Ezekiel 6:9
Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil things they did, their abominations of every kind.
Psalm 115
1 Not to us, Yahweh, not to us,
but to Your name give glory
because of Your faithful love, because of Your truth.
2 Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven
and does whatever He pleases.
4 Their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk.
They cannot make a sound with their throats.
8 Those who make them are just like them,
as are all who trust in them.
9 Israel, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and shield.
10 House of Aaron, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and shield.
11 You who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and shield.
12 The LORD remembers us and will bless us.
He will bless the house of Israel;
He will bless the house of Aaron;
13 He will bless those who fear the LORD—
small and great alike.
14 May the LORD add to your numbers,
both yours and your children’s.
15 May you be blessed by the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
16 The heavens are the LORD’s,
but the earth He has given to the human race.
17 It is not the dead who praise the LORD,
nor any of those descending into the silence of death.
18 But we will praise the LORD,
both now and forever.
Hallelujah!
Spiritual Minefield 
Reminds me of the 80’s song “Hard habit to break.” Only God can convict. I stayed in Catholicism for a good 3 years after my conversion. I got to a Pilate moment and asked, “Quid est veritas?”
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Exactly what “idol” or “idols” are Catholics bowing down to?
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The statue of Mary that people bow down, kiss the feet of the statue and pray to her.
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Statue of Lourdes, Virgen de Guadalupe, Statue of St. Joseph, The Black Nazarene, St. Augustine, etc. I know this because I grew up in a pious Catholic household. Most Catholics in other countries happen to be more pious than the ones here in the US.
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I have another question: If I pray on my knees beside my bed with an open Bible on the bed, am I worshipping my Bible and/or making it an idol? Or if I take a picture of my husband and daughter from my purse, show it to you and then kiss it because I love them, am I worshipping my husband and my daughter and/or making them idols?
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No Christian prays or bows down towards the Bible as if it was deity but to the God that’s revealed in the Bible. If you pray to the pictures of your family then its idol worship but if you pray to the Lord about your family then you are not sinning.
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Of course no Christian prays or bows down towards the Bible as if it were a deity! A Christian would honor, respect and love the Bible because of what it represents as the Word of God. No Christian would pray to pictures of his/ her family as if they were deities either! The picture represents the family that is loved and cherished.
How, then, are you so very certain that Catholics are praying to a statute or image of a saint or of Christ himself and worshiping that statute or image as a deity? Is it on the basis of kneeling beside it? Or kissing it? Or prayer?
If so, how then does that differ from my example of the open Bible at the bedside or kissing a picture of my family? If I kneel at the altar and pray and there is a cross at the front of the sanctuary, am I praying to and worshiping that cross as a deity? “No, that is different,” you tell me. Is it different? Then please explain to me how is it different?
Where in Catholic church teaching, doctrine, catechism (whatever) are Catholics instructed to treat religious statutes, images, pictures, etc. as deities that are to be worshiped? I have never heard of that doctrine/ teaching before.
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Let me ask you a question, where in the Bible does it instruct anyone ” to treat religious statutes, images, pictures, etc. as deities that are to be worshiped?”
Catholics worldwide do this out of manmade tradition and not even you can deny this fact. They do their processions, monthly feasts to these saints back where I came from. It is this assumed manmade unbiblical tradition that trips up the adherents and I believe there are people who genuinely have given their heart to Jesus but is mired in this gripping false religion who purports (The Pope specifically) ALL people pray to the same God, this is a lie. Another sad thing is Catholics believe NO ONE can gain salvation apart from the Holy Catholic Church. They appear to be accepting of other religions but their very Catechism anathematizes non Catholics. Explain that.
My mother reasons that not everything can be written in the book. If she happened to get her reasoning from the priest and obviously, they are not written in Scripture, what does that equate? Man made tradition and Jesus condemns this in Mark 7:8, “You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.”
People can reason all they want, but like I said, only God can convict. You make the choice, keep your assumed manmade tradition or stick to what is revealed in Scriptures. No one forces anyone. It is a choice to be made. Who do you choose? God or Man? I say Catholics choose man.
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The Bible clearly condemns anyone kneeling to a statue that one has made or pray to anyone else instead of God Himself in Jesus’ name.
Leviticus 26:1 Do not make idols for yourselves, set up a carved image or sacred pillar for yourselves, or place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am Yahweh your God.
