The Old Testament forbids the worship of icons. And the business can no longer be stopped

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Not only in every church, but also in many houses and apartments there are icons that people worship.

Moreover, the icons are massively placed in car interiors. People believe that this will help them in difficult times, prevent them from troubles on the road. As if, the face depicted on the icon takes the driver and passengers of the car under the protection, protects them as a Guardian Angel.

Is it so?

Icons in the church

One can hardly even imagine an Orthodox Church without icons. They are everywhere. Moreover, the walls and ceiling are sometimes painted with the faces of saints and scenes from the Holy Scriptures.

Now Christianity is divided into many currents and sects. Some of them, for example, Protestants do not recognize icons, but most are engaged in the veneration of icons.

People come to church, pray for icons, light candles for them, make requests, some even put notes under the icons, where it is written in detail what this or that saint should do, how to help.

Are they doing the right thing? Can an icon help a person?

There are various legends about the miraculous remedies of icons. As if icons help to cure diseases, ward off trouble from home, make life rich and happy.

They say, for example, that during the Great Patriotic War a plane with the icon flew around Moscow and it held out, the enemy retreated from it.

They also say that the icons stream myrrh, pouring out an oily tear from their eyes. But this is nothing more than cunning tricks of the priests, with the aim of attracting parishioners and receiving donations.

What the Bible Says About Icons

What is an icon? This is an image, an idol that is worshiped.

The fact that it is impossible to worship idols, to which the icons belong, is repeatedly said in the Old Testament.

"Do not make idols for yourself, and do not set up statues, and do not put pillars in your place, and do not put stones with images in your land to bow down before them, for I am the Lord your God." Leviticus chapter 26.1.

You can bow and pray only to God and to no one else. By bowing before the icons and praying to them, a person thereby pleads with God, making him equal with the one depicted in the icon.

The priests claim that the icon depicts the image of God, therefore the icon is not an idol. But they are cunning, because everything in our world was created by God, and is Him. Any speck of dust, a blade of grass, a drop of water, a hare running in the field, the sound of the wind - all this is a part of God.

But it never occurs to anyone to weigh a landscape of nature or images of birds, drawings of mountains or houses in a church.

But this is the same thing.

So you don’t need to worship them, you don’t need to worship idols, because by highlighting saints from the general environment, placing their portraits on icons, you highlight, thereby, a piece of God and exalt it above others. It is not right.

What did Jesus Christ say about icons?

Nothing. After all, it is said:

"Do not think that I have come to break the law or the prophets: I did not come to break the law, but to fulfill it." Gospel of Matthew chapter 5.7.

Neither Jesus Christ, nor the early Christians even thought of praying to icons, worshiping idols. After all, this is a direct violation of the Covenant, the Law of God.