Sorry, I got interrupted.....where were we...?
Yes, I have had that told to me many times by Catholic people...but the fact remains that no images were to be used in worship that were not prescribed in every detail by God. When you make images of people that you have no idea what they looked like, you run the risk of the devil taking advantage of your disobedience. I mean, would you like someone to flash a picture of Donald Trump and then tell everyone that it was you?
I once had a very devout Catholic lady show me a picture of the Virgin Mary in the clouds. She was so adoring of that picture but when I mentioned that it was a picture of a statue and not a human, and asked why Mary would not appear in person, she was at a loss to explain. Isn't it easy to have a lend of someone who has been trained from childhood to see images as real people....? Performing worship before an image is idolatry, pure and simple.
God's law forbade the "
making" of "
any" images....period. (Exodus 20:4-5) That includes two dimensional ones like icons. If they are used in worship as these pictures clearly indicate, then the camera is not lying...the church is. The cross is an image too.
What do you consider an act of worship to be?
Awesome!...a point of agreement.
Jesus, the grandson of Alexander Helios=Heli was called God, the son of God, King of kings, etc, which was not unusual in those days. Originally, Cleopatra ruled with her father Ptolemy XII and later with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, whom she married as per Egyptian custom, but eventually she became sole ruler.
No children were born from her union with her two brothers, but she did bear a son [Caesarion] to Julius Caesar, who was later elevated to co-ruler in name only. It is also written, at the time the assassination of Caesar by Brutus and his companions, that Cleopatra was living in Rome in a villa of Caesars, who then, fearing for her life also, fled Rome and returned to Alexandria in Egypt.
Cicero was to later write a series of letters alluding to the fact that she was at that time pregnant with a second child by Julius Caesar. If Caesarion, the son of Julius Caesar and Clepoatra, who Augustus had murdered, had a full sister she would not have been seen as a threat to the new Caesar Augustus as Caesarion was, and would have been spared, as no woman could rule in Rome.
Cleopatra represented herself as the reincarnation of the Egyptian goddess ‘Isis’, and was given the title of “Queen of Kings” by Mark Anthony. Her son ‘Caesarion’ was also given many titles, including ‘god’, ‘Son of god’ and ‘King of Kings’ and was depicted as Horus the son of Isis. It was after the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC, that Cleopatra coupled up with Mark Anthony and in 40 BC she bore to him the twins Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios, and later on another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus.
In late 34 BC, at the Donations of Alexandria, shortly after Anthony had conquered Armenia, Cleopatra and Caesarion were crowned rulers of Egypt and Cyprus. Alexander Helios, their six-year-old son, was crowned ruler of Aemenia, Media and Parthia; Cleopatra Selene II, Heli’s six-year-old twin sister, was crowned ruler of Cyrenaica and Libya, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, the younger of their three children was crowned ruler of Phoenicia, Syria and Cilicia.
Isis was the most popular goddess from the time of Psamtik 1 (663-610 B.C) till the coming of Christianity, her cult appealed to the Greeks and Romans alike and when Egypt came under Roman rule, her cult spread through much of Europe. By the time of Jesus, the chief centre of her worship was in Rome. Isis is commonly depicted with Horus the child (Harpocrates) on her lap, and today, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the late pagan and 4th century Christian icons of the mother and child, [Isis and Horus---Mary and Jesus] it’s almost as though the old Pagan Queen was stripped of her mythical garments and clothed with the new covering of Christianity.