Deuteronomy 4:16-18 15 “For your own good, be extremely careful—because you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you out of the fire at Horeb— 16 not to act corruptly and make an idol for yourselves in the shape of any figure: a male or female form, 17 or the form of any beast on the earth, any winged creature that flies in the sky, 18 any creature that crawls on the ground, or any fish in the waters under the earth.
1 Kings 19:18 18 But I will leave 7,000 in Israel—every knee that has not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
According to the passage above kissing a statue is a sign of worship. No where in the Bible that the Lord prohibits or commands anyone to bow down to an idol or kiss it to show respect towards Him according to: Isaiah 46:5-13
5 “Who will you compare Me or make Me equal to?
Who will you measure Me with,
so that we should be like each other?
6 Those who pour out their bags of gold
and weigh out silver on scales—
they hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.
Then they kneel and bow down to it.
7 They lift it to their shoulder and bear it along;
they set it in its place, and there it stands;
it does not budge from its place.
They cry out to it but it doesn’t answer;
it saves no one from his trouble.
8 “Remember this and be brave;
take it to heart, you transgressors!
9 Remember what happened long ago,
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and no one is like Me.
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I don’t think Jesus will be pleased with the baby Jesus depiction. Glad you put that up there. There is another specific idol called St. Niño. It seems people who bow and kiss it forget the fact that Jesus did not remain a baby. He died to save the world and will bring peace when He comes back, contrary to what some Marian apparitions state that constantly praying the rosary will bring about World Peace.
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Amen sister
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I will answer your question directly: where in the Bible does it instruct anyone to treat religious statutes, images, pictures, etc. as deities that are to be worshiped?
Nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to do such a thing. We are sternly warned against the sin of idolatry. In fact the first three of the ten commandments are very clear that we are to worship God and God alone. I agree 100% that God, himself, commands that we should have no other god(s) other than the Lord God Creator of heaven and earth.
However, that is not to say that God has prohibited the use of religious images, icons, symbols, etc. In fact, God himself ordered a bronze statute of a snake to be made and lifted up so that the Israelites who had been bitten by the poisonous snakes in the desert could look up to the image and be healed/saved. In the same way, God himself gave very specific instructions about the crafting of the ark of the Covenant and the temple which included religious icons and symbols.
I have answered your question directly Cali. You have not answered mine. How are the examples I have given in my post from 12:23 pm different and where in Catholic teaching, doctrine, Catechism, etc. are Catholics instructed to worship anyone or anything other than God himself? Can you give me some official reference? Any official reference?
You tell me about your mother and about your mother’s priest. Is your mother a theologian, a professor at a seminary or some expert on the Catholic faith? Should I trust her interpretation over official church teaching/ doctrine? Your mother’s priest – the things your mother claims he said, is this what he really said or did she misunderstand him?
And let’s say, for sake of argument, that your mother’s priest is teaching things that are diametrically opposed to official Catholic church doctrine: If a priest (or let’s say a Protestant pastor) speaks in doctrinal error, does that make the entire faith/ denomination wrong? Is any individual priest or pastor an official spokesman for an entire denomination?
I would certainly hope not! Even the Pope cannot legitimately and officially speak contrary to Catholic doctrine as stated in the Catechism, the various Church Council’s, the Magisterium, etc. Can you see where I am having a problem? If you are going to make various claims, you should be able to back up those claims with hard evidence and actual facts.
If there are Catholics who are worshiping Mary or any saint or angel as a deity, then they are 100% in violation of Catholic teaching/ doctrine and a number of very clear Scriptural mandates. If this is what they are doing, then these individuals really should repent, confess that sin and ask for God’s forgiveness. That individual Catholic is just plain wrong.
So have you ever asked a Catholic who was kneeling before a statute of Mary or one of the saints what he or she was doing? What was his/her intent? Was the intent to worship the icon as a deity? Or to show honor and reverence?
You automatically assume that my intent to kneel and pray before an open Bible is my worship of the God who gave us that Bible. After all, no Christian worships the Bible! But if I were to kneel and pray before a religious icon in a Catholic Church, then I am automatically assumed to be engaged in idolatry? This is nothing other than outright hypocrisy.
