Treasured Truths.

 Exo 20:4  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: 

Exo 20:5  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; 

Exo 20:6  And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

Why not? Or rather, why? God gave ten royal laws, laws that were written in stone, unlike other laws given- ceremonial etc. God put only the ten royal laws into the Ark of the Covenant that was placed in the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle and Temple.  To say the ten royal laws were held as special is truly an understatement of the fact it is of supreme importance. You do not place a treasure inside of a treasure box if it's meaningless, at least, not as a rule. Treasure boxes were to hold only treasure, while other boxes could contain things of much lesser importance. You don't build a safe with state of the art technology to put meaningly bric-a-brac inside. You build that safe to guide your precious, treasured possessions.  Banks and other financial institutions have safes because they hold the treasures of many. There are safe guards upon safe guards for things that are highly prized, we know this, we can be logically about this. Treasure, prized possessions- all are expected to be inside containers that can protect them.

The Ark of the Covenant was a treasure of God's.  The Ark contained the prized possessions of God. The Mercy Seat was over top of the prized possessions, the lid of the Ark. The Mercy Seat …

Exo_25:17  And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold…

Exo_25:21  And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.

Exo_25:22  And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.

Exo_26:34  And thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place.

Exo_30:6  And thou shalt put it before the vail that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with thee.

GOD WILL MEET WITH THEM THERE. GOD WILL COMMUNE WITH THEM FROM ABOVE THE MERCY SEAT.

The sheer enormity of that statement is mind-blowing. God, who no temple made with hands could contain. God, whose earth is His footstool. God chose a place to commune with mankind and that place was sacred. The testimony in the ark was of supreme importance- the ten royal laws and one of those laws was this one--

Exo 20:4  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: 

Exo 20:5  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; 

Exo 20:6  And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

These laws were reinforced by Jesus, kept by Jesus and brought to life by Jesus, stripped down to their very core by Jesus. 

When we read that we are not to make ANYTHING to bow down to… GOD MEANS JUST THAT!  He did NOT want us to even bow down to the tabernacle, the ark, the altars, there was NO instruction to bow down to anything man made. Yet how many people find themselves even today bowing before altars, statues, crosses, buildings, candles, and the like? How many cry out, they do it to honor and show respect to God, but God has told them NOT to do it! They are calling EVIL - GOOD! They've convinced themselves beyond any doubt that it's harmless and good, a blessing, a reverence for Him, even as their mouths speak the words of worship towards this saint and that saint. GOD did NOT want us to worship ANY kind of image, not even His own- so He did not show Himself to mankind.  God is Spirit and we must worship Him in Spirit, not in things. We take away something vital that belongs to God alone, when we worship at the feet of things man creates. 

Satan has a huge storehouse filled with deceptions, in fact it's so huge we cannot fathom it's true size. Satan wants us to ultimately ignore God's truth and choose substitutions for that truth. When Christ comes for His people, many will cry out that they belong to Him, and He will tell them to depart from Him, that He never knew them and that will be the truth!  How shocked they are going to be by that pronouncement, yet they will know in that same instant as soon as the words leave the Savior's mouth, where they have erred. They won't be left with doubt for long. They'll know where and how they turned their backs on God's truth and accepted Satan's delusions instead.  PLEASE LORD WE DO NOT WANT TO BE AMONG THOSE WHO ARE DECEIVED! Please, Lord, KEEP US FROM EVIL! Please, Lord, please. 

(Excerpt)

'April 23, 1901

“The Keeping of the Commandments. The Second Commandment” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 78, 17, pp. 264, 265.

“I AM the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 

“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; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:2, 4-6. 

As already stated, Gregory II was pope when the great controversy over the worship of images was raised, by the efforts in the East to abandon it. 

This pope Gregory made himself chief champion of the images and their worship. In 730 he wrote in defense of image of worship, to Emperor Leo the Isaurian who was trying to destroy the images. Since the cause of image worship prevailed, and was established as a part of Catholic faith, this letter of Pope Gregory II is important as giving the principles and arguments upon which that worship rests. 

To Emperor Leo, the pope wrote:— 

Ten years by God’s grace you have walked aright, and not mentioned the sacred images; but now you assert that they take the place of idols, and that those who reverence them are idolaters, and want them to be entirely set aside and destroyed. You do not fear the judgment of God, and that offense will be given not merely to the faithful, but also to the unbelieving. Christ forbids our offending even the least, and you have offended the whole world, as if you had not also to die and to give an account. 

You wrote. “We may not, according to the command of God (Exodus 20:4), worship anything made by the hand of man, nor any likeness of that which is in the heaven or in the earth. Only prove to me, who has taught us to worship (aibrothos kai procaunein) anything made by man’s hands, and I will then agree that it is the will of God.” But why have not you, O emperor and head of the Christians, questioned wise men on this subject before disturbing and perplexing poor people? You could have learnt from them concerning what kind of images made with hands cheiropoieta God said that. But you have rejected our Fathers and doctors, although you gave the assurance by your own subscription that you would follow them. The holy Fathers and doctors are our scripture, our light, and our salvation, and the six synods have taught us (that); but you do not receive their testimony. I am forced to write to you without delicacy or learning, as you also are not delicate or learned; but my letter yet contains the divine truth. 

