Statues

Christians have the Holy Spirit to guide us. We follow Jesus who said that its all about love. We love Jesus and since we love him, we have pictures of him around our house and church. Like the pharisees, you miss the point of the law and turn it into the opposite of its meaning. The commmandment was to help us love God, but you turn it into a rule against having a picture of the one we love the most, our Lord Jesus.

Stop being a pharisee.

 

Note that exodus 20:4-5

But often ignore exodus 25:17-20

which according to these people God as he is giving the instructions for the Ark has violated his own law

Yet we know Cherubs are angels in heaven above and God is commanding men to make their image on the Ark which is venerated and bowed down to holding the very pressence of God. Logically we know God cannot sin. So if he commands the image or idols of Cherubs to be made on the most holy item it must not be the image itself or even bowing to it that is a problem for God. But insisting that it is a god apart from the One True God! That is the most reasonable answer but of course baptist insisting on any picture or dipiction or statue of a bible scene is a idol must point their finger at God in accusation because he commands the Israelites to make a graven image of angels. Yet they think its better to just ignore this verse or take it out of the bible all together.

 

That's a really good point! How do the iconoclasts explain that? It seems like they take the commandment even more literally than God himself!

It seems like another case of how the pharisees interpreted everything so strictly. They wouldn't even allow healing a cripple on the sabbath! They would rather let him stay crippled! And they won't allow me to look at a picture of my Lord and Savior when I pray. It seems like taking rules to extremes, which is what Jesus disliked so much about the religious practice of his day.

Jesus said about the 4th commandment that the sabbath was created for man, not man for the sabbath. I expect he would say the 2nd commandment was to help us love God, not hinder us from loving God.

 

EXCELLENT POINT!!! I see this point avoided over and over.

 

Are you suggesting its ok to sin if God Authorizes it? How do you explain God telling the Israelites to make images of angels against his own word? Can God sin? Is God the author of sin. If not then how do you explain it? Can God Contradict himself?

 

I often pray before my bible...thus by this strict legalistic interpretation, that makes me an idolitor. Go figure...

WM

 

Catholics believe that God resides in the tabernacle. If they bow before God - is that idolotry? If He really is there and you don't bow before Him what does that make you?

WM

WM

 

So, what you are saying is that God is allowed to be fickle and inconsistent with what he regards as sin. Rather than hold to the easy interpretation of the bible which suggest that God doesn't not have a problem with images as long as you don't make them their own deity. So, in your mind you believe that God could tell you to commit adultery and its ok because he "Authorized it"? You must have a low view of God.

 

So basically you expect us to believe that the angels on the ark were a one-time exception to the commandments, which, by the way, the ark was designed to carry.

I prefer to believe that your understanding of the commandment is too narrow, and that the commandment allows engraved statues as long as they aren't statues of false gods. This way God isn't contradicting Himself with the angels on the ark. Respect God and stop making Him appear inconsistent, ordering a box made for his commandments that contradict the words on the commandments!!!

 

So according to you God wasn't present on the Mercy Seat either? Catholics didn't invent Jesus saying while holding up bread "this is my body which has been given up for you"

You obviously have no idea how the spiritual and the material world works together. Thus you have gnostic views because you seperate the two when God has built the Material world on the frame of the spiritual world.

Ie to you a firery bush is just a bush. Jesus' physical death really does nothing because its just physical. Maybe Jesus only seemed to suffer. What do you think? Why did Jesus put mud in the blind mans eyes?

 

You are still evading the question. And you are still saying God can permit what he already proclaimed is sin. There is a contradiction here.

 

Moriah needs to address this and stop side-stepping it.

 

Well, they certainly believe it. Further, according to the RCC, this is not a bloody re-sacrifice - it is a re-presentation.

From their Catachism...

1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:

[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.187

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different." "In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner."188

You know... anyone can do a basic Internet search and find out what the RCC means by the word "sacrific". But no - not you. You apparently feel compelled to show your ignorance repeatedly here.

WM

 

Yes, but I'm sure we will continue to hear how the 'RCC re-sacrifices Christ at each mass' regardless of what that church actually teaches. This has been pointed out time and time again, but is also ignored.

 

The balance here is very simple. God explicitly directed certain images to be built by man for specific instructive purposes after a specific heavenly pattern. Idolatry is errecting RELIGOUS images after human or heavenly patterns that God never explicitly instructed man to build. - PERIOD!