If I were to tell you that I worship the God that that religious icon represents and I honor the life and example of Mary as the Mother of God, or of the saint that was represented, would you then call me a liar and insist that I am engaged in idolatry? In corollary, if no true Christian worships the Bible, I tell you that no true Catholic worships a religious icon.
So tell me, is there a difference between worship vs. honor and reverence? Can one honor something or someone without worshiping that thing or person? Or is any showing or demonstration of respect, honor, and/or reverence the exact same thing as worship? Or is it all one and the same for you? I would hope you can make some distinctions.
As for the traditions of men: Protestants have their own versions of traditions of men. Where in the Bible can I find the Protestant practices of: altar call? Sunday school classes? Wednesday night prayer and Bible study? Or quotes from the writings of Sturgeon? Wesley? Knox? Calvin? Luther? Or where in the Bible do I find such words as Trinity, hypostasis union, incarnation and/or Great Commission?
If you are really going to claim “sola scriptura” then there are a whole lot of practices the various Protestants will need to abandon. I suggest to you that no one, neither Catholic nor Protestant, is divorced from tradition. However, it appears that Catholic tradition is to be rejected and disdained and Protestant tradition is to be embraced and applauded.
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First lets start with the snake on the standard. The snake on the pole according to John 3:14 which says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” The snake on the pole was a foreshadow of Jesus salvation to the human race through His death (cross), burial and resurrection. No Israelites knelt down or prayed to it in the wilderness. You are twisting scripture where it plainly says that to bow down to any idol it is prohibited and you are justifying your sins and going against God’s Word. When the Jews started to worship the bronze snake on the standard by offering incense, they turned something into an idol of worship as seen in 2 Kings 18:4 which says, “He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake that Moses made, for the Israelites burned incense to it up to that time. He called it Nehushtan.”.
Your understanding of scripture is a classical illustration of what the Jehovah Witness do, which is twist and turn passages to mean other then what it plainly states. You want to justify your worship of Mary and saints other then giving only the glory to Jesus Christ .By you saying that you are not worshiping her is ridiculous because bowing down to a lifeless statue and kissing it is worshiping it period. Honor and reverence in scripture is used as the same which is only applied to God.
Leviticus 19:32 “‘Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.
The Hebrew word for reverence is eulabeia (yoo-lab’-i-ah) which means: reverence, fear of God.
You give your reverence/worship to a lifeless demonic idol which demons are behind all idols as seen in 1 Corinthians 10:19-20 which says, “19 What am I saying then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but I do say that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to participate with demons!”
In reality all Catholics are worshiping demons every time they bow down to an idol, it is giving reverenced honor to Satan.
Concerning your illustration that an altar call is some type of tradition is very bizarre. An alter call is to encourage people to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As Christians we are commanded to bring people to Christ and pastors actually do that and invite people to accept Jesus as Lord and savior which I invite you to believe in the right Jesus not in the Catholic Jesus. The Catholic Jesus is powerless since you need to add your works to help Jesus save you. That Jesus is foreign to scripture. My Jesus did it all on the cross and is all powerful.
The evangelicals DO NOT have tradition especially like Catholicism who worships Popes, statues, dead people, items of the sort…etc. You Catholics cannot worship Jesus Christ and idols at the same time. Susan if you don’t put your faith in Jesus Christ and abandon your idols you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Susan, I am addressing you paragraph by paragraph.
“Nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to do such a thing. We are sternly warned against the sin of idolatry. In fact the first three of the ten commandments are very clear that we are to worship God and God alone. I agree 100% that God, himself, commands that we should have no other god(s) other than the Lord God Creator of heaven and earth.”
– I’m glad we agree on this.
“However, that is not to say that God has prohibited the use of religious images, icons, symbols, etc. In fact, God himself ordered a bronze statute of a snake to be made and lifted up so that the Israelites who had been bitten by the poisonous snakes in the desert could look up to the image and be healed/saved. In the same way, God himself gave very specific instructions about the crafting of the ark of the Covenant and the temple which included religious icons and symbols.”
– God was very specific when He gave instructions never to carve anything in the shape or form of any creature when he gave the 10 commandments. Your snake/standard mention was specific for the Israelites and to apply that to justify veneration of icons today would be completely erroneous and presumptuous at best.
“I have answered your question directly Cali. You have not answered mine. How are the examples I have given in my post from 12:23 pm different and where in Catholic teaching, doctrine, Catechism, etc. are Catholics instructed to worship anyone or anything other than God himself? Can you give me some official reference? Any official reference?”
