Using Images In The Church

How come Catholics still make use of images in their church, while the bible clearly warns us against the use of image? "You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,  under the earth: you shall not bow down to them or serve them" (Ex. 20:4–5). Also God frowned at the people of Israel when the made a golden image at the wilderness…"Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold" (Ex. 32:31). Truly our catholic brethren are perishing for lack of knowledge and their inheritance is hell fire!

 Hahahahahaha…… funny…the paragraph above is always the point of argument between the Catholics and non-Catholics.  The truth is that both Catholics and non-Catholics have come short of the bible passage above. An image is a pictorial representation of a person, object or thing. Pictures, drawings, sculpture, videos etc. are all examples of images. The scripture in above paragraph said you should not make an image of anything in heaven, on earth and under the earth. We are all comfortable to snap pictures of ourselves, our family members, our friends and relations, even that of our pastors. We post them in our Facebook pages, tweeter handles, and other social media, some of us criticizing Catholics even have our pastors pictures as our profile picture.The irony is that some of the people accusing Catholics are into drawings and paintings... This is hypocrisy in the highest level.

God I know can never contradict Himself because He is God….His word is life and it is true at all times. If He was against the use of image in religious worship why then did he encourage the people to make the image of two winged creature (cherubim) in Ex. 25:18–20 “you shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat at its two ends. The cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another; the faces of the cherubim are to be turned toward the mercy seat.” In 1 Chr. 28:18–19 “and the weight of the refined gold for the altar of incense. He also gave him the plan for the chariot, that is, the cherubim of gold that spread their wings and overshadow the ark of the covenant of the Lord.  “All this,” David said, “I have in writing as a result of the Lord’s hand on me, and he enabled me to understand all the details of the plan.”

During the Exodus, the Israelite sinned against God and He punished them with serpent, Moses cried unto God for mercy…God told Moses to "make [a statue of] a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live" (Num. 21:8–9).  

The question now should be why then did God said we should not make an image of anything in heaven, earth or under the earth?

The answer is simple…the Egyptians of the old are known for ‘Art’, they makes images a lot and they worships the images they make as god. They believe in the god they see, Israelite that left Egypt for the promise land were all born and brought up in Egypt, so the tendency of making images and worshiping them are still there because that is the culture they know. That explains why, when Moses went to bring the Lord’s commandment, he only spent 40 days and night in the mountain of the lord but before he could come back the people have made for themselves an image of a calf and worshiped it saying it was the God that brought them out of Egypt (Ex. 32:1-8). The bronze image made by Moses in Numbers 21: 8-9, was placed in the temple for a long time and God was not angry with the people but  when people did start to worship the bronze serpent as a snake-god (whom they named "Nehushtan"),God became angry with people and the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs. 18:4). 

Someone may also argue that what the scripture said is 'graven image' (carved, engraved image)...wow sound argument, but was their anything like camera as at the time the commandment was given? The only form of imaging then was graven.

In summary, if you still watch religious videos, and your church still makes fliers, banners, or you have your pictures or that of your loved ones, and you are worried about Catholics going to hell fire because to you they worship idols by having religious images (sacramental) in their homes and churches, you have already condemned yourself to judgement.