Click on the pictures to enlarge if needed:
50 million of Christians were tortured and martyred during the dark ages of the Roman Catholic Church's rule.
"And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." Rev 18:24
More in Jeremiah 44 about the Queen of Heaven
The seven hills of Rome.
The Pope stands as a "replacement" of Jesus and demands to be worshiped.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest church with over a billion followers all over the world.
15 comments:
Pope worship
http://ivarfjeld.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/prostrate-to-pope.jpg
(same poster as before, I just have a blogger account now and am using that ID).
That picture appears to be of an ordination. It certainly does not show worship of the Pope (and this is why context is always important). According to Catholic Online, the men being ordained lie prostrate because “It symbolizes his unworthiness for the office to be assumed and his dependence upon God and the prayers of the Christian community.” They aren't bowing before the Pope. Even if they were, though, bowing is not de facto worship; if it were, then square dancers or any stage performers would be guilty of this since they bow to another. The intent is quite important. The Church also unequivocally states that worship is for God alone.
I hope that helps. :-) God bless.
Bowing is not de facto worship? I apologize because I must disagree with that. The main act of worship is to bow down or prostrate oneself to another.
WORSHIP:
Strong's # 07812
shachah {shaw-khaw'}
a primitive root; TWOT - 2360; v
AV - worship 99, bow 31, bow down 18, obeisance 9, reverence 5, fall down 3, themselves 2, stoop 1, crouch 1, misc 3; 172
If bowing was not a big deal, then Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego would've bowed before Nebuchadnezzar's statue instead of get thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to his image. (Daniel 3:4-6)
Nebuchadnezzar demanded them to worship the image he created, by ordering them to bow down before the golden image.
I believe you that the priests are lying prostrate as they take their vows during their ordination, but look at who they bow towards to. Who sits at that "high altar?"
No, bowing isn't de facto worship. ~If it were, square dancers would be guilty of worshipping their partners, actors would be guilty of worshipping the audience, all Japanese people would be guilty of worshipping each other, etc. Bowing can be part of worship, but bowing does not always mean worship. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were correct in not bowing because bowing in that context would've meant worship.
As I said, the ordinands are lying prostrate to humble themselves before God. In most parishes, the Tabernacle, which contains the Eucharist, is behind the altar.
God bless
So, are you saying they are not bowing to the Pope, but to the Eucharist behind the altar? Please check out my reply in the other post (The Lord Jesus Christ vs the RCC) about the Eucharist.
I even have a problem with Christian churches and when people bow and pray at the altar. The pastor is standing on a pulpit above the crowd with his arms outstretched, saying "come." Although they are not deliberately worshiping the pastor, they are bowing towards Him. That is a whole other discussion, however.
But it is the same.. like in the book of Esther, Mordecai refused to bow to the King's right hand man. This man wanted Mordecai hung for such thing, but we bow to the Lord alone. He wouldn't want us bowing to a piece of bread even. The Catholic Church does not have the second commandment which is not to bow to any image from heaven or earth. We want something we can see and touch, but God is Spiritual. In order for us to worship Him, we must worship Him in Spirit and Truth.
"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. " John 4:23,24
2 Kings 2:15— “And the disciples of the prophets who were in Jericho saw him from a distance, and they said, "Elijah's spirit has rested on Elisha." And they came toward him and >>>>>prostrated<<<<< themselves before him to the ground.
1 Kings 1:23—“When he had been announced, the prophet [Nathan] entered the king's [David] presence and, bowing* to the floor, did him homage.
Nothing wrong with simply prostrating or bowing.
This may be removed from the Catholic Bible, so I'll post this:
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" Exodus 20:4,5
Or, this would apply to the image I posted above:
"But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal." Romans 11:4
But how does this relate? Well, this is the religion of Baal and Ashtaroth, but with different names: Jesus and Mary, although they are not the true Jesus and Mary of the Bible. Baal is god incarnate, the son of His mother, the Queen of Heaven. Their practices, images and even "holy days" are the same. Look up Easter and Christmas, and see what pagan days they are in honor of.