God gave that command because of the idolaters who had the land of promise in possession and worshiped golden animals, etc., saying: “These are our gods, and there is no other God.” On account of these diabolical cheiropoieta, God has forbidden us to worship them.... Moses wished to see the Lord, but He showed himself to him only from behind. To us, on the contrary, the Lord showed himself perfectly, since the Son of God has been made man.... From all parts men now came to Jerusalem to see Him, and then depicted and represented Him to others. In the same way they have depicted and represented James, Stephen, and the martyrs; and men, leaving the worship of the devil, have venerated these images, but not absolutely (with latria), but relatively.... 

Why, then, do we make no representation of God the Father?—The divine nature can not be represented. If we had seen Him, as we have the Son, we could also make an image of Him. 

This is precisely the reason that the Lord gives in His word, as to why He allowed no manner of similitude to be seen. Read that word again: “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure.” Deuteronomy 4:15, 16. 

Thus the Lord allowed no similitude to be seen, expressly that the people should make no image, and because the people were so idolatrous that, had they seen any similitude, they would certainly have made a graven image. 

Yet Pope Gregory II plainly says of God: “If we had seen Him, ... we could also make an image of Him.” 

This is only to say that he and those of that way are in heart as idolatrous as were the people at Sinai. 

Pope Gregory says also, “We have seen the Son,” and thus can make images of Him, and, “If we had seen God the Father, as we have the Son, we could also make an image of Him.” But since God allowed no similitude to be seen, “lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image,” and since this word of Pope Gregory’s shows that he and those of that way are as idolatrous as were those at Sinai,—this, then, shows that the use of images of Christ in the Catholic Church is as essentially idolatrous as was ever the use of any images in the world. 

Further, the pope wrote:— 

You say: “We worship stones and walls and boards.” But it is not so, O emperor; but they serve us for remembrance and encouragement, lifting our slow spirits upward by those (persons) whose names the pictures bear, and whose representation they are. And we worship them not as God, as you maintain; God forbid! For we set not our hope on them; and if a picture of the Lord is there, we say: Lord Jesus Christ, help and save us. At a picture of His Holy Mother, we say: Holy God-bearer, pray for us with thy Son; and so with a martyr.... It would have been better for you to have been a heretic than a destroyer of images. 

But that is only the argument of open pagan idolaters. They know that the image itself if not their god; they say only that the image represents the god; it serves to aid the mind in rising to the true idea and worship of the god, of which the image is the representative and remembrancer. 

The war against image worship continued till A.D. 789, when Irene came to power as the guardian of her son Constantine VI. She entered diligently upon the work of re-establishing image worship. 

She opened correspondence with Pope Hadrian I, who “exhorted her continually to this.” In his argument promotive of image worship the pope used Hebrews 11:21,—Jacob blessed both the sons of Joseph, and “worshiped upon the top of his staff,“—and made it support image worship by casting out the preposition, so that it should read, “worshiped the top of his staff.—Bower’s “Lives of the Popes,” Hadrian, par. 40. And so it reads in the Catholic Bible to-day. 

But since the image worship had been abolished by a general council, it was only by a general council that image worship could be doctrinally restored. It took considerable time to bring this about, so that it was not till 787 that the council was convened. 

This council, called also the seventh general council, was held at Nice, in Asia, especially for the prestige that would accrue to it by the name of the Second Council of Nice. It was held Sept. 24 to Oct. 23, A. D. 787. “The inconoclasts appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents; the scene was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian, and the Eastern patriarchs; the decrees were framed by the president, Tarasius, and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the Fathers and councils of the Church.”—Gibbons, “Decline and Fall,” chap 49., par. 17. 

The closing words of the decree of the council are as follows:— 

We are taught by the Lord, the apostles, and the prophets, that we ought to honor and praise before all, the holy God-bearer, who is exalted above all heavenly powers; further, the holy angels, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, the holy doctors, and all saints, that we may avail ourselves of their intercession, which can make us acceptable to God if we walk virtuously. Moreover, we venerate also the image of the sacred and life-giving cross and the relics of the saints, and accept the sacred and venerable images, and greet and embrace them, according to the ancient tradition of the holy Catholic Church of God, namely, of our holy Fathers, who received these images, and ordered them to be set up in all churches everywhere. These are the representations of our incarnate Saviour Jesus Christ, then of our inviolate Lady and quite holy God-bearer, and of the unembodied angels, who have appeared to the righteous in human form; also the pictures of the holy apostles, prophets, martyrs, etc., that we may be reminded by the representation of the original, and may be led to a certain participation in His holiness. 

This decree was subscribed by all present, even by the priors of monasteries and some monks. The two papal legates added to their subscription the remark that they received all who had been converted from the impious heresy of the enemies of images.—Hefele. The council was not content with this formal and solemn subscription. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation, “We all believe, we all assent, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the Church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of the world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images! Anathema upon Theodorus, falsely called bishop of Ephesus; against Sisinnius, of Perga; against Basilius, with the ill-omened name! Anathema against the new Arius Nestorius and Dioscorus, Anastasius; against Constantine and Nicetas (the iconoclast patriarchs of Constantinople)! Everlasting glory to the orthodox Germanus, to John of Damascus! To Gregory of Rome everlasting glory! Everlasting glory to the preachers of truth!”—Milman, “History of Latin Christianity,” book iv, chap 8, par. 27. 

In the West, Pope Adrian I accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman Church, it is somewhat unfortunate that the two princes [Constantine and Irene] who convened the two councils of Nice, are both stained with the blood of their sons.—Gibbon, “Decline and Fall,” chap 49, par. 18. 

Thus it was that image worship was established as a part of the faith of the Catholic Church, and that it is as clearly idolatry as ever was anywhere, the whole record, as well as the Scripture, shows. '