It appears that some don't quite understand what images are, so for them I post this and await comments. I did this yesterday but it has disappeared from the site for some reason. If however it is still here somewhere the mods will no doubt delete the copy.


Now the Lord thy God said, “ Unto thee, thou shalt not make any graven images,” why? Because it was not Him who had the problem, but man. And what was the problem? That their images would turn to desires and these desires overshadowing Him, replacing Him in their minds with something that was not Him or of Him.

In and by faith the follower of God must not look back but look to Jesus as he goes forward denying the world its place in him or her any more. The tribes were expected to do the same, the very reason that images, whether in mind or actuality, them being of the world, could draw them back from God. Do you understand?

He never said, “ Unto Me, thou shalt not make any images “ but “ unto thee ” and this is where man chooses to dispute what images are, especially if they are graven which means manmade. We know a depiction of God is quite wrong but it is essential to understand why? Because an image begins in the mind and whether it comes to fruition in stone or anything else, it remains manmade. It belongs to the world.

That is why God Himself utters that He is a jealous God, jealous of man putting Him on the same equivalent that his mind, man’s mind, conjures. God is not the mind of men and never can be. The “ unto thee ” that God speaks of shows this important difference between what we think and what God really is, hence the commandment. It shows how much of the world man is and how much of it that God isn’t.

God is not of the world, that place and its contents being fallen. The Apostle John brings that out quite clearly in his letters. The world by nature hates God and so in turn he implores the follower, the believer, to hate the world, why? Because he knew how easily the world, if allowed to, can turn others back to it, as did Jesus when He spoke of it.

Indeed Paul wrote in his letter to the Roman church how the mind of man could so easily project what it felt God was by turning their innermost images into objects of all sorts. Is this not more or less what the world and its religions are doing today? With poor excuse they hanker after images of all sorts claiming that they only venerate them, yet never give reason why an image needs veneration. Are these things not graven images made “ unto thee ”?

There are but two ordinances that the Christian is endeared to, yet even they are but figurative symbols of the one Person in Jesus Christ and I talk of the bread and wine by which we are to remember Him. Not just a God in the flesh, rather God in the flesh who came, died, rose again that we too might live as He does. Like all the things that the Temple shadowed these are also defined to be exclusive, not by man, but God.

By the New Testament in His blood, like rebirth, the Old has passed away for the believer, replaced by the New but only for the believer because all the rest remain under the Old Covenant governed by its Law. They have no recollection of being renewed, reborn, made regenerate, because their lives remain the same and that cannot be if one claims to be Christian. The old life must pass away.

The world must be left behind and what greater in the world can images project that are not worldly things, things that come from the minds of men and not God. They can’t and if so there is no excuse for making them?