared to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Baal worship is self-worship.