Or, this video would save you time. This is an excellent comparison of both likeliness to a tee- and this man in the video was missing, believed to be murdered by the religion he left.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYVwYEcNAhg&p=AC57C3BC790D08F6&index=0
That verse is definitely in our Bible. However, it cannot be a prohibition against all images, as then God would be contradicting Himself in ordering the creation of the images of the cherubim for the ark or the serpent on the staff. It's only a problem if we worship those images.
I didn't watch all of the video, in large part because the inaccuracies were appalling. Please, research these things, and you'll see that Semiramis was never assumed into Heaven and deified, Tammuz's birth wasn't celebrated on 25 December, etc. There is no credible historical archaeological source saying those things.
God bless
You're right that worshiping the image is a big taboo, but the first part of the verses above is that we are not to create any images either. I used to have pictures of Jesus, and crosses around the house, but after learning about images, I threw them away. I also learned later by studying symbols that the majority of them have pagan/witchcraft origins, so I finally understood why I wasn't supposed to have images.
About Tammuz's birthday, are you familiar with the festival of Saturnalia? Natalis Solis Invicti? They celebrate the death and resurrection of the sun-god, and even the evergreen tree is a pagan symbol of immortality (which we definitely aren't to have either from Jeremiah 10:1-5). It is also the birthday of a sun-god deity in the Roman Empire called Mithras. This Mithras was known as Horus in Egypt and Tammuz in Babylon.
Rome was primarily a Pagan country, and Catholicism originated in Rome. Trying to appease both Christians and Pagans, they combined a lot of things and "Christianized" a lot of pagan practices and observances. The links and similarities are undeniable.
Are you familiar with Constantine? He changed sabbath to "Sun-day" and merged the "holy days" with Pagans around 375AD, and even the early church fathers opposed it but the next generations in 440 started to adopt it as well. It mattered not to pagan Rome whether they worshiped Isis and Horus, or Venus and Jupiter, or Mary and the Christ-child.
It is dangerous to mix these things, and God wants us to be like oil and water. We can't take something wicked, and then "turn" it good.
If merely making images is wrong, then God sinned by ordering the Israelites to make the cherubim to go on the ark, or by ordering the creation of the serpent in the desert. Since we know God cannot sin, then we must look again at this and realise that it is not prohibiting all images.
Saturnalia was a celebration on 17 December, and later extended from 17-23 December. Not the 25th. Mithras is not the same as Horus or Tammuz, nor was his birth celebrated on 25 December, as far as I can find. He was born from a rock, not a Virgin, so the story isn't the same anyway. Horus, likewise, has no celebration associated with 25 December and also was not born of a Virgin. Tammuz was a shepherd-god; I can find nothing about celebrating his birth, but his death was observed at the summer solstice.
If you look at the full passage in Jeremiah, you see that he is speaking of carving idols out of wood, not of decorating an evergreen tree. No one has to have an evergreen tree at Christmas, of course, but it can be a reminder of Christ. The evergreen does symbolise eternity – the pagans recognised that to an extent, but did not fully understand this gift of eternal life that Jesus gives. The lights we put on the tree remind us that the Light of the World has come. It isn't taking something wicked and making it good, but rather taking something that is good (because God created it) and has been perverted by the pagans and restoring it to goodness.
Catholicism originated in Jerusalem in AD33.
Constantine changed nothing. The early Christians worshipped on Sunday, the first day of the week, in honour of our Lord resurrecting on that day. You can see this in the NT. All Constantine did was end the persecution of Christians and allow for Sunday to be a day off of work since the Christians worshipped on that day.
Again, please research these things using credible sources. I say this not just as a Catholic, but as an archaeologist and historian. While I don't recommend stopping with Wikipedia, the bibliographies listed often have some good sources. God bless.
Constantine changed nothing. The early Christians worshipped on Sunday, the first day of the week, in honour of our Lord resurrecting on that day. You can see this in the NT. All Constantine did was end the persecution of Christians and allow for Sunday to be a day off of work since the Christians worshipped on that day.
Again, please research these things using credible sources. I say this not just as a Catholic, but as an archaeologist and historian. While I don't recommend stopping with Wikipedia, the bibliographies listed often have some good sources. God bless.