– I thought you were talking to the original poster but now that you have mentioned my name, your examples by the way is a clear misunderstanding and erroneous justification. I would assume the family members you’re talking about in the photo are alive and so that would not mean worship, however, it is another story especially if those family members in the picture have already departed. The case with the Catholics is that they invoke and venerate so-called Saints which are physically dead and is clear in Deuteronomy 18:11 as a form of necromancy. The normal Catholic response would be since those “saints” are in God’s presence, they can help intercede to God for us, but scripture itself is clear that we are to pray to the Father only in Jesus’ name in Jesus’ model prayer which the Catholics repeat verbatim. If you want official reference, don’t put the burden on me. Be a good Catholic and read your Catechism yourself which by the way is accessible through here http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
“You tell me about your mother and about your mother’s priest. Is your mother a theologian, a professor at a seminary or some expert on the Catholic faith? Should I trust her interpretation over official church teaching/ doctrine? Your mother’s priest – the things your mother claims he said, is this what he really said or did she misunderstand him?”
– My mother happens to be a typical Catholic like you who believes that she has to go consult a seminarian in order to interpret Scripture. Just because the Catholics have the erroneous belief that the Holy Spirit is imparted through infant baptism does not necessarily mean the Seminarian has the Holy Spirit to aid him in understanding Scripture. It is clear in that the Holy Spirit indwells the believer that moment the person consciously makes the decision to accept Christ as their Savior (Ephesians 1:13). I am sorry to remind you that the gospels itself were not penned by scholars (except for Paul) but by mere lay people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Scripture is not meant to be esoteric and interpreted solely by the world’s standards of learned people, but people whom God has given the Holy Spirit. Please read 1 Corinthians 25-27, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. 26 Brothers, consider the time of your calling: Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
“And let’s say, for sake of argument, that your mother’s priest is teaching things that are diametrically opposed to official Catholic church doctrine: If a priest (or let’s say a Protestant pastor) speaks in doctrinal error, does that make the entire faith/ denomination wrong? Is any individual priest or pastor an official spokesman for an entire denomination?”
– The Pope speaks a lot of doctrinal error. An example is here: https://modconspiracy.wordpress.com/the-new-world-order-is-not-a-conspiracy-theory/ The Pope is the spokesperson for the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is false for the very fact that its extra biblical traditional teachings cancel out the Scriptures. Like I said, a person has to choose. I made my choice and I choose to believe what is written in Scripture. We are admonished “not to go beyond what is written” in 1 Corinthians 4:6.
“I would certainly hope not! Even the Pope cannot legitimately and officially speak contrary to Catholic doctrine as stated in the Catechism, the various Church Council’s, the Magisterium, etc. Can you see where I am having a problem? If you are going to make various claims, you should be able to back up those claims with hard evidence and actual facts.”
– The Pope said in his speech during his visit to NYC something truly blasphemous and heretical which I addressed in this blog post https://modconspiracy.wordpress.com/a-wolf-unmasked/ It actually has the transcript.
“If there are Catholics who are worshiping Mary or any saint or angel as a deity, then they are 100% in violation of Catholic teaching/ doctrine and a number of very clear Scriptural mandates. If this is what they are doing, then these individuals really should repent, confess that sin and ask for God’s forgiveness. That individual Catholic is just plain wrong.”
– Mary assumes the title of Queen of Heaven. Read more about this on my previous post which can be found here- https://modconspiracy.wordpress.com/musings-of-an-unapologetic-iconoclast/ She is definitely not a queen. Nowhere in scripture and I mean nowhere, does it ever mention she is that. On the contrary, she admits to Jesus as her savior so go tell the rest of your Catholic friends they are wrong.
“So have you ever asked a Catholic who was kneeling before a statute of Mary or one of the saints what he or she was doing? What was his/her intent? Was the intent to worship the icon as a deity? Or to show honor and reverence?”
– I don’t have to ask a Catholic what is on their mind. I used to do that so I would know. If your heart is truly bent to worship only God, I can give you with full assurance that God will personally take you out of that false system, like He did me and many other ex-Catholics and also of the biblical example of Cornelius in Acts 10. My entire family are still Catholics and they bow to pray to her to intercede to Jesus. She died, sorry to tell you and she definitely did not ascend to heaven as what Catholic tradition states. The only people mentioned in the bible who was taken up to heaven was Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus. That is it. No mention of Mary ever ascending to heaven.
