Where did all pagan idolatry begin?
All pagan idolatry began at the Tower of Babel. There Nimrod, the first totalitarian despot, gathered humanity into a false religious system meant to usurp heaven’s throne, and from that rebellion idolatrous worship spread in various forms. This occurred after the Flood, when people rejected God's authority.
Les explains that the New Age movement is designed to bring the world back under the same idolatry that began at the Tower of Babel. That is where these verses begin: man first rejected God and His authority under Nimrod, who was not merely a hunter of animals but a hunter of men and the first world totalitarian despot. Nimrod brought them to the Tower of Babel not just to build with clay and pitch, but to set up a religion. Reaching to heaven meant a religious system intended to usurp the very throne room of heaven. Les says this is where the beginning of all pagan idolatry lies, and where they began to worship in various ways. Before the Flood there was no idolatry, no religion of sorts, no temple worship, and no organized worship; man became corrupt and violent with nothing to control his thinking. After the Flood, eight people—Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives—had a knowledge of God, yet within 200 years, only a generation or two, the expanding population gathered around the Tower of Babel and was ready to embrace pagan worship.