Ruler Worship

The Torah is plain about certain involvement with pagan religions deserving death.  Along with sacrificing to any god other than Yahweh (Exodus 22:20) or engaging in human sacrifice to a god like Molech more particularly (Leviticus 20:1-5), worshipping any real or nonexistent being (or part of the natural world) other than Yahweh is prescribed execution (Deuteronomy 17:2-7).  In fact, simply enticing someone else to worship other gods deserves the death penalty (Deuteronomy 13:6-10) even if the act is not carried out.  While not everything associated with every pagan religion is particularly fastened to capital punishment--someone who casually but stupidly identifies with pagan philosophy but does not actually worship or sacrifice to any other gods has not done such things--key acts are.

Since all allegedly self-affirmed divine rulers, living or dead, who are worshipped would be other "gods" besides Yahweh, though they are not deities at all if they are but humans, they would deserve to be killed for their cosmic treachery in acting like they are an uncaused cause or something closer to one.  Physical idols would not even have to be part of these practices.  They all would deserve to be killed for this alone, not to mention any of the murder, abduction, rape, adultery, or unbiblical torture they engaged in, all of which are their own capital sins.  Other than pretending to be above or ungoverned by the necessary laws of logic, there could be no greater arrogance than that or a lesser being considering itself divine.

Every pharaoh, emperor, monarch, and other human figure who has encouraged ruler worship or demanded this kind of reverence would by necessity deserve to die in light of this.  They would have enticed someone else to worship something other than Yahweh, or in some instances gone as far as to demand this unmerited reverence under the threat of death or torture.  As such, every single person who has ever decreed such a thing would Biblically deserve to be prematurely put to death.  They would not have to murder or abuse people in certain ways to coerce worship in order for this to be justice on the Christian worldview.  As foreign to some moderners as it might be, ruler worship is attested to in the historical record.

Xerxes of Persia might not have thought himself a literal god as presented in the film 300, but there are other cases of analogous delusion.  The imperial cult of Rome, for instance, pertained to the supposed deification of Caesars, and eventually their families, after death.  Caligula, according to Seutonius, is the first emperor of Rome to have called for worship while he was still alive.  This same sort of behavior is present on a smaller scale whenever a charismatic cult leader expects to be treated like a divinity.  Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple who manipulated over 900 people at Jonestown in Guyana to commit suicide or be involuntarily injected with cyanide in 1978, would be an example of this.  He stated or implied that he himself was God to exert control over his followers.

It is not just that ruler worship is deeply erroneous if someone is not truly the embodied uncaused cause, from which all contingent things came directly or indirectly (such as if God created another being that created the universe with its own power).  If there is such a thing as reverence owed to any being, a queen or king could not deserve the same regard as the uncaused cause itself, no matter how much it would gratify their pathetic egos.  Mosaic Law does not have to specifically mention ruler worship by these words to condemn its adherents to death along with any person who called for worship of mortals, including that of their own self.  Anyone who sacrifices to other gods must be killed, and the same is the case with those who worship other gods/goddesses in additional ways or so much as entice people to do the same.  Coercing this would be necessity have to also deserve death.