“You automatically assume that my intent to kneel and pray before an open Bible is my worship of the God who gave us that Bible. After all, no Christian worships the Bible! But if I were to kneel and pray before a religious icon in a Catholic Church, then I am automatically assumed to be engaged in idolatry? This is nothing other than outright hypocrisy.”
– Hmmm, actually, I didn’t assume anything so stop putting words in my mouth. I was speaking from experience. And this one, I honestly thought you were addressing Spaniard. Praying to an icon is contrary to scripture because as believers, God desires we worship Him in Spirit and in truth. If you need to see an icon to better pray to Him, then that would mean you need to see something in order for you to pray to the Father who is Spirit. How exactly do you call that faith?
“If I were to tell you that I worship the God that that religious icon represents and I honor the life and example of Mary as the Mother of God, or of the saint that was represented, would you then call me a liar and insist that I am engaged in idolatry? In corollary, if no true Christian worships the Bible, I tell you that no true Catholic worships a religious icon.”
– We do not worship the bible. We try to live what is written and since we all belong to the same human race, we are all in a level playing field that is why we need Jesus. We don’t kiss the Bible, kneel to it or bow to it but we do honor what is written, the spoken words of Jesus and the full revelation of Himself and how God ought to be worshipped. Now, if you choose to worship God through an icon, then clearly, that would be idolatry. I don’t know why Catholics always keep trying to go around this.
“So tell me, is there a difference between worship vs. honor and reverence? Can one honor something or someone without worshiping that thing or person? Or is any showing or demonstration of respect, honor, and/or reverence the exact same thing as worship? Or is it all one and the same for you? I would hope you can make some distinctions.”
– Honoring God the way He prescribed sans the aid of icons is true honor. Anything else apart from what He prescribed is unacceptable to Him. Your so called justification of revering a saint or Mary is already against Scripture because it is clear God will not give His glory to another (Isaiah 42:8) and that we ought to pray only to the Father in Jesus’ name.
“As for the traditions of men: Protestants have their own versions of traditions of men. Where in the Bible can I find the Protestant practices of: altar call? Sunday school classes? Wednesday night prayer and Bible study? Or quotes from the writings of Sturgeon? Wesley? Knox? Calvin? Luther? Or where in the Bible do I find such words as Trinity, hypostasis union, incarnation and/or Great Commission? ”
– The Altar Call is not a tradition. It is an invitation to anyone who feels they want to finally commit to God at that moment so you are totally misunderstanding this.
– As for your question of where to find the certain words in the bible, I don’t need to explain something that is a non issue here. The trinity is a clear revelation of God’s Triune nature in Genesis and also during Jesus’ baptism (The Father speaking this is my son whom I am well pleased, as Jesus was baptized with the Holy Spirit descending as a dove). Incarnation when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and the Great Commission when Jesus told his apostles to go out and preach. Honestly, I didn’t need to address this because it’s pretty nonsensical to address something we agree on.
“If you are really going to claim “sola scriptura” then there are a whole lot of practices the various Protestants will need to abandon. I suggest to you that no one, neither Catholic nor Protestant, is divorced from tradition. However, it appears that Catholic tradition is to be rejected and disdained and Protestant tradition is to be embraced and applauded.”
– Protestants who adhere to Sola Scriptura are divorced from “SPIRITUAL” tradition that are not written in Scripture. We all live with tradition but not all tradition are labeled spiritual. Now, it is one thing what the Catholic Church does where it mandates its adherents to do certain things or they could be excommunicated from the church. I tell you one thing… Excommunication or shunning is a common thread in a false religion.
I keep stressing it is the Holy Spirit who convicts. If the words revealed in Scripture does not at all convict you, then it means nothing I can say will matter.
I just want to let you know this is not an attack on individual Catholics, but rather, the false system that is responsible in promoting spiritual adultery which is idolatry.
I have posts about Catholicism which you can check out if you wish to and I don’t want to hijack Spaniard’s post with an absurdly long chat so if you feel the need to respond, feel free to contact me personally. I do see you are already set in your beliefs so it would be quite pointless to contact me only to argue. Take care and may God truly open your eyes.
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