Eyyy! You made my point for me! I love it when people do that.
So, as you just now said, there is nothing wrong with having images in church.
There were no images in any "church" because the Jewish temple was a building and the Christian "church" is the people....the congregation. They met for worship in people's homes, so the building itself was not important.
And the Ark, which was decorated with cherubim, was most certainly treated with the highest respect. It was kept out of sight of the common people, and you couldn't even touch it without dying.
Exactly. It could not be seen by anyone other than the priests. When it was transported on one occasion by the order of King David, he failed to follow protocol and it was carried on the back of a wagon instead of by the priests. When an upset seemed immanent, the person who touched it trying to save it, died. That was already well known, so like touching a live wire, regardless of the motive, death was the expected result.
So where does that leave carrying statues of Mary around so she is idolised? We know she is because we can see it. You can deny it all you wish. It is outright idolatry.
Crack open a history book. Crack open the Bible. Crack open Acts 6, 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Timothy 5. The idea that Christianity had no churches and no liturgical priesthood is a complete and utter farce that can't stand up for a single second of actual scrutiny and examination of source documents that we have from the time.
By all means crack open the Bible and you will see that there were no "priests" officiating in any ritualistic form of worship in the Christian congregations. There were men in shepherding roles of responsibility, but they were a body, not a single man with the job of taking care of the spiritual needs of everyone. There were overseers and men in other ministerial roles but no priests according to Christendom's definition. All were brothers....so there was no rank. No clergy/laity distinctions.
Read all of those scripture you cited and point the priests out to me.
A "bishop" in the first century was certainly NOT what Catholicism turned the position into. Forget the man in the fine robes with the funny hat...that is not what a bishop was in the first century.
According to Wiki...."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Bishop
The term epískopos, meaning "overseer" in Greek, the early language of the Christian....The term
epískopos, meaning "overseer" in Greek, the early language of the Christian Church, was not from the earliest times clearly distinguished from the term
presbýteros (literally: "elder" or "senior", origin of the modern English word
priest)
Please note how it says "the modern English word priest."
For someone who claims to put all his trust in the Bible, you sure do seem to completely ignore it whenever convenient. I'm surprised I'm even rehashing this with you; I've pointed out these same exact things to you time and time again, yet every time you make the same exact points as before, like you've never even seen any of this before. Short-term memory loss, perhaps?
Could I say the same for you perhaps.
There are new member here who may not have read our previous interchanges.....the information is for them too.
Just because there will be priests later doesn't mean there weren't priests in the first century. And we know for a certain fact that there was a liturgical hierarchy in the first-century Church. Initially, bishops took on the roles that we would now assign to a priest. In fact, all a priest is is a delegate of a bishop who has the bishop's blessing to perform the sacraments and care for a smaller community.
You are speaking about the roles of men in the Catholic Church. I am speaking about first century Christianity....you cannot compare the two.
There was no hierarchy in the Christian congregation, only positions of service. There was no distinctive garb, funny fish shaped hats and no ritualistic repetition...there were no images, no holy water, no incense. There was no one who was a Christian "priest" in the flesh. Their role was to be in heaven in that capacity. These priests were also to be kings...so is that what we see? (Rev 20:6)
There is another problem with your argument here.....
The apostle Paul made something very plain.
Galatians 3:26-29....
"For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise."
When Jesus chose the twelve, they were all male. No female was permitted to teach in the assembly, either in Judaism or in the Christian congregations. But notice that Paul said that in the heavenly arrangement, there is "no longer male or female"? All are "one in Christ Jesus". These are the ones anointed with God's spirit to become adopted "sons" even though there is no gender in heaven.
The role of those chosen to go to heaven are said to be "kings and priests".....again these were roles given only to men on earth, and yet women were also among God's spirit anointed ones with a "heavenly calling". (Heb 3:1)
The females in the congregation were not nuns. They were ministers of the kingdom along with their spiritual brothers. So to have a priesthood on earth would have meant eliminating the females who were to be of equal standing to their male counterparts once in the heavenly arrangement.
Venerate=/=worship. Icons and statues of Christ and the Saints are not objects of worship, nor are they worshipped. Just because you're unable to make that logical deduction doesn't mean that billions of other people throughout history have been unable to do so.
When archeologists worked in the catacombs, they did not see a single image along with inscriptions of the Christians buried there. Not up until the 4th century do we see images creeping in. Such was their abhorrence of images.
So Jesus broke His promise to protect His Church. The Holy Spirit failed His job as well. The pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) crumbled to the ground. And God waited 1900 years, letting billions of people die and get slated for damnation, before He finally decided to stop being lazy and re-reveal the truth to a bunch of Americans sitting around reading the Bible that, apparently, not even those who sat at the feet of the Apostles and learned personally from them, the ones whose hearts had been opened by Jesus to understand what was written about Him, could understand.
LOL.....Well, when you it it that way......
Only problem is Jesus himself foretold the sowing of the weeds and how both the wheat and the fake wheat would both grow together until the harvest time. Guess what?....its harvest time now.
Jesus has been busy separating the wheat from the weeds all through this "time of the end".
God liberated his people from a greater Babylon and restored true worship in this time period , just as the Bible says. (Rev 18:4, 5)
Daniel too was used to write about the "time of the end" when a "cleansing and refining" of God's people would take place (Dan 12:9, 10)....so you are right...sort of.
Excuse me if I can't take you seriously for saying that.
That is up to you.
The belief in resurrection of the dead and of the Messiah originally came from Zoroastrianism, and are not to be found in earlier parts of the Bible. What do you say to that?
Resurrections are found in the OT as well as the NT...they come from God. The devil is a mimic.
Aside from the time when God commanded that images be made, and when God sanctified a temple that was completely filled with images, or... You know what, never mind, you're just going to ignore the Bible anyway.
The only problem with that is of course, we have no sanction from God because the Christian arrangement had no temple. The "church" was the people and they were told to adorn themselves with the teachings of the Christ. You operate by too many centuries of ingrained Catholic thinking.
What about parading around the Ark of the Covenant?
It was never paraded...it was never seen without its cover. As stated above.
So many misconceptions....all so easily explained.
