Home › Forums › Everything Else › Graven Images › Reply To: Graven Images
I used New American Standard Bible. There, it used the singular god.
I see the NIV. It is using the plural.
However, we must not forget what Aron is saying, “We shall have the festival to the Lord.” To say this, Arom must have concluded that he was using the golden calf as the tool to represent God, or how could he say we will have the fesitval to the Lord?
Your argument makes Aron’s action impossible. He said, “these are gods who brought you out of Egypt” Who brought Israelites out of Egypt? Israliests knew the expression was indicated toward the Lord. “The god, who brought you out of Egypt..” you will see this quote used again, again, in many books of the old testament, untill the part, where Israelites were exiled to Babylon. Then, the expression was changed to “the God, who brought you out of Babylon.”
If the plural part seems problematic to you, I shall say it actually supports my case. Aron is not only representing God in a wrong way, he is actively distorting the character of God to gratify the desires of Israelites – “As you like it, you have various concepts of true God as many as you want. You define him. I will give you this as the sample.” Remember, Israelies were already corrupted a lot when they had been influenced by Egyptians, who believed in many gods.
If you deny this, you can never logically justify youself of why Aron said, “We shall have the festival to the Lord”, who brought Israliets out of Egypt! Both were very symbolic indications to which Israelites were too familiar. Aron could not use them lightly!
Remember, what we beget is only identical to us. what we creat is inferior to us. God begot his Son. We can never draw God’s images through our perception, without distoring his True image. I agreed with you that the sculpture and icons of the saints were not bad, already. But, there was no example in the Bible, which showed Isralites used the man-made images of God, officially. The reproduction of the images of Christ were started when Christians in Rome were affected by Roman cultures, which used sculptrues to represent their pagan gods. I heard this from my catholic world religion teacher.
Even though our heart yearns for it, I believe we must never reproduce the images of God the Father and Son. The Son had no earthly majesty to attract us, and God, the Father has majesty too great for us to approach.
Remeber, how Israliets begged Moses to stop God’s direct presence over them. They were almost faint, even hearing his voice alone. “Speak to yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die (Exodus 20:19)”
To define a God in human terms is a sin to God. Remeber, it was God, who answered to Moses, “I am who I am.”
Please, justify why Aron said “we shall have the festival to the Lord.”, after having decided to use the golden calf as the Idol.
Let Truth triumph over us.
Please send me a picture or icon of God, which does not creat wrong impressions of the perfect image of the Son, and the Father, whose face nobody could really bare.