I'd love to see scripture stating that disciples observed sabbath on Sunday. I can't find that, except that they met on the first day of the week to do business and divide their finances amongst each other. If Sabbath was changed to Sunday, then surely the Bible would've said so. Instead in Hebrews 4 and Col 2, it says that Jesus became the fulfillment of Sabbath and we enter into His rest continually.
About Jeremiah and the Christmas tree, it only states that a workman cuts a tree from the forest with an axe, "decks" (a Christmas term even) it with silver and gold (which is a custom we do also on Christmas with tinsel and ornaments), that it stands upright in their homes and move not. It's traditions were found in ancient Egypt who used palm trees with the same customs during the winter solstice.
About Mithra, what is interesting is that he was called a "mediator" and he also had a Eucharist. You were right that he was born under a rock but it was also to a virgin mother. It was Rome that observed Mithra worship as it's religion/cult. These things are something for us to think about, as we know that Jesus Christ is not Mithra, but some may be tricked into worshiping Mithra disguised as Christ.
In Acts 20:7, we see that they meet on the first day of the week to observe the Eucharist. We also see in the Didache, a document from AD90, that the early Christians are instructed with the following: “ On the Lord's own day, assemble in common to break bread and offer thanks, but first confess your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure." Didache, 14 (A.D. 90). “ Before you object to the Didache not being Scripture, please note that not only is sola Scriptura anachronistic (the canon of Scripture wasn't compiled until the 400s), but un-Scriptural, since Paul instructs us to follow the traditions taught, both by word of mouth and by letter (2 Thes 2:15).
Here is the passage from Jeremiah: 3 Yes, the customs of the peoples are quite futile: wood, nothing more, cut out of a forest, worked with a blade by a carver's hand, 4 then embellished with silver and gold, then fastened with hammer and nails to keep it from moving. 5 Like scarecrows in a melon patch, they cannot talk, they have to be carried, since they cannot walk. Have no fear of them: they can do no harm -- nor any good either!'
They are carved and referred to as scarecrows, showing that they are carved into anthropomorphic forms, not left as trees. Images of gods were often covered in gold plate, in Egypt at least, since they believed their gods had gold skin.
The only thing I can find regarding Egyptians decorating a palm tree on the winter solstice is in Hislop's work. I've mentioned before that his work is rife with inaccuracies. Here's a short run-down of Egyptian feasts: http://www.philae.nu/akhet/Seasons.html
Mithra did not have a Eucharist. A ritual meal, yes, but not the Eucharist. The ritual meal, as far as we can tell, was eating a bull, since Mithras was supposed to have killed a bull and then feasted on it. Archaeologists are not entirely sure about the origins of Mithraism, with some suspecting it came from Persia and is related to Zoroastrianism, and others thinking it was created in Rome. I've never seen proof that Mithras was thought to be born of a virgin, just that he sprang from a rock. There are a lot of good references on the Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries (again, not suggesting that one stop with just looking at Wiki, but the references are a good resource).
Firstly, I want to thank you for your time to discuss these things with me. I will definitely research these things more about what you mentioned about Hislop, Semiramis, Tammuz and Mithra. Thank you for the information from your archaeologist standpoint. It has been most interesting!
Secondly, we can easily debate about Jeremiah and the Christmas tree.. but I think we can see from this passage that it speaks of a wooden idol that we bring into our home and erect upright with adorning. Perhaps you may be right that Jeremiah was speaking of some carvings in anthropomorphic forms in his time, or whatever these nations observed back then. Although, whether they were carved or left as a tree (and was not pointed out in the passage), I doubt makes big difference, but I do believe it was written more generally for a purpose. The introduction of this passage is most important: "learn not the way of the heathen, nor be dismayed at them." (v2). These are customs of the people of the land, and God tells us not to learn their ways and to observe it ourselves also, v3 says that the customs of the people are in vain. Jeremiah continues down to the passage praising the Lord, saying there is none like Him.. to show us that our attention, our praise, glory and sights should be fixed on Him alone for